When I first proposed my hypothesis a few days ago, I asked for comments and critique. I have now received this and have updated my hypothesis to reflect this. You can see this discussion under "AFDave's God Hypothesis." Thanks to all of you for your feedback!
I will now restate my updated Hypothesis (added a few points) and set forth the updated rules and framework which I wish to use for my reasoning.
MY BACKGROUND I was first an Electrical Engineer, then an Air Force pilot (T-38 and Huey, believe it or not), then a businessman. Having sold my second business, I am now what you might say "between businesses" and am spending a lot of time on non-profit endeavors. I do have an aircraft charter business (a single King Air to fuel my flying "habit") and I am into alternative motor vehicle fuels with the possibility of a future business venture, but I'm not currently doing anything big in business. I was never a logician, by trade, but that does not mean I can't become one very quickly, especially when I see gross incompetence in the field. I also do not pretend to be a professional geologist, cosmologist, physicist, biologist, or Hebrew or Greek scholar. But I do know some good ones and I read voraciously. What I really am is an ordinary guy with a pretty good brain for learning most anything who is sick and tired of what appears to me to be absolute nonsense being fed to us from the Evolution Dogmatists. It appears to me that while there are many good scientists doing a truckload of good work for the benefit of humanity, there seems to be a big disconnect with reality when "science" begins speculating about how life began and developed. I was pleased to see the article mentioned below by Meyer because it is now obvious to me that I am not the only one floating the "God Hypothesis" again. I am apparently in very good company and the pace of new research in this area is accelerating.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (ROE) I need to say right up front that my reasoning with respect to this "Creator God Hypothesis" DOES NOT follow the Deductive Framework. I have stated prior to giving my hypothesis, that I cannot provide a watertight proof for God and I don't believe anyone can, so people are correct in saying that my hypothesis would fail using the deductive schema. However, we CAN use Abductive Reasoning then draw an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), and as Meyer points out below, this gives us powerful support for believing that the "Creator God Hypothesis" may in fact be true. So there is good news, O Seeker of Truth! There is massive support for the existence of God and for the literal truth revealed in the Bible. Stay with me through all of my points and I will show it to you in terms you can understand!
Here's a little blurb on Abductive reasoning from Stephen C. Meyer. I would HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend reading his entire paper (only 23 pages) called "The Return of the God Hypothesis" which can be found here ...
Abductive Reasoning DATA: The surprising fact A is observed. (The finely tuned cosmos, biological machines, written 'holy' books, etc.) LOGIC: But if B were true, then A would be a matter of course. (B is the God of the Christian Bible) CONCLUSION: Hence, there is reason to suspect that B is true.
Stephen C. Meyer notes that "The natural and historical sciences employ such logic [abductive] routinely. For instance, Peirce argued that skepticism about Napoleon's existence was unjustified although his existence could be known only by abduction: Numberless documents refer to a conqueror called Napoleon Bonaparte. Though we have not seen the man, yet we cannot explain what we have seen, namely, all these documents and monuments, without supposing that he really existed" (Peirce, C. S. 1931. Collected Papers. Eds. Charles Hartshorne & Paul Weiss. Vol. 2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
UPDATED HYPOTHESIS A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose. This God created mankind with a choice of either doing his will or not doing his will, in a similar way as parents "create" babies knowing full well that their child will either do their will or not do their will. Christian Theologians commonly call the choice of NOT doing God's will "sin."
C. All of human kind descended from two genetically rich parents, Adam and Eve, but did not diversify significantly due to minimal geographic isolation. My hypothesis proposes that there was only one large "super-continent" prior to the Great Flood of Noah, thus minimizing geographic isolation and resultant natural selection and specialization/diversification. The same applies to animals except that I make no proposal as to HOW MANY animals there were initially. Obviously, there would have to be at least one pair of each 'kind' (a term to be defined later)
D. Early man was created perfectly, i.e. no deleterious genetic mutations. It is proposed that early man was vigorous, healthy and possibly taller than modern humans. Early families were very large--on the order of 30 to 50 kids per couple and lives were long, many over 900 years. Sons routinely married their sisters in the ante-diluvian world with no worries of genetic defects. The first laws prohibiting close marriages did not occur until the time of Moses by which time we assume that accumulated harmful genetic mutations would have been a significant consideration.
E. Mankind chose NOT to do God's will very early on (just as all young children choose not to do parents' will), thus prompting God to institute a system for persuading humans to admit their folly and begin doing His will, for "redeeming" humans who choose this path, and for reminding humans that the present physical world is only a "proving ground" or "training camp" for the next world which will be created at a definite point in the future. These events are commonly called the Fall and the Curse by Christian Theologians.
F. God allowed the choices of mankind to take their natural course for the most part, intervening in the affairs of men sporadically and briefly. Most of the "day-to-day management" of Planet Earth was delegated to mankind himself, similar to how modern parents delegate the day-to-day management of their children to a school or a day care center.
G. The natural result of collective disobedience to the revealed will of God was an extremely corrupt society--i.e. rampant dishonesty, injustice, murder, theft, etc.--which was terminated by God through the agency of a global, life-destroying flood--the Flood of Noah described in Genesis.
H. The Global Flood of Noah was an immense cataclysm of enormous tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic upheaval. It completely reshaped the ante-diluvian world and resulted in massive, worldwide sedimentation and fossilization, mountain range uplift, sea basin lowering, continent separation, and climate change. The Flood was survived in a floating ark by 8 humans (four couples) and one or more pairs of terrestrial, air-breathing, genetically rich animals and birds. The diversity we see in the living world today is the result of subsequent geographic separation and isolation of species and natural selection.
I. Following the Global Flood, we hypothesize an Ice Age of undetermined duration brought on by the massive climate changes induced by the Flood. It was during this time that the dinosaurs and many other species died out. Since the time of the Ice Age, the structure of the earth's crust and the climate which followed, has not changed appreciably, and uniformitarian principles may now be applied to geological studies.
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
L. God personally dictated the events of the Creation week to the first man, Adam, but then assumed a less active role in the composition of the balance of Genesis and the balance of what is now commonly called the Christian Scriptures. This role varied from active dictation in an audible voice to less obvious methods--we might call it "planting of thoughts" in the minds of the writers. This collective process is commonly called the "Inspiration of Scripture" by Christian Theologians.
M. Many cultures in geographically diverse locations around the world have legends which follow the general outline above. The reason for the variance we find in the legends is that many of them are simply oral traditions passed down through the generations without the benefit of scrupulous copying of written records that the Christian Scriptures have enjoyed. Since the Documentary Hypothesis (Graf-Wellhausen Theory) has now been thoroughly discredited, we have good reason to revert to the previously well established hypothesis that Genesis is NOT oral tradition, but rather it is a carefully copied written record of eye-witness accounts.
N. The Christian Scriptures, i.e. the 66 books of what is commonly called the Holy Bible, are essentially the WRITTEN record of what this Super-Intelligent, Super-Powerful Creator God wanted mankind to know about Himself, His Creation, and His Plans for the Future.
O. Jesus of Nazareth is the single most influential human being to ever walk Planet Earth. Also, there are over 300 specific prophecies concerning a supposed "Messiah" figure throughout the Jewish Scriptures -- what Christians call the Old Testament. These prophecies "just happen" to all converge in the life of one man of history--Jesus of Nazareth. We hypothesize that this Jesus of Nazareth was (and is) the Creator God in human form, just as he claimed to be.
P. The Christian Scriptures consisting of the Jewish Scriptures plus what is commonly called the New Testament are the most basic and foundational collection of documents for all of mankind's activities on Planet Earth--from scientific endeavor to family activities to government structure. They also are the only reliable source documents for knowing the future of Planet Earth and Mankind in relation to it. As such, these Scriptures should be the basis and starting point for all human activities from individual behaviour to family operation to nation building and governance of human affairs to scientific endeavors and the arts.
So now you have the "AF Dave Creator God Updated Hypothesis" ... this is my second draft and almost completely my own words. While it is true that I have done extensive study, the only sentence to my knowledge "lifted" from an outside source is the first sentence of para (b). This hypothesis covers many of the main points that I believe should be included, but I would welcome any constructive comments suggesting additions, modifications, or clarifications.
As soon as I am satisfied from my feedback from you that my framework of reasoning is sound, I will proceed to provide evidence which I believe supports each point in my Hypothesis.
This should be fun ... I welcome your comments!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
To save you some time, we don't need evidence that there was an ice age.
If you could give us something that we haven't heard a hundred times before I'm sure we'd all be very grateful.
If you're going to present this theory as an alternative to current science theories using abductive reasoning you need to show why it explains the data better than current theories. Just because your hypothesis also talks about the origin of the universe it does not mean it is automatically a better theory of the origin of species than evolution.
[cue smart people who should know better taking afdave's moronic bait]
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
If you're going to present this theory as an alternative to current science theories using abductive reasoning you need to show why it explains the data better than current theories.
I agree completely ... I plan on going to great lengths to show exactly that. My Ice Age info will show that it was not a million (did I get that about right from ToE?) year Ice Age, but that it was relatively short, occurred right after the Great Flood, and helps to explain dinosaur extinction.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You seem to be honest in your desire for feedback, so I will give you honest critiques. Gee, where to start? The beginning, I guess.
Science doesn't really say anything for or against points A and B. They aren't questions that science can address. (At least not at this point in time. It might be possible in the future, but it might not be possible either.)
In point C, you immediately start to limit yourself in a way that science does not. "I make no proposal as to HOW MANY animals there were initially. Obviously, there would have to be at least one pair of each 'kind' (a term to be defined later) " Why won't you make a claim? Is it because the claim could be tested and found to be wrong? Science makes hypotheses that are tested all the time. You're already starting on a nonexistent foundation.
In point D, you finally make a claim: "It is proposed that early man was vigorous, healthy and possibly taller than modern humans. Early families were very large--on the order of 30 to 50 kids per couple and lives were long, many over 900 years." What evidence do you have for this claim? Any fossils of humans taller than today's humans? Any archaelogical digs that show structures designed for tall humans or very large families? (No, the Bible doesn't count as evidence. There are places in the Bible that say bats are birds, so I'm not confident in the Bible as a source of scientific evidence and knowledge.)
Later in point D: "The first laws prohibiting close marriages did not occur until the time of Moses by which time we assume that accumulated harmful genetic mutations would have been a significant consideration." Again, why "assume"? Why not look for evidence?
Your chain of "abductive logic" has glaring flaws and weaknesses from the get go.
Don't multiply topics needlessly. There was no need to open a new topic for this modification of what is already being discussed in the original topic.
-------------- "You can't teach an old dogma new tricks." - Dorothy Parker
Is there any way to copy this stuff over to the other topic?
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My Ice Age info will show that it was not a million (did I get that about right from ToE?) year Ice Age
The theory of evolution doesn't say anything about the ice age, saying thins like this makes people not take you seriously. The theory of evolution says nothing about the origin of the universe, the origin of matter, or the origin of life. Some of the requirements include things like an old earth, but an ice age is not one of them.
There was no need to open a new topic for this modification of what is already being discussed in the original topic.
I hear you. I assumed people would quit posting to the old one and it would fade away ... If you need to merge them, though, no problem ... maybe use the TITLE for this one so people know it's updated and tack this discussion on the end of the other one?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
this "Creator God Hypothesis" DOES NOT follow the Deductive Framework. I have stated prior to giving my hypothesis, that I cannot provide a watertight proof for God and I don't believe anyone can, so people are correct in saying that my hypothesis would fail using the deductive schema. However, we CAN use Abductive Reasoning then draw an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), ...
Some people can use Abductive Reasoning and then draw an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), but not you, Dave.
There is an old quote from David Brooks that applies to your method of reasoning: "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy."
Of course, your problem is that you don't recognise "God" as an unknown, do you?
Your "abductive inference" (that there is a least one god) is over 3,000 years old and so are the so-called "surprising facts" you are using as support. In all that time, going through several religions, it never made it past first base into the realm of deductive science.
Also, I would not recommend reading Stephen C. Meyer to learn about logic -- he'll probably forever cripple your ability to understand modern scientific reasoning.
Good question from the old thread from improvius ...
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Or you can just change the meaning of "logic" to help you rationalize this junk.
Here's my logic ... 1) We hypothesize a Super-Intelligent Creator ... we can only imagine Him somewhat like a human mind because that is what we are familiar with, but much more intelligent ... this is my "B" 2) We observe a Surprising Fact that all over the world, people claim to have received messages--written and oral from some 'god' character. It's a surprising fact because quite frankly it's WEIRD ... this is my "A" 3) LOGIC: If B were true, then A would follow naturally based on our own experience with Intelligent Agents (i.e. they communicate verbally and in writing) 4) CONCLUSION: There is reason to suspect that B is true (not proof, obviously, but reason)
Now how is this "junk" logic?
Quote
In all that time, going through several religions, it never made it past first base into the realm of deductive science.
Again, I am saying that I am not using Deductive Reasoning ... I am using Abductive Reasoning and drawing an Inference to the Best Explanation. This is used regularly by both scientists and historians, Meyer's Napoleon scenario being an excellent example. Again, for other readers, see http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_returnofgod.pdf
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) Let's hypothesize that humans are imaginative, and similar to one another in this way everywhere. Part of what makes them human.
2) We observe that humans imagine vaguely-human super powerful or influential beings fairly commonly. In fact, even small children do this.
3) LOGIC: We reason that people are very similar to people. They might even BE people.
4) We observe that apart from human imagination, no trace of objective evidence has EVER been discovered (despite searches so dedicated they approach desperate) of any such entities.
5) LOGIC: We reason that imagination might be producing something imaginary. Being the product of imagination, it might even BE imaginary.
Next step: testing. Fairly exhaustive tests for the actual existence of imaginary entities have so far failed to produce anything of the sort. Another test: do those humans raised to believe in evidence and observation and NOT raised to believe in the imaginary, ALSO experience the same entities? Well, no, they don't.
I agree completely ... I plan on going to great lengths to show exactly that. My Ice Age info will show that it was not a million (did I get that about right from ToE?) year Ice Age, but that it was relatively short, occurred right after the Great Flood, and helps to explain dinosaur extinction.
Dave, where did you get the idea that there was just one long ice age? The history of the earth is peppered with ice ages, including one, about 600 million years ago, where the entire surface of the earth froze solid.
You're going to need to come up with more than one ice age in your chronology, and that's just one of your easier assignments.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, before I answer in any more of your arguments, I want to make this perfectly clear: Have we agreed that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms? Yes or no?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
How far do you think you're going to get with the people on this website, many of whom are professional scientists?
I may not get very far with closed minded professional scientisits, which I hope you are not, but I hope to put some truth out there in an area where I currently see a lot of error.
This is from the Meyer article quoted previously ...
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Scientists rarely prove their theories deductively from empirical evidence. Indeed, no field of inquiry short of mathematics could progress if itlimited itself to the logic of entailment. Rather, most fields of inquiry employ alternate forms of inference known variously as the method of hypothesis,abduction, hypothetico-deductive method, or inference to the best explanation. (p.21)
and ...
Quote
The natural and historical sciences employ such logic routinely. In the natural sciences, if we have reason to expect that some state of affairs will ensue given some hypothesis, and we find that such a state of affairs has ensued, then we say that our hypothesis has been confirmed. This method of confirmation of hypothesis functions to provide evidential support for many scientific hypotheses. Given Copernicus heliocentric theory of the solar system, astronomers in the seventeenth century had reason to expect that the planet Venus should exhibit phases. Galileo's discovery that it does exhibit phases, therefore, supported (though it did not prove) the heliocentric view. The discovery did not prove the heliocentric theory, since other theories might and in fact could explain the same fact (Gingerich 1982: 133-43) (p. 22 of Meyer's article).
and ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, before I answer in any more of your arguments, I want to make this perfectly clear: Have we agreed that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms? Yes or no?
Well, he is an engineer, not a sciemtist
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
In all that time, going through several religions, it never made it past first base into the realm of deductive science.
Again, I am saying that I am not using Deductive Reasoning ... I am using Abductive Reasoning ...
You think you are using Abductive Reasoning but you're not really doing that. What you are doing is called "rationalization."
Abductive Reasoning is supposed to lead to a hypothesis where deductive reasoning can apply. Thus your failure to supply a testably hypothesis after doing your Abductive Reasoning means you've failed to do it correctly.
Dave, your "abductive reasoning" is a science-killer.
A quick example:
A volcano is a "strange, weird thing."
But if God exists, volcanoes would exist as a matter of course.
Using that kind of reasoning, how far do you think we would have gotten using our belief in God to explain natural phenomena? What would we know about volcanism?
BTW, when you say things like, "I see a lot of error in scientists' work, which I mean to correct for the honest folk on this discussion board," you do realize you obliterate any credibility you might have had, right?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
These facts do not lend any credibility to your arguements.
I don't expect them to lend to or detract from credibility. I want new people who have never met me to have some idea of where I'm coming from.
Faid-- The more I study this issue, the more I agree with Meyer that the Abductive approach with a Logical Inference to the Best Explanation is in fact used extensively by both scientists and historians to "establish" many theories (not prove, I understand) which are of great use to humanity. This is not to say that my conclusions are then automatically true. I expect to be required to do a great deal more work ... and I may fail. I admit that. If you used the same approach and your explanation was better, then it would be reasonable to adopt yours, to be sure.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I want new people who have never met me to have some idea of where I'm coming from.
Yeah, like Mars, Pluto or some Fundy Planet in another galaxy ... yeah, yeah ... I know the jokes are coming ... :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I may not get very far with closed minded professional scientisits, which I hope you are not, but I hope to put some truth out there in an area where I currently see a lot of error.
Dave, you're really starting to disappoint me. You continue to criticize technical areas in which you admittedly have no expertise, yet accuse those who do have detailed knowledge in those areas of being "closed minded".
What you are doing is the equivalent of going to a convention of aerospace engineers and pilots, held at an airport with hundreds of aircraft on the tarmac and flying overhead, and lecturing that heavier-than-air flight is impossible. Then, after you have embarrassed yourself with that, dozens of those technical people offer to help you and teach you the basics you obviously lack, but you refuse to listen and instead tell them they're closed minded.
Is it any surprise you are turning off most everyone here?
Being smug and self-assured may be a good thing for a combat pilot, but if not backed up with technical knowledge and understanding those traits will just make you a smoking hole in the ground.
Many people have already pointed out the unwarranted assumptions and battleship-sized flaws in your logic. If you want to impress us, start listening and addressing the criticisms. Show more critical thinking skills and less single-minded bluster.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Here's something else I have never understood ... maybe one of you can explain ...
Why does it always seem that every time the word 'God' is even mentioned, everybody runs for cover and says it's not science? Personally, I'm content to not use the word God if it makes everyone feel better. How about Super-Computer-Alien-Thingy? (SCAT for short) How about Cosmo-Brain? Or you think of a name ... it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is IF ..... IF,IF,IF,IF,IF ..... there is such a thing, what do you call Him (or it) to even begin an honest search to find evidence for Him (or it) or show that there is none?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
How far do you think you're going to get with the people on this website, many of whom are professional scientists?
I may not get very far with closed minded professional scientists, which I hope you are not, but I hope to put some truth out there in an area where I currently see a lot of error.
Close-minded? Are you serious? This from someone who, in a single post, has proved that he has closed his mind to virtually every single bit of scientific evidence concerning the age of the Earth and its long and convoluted history?
Do you even realize how close-minded you are? Do you understand the sheer tsunami of evidence scientists (many of them Christians) have built up over the past 200 years compared to the muddy sidewalk puddle you young-earthers have been wallowing in?
I'm sorry to be so blunt, but you are really preaching to the wrong crowd here.
Your hypothesis--statement of faith--reads like something from a bad pseudoscience web site "proving" that aliens abducted his grandmother. Doesn't Ken Ham have a message board you can hone your rhetoric on, or are you, like others suspect, posting here in the vain hope you will manage to "convert" some of us to your faith? And if you are, I hope you understand how insulting that is to those of us who are already Christians.
E. Mankind chose NOT to do God's will very early on (just as all young children choose not to do parents' will), thus prompting God to institute a system for persuading humans to admit their folly and begin doing His will, for "redeeming" humans who choose this path, and for reminding humans that the present physical world is only a "proving ground" or "training camp" for the next world which will be created at a definite point in the future. These events are commonly called the Fall and the Curse by Christian Theologians.
Kind of odd behaviour for an entity who is supposed to be omipotent. Are we expected to believe that God (as defined by most Christians anyway) needed a "Plan B"? (Actually, if you assume the flood actually happened, he had to use a Plan C as well).
Here's my logic ... 1) We hypothesize a Super-Intelligent Creator ... we can only imagine Him somewhat like a human mind because that is what we are familiar with, but much more intelligent ... this is my "B" 2) We observe a Surprising Fact that all over the world, people claim to have received messages--written and oral from some 'god' character. It's a surprising fact because quite frankly it's WEIRD ... this is my "A" 3) LOGIC: If B were true, then A would follow naturally based on our own experience with Intelligent Agents (i.e. they communicate verbally and in writing) 4) CONCLUSION: There is reason to suspect that B is true (not proof, obviously, but reason)
Now how is this "junk" logic?
(Copy/pasting my answer from the other thread)
Dave, let me rephrase that the way it actually is:
1) I observe people say that they have been contacted by an entity
2) I propose there is an entity that wishes to contact people
3) I conclude that there is good reason that my theory is true.
Maybe this might help you finally understand.
Oh, about the previous post, my bad: I was referring to the "testable predictions" part of your hypothesis, of course.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
If you want to impress us, start listening and addressing the criticisms.
Where have you been? I have been doing just that. How about you? Do you ever do that? What more do you want me to do? (Agree that you are right ... I know, I know ... but you'll have to earn that if that's what you want.) What we have here, Aftershave, is a big problem in science today and many scientists are either too proud, or too blind, or too afraid to lose their jobs or their friends, or whatever to do anything about it themselves. Denton and Behe are quite clear on this issue and I think this explains why they have taken the unusual step of presenting their information to the non-professionals like me.
You know, in families sometimes the dad shirks his responsibilities as a dad and so the mom takes over. She's not as good at being a dad as he is (just like I'm not as well trained in logic, geology, etc., etc.). But she has to jump in there and take over or the family would be in trouble.
This is exactly what I see in this one critical area of science today, i.e. the area of Origins and the Nature of Mankind and the issue of God. Science should not be claiming that they have disproved the existence of God because they have not. Science should not be implying to our children that they are glorified animals, because there is no proof. Science should not be telling the theologians that God is dead or irrelevant, because they have no basis for claiming that and they arrogantly claim that they do. And so on ... you get the idea. So if science is going to behave irresponsibly, then who else but non-scientists are going to have to jump in and "blow the whistle" ??
This is exactly what you see going on right now on multiple fronts and it is exactly the reason we hear so much about "concerned scientists."
Now we laymen are reasonable people and we will forgive scientists if they admit their errors and fix them, but if all we ever get is stonewalling and "you're not even fit to make an argument" and "you're just a religious nut", you can be sure that the people will do everything in their power to rise up and fix it themselves.
And believe me, we laymen can do a lot. I may not get professional scientists to listen to me, but as you and I both know, all we need is a political majority and we win. Not to say that I'm just about politics. I am about Truth and Fairness, but I am also about winning and using every political tool in my toolbox to make sure we have Truth and Fairness in the science establishment in this country.
A lot hinges on this, too. What people think about origins and the nature of mankind is VITALLY important to law and society. This is why you see me being so passionate about this issue.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Here's my logic ... 1) We hypothesize a Super-Intelligent Creator ... we can only imagine Him somewhat like a human mind because that is what we are familiar with, but much more intelligent ... this is my "B" 2) We observe a Surprising Fact that all over the world, people claim to have received messages--written and oral from some 'god' character. It's a surprising fact because quite frankly it's WEIRD ... this is my "A" 3) LOGIC: If B were true, then A would follow naturally based on our own experience with Intelligent Agents (i.e. they communicate verbally and in writing) 4) CONCLUSION: There is reason to suspect that B is true (not proof, obviously, but reason)
Now how is this "junk" logic? Again, I am saying that I am not using Deductive Reasoning ... I am using Abductive Reasoning and drawing an Inference to the Best Explanation.
Your problem is that we have plenty of evidence from extant primitive cultures that your "A" is simply an attempt by those societies to explain what they can't understand.
Why do you insist on a double standard? One for the ancient Jews, and another for the rest of humanity? After all, you surely don't infer (abduce or whatever) that the Norse God Thor exists since the Vikings found him to best way to explain the phenomenon of lightning?
It's also a fact that the human brain works overtime to make sense of out of the confusing and incomprehensible, including dreams. We know that people with temporal lobe epilepsy have utterly convincing visions that lead them to believe they have a direct line to God (or even that they are God themselves). Why do you ignore this good, basic, scientific evidence that could help explain these "contacts with God" and simply argue that it's "WEIRD".
Of course it's weird, but that's no excuse to make the unsupported leap and decide that there must be a creator God.
It's funny, 100 years ago, people used to believe in fairies, elves, and succubi since they "explained" many the weird things that happened to them. Today... not so much. What happened? UFOs happened. Now it's all ETs and little green men. Does the fact that thousands of people all around the world claim similar experiences mean that alien abductions are really happening? And why is your case for a creator God any more compelling than that nonsense?
Science should not be claiming that they have disproved the existence of God because they have not.
Sience is NOT claiming it has disproved God, no scientist is saying that.
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What we have here, Aftershave, is a big problem in science today and many scientists are either too proud, or too blind, or too afraid to lose their jobs or their friends, or whatever to do anything about it themselves.
Is this the old 'most scientists don't really believe in evolution but they just can't say it'. As I scientists I can tell you this is not true.
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Science should not be implying to our children that they are glorified animals, because there is no proof.
What is your definition of an animal that does not include humans?
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Science should not be telling the theologians that God is dead or irrelevant, because they have no basis for claiming that and they arrogantly claim that they do.
They don't say that either, what they do say is that there is no empirical evidence that conclusively points to a God, maybe you can prove them wrong.
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So if science is going to behave irresponsibly, then who else but non-scientists are going to have to jump in and "blow the whistle" ??
Please quote me the science textbook passage of paper that says God does not exist. It is statements like this that make people call you a religious nut. If you think that there is an atheist conspiracy of scientists then please present your evidence.
This is exactly what I see in this one critical area of science today, i.e. the area of Origins and the Nature of Mankind and the issue of God. Science should not be claiming that they have disproved the existence of God because they have not. Science should not be implying to our children that they are glorified animals, because there is no proof. Science should not be telling the theologians that God is dead or irrelevant, because they have no basis for claiming that and they arrogantly claim that they do. And so on ... you get the idea. So if science is going to behave irresponsibly, then who else but non-scientists are going to have to jump in and "blow the whistle" ??
This is exactly what you see going on right now on multiple fronts and it is exactly the reason we hear so much about "concerned scientists."
Now we laymen are reasonable people and we will forgive scientists if they admit their errors and fix them, but if all we ever get is stonewalling and "you're not even fit to make an argument" and "you're just a religious nut", you can be sure that the people will do everything in their power to rise up and fix it themselves.
And believe me, we laymen can do a lot. I may not get professional scientists to listen to me, but as you and I both know, all we need is a political majority and we win. Not to say that I'm just about politics. I am about Truth and Fairness, but I am also about winning and using every political tool in my toolbox to make sure we have Truth and Fairness in the science establishment in this country.
A lot hinges on this, too. What people think about origins and the nature of mankind is VITALLY important to law and society. This is why you see me being so passionate about this issue.
Now the mask is coming off:
Science should not be claiming that they have disproved the existence of God because they have not.
I will be charitable and assume you really believe this. If that's the case, you are sadly, sadly mistaken and have been taken in by the lies of your fellow creationists.
"Science" doesn't and cannot claim to have disproved the existence of God. That would be impossible. Once again, many good, honest and hard working scientists are committed Christians and would be insulted to hear such nonsense.
Science should not be implying to our children that they are glorified animals, because there is no proof.
What the heck is a "glorified animal"? Either way, this is nonsense. Forget evolution. Try basic anatomy. What, apart from a bigger brain, do we have that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Nothing. Even if you believe in some sort of supernatual soul, we are still mammals and primates. Like it or lump it.
Science should not be telling the theologians that God is dead or irrelevant, because they have no basis for claiming that and they arrogantly claim that they do. And so on ...
Again, this is an utter lie. You should know better. There are a few scientists, like Richard Dawkins (no doubt your favourite devil), who are outspoken on this issue, but even he would not claim what you say he does. Again, science cannot do this. Some scientists do, but that is not the same thing. Any reasonable person should understand this. There are thousands of Christian biologists and geologists who accept evolution. Are you trying to insult each and every one of them?
With posts like this I suspect you are beginning to wear out your welcome here. Why should we even bother to listen to you when even your motivations are based on such an obvious falsehood?
Now we laymen are reasonable people and we will forgive scientists if they admit their errors and fix them, but if all we ever get is stonewalling and "you're not even fit to make an argument" and "you're just a religious nut", you can be sure that the people will do everything in their power to rise up and fix it themselves.
Dave, this is exactly the kind of arrogant crap that gets you into trouble with scientists. You think you're being magnanimous by being willing to forgive scientists their errors if they admit them and fix them? You think you're qualified to even find errors in scientists' work? Who do you think you are?
Some guy goes through 12 years of public school, four years of undergraduate training, another six years of postgraduate studies, a few more years of fellowships, spends the next twenty years of his life doing research into invertebrate physiology, and then you think you're entitled to read a few articles on AiG and then tell him he's wrong? What kind of a blockhead are you?
I'd say no offense, but given the offensiveness of your position, I'd be lying if I said so.
If you think the last 150 years of evolutionary biology is wrong, then I suggest you go out there, get your postgraduate degree in the relevant fields, and then go out and do some research. If you think you're remotely qualified to critique these guys' work, you're delusional.
Oh, and by the way: how are you doing with your detailed, comprehensive rebuttal of all the evidence demonstrating that the earth is billions of years old? You might want to stop criticizing scientists' research and start doing some research of your own.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Where have you been? I have been doing just that. How about you? Do you ever do that? What more do you want me to do? (Agree that you are right ... I know, I know ... but you'll have to earn that if that's what you want.)
Actually Dave, you haven’t. All you’ve been doing is continuing to present your uninformed opinions on technical topic that you don’t understand. I, personally, don’t care what you choose to believe, as long as it makes you happy. However, when you present your ignorance as an alternative to actual scientific results, I will continue to point out your errors.
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What we have here, Aftershave, is a big problem in science today and many scientists are either too proud, or too blind, or too afraid to lose their jobs or their friends, or whatever to do anything about it themselves.
That’s total bullshit Dave. You’re off on an exercise of self-justification for your religious beliefs, nothing more. Do you think you’re the first to come here and do this?
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Denton and Behe are quite clear on this issue and I think this explains why they have taken the unusual step of presenting their information to the non-professionals like me.
Denton and Behe and the other Creationist pseudo-scientists specifically target untrained laymen like you because you don’t have the skill set to know you’re being lied to. You’re a “soft target” Dave, whether you care to admit it or not.
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You know, in families sometimes the dad shirks his responsibilities as a dad and so the mom takes over. She's not as good at being a dad as he is (just like I'm not as well trained in logic, geology, etc., etc.). But she has to jump in there and take over or the family would be in trouble.
And sometimes there is no problem, but the Mom becomes a controlling, domineering battle-ax over her children anyway just because she needs to feel important.
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This is exactly what I see in this one critical area of science today, i.e. the area of Origins and the Nature of Mankind and the issue of God. Science should not be claiming that they have disproved the existence of God because they have not.
Science HAS NOT EVER claimed to have disproved the existence of God. Whoever told you that if full of shit too. There are certainly a few atheistic scientists (i.e. Dawkins) who hold that personal opinion, but the science itself says NOTHING one way or the other on the existence of God. You want to claim different? Then find me a textbook or a scientific research paper ANYWHERE that says “here is scientific evidence there is no God”.
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Science should not be implying to our children that they are glorified animals, because there is no proof.
Er Dave, there is ample evidence humans ARE just another species of animal. Your total ignorance of, or personal dislike for of the evidence does not mean the evidence doesn’t exist.
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Science should not be telling the theologians that God is dead or irrelevant, because they have no basis for claiming that and they arrogantly claim that they do. And so on ... you get the idea. So if science is going to behave irresponsibly, then who else but non-scientists are going to have to jump in and "blow the whistle" ??
Again, science DOES NOT DO what you claim. Just what do you think “science” is, anyway? Science is just the collected technical knowledge of the natural world. It has been compiled by millions of people of all religions over hundreds of years and is available to be examined or questioned by anybody. It is not some unified organization like the Catholic church with a “head scientist” as Pope handing out scientific “proclamations” that must be followed by the lesser scientists.
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This is exactly what you see going on right now on multiple fronts and it is exactly the reason we hear so much about "concerned scientists." Now we laymen are reasonable people and we will forgive scientists if they admit their errors and fix them, but if all we ever get is stonewalling and "you're not even fit to make an argument" and "you're just a religious nut", you can be sure that the people will do everything in their power to rise up and fix it themselves.
Again, nothing personal Dave, but you’re way too ignorant on the topic to be telling professionals that they are in error. If you wish, you can study the sciences, do your own research, and present peer reviewed results to overturn current scientific thinking. However, just repeating your uninformed bogus claims will only get you laughed at.
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And believe me, we laymen can do a lot. I may not get professional scientists to listen to me, but as you and I both know, all we need is a political majority and we win. Not to say that I'm just about politics. I am about Truth and Fairness, but I am also about winning and using every political tool in my toolbox to make sure we have Truth and Fairness in the science establishment in this country.
I agree 100% that this is a political battle, because the scientific battle was decided over 150 years ago. The YECs lost. Like so many other Fundamentalists, all you want is your particular religion’s brand of “Truth and Fairness”, regardless that all the scientific evidence available directly contradicts you.
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A lot hinges on this, too. What people think about origins and the nature of mankind is VITALLY important to law and society. This is why you see me being so passionate about this issue.
I respect your passion, but your critical thinking skills still haven’t gotten off the ground.
Take care.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Nicely put Eric. Dave is no different from people like Richard Hoagland who condemns that whole of NASA and the rest of the space industry simply because they won't admit the Face on Mars is an artificial construct. It's funny how he expects us to listen to him while he ignores every inconvenient little fact we bring up.
He has the nerve to bring up "Truth and Fairness" when even the premise of his argument (science is anti-religious) is a blatent lie? I constantly find it astouding how people who are obviously quite intelligent, smart, and capable people (if we are to assume his background information is true) can be so wildly off base and so wilfully ignore the truth even when it's staring them in the face. Whether or not God exists is not the issue here. No one can prove that either way. It's the dishonesty with which they even approach the subject of origins that frustrates and infuriates me. I mean, it's one thing to believe what you are being told by your fundamentalist preacher and favourite creationist web site, it's another to continue believing it unquestioningly when you are presented with solid evidence that you are wrong.
Is faith in God so precarious that the odd bit of scientific evidence brings is all tumbling down? Why do they want to prove God exists anyway? With proof, faith is nothing if not diminished, and Christianity has a long history of priding faith over all other things.
Dave appears to be a prime example of what Steven Colbert would deem to be "truthiness". The facts don't matter, it's what you feel in your gut that really counts!
... more I study this issue, the more I agree with Meyer that the Abductive approach with a Logical Inference to the Best Explanation is in fact used extensively by both scientists and historians to "establish" many theories (not prove, I understand) which are of great use to humanity.
The problem with your above statement is you've misread Meyer who is already lying to you.
When Meyer says "developments in modern science provide support for Christian theism" it is a lie. He has offered a very skewed argument in which many lines of evidence are omitted and the evidence he does provide will not take you as far as he claims, to confirmation of Christianity. Even if it were valid, which it is not, it could only take you a vague idea of a god.
You then misread him when you say "a Logical Inference to the Best Explanation is in fact used extensively by both scientists and historians to establish many theories." Meyer's never explores anything but the metaphysical conclusions one might draw from what science we know. I never saw him claim any where that scientific theories were established by abductive reasoning alone.
It is a lie to say abductive reasoning alone establishes a scientific theory because deductive reasoning must be involved in establishing those theories. It is paramount, the fact that an apparent use of abductive inference can also seem to "establish" them is a slight of hand distraction away from what is actually critical to those theories.
For example, the theory you so dislike, Darwinian evolution, has many lines of deductive proof and prediction from them to go on. I can lay out a few if you're interested.
Science HAS NOT EVER claimed to have disproved the existence of God. Whoever told you that if full of shit too. There are certainly a few atheistic scientists (i.e. Dawkins) who hold that personal opinion, but the science itself says NOTHING one way or the other on the existence of God. You want to claim different? Then find me a textbook or a scientific research paper ANYWHERE that says “here is scientific evidence there is no God”.
I just have to laugh ... "only a few ... mmm ... like Dawkins, for example ... he's not very influential... not many others ..." OK. Whatever.
I'll tell you what ... I won't sell you any bridges and you don't sell me any and we'll be friends, OK!
As for me, I'm going to get back on topic ...
Thankyou, Norm at least for that! I'll consider your words.
Would anyone else like to comment on the real issue on this thread ... ?
We (at least I and Norm and a few others) are debating the validity of my structure for debating Origins, the Nature of Life and related topics, collectively referred to as my Creator God Hypothesis.
I have given you my preferred approach ... are there any more substantive objections?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I just have to laugh ... "only a few ... mmm ... like Dawkins, for example ... he's not very influential... not many others ..." OK. Whatever.
I'll tell you what ... I won't sell you any bridges and you don't sell me any and we'll be friends, OK!
As for me, I'm going to get back on topic ...
Thankyou, Norm at least for that! I'll consider your words.
Would anyone else like to comment on the real issue on this thread ... ?
We (at least I and Norm and a few others) are debating the validity of my structure for debating Origins, the Nature of Life and related topics, collectively referred to as my Creator God Hypothesis.
I have given you my preferred approach ... are there any more substantive objections?
Why should we bother commenting on anything else you say when you can't even be bothered to back up your own comments with, like, you know, evidence.
First tell us exactly where Dawkins says that science disproves God instead of just laughing it off. If it's so obvious to you, then educate us. We're listening.
Second, does the fact that one, admittedly strongly atheistic and outspoken scientist might believe it mean it is safe to assume all, or even a more that a small minority of scientists believe it too. Gee, I guess that must mean I must be right in thinking that all Christians believe the same as that paragon of Christian thought, Pastor Fred Phelps (look him up if you haven't heard of him).
Finally, perhaps if you started addressing our existing comments (you haven't answered any of mine yet) then maybe we will start to entertain the idea that you are actually interested in anything we have to say.
I just have to laugh ... "only a few ... mmm ... like Dawkins, for example ... he's not very influential... not many others ..." OK. Whatever.
More misdirection, Dave. Dawkins has often said that he personally does not believe in God, and points out that there is no solid evidence that God exists. He has never claimed that science can, or has, proved that God does not exist.
These claims may work with your not-well-informed layman friends, but they will not work with people who actually read about science.
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As for me, I'm going to get back on topic ...
Dave, you're avoiding "the topic" like the plague. The "topic" is, what evidence does Dave have for his claim that the Bible is inerrant and is the best available explanation for experience. So far, you're batting zero on that topic.
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We (at least I and Norm and a few others) are debating the validity of my structure for debating Origins, the Nature of Life and related topics, collectively referred to as my Creator God Hypothesis.
I have given you my preferred approach ... are there any more substantive objections?
I'm pretty sure the objections you've already heard have not only demolished your hypothesis; they've demolished your method for even arriving at a hypothesis. Your proposed method takes you way outside the bounds of science. You're not talking science; you're talking theology. I don't think I can get any clearer than that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I just have to laugh ... "only a few ... mmm ... like Dawkins, for example ... he's not very influential... not many others ..." OK. Whatever.
I'll tell you what ... I won't sell you any bridges and you don't sell me any and we'll be friends, OK!
As for me, I'm going to get back on topic ...
Well Dave, if you didn't want to discuss your claim of "science says it disproves the existence of God", then why in the world did you bring it up in the first place?
Speaking of on topic, you are still avoiding answering this objection to your hypothesis
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I can spin that kind of argument any way I want too. I can hypothesize "A Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being could create all necessary physical laws in the first femtosecond of existence, then just sit back and observe the results. Therefore when I observe scientific data that says the universe is 14 Billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, and that life has existed on Earth for over 3 billion years, and that life has evolved over that time by observed processes such as random mutations plus natural selection, I have just verified my hypothesis.
Why is that reasoning any less valid than yours?
or
Abductive Reasoning DATA: The surprising fact A is observed. (The Indian tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people LOGIC: But if B were true, then A would be a matter of course. (B is the hypothesis that AFDave caused the tsunami ) CONCLUSION: Hence, there is reason to suspect that B is true.
Tell us AFDave, should we suspect you of killing all those innocent people?
Don't feel alone. Most of the YECs who come through here experience similar bouts of cognitive dissonance when presented with factual evidence that blows away their arguments. That makes them get angry and confused, just like you.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Abductive Reasoning DATA: The surprising fact A is observed. (The Indian tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of people LOGIC: But if B were true, then A would be a matter of course. (B is the hypothesis that AFDave caused the tsunami ) CONCLUSION: Hence, there is reason to suspect that B is true. Tell us AFDave, should we suspect you of killing all those innocent people?
Thankyou, Aftershave, for getting back on topic ... you know very well what the topic is and I'm glad you are man enough to finally get back to it. It's right up there at the top of this Internet Explorer frame. I'm glad you noticed we are debating the UPDATED version, thankyou.
Now ... to fillet your statement in front of God and everybody ... my surprising answer to your question is ... DRUM ROLL ... YES ...
YES, YES!! Thankyou! A Thousand time YES! This is precisely what you should do! And while you are at it, put your Origins and Macro-Evolution Hypothesis in exactly the same format and go look for that evidence on the same trek!
Guess what! You won't find a SHRED of evidence for either one and you will display to all who come here that it is the Evolution Dogmatists who are doing Voodoo Science! That's the difference between my Hypothesis and the two of yours.
Yours have no evidence. Mine does.
And tomorrow morning you will be getting more or it than you care to hear. But not for your benefit, unless you open your mind. If you haven't noticed, I'm really writing for the benefit of people with open minds. I know I won't convince hardened skeptics.
So bring it on and let's see how yours stands up. (Either one you like--Tsunami or Evolution). You tell me you guys are the professionals. Let's see how professional your arguments are. Or are you just going say I'm incompetent and I have no idea what I'm in for and Meyer is a liar, blah, blah, blah?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
[Guess what! You won't find a SHRED of evidence for either one and you will display to all who come here that it is the Evolution Dogmatists who are doing Voodoo Science! That's the difference between my Hypothesis and the two of yours.
Yours have no evidence. Mine does.
No, Dave, you don't. You haven't presented anything remotely resembling "evidence" for any of your claims. To say that something "could have happened this way," or "probably happened this way," simply doesn't amount to evidence.
Face it, Dave. "Hardened skeptics" are the people you have to reach. All practicing scientists are "hardened skeptics," and they won't be persuaded by half-assed guesses unsupported by any reference to actual evidence.
Now—where's your evidence that the earth is only 6,000 years old?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, get on with it. We are all waiting for this "evidence" to appear. Are you now saying that you have already presented it? You are joking, right? Either that, or you are insulting us.
...and in this mood of anticipation that you have created, take the hat and pluck out the evidence... come on! Oh, btw, your "suspicion" does not count as evidence, but I think you know that.
Well laddy, you promised evidence, so, do honour to your word!
Ad hominem attacks combined with a strong martyrdom complex. Interesting strategy. Do you expect it to win converts when you are lobbing general insults, though often veiled, at people?
Or is it your strategy, as you've demonstrated several times in this thread, that you will simply ignore any evidence that doesn't mesh with your predecided upon conclusion? Or, worse yet, deciding to declare arguments that are damaging to your point of view as "off topic" even if they are in direct responce to comments that you, yourself, have made in the self same thread? How can it be that we should be expected to stay "on topic," as decided upon by yourself apparently, when you are not bound by those same rules? The issues that have been discussed above in this thread that you deemed "off topic" stemmed from comments that you yourself have made. Thus, you are delivering the message that (A) you are allowed to be off topic but (B) no one is "allowed" to respond to your off topic statements.
I mean, I'm just trying to look at the rules that you're apparently setting up for us to "follow" should we hope to have our eyes opened by yourself. Assuming that we are "men enough" to do so. Because it seems to me that the pattern is going to be you ignoring, or simply labelling as "off topic," any evidence that is contrary to your position, while delivering veiled insults to anyone who dares to be on the side of reason in this whole debate.
To use your own terms, are you man enough to debate this honestly? More simply: why should we bother reading and replying to you?
This is extremely important and will come after I present credible evidence that we should expect some Super-Intelligence to exist and that it is highly likely that He (or it) commmunicates like we do.
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And this is where I think my evidence ... "cosmic fine tuning, the anthropic principle, etc." as I will elaborate on soon lead to a Super-Intelligent 'god-like' character as a better explanation than other alternatives.
Oh cra_p. Is this going to be a Deja Vu feeling, like talking to Heddle?
Oh cra_p. Is this going to be a Deja Vu feeling, like talking to Heddle?
I think you're being unfair to Heddle -- this guy makes David Heddle look like a genius.
If anything this thread reminds me of any number of threads on boards like Bad Astronomy where a rank amateur posts a series of half-assed assertions and claims he's just about to overturn everything we thought we knew about the laws of physics.
When challenged to produce evidence to back up his assertions all he can do is: ignore, dismiss, change the subject, mock, etc. etc. Classic pseudoscientist reactions.
As for the forthcoming "bombshell". I'm not holding my breath.
Ok, since anecdotal evidence counts in Dave's book, I will provide some:
I heard a couple of people saying Dave caused the tsunami.
At this point, I think that puts it on equal footing with your God hypothesis.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
If anything this thread reminds me of any number of threads on boards like Bad Astronomy where a rank amateur posts a series of half-assed assertions and claims he's just about to overturn everything we thought we knew about the laws of physics.
When challenged to produce evidence to back up his assertions all he can do is: ignore, dismiss, change the subject, mock, etc. etc. Classic pseudoscientist reactions.
For arguments like this, you don't even have to go that far to find one. Find the "LUCA Thread" on this very site. See how far the Ghost of Paley has progressed in his battle to overturn the last 500 years of astronomy and astrophysics.
Last I saw, he was still struggling with a geocentric explanation of non-cosmological redshift.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave, you keep ignoring this important discussion point. You've ignored it three times now, so I'll ask it a fourth time
OA: "I can spin that kind of argument any way I want too. I can hypothesize "A Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being could create all necessary physical laws in the first femtosecond of existence, then just sit back and observe the results. Therefore when I observe scientific data that says the universe is 14 Billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, and that life has existed on Earth for over 3 billion years, and that life has evolved over that time by observed processes such as random mutations plus natural selection, I have just verified my hypothesis."
Why is that reasoning any less valid than yours?
AFDave says
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And tomorrow morning you will be getting more or it than you care to hear. But not for your benefit, unless you open your mind. If you haven't noticed, I'm really writing for the benefit of people with open minds. I know I won't convince hardened skeptics.
Sure, if you realize as we do that your definition of "open minded person" is someone as totally ignorant of the sciences involved as yourself who can be gulled by pseudoscientific charlatans. You probably won't find many here who fit your definition, though.
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So bring it on and let's see how yours stands up. (Either one you like--Tsunami or Evolution). You tell me you guys are the professionals. Let's see how professional your arguments are.
Sigh...Sorry Dave, you started this thread to provide the evidence for your YEC position, remember? So post your evidence based on the pseudoscientific garbage that you picked up from AIG. We've seen it all before. (In fact, we 've heard it so many times it has a special name. PRATT, or "Points Refuted A Thousand Times".) Post your technical "evidence", and we'll hand you your ass on a platter, just like every other cock-sure but clueless YEC we meet. And you'll sputter and fume, and tell us we'll all burn in he11...oh well.
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Or are you just going say I'm incompetent and I have no idea what I'm in for and Meyer is a liar, blah, blah, blah?
No need for me to belabor the obvious. I'll let the scientific quality of your YEC arguments speak for themselves.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Tell us AFDave, should we suspect you of killing all those innocent people?
YES, YES!! Thankyou! A Thousand time YES! This is precisely what you should do!
Previously I said: "...the theory you so dislike, Darwinian evolution, has many lines of deductive proof and prediction from them to go on. I can lay out a few if you're interested."
Here is just one line of proof:
At this website you'll find a chapter from a book by Kevin Kelly called "Out of Control":
I will use this chapter to illustrate how science uses abductive reasoning to move into deductive reasoning and show how its the deductive reasoning that is the key to science, not the abductive.
It's about Danny Hillis who built the first massively parallel processing computer, the Connection Machine, and used it as a "proof" for a concept in Darwinian evolution.
Hillis saw a problem: The more knowledge you gave a computer, the slower it got. Yet with a person, the more knowledge you give him, the faster he gets. This paradox, that if you tried to make computers smart, they got stupider led to some pre-scientific abductive reasoning. (Well, not really, because John Holland already did both the abductive and deductive core but Hillis' contribution is easier for me to explain because of this book - so let's look at Hillis alone.)
Hillis' abductive reasoning went: "There are only two ways we know of to make extremely complicated things. One is by engineering, and the other is evolution. And of the two, evolution will make the more complex. If we can't engineer a computer that will be proud of us, we may have to evolve it."
Hillis looks at the world and see a variety of complex things, human machines, living things and the rest of nature. He knows that people make complex and functional machine things -- he is such a person after all -- he is also told the the process of Darwinian evolution can make complex and functional machine-like things too and, unlike you, he believes this and understands it.
From Hillis' abductive reasoning about evolution he moves then, naturally, to a deductive scientific mode of reasoning by turning his assumption about evolution into a hypothesis: He should be able, like John Holland suggests, to make a computer that can evolve computer programs and thus test this assumption about evolution. (This didn't really test evolution for anything we didn't know by the 1950s using pure math, but Hillis was first to make the argument into a machine). This hypothesis was then tested by building a machine that could evolve computer programs. If that had not been done -- it's the experiment in the experimental method, the scientific method -- then Hillis would not have been a scientist but merely a philosopher, like Hume or Kant or Meyer.
"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." -- David Hume
And note what happens when its done, we have to start talking about something you'll see a lot of in science: numbers! Measurable reality quantified. You don't see much of that in philosophy.
The Connection Machine had 64,000 processors with a population of 64,000 very simple software programs that could be altered by mutation. Each program had an entire computer processor dedicated to running it. initially the seed programs are just random sequences of computer instructions, but over tens of thousands of generations they became a program that sorted a long string of numbers into numerical order. It was a specific and real machine testing a significant assumption about evolution.
The computer used selection, akin to natural selection, tested the programs and terminated the less fit so that only the shortest (the best) sorting programs would be given a chance to reproduce. Over ten thousand generations of this cycle, Hillis' system bred a software program that was nearly as short as the best sorting programs written by human programmers.
That is a form of proof -- call it proof of concept. It's not proof that Darwinian evolution is what wrote our genomes, but it is proof that evolution could, in principle, do so. That's what I mean when I talk about science and deductive proof.
All that was in the '80s and you'll hardly ever hear any creationist ever talk about Hillis or Holland. Did you know those men existed before I told you?
Re "It's about Danny Hillis who built the first massively parallel processing computer, the Connection Machine, and used it as a "proof" for a concept in Darwinian evolution. [...]"
I dunno whether afdave appreciates that story or not, but I found it fascinating.
Why oh why does anything about god matter in even the slightest bit to humans? Heaven and #### are meaningless words in the context of eternity. They are quite meaningful when applied to how we feel while living but not once we're dead. So why is gOd important?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
AFDave: again, I think we have a slight confusion of terminology. What you're describing as an hypothesis would, if I understand correctly, be more accurately considered a conjecture.
My understanding is that statements about the universe subdivide into the following categories:
Conjectures - statements that fit all the known data (these are produced by the largely-intuitive process of abduction)
Hypotheses - conjectures that are falsifiable
Data - conjectures that have been verified (there's no term for conjectures that are merely verifiable)
Predictions - conjectures that are both verifiable and falsifiable, and that haven't yet been verified or falsified
Science is concerned primarily with deciding which of the infinite number of possible hypotheses for any given situation is best. It does this by applying three principles: predictivity, parsimony and credibility. Predictivity means that an hypothesis must give us some idea of what we'll find next (otherwise it's scientifically useless), parsimony means that an hypothesis must be efficient in its use of "magic numbers" (so, for example, five dots in a row would be best described by a linear equation not a quintic equation), and credibility means that an hypothesis must have survived attempted falsification. Of these, credibility is the most important, followed by predictivity and then parsimony (this is partly because predictivity is a necessary condition for credibility).
Your conjecture does not, as it stands, make any predictions, so can't be considered an hypothesis. To rectify this, you'll need to: 1) increase its specificity until you can use it to make a prediction of the form described above 2) confirm that the current best-of-breed scientific hypotheses would not also make that prediction (ideally, they shouldn't even leave open the possibility of that prediction being true, but you can't have everything) 3) go out and test the prediction
I repeat: for your conjectures to be scientifically valid, it is not sufficient to present existing evidence in support of each of them. To match the level of current origins science, you must also be able to derive and confirm predictions from them. Otherwise, it really is just a "just so story". Predictivity is what makes the difference.
As an aside:
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Why does it always seem that every time the word 'God' is even mentioned, everybody runs for cover and says it's not science?
Because over the centuries scientists have shown an alarming tendency to get sucked into ultimately-unsuccessful research of the paranormal and cease to ever again produce useful scientific results. That's not a tendency that anyone particularly wants to encourage, so it's considered valid to basically tell students: "It's a dead end. Live with it." Plus, of course, a wide array of folks claim erroneously to have scientific support for their religious beliefs, which effectively dilutes science's trademark.
Another aside:
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I just have to laugh ... "only a few ... mmm ... like Dawkins, for example ... he's not very influential... not many others ..." OK. Whatever.
As I understand it, Dawkins merely says that modern science proves that God doesn't necessarily exist, not that He doesn't exist. It's a necessary condition for atheism, not a sufficient condition.
I'll probably start off every day with a retraction or two because I am passionate about this stuff and I believe there is a lot in our country at stake, and sometimes I say unnecessary things to try and make my point ... I think we all do ...
I said ...
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Science should not be claiming that they have disproved the existence of God because they have not. Science should not be implying to our children that they are glorified animals, because there is no proof. Science should not be telling the theologians that God is dead or irrelevant, because they have no basis for claiming that and they arrogantly claim that they do.
I am happy to retract these statements. They are unnecessary and do not contribute to the points I am trying to make. They represent an impression I have about some of our leading scientists, but they do open a can of worms that I don't want to focus on right now. Also, I do not mean to insult anyone here who may be a professional scientist. I have no doubt--honest--that you all do excellent work in your specialty. But I feel that many good scientists have "stepped over" OUT OF their specialty (as I also am doing) to address the question of origins. I don't know what your reasons are, but I'm sure you have good ones, and I have my own reasons as well. I agree that name-calling, motive-questioning and other such tactics get us nowhere, and I for one will apologize when I commit these 'sins'.
So ... back to what I DO want to focus on ...
MY GOALS My goal, first of all, is NOT to win an argument, or to make someone feel stupid. My real goal is two-fold: (1) to really get to the bottom of why Creationism is so objectionable to a lot of good scientists. This is why I am HERE, not over at AIG or DI, (2) I have personally seen a lot of excellent support for being a Creationist, but I could be wrong. If so, who better to tell me I'm wrong that professional scientists over here? (3) If I am right, the implications are enormous and all of humanity should know about this. Believe it or not, I care about all of you on this blog as human beings. I feel that I am a 'beggar who has found bread' and I want to share this information with others. My motives are altruistic even though I may not act like it sometimes. I am human and someone has rightly said 'To err is human.' I will continue to 'err', but I will try not to and when I do, I will confess and try to fix it. What else can I do? (4) I came here already armed with a significant amount of study, but I knew that I was missing one key ingredient ... actual dialog with a diverse group of Naturalistic Philosophers. So what is really happening here is that you all are making some very good points to improve the presentation of my logic, help me select proper terminology so as not to make people mad, and understand the naturalistic perspective. This is an incredibly valuable learning experience for me, which will help me immensely if I ever do get around to presenting information on a Grand Scale. And of course there is the off chance that you guys' position may be correct, in which case I would be a fool NOT to adopt it.
So let's dive in ... it appears that I need to spend a little more time explaining my structure for testing ANY hypothesis ... I think that a lot of the evidence I will present, you will have probably heard before, but you may reject it as support for my particular hypothesis on logical or other grounds. So I think I need to first argue the validity of using my approach ...
I have proposed Abductive Logic Confirmed by Inference to the Best Explanation, and have inserted an extra step (this was an assumption to me, but I see it is not for you, so we will insert it)
Abductive Reasoning DATA: The Surprising Fact A (or Phenomenon A) is observed. (The finely tuned cosmos, biological machines, written 'holy' books, etc.) EXPERIENCE: (Let us insert this to explain where 'B' comes from) We propose 'B' based upon our own observation and experience. We cannot do otherwise and still call it 'science' LOGIC: But if B were true, then A would be a matter of course. (B is the God of the Christian Bible) CONCLUSION: Hence, there is reason to suspect that B is true.
Let's illustrate this process from an example from my own experience. I lived for a while as a child in a foreign country with a tribe of jungle natives (my Dad is a Bible translator). These natives had never seen an airplane when my dad arrived. We will call this Surprising Fact (or Phenomenon) A. Some on this thread have argued that it should not be called a Surprising Fact, but I believe it should because the 'surprise' part means that you have never seen the thing before, i.e. you are surprised. Some also say that EVERYTHING you see in the world could be called a Surprising Fact if you propose a 'God', but this is not true. The definition of a surprising fact in this context is simply 'new', i.e. not previously studied. Of course 'new' facts soon become old, but this does not take away anything. Many new things in the physical world are still fascinating to study even though they are not 'new' to science. So I would also be content to call my 'Surprising Fact" a 'Noteworthy Fact' or simply 'Phenomenon.' Someone else may say, "Why do you think that fact is noteworthy? I don't think it is." Well, you may not and that's OK. This whole exercise is written for those who ARE interested in the phenomena of the physical world and who seek to explain how they got here. I am one of them and I assume there are others.
So the natives observe this airplane and they observe people getting out of it and walking toward them and they say "Wow ... a sky canoe!" (They really did this ... and that is what they call an airplane to this day ... the word is 'kanawa' in their language). Notice that they immediately explained Phenomenon 'A' in terms they already understood well. They understand canoes ... they get into their canoes, go various places, then get out again. They saw this airplane arrive from someplace, they saw people get out, and so they assume that it is a very fancy 'canoe', and in a sense they are correct.
Now some of the more thoughtful natives (not many mind you ... most of them said 'Wow! Sky Canoe' and moved on) ... but some of them said to themselves, 'I wonder who made this sky canoe?' ... and they began asking questions. They asked my dad and he told them something like 'Cessna Aircraft Corporation' in a country far from here called 'America.' (Which to the natives was so foreign sounding that my dad might just as well have said 'The Tooth Fairy made it and she lives in Timbuktu.' Now there are some interesting things we can observe here. First, we could ask why my dad told them Cessna made the airplane. And the answer would be that he had previously used the Abductive Reasoning method and had made an Inference to the Best Explanation. Let's walk through this.
MY DAD IS THE OBSERVER DATA: Phenomenon A is the airplane. EXPERIENCE: My dad proposes 'B' because of his own experience LOGIC: If B were true, then A would be a matter of course. CONCLUSION: There is reason to suspect that 'B' is true. In fact, 'B' is so well supported that my dad feels it warrants the strong statement 'Cessna made this airplane.'
Now my dad only has his own experience to draw upon to propose 'B' and to do anything else would be unscientific. What is his experience? He has seen many airplanes, he has read about Cessna, Piper and Beechcraft, and he even read a book on aerodynamics once. All this leads him to propose 'B' that 'Cessna made the airplane.' Could he propose other 'B's'? Sure, he could propose that a farmer planted aiplane seeds and this airplane grew from one of the seeds. He could propose that the Fairy Godmother waved a magic wand and the airplane magically appeared. But these proposals would not be based in his experience and they would not constitute good science. So he does the most logical thing and proposes that 'Cessna made the airplane.' Now some will ask, "This is great, Dave, but can he PROVE that Cessna made the airplane? Well, no. Has he ever OBSERVED any aircraft factory building airplanes? No again. How does he know that someone didn't just FABRICATE THE EVIDENCE ... maybe a trickster printed 'Cessna' on the side of the airplane and on the instrument panel an on the pilot's operating handbook! Right again ... coulda happened. Maybe that book on aerodynamics had errors. Maybe the whole book was a fraud. And on and on we could go. Well ... granted ... my dad could propose many alternatives for explaining the origin of the airplane, but the problem is that these alternatives would not be supported from his own experience, thus rendering them UNSCIENTIFIC. The Best Explanation then, from his own experience is 'Cessna made the airplane.' He cannot prove this in the sense that it is not a Deductive Proof using Logical Entailment. In other words, he cannot 'prove' the logical premise that airplanes come from aircraft factories because there is the logical chance that this might not be true.
Another thing to point out in this example is that we have two 'classes' if you will, of people here. This is important because some people on this thread said that my Proposals -- 'B' -- are invalid because I was informed about them already, i.e. someone has already proposed that there is a God. But this does not matter. Let us see why. My dad is in the supposedly 'informed class' of people who DO know about airplanes (or at least claim they do), and the natives are in a different 'class' of people who are NOT informed about airplanes. We explored the proposal that my dad made from his experience - "Cessna made the airplane." Now consider the Proposal -- 'B' -- that the natives might have proposed had they not been told anything by my dad.
THE NATIVES ARE THE OBSERVERS DATA: Phenomenon A is the airplane. EXPERIENCE: The native proposes 'B' -- 'A super-expert canoe-maker made this sky canoe. His canoe-making ability far exceeds our own because this canoe is not restricted to the river. It obviously can fly over the treetops and can go anywhere the guy steering it wants it to go. It is also much faster--look how fast it whizzed by as it was taking off. And no one has to paddle! It has a strange 'paddle' on the front that spins!' ... and so on ... They make this proposal -- 'B' -- because of their own experience -- which is an Inference to the Best Explanation that they can think of that compares to this new phenomenon. LOGIC: Now if B were true, then A would be a matter of course. CONCLUSION: There is reason to suspect that 'B' is true. Are there other conclusions one could draw? Yes, but they would not be better explanations based upon the evidence of their own experience and thus would not be scientific. The Best Explanation for the natives is that stated above and so they make the Inference and are scientifically justified in making it.
Now here's the fun part ... notice that the two Proposals made by the two Classes of people are QUITE SIMILAR. My dad's 'B' was 'Cessna did it'. The natives 'B' was 'A super-expert canoe-maker did it.' Both drew from their experience. And both made logically sound proposals to explain the phenomenon. My dad's is more refined because he has had the privelege of more data. But the native could also gain access to this same data if he put forth some effort, i.e. learn English, read some books on airplanes, travel to America and observe more airplanes, etc. My point is that the objection of 'You are just making proposals from you own experience so this invalidates your proposal' is not a valid objection. In fact, we are REQUIRED to ONLY make proposals based upon our own experience because this is the THE ESSENCE OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. At least, that's what I think I am hearing from all of you ... correct me if I am wrong.
Now someone will say, 'Come on, Dave. Where all your evidence for this supposed 'Creator God. We are waiting!' And some have also said, 'We've seen all the supposed YEC evidence and we don't buy it.' I have already hinted about some of my evidence for Point 1 - There is a God ... namely, the Cosmic 'Fine-Tuning', biological 'machines' we observe and so on. I will elaborate on these and many other evidences of my other points going forward. But I think many of you do in fact already have part of your answer to the question "Where is the evidence?" You have read Denton, Behe, Dembski and YEC writers.
I think the REALLY NEW THING that I am presenting to you is not necessarily new evidence, but a NEW WAY OF DRAWING CONCLUSIONS FROM THE EVIDENCE, which I actually believe you put into practice every day in your scientific and other endeavors, but which you may not have thought to put into practice into the Origins question. And I admit, that my framework may need some tweaking ... maybe you can help me with that. But I think I am at least on the right track. So these are my really BIG questions for you: Is it possible that this is the case with you? Is my approach outlined above unreasonable? If so, why specifically? Do you admit that you use this process regularly to support many 'hypotheses' about a plethora of 'phenomena'? I welcome your comments on this.
SOME MORE OBJECTIONS
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Chris Hyland: ... The theory of evolution doesn't say anything about the ice age, saying thins like this makes people not take you seriously. The theory of evolution says nothing about the origin of the universe, the origin of matter, or the origin of life.
I think this is a terminology thing. I will revise my terminology. I will stop saying 'Evolutionists' and start saying 'Naturalistic Philosophers'. Is that better?
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Norm Doering: ... There is an old quote from David Brooks that applies to your method of reasoning: "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy." Of course, your problem is that you don't recognise "God" as an unknown, do you?
Actually yes. You'll notice from the discussion above that I am doing EXACTLY what you say I should do, i.e. "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure;" Namely, I am trying to explain the origin of natural phenomena (unknown), with propositions from my own experience (known).
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Dave, before I answer in any more of your arguments, I want to make this perfectly clear: Have we agreed that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms? Yes or no?
Answer is YES. I do not practice 'religion' (whoa ... there's a shocker that I will have to explain separately no doubt) and I do not engage in wild speculation. I have the mind of an engineer and a scientist. I, like you, am a healthy skeptic.
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Abductive Reasoning is supposed to lead to a hypothesis where deductive reasoning can apply.
I would submit to you that Deductive Reasoning can apply to NOTHING in all of science or history in an absolute sense. I am only aware of its application in mathematics. I believe the structure that I have proposed is used constantly in every day scientific practice. Can you demonstrate why I am wrong here?
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BTW, when you say things like, "I see a lot of error in scientists' work, which I mean to correct for the honest folk on this discussion board," you do realize you obliterate any credibility you might have had, right?
Yes, I can see that. Good call, referee! I'll take the 'foul'!
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The problem with your above statement is you've misread Meyer who is already lying to you.
It may be true that Meyer is lying about certain things. I have not investigated all his claims. But Meyer has pointed out a logical framework to determining 'truth' (proposed by Peirce in the 30's) that appears to be in use by many scientists and historians today. I have thought through this framework myself and am adopting my own version of it, and I think it is solid. I honestly value your feedback on this, though.
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Dave, why would you get on this site without knowing about logic and how to make a hypothesis and so on? Shouldn't you study up a little before presenting your hypothesis?
Good question. I came here already armed with a significant amount of study, but I knew that I was missing one key ingredient ... actual dialog with a diverse group of Naturalistic Philosophers. So what is really happening here (and this was one of my goals) is that you all are making some very good points to improve the presentation of my logic, help me select proper terminology so as not to make people mad, and understand the naturalistic perspective. This is an incredibly valuable learning experience for me, which will help me immensely if I ever do get around to presenting information on a Grand Scale. And of course there is the off chance that you guys' position may be correct, in which case I would be a fool NOT to adopt it.
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To use your own terms, are you man enough to debate this honestly?
Yes.
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Ockham's Aftershave: "I can spin that kind of argument any way I want too. I can hypothesize "A Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being could create all necessary physical laws in the first femtosecond of existence, then just sit back and observe the results. Therefore when I observe scientific data that says the universe is 14 Billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 Billion years old, and that life has existed on Earth for over 3 billion years, and that life has evolved over that time by observed processes such as random mutations plus natural selection, I have just verified my hypothesis."
Yes, you could propose this, but the proposal would not be based upon your experience because we have never observed such a process, so it would not be the BEST explanation. Admittedly it's an explanation, just not the best one. A BETTER explanation is something based in our own experience, such as a Super Intelligent Being DESIGNED this flagellum (or whatever), because this would be based upon our experience. See discussion above.
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Norm Doering: It's about Danny Hillis who built the first massively parallel processing computer, the Connection Machine, and used it as a "proof" for a concept in Darwinian evolution.
I will copy this to my thread "AF Dave wants you to prove evolution to him" and I will try to find time to show you over there why this DOES NOT provide proof of concept for Darwinian Evolution. But you need to know that this will be lower priority to me because I really want to get away from "Evolution Bashing".
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Why oh why does anything about god matter in even the slightest bit to humans? Heaven and #### are meaningless words in the context of eternity. They are quite meaningful when applied to how we feel while living but not once we're dead. So why is gOd important?
He's only important IF HE (or it) is there. If He is not, I agree ... who cares. But I have strong suspicion that He is there and so I propose that see is, then make scientific observations to see if the proposal is supported. If it is, then I make only a small step of 'Faith' by saying that I believe in God. A step which I think takes LESS FAITH than the alternatives. Note that many people just basically pull this 'I believe in God' stuff out of thin air and I think they are rightly accused of practicing 'Blind Religious Faith.'
Now I will go ahead and stop here and post this, then begin presenting my EVIDENCE FOR POINT 1.
See you in about an hour ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
YES, YES!! Thankyou! A Thousand time YES! This is precisely what you should do! And while you are at it, put your Origins and Macro-Evolution Hypothesis in exactly the same format and go look for that evidence on the same trek!
- Hypothesis: humans evolved from the same lineage as modern apes
- Observation: the modern apes that are most physiologically similar to humans have 24 chromosomes per haploid
- Observation: humans have 23 chromosomes per haploid
- Conclusion: either humans have lost a chromosome or the other apes have all gained a chromosome
- By application of parsimony: humans have lost a chromosome
- Observation: chromosomes are generally "lost" by merging with another chromosome, as destruction of a chromosome's worth of genetic information is generally fatal
- Conclusion: at some point in our ancestry, two human chromosomes merged
- Prediction: one human chromosome will closely resemble two ape chromosomes merged together.
This prediction was subsequently confirmed. I can present other instances of confirmed predictions if you like.
Dave, if you're going to present evidence for the existence of God, you're kind of wasting your time. Many of the people here already believe that God exists, and most others, like me, who don't believe God exists, concede that the question is essentially unprovable either way. Most theologians seem to be of the opinion that trying to use physical evidence to prove the existence of God is at best futile and at worst blasphemous.
Your really contentious claim is that the Bible is inerrant. Given the difficulty of that task, I really think you should concentrate your efforts there.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now some will ask, "This is great, Dave, but can he PROVE that Cessna made the airplane? Well, no. Has he ever OBSERVED any aircraft factory building airplanes? No again.
However, it was still a valid hypothesis because it makes the falsifiable, verifiable prediction that, if he chose to go to the factory, he would see planes being made that were identical in style to his. Likewise, the conjecture that the aerodynamics book was accurate is falsifiable - he could go away and build a bunch of toy aircraft and compare their flight with the book's claims, for example.
In general, the only time we take a statement on trust is when we can reasonably expect that it would have been falsified were it not true. Or when we have absolutely no other option. Abduction is rarely more than half the story, and in science it's generally not even that.
I have already hinted about some of my evidence for Point 1 - There is a God ... namely, the Cosmic 'Fine-Tuning', biological 'machines' we observe and so on.
We would also expect to see these things if there weren't a God.
Remember you have to present why the evidence fits your hypothesis better than the competing hypothesis.
Dave, before I answer in any more of your arguments, I want to make this perfectly clear: Have we agreed that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms? Yes or no?
Answer is YES. I do not practice 'religion' (whoa ... there's a shocker that I will have to explain separately no doubt) and I do not engage in wild speculation. I have the mind of an engineer and a scientist. I, like you, am a healthy skeptic.
What you've said here is that you agree that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms. Is that what you meant to say? If it is, I'm not sure this is a proper venue for you to be discussing these matters, since your conjectures, hypotheses, proposals, arguments, etc., are going to be dealt with from within the constraints of science. If you're not going to be talking in terms of science, you're going to be going at it at cross-purposes to everyone else here.
Possibly this isn't what you meant to say. But we need to know one way or another.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I like how afDave ignores all relevant questions to him and keeps asserting the same idiotic, unscientific ideas as if he is really on to something new. His ignorance of jr high level science is only matched by his ignorance of how many times we have heard the exact same nonsense he is bringing to the table.
DATA: The Surprising Fact A (or Phenomenon A) is observed. (The finely tuned cosmos, biological machines, written 'holy' books, etc.)
Just stop. None of those things constitue data. They all represent bias before the fact. I mean, really, you are just insulting us here. "Surprising fact" describes an emotional reaction, not emprical data. There is no way to measure the tuning of a cosmos. And what scale are you using to determine how holy a given book is?
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I like how afDave ignores all relevant questions to him and keeps asserting the same idiotic, unscientific ideas as if he is really on to something new
I "like" how everyone keeps encouraging him by endlessly responding to him, regardless of his demonstrated inability to offer or even understand anything constituting reasoned arguments or evidence, thereby continually pushing his moronic threads to the top of the board and creating the impression (for anyone who doesn't already know better) that he might actually be sustaining his side of a debate. Of course, when I say "like," I really mean hate.
Don't feed the moron.
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
Also, I'd like to get some clarification here: Dave, before I answer in any more of your arguments, I want to make this perfectly clear: Have we agreed that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms? Yes or no? Answer is YES. I do not practice 'religion' (whoa ... there's a shocker that I will have to explain separately no doubt) and I do not engage in wild speculation. I have the mind of an engineer and a scientist. I, like you, am a healthy skeptic.
What you've said here is that you agree that we are NOT discussing in scientific terms. Is that what you meant to say?
CORRECTION: I blew right past that "NOT" didn't I. Thanks.
I meant to say "Answer is NO. I do not practice 'religion' (whoa ... there's a shocker that I will have to explain separately no doubt) and I do not engage in wild speculation. I have the mind of an engineer and a scientist. I, like you, am a healthy skeptic."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
EVIDENCE FROM MY EXPERIENCE SUPPORTING POINT 1 (I will use numbers instead of letters so as not to confuse with the 'A' and 'B' logic tools.)
Again as I said earlier, I think most of you are quite familiar with my supporting evidence for my points, but again, the important thing to me is THE METHOD OF DRAWING CONCLUSIONS FROM THE EVIDENCE.
To recap, Point 1 is as follows: 1. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
Let us also restate the framework (constantly being refined ... that's what scientists do, right?) and place this Point 1 into it.
ABDUCTIVE REASONING WITH LOGICAL INFERENCE TO BEST EXPLANATION DATA: Phenomenon A is observed. (The finely tuned cosmos, biological machines, written 'holy' books, relativity, particle physics, etc.) EXPERIENCE: We propose 'B' (Point 1 above) from our own observation and experience. We cannot do otherwise and still call it 'science' LOGIC: If B were true, then A would be a matter of course. (In this exercise, B is the God of the Christian Bible) CONCLUSION: Since we do observe lots of 'A's there is reason to suspect that B is true. We will propose that it is true, then modify, refine, etc. as we gather more data.
Now, what do I observe in the natural world? This is my 'A' above.
A1=WE OBSERVE A FINELY TUNED COSMOS. Meyer observes ... "Physicists have discovered some seventy separate physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe (Barrow & Tipler 1986; Gribbin & Rees 1991; Ross in Dembski 1998)." Say what you want about Michael Denton and his conclusion that 'the laws of Biology reveal Purpose' in the universe, but his book "Nature's Destiny" certainly presents credible evidence to me that at least the universe is in fact 'finely tuned' for life on earth as we observe it today. He talks about water, light, the elements of the earth, carbon, gases, metals, DNA, 'the nano-manipulators' we call proteins, and cells, and he shows very convincingly that every parameter must be exactly as we find it within incredibly small tolerances, or life on earth would not be possible. I like Denton's conclusion on page 389, ""All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact ... As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in these final days of the second millenium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished--the "defender of the anthropocentric faith."
B1=A SUPER-INTELLIGENCE SET THE PARAMETERS. We propose that some Super-Intelligence intentionally set the myriad parameters of the cosmos so that life would be possible. This is consistent with our experience. In our experience, intelligent engineers set parameters quite precisely in order to achieve some goal. For example, the viscosity of fuel has to correct for it to be used as a motor fuel in a gasoline engine. Note that we are not saying that 'life WAS the goal'. We are simply saying that in our experience, intelligent agents set parameters precisely to achieve some goal. Since we do find lots of precisely set parameters in the cosmos, maybe it's reasonable based on our experience, to propose that SOMEBODY set them in order to achieve some goal.
A2=BIOLOGICAL MACHINES. Sorry guys, I know you don't like Denton and Behe, but if I could find someone who says it better that you like, I would quote them. Maybe you can help me with that. Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" is now well known. I love Behe's words ... "systems of HORRENDOUS, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell"!! I just love that word "HORRENDOUS." Michael Denton in "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" makes a very powerful and revealing statement ... "We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive." (p. 249) Denton says about the cell ... "What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth." (p. 329) and Bill Gates says of DNA--which is the controlling 'program of life'--that it is "is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we have ever created (The Road Ahead, 1996, p. 228) Denton and Behe are absolute MUST READS!
B2=A SUPER-ENGINEER DESIGNED THE MACHINES. We propose that a Super-Human Software Engineer of surpassing brilliance wrote the DNA code. We propose that that a Super-Human Nano-technology engineer designed the wonderfully innovative and ubiquitous proteins fro which the DNA codes. Was it the same 'guy'? I propose that it was, yes. Of course there is the possibility that there are several such 'guys' somewhere that worked onthis project together ... a sort of Engineering Department if you will.
OK ... there's 2 A's and B's for you ... again what we are saying is ...
DATA: Phenomenon A1 (FINELY TUNED COSMOS) is observed. EXPERIENCE: B1=A SUPER-INTELLIGENCE SET THE PARAMETERS. We propose 'B' (supporting Point 1 above) from our own observation and experience. LOGIC: If B1 were true, then A1 would be a matter of course. CONCLUSION: Since we do observe A1, there is reason to suspect that B1 is true. We will propose that it is true, then modify, refine, etc. as we gather more data.
DATA: Phenomenon A2 (BIOLOGICAL MACHINES) is observed. EXPERIENCE: B2=A SUPER-ENGINEER DESIGNED THE MACHINES. We propose 'B' (supporting Point 1 above) from our own observation and experience. LOGIC: If B2 were true, then A2 would be a matter of course. CONCLUSION: Since we do observe A2, there is reason to suspect that B2 is true. We will propose that it is true, then modify, refine, etc. as we gather more data.
I know I'm not done with Point 1 ... I still have to cover 'speaking things into existence' and 'living outside time' but my eyes hurt and I'm quitting for now ...
See you soon!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I "like" how everyone keeps encouraging him by endlessly responding to him, regardless of his demonstrated inability to offer or even understand anything constituting reasoned arguments or evidence, thereby continually pushing his moronic threads to the top of the board and creating the impression (for anyone who doesn't already know better) that he might actually be sustaining his side of a debate. Of course, when I say "like," I really mean hate.
Don't feed the moron.
It's just entertainment, Mr. Toothbrush. None of us is having to do this for a living, we're not getting paid for it, and surely we don't want a site where we're just standing around agreeing with each other, like those other sites.
Dave is charmingly naive, and it's kind of fun watching him get his ass handed to him over and over again. And after all, no one is forcing you to read his threads, right?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A1=WE OBSERVE A FINELY TUNED COSMOS. Meyer observes ... "Physicists have discovered some seventy separate physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe (Barrow & Tipler 1986; Gribbin & Rees 1991; Ross in Dembski 1998)."
Let me ask you something, Dave: would it surprise you to find yourself living in a universe that cannot sustain life? I know it would surprise me.
So let's just say that your fine-tuning argument, aside from being hardly original, is a less than compelling argument for the existence of God. At best, it's an argument for good luck. Assuming you think being blessed with existence is actually good luck.
BTW, I think we all get your "method" for deriving "conclusions" from "evidence." Endless repetition is only going to annoy people.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Norm Doering: ... There is an old quote from David Brooks that applies to your method of reasoning: "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy." Of course, your problem is that you don't recognise "God" as an unknown, do you?
Actually yes. You'll notice from the discussion above that I am doing EXACTLY what you say I should do, i.e. "To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure;" Namely, I am trying to explain the origin of natural phenomena (unknown), with propositions from my own experience (known).
Not quite.
You're conflating various origin concepts (origin of the universe, origin of life, origin of species) and applying exactly the same teleological reasoning to each.
Teleological reasoning has the illusionary quality of appearing "knowable" but it's really a mask for a great big unknown.
Consider your airplane argument. It's classic teleology. You're stealing the basic concept of William Paley's watchmaker argument which was made prior to Darwin and which Darwin himself shot down after he believed it for awhile.
A1=WE OBSERVE A FINELY TUNED COSMOS. Stars and that...
B1=A SUPER-INTELLIGENCE DIDN'T SET THE PARAMETERS. Because evolution is bound by many factors including physical constants ie the properties of water and carbon, and the availability of energy, it will create organisms that depend heavily on these. Therefore because we observe that if any of the physical constants change life would not exist we assume that evolution is true. Under the alternative hypothesis, we could just as easily see organisms survive if the universe was stacked against them.
A2=BIOLOGICAL MACHINES. "systems of HORRENDOUS, irreducible complexity inhabit the cell"
B2=THE MACHINES EVOLVED. Based on what we understand of evolution including duplication followed by differential loss of both genes and interactions, we expect these systems to be incredibly complex, and exhibit certain properties, such as being scale-free, modular and heirachical. We increase our knowledge of A, and find that they are, so we increase our confidence in B.
Abductive Reasoning is supposed to lead to a hypothesis where deductive reasoning can apply.
I would submit to you that Deductive Reasoning can apply to NOTHING in all of science or history in an absolute sense. I am only aware of its application in mathematics.
That demand for "absolutes" in the face of technological proof has got to be one of the classic examples of fundy brain damage.
There is nothing more "absolute" in human knowledge than technological proof, it is more certain than mathematical proof. For as Albert Einstein said, "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
It is far more absolute than your vague obfuscations and teleologies.
Hillis' proof is as absolute as the human mind can get.
If someone says a heavier than air machine cannot fly and then someone builds one that can -- it is as absolutely certain a thing as man can know that a heavier than air machine can fly.
If Hillis builds a computer that demonstrates the ability of evolution then those abilities are absolutely demonstrated.
... may be true that Meyer is lying about certain things. I have not investigated all his claims. But Meyer has pointed out a logical framework to determining 'truth' (proposed by Peirce in the 30's) that appears to be in use by many scientists and historians today.
You talk of "absolutes" to escape Danny Hillis' demonstration of evolutionary concepts, but then you talk of "truth" when dealing with Meyer's metaphysical conjectures.
These tidbits from your favorite DI fellows aren’t evidence, Dave. And, remember, they’re the same as the justification for the assumptions implicit in your *cough* hypothesis. You start with the anthropic musings of Meyer:
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Physicists have discovered some seventy separate physical or cosmological parameters that require precise calibration in order to produce a life-sustaining universe
First, as you will hear in practically every response to this post, I would be quite surprised to find myself in a universe where my existence was impossible. Second, what does “life-sustaining universe” mean? Does it mean “universe identical to this one?” If so, that’s a neat tautology. On the other hand, it could mean “a universe with fundamentally different life from this one” in which case no one knows how “precise” this “calibration” would need to be. For all that we know about life on Earth, it’s still a sample size of one. We, all of us, are fundamentally ignorant about the ‘parameter space’ in which something we would be willing to call ‘life’ can occur. Unless, of course, you would only be willing to call DNA-based para-terrestrial organisms ‘life,’ in which case you’re back to the tautology “the universe is fine-tuned to be… just like this universe!”
And then we get a patented Denton howler:
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All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.
All the evidence available in the biological (and geological) sciences in fact supports the proposition that life began ~3.8 billion years ago, and that from that time forward the most numerous, diverse, robust, and tenacious life-forms have been prokaryotes. Multicellular, animal life has been around for maybe a billion years, most of that as relatively undifferentiated worm-like creatures. Mammals have been around for 80 to 100 million years, primates about 40 million, hominids 7 to 8 million, and genus Homo maybe two million. The human conception of a creative “Super-Intelligence” is about the only thing the Bible dates correctly, being about 5 or 6 thousand years old. In other words, roughly .000001 of the history of life, or .0025 of the existence of our genus. Pretty long build-up for the punchline, wouldn’t you say? Now, I like people too, Dave. I think we’re pretty darn special. But you have to see that, against the backdrop of the actual “evidence available in the biological sciences,” the conceit that the entire universe is just for us can begin to seem like so much wishful thinking. Keep saying it, I guess. But it sounds like whistling past the graveyard to me.
-------------- The is the beauty of being me- anything that any man does I can understand. --Joe G
Dave, I'll bite. You don't regard yourself as "religious"... maybe I'm being too suspicious, but I've heard this assertion from fundamentalist Christians to take it at face value. They seem to regard their faith as something more than religion, but by any dictionary definition, Christianity, or faith in Jesus or whatever way you want to term it, is still a religion. So, Dave, is that the case with you?
I see you are trying to tread carefully, avoiding a minefield of assertions and definitions in an attempt to appear neutral and willing to learn, but you're still letting some YEC howlers slip through. Your biggest mistake this time is your assertion that *not* believing in God takes more faith than believing in God. All good fundamentalists and creationists like to trot that one out in such debates and it usually gets a good rise, quite justifiably, out of the opposition.
Regarding your observations:
A1: First, as others have suggested, our very existence requires there to be a Universe fine-tuned for life, that is not a surprise. Second, we already have people working on theories, backed up by mathematics (far beyond my meagre brain's understand) that points to the possibility that our Universe may only be one of an infinite number of universes, all with different "fine-tunings". If that turns out to be the case, then our existence may have turned out to have been inevitable. We may never be able to detect these other universes but the theoretical physicists are hard at work on the issue and may one day find some solid evidence to back up the multiverse conjecture.
As it stands, we already have an amazing amount of knowledge and understanding of how the Universe evolved (from the moment after the Big Bang) to today, from the orginal expansion, formation of the first gases, the first stars, galaxies, solar systems, life, etc. etc. Probably the biggest gap in our knowledge is abiogenesis, but we're working hard on that too.
99.9% of all surprising facts (lightning, supernovae, "holy" books, visions of God, ghosts, tornados, etc. etc. etc. turn out to have mundane and natural explanations. Why make this exception?
A2: OK, so you simply point us to Behe, Dembski, et al. Surely you don't expect us to waste our time refuting what has already been refuted. If you are being sincere in your search for the truth (BTW: only creationists and religious fundies capitalize talk about "Truth") then you need to read the books and articles that directly refute their claims. Are you prepared to do that? It will take some work and the technical aspects are not always easy (at least they aren't for me) but you owe it to yourself to try.
So far you haven’t provided any evidence at all to support YEC or God, just your own (and a few other Creationists’) personal incredulity. “WOW! It’s just SOOOOO complex, I’m too stupid or too lazy to investigate how it could have evolved!!” You sound just like the natives looking at the “flying canoe”. Do you realize that Behe accepts the Theory of Evolution, an old earth, and common descent? He just thinks God, er, the Intelligent designer “front loaded” things billions of years ago.
Speaking of Behe and his “molecular machines”, did you happen to follow any of the Kitzmiller vs. Dover PA. school board "ID" trial last year? Behe was called as a star witness for the defense, and was made to look like an absolute bumbling fool by the questioning attorney. First, under oath, Behe testified that Astrology would qualify as a legitimate science under Behe’s definition. If that didn’t make the clown look bad enough, Behe then made his famous “irreducible complexity” argument using the human immune system, Behe claimed there was no evidence whatsoever that the immune system could have evolved. The prosecuting attorney then dropped a two foot high stack of over 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers and articles with research detailing the evolution of the human immune system and asked Behe if he was familiar with the work.. Behe replied that he didn’t need to read them as he already knew his claim was correct. With that foot shoved deep into his mouth, Behe effectively scuttled the rest of his already pitifully weak scientific credibility and his career.
I’ll give you another day to start presenting your evidence, so far you’re 0 for the week.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The "fine-tuning" argument is really an argument "against" a God of miracles. Think about it. If we lived in a universe that would NOT allow life, then THAT would be a miracle, and could be used as an argument for a God of miracles.
As has been pointed out, we know how everything happened in a natural way, from the Big Bang, right upto now. Abio-genesis is still a big gap, and you are welcome to plug that gap with your God. Another place you can plug him in, if you so wish, is before the Big Bang. Any attempt to force him into another area is just dishonest (yes, we do think you are dishonest, even though sincere), since we have natural explanations for it.
I must mention this again, but some Christians believe that their God started everything off at the big bang. In his infinate wisdom, he planned everything so well (even evolution) that it required no constant "tinkering and fixing" from him. This God, is way more powerful and smart than the one you are trying to peddle here. You think you make a good case for your god, but all you are really doing is insulting him, and us.
From Corkscrew ... - Hypothesis: humans evolved from the same lineage as modern apes - Observation: the modern apes that are most physiologically similar to humans have 24 chromosomes per haploid - Observation: humans have 23 chromosomes per haploid - Conclusion: either humans have lost a chromosome or the other apes have all gained a chromosome - By application of parsimony: humans have lost a chromosome - Observation: chromosomes are generally "lost" by merging with another chromosome, as destruction of a chromosome's worth of genetic information is generally fatal - Conclusion: at some point in our ancestry, two human chromosomes merged - Prediction: one human chromosome will closely resemble two ape chromosomes merged together. This prediction was subsequently confirmed. I can present other instances of confirmed predictions if you like.
Corkscrew continues to be the most logical sounding, non-emotional advocate of the general Theory of Evolution that I have heard over here at PT. Right behind him is Faid, who is at least polite and does not engage in polemics, and Norm who sounds intelligent. I keep throwing this bone out to ToE advocates that you will further your cause if you adopt the rational, non-emotional 'Corkscrew' approach. Adopting the 'Aftershave' approach or the 'Mr_Christopher' approach will only harm your cause. This hypothesis is very interesting to me and I want to hear more. I will copy it into my "AF Dave wants you to prove Evolution" thread, then I would like to do some Google searching and get back to you on this as soon as I can.
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Corkscrew said ... In general, the only time we take a statement on trust is when we can reasonably expect that it would have been falsified were it not true. Or when we have absolutely no other option. Abduction is rarely more than half the story, and in science it's generally not even that.
At first glance, I don't agree with this, but I will consider it further to see if my disagreement is warranted or not. What do you think about Meyer's objection to falsifiability as a criterion for status as a "scientific theory"? [I'm asking Corkscrew ... or anyone else that wants to provide a calm, rational answer other than 'Meyer is a liar', etc.]
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With the death of positivism in the 1950s, demarcationists took a different tack. Other semantic criteria emerged, such as Sir Karl Popper's falsifiability. According to Popper, scientific theories were more meaningful than nonscientific ideas because they referred only to empirically falsifiable entities.21 Yet this, too, proved to be a problematic criterion. First, falsification turns out to be difficult to achieve. Rarely are the core commitments of theories directly tested via prediction. Instead, predictions occur when core theoretical commitments are conjoined with auxiliary hypotheses, thus always leaving open the possibility that auxiliary hypotheses, not core commitments, are responsible for failed predictions.
Newtonian mechanics, for example, assumed as its core three laws of motion and the theory of universal gravitation. On the basis of these, Newton made a number of predictions about the positions of planets in the solar system. When observations failed to corroborate some of his predictions, he did not reject his core assumptions. Instead, he scrutinized some of his auxiliary hypotheses to explain the discrepancies between theory and observation. For example, he examined his working assumption that planets were perfectly spherical and influenced only by gravitational force. As Imre Lakatos has shown, Newton's refusal to repudiate his core in the face of anomalies enabled him to refine his theory and eventually led to its tremendous success.22 Newton's refusal to accept putatively falsifying results certainly did not call into question the scientific status of his gravitational theory or his three laws. Meyer on Scientific Status of Intelligent Design
AFDave said ...
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I have already hinted about some of my evidence for Point 1 - There is a God ... namely, the Cosmic 'Fine-Tuning', biological 'machines' we observe and so on.
Chris Hyland said ...
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We would also expect to see these things if there weren't a God.
On what basis? Your personal experience? Is there a scientist somewhere that has observed this that I have not read about? In my personal experience and in all my reading, I have never observed (or read about) a non-intelligent cause producing a functional machine (there are a few equivocal examples I have heard about). Have you? My experience has ALWAYS been that functional machines require intelligent agency. Therefore, I think my hypothesis of a Super-Engineer (I do not insist upon calling him 'God') is a better explanation.
Eric Murphy said ...
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Let me ask you something, Dave: would it surprise you to find yourself living in a universe that cannot sustain life? I know it would surprise me.
If you read what I have written, you will notice that I said I am content to discard the term 'Surprising Fact' and simply use 'Phenomenon.'
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So let's just say that your fine-tuning argument, aside from being hardly original, is a less than compelling argument for the existence of God. At best, it's an argument for good luck. Assuming you think being blessed with existence is actually good luck.
I didn't say it was original ... 'my hypothesis' means to me a conglomerate of existing ones plus some of my own thoughts presented in my own way. Everyone does this. Why is it less than compelling? Have you ever experienced or read about a system that was 'finely tuned' that was NOT finely tuned by an engineer (or team of them)?
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You're conflating various origin concepts (origin of the universe, origin of life, origin of species) and applying exactly the same teleological reasoning to each. Teleological reasoning has the illusionary quality of appearing "knowable" but it's really a mask for a great big unknown. Wikipedia has an entry on teleology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument Consider your airplane argument. It's classic teleology. You're stealing the basic concept of William Paley's watchmaker argument which was made prior to Darwin and which Darwin himself shot down after he believed it for awhile. Teleology and the watchmaker argument have even deeper flaws than those noted by Wikipedia.
Yes. I am conflating them. If I had a good reason from my experience and observable evidence NOT to conflate them, then I would not conflate them. But I think it is quite well accepted now that the universe is finite and had a beginning, is it not? (I think the 'parallel universe' theory is pretty much dead). So this provides support to my 'God' hypothesis. No one has a clue about the origin of life, so why shouldn't we propose 'God' until we can find something better? No one has yet shown me an example of a worm-like creature evolving into a squid or a dinosaur-like creature evolving into a bird, etc., etc. (did I get the supposed progression right?), so again, what is so unscientific about proposing a Master Engineer (or a committee of Master Engineers) that MIGHT HAVE created them? And what is wrong with proposing that they all be conflated into one entity? There are other lines of evidence that support this. I think we can AT LEAST propose it, then investigate. Wikipedia's main gripe of the Watchmaker argument (and I assume teleology as well) seemed to be that you run into the 'brick wall' of 'Who Designed God?' I admit this readily, but just as the native would be wrong to say 'I cannot explain who designed the engineers at Cessna, so I will not believe that Cessna engineers designed Cessna airplanes', it is just as illogical to toss out the 'God possibility' simply because we cannot explain HIS origin.
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Chris Hyland's Evolution Hypothesis A1=WE OBSERVE A FINELY TUNED COSMOS. Stars and that... B1=A SUPER-INTELLIGENCE DIDN'T SET THE PARAMETERS Because evolution is bound by many factors including physical constants ie the properties of water and carbon, and the availability of energy, it will create organisms that depend heavily on these. Therefore because we observe that if any of the physical constants change life would not exist we assume that evolution is true. Under the alternative hypothesis, we could just as easily see organisms survive if the universe was stacked against them.
I do not follow your logic. Can you explain more clearly? Also, to use my structure, you would need to propose what DID set the parameters. Are you proposing that the parameters got set by chance? If so, what basis do you have from your experience to propose this as valid? How would you deal with the odds against this, etc.? I think maybe what you are saying is that you don't believe the 'fine tuning' was necessary for life to evolve? I obviously have already accepted that they are set precisely to sustain life because I think this is well supported. Are you saying you do not accept this?
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If someone says a heavier than air machine cannot fly and then someone builds one that can -- it is as absolutely certain a thing as man can know that a heavier than air machine can fly.
I see what you are saying, but even in this case, it is only absolute certainty to the person (or people) who built it and flew it. Think about it. All other people who hear about it will get INDIRECT evidence--they will read about it, see the report on TV, etc. and of course this is quite reliable for the example you raise. But TV and newspaper reports can get unreliable when reporting less cut and dried events. The Miller/Urey experiment is an example. The headlines were something like "Scientists Create Life in a Test Tube!!" Oh really? On closer examination, we found that was a big stretch (translated, lie). Ditto for newspaper reports of many supposed human ancestor fossils. For our discussion, I am assuming we were talking about things which CANNOT be verified directly, such as forces, fields, atoms, quarks, past events, mental states, subsurface geological features, molecular biological structures, airplane factories that the natives have never seen, George Washington, and 'God' to name a few.
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You talk of "absolutes" to escape Danny Hillis' demonstration of evolutionary concepts, but then you talk of "truth" when dealing with Meyer's metaphysical conjectures. You don't see a problem with that?
My problem with Danny Hillis' has nothing to do with the concepts of 'absolutes'. It has everything to do with the question of 'What exactly does the Hillis demo tell us? (Really, when we remove the spin) Notice my reference to the word 'truth' is in quotes because I know there are different definitions of truth.
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These tidbits from your favorite DI fellows aren’t evidence, Dave.
If they are not, then could you propose an example of what IS evidence? Let me guess ... mountains and mountains of 'scholarship' from the science establishment to support Naturalistic Explanations Only? This was the kind of odds Galileo was working against too. Are you telling me that I should believe your evidence and reject mine because yours fits with the majority?
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Second, what does “life-sustaining universe” mean?
Exactly what it says. And I challenge you to propose some parameter changes and ask a biologist how likely it would be for life to continue. The problem with naturalistic speculators like yourself is that you guys like to say "Well, we only know about life on earth ... sample size of one. There could be other planets, other universes, who knows!" OK, great. I agree. And there could be a Fairy Godmother for all I know. But if we are going to admit wild speculation into the arena, let's admit ALL kinds of wild speculation into the arena. My favorite is "Parallel Universes". I don't know how people can tell me with a straight face that there might be an infinite number of parallel universes, then in the next breath tell me I'm a wild speculator for proposing an Infinite God character.
Regarding the Denton "howler" ... THIS is the howler ...
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All the evidence available in the biological (and geological) sciences in fact supports the proposition that life began ~3.8 billion years ago
*cough* because we arbitrarily made some massive initial conditions assumptions so it would come out that long
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and that from that time forward the most numerous, diverse, robust, and tenacious life-forms have been prokaryotes.
the old 'what do you think makes humans so special, just look at the bacteria' saw ... sometime I'm going to do a thread on the implications of this thinking on law and culture ... talk about a howler ... this one will be way better than Rush Limbaugh and the Tree Huggers!
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Multicellular, animal life has been around for maybe a billion years
based on our flawed assumptions in dating supposed 'index fossils'[/quote], most of that as relatively undifferentiated worm-like creatures. Mammals have been around for 80 to 100 million years, primates about 40 million, hominids 7 to 8 million, and genus Homo maybe two million[/quote]Ditto above ... funny ... every non-YEC history book I can find anywhere says things like "4000 (or so) BC: History Begins" (I never find over 10,000). Hmmm... what did all those 'Homos' do for 1,996,000 years? You're telling me they all of a sudden started writing and making artifacts only in the last .000000001% (or whatever) of their existence on the planet ... yeah, pretty plausible
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The human conception of a creative “Super-Intelligence” is about the only thing the Bible dates correctly, being about 5 or 6 thousand years old. In other words, roughly .000001 of the history of life, or .0025 of the existence of our genus. Pretty long build-up for the punchline, wouldn’t you say?
the buildup is in your imagination, Mr. O'Brien, which is great. I like imagining things too. Have you seen Narnia? It's a good one for the imagination, but it's not about science, unless we redefine science ... which I'm not opposed to as long as the rules are fair.
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Tacitus said ... Dave, I'll bite. You don't regard yourself as "religious"... maybe I'm being too suspicious, but I've heard this assertion from fundamentalist Christians to take it at face value. They seem to regard their faith as something more than religion, but by any dictionary definition, Christianity, or faith in Jesus or whatever way you want to term it, is still a religion. So, Dave, is that the case with you?
'God, Jesus, etc,' are religious terms by convention, and I understand that most people consider me religious, and I will call myself religious in certain contexts so as not to confuse people needlessly. But my real view of myself is that I am scientific, not religious. But my definition of science is ... drum roll ... more expansive than yours. I consider ALL possibilites for explaining and describing the universe, not just so called 'naturalistic ones' which we presently understand. I, in contrast to you, make allowance that there just might be some things that we don't understand yet because our science is not advanced enough ... like angels and demons and creation of matter from nothing and the ability to walk on water, part the Red Sea, etc. Why do you guys choke so much on these ideas? I thought you were scientists, forever pushing the boundaries back. Isn't that what you want? This is the most illogical thing to me. That supposedly open-minded scientists would categorically rule out so many possibilities for explaining phenomena. Here ... go read Meyer some more and call me in three days ... http://www.discovery.org/scripts....Science
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If you are being sincere in your search for the truth (BTW: only creationists and religious fundies capitalize talk about "Truth") then you need to read the books and articles that directly refute their claims. Are you prepared to do that?
Already did. Been there. Done that. Didn't buy it because it was unconvincing.
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So far you haven’t provided any evidence at all to support YEC or God, just your own (and a few other Creationists’) personal incredulity. “WOW! It’s just SOOOOO complex, I’m too stupid or too lazy to investigate how it could have evolved!!” You sound just like the natives looking at the “flying canoe”.
Uh, oh. I'm getting 'Aftershaved" again. Hey try some intelligent sounding arguments instead of insults ... they work better. See Corkscrew, Norm and Chris Hyland and others for some good examples of intelligent sounding stuff.
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First, under oath, Behe testified that Astrology would qualify as a legitimate science under Behe’s definition.
Let's get the quote right at least if you're going to quote him. Here's what I found ...
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They acknowledged under oath that ID cannot qualify as science unless the definition of science is completely changed to admit the supernatural. Behe acknowledged that under his definition, astrology would equally qualify as science.
OK. So astrology wants to call itself a science? Let 'em. They have to prove their ideas just like the YECers and everyone else. Don't you believe in the free market of ideas? I think the majority would weed them out just like it does in other arenas. Do you see an Astrology Chapel at the USAF Academy? (I was just there). Do you see a Scientology chapel? Or a Buddhist temple? No. You see a BIG Protestant chapel, a smaller Catholic chapel and a smaller still Jewish chapel. Why? Democracy. Freedom. Reflection of the majority within practical limits. Should the USAF Academy shut down all religion on campus b/c it's a government entity? Of course not. Remember.. here in the USA ... Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [no state church lke the Church of England] or prohibiting the FREE EXERCISE thereof. Same for science classes. We shouldn't be telling kids 'God created the world' in science class and we shouldn't be telling the world that 'Evolution created the world' in science class. We should be telling them 'Most scientists believe some form of Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain the appearance of life. Many non-scientists and a minority of scientists believe in some form of supernatural cause for the appearance of life. Creationism and Intelligent Design Theory are two of these views.' And if Astrology or Scientism or Christian Science or whatever gets a big enough following, then throw them in there too and let the kids decide for themselves with the help of their parents. And this is one point I would probably agree with all of you about. I know there are YECers who share my view of Origins but who use bad tactics--'Let's teach the kids that God said it, I believe it and that settles it!!' I join you in vigorously opposing these types. They are not my allies.
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The prosecuting attorney then dropped a two foot high stack of over 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers and articles with research detailing the evolution of the human blood clotting system and asked Behe if he was familiar with the work.. Behe replied that he didn’t need to read them as he already knew his claim was correct.
I didn't check this quote for accuracy, but I imagine he feels as I feel that scientists just keep on writing mountains and mountains of nonsense to support these notions they really, really want to be true ... like the immune system evolved, etc. I've read a lot myself and it all starts to sound the same ... I'm sure you can relate. Many people here have said the same about the stuff I write. I will agree with you that it seems hair-brained to adopt the strategy to go try to defend a local school board's decision to put 'Evolution Warning Labels' on the books. I mean ... who knows what kind of rednecks you might be defending? Why fight this in the courts anyway? I can think of better places to get the word out. So is that 2 things we agree on now? Oh yeah ... we're both EE's. OK 3 then.
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The "fine-tuning" argument is really an argument "against" a God of miracles.
Not if you use MY definition of 'miracles'. Have I given that yet? A miracle is simply a natural law being employed which our science does not yet understand. Jesus knew how to walk on water (if the NT record is true), but we don't yet, etc.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Let me ask you something, Dave: would it surprise you to find yourself living in a universe that cannot sustain life? I know it would surprise me.
If you read what I have written, you will notice that I said I am content to discard the term 'Surprising Fact' and simply use 'Phenomenon.'
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So let's just say that your fine-tuning argument, aside from being hardly original, is a less than compelling argument for the existence of God. At best, it's an argument for good luck. Assuming you think being blessed with existence is actually good luck.
I didn't say it was original ... 'my hypothesis' means to me a conglomerate of existing ones plus some of my own thoughts presented in my own way. Everyone does this. Why is it less than compelling? Have you ever experienced or read about a system that was 'finely tuned' that was NOT finely tuned by an engineer (or team of them)?
You're missing the point, Dave. I'm not talking about whether a given phenomenon is "surprising" or not.
My point is (and this is known as the "weak anthropic principle") we would be surprised to find ourselves living in a universe that was not finely tuned for life. Obviously, Dave, we could not live in a universe that was inimical to life, unless a creator god made it possible for us to live there nevertheless. Since we are, in fact, alive, it should come as no surprise at all to us that we inhabit a universe that can sustain life.
What would be truly surprising, and what would be evidence for the existence of God, would be if we inhabited a universe that could not sustain life.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What would be truly surprising, and what would be evidence for the existence of God, would be if we inhabited a universe that could not sustain life.
And if we should someday visit lots of our universe and find no life anywhere, what should we conclude? That this is evidence for some god, who crafted life on earth despite the fact that this universe is otherwise very uncongenial to life?
But if we find life everywhere we go, should we then conclude that this same god created a universe where life can thrive, and therefore must also exist?
These anthropocentic arguments always come down to "heads I win, tails you lose" circular conclusions: My god exists, therefore whatever we find proves it.
From Corkscrew ... - Hypothesis: humans evolved from the same lineage as modern apes - Observation: the modern apes that are most physiologically similar to humans have 24 chromosomes per haploid - Observation: humans have 23 chromosomes per haploid - Conclusion: either humans have lost a chromosome or the other apes have all gained a chromosome - By application of parsimony: humans have lost a chromosome - Observation: chromosomes are generally "lost" by merging with another chromosome, as destruction of a chromosome's worth of genetic information is generally fatal - Conclusion: at some point in our ancestry, two human chromosomes merged - Prediction: one human chromosome will closely resemble two ape chromosomes merged together. This prediction was subsequently confirmed. I can present other instances of confirmed predictions if you like.
Corkscrew continues to be the most logical sounding, non-emotional advocate of the general Theory of Evolution that I have heard over here at PT. Right behind him is Faid, who is at least polite and does not engage in polemics, and Norm who sounds intelligent. I keep throwing this bone out to ToE advocates that you will further your cause if you adopt the rational, non-emotional 'Corkscrew' approach. Adopting the 'Aftershave' approach or the 'Mr_Christopher' approach will only harm your cause. This hypothesis is very interesting to me and I want to hear more. I will copy it into my "AF Dave wants you to prove Evolution" thread, then I would like to do some Google searching and get back to you on this as soon as I can.
Dave, this is an extremely well-known and well-publicised example of a prediction made by neodarwinian evolution. Any general text on evolution (and certainly any website like talkorigins) would have mentioned this example. That it is evidently news to you does not bode well for how much research you have done into evolution. If this is indeed the first time you've come across this example, it's pretty strong evidence that you have done very little research into the evidence in support of evolution, but rather have spent most of your time looking for evidence to refute evolution.
If it's true that this is your first exposure to the human-chimp chromosome number prediction, this seriously undercuts your claim that no one has ever shown you, e.g., evidence of evolution from dinosaurs to birds.
I said earlier that I do not believe you are qualified to hold a credible opinion on the subject of evolution. This most recent post only reinforces that notion.
Oh, and by the way—evolution is not a "cause." It's "science."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No sir, you are no skeptic. You can pretend otherwise, but you're what is called a "true believer".
And you do not have the mind of an engineer or a scientist, if you did you would have seen through the nonsense you promote a long time ago.
No need to thank me for pointing this out to you.
For a thousand years or more people "thought" in order to show that their Xian beliefs were right. And some of that thinking was good, yet it was unavoidably limited.
What I'm saying is that there is nothing new or surprising that Afdave begins with an inadequate a set of a priori assumptions (people did so prior to Xianity as well, of course). The trouble is that he has it now, and he is unlikely to upset his world by seriously questioning his beliefs. He's not young enough, he's not troubled enough by his inconsistencies and the gaps in his "thinking". In fact he is the sort that I would bet 50 to 1 will never truly question his a priori commitments, indeed, that he cannot do so. He seems sincere in claiming that he came at his beliefs skeptically, when just his assumption that the Bible accurately relates history to its readers shows that he does not look at "Biblical issues" in any competent manner whatsoever.
He refers back to his college days as what set him on his current path. Not surprising, since beliefs typically congeal around that time. But did he know much about the issues? Certainly not. Engineers have quite an load of engineering and math courses, and typically do not take many history or literary courses. Hence he relied upon what he had been force-fed earlier. One has to reach conclusions without adequate knowledge in many cases, and so Afdave did. Believing that he was indeed skeptical and knowledgeable, he connected a set of inherited beliefs to his ego, and he has defended that ego ever since.
So of course he is a true believer, but like many true believers he thinks that he reached his conclusions with enough knowledge to come to his conclusions. On the other hand, he seems not to be totally sure, hence his forays into the "knowledge" imparted by rank apologists at the CRI and AIG. But their answers fit with his limited knowledge and a priori worldview, so they are satisfying to his mind.
He cannot think skeptically, or to put it another way, he cannot think skeptically about his own beliefs, rather he uses his faulty worldview to "think skeptically" about the claims of those who know vastly more about science and the Bible. And as I implied previously, he is of no age or shape to jostle up his worldview, thus he cannot learn to think in a truly empirical manner. As he notes, his mission is to get us to "think in a new way", as if many of us are not altogether too aware of how he does "think" and of the circularity of his "reasoning".
What might be instructive is if he learned another metaphysical mode of "thinking", like that found in Plotinus, or eastern thought, which possibly could show how it is the way that he even begins his "skeptical thinking" that is at fault. However, as I said before, he evidently is in no position to learn beyond his working hypotheses, so it is questionable if he even could learn how wonderfully consistent (more so than fundamentalism), yet baseless, a system like Plotinus's neo-Platonic philosophy really is.
Unfortunately, Afdave does indeed have the mind of many engineers, and not a few scientists (think of Behe, etc.). Engineers receive an education that teaches them vetted knowledge, from which they are to deduce further working systems. Engineers (and some scientists) do not learn how to substantiate their knowledge empirically from their particular studies--or at best they learn only the barest information about this. They learn about designed systems, not about evolved systems, like language, texts, history, and biology. Afdave is one of too many engineers who takes his knowledge to be knowledge of the world, and resorts to deductive schemes "based upon" self-confirming interpretations of the barest of "evidence". If many engineers do rather better, clearly the inadequacies of many an engineering education to equip persons for scientific thought are evident in Afdave, Sal Cordova, and DaveScot.
I am doing the only thing that I think is sound in the presence of Afdave and others who automatically fit everything into their unwarranted worldviews. I am explaining him, and not troubling with his wholly unsubstantiated arguments. The fact is that he is unreachable at present, and there is scant reason to believe that he will ever really question his silly beliefs that the Bible is historically sound, or that flood waters explain evaporite deposites and sand dunes in the geological column. It all "makes sense" to him because he has never had the knowledge to recognize the senselessness of it all.
And because he only thinks that we do not know how to think in his wonderful way, when some of us have learned nearly every way in which these beliefs we inherited are inadequate, he cannot begin to understand the opposition to his "reasonable position".
To be sure, everyone (except Carol and a few others) knows this, and argues with him anyway. That's all fine, if that's what they want to do. I just wanted to lay out how intractable Afdave really is, and basically how it all comes to be. The crucial point almost certainly came in college, when he defaulted to a worldview that he did not have adequate knowledge to question. Ever since then, he has defended his ego/beliefs like most of us do, but most of us here did know rather more than Afdave when we formed our basic worldviews (yes, mostly in college for me, too, though I extended the questioning period considerably beyond college).
I just hope that most here recognize that Afdave is almost certainly beyond the stage when he can question his fundamental beliefs--apart from suffering an overwhelming change in his circumstances.
I have read and read this thread, and lurked and read some more ...
... and we finally come to this:
Quote (afdave @ May 03 2006,10:28)
I feel that scientists just keep on writing mountains and mountains of nonsense to support these notions they really, really want to be true ... like the immune system evolved, etc.
Can one really argue against this? Can one really debate with a man who convinces himself that the hundreds of thousands of published, peer-reviewed, professional scientists who put into workable practice their research every single day, are really part of a big conspiracy to further the evolution cause??
Yes Dave, the next time you pop a pill in your mouth to help soothe your aching head, or get vaccinated when you travel to malaria country, I'd beware because the medicine was indeed developed by a team of scientists who didn't really research their immunology very well, they just wrote some nonsense in the vague hope that they and AAAAAAALLLLLL the other scientists will have their big conspiratorial evilution cause furthered, because yes, they sooooooooo want it to be true.
Sheesh. And you're looking for intelligent answers to this?
What do you think about Meyer's objection to falsifiability as a criterion for status as a "scientific theory"?
Meyer's critique is good, and not at all new or particularly in question. We often resort to "falsification criteria" as a shorthand test of a scientific claim. It is hardly sufficient, and indeed science could never begin with falsification criteria, but rather had to begin with positive inferences.
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On what basis? Your personal experience? Is there a scientist somewhere that has observed this that I have not read about? In my personal experience and in all my reading, I have never observed (or read about) a non-intelligent cause producing a functional machine (there are a few equivocal examples I have heard about). Have you? My experience has ALWAYS been that functional machines require intelligent agency. Therefore, I think my hypothesis of a Super-Engineer (I do not insist upon calling him 'God' is a better explanation.
Here is your problem displayed for all to see. You simply assume that "functional machines" have to be produced by intelligent agency, hence you are blind to the fact that the derived characteristics of organisms are the mark of non-design, not of design. And you seem incapable of even questioning your presupposition that life (which is in many ways unlike designed machines) has to be designed.
And yes, we know very well of non-intelligent causes that have produced "functioning machines", namely evolutionary causes. If you had an open mind, you could see it too. And if you had even a remote concept of what "biological machines" are, you would already know that living organisms are quite unlike automata.
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I didn't say it was original ... 'my hypothesis' means to me a conglomerate of existing ones plus some of my own thoughts presented in my own way. Everyone does this. Why is it less than compelling? Have you ever experienced or read about a system that was 'finely tuned' that was NOT finely tuned by an engineer (or team of them)?
Once again your narrow a priori beliefs get in the way of even questioning metaphysical assumptions. Have you ever seen a universe being created by a God? Have you ever seen anything like an organism made by an intelligent agent?
Of course you haven't. You're analogizing across very different phenomena, not even noticing that intelligent religionists have typically considered the gods and/or other "supernatural agents" to be non-analogous with ourselves based upon the fact that we do not make universes, organisms, and what-not. Only at this late date do we have people supposing that life is just a collection of machines, that the universe is fine-tuned like a computer or some such thing.
And frankly, I have said enough. If you can ever question your prejudices, then you might learn how we know that reproducing derivative "machines" were not produced by any kind of "intelligent agent" that we have ever seen, and that the universe cannot be compared with anything we have ever produced.
And no, I did not write this for Afdave, really, but just to show generically what is wrong with Afdave's unquestioned worldview. Anthropomorphism runs rampant through it, and the poorest analogies are used to show that life is "created like other machines", without Afdave even noticing the vast differences between designed machines and life. Then again, better educated individuals have failed as completely to make these basic distinctions, so we should not be surprised if Afdave is unable to question his assumptions.
My point is (and this is known as the "weak anthropic principle") we would be surprised to find ourselves living in a universe that was not finely tuned for life. Obviously, Dave, we could not live in a universe that was inimical to life, unless a creator god made it possible for us to live there nevertheless. Since we are, in fact, alive, it should come as no surprise at all to us that we inhabit a universe that can sustain life.
This is all good, of course. But what might be worth wondering about is why this universe, which is so poorly equipped to produce and to sustain life, is considered to be miraculously created to do just that.
If you (anyone) were God, would you produce a universe that often subjected planets to death-causing radiation, colossal collisions with heavenly bodies, and random changes in earth's climate that alternately freeze and fry life on earth? Or would you make something far more controlled, like we do on our limited scale?
The fact of the matter is that few enough organisms survived the Permian extinction. For most of earth's existence, there was inadequate oxygen (rising oxygen levels remain a good candidate for setting off the "Cambrian explosion"). Mars was dessicated by this "universe fine-tuned for life", while Venus was completely fried. We exist as highly successful mammals largely because an asteroid (or at least some great disaster) killed off the dinosaurs. We may have narrowly escaped the a caldera explosion, which appears to have produced a genetic bottleneck (with subsequent problems for us) in the human genome (I am not wedded to the caldera (supervolcano) hypothesis for the bottleneck, but it seems reasonable).
We probably exist in a sweet spot in this slated-to-die universe. Earlier, there was too much chaos, radiation, and too many explosions for much life to arise and then evolve. Later, the energy output of the universe will be rather poor, with few opportunities for life to arise, and diminishing resources for intelligent life trying to maintain itself.
The fact is that many conditions had to exist (be "fine-tuned") even for our dangerous and dicey existence to happen--hence there is real thought regarding the "fine-tuning" (the multiverse is a good hypothesis, but at best a hypothesis currently). However, such "fine-tuning" indicates no real concern for producing adequate, let alone truly hospitable, conditions for intelligent life (which most IDists/creationists assume is the "goal"). Particularly in the past, life has been nasty, short, and brutish, for most of the human population, hardly the mark of a benevolent God.
The fine-tuning issue remains a real question in science--the journal Nature recently ran some articles about it. What fine-tuning does not do, however, is to show that life is in any way favored, supported, or designed for anything except to die out as the universe slowly runs out of energy. So many theists have claimed otherwise that we too-often argue as if fine-tuning did show a concern for life, when life only has all of the problems that evolution causes to non-designed systems, as well as the problems caused by stellar and cosmological evolution.
What is more, one would have to show that life is some sort of "goal" or "preferred outcome" even to suggest that a single universe with life is "unusual" in any way. We do not have access to God's telos to show that life is (supposedly) an unlikely but meaningful outcome to cosmic evolution. Creationists/IDists only assume that life is a meaningful outcome, while we have no excuse to suppose that it is meaningful in a cosmic sense (as opposed to our own sense), however likely or unlikely it may be.
For all I know, the universe was designed not to produce life, but the God's calculations were off and he abandoned this universe with its noisome organisms. I have as much reason to believe this as to believe that the death-dealing universe was made for us.
This is all good, of course. But what might be worth wondering about is why this universe, which is so poorly equipped to produce and to sustain life, is considered to be miraculously created to do just that.
I should probably strengthen a point I made in my previous post:
If we found ourselves living a universe in which life could not possibly exist, that would be evidence for the existence of god (and it would be pretty surprising, too).
That we live in a universe which seems in some ways to be "finely tuned" to permit life, but in which life seems extremely rare (at least, as far as we can tell so far) strikes me as extremely weak evidence for the existence of god.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ditto above ... funny ... every non-YEC history book I can find anywhere says things like "4000 (or so) BC: History Begins" (I never find over 10,000). Hmmm... what did all those 'Homos' do for 1,996,000 years? You're telling me they all of a sudden started writing and making artifacts only in the last .000000001% (or whatever) of their existence on the planet ... yeah, pretty plausible
Dave, as a fellow EE it’s embarrassing to see you continue to flaunt your ignorance on such topics. Art and artifacts have been around for way before 4000 B.C. Have you never heard of the Lascaux cave paintings in France? Google is your friend Dave – you could easily find hundreds of examples that contradict your silly words if you were motivated to look.
Your personal incredulity and ignorance will never be acceptable as evidence, Dave.
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Uh, oh. I'm getting 'Aftershaved" again. Hey try some intelligent sounding arguments instead of insults ... they work better. See Corkscrew, Norm and Chris Hyland and others for some good examples of intelligent sounding stuff.
Sorry Dave, my intention is not to insult you. However, when you continue to say really stupid things, and I point out to you that they’re really stupid things, I can understand how you’d feel slighted.
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Let's get the (Behe) quote right at least if you're going to quote him. Here's what I found ...
I didn’t quote him Dave, I accurately described his testimony.
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OK. So astrology wants to call itself a science? Let 'em. They have to prove their ideas just like the YECers and everyone else. Don't you believe in the free market of ideas? I think the majority would weed them out just like it does in other arenas.
The scientific community HAS weeded them out Dave, over 150 years ago. That’s why the Creationists and IDers are trying to use the legal system to get their religion forced into science classrooms.
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Do you see an Astrology Chapel at the USAF Academy? (I was just there). Do you see a Scientology chapel? Or a Buddhist temple? No. You see a BIG Protestant chapel, a smaller Catholic chapel and a smaller still Jewish chapel. Why? Democracy. Freedom. Reflection of the majority within practical limits. Should the USAF Academy shut down all religion on campus b/c it's a government entity? Of course not. Remember.. here in the USA ... Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion [no state church lke the Church of England] or prohibiting the FREE EXERCISE thereof. Same for science classes.
Wrong Dave. Science is not a democracy, and scientific facts aren’t decided by majority vote. Do you think we can pass a law that will reduce the force of gravity by 50%? Or change the properties of chemical bonds?
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We shouldn't be telling kids 'God created the world' in science class and we shouldn't be telling the world that 'Evolution created the world' in science class. We should be telling them 'Most scientists believe some form of Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain the appearance of life. Many non-scientists and a minority of scientists believe in some form of supernatural cause for the appearance of life. Creationism and Intelligent Design Theory are two of these views.'
That’s great for a philosophy class, but dead wrong for a science class. Should we teach the Geocentric view of the universe in science class because some non-scientists and a teeny minority of scientists hold that view?
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And if Astrology or Scientism or Christian Science or whatever gets a big enough following, then throw them in there too and let the kids decide for themselves with the help of their parents.
Wrong again Dave. Kids, even with the help of their lay parents, do not have the technical knowledge to decide for themselves what is scientifically accurate.
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"The prosecuting attorney then dropped a two foot high stack of over 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers and articles with research detailing the evolution of the human blood clotting system and asked Behe if he was familiar with the work.. Behe replied that he didn’t need to read them as he already knew his claim was correct."
I didn't check this quote for accuracy, but I imagine he feels as I feel that scientists just keep on writing mountains and mountains of nonsense to support these notions they really, really want to be true ... like the immune system evolved, etc. I've read a lot myself and it all starts to sound the same ... I'm sure you can relate.
He’s supposed to be a profession scientist and an expert on the subject. Since he never bothered to read all the scientific evidence, how did he know it was nonsense? The scientific evidence being presented “all sounds the same” to you only because it all directly contradicts your ignorance based view of scientific reality.
Being ignorant doesn’t mean unintelligent Dave, it just means untrained. I’m quite ignorant of the flight controls of a Huey, but I’m sure you could teach me. You don’t see me going on web sites and claiming that I already know better that those “closed minded” Huey drivers about how to pilot their aircraft.
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Many people here have said the same about the stuff I write. I will agree with you that it seems hair-brained to adopt the strategy to go try to defend a local school board's decision to put 'Evolution Warning Labels' on the books. I mean ... who knows what kind of rednecks you might be defending? Why fight this in the courts anyway? I can think of better places to get the word out. So is that 2 things we agree on now? Oh yeah ... we're both EE's. OK 3 then.
Then you need to tell that to the Creationists who avoid the scientific peer review process like the plague, and opt for “end runs” through the legal system instead.
Sorry again if you feel insulted – I’ll buy you a beer or three if we ever meet As you are passionate about your cause, I am just as passionate about scientific literacy. I see a real threat to the economic future of my country if the pseudoscientific pushers like the Creationists continue to try and lower the U.S. science standards.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Is there a scientist somewhere that has observed this that I have not read about? In my personal experience and in all my reading, I have never observed (or read about) a non-intelligent cause producing a functional machine (there are a few equivocal examples I have heard about). Have you? My experience has ALWAYS been that functional machines require intelligent agency. Therefore, I think my hypothesis of a Super-Engineer (I do not insist upon calling him 'God' is a better explanation.
The difference is that we know the processes which led to the diversity of life and 'crafted' these systems. They differ from manmade machines in that they have properties we would expect if they had been formed by the processes of evolution. Every engineer who has seriously studied biology has told me this. We cannot assume that just because the only time we have seen machines being created it was by humans, we can infer nature was created by an intelligence. I might just as easily infer it must have been created by some humans.
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Are you proposing that the parameters got set by chance? If so, what basis do you have from your experience to propose this as valid? How would you deal with the odds against this, etc.? I think maybe what you are saying is that you don't believe the 'fine tuning' was necessary for life to evolve?
No Im saying life could ONLY evolve if the constants are perfect. An omnipotent being could create life even if they were not. Therefore If I observe that the constants are right for life I infer that the were not 'fine-tuned'. That being said I have no strong feelings one way or the other as my cosmology is a little lacking, the point is it is not reasonable to infer a creator from fine tuning.
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If they are not, then could you propose an example of what IS evidence? Let me guess ... mountains and mountains of 'scholarship' from the science establishment to support Naturalistic Explanations Only?
Just give us a way to test the supernatural using science, no one has as far as I am aware.
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'Most scientists believe some form of Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain the appearance of life. Many non-scientists and a minority of scientists believe in some form of supernatural cause for the appearance of life. Creationism and Intelligent Design Theory are two of these views.'
I was told this in high school (well not about ID), but as scientists do not believe it we didn't learn about it.
If we found ourselves living a universe in which life could not possibly exist, that would be evidence for the existence of god (and it would be pretty surprising, too).
Not so surprising to the Semitic (writ large) mind , which typically thought of the universe as being fundamentally chaotic, yet held together by the pharoahs or kings, and the gods.
And I say this to bolster your point, that the miracles are apparent where they overcome the unknown difficulties that beset us. This "fine-tuned" claim for God seems to fit well with pagan beliefs about the eternal universe, yet one in which we "miraculously" exist "apart from nature" (that is, in later pagan beliefs). Even the Xians tended to view this universe, though created by God, as a barely tolerable, inimical-to-humanity realm of the devil. Xians needed God to survive in this hellhole, and the only thing that made this universe in the least bit "fair" was the fact that the good would go to heaven.
Now the parameters of existence are used as "evidence" for this supposedly benevolent God, when in the past it was salvation from this squalid existence that indicated that the Savior was Good. And I quite agree with your conclusions.
These tidbits from your favorite DI fellows aren’t evidence, Dave. If they are not, then could you propose an example of what IS evidence? Let me guess ... mountains and mountains of 'scholarship' from the science establishment to support Naturalistic Explanations Only? This was the kind of odds Galileo was working against too. Are you telling me that I should believe your evidence and reject mine because yours fits with the majority?
One of the things about science that YEC's just can't get their heads around is that there just isn't any "my evidence" and "your evidence." Science demands transparency and replicability. So all of the evidence we have comes from that dreaded "establishment." Unless there's a YEC research program I'm not aware of, all you have to go on is the evidence uncovered by the hard work of scientists, spit on by the cretins at AiG et al.
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Second, what does “life-sustaining universe” mean? Exactly what it says. And I challenge you to propose some parameter changes and ask a biologist how likely it would be for life to continue. The problem with naturalistic speculators like yourself is that you guys like to say "Well, we only know about life on earth ... sample size of one. There could be other planets, other universes, who knows!" OK, great. I agree. And there could be a Fairy Godmother for all I know. But if we are going to admit wild speculation into the arena, let's admit ALL kinds of wild speculation into the arena. My favorite is "Parallel Universes". I don't know how people can tell me with a straight face that there might be an infinite number of parallel universes, then in the next breath tell me I'm a wild speculator for proposing an Infinite God character.
It's a simple question (with complicated implications), and you didn't answer it, Dave. And there are demonstrably "other planets," so the 'parameter space' that would allow for life is a completely open question, just in the universe we are sure exists. You'll notice that I didn't say anything about multiverses, not because I agree with you that the concept is on an epistemological level with your "Super-Intelligence," but because, in a simplistic debate like this, it's open to your facile dismissal. Why don't you respond to the arguments I did make, rather than the ones you wish I'd made?
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Regarding the Denton "howler" ... THIS is the howler ...
All the evidence available in the biological (and geological) sciences in fact supports the proposition that life began ~3.8 billion years ago *cough* because we arbitrarily made some massive initial conditions assumptions so it would come out that long
We did? This is interesting. Can you lay out for me a few of these "massive assumptions"?
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and that from that time forward the most numerous, diverse, robust, and tenacious life-forms have been prokaryotes. the old 'what do you think makes humans so special, just look at the bacteria' saw ... sometime I'm going to do a thread on the implications of this thinking on law and culture ... talk about a howler ... this one will be way better than Rush Limbaugh and the Tree Huggers!
Again, you're responding to something I plainly did not say. Microbial life has dominated this planet from the dawn of life to now, and will continue to do so, right up until the sun, a bloated red giant, swells up to devour the earth. From a prokaryotes 'point of view,' the universe is made for it. And I can't imagine anything being worse than "Rush Limbaugh and the Pill Poppers," so have fun with that.
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Multicellular, animal life has been around for maybe a billion years, based on our flawed assumptions in dating supposed 'index fossils'
Again with the mystery assumptions. And I think you're confused. Index fossils are mostly used to date rocks, not necessarily other fossils, and certainly not the earliest. The date is derived from the earliest trace fossils, and the radiometric dates of the rocks themselves. Why don't you finish toppling the facade of evolution before you start in on digging out the rotten foundations of nuclear physics, there, tiger.
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most of that as relatively undifferentiated worm-like creatures. Mammals have been around for 80 to 100 million years, primates about 40 million, hominids 7 to 8 million, and genus Homo maybe two millionDitto above ... funny ... every non-YEC history book I can find anywhere says things like "4000 (or so) BC: History Begins" (I never find over 10,000). Hmmm... what did all those 'Homos' do for 1,996,000 years? You're telling me they all of a sudden started writing and making artifacts only in the last .000000001% (or whatever) of their existence on the planet ... yeah, pretty plausible
"Writing" and "making artifacts" are separated by millions of years. Is it too much to ask that you try to perceive that technology developed through time? I mean, why cave painting, when they could've invented TV and been done with it?
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The human conception of a creative “Super-Intelligence” is about the only thing the Bible dates correctly, being about 5 or 6 thousand years old. In other words, roughly .000001 of the history of life, or .0025 of the existence of our genus. Pretty long build-up for the punchline, wouldn’t you say? the buildup is in your imagination, Mr. O'Brien, which is great. I like imagining things too. Have you seen Narnia? It's a good one for the imagination, but it's not about science, unless we redefine science ... which I'm not opposed to as long as the rules are fair.
If it's in my imagination, then evidently it is also in the imagination of the entire scientific community. Conspiracy theories? The rules are unfair? How dreadful.
-------------- The is the beauty of being me- anything that any man does I can understand. --Joe G
I give up. With every response Dave makes he confirms he's simply the same old run-of-the-mill young-earth creationist fundamentalist Christian who just happens to believe he has some novel approach to the tried old arguments. Well, I;ve got news for him. Expanding the definition of science to encompass supernatural phenomena is not a novel approach. It is at the very heart of what both the creationist and ID movements have been trying to do since the beginning. It's never worked before, and will never work in the future.
The only ground he's given in this debate is on terminology alone. He hasn't really been listening to anything we're saying--at least, if he has, it hasn't moved him one jot.
Same for science classes. We shouldn't be telling kids 'God created the world' in science class and we shouldn't be telling the world that 'Evolution created the world' in science class. We should be telling them 'Most scientists believe some form of Darwin's Theory of Evolution to explain the appearance of life. Many non-scientists and a minority of scientists believe in some form of supernatural cause for the appearance of life. Creationism and Intelligent Design Theory are two of these views.'
This is incorrect. The Theory of Evolution says nothing about the appearance of life. Origins of Life ("abiogenisis") theories are entirely separate from the Theory of Evolution. Nor does the Theory of Evolution have anything to say about the origin of the earth or the origin of the universe. Entirely separate theories deal with those issues. It's common among creationists to assume that the Theory of Evolution is an all-embracing origins theory.
Again, Dave, this reinforces my impression that you've done next to no reading about what evolution actually says, as opposed to what creationists think it says.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I asked you very early on in this thread to explain why you think the earth is only thousands of years old, not billions of years old. So far, the only thing you've come up with, after several very long posts, is that the evidence for an earth billions of years old is based on "flawed assumptions." The evidence isn't based on "flawed assumptions"; it's based on a detailed understanding of nuclear decay and geophysical processes, among other things. No one "assumed" the earth was billions of years old; the evidence showed that it was.
You're going to have to explain what those "flawed assumptions" are pretty quickly if you're going to maintain whatever shreds of credibility you have left. And believe me, this isn't a side issue: it's critical to your claim that the Bible is inerrant. If the Bible is off by six orders of magnitude on an fact as basic as the age of the earth, that doesn't leave it much credibility on other matters.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I see what you are saying, but even in this case, it is only absolute certainty to the person (or people) who built it and flew it. Think about it. All other people who hear about it will get INDIRECT evidence--they will read about it, see the report on TV, etc. and of course this is quite reliable for the example you raise. But TV and newspaper reports can get unreliable when reporting less cut and dried events.
What about you, Dave? Didn't you say you were a pilot?
You don't design airplanes -- but you, and most people, do have direct evidence of a heavier than air machine flying. You've got a non-argument there. Is there anyway you could ever deny to yourself that it is possible for heavier than air machines to fly?
Evolutionary programming and genetic algorithms are that kind of evidence. It may be indirect to you now -- but you've got to be stubornly denying the obvious for you to deny such things exist.
It is still as absolute a proof as the human animal can get.
I give up. With every response Dave makes he confirms he's simply the same old run-of-the-mill young-earth creationist fundamentalist Christian who just happens to believe he has some novel approach to the tried old arguments. Well, I;ve got news for him. Expanding the definition of science to encompass supernatural phenomena is not a novel approach. It is at the very heart of what both the creationist and ID movements have been trying to do since the beginning. It's never worked before, and will never work in the future.
Have you ever met theist who actually had a novel take on these arguments? I haven't. The boilerplate is the same no matter what they claim or think.
But you are right about afDave: he hasn't actually responded to a single logic point raised.
My problem with Danny Hillis' has nothing to do with the concepts of 'absolutes'. It has everything to do with the question of 'What exactly does the Hillis demo tell us?'
You'll learn some basic ideas about things like "search space," co-evolution, evolutionary computer algorithms and get a very brief note on the mathematics involved.
No one has yet shown me an example of a worm-like creature evolving into a squid or a dinosaur-like creature evolving into a bird, ....
Evolution in animals takes a long time so you can't see it directly, (though you can get direct results with bacteria and fruit flies). We can, however, show you tons of evidence that it happened. You want a worm-like creature evolving into something? How about this bit of sample evidence: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/po/news/2005-06/jan/09.shtml http://www.physorg.com/news9717.html
The genes of animals have extra bits of DNA sequence, called introns, that don't code for proteins. Humans have many and flies have fewer. Some assumed that a simple fly genome might be more ancient, but flies go through far more generations in the same period of time than humans or other animals. Genes don't always get more complex during evolution. So, animals have a lot of introns, and quickly-evolving species like flies have lost most of them.
We share introns with a worm-like creature that lived more than 550 million years ago, a last common ancestor of almost all living animals, including worms, flies and humans.
Creationists have nothing like that kind of evidence not because they're not trying -- that had more than a thousand years head start on looking for evidence -- but because their evidence isn't there.
Yep. Once they make it clear that they reject methodological naturalism, there's really no point in continuing the discussion.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You're really in the position of someone claiming heavier-than-air flight is impossible. The evidence for an ancient earth, and for the fact of evolution (as opposed to the Theory of Evolution), is absolutely overwhelming and ironclad. Those of us who are familiar with this evidence know this (you have demonstrated conclusively that you are not aware of this evidence).
Therefore, the only things you can say that will be of interest to the rest of us is why you think the earth is less than 10,000 years old and macroevolution doesn't happen. In other words, you need to show in detail why the vast body of evidence supporting these two contentions is incorrect. N.B.: you can't just show that a few pieces of evidence here and there are incorrect, because the evidence is cumulative. You'd have to refute virtually all of it.
But nothing else you can say on the subject is really of interest. Your methods, sources, life history, etc. aren't really advancing your argument. Nor are analogies to watches, airplanes, or other machines. Either presenting evidence that the earth is young, or demonstrating that the evidence of its antiquity is incorrect; or evidence not only that evolution is impossible, but that the Bible's account of the origin of species is correct, are really the only things that are going to get you anywhere here.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well, I just want to jump in and once again thank everyone for modeling the appropriate responses to Creationist blather. Afdave is certainly charming and affable, and he periodically throws in a little self-deprecating humor, but I, too, finally decided that he is unreachable. For me, it was these comments:
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I was never a logician, by trade, but that does not mean I can't become one very quickly, especially when I see gross incompetence in the field.
Really? Without actually BEING one, Dave can see “gross incompetence”? Huh, that, to me, suggests that Dave can NOT “become one very quickly”.
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I may not get very far with closed minded professional scientists, which I hope you are not, but I hope to put some truth out there in an area where I currently see a lot of error.
Dave hopes to put some “truth” out there. Not “corrections of data”, or “new and compelling data”, but “truth”. And of course, he “sees a lot of error” in spite of having no training other than reading some articles.
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Why does it always seem that every time the word 'God' is even mentioned, everybody runs for cover and says it's not science?
No one “runs for cover”. Everyone “says it’s not science” for the simple reason that… wait for it… it’s not science! This is one of the things that truly puzzles me about fundies and biblical literalists. Why the obsession with being scientific? You’re talking about GOD. That is, if I recall, a RELIGIOUS topic. Not all things in the world are the same in all respects. Some things are different from other things in significant ways. Religion and Science would be two things that are not the same, but different. Why the insistence that the auto mechanic could really, really use flour, eggs and milk as part of his toolkit?
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A lot hinges on this, too. What people think about origins and the nature of mankind is VITALLY important to law and society. This is why you see me being so passionate about this issue.
I think this is the real reason for Dave’s enthusiasm. Obviously, the world is going to h3ll in a handbasket, and someone has to do something, quick! Nevermind that old people have said this about young people since there have been old people and young people, THIS time, it’s SERIOUS! The other observation I would make is that there have been more than a few “societies” since the time of Christ. Of those with some form of Christianity as their religious foundation, there is significant difference in their laws and social structures. This suggests that there is not as direct a correlation as Dave may be hoping for.
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My real goal is two-fold: (1) to really get to the bottom of why Creationism is so objectionable to a lot of good scientists. This is why I am HERE, not over at AIG or DI, (2) I have personally seen a lot of excellent support for being a Creationist, but I could be wrong. If so, who better to tell me I'm wrong that professional scientists over here? (3) If I am right, the implications are enormous and all of humanity should know about this.
1) Creationism is objectionable because is CLAIMING to be science, but it is NOT science. If it WAS science, scientists would treat it as such. If it DID NOT CLAIM to be science, scientists would have no problem with it. 2) Oddly, in spite of ALL of the professional scientists here telling Dave he is wrong, he’s not getting it. Perhaps the answer to the “who better” would be… Dave’s minister. 3) Enormous implications for all of humanity? Wow! Ya think? Dave better hope there’s, like, no one else working on this question, or else they may tell all of humanity before he does and steal his thunder.
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I think the REALLY NEW THING that I am presenting to you is not necessarily new evidence, but a NEW WAY OF DRAWING CONCLUSIONS FROM THE EVIDENCE, which I actually believe you put into practice every day in your scientific and other endeavors, but which you may not have thought to put into practice into the Origins question.
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I consider ALL possibilities for explaining and describing the universe, not just so called 'naturalistic ones' which we presently understand.
This betrays such a misunderstanding of the scientific process that it is hard to know how to respond. After several promises of “evidence coming soon”, Dave changes tracks and offers a New Way of Drawing Conclusions; if you want Conclusion A, use Method A, and if you want Conclusion B, use Method B; what could be more useful than that?
My understanding is that the success of science is largely BECAUSE OF its strictly self-imposed limitations; ONLY natural phenomena, ONLY repeatable experiments, ONLY provisional acceptance of explanations. Once you admit supernatural explanations, you’ve diluted the usefulness of your explanations.
Dave was intriguing to me because he came on initially like someone who really did want to learn. It was kind of sad to see him reveal his inability to get it.
But thanks again to those who patiently respond; we lurkers find it valuable.
I begin this morning with a quote from Corkscrew because I can still see that we are not in agreement on HOW to present my case and WHAT constitutes 'science' ...
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AFDave: again, I think we have a slight confusion of terminology. What you're describing as an hypothesis would, if I understand correctly, be more accurately considered a conjecture. My understanding is that statements about the universe subdivide into the following categories:
Conjectures - statements that fit all the known data (these are produced by the largely-intuitive process of abduction)
Hypotheses - conjectures that are falsifiable
Data - conjectures that have been verified (there's no term for conjectures that are merely verifiable)
Predictions - conjectures that are both verifiable and falsifiable, and that haven't yet been verified or falsified
Science is concerned primarily with deciding which of the infinite number of possible hypotheses for any given situation is best. It does this by applying three principles: predictivity, parsimony and credibility. Predictivity means that an hypothesis must give us some idea of what we'll find next (otherwise it's scientifically useless), parsimony means that an hypothesis must be efficient in its use of "magic numbers" (so, for example, five dots in a row would be best described by a linear equation not a quintic equation), and credibility means that an hypothesis must have survived attempted falsification. Of these, credibility is the most important, followed by predictivity and then parsimony (this is partly because predictivity is a necessary condition for credibility).
Your conjecture does not, as it stands, make any predictions, so can't be considered an hypothesis. To rectify this, you'll need to: 1) increase its specificity until you can use it to make a prediction of the form described above 2) confirm that the current best-of-breed scientific hypotheses would not also make that prediction (ideally, they shouldn't even leave open the possibility of that prediction being true, but you can't have everything) 3) go out and test the prediction
I repeat: for your conjectures to be scientifically valid, it is not sufficient to present existing evidence in support of each of them. To match the level of current origins science, you must also be able to derive and confirm predictions from them. Otherwise, it really is just a "just so story". Predictivity is what makes the difference.
This objection is commonly called a "Demarcation Argument" ... possibly you all are very familiar with this in which certain "Demarcation Criteria" such as verifiability, falsifiability, predictivity, etc. are used to say "This is not science" or "that is not science."
While I would agree that Corkscrew's arguments are true for some endeavors within some branches of science, I do not think they are true for all of them. Historical geology is one field that I would assume everyone here considers to be a scientific endeavor, yet I am not aware that the rules above apply. My understanding of the data which we have in historical geology is that it is fixed. We go out and observe the rock formations and begin making theories about WHY they are the way they are. Of course, we can also test some samples in the lab to determine isotope content subject to certain initial conditions. But I am not aware of anyone being able to make predictions of "how the next mountain range will be built" or "where the next oil fields will be laid" or "when, where or how a new gold mine will be formed." (If some of you know this last one, please tell me) Rather, what we are concerned with is HOW the geologic formations got there and WHAT EVENTS might have caused them, and this is a different business than predicting orbits of satellites, yet we rightly call it science.
Corkscrew uses the term 'origins science' and I agree that the study of the ORIGIN of all things IS INDEED SCIENCE. However, some distinctions must be made. A Neo-Darwinist's attempt to explain the origin of species (or we might say phyla here) by mutation and natural selection is in my opinion a scientific endeavor, but not because of the rules above. Some of the rules certainly apply when predicting relatively minor changes such the size of finch beaks, moth colorations, fruit fly anomalies, and my kid's disposition, etc. But when ND's begin talking about how a worm developed into a squid, or how a land-mammal developed into a whale, they have crossed a big line. Now they cannot make "predictions" in the same sense, i.e. "Put that worm in a bucket in your backyard, add X, Y, Z and wait one year and you will have a proto-squid." They can do this with minor variations in finches and fruitflies, however. They can say "Take some finches from South America with long beaks, put them on the Galapagos Islands and wait 10 years. Then come back after 10 years and you will see only finches with short, strong beaks." (or whatever ... you get my point). Do you see the difference? One field of study, which I call "Designed Adaptation" (I think ND's call it confusingly to me -- Evolution) allows one to apply the demarcation tests of Credibility, Predictivity, Parsimony, mentioned by Corkscrew, and even Experimental Validation. But with the former enterprise, which I have trouble labeling--shall we call it Macro-evolution? (worms to squids, eyes from eyespots, flippers from feet, etc)--we are not able to do any such thing to my knowledge.
I submit to you that in light of these considerations, my attempt to propose a Hypothesis for an Intelligent Designer as the Cause of all life on earth IS AT LEAST IN THE SAME CATEGORY OF DEMARCATION as current Neo-Darwinist attempts to explain life on earth (I call this Macro-Evolution, but I am open to a different term).
1) BOTH have access to data which is FIXED. We cannot observe flippers to feet happening today, and we cannot observe my postulated creation of dolphins. 2) BOTH assume that AN EVENT in the past or a SERIES OF EVENTS in the past caused the phenomena being studied. 3) BOTH are seeking to come up with a true description of the event or events that took place in the past. 4) NEITHER can test the process that formed the phenomena today by experimental methods. 5) BOTH require the use of analogy to things which ARE known to us 6) BOTH require the scientist to DRAW INFERENCES TO THE BEST EXPLANATION
OK? There you have my argument for why I think my structure is valid. Before moving ahead with more evidence supporting Point 1 of my hypothesis, I would like to have your feedback. For those who don't think I am being responsive with your questions, keep in mind that I am trying hard, but I also need to stay focused on the topic of this thread.
I did study the Human-Chimp chromosome fusion prediction and I found what appears to be some serious flaws in reasoning. This is posted as a separate topic. I will be interested in your replies.
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Evolution in animals takes a long time so you can't see it directly, (though you can get direct results with bacteria and fruit flies).
I am glad to see an acknowledgment that you cannot see evolution in animals. I had never heard of that. I am aware of the fruit fly and bacteria thing. What kind of changes do we see? I am only aware of relatively minor changes, which I would call 'Designed Adaptation.' Are you saying that someone has observed, for instance, a fruit fly evolving into a house-fly like insect?
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This is incorrect. The Theory of Evolution says nothing about the appearance of life. Origins of Life ("abiogenisis") theories are entirely separate from the Theory of Evolution. Nor does the Theory of Evolution have anything to say about the origin of the earth or the origin of the universe. Entirely separate theories deal with those issues. It's common among creationists to assume that the Theory of Evolution is an all-embracing origins theory.
OK. Maybe someone should come up with one. Isn't there something called a GUT? (Grand Unifying Theory). That's sort of what mine attempts to be.
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Dave, I asked you very early on in this thread to explain why you think the earth is only thousands of years old, not billions of years old.
I have to get past Demarcation Arguments and Point 1, then we will look at it.
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Evolutionary programming and genetic algorithms are that kind of evidence. It may be indirect to you now -- but you've got to be stubornly denying the obvious for you to deny such things exist.
They are excellent evidence for what I call "Designed Adaptation" (moths, fruiflies, etc.) and are certainly quite useful, but they are not convincing to me regarding Flippers from Feet, etc.
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One of the things about science that YEC's just can't get their heads around is that there just isn't any "my evidence" and "your evidence."
Agreed. I did not mean to imply there is separate evidence. I only meant evidence that I have seen.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Forget about the.. ah theory (snigger)BS I've got a much better idea for you. Take a tip from someone who really knows how to sell a great idea(giggle). Merda d'artista available for a small price http://www.heyokamagazine.com/heyoka-3-manzoni.htm much more valuable than ID its a collectable....a bit like ID. You should go out and get all those books while they last half a dave before they become as rare as rocking horse s**t.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
4) NEITHER can test the process that formed the phenomena today by experimental methods.
What we can do is test the mechanisms that we hypothesize caused macroevolution. We can also make predictions based on what we understand from these processes, of what we expect to find in other organisms.
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5) BOTH require the use of analogy to things which ARE known to us
How so? If you like we can stop using analogies for the purpose of this debate.
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6) BOTH require the scientist to DRAW INFERENCES TO THE BEST EXPLANATION
No one has said otherwise. This in no way means of course that both inferences are equally valid.
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I did study the Human-Chimp chromosome fusion prediction and I found what appears to be some serious flaws in reasoning.
No it doesn't. I don't mean to be rude but you don't seem to have much of a concept of how biology works at all. If this was a mistake like you claim someone would have already noticed it.
It would be better for all concerned if you just present your evidence. We will judge it in the same way that we judge the evidence for evolution.
Dave, you've posted another great big long post on defintions, methods, etc., when what everyone here really wants to see is evidence. I cannot fail to point out that you have not yet presented any evidence for the following claims:
1. The Bible is inerrant; 2. The earth (and presumably the rest of the universe) is less than 10,000 years old; and 3. Evolution cannot account for the origin of species (and higher-level taxa).
You've been admonished several times that you'll wear out everyone's patience if you don't get down to supporting these three assertions.
Quote (afdave @ May 04 2006,11:58)
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This is incorrect. The Theory of Evolution says nothing about the appearance of life. Origins of Life ("abiogenisis") theories are entirely separate from the Theory of Evolution. Nor does the Theory of Evolution have anything to say about the origin of the earth or the origin of the universe. Entirely separate theories deal with those issues. It's common among creationists to assume that the Theory of Evolution is an all-embracing origins theory.
OK. Maybe someone should come up with one. Isn't there something called a GUT? (Grand Unifying Theory). That's sort of what mine attempts to be.
In some sense, Dave, all of experience comes down to quantum mechanics. But if you think you're going to come up with a theory that explains the hierarchy problem in particle physics and how birds evolved from dinosaurs, you'd better get cracking. The "GUTs" (Grand Unified Theories) of particle physics attempt, with indifferent success, to unify three of the four known forces of nature (gravity excluded). They don't even begin to be as ambitious as to attempt to explain the origin of the universe, the origin of the earth, and the origin of life, and have nothing whatsoever to say about the evolution of life.
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I have to get past Demarcation Arguments and Point 1, then we will look at it.
No you don't. Demarkation arguments aren't going to help you. We want to see evidence to support your assertions, and you're not going to get any peace until you present such assertions. Quibbling about "demarkation arguments" is a waste of time.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Not to belabor the point, but it seems Davey is very confused about the term "testable predictions". He's expecting Nostradamus-type predictions, like how many fingers humans will have one million years from now. He doesn't seem to appreciate actual scientific predictions, like human/chimp DNA similarity, chromosome fusion, finding specific fossils, etc.
Of course, this is certainly a minor complaint compared to his dismissal of methodological naturalism.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You've been admonished several times that you'll wear out everyone's patience if you don't get down to supporting these three assertions.
Relax. Relax. We'll get there ... besides, aren't you having fun beating up on a YECer? Just think ... you might even make a convert!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You've been admonished several times that you'll wear out everyone's patience if you don't get down to supporting these three assertions.
Relax. Relax. We'll get there ... besides, aren't you having fun beating up on a YECer? Just think ... you might even make a convert!
Beating up a YECer? Fun? Not much sport really. Make a convert? Why would we care to make one of you? You won't even Google that rubbish from AIG for truthiness before cutting and pasting it here. Can't see how much use you'd be to science.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Actually, not really. Since you haven't actually presented any "evidence" yet, all we've really been able to do is ask you to present it.
Granted, it was slightly fun to watch you pull up 30-year-old research to attempt to refute one piece of evidence in support of evolution, only to have it get torn to shreds, but we see this kind of thing all the time from creationists.
What we really want to see is your evidence supporting your assertions. We haven't seen that yet.
Creationists spend about 95% of their time trying to critique scientific research they don't have the competence to critique, and another 5% in lobbying efforts aimed at the non-scientific community. That leaves what percent for actual research?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Mmmm ... proud words! Hope you can keep it up for the long haul :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If you can't figure out that microevolution in your lifetime + millions of years = macroevolution then people will eventually see that trying to teach your religion darkened brain anything is about is profitable as Brian Greene trying to teach his dog string theory.
Relax. Relax. We'll get there ... besides, aren't you having fun beating up on a YECer? Just think ... you might even make a convert!
It's actually depressing to see another human being so gleefully embracing ignorance and lies. The worst part is that many of us feel helpless to do anything about it. We can argue until we're blue in the face, but nothing ever seems to snap you true believers out of that trance. Any anger you sense is just coming out of our frustration.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I’m not a scientist. I’m just a regular guy. I am considered knowledgeable and talented in my chosen field, (business video communications) and the people who consider me so are my peers. I have interests and activities outside of my chosen field; these are hobbies (collecting PEZ dispensers, writing original music). In my hobbies, I am NOT an expert, and I sometimes seek information from people who I determine may know more than I.
From what you’ve told us, you were an Electrical Engineer, an Air Force Pilot, and a successful businessman. Cool. I bet you’re smart and know a lot of stuff.
Now, I don’t know about you, but in MY life, I have found that there are many things I DON’T know. Plumbing. Car repair. Tax return preparation. Ballroom dancing. Gourmet cooking. Quantum mechanics. Evolutionary biology. And many more.
For these things, I rely on Experts. I mean, I suppose I COULD study the tax code and prepare my own returns, but you know what? I don’t wanna. It doesn’t interest me. So I hire an accountant to do that for me. I trust him to do so professionally, and so far, so good. And I suppose I COULD learn to cook better, but I usually get a better meal when I go to a restaurant, so when I want a really good meal, I go to a restaurant. I trust the chef not to poison me, and so far, so good. And there are some things that I simply, physically, cannot do. My knees are way too shot to ever let me learn ballroom dancing. And my brain is way too small to ever let me learn quantum mechanics. So I trust the professionals in those fields as well.
Science (like Religion) is a human endeavor conducted by human beings. It is, therefore, imperfect. (Like Religion.) I believe that the class of professionals called “scientists” has no inherent reason to lie to the rest of us. I notice that when they catch one of their own in a lie, they essentially destroy the liar’s career. I’m confident that they sometimes make mistakes, but the nature of their endeavor is to continually refine their knowledge and correct mistakes as they are found. I understand and appreciate that the nature and amount of their training is far more than I could handle, and I respect them for their knowledge and ability. I trust them.
I trust them with many, many things as well. I am not a hermit who rejects science. I love all the research that our enormous scientific community is doing and most of what they do is not affected by my debate here.
There is really one really big thing I resent. And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals. This to me first of all has never been proven but many scientists speak as if it has, and secondly, history has shown what this type of belief can do in a society if it is believed by the leadership. I not only believe it is unproven, I believe it is patently false, and I believe that I can show that my assertion that mankind is no animal (in spite of our little chimp discussion today), but that he is in a different category--made in the image of the Creator God with the ability to commune with this God, is very well supported by the evidence.
The rest of the stuff I don't care nearly so much about.
See you tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
afdave, you've asserted that your view of the world and its origins is true because a) most people believe it and b) you and others are marshaling political support for it.
Yet you agree with Behe that a two-foot stack of research, produced and challenged and confirmed over many decades, is meaningless.
Are scientific research and its results determined by democratic vote, or not? If not, you have no support at all. If so, who's franchised? How often would the votes take place? Who sets the ballot? Are the votes national, or statewide, or county-by-county? How would the voting affect, e.g., pharmaceutical research? If scientific research isn't voted on but scientific pedagogy is -- how would that work?
You reject so-called "macroevolution" because you've never witnessed it. In theological terms, aren't you being a bit presumptuous, assuming that the Lord's works are limited by what you can perceive? In practical terms, if you flew a plane relying on nothing but your own senses, how would that work out?
Your thinking is pretty flabby, for a skeptic. Or anyone else.
Well, God made us right after all the other animals, and we share a lot of the same characteristics with them... Do you think the people who wrote Genesis knew exactly how God made all the animals, or us, out of dirt? They only write a sentence or two. How did God do it?
I love all the research that our enormous scientific community is doing and most of what they do is not affected by my debate here.
Well, actually, none of the research is affected by your debate.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
There is really one really big thing I resent. And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals. This to me first of all has never been proven but many scientists speak as if it has, and secondly, history has shown what this type of belief can do in a society if it is believed by the leadership.
Why do you resent the idea that you're an animal, Dave? (Would you prefer to be a plant?)
The evidence that human beings are animals (as opposed to, say, amniosperms, fungi, viruses, or archaebacteria) is so utterly overwhelming as to leave the suspicion that doubters aren't fully in possession of their senses. Not only can we tell that humans are animals, but we can tell how closely or how distantly they are related to other primates, other mammals, other amniotes, other vertebrates, other animals, other eukaryotes, etc. I'm sorry this makes you feel resentful, but I suppose that can't be helped.
I guess if it makes you feel better to believe that humans were specially created by God and bear no closer relationship to other animals than they do to, say, the color blue or the number 3.4747907, I don't really have a problem with that. But if you think you're going to persuade the rest of us that none of us are actually animals, I suggest you try a less challenging hobby. Like, for example, building suspension bridges using the two smallest toes on your left foot and items found around the office.
Oh, and if you're worried about the political ramifications of a belief that humans are animals—look around you and observe the political ramifications of a belief that they are not.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So, Dave, your only gripe is really with common descent, from ape to man? That's it? That's all? Then why all this other useless noise and antics? Lets focus on the chimp/human thing then and ignore the rest of the BS.
Tip: Vitamin C. I used to be a YEC fundie, Vitamin C did it for me. Why do you need Vitamin C? What other animals... come on Dave, show us you can do some googling....
afdave, you've asserted that your view of the world and its origins is true because a) most people believe it and b) you and others are marshaling political support for it.
What I think I said was that to me it warrants investigation when half the country believes AIG and some smaller % believe in evolution. In response to this, the consensus here was that this "half the country" aren't scientists, which I grant is a good answer. However, the question still remains to me ... "Are ND's really such poor marketers of their ideas that only 20% of the public is buying their story?" I mean, they've got all the museums showing evolution, all the textbooks, all the encyclos, most of the media, etc, etc. I draw one of two conclusions from this ... (1) either the ND's are just REALLY bad at marketing their origins ideas or, (2) their origins ideas don't make any sense and the public rejects them
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Yet you agree with Behe that a two-foot stack of research, produced and challenged and confirmed over many decades, is meaningless.
It's meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system. I'm sure its quite meaningful at explaining HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WORKS.
Quote
Are scientific research and its results determined by democratic vote, or not? If not, you have no support at all. If so, who's franchised? How often would the votes take place? Who sets the ballot? Are the votes national, or statewide, or county-by-county? How would the voting affect, e.g., pharmaceutical research? If scientific research isn't voted on but scientific pedagogy is -- how would that work?
You might want to try quoting me next time so I can see how you think I am saying this. I don't think any of this stuff.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I haven't a clue. The writers of Genesis didn't either. ND's THINK they know how it happened, but they really only have some guesses.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Why do you resent the idea that you're an animal, Dave? (Would you prefer to be a plant?) The evidence that human beings are animals (as opposed to, say, amniosperms, fungi, viruses, or archaebacteria) is so utterly overwhelming as to leave the suspicion that doubters aren't fully in possession of their senses. Not only can we tell that humans are animals, but we can tell how closely or how distantly they are related to other primates, other mammals, other amniotes, other vertebrates, other animals, other eukaryotes, etc. I'm sorry this makes you feel resentful, but I suppose that can't be helped.
Yes, I understand all this ... no ... don't care to be a plant. I understand that our BODIES are very much like other animals ... VERY, VERY much like chimps as we are seeing on the other thread (I've got a lot more for that thread by the way), but I will be showing you that there are many fundamental differences between a chimp and a human--differences so great that when you see them, you realize it is not sensible to call a human an animal any more. He should be called a human. These are not physical differences. It's matters of the mind and spirit and morality that we will be exploring. You may not think these issues are not 'science' but they are whether you recognize it or not.
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Oh, and if you're worried about the political ramifications of a belief that humans are animals—look around you and observe the political ramifications of a belief that they are not.
It is true that many awful things have been done in the name of God, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Atheism, etc., but I believe (don't know if I will get to show this here--we're trying to focus on the God/human thing) that all the wonderful blessings of Western Civilization all ultimately boil down to one man of history--Jesus of Nazareth.
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So, Dave, your only gripe is really with common descent, from ape to man? That's it? That's all? Then why all this other useless noise and antics? Lets focus on the chimp/human thing then and ignore the rest of the BS.
You'll notice my first hypothesis points focus on God and mankind. If you want to tune me out after the first two points are done, OK by me.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, are you going to read up on the Vitamin C thing or not? If so, check some other sources too, not just AiG BS.
Sure. What is it exactly that I am looking for?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"Are ND's really such poor marketers of their ideas that only 20% of the public is buying their story?"
As surprising as it may seem to you, Dave, the answer is yes. And there's nothing wrong with that. You see, "ND's" Do not try to market their ideas. Maybe that hurts their image, but they cannot do otherwise: Their cause is to discover truth, not sell their "truth" to the public (which is exactly what the other side -ID/Creos- does). That's why all their funding goes to research, not PR departments. But maybe this "marketing" of ideas seems normal to you... In which case, tell me: If you learned that a car company puts all their money in advertising and publicity, to show how cool their cars are, and NOTHING in research to make them better and safer -in fact, they don't have an R&D department at all- would you buy a car from them? Or would you ignore them, regardless of what other people think?
(Oh I understand the alalogy is a bit flawed- ID does not even have a car to sell )
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It's meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system. I'm sure its quite meaningful at explaining HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WORKS.
Um Dave, I dunno what AIG says, but the research presented in the trial was about the evolution of the immune system. If they were to present all the research done over the whole field of immunology over the last years, they'd probably need one of these:
...Now, what would ID?Creos need to present their research in the field? Well, probably come up with some first, I guess.
PS. the question mark in "ID?Creos" was supposed to be a slash, but I like it better that way. "ID? Nah, Creos".
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Imagine you write a book. It is a book about sound and how it behaves. You publish the book and have copyright on it. A couple of months later, you pick up another book, about sound. You are furious when you notice that someone else has copied your work, and you promptly take them to court.
Now, how will you prove that the other person copied your book, since all the facts about sound, and how it behaves, are stated in the same way in both books? The other person could of course get the facts right too! In fact, the 2 books appear about 97 percent the same (factually)! You cannot tell the judge: “Well, your honour, I wrote the speed of sound is 330 m/s, and the other person wrote the same!”. The judge will laugh at you, since you claim that because the other person got his facts right, that he must have got it from you. Still with me Dave?
But, if there are errors in your book, factual errors, and they appear in the other book too, then you have a strong case for copyright infringement. If you made a mistake in your book, and wrote that the speed of sound is 632 m/s, and the other person repeats that EXACT SAME mistake, then you can prove that he copied your book. Your case would be even better if you could come up with 37+ errors that you made that were repeated in the impostor’s book!
Humans must eat Vitamin-C. They cannot fabricate their own Vitamin-C. Why is that? It is because our gene for Vitamin C fabrication is broken. It was a mutation that destroyed the function of the Vitamin-C gene, therefore we have to eat stuff with Vitamin-C in it, or else we would die. You know who sits with the same problem? Chimps! They also have the broken Vitamin-C gene, and it is broken in the SAME way that ours is. Why is that?
We know our DNA and Chimp DNA are VERY close to each other. But apart from the entire DNA that works, that are the same, in both our species, we ALSO share ERRORS, like the Vitamin-C gene (and many others), with Chimps. To me, this is good proof that we and Chips evolved from the same type of ape thing. We share common ancestry (Thus, we did not evolve FROM Chimps; we simply share a common ancestor). We BOTH inherited the DNA that works, AND the various ERRORS from the common ancestor.
Relate this back to my copyright story at the start of this post, and you will understand. But take it further. The 2 books are WORD FOR WORD, FACT AND ERROR, the same and ordered the same, except for about 5% max (it’s less), that differs.
So, tell me with a straight face that you think common ancestry is not true. But hey, I know you would rather believe preachers (AiG) than biologists (and other scientist) about biology. Even Behe admits common ancestry is true….
These are not physical differences. It's matters of the mind and spirit and morality that we will be exploring. You may not think these issues are not 'science' but they are whether you recognize it or not.
Interesting, all we need to see is your evidence. I would point out first that many people believe the fact God imbued man with a spirit does not mean we didn't evolve from apes.
I supose Afdave wants us to assume that there is something like a spirit/soul, and that these are not just words used for the mind and its various functions/output.
history has shown what this type of belief can do in a society if it is believed by the leadership.
This is utter bs, Dave. But I'd love to see you Godwin this thread, so I'll ask you what evidence you think you have to back this up.
Someday you'll regret having lied to your children about all of this.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
[quote=dave] However, the question still remains to me ... "Are ND's really such poor marketers of their ideas that only 20% of the public is buying their story?" I mean, they've got all the museums showing evolution, all the textbooks, all the encyclos, most of the media, etc, etc. I draw one of two conclusions from this ... (1) either the ND's are just REALLY bad at marketing their origins ideas or, (2) their origins ideas don't make any sense and the public rejects them[/quote] There is another reason, which Faid was, I suspect, too polite to touch on.
The reason, Dave is that most people are stupid. Yes, that's right. Stupid. Civilization advances and is sustained on the minds of a vanishingly small percentage of the race. The rest are drones - useful for evolutionary purposes, no doubt, but contributing nothing, unable to reason, unable to do much of anything except eat, sleep, and procreate.
AIG is a case in point: an entire organization of such drones.
Quite frankly, I'm astonished that the percentage of cretins is as low as it is.
"Most people can't think, most of the remainder, won't think, and those that do mostly don't do it very well."
1. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
I have already given evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Entity of some sort. The two lines of evidence given so far are (1) Cosmic Fine Tuning and (2) Biological Machines. To me this says loud and clear ... "Someone purposely set the 'dials' in the 'universe control room'" and "Someone is a fantastically brilliant Engineer." Obviously, that's ALL these two lines of evidence suggest. They say nothing about the Bible or genetics or morality or any of the other myriad issues that I am interested in. But to me they do speak very loudly to the two statements above. Some here say that this is not evidence and I would have to ask specifically WHY is this not evidence?
Some ask "What do you mean by Cosmic Fine Tuning?" Well to quote one of your favorite resources over at TalkOrigins ...
Quote
In recent years, creationist theologians, and even a few physicists, have heavily promoted what they claim is a remarkable fine-tuning of the basic laws and constants of physics, without which life as we know it would never have developed (Barrow, 1986; Rolston III). If the universe had appeared with slight variations in the strengths of the fundamental forces or the masses of elementary particles, that universe would be pure hydrogen at one extreme, or pure helium at the other. Neither would have allowed for the eventual production of heavy elements, such as carbon, necessary for life. Similarly, if gravity had not been many orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetism, stars would not have lived long enough to produce the elements of life. Long before they could fabricate heavy chemical elements, stars would have collapsed. Only the fact that the gravitational force was forty orders of magnitude weaker prevented this from happening. In a calculation similar to Hoyle's, mathematician Roger Penrose has estimated that the probability of a universe with our particular set of physical properties is one part in 1010123 (Penrose 1989: 343). However, neither Penrose nor anyone else can say how many of the other possible universes formed with different properties could still have lead to some form of life. If it is half, then the probability for life is fifty percent. [url="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html"]
Notice here that this TalkOrigins writer does not refute any claims of these physicists regarding THIS universe. All he is able to do is point out that there MAY BE other universes. And this nicely illustrates my point about the inconsistency of scientists such as some of you ... namely that you engage in 'wild speculation' about multiple universes with no evidence that there may be other universes. Then you accuse theists of engaging in 'wild speculation' about our proposed 'God' character. We are BOTH talking about things that we cannot observe and that are even difficult to imagine, yet the theistic scientists are pushed away with the lame argument that they are somehow less scientific that the Multiple Universe Speculators (MUS's). Now of course we theists would not push away the MUS's as we ouselves are pushed away. It is quite permissible for them to propose anything they want ... the real question is "How reasonable is their hypothesis?" to which Richard Swinburne, John Leslie, William Lane Craig and Robin Collins have given a formidable answer. In my opinion, they have shown the superiority of the Theistic Design Hypothesis. More about that here [url="http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_returnofgod.pdf"]. If anyone would like to argue this, I am happy to dive into it in more detail. (looked hard on TO for a refutation ... couldn't find one)
Some also ask "How do biological machines point to a 'God'?" ... Well again, I have not yet given enough evidence to say that it is 'God' as described in the Bible, but it certainly does seem to indicate that there at least was a Designer of some sort. Richard Dawkins spends an entire chapter on bat echolation in The Blind Watchmaker and then says
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I hope the reader is as awestruck as I am, and as William Paley would have been, by these bat stories. My aim has been in one respect identical to Paley's aim. I do not want the reader to underestimate the prodigious works of nature and the problems we face explaining them. (p. 37)
then he says
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We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. (p. 43)
Thank you Richard Dawkins. Case closed. It's been great debating all of you. Now can we move on to the IMPLICATIONS of the existence of a Designer? Just kidding ... I know you are not yet convinced, but I hope this is at least a good start for you. I'm pretty sure you don't want me to repeat the Denton and Behe stuff which is why I quoted one of your own. Here's one more nice tidbit on Molecular Machines from a non-YEC source ... Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences, introduced this issue with an article entitled, The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines (pointed out by Meyer ... see link above). In his article, Alberts admits that
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We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as afactory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).
Alberts notes that molecular machines strongly resemble machines designed by human engineers, although as an orthodox neo-Darwinist he denies any role for actual, as opposed to apparent, design in the origin of these systems.
Say what you want about Behe and his wisdom in court (and I probably agree), but in my opinion, Behe has done an excellent job of pointing out the complete absence of any gradualistic explanations for the origin of the systems and motors he discusses.
Before we field questions, let's touch on the last two issues in Point 1. I said
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this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
What in the world could I possibly have as evidence for this? Well, this is obviously a bold statement, but consider Meyer's study of "The Big Bang and General Relativity." I searched TalkOrigins for a refutation of Meyer's "God Hypothesis" article as well as the "Index to Creationist Claims" for a refutation of the particular section I am about to quote and found none. I Googled "meyer god hypothesis refutation" which yielded a seemingly unrelated Panda's Thumb article. So maybe you all can point me to some of those if they exist somewhere. Here's the Meyer quote in full. I give it IN FULL because I want all here to READ IT IN FULL. I have, probably 3 times now and it makes a lot of sense to me ...
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THE BIG BANG AND GENERAL RELATIVITY During the twentieth century, a quiet but remarkable shift has occurred in science. Evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology now tells a very different story than did the science of the late nineteenth century. Evidence from cosmology now supports a finite, not an infinite universe, while evidence from physics and biology has reopened the question of design. In 1915-16, Albert Einstein shocked the scientific world with his theory of general relativity (Chaisson & McMillan 1993: 604-5). Though Einstein s theory challenged Newton s theory of gravity in many important respects, it also implied (as did Newton s) that the universe could not be static, but instead was simultaneously expanding and decelerating. According to relativity theory, massive bodies alter the curvature of space so as to draw nearby objects to them. Einstein s conception of gravity implied that all material bodies would congeal unless the effects of gravitation were continually counteracted by the expansion of space itself (Eddington 1930). Einstein s theory thus implied an expanding, not a static, universe. Einstein disliked this idea, in part for philosophical reasons. An actively expanding universe implied a beginning to the expansion, and thus, to the universe. As the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann (1922: 377-86) showed, general relativity implied that, in the words of Stephen Hawking, at some time in the past (between ten and twenty thousand million years ago) the distance between neighboring galaxies must have been zero (1988: 46). Relativity theory suggested a universe of finite duration racing outward from an initial beginning in the distant past. For Einstein, however, a definite beginning to the universe seemed so counterintuitive that he introduced an arbitrary factor in his theory to eliminate the implication. In 1917, he postulated a repulsive force, expressed by his cosmological constant, of precisely the magnitude necessary to counteract the expansion that his theory implied.1 Like Newton, Einstein inadvertenly concealed an important cosmological reality implicit in his theory. Yet the heavens would soon talk back. In the 1920s-30s, Edwin Hubble, a young lawyer-turned-astronomer, made a series of observations that shocked even Einstein. While working at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in Southern California, Hubble discovered for the first time that our Milky Way galaxy is but one of many galaxies spread throughout the universe. More important, he discovered that the galaxies beyond the Milky Way are rapidly receding from ours. Hubble noticed that the light from these distant galaxies was shifted toward the red-end of the electromagnetic spectrum. This red-shift suggested recessional movement, for the same reason the so-called Doppler Effect that a train whistle drops in pitch as a train moves away from a stationary observer. Hubble also discovered that the rate at which these other galaxies retreat from ours is directly related to their distance from us just as if the universe were undergoing a spherical expansion in all directions from a singular explosive beginning the big bang (1929: 168-73). During the remainder of the twentieth century, physicists and cosmologists formulated several alternatives to the Big Bang theory that preserved an infinite universe. Some of these cosmological models were formulated for explicitly philosophical reasons. For example, in the late 1940s, Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi proposed the steady state model to explain galactic recession without invoking the objectionable notion of a beginning. According to their theory, as the universe expands new matter is generated spontaneously in the space between expanding galaxies. On this view, our galaxy is composed of matter that spontaneously popped into existence between other galaxies, which in turn came out of the empty space between other galaxies, and so on (Bondi & Gold 1948; Hoyle 1948). Thus, the steady state theory denied the need to postulate a singular beginning, and reaffirmed an infinite universe without beginning or end. By the mid-1960s, however, Hoyle s theory had run aground as the result of a discovery made by two employees of Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. According to the steady state model, the density of the universe must always remain constant, hence the creation of new matter as the universe expands. Yet in 1965, the Bell Lab researchers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, found what physicists believed to be the radiation left over from the universe s initial hot, high-density state (1965: 419-21). The discovery of this cosmic background radiation, at roughly 2.7 degrees Kelvin equivalent, proved decisive. Physicist George Gamow had predicted its existence as a consequence of the Big Bang (1946: 572-73). Yet advocates of the steady state acknowledged that, given their model, such radiation should not exist. The steady state theory also implied that galaxies should have radically different ages, but advances in observational astronomy have revealed that galactic ages cluster narrowly in the middle-age range. By the 1970s, even Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle had abandoned their theory (Kragh 1993: 403). Following the demise of the steady state model, the oscillating universe model arose as an alternative to a finite universe. Advocates of this model envisioned a universe that would expand, gradually decelerate, shrink back under the force of its own gravitation, and then, by some unknown mechanism, reinitiate its expansion, on and on, ad infinitum. But, as physicist Alan Guth showed, our knowledge of entropy suggests that the energy available to do the work would decrease with each successive cycle (Guth & Sher 1983: 505-7). Thus, presumably the universe would have reached a nullifying equilibrium long ago if it had indeed existed for an infinite amount of time. Further, recent measurements suggest that the universe has only a fraction about one-fifth of the mass required to create a gravitational contraction in the first place (Peebles 1993: 475-83; Coles & Ellis 1994: 609-13; Sawyer 1992: A5; Ross 1993: 58). Prior to the formulation of the oscillating universe theory, three astrophysicists, Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose, published a series of papers that explicated the implications of Einstein s theory of general relativity for space and time as well as matter and energy (Hawking & Penrose 1970). Previously, physicists like Friedmann showed that the density of the universe would approach an infinite value as one extrapolated the state of the universe back in time. In a series of papers written between 1966-70, Hawking and his colleagues showed that as one extrapolated back in time the curvature of space also approached infinity. But an infinitely curved space corresponds to a radius (within a sphere, for example) of zero and thus to no spatial volume. Further, since in general relativity space and time are inextricably linked, the absence of space implies the absence of time. Moreover, neither matter nor energy can exist in the absence of space. Thus, Hawking s result suggested that general relativity implies that the universe sprang into existence a finite time ago from literally nothing, at least nothing physical. In brief, general relativity implies an absolute beginning of time, before which neither time and space, nor matter and energy, would have existed. The space-time theorem of general relativity was, of course, conditional. It stated that, if general relativity obtains for the universe, then space and time themselves must have originated in the same initial explosion that created matter and energy. In a series of experiments, beginning just two years after Einstein published his results and continuing on to the present, the probable error of general relativity (estimated quantitatively) has shrunk from 10 to 1 to .05 percent, to a confirmation out to the fifth decimal place. Increasingly accurate tests conducted by NASA, such as the hydrogen maser detector carried by a NASA rocket in 1980 and 1994, have continued to shrink the probable error associated with the theory (Ross 1993: 66-67; Vessor 1980: 2081-84). Thus, general relativity now stands as one of the best confirmed theories of modern science. Yet its philosophical implications, and those of the Big Bang theory, are staggering. Taken jointly, general relativity and the Big Bang theory provide a scientific description of what Christian theologians have long described in doctrinal terms as creatio ex nihilo Creation out of nothing (again, nothing physical). These theories place a heavy demand on any proposed causal explanation of the universe, since the cause of the beginning of the universe must transcend time, space, matter, and energy.[url="http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_returnofgod.pdf"]
Now admittedly, this study does not yet fully support my hypothesis points of "God speaking things into existence" and "God living outside of time, seeing the past and future with equal ease." But you have to admit it is intriguing and warrants further study. Meyer's last paragraph (bold) is stunning to me and argues strongly for AT LEAST THE POSSIBILITY of a 'God' who can 'speak' things into existence and who JUST MIGHT in fact 'live outside of time' as the Bible asserts.
OK. That's enough for now. I have now given you much of what I consider to be excellent evidence for a "Designer of the Universe" and a "Designer of Living Systems" and at least preliminary evidence for believing the long standing assertion of theists that "God Transcends Space and Time." As we move ahead, I will show why I believe there is much evidence that this "Universe Designer" and "Living Systems Designer" are in fact One Person and that there is good reason to believe that this One Person does in fact 'dwell outside of space and time.'
I welcome your intelligent comments. I qualify comments with the modifier 'intelligent' because I have now pretty much heard everything un-intelligent that there is to hear including but not limited to Glen Davidson's detailed and authoritative "Psychoanalysis of AF Dave" (thankyou, Glen ... I have to pay $300/hr for those here in Kansas City), Aftershave's continual attempts to supposedly "Look out for a poor-deluded fellow EE and help him avoid 'getting his ass handed to him'". Some people's criticisms have in fact been well founded and I have acknowledged them. The latest, of course is AIG's reference to the Chimp-Human Chromosome issue and my acceptance of it. Again, a good criticism and I plan on confronting AIG about it (I have a contact who claims they know Ken Ham personally ... we will see what happens). Of course, if you WANT to keep making un-intelligent criticisms, that's OK, but you could always start another thread for that, and I question what such inane comments profit you. But again, who am I to stop you?
Note that I have left of the A1, B1 stuff. I assume by now that everyone at least UNDERSTANDS my argumentation framework--whether they agree with it or not, so it is not necessary to keep repeating it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
FYI, quote mining is probably the single best way to demonstrate your own dishonesty.
Quote
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. How, then, did they come into existence? The answer, Darwin's answer, is by gradual, step- by-step transformations from simple beginnings, from primordial entities sufficiently simple to have come into existence by chance. Each successive change in the gradual evolutionary process was simple enough, relative to its predecessor, to have arisen by chance. But the whole sequence of cumulative steps constitutes anything but a chance process, when you consider the complexity of the final end-product relative to the original starting point. The cumulative process is directed by nonrandom survival. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the power of this cumulative selection as a fundamentally nonrandom process.
Someday you'll regret having lied to your children about all of this.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. (p. 43)
Thank you Richard Dawkins. Case closed. It's been great debating all of you.
Dave, Before we discuss this, it's important (I think) to clear out something:
Quote-mining is frowned upon in this forum. It's a clear indicator of the deceiving tecniques the people you believe in use. Now, I think you probably quoted that straight from the AIG site, so I don't blame you. You can retract it, of course, or, better yet: Look what Dawkins actually wrote, and see for yourself who has been LYING to you.
Not at all. The more the merrier. I'd be happy to see EVERYONE here give Dave a smack for that one. I mean seriously, quote mining Dawkins? Dave is getting worse and worse with each new post. I'm just waiting for him to trot out the alleged connection between evolution and you-know-who.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Hmm. I think thordaddy did, at some point... But then, thor is so absurd, even Godwin can't touch him.
Dave, About your talkorigins link: Did you stop reading after the part you quoted? Because if you kept on, you'd see how he goes on to explain how his arguments are not based in the "multiple universe" theory.
Uniess you quoted that from AIG too, I guess.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I must say the Dawkins quote surprises me. For anyone who has never heard of Dawkins, there won't be any leverage from name recognition anyway. For anyone who HAS heard of Dawkins, this quote is such a flagrantly dishonest misrepresentation of what Dawkins says that such people better not be trying to eat when they read it. Even the most brain-dead creationist can't help but recognize that this can't be even remotely accurate.
Discussing this stuff with someone who genuinely doesn't know any better might have some value. But why discuss with someone who knows better and lies anyway? This is the canonical argument with pigs.
FYI, quote mining is probably the single best way to demonstrate your own dishonesty. [quote] We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. How, then, did they come into existence? The answer, Darwin's answer, is by gradual, step- by-step transformations from simple beginnings, from primordial entities sufficiently simple to have come into existence by chance. Each successive change in the gradual evolutionary process was simple enough, relative to its predecessor, to have arisen by chance. But the whole sequence of cumulative steps constitutes anything but a chance process, when you consider the complexity of the final end-product relative to the original starting point. The cumulative process is directed by nonrandom survival. The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the power of this cumulative selection as a fundamentally nonrandom process.
Someday you'll regret having lied to your children about all of this. [/quote]
I own the book ... I have heard you that you don't accept 'lifts' from AIG, so you didn't get any this time. I typed the quotes from Dawkins myself.
It's not dishonest to quote the pieces I did because the part I was wanting to point was that Richard Dawkins himself at least ADMITS that it all looks designed, which my quotes illustrate nicely. Of course it is common knowledge that Dawkins rejects ACTUAL design ... I think that's pretty obvious from the title of his book, don't you?
As for my kids, they have free access to this book and they understand both Dawkins and MY position well. Come on, guys, there's no deception going on here.
Now if we are going to get preachy about quote mining, let's talk about some other quote mining criminals ... let's look at Faid's ... he lifted this from me
Quote
(afdave @ May 05 2006,08:59) [Quote ] We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. (p. 43)
Thank you Richard Dawkins. Case closed. It's been great debating all of you. [/quote]
but forgot to include the last part ...
Quote
Thank you Richard Dawkins. Case closed. It's been great debating all of you. Now can we move on to the IMPLICATIONS of the existence of a Designer? Just kidding ...
I was joking because I KNEW that Dawkins (and you) don't accept this as ACTUAL design ... i.e. "It LOOKS like a duck, WALKS like a duck, QUACKS like a duck, but let me spend the next EIGHT CHAPTERS trying to convince you that it's NOT a duck **cough** (isn't that what this debate is about in the first place?)
OK. So now that we have another ROE question settled, are there any substantive arguments against my case?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
After you say "just kidding", you admit this is an attempt to convince us:
Quote
I know you are not yet convinced, but I hope this is at least a good start for you. I'm pretty sure you don't want me to repeat the Denton and Behe stuff which is why I quoted one of your own
When you knew, in fact, that this misquote does not support "design" in any way, and in fact simply argues against random assembly of life in its present complexity, ie: the "tornado in a junkyard" example(which is something none of us believes, anyway).
I mean seriously, Dave.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
To use your own terms, are you man enough to debate this honestly?
Yes.
Just to remind you of your promise. Cause quote mining? Doesn't count as honest debate. Even if you mined your own quote from the book rather than relying on a pre-mined quote, it's still quote mining.
Some also ask "How do biological machines point to a 'God'?" ... Well again, I have not yet given enough evidence to say that it is 'God' as described in the Bible, but it certainly does seem to indicate that there at least was a Designer of some sort.
As I said before, you need to provide evidence that biological systems are more likely to be the work of a designer than biological evolution without using and argument from ignorace or analogy. No-one will accept your point if you just assume this to be the case.
When you knew, in fact, that this misquote does not support "design" in any way, and in fact simply argues against random assembly of life in its present complexity, ie: the "tornado in a junkyard" example(which is something none of us believes, anyway).
I mean seriously, Dave.
Again, let me say VERY CLEARLY. I quoted Richard Dawkins to illustrate to me a FASCINATING phenomenon with this man ...
Here is a man who everyone know DOES NOT accept design, yet he in effect says, "It LOOKS like a duck, WALKS like a duck, QUACKS like a duck, but let me spend the next EIGHT CHAPTERS trying to convince you that it's NOT a duck **cough** (isn't that what this debate is about in the first place?)
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to once again highlight this embarassing paradox of one of science's most brilliant minds.
I'll do my darndest not to quotemine and I trust you will do the same. Now, to quote someone on this thread, "Can we quit arguing about rules and get on with it?"
Do you have any substantive refutation of my logic?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The reason, Dave is that most people are stupid. Yes, that's right. Stupid. Civilization advances and is sustained on the minds of a vanishingly small percentage of the race. The rest are drones - useful for evolutionary purposes, no doubt, but contributing nothing, unable to reason, unable to do much of anything except eat, sleep, and procreate.
Well, true enough, I suppose, but we didn't evolve intelligence in order to theorize and to do mathematics. We evolved intelligence in order to do well in our little primate groups, and that is entirely possible to do without knowing science or accepting evolution. We're herd animals, and we are intelligent herd animals for the most part.
Afdave illustrates this fact over and over again. It's all argumentum ad populum, which is why he fails to distinguish between good science and bad (whatever), and fails entirely to even recognize the evidence when it's in plain view. Which is why he looks at the obviously derived chromosome 2, and says that what obviously did happen "could not happen". His "standards" come from his herd. He doesn't think so very stupidly, considering where he's coming from, so much as that he argues from his herd position, and with a near-total lack of science knowledge--let alone its philosophy.
There are no rewards for him even to begin to understand the world in an unbiased manner, rather he probably gets credit in his circles for "tackling the atheists", even though he never actually manages a hit on anybody (his herd would know the difference?). Within his herd, his reward system, it all works out, and he obviously cares not a fig about science (though he probably has a high opinion of an ideal of science), only about defending his ego and his herd. This is why "discussing these things with him" is futile through and through.
You can't make a cat look in the mirror, and you can't get most people to look past their social-reward systems. This is actually true for scientists in many cases, as anyone who has come up with actually new ideas knows. Nearly all challengers of the accepted ideas have considerable trouble getting even scientists to look at the evidence uncolored by past beliefs. How much worse it must be when one has virtually no background in science, an "education in evolution" from the CRI and AIG, and a considerable amount of ego invested into "knowing evolution to be wrong".
Intelligence serves the primate's psyche, not the "truth of the world" (it's complicated to explain how this differs in science to a meaningful extent, but it has mostly to do with societies of people who have recognized and experienced the rewards of empiricism). Intelligence could not evolve differently, as far as we know, so we're stuck with people whose intelligence works for themselves and their group, quite contrarily to small-t "truth" as it is commonly understood.
And yes, I still think that saying "people are stupid" fits the contextual meaning of that phrase. Of course, but most people who are too stupid or lazy to understand the scientific method still don't oppose the vast majority of science--partly this is because their religious prejudices actually tend to suggest that one may well learn from the "created world". The trouble is when one disagrees that life itself was "created" (or disagrees that a flood was created by an angry God who regretted what he had made--a clear strike against the "design hypothesis"), since that goes against the worldview that in many cases has facilitated science.
Stupidity no doubt has much to do with it, however the social "herd instinct" of humanity seems to explain more. While social pressures and curiosity helps to place more of the intelligent people into a mode of the acceptance of science, clearly some quite intelligent people also expend quite a lot of intellectual skill (debating skill) into disagreeing with the science that they have learned where they "already know it to be wrong".
Look at Afdave's argument. Clearly it is fallacious by any standard, but it is also carefully drawn (though it was hardly invented by Afdave) to avoid the fact that the only explanation for current and fossil forms of life that has managed to cross borders, religions, ethnic groups, politics, and intellectual inheritances, is evolutionary theory. Russian atheists, American Catholics and mainline Protestants, scientists, intellectuals, Japanese Shintoists (initially, anyhow, though I don't know if Shinto holds up well alongside modern science), Muslim thinkers, Hindus, Jainists, and traditional religionists like native Americans, have all been able to comprehend and accept the evidence for evolution.
Herd thought? No, except to the degree that empiricism is a kind of herd thought, which it is (but with standards that reach beyond the herd). Tradition? Only the tradition of "objectivity", rather than forcing the interpretation.
Evolutionary theory is extraordinarily successful by the standards of any startup of a new religion. This is because evolutionary thought only depends upon the evidence, and it is not designed to challenge or to disagree with any religion. Cultural baggage and biases (such as Darwin's) need not follow evolutionary theory, and indeed tend not to. Most of all, evolutionary theory does not depend upon herd thought, except to the extent that empiricism should be considered "herd thought". Promulgating a new religion, by contrast, requires herd sanctions and herd thinking to slowly infiltrate (or to be violently imposed) upon society, and the creation myths of that religion remain peculiar to that religion.
The only universally-acceptable origins-of-life idea is evolutionary theory, while one may easily enough explain why opposition by particular religions persist. But one may as "easily" explain to a herd-thinker like Afdave why he and so many other ignorant types cling to exploded notions, as one may explain to them how to recognize the evidence of derivation of chromosome 2 when they are explaining how something like chromosomal fusion cannot occur. They are operating on the basis that evolution is impossible, which is why they cannot even begin to deal with the evidence in favor of evolution.
Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed. You can't just say 'they look designed' and assume they are. People who actually study these systems don't think they look designed at all.
I welcome your intelligent comments. I qualify comments with the modifier 'intelligent' because I have now pretty much heard everything un-intelligent that there is to hear including but not limited to Glen Davidson's detailed and authoritative "Psychoanalysis of AF Dave" (thankyou, Glen ... I have to pay $300/hr for those here in Kansas City),
Well, you're too stupid and ignorant even to respond to my authoritative analysis, moron. All you can do is to compound your ignorance by denying everything intelligent ever written with regard to your mindless tripe, and of course your ignorance of yourself is probably the most profound ignorance that you possess.
If you ever can make an intelligent remark, please do so, cretin. I see that you not only cannot respond to my analysis of your mindlessness, but you have also failed to explain how such a dangerous place as this universe is "designed for life", why it is that the "designer" only uses evolutionary algorithms, or evinced the least bit of knowledge of how science works. Thank you for showing how close to correct my analysis of your ignorance is.
There is virtually no chance that you will ever be anything except a stupid and ignorant little ape, Dave. The biggest reason of all is that you only sneer at expertise of all kinds, while clinging to your tiny collection of knowledge as if it were Eternal Truth, as do all bigots.
Here is a man who everyone know DOES NOT accept design, yet he in effect says, "It LOOKS like a duck, WALKS like a duck, QUACKS like a duck, but let me spend the next EIGHT CHAPTERS trying to convince you that it's NOT a duck **cough** (isn't that what this debate is about in the first place?)
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to once again highlight this embarassing paradox of one of science's most brilliant minds.
It should be embarrassing for Dawkins. However, real scientists do not care a fig about Dawkins' incorrect notions about life "appearing designed", for on the face of it, life does not appear designed. I will grant that it may appear "miraculous" or "spiritual", depending on definitions and contexts, but it does not appear designed.
The most truly embarrassing thing is that religious apologists like Afdave think that life looks designed like machines.
I brought this up previously, Dave, and you failed as utterly to respond intelligently as you did to my analysis of your ignorance. Why don't you for once face the facts, that you know virtually nothing except engineering and business, and that you need to learn something other than your determined prejudices? Or at least that you shouldn't reveal to intelligent people that you couldn't think yourself out of a hole in a tree.
The reason, Dave is that most people are stupid. Yes, that's right. Stupid. Civilization advances and is sustained on the minds of a vanishingly small percentage of the race. The rest are drones - useful for evolutionary purposes, no doubt, but contributing nothing, unable to reason, unable to do much of anything except eat, sleep, and procreate.
Count me out on that. It reminds me of a Randroid math professor I once knew. He was puzzled that America was so successful. He said in European countries--he was Swedish--only the very few top people were selected to become professors and corporate executives and researchers and the like. America, he said, allowed anyone to try to do anything. Allowing all those unthinking idiots he and Rilke's Grandaughter believes in to try all those things, would waste so many resources America should be inefficient and poor.
Now, I would agree that most people don't think in a very logical and trained way. But they do think.
And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals.
Now see, Dave, if you were intelligent and educated you'd know that the idea that humans are animals (generally thought to be "at the peak") is hardly new with Darwin. Aristotle generally referred to us as animals, for the obvious reason, that we act and exist very much like animals.
Do you want medical testing to be done on our relatives, the apes, or would you prefer that it be done on birds? And can you think through the implications of why medical testing is done on monkeys and apes just prior to humans, or are you going to just drivel on in your ignorance and prejudice?
And if for once you were able to argue something based on the evidence, instead of your prejudices, you might get some respect. That is to say, if you were curious and willing to learn, even though you know so little about science, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and religion, you would receive some helpful replies.
We do care that your prejudices against humans as "evolved animals" prevent you from discussing the evidence that we are. We just don't care about all of the blather that you gather up to defend your prejudices, trying to pass them off as science.
As I said before, you need to provide evidence that biological systems are more likely to be the work of a designer than biological evolution without using and argument from ignorace or analogy. No-one will accept your point if you just assume this to be the case.
True. But this is my point exactly. Science attempts to explain things in terms of current understanding. Then as new understanding comes, science modifies its descriptions. This is what I do. I see bio machines. I know how non-bio machines come into existence, so I have nothing better from my experience to explain the bio-machines than "Bio-Machine Design." I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not. When I ask for examples of, for instance, a fruit-fly "evolving" into a house fly type insect, I am told that this type of change would take many millions of years, so "we cannot possibly observe the process." This would leave me in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain a process that I can only wildly speculate about, but have never even seen, even by analogy. So to me, my ANALOGY, while it may be weak, appears to be far stronger than your COMPLETE LACK OF AN ANALOGY. In other words ... at least I have SOMETHING ... I have my analogy. You have NOTHING that I can see. Oh, yes ... I know ... moths changing color and finch beaks, etc. But this is well understood already WITHIN the Creationist model and has NOTHING AT ALL to say about "Feet to Flippers" type Evolution. Oh and I know .. the fossil record. But again, we have a handful of equivocal examples of "transitional forms."
I'm happy to try to see things your way, but so far, no one has walked me through it well enough to be convincing.
Does this make sense?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I searched TalkOrigins for a refutation of Meyer's "God Hypothesis"
Meyer doesn't warrant special attention in a search term because his arguments are stolen from old and moldy arguments that were refuted before he made them.
Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."
You think the Big Bang theory provides a scientific description of creatio ex nihilo, Creation out of nothing but that's not quite true -- define "nothing."
Spacetime, the fabric of the universe isn't really nothing. Look up the term "Casimir effect."
The metaphysical question is really "what is the primordial stuff of the universe?" What had to exist for that big bang to happen.
You propose "an intelligent being" but there is no evidence that an intelligent being could do such a thing (you have to make up your major claim out of whole cloth -- "God could speak things into existance") And besides, an intelligent being that can speak things into existance isn't nothing.
Nothing is explained by proposing an unknown entity with unknown powers. You're explaining the known in terms of the unknown.
What killed those old arguments was the death of dualism. Back in history people used to think that intelligence itself was a primordial thing, souls existing forever and all.
Religions, at least those of Judeo-Christian family, must start with a core metaphysical assumption about mind (of an entity with will, planning, intention, foresight and understanding) being the primordial stuff and cause of the universe. This is implied in Judeo-Christian creation myths when God makes a universe out of nothing, a void: Mind was first — a mind and soul as primordial stuff.
Creation myths are teleological and naturalism undermines teleology by finding non-mind, (rules of material interaction without any mind stuff like choice, will or intention coming into play), as an explanation. But when naturalism begins to explain the only organ of teleological action we know, the brain, in naturalistic terms then teleological explanations are undermined more completely.
The core assumptions of our religions were made in ignorance of such science and now neuroscience has begun to undermine this core teleological and metaphysical assumption that Christianity is rooted in.
It's only you who sees the paradox here, Dave. If, in your mind, "not made by pure chance" = "designed by god" that is only your inability to understand that evolution is NOT a purely random process- far from it. THAT is what Dawkins says, and you should KNOW that before you served his butchered words to us as admittance of design. And you should know that this would NOT "convince" us, even in the slightest.
As for your other arguments: The anthropic principle is examined thoroughly in the very talkorigins page you quoted; again, did you read past the quote? Because if you did, you'd see that the author does not use multiple universes as the sole support for his arguments. As for your "biological machines" argument, this has been demonstrated repeatedly to be based on loaded terms: Labelling living things "machines" to argue that they are designed, presupposes that they are designed. It's a "dog=table" argument, basically, interwined with speculations of a cause: With the same logic, we should argue that those round volcanic rocks were the marbles of giants, because they look like big stone marbles. Now, the reasons those rocks are round are pretty much the same (as far as the fundamental laws of physics are concerned) with the reasons marbles are made round- but that is no proof that they are, in fact, marbles -as I'm sure you agree.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
We just don't care about all of the blather that you gather up to defend your prejudices, trying to pass them off as science.
Would you care to show me specifically WHY it's blather, since you obviously are smarter than me? Or will you keep filling my thread with psycho-analysis?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Would you care to show me specifically WHY it's blather, since you obviously are smarter than me? Or will you keep filling my thread with psycho-analysis?
One more thing, Glen. Talk really slow and refute my points one by one in simple layman's terms so that my "religion darkened brain" can understand.
Thanks!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I understand that our BODIES are very much like other animals ... VERY, VERY much like chimps as we are seeing on the other thread (I've got a lot more for that thread by the way), but I will be showing you that there are many fundamental differences between a chimp and a human--differences so great that when you see them, you realize it is not sensible to call a human an animal any more. He should be called a human.
Actually, Dave, the differences between humans and chimps, compared to e.g. the differences between humans and bacteria, are practically invisible. Humans are basically taller, balder, weaker, and smarter chimps. I fail to understand why this presents a problem for you.
If you want to say there are spiritual differences between a human and chimp that amount to some sort of unbridgeable gulf, that's fine, but you're not talking about science anymore (to the extent you ever were).
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
True. But this is my point exactly. Science attempts to explain things in terms of current understanding. Then as new understanding comes, science modifies its descriptions.
Metaphors do not fundamentally change the practice of science. Of course the descriptions change, but they are also understood as relatively fluid descriptions, not as statements about reality. Unfortunately you do not know this, either, about science, or you'd know that "biological machines" is a convenient tag used for what used not to be called "machines". IDists have made a great deal out of the metaphor of "machine" to indicate biological "objects", but they fundamentally misunderstand what science has identific, vs. the words it uses to understand what has been identified.
Naturally, you are too ignorant and unintelligent to understand this, Dave, but just because you don't understand anything doesn't mean that it isn't true.
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This is what I do. I see bio machines. I know how non-bio machines come into existence, so I have nothing better from my experience to explain the bio-machines than "Bio-Machine Design."
"Machine" is just a name. Learn some philosophy, if you ever learn any science.
And of course you have nothing better to "explain it", because you know nothing about biology. Before "biological machines" were even called that, biologists already had a better explanation. Your ignorance is no excuse to say Goddidit.
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I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not.
We have lizards losing their legs right now, Dave. The only reason you haven't seen evolution happening is that you haven't looked, and apparently are unwilling to use the vast evidence for past evolution to question your ignorance.
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When I ask for examples of, for instance, a fruit-fly "evolving" into a house fly type insect, I am told that this type of change would take many millions of years, so "we cannot possibly observe the process."
Yet you believe the Bible as a credible source for history throughout, when you have never seen any of the miracles mentioned.
You do not have the same standard for evolution that you have for other historical and supposedly historical occurrences, but make an exception here. You aren't even intellectually honest, among your other tremendous intellectual faults.
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This would leave me in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain a process that I can only wildly speculate about, but have never even seen, even by analogy.
You haven't, but you could, using evolutionary programs. You only close your eyes to the evidence.
By the way, did languages evolve? No one has seen the evolution of English out of Indo-European, or its equivalent, but we have clear evidence that it did. Cretinists and IDiots don't generally fault that evidence, only the evidence that they find inconvenient.
Many creationists, and most IDists, accept that Darwin's finches evolved, substantially through natural selection. Yet we have never "observed" that sort of speciation (other than what is happening at present, but its a tiny sliver of the whole). So of course there is no real problem with past evidence in their philosophy, only with past evidence which points to considerable evolutionary changes.
Crack a book for once, Dave, and quit relying upon what you don't know to "analyze evolution".
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So to me, my ANALOGY, while it may be weak, appears to be far stronger than your COMPLETE LACK OF AN ANALOGY.
Of course we have a number of analogies, you just ignore them when they are presented. We have evolved stories, evolved languages, computer simulations, and observed smaller scale evolutions that we have observed.
We use phylogenetic evidence to identify strains of HIV, even though we don't "directly observe" HIV evolution. Sometimes this phylogenetic evidence is used in court in relation to deliberate AIDS infection. There is actually little "categorical" difference in the sorts of information being used to track HIV evolution and the use of information to track primate evolution. Crack a book, open your mind, and you might learn this, too.
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In other words ... at least I have SOMETHING ... I have my analogy. You have NOTHING that I can see.
No, you have precisely nothing, because there has never been an observed designer who has designed to produce the "nested hierarchies" that we see in life. We have several analogous derivative evolutions to compare and contrast with biological evolution, though we have to recognize that language and narrative evolution occur significantly differently than does RM + NS (which doesn't change the fact that similar (but not identical) patterns are seen).
What is more, we back up our mechanism with evidence. You only argue words like "machine", without even understanding how paltry your knowledge of the relationship of science to words is.
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Oh, yes ... I know ... moths changing color and finch beaks, etc. But this is well understood already WITHIN the Creationist model and has NOTHING AT ALL to say about "Feet to Flippers" type Evolution.
Tell me why creationists didn't come up with "microevolution". Also, tell us how it is that microevolution cannot add up to macroevolution (I know that some differences can be defined as "macroevolutionary", but even using this definition would not prevent microevolutionary changes alone from adding up to "macroevolution"). Bring up some evidence that "microevolution" is separate from "macroevolution" to show for once that you have even a slight regard for evidence.
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Oh and I know .. the fossil record. But again, we have a handful of equivocal examples of "transitional forms."
They aren't equivocal, and your lies do not make them so. See, this is the actual evidence you've been given, the sort of thing that you lack in all of your posts. It is more than a handful of intermediates that we have as well, though I recognize that you wouldn't know that or any other intellectually sound fact.
I have already given evidence for the existence of an Intelligent Entity of some sort. The two lines of evidence given so far are (1) Cosmic Fine Tuning and (2) Biological Machines. To me this says loud and clear ... "Someone purposely set the 'dials' in the 'universe control room'" and "Someone is a fantastically brilliant Engineer." Obviously, that's ALL these two lines of evidence suggest. They say nothing about the Bible or genetics or morality or any of the other myriad issues that I am interested in. But to me they do speak very loudly to the two statements above. Some here say that this is not evidence and I would have to ask specifically WHY is this not evidence?
Dave, you have not given evidence for a cosmic "Intelligent Entity" through the "cosmic fine tuning" and "biological machines argument." You're still unclear on the meaning of the term "evidence." At best, "cosmic fine tuning" and "biological machines" are conjectures, or arguments. They're certainly not "evidence," and both conjectures have been reviewed here and you've been shown why they're not persuasive.
I don't want to leave you with the impression that you've "established" anything by presenting "cosmic fine tuning" or "biological machines" "evidence."
If you'd shown some physical parameters that are indeed finely tuned (the cosmological constant, to pick an obvious example), that would be one thing, but you haven't done that, and even if you had, we've already shown you why that argument is unpersuasive.
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Thank you Richard Dawkins. Case closed. It's been great debating all of you.
Dave, this same quote-mining was used over a century ago with Charles Darwin. Darwin made the same point (that biological organisms are awe-inspiring in their complexity), and then went on to explain exactly how that complexity could have come about through unguided processes. Dawkins is saying exactly the same thing here, and you're making the same mistake of misinterpreting where Dawkins is going with this.
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Alberts notes that molecular machines strongly resemble machines designed by human engineers, although as an orthodox neo-Darwinist he denies any role for actual, as opposed to apparent, design in the origin of these systems.
Dave, this is argument by analogy. It's not evidence of anything. Behe made the statement at Dover and in "Darwin's Black Box" that life looks designed, therefore it was designed. I'm sure you can see how weak this argument really is.
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Say what you want about Behe and his wisdom in court (and I probably agree), but in my opinion, Behe has done an excellent job of pointing out the complete absence of any gradualistic explanations for the origin of the systems and motors he discusses.
No he hasn't. Every single example Behe used (the flagellum, the clotting sequence, the complementary immune system) has been shown over and over again to be evolvable. This area of biological research is extremely fertile, Dave, and if you don't read the current research, you're always going to be way behind. "Darwin's Black Box" was written ten years ago.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
in my opinion, Behe has done an excellent job of pointing out the complete absence of any gradualistic explanations for the origin of the systems and motors he discusses.
In his book "Darwin's Black Box", Behe claimed that there was a certain kind of biological system that was "irreducibly complex". He claimed that a gradual, stepwise path leading to an IC system could not exist. He emphasized the complexity of biological systems by describing six especially complicated systems in detail.
Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems. Remember that Behe's claim was not just that we don't know exactly how these systems evolved. Behe's claim was that no possible pathway existed for these IC systems.
That claim was dead wrong. IC systems can evolve. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.
If you believe that there is a "complete absence of any gradualistic explanations" for these complex systems, somebody really hasn't been honest with you. I can definitely sympathize. As a Christian, I naively assumed that anti-evolutionists would be very honest with their audience. Once I started digging in to the claims of creationists and intelligent-design proponents, I was horrified by how many falsehoods that I encountered.
After about ten years of studying all sides of the debate over evolution, I've found that the scientists defending evolution are more honest than the Christians who are attacking it. Not just a little bit more honest-- a lot more honest. Even the agnostics and atheists defending evolution are behaving far more honestly than most of the Christians who lead the "creation science" and ID movements. It's scandalous.
I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not.
Just so I understand, this is an important point. You will think that design is a better scientific explanation until you actually see some kind of large scale change take place naturally, with your own eyes?
Would you care to show me specifically WHY it's blather, since you obviously are smarter than me?
I already did. You lacked the courtesy and knowledge to respond to what I had written, preferring to tell lies instead.
What is it about so many of the religious? Why do lies about others come out so readily into their posts?
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Or will you keep filling my thread with psycho-analysis?
It's not "your thread", greedy businessman, rather it is a thread in which all may discuss. And it's hardly psychoanalysis, though you wouldn't know that either. It's more of an analysis based on social psychology, if more on the lines of Nietzsche than on Pareto, Weber, or Durkheim.
And since you have no evidence, or convincing arguments, there is little really to do except to point out the failings of you and many of your fellow believers. I do so in part because "our side" tends to argue with you guys as if you might soon begin to understand things sensibly, when it is clear that you will not.
While many are not really going to understand just why it is that you "think" your herd thoughts and how thoroughly entrenched your very patterns of cognition actually are, at least one might drive home the fact that worldviews are not easily changed. Particularly not in the self-satisfied bourgeoisie.
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One more thing, Glen. Talk really slow and refute my points one by one in simple layman's terms so that my "religion darkened brain" can understand.
Don't imply that I consider religious brains to necessarily be "darkened". Norm Doering strikes at religion, I do not, except when religion has decided to make exceptions in accepted thought to accommodate their dogmas. Not even then, if they don't spread their nonsense onto the web and attempt to force it into schools.
And if you understood what I have written, you would recognize that I know that I can hardly get through to you. I have refuted any number of your points, and what I got in return were sneering lies from you.
What is more, I do not believe in trying to dumb things down enough for those who refuse to study. I might try to get through to someone who was curious and teachable, but not someone who really only wants to defend the nonsense that he got from pseudoscientific sites.
If you don't know that all of your points have either been refuted or explained to be without merit (but not "refutable" exactly), you're clearly not listening or unable to comprehend. That is why I think it more profitable to discuss the why of your failings, rather than try again and again to get you to see what you not only have not learned to see, but rather have learned to avoid seeing.
Quite honestly, and without malice, I can only recommend that you do some serious study into biology, and into the history of evolutionary thought. If you were to simply read, not react, and follow the thought processes of biological/evolutionary thinkers, you might begin to understand how the evidence is used scientifically to indicate that life was derived from other life.
And if you still did not accept evolution, at least you would not be using such faulty lines of "reasoning" and denial of evidence to "make your points". Then we might still disagree, but we could discuss things on an equal footing. It will not do to demand that we see things your way, when we have learned how and why the kinds of thinking that we were taught early on are not adequate.
I do know how to see the evidence like you do, I merely have to think back to when I was 14 and earlier. You need to learn, and it is not simple or easy, how scientists and/or philosophers think, if you want to have some traction on science forums.
Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems.
Is there an online source you could point me to so that I can see this?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
[quote=afdave,May 05 2006,11:24][/quote] Dave, try to stop lying. You are trying to come across as being impartial when it is clear that you are not. You cannot reconcile statements like this:
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I would be happy to adopt "Evo Did It" if I had ever seen an instance of this happening, but so far I have not.
With statements like this:
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There is really one really big thing I resent. And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals.
Your objections stem from an emotional reaction, not from rational thought. There is NO WAY we can reasonably convince you because your objections are not based in reason to begin with.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
What Afdave fails to recognize in the area of origins is the importance of establishing proximate causes, of showing how one event causes another one.
In this matter he thinks like the ancients did, by using sweeping analogies which led to anthropomorphic "hypotheses". While few of the ancients made the mistake of thinking that animals and humans were designed machines (they don't act like machines, they aren't "designed" like machines, and they are produced in a wholly different way. The evidence for derivation came later, of course), they did view "creation" as occurring via reproductive means, spirit transfers, and speech.
But what we need for any ID hypothesis is a designer who has been shown to design items similar to organisms. We don't mind inferring design of simple and complex objects so long as they conform to human capabilities, because we have this known "proximate cause" for pots and spacecraft. Undoubtedly we would also infer intelligent humanoid designers if we found early alien spacecraft, again because we know how some evolved "intelligences" act. Yet we totally lack any credible designer who has made organisms like those we see.
Thus a designer is not a reasonable explanation. As IDists have noted, we do indeed think that we could detect the results of "intelligent beings" in radio signals and in machines. Yet virtually no one has seriously proposed that aliens made the animals (aliens are brought up to confuse the issue, but only for that reason). This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance. And more so when we study organisms thoroughly.
What is more, we aren't even satisfied with "intelligence" as a "reason" for human-made machines and art, rather we typically appeal to psychology, evolution, and social causation to explain why and how art is made (as in all historical sciences, we can't fully explain Sumerian art, but we can explain important aspects of it). Ideally we will at some point have good neurological explanations for artistic creation, which will rely on evolution for part of the complete explanation.
This brings up an important fact: triumphant IDists would likely impede investigation into what intelligence is and why it is the way that we find it to be--even if only by suggesting that intelligence is some kind of "universal constant" or "law". We don't even explain design, today, without resort to causal factors beyond the former black box of the brain. IDists analogize wildly to God, but then they fail utterly to be able to identify factors, like evolution, that would constrain God's designs. So while we are unwilling to stop with "design" as an explanation anywhere, IDists insist that this is the end of the matter, that God designs in a certain way because of his will, or some such thing.
Anyway, I became sidetracked in these issues, but the important point is that Afdave thinks of "Cause" in the pre-scientific analogical sense, while we insist on at least tentative causes throughout. We are not going to know every cause, of course, but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation.
We know how many mutations are caused, and we know a good deal about natural selection. We have dealt with the causes, we have connected them, and we have shown how evolution proceeds, at least in considerable part. It would not do to just invoke "RM + NS" as some grand "Cause", rather science has worked out how it happens, if questions remain. Science extends these conclusions to fossils and "genomic fossils", but only because both fossils and genomes fit the pattern expected from RM + NS, the patterns observed in HIV evolution. Thus it is a very reasonable extrapolation.
Dave doesn't like macroevolution, claiming that it has not "been seen". Since, however, macroevolution is predicted to be produced by largely known mechanisms, therefore to produce the sorts of fossils, nested hierarchies, and genomes that we see, it is fair to say that we have observed it, since we are surrounded by it and are a part of it.
What he wants is some sort of "evidence" for macroevolution beyond the proximate causes that we know. But science wants proximal causes for evolution, including "macroevolution", and this is what it finds. This is all that it can be expected to find, since it insists on using proximally linked causes in its evidence, as opposed to the philosophizing about the "Grand Cause". We have found the mechanisms of evolution, and the patterns to be expected from "RM + NS" (plus other mechanisms of "selection" and bottlenecking).
The genetic material we found is what was needed for evolution, and what would seem unlikely for a perfect creation to have in it. That is to say, we have found the proximate causes of "macroevolution" operating. This was needful, but evolution passed this test.
Dave wants something like God to explain "macroevolution", otoh, because he equates evolution with his origins myth. No, we do not accept Causes that are not seen to be acting, we accept the mutations and selections of those mutations as the sort of mechanism that evolution demands and requires, both as a science of proximal causes, and as a theory peculiar to biology.
Could something be intervening in the course of evolution? See, here is where it is appropriate to demand evidence for "macroevolution". We don't know what might have intervened in the past, but we know that something could have. Hence, evidence is required for past "macroevolution" if it is going to be properly accepted. Since we've found such evidence in abundance, some through predictive (and other) paleontology, and much more in the genomes of organisms, we have high confidence that the proximal causes necessary for evolution that we have identified happening, also happened in the past (or at least any other mechanisms left essentially the same pattern of derivation).
We have our proximate causes, then. The IDists/creationists have no cause at all, but only an analogy that on the face of it appears flawed, and which more tellingly cannot be backed up through evidence for active proximal causes. Evolution is active today, while any number of IDists and creationists claim that the proximal causes of "type creation" are lost to the past. We can and do demonstrate how changes occur, but the IDist cannot demonstrate how anything was "caused by the designer".
If you learned that a car company puts all their money in advertising and publicity, to show how cool their cars are, and NOTHING in research to make them better and safer -in fact, they don't have an R&D department at all- would you buy a car from them?
No, I would not buy the car. And I do realize that ICR has a limited research department and I think AIG and DI probably have none at all ... doesn't matter because the fact is that THE DATA IS THE DATA, regardless of the source. Creationists really don't care a hoot about the beliefs of the guy digging up the fossil or mapping the genome or what have you. What we are interested in is the INTERPRETATION of the data. And we do realize that you need qualified experts in many fields to be able to INTELLIGENTLY analyze the data. At this point in my study of the whole origins debate, it is too early for me to be able to say with strong assurance that ICR and AIG and DI have well qualified experts in many fields. I have assumed they did in past years without drilling into them in great detail. Now that I have begun this very detailed investigation, I have found one major goof (or lie, not sure which yet) by Carl Wieland (the chimp chromosome thing). If I find a lot of these types of wrong information, obviously I will begin to question the reliability of the whole organization, question their motives, etc. This has not yet occurred, but I'm sure you will help me on this quest. That is one reason I am here and not debating over at DI (as someone has suggested).
AF Dave said ...
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It's meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system. I'm sure its quite meaningful at explaining HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WORKS.
Faid responded ...
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Um Dave, I dunno what AIG says, but the research presented in the trial was about the evolution of the immune system.
So let us look at the relevant testimony because this is very important that there be no misunderstanding ...
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Q. We'll get back to that. Now, these articles rebut your assertion that scientific literature has no answers on the origin of the vertebrate immune system? A. No, they certainly do not. My answer, or my argument is that the literature has no detailed rigorous explanations for how complex biochemical systems could arise by a random mutation and natural selection and these articles do not address that. Q. So these are not good enough? A. They're wonderful articles. They're very interesting. They simply just don't address the question that I pose. Q. And these are not the only articles on the evolution of vertebrate immune system? A. There are many articles. Q. Okay. So there's at least fifty more articles discussing the evolution of the immune system? A. And midpoint I am, I certainly haven't had time to look through these fifty articles, but I still am unaware of any that address my point that the immune system could arise or that present in a detailed rigorous fashion a scenario for the evolution by random mutation and natural selection of the immune system. Q. Is that your position today that these articles aren't good enough, you need to see a step-by-step description? A. These articles are excellent articles I assume. However, they do not address the question that I am posing. So it's not that they aren't good enough. It's simply that they are addressed to a different subject. Q. And I'm correct when I asked you, you would need to see a step-by-step description of how the immune system, vertebrate immune system developed? A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions. Q. And you haven't undertaken to try and figure out those? A. I am not confident that the immune system arose through Darwinian processes, and so I do not think that such a study would be fruitful. Q. Origin and Evolution of the Vertebrate Immune System, by Pasquier. Evolution and Vertebrate Immunity, by Kelso. The Primordial Vrm System and the Evolution of Vertebrate Immunity, by Stewart. The Phylogenesis of Immune Functions, by Warr. The Evolutionary Mechanisms of Defense Reactions, by Vetvicka. Immunity and Evolution, Marchalonias. Immunology of Animals, by Vetvicka. You need some room here. Can you confirm these are books about the evolution of the immune system? A. Most of them have evolution or related words in the title, so I can confirm that, but what I strongly doubt is that any of these address the question in a rigorous detailed fashion of how the immune system or irreducibly complex components of it could have arisen by random mutation and natural selection. Q. And the fifty-eight articles, some yes, some no? A. Well, the nice thing about science is that often times when you read the latest articles, or a sampling of the latest articles, they certainly include earlier results. So you get up to speed pretty quickly. You don't have to go back and read every article on a particular topic for the last fifty years or so. Q. And you conclude from them that certain structures are irreducibly complex that could not have evolved through natural selection, and therefore are intelligently designed? A. I conclude from them that we see very detailed molecular machinery in the cell, that it strongly looks like a purposeful arrangement of parts, that in fact a purposeful arrangement of parts is a hallmark of intelligent design. I surveyed the literature and I see no Darwinian explanations for such things. And when one applies one's own reasoning to see how such things would be addressed within a Darwinian framework it's very difficult to see how they would, and so one concludes that one explanation, Darwinian processes, doesn't seem to have a good answer, but that another explanation, intelligent design, does seem to fit better.
After reading through this, I think my statement above is valid, but could be stronger and more clear, so let me add to it.
The stack of 50+ books are meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system. I'm sure they quite meaningful at explaining how the immune system works and I'm sure they are quite full of SINCERE ATTEMPTS to explain the origin of the immune system.
There ... is that better? If you read the testimony above, this is what Behe is saying and I strongly agree with him. Again, let's reiterate what Behe (and I) (and all Creationists) are looking for ...
A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.
Notice also that Behe (and I) think that spending one's time to search for this is, to put it politely as Behe did, UNFRUITFUL. I can think of many other, less polite adjectives to describe the wisdom of attempting such a search, but I'm trying to practice what I preach and be nice, so I will refrain, but you get the idea.
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PS. the question mark in "ID?Creos" was supposed to be a slash, but I like it better that way. "ID? Nah, Creos".
Cute. And I happen to agree with you on this point. And I do have my own version: Evos? Nah, Flat-earthers. :-) Just kidding here. I know everyone here is very intelligent even though I disagree with some of your interpretations.
Renier-- Thanks for the analysis of the Vitamin C issue. You are correct that this requires careful analysis. I will be taking some time to do just that starting with what you have written.
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The reason, Dave is that most people are stupid. Yes, that's right. Stupid.
I would agree that the advent of government involvement in education in Western society has, in fact been a colossal failure. I might take this opportunity to point out, though, that even with private schools, self study, excellent colleges and the like, it appears that much learning does not always yield smarts, unfortunately. Or maybe the better term would be wisdom instead of smarts. There have been many people down through history who had much learning, but did incredibly unwise things or made incredibly unwise statements-- Galileo's opponents being a case in point. I believe--but have not proven yet to my satisfaction (it's still a hypothesis)--that this exact situation exists today with Neo-Darwinists. They have much learning and know many facts and possess much knowledge, but in my opinion are making incredibly unwise statements when they assert that "flippers came from feet" and "we see life because of abiogenesis millions of years ago", etc. This by itself is very unwise, but then to go further and not only assert things which don't make sense to a lot of people, but also vilify others who try to propose alternatives that they honestly feel DO make sense, is INCREDIBLY UNWISE to me. In my opinion, there are hordes of Neo-Darwinists sitting on a very thin branch, with the "saw" of scientific evidence slowly cutting through it, the ID/Creo people are offering an escape ladder, and the ND's are spitting on them.
RICHARD DAWKINS MISIDENTIFIES "DUCKS"
I will repeat my quote of Richard Dawkins because (a) I am NOT "quote mining" (maybe I should just quote the whole chapter?) and (b) it is worth repeating because it drives home my point so well. Dawkins spends an entire chapter on bat echolation in The Blind Watchmaker and then says
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I hope the reader is as awestruck as I am, and as William Paley would have been, by these bat stories. My aim has been in one respect identical to Paley's aim. I do not want the reader to underestimate the prodigious works of nature and the problems we face explaining them. (p. 37)
then he says
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We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully 'designed' to have come into existence by chance. (p. 43)
This is HUGE and I do not want my readers to miss this. Here is one of "world's most brilliant minds) (according to some vote) spending AN ENTIRE CHAPTER ON A SINGLE WONDER OF NATURE -- Bat Echolocation and admitting that he is "awestruck" and does not underestimate the "prodigious work of nature" and "the problems we face explaining them." After standing in awe of this stuff, he then spends the next 9 chapters telling us why this is not ACTUAL design, but APPARENT DESIGN ... i.e. "It LOOKS like a duck, WALKS like a duck, QUACKS like a duck, but let me spend the next NINE CHAPTERS trying to convince you that it's NOT a duck **cough** **retch** **die**
This is HUGE, folks, and we are just getting started. I will make this prediciton ... there will come a day soon when the name of Darwin and all his disciples, like Richard Dawkins will be relegated to the ashheap of scientists whose theories were wrong and whose name people remember, not for the good they did, but for the prodigious blunder they made.
Glen Davidson ...
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We're herd animals, and we are intelligent herd animals for the most part. Afdave **cough** (I meant to say the Neo-Darwinist) illustrates this fact over and over again.
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Look at Afdave's argument. Clearly it is fallacious by any standard, but it is also carefully drawn (though it was hardly invented by Afdave) to avoid the fact that the only explanation for current and fossil forms of life that has managed to cross borders, religions, ethnic groups, politics, and intellectual inheritances, is evolutionary theory. Russian atheists, American Catholics and mainline Protestants, scientists, intellectuals, Japanese Shintoists (initially, anyhow, though I don't know if Shinto holds up well alongside modern science), Muslim thinkers, Hindus, Jainists, and traditional religionists like native Americans, have all been able to comprehend and accept the evidence for evolution. Herd thought?[YES]
You guessed it, Glen. My thought exactly. (Attention Quote Mine Police: Glen really said "No" -- I'm putting words in his mouth)
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Evolutionary theory is extraordinarily successful by the standards of any startup of a new religion.
Yes. And so was Islam. And your point is? Possibly that this means AF Dave should accept it as true? I see.
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The only universally-acceptable origins-of-life idea is evolutionary theory
never mind the small detail that no one has the slightest idea how it arose. Francis Crick was so perplexed that he proposed "Panspermia".
Chris Hyland ...
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Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed.
Trivial? How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed. Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed. To me, this is in no way trivial.
Glen Davidson ...
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Well, you're too stupid and ignorant even to respond to my authoritative analysis, moron ... If you ever can make an intelligent remark, please do so, cretin ... There is virtually no chance that you will ever be anything except a stupid and ignorant little ape, Dave. The biggest reason of all is that you only sneer at expertise of all kinds, while clinging to your tiny collection of knowledge as if it were Eternal Truth, as do all bigots.
Wow Glen, if words could kill! Have you found this debating technique to be effective for you?
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However, real scientists do not care a fig about Dawkins' incorrect notions about life "appearing designed", for on the face of it, life does not appear designed. I will grant that it may appear "miraculous" or "spiritual", depending on definitions and contexts, but it does not appear designed.
Are you telling me that Richard Dawkins is not a real scientist?
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The most truly embarrassing thing is that religious apologists like Afdave think that life looks designed like machines.
Why don't you call Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences and tell him he is an embarrasment to you. Here is his quote again ...
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We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein [ba]machines?[/b] Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).
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Do you want medical testing to be done on our relatives, the apes, or would you prefer that it be done on birds? And can you think through the implications of why medical testing is done on monkeys and apes just prior to humans, or are you going to just drivel on in your ignorance and prejudice?
If you read what I wrote, you will see that I acknowledge that human BODIES are very similar to the apes. I even acknowledge that Chromosome 2 in humans does in fact appear to be fused from 2 chromosomes in chimps. But to me it is a different matter then to say definitively that they did in fact fuse. Also, let me reiterate what I have said before that my hypothesis regarding humans and apes is that humans have something additional, something invisible, that is very different from the apes, and that this difference is quite crucial. I will be presenting evidence for this soon.
Norm Doering ...
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Meyer doesn't warrant special attention in a search term because his arguments are stolen from old and moldy arguments that were refuted before he made them. Try searching for "Big Bang Argument for the Existence of God," "Teleology," "Prime Mover."
Or maybe the reason is because no one HAS BEEN ABLE to refute him? I searched the archive below and found nothing that refutes Meyer's "Cosmic Fine Tuning" argument. In fact, the article from Talk Origins that I posted does not in any way attempt to refute it. Don't you think this would be the FIRST thing they do if it could be refuted?
Talk Origins Index to Creationist Claims CE400: Cosmology (see also CI300: Anthropic principle) CE401. There are too few supernova remnants for an old universe. CE410. Physical constants are only assumed constant. CE411. The speed of light has changed. CE411.1. Physicists found that the speed of light was once faster. CE412. Gravitational time dilation made distant clocks run faster. (see also CF210: Radiometric dating assumes constant rates.) CE420. The big bang theory is wrong. CE421. The cosmos has an axis, contrary to big bang models. CE425. Red shift comes from light aging, not expansion of the universe. CE440. Where did space, time, energy, and laws of physics come from? CE441. Explosions such as the big bang do not produce order or information.
You are going to have to better than send me off on a Google hunt if you want me to believe that "Cosmic Fine Tuning" has been refuted. Try refuting me point by point with linked support.
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Spacetime, the fabric of the universe isn't really nothing. Look up the term "Casimir effect."
I agree. The term is used by Creationists out of convenience and the need to use SOME word. Maybe we should say "apparent nothing."
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Nothing is explained by proposing an unknown entity with unknown powers. You're explaining the known in terms of the unknown.
Yes, actually it is ... quite well. Remember my example of the native who has never seen an airplane before? He proposes an unknown (the Cessna factory) to explain the new phenomenon (the airplane) in terms THAT HE ALREADY KNOWS (canoes), hence his fairly accurate statement considering his limited observation and experience, "A brilliant sky-canoe maker must have built this!" Would you like more examples?
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Religions, at least those of Judeo-Christian family, must start with a core metaphysical assumption about mind (of an entity with will, planning, intention, foresight and understanding) being the primordial stuff and cause of the universe.
My discussion has nothing to do with religion and I do not consider myself to be religious. I am trying to explain the phenomena in the universe by the most sensible explanations. Religion to me is man made stuffy ritual ... robes, candles, homina-hominas and the like. Would it surprise you to know that I don't think God is religious? Or Jesus either? Well ... that's my opinion.
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Creation myths are teleological and naturalism undermines teleology by finding non-mind, (rules of material interaction without any mind stuff like choice, will or intention coming into play), as an explanation.
There are in fact many creation myths. But my opinion is that there is only one true, earliest, eyewitness account from which all the myths were then derived with various levels of deletions, modifications and embellishments.
Secondly, naturalism only undermines teleology if it explains the evidence BETTER. It is my goal of this exercise to show you that Teleology is in fact the better, more sensible explanation.
Faid said ...
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The anthropic principle is examined thoroughly in the very talkorigins page you quoted
Really? Where? Could you cut and paste the section? I looked and did not find it. Also, why would not the author have refuted the section I quoted if he thought he could have?
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As for your "biological machines" argument, this has been demonstrated repeatedly to be based on loaded terms: Labelling living things "machines" to argue that they are designed, presupposes that they are designed.
I propose that the labeling is complained about only by those who have no other way to complain that their view might be questioned, i.e. they don't have anything sensible to counter with, so they have to say crazy things like "your terms are loaded." As for my calling them machines, talk to Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences. He is more of an authority than I. Also, let me correct you ... I do not PRE-suppose design. I PROPOSE design, then test the validity to see if it is the best among competing hypotheses. There is a BIG difference.
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With the same logic, we should argue that those round volcanic rocks were the marbles of giants, because they look like big stone marbles. Now, the reasons those rocks are round are pretty much the same (as far as the fundamental laws of physics are concerned) with the reasons marbles are made round- but that is no proof that they are, in fact, marbles -as I'm sure you agree.
I do agree. But have ever studied the differences between marble/round rocks and biological machines? I don't think you need to study this b/c this is obvious. This is not a valid refutation of my argument.
Eric Murphy ...
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Actually, Dave, the differences between humans and chimps, compared to e.g. the differences between humans and bacteria, are practically invisible. Humans are basically taller, balder, weaker, and smarter chimps. I fail to understand why this presents a problem for you.If you want to say there are spiritual differences between a human and chimp that amount to some sort of unbridgeable gulf, that's fine, but you're not talking about science anymore (to the extent you ever were).
The proper definition of science should include trying to explain the phenomena in the universe, where ever that may lead. If it leads us to invisible entities, why is that a problem? Are not quarks invisible and rather abstract and hard to define? Ditto for multiple universes, the Casimir Effect and a host of other things?
Norm quoted someone who said ...
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Since then, biologists have proposed gradual, stepwise pathways for all six of those systems. (Behe's supposedly irreducibly complex systems)
Yes. After Behe's book they tried. But even if there were a few before, they were unconvincing attempts. See discussion above RE: Dover testimony. Here's an example of a failed (in my opinion) attempt. You see if YOU think the attempt was successful.
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One plausible path for the evolution of flagella goes through the following basic stages (keep in mind that this is a summary, and that each major co-option event would be followed by long periods of gradual optimization of function):
a. A passive, nonspecific pore evolves into a more specific passive pore by addition of gating protein(s). [How? In detail please. By magic? By what selective pressure? What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?] Passive transport converts to active transport by addition of an ATPase [Ditto above questions]that couples ATP hydrolysis to improved export capability. This complex forms a primitive type-III export system.
b. The type-III export system is converted to a type-III secretion system (T3SS) by addition of outer membrane pore proteins (secretin and secretin chaperone) from the type-II secretion system. These eventually form the P- and L-rings, respectively, of modern flagella. The modern type-III secretory system forms a structure strikingly similar to the rod and ring structure of the flagellum (Hueck 1998; Blocker et al. 2003).
[How? In detail please. By magic? By what selective pressure? What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]
c. The T3SS secretes several proteins, one of which is an adhesin (a protein that sticks the cell to other cells or to a substrate). Polymerization of this adhesin forms a primitive pilus, an extension that gives the cell improved adhesive capability. After the evolution of the T3SS pilus, the pilus diversifies for various more specialized tasks by duplication and subfunctionalization of the pilus proteins (pilins).
[How? In detail please. By magic? By what selective pressure? What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]
d. An ion pump complex with another function in the cell fortuitously becomes associated with the base of the secretion system structure, converting the pilus into a primitive protoflagellum. The initial function of the protoflagellum is improved dispersal. Homologs of the motor proteins MotA and MotB are known to function in diverse prokaryotes independent of the flagellum.
[How? In detail please. By magic? By what selective pressure? What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]
e. The binding of a signal transduction protein to the base of the secretion system regulates the speed of rotation depending on the metabolic health of the cell. This imposes a drift toward favorable regions and away from nutrient-poor regions, such as those found in overcrowded habitats. This is the beginning of chemotactic motility.
[How? In detail please. By magic? By what selective pressure? What mutation or transposition of what gene(s)?]
f. Numerous improvements follow the origin of the crudely functioning flagellum. Notably, many of the different axial proteins (rod, hook, linkers, filament, caps) originate by duplication and subfunctionalization of pilins or the primitive flagellar axial structure. These proteins end up forming the axial protein family.
Do I make my point clear? This is the point Behe was trying to make in the trial. Let me repeat his statement from above ...
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A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions...Q. And you haven't undertaken to try and figure out those? A. I am not confident that the immune system arose through Darwinian processes, and so I do not think that such a study would be fruitful.
improvius quote mined me ...
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There is really one really big thing I resent. And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals.
and left out the last part that said I also believe this to be a factual error. It is true that I get somewhat emotional, but the emotion is generated BECAUSE I believe there is some great error in ND thinking. I've notice some of this emotion going the other direction on this thread as well, have you not? It is understandable on both sides of the debate ... we are human, not rocks, thus we have emotions.
Glen said ...
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What Afdave fails to recognize in the area of origins is the importance of establishing proximate causes, of showing how one event causes another one.
What I am doing, Glen, is showing everyone why MY proposed proximate cause makes more sense than YOUR proposed proximate cause for explaining the phenomena in the universe.
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But what we need for any ID hypothesis is a designer who has been shown to design items similar to organisms.
Well, I cannot show Him to you any more than you can show me a fruitfly evolving into a "housefly type insect" or a "foot becoming a flipper."
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This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance.
Yes, but the key difference is that they are SO SO SO SO much more sophisticated. Ask Bill Gates ...
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DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we ve ever created (The Road Ahead,1996: 228).
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What is more, we aren't even satisfied with "intelligence" as a "reason" for human-made machines and art, rather we typically appeal to psychology, evolution, and social causation to explain why and how art is made (as in all historical sciences, we can't fully explain Sumerian art, but we can explain important aspects of it).
You're kidding, right? I will let you take this one back if you want to and I won't even bring it up again.
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This brings up an important fact: triumphant IDists would likely impede investigation into what intelligence is and why it is the way that we find it to be--even if only by suggesting that intelligence is some kind of "universal constant" or "law".
Your implication that IDists are not progressive in science? What about Galileo, Newton, Hooke, Brahe, Copernicus and Huygens? They all believed in Design. Were they anti-progressive?
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IDists analogize wildly to God, but then they fail utterly to be able to identify factors, like evolution, that would constrain God's designs.
What? Constrain God's design? Creationists accept Designed Adaptation that you call evolution. Maybe I'm not following you.
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but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation.
Yes. I predict this will happen soon.
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Dave doesn't like macroevolution, claiming that it has not "been seen". Since, however, macroevolution is predicted to be produced by largely known mechanisms, therefore to produce the sorts of fossils, nested hierarchies, and genomes that we see, it is fair to say that we have observed it, since we are surrounded by it and are a part of it.
No. You have NOT observed it. You have observed what you THINK is evidence for it, but I will show you in time why this fails.
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No, we do not accept Causes that are not seen to be acting, we accept the mutations and selections of those mutations as the sort of mechanism that evolution demands and requires, both as a science of proximal causes, and as a theory peculiar to biology.
Yes. You DO accept Causes that are not seen to be acting. Again, no one has seen feet evolve into flippers, etc.
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We have our proximate causes, then. The IDists/creationists have no cause at all, but only an analogy that on the face of it appears flawed, and which more tellingly cannot be backed up through evidence for active proximal causes.
No. You don't have your proximate causes, then. You don't even have an analogy. We at least have an analogy from our experience. To me, this is far more scientific.
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If this news turns out to be true, even the shaky foundation Meyer built his argument on is shot down:
'Cyclic universe' can explain cosmological constant [URL=http://www.newscientistspace.com/article....ue]http
Thanks. I'll check it out.
And with that, I'll leave you with this parting nugget from Talk Origins ...
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Furthermore, we are beginning to understand the possible physical mechanisms for the appearance of matter from nothing [hmmm... seems like Creationists have said something about this before], and for organization without design.
May God bless all of you (including Glen)! And have a great weekend!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I welcome your intelligent comments. I qualify comments with the modifier 'intelligent' because I have now pretty much heard everything un-intelligent that there is to hear including but not limited to Glen Davidson's detailed and authoritative "Psychoanalysis of AF Dave" (thankyou, Glen ... I have to pay $300/hr for those here in Kansas City),
What you really mean is "I welcome all those comments that I can spin and/or tap dance around. The other 95% are tough questions that show me to be mind-numbingly naive and ignorant. Those I'll just ignore".
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Aftershave's continual attempts to supposedly "Look out for a poor-deluded fellow EE and help him avoid 'getting his ass handed to him'".
Hasn't worked though, has it. Every day we see another steaming plate of deef fried AFDave cheeks being delivered.
Oh well, don't take it personally Dave. You're not the first arrogant but hopelessly ignorant YEC to come through here, and you won't be the last. Isn't this a great country where even an ex AF pilot can make himself look like a total idiot on a public forum!
Strike three Dave, you're out.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
If I find a lot of these types of wrong information, obviously I will begin to question the reliability of the whole organization, question their motives, etc. This has not yet occurred, but I'm sure you will help me on this quest.
Go ahead and dig up more.
Find some more articles on those sites that you find convincing and we'll dig out the lies and show them to you.
That appears to be the only thing you understand in your current state of ignorance.
The stack of 50+ books are meaningless for explaining the ORIGIN of immune system. I'm sure they quite meaningful at explaining how the immune system works and I'm sure they are quite full of SINCERE ATTEMPTS to explain the origin of the immune system.
There ... is that better?
Nope. It's worse than before and shows you haven't comprehended the first thing about how science actually works.
Behe is dependent on a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution. A step-by-step, mutation by mutation, analysis is hardly necessary to establish the evolution of the system when you have comparative immunology, some observed point mutations, known mechanisms for immunological diseases and more.
My discussion has nothing to do with religion and I do not consider myself to be religious. I am trying to explain the phenomena in the universe by the most sensible explanations.
Riiighhht, that's why you include Noah's flood in your origins hypothesis.
That's why you go to Answers in Genesis for your arguments.
That's why you call the "Intelligent Designer" God.
Have you ever though about what intelligence is? Have you ever thought about what your intelligence is? Do you know what "design" is?
Maybe evolution is intelligent. How do you define intelligence? How can you say evolution isn't intelligent? What is it lacking?
Did you know there are mathematical relationships between neural net models and evolutionary programming?
Do you even know what a neural net is?
Do you know what you're talking about when you talk about "intelligence" or "design"? If you don't, then you are using the unknown (to you) to explain the known.
We're herd animals, and we are intelligent herd animals for the most part.
AF Afdave **cough** (I meant to say the Neo-Darwinist) illustrates this fact over and over again.
You think that's witty, or an intelligent response?
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Look at Afdave's argument. Clearly it is fallacious by any standard, but it is also carefully drawn (though it was hardly invented by Afdave) to avoid the fact that the only explanation for current and fossil forms of life that has managed to cross borders, religions, ethnic groups, politics, and intellectual inheritances, is evolutionary theory. Russian atheists, American Catholics and mainline Protestants, scientists, intellectuals, Japanese Shintoists (initially, anyhow, though I don't know if Shinto holds up well alongside modern science), Muslim thinkers, Hindus, Jainists, and traditional religionists like native Americans, have all been able to comprehend and accept the evidence for evolution. Herd thought?
AF [YES]
AF You guessed it, Glen. My thought exactly. (Attention Quote Mine Police: Glen really said "No" -- I'm putting words in his mouth)
Wow, you can take a statement and turn the accusation around. All the while not supporting your dishonest claims. Of course you have supported virtually no non-trivial claim heretofore.
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Evolutionary theory is extraordinarily successful by the standards of any startup of a new religion.
AF Yes. And so was Islam. And your point is?
I made my point, which is that evolutionary theory is successful in a universal sense. Too bad you can't read anything above high school level, and have to conflate the biased myths that I clearly differentiated, remaining in your ignorance and bigotry.
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AF Possibly that this means AF Dave should accept it as true? I see.
You are just about that stupid, aren't you? I, of course, would never argue so stupidly, but then you can hardly understand a discussion about ideas and how and why some are successful, and how and why other ideas are successful. I laid it all out, and you completely missed the point. It's the difference between understanding and not understanding, and you have an immensely long way to go to begin to understand the dynamics of evidence-based systems of thought vs. the dynamics of the mythic beliefs of a religion.
I'll try once more (really more for the benefit of other readers, though): Why do you suppose that a number of Muslims accept evolution, while they do not accept your beliefs? And for once think, don't just react.
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The only universally-acceptable origins-of-life idea is evolutionary theory
AF never mind the small detail that no one has the slightest idea how it arose. Francis Crick was so perplexed that he proposed "Panspermia".
Take a remedial reading course, Dave. In that context I was obviously referring to evolution as the "origins-of-life idea", not to abiogenesis. There is not enough to abiogenesis to claim that there is a theory that is "universally-acceptable".
The reason "origins-of-life" can refer to evolution is that a term like "life's origins" is ambiguous. "Origins-of-life" may refer to either the origins of life in the beginning, or to the origins of the various forms of life.
I never know whether it is your incompetence or your intellectual dishonesty that leads you to such distortions of what another has written. I'm guessing that the two failings sort of merge within your incomprehension.
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[Chris]Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed.
AF Trivial? How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed. Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed. To me, this is in no way trivial.
Dawkins makes the mistake of writing that life appears designed, but he competently and extensively shows how it is not, based upon evidence. You know, Dave, evidence, that concept which remains foreign to you after all of the times that it has been requested and discussed.
So you utilize the fallacies that you know to use, argumentum ad populum and argumentum ad verecundiam. Thus revealing your inability to discuss anything non-trivial yet again.
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Well, you're too stupid and ignorant even to respond to my authoritative analysis, moron ... If you ever can make an intelligent remark, please do so, cretin ... There is virtually no chance that you will ever be anything except a stupid and ignorant little ape, Dave. The biggest reason of all is that you only sneer at expertise of all kinds, while clinging to your tiny collection of knowledge as if it were Eternal Truth, as do all bigots.
AF Wow Glen, if words could kill! Have you found this debating technique to be effective for you?
It is the only thing that does work with bigots who pretend to discuss matters that they don't begin to understand. Unfortunately, it only jolts a few mules into giving up their obstinate prejudices long enough to consider the evidence.
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However, real scientists do not care a fig about Dawkins' incorrect notions about life "appearing designed", for on the face of it, life does not appear designed. I will grant that it may appear "miraculous" or "spiritual", depending on definitions and contexts, but it does not appear designed.
AF Are you telling me that Richard Dawkins is not a real scientist?
Was Physics Today telling us that Einstein was not a real scientist when it discussed several of Einstein's errors? And, can you even understand an intelligent string of material without coming to some unwarranted conclusion, or unwarranted tentative conclusion?
One thing that you so desperately lack is any comprehension that arguments from authority are essentially meaningless. This is not always the case, because of course we rely on competent "authorities" even to relate empirical evidence to us. However, in the matter of Dawkins discussing "appearance of design", he is no expert on this matter, for he knows science, not the history of ideas, nor the phenomenological viewpoint (for instance).
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Why don't you call Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences and tell him he is an embarrasment to you.
Why don't you learn to read Bruce Alberts properly, instead of getting this tidbit, coupled with ID prejudices, from the tendentious and dishonest creationist/ID sources? You have, quite evidently incorrectly, claimed to be skeptical, while you swallow false implications and misrepresentations of people like Alberts, then repeat the pseudoscientists' dishonesty. Many Xians believe these false claims to be against the 9th commandment.
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Here is his quote again ... Quote We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein [ba]machines?[/b] Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).
How can I even discuss things with you, when you don't even know how Alberts is using those words? You simply repeat the mistake you've made all along, confusing biological machines with human-made machines. That the word is the same is the only thing you have going for you, and it doesn't even occur to you that the differences in the "machines" are considerable--not even when you are told this (you're too intellectually dishonest to give proper weight to an intelligent response).
I have not denied that biological machines are "machines" under reasonable definitions. Your ignorance and intellectual dishonesty are not shared by more educated and understanding people, and it behooves you to become curious as to why this is the case.
Can't you even notice that his argument for calling them "machines" is a functional and coordination argument, and not one that mistakes biological machines as being designed? Are you completely without the capacity to comprehend a new thought, or in any case, one not fed to you by liars?
I was recently reading in Science or Nature about teasing information out of cells. One of the important issues brought up is that cells are not designed, meaning that it is not wise to presuppose that cellular automata will be like the machines we design.
And indeed they are not. Cellular parts are not compartmentalized or specialized to the degree that our designed machines are. And crucially, cellular machines are derived (ultimately through genes), utilizing non-obvious solutions for the problems and opportunities that have arisen throughout evolution. Cellular functions are also often redundant. Guess, what, these things that I have mentioned in this paragraph are predicted (in context) by evolutionary theory, and they significantly deviate from designed structures.
Now explain that, for once. I have mentioned this in various ways and places, but you stupidly use same semantic arguments again and again, as if we are as ignorant as you. We, many of us, know the differences between biological machines and designed machines, and all of your incomprehension of how language is used, let alone your ignorance of science, only reinforces our sense of your profound ignorance.
I read stuff somewhat like Alberts' bit all of the time. There is nothing surprising in it, nor in your distortion of what Alberts was actually discussing. It comes from your ignorant herd, and it repels us from your herd again and again.
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Do you want medical testing to be done on our relatives, the apes, or would you prefer that it be done on birds? And can you think through the implications of why medical testing is done on monkeys and apes just prior to humans, or are you going to just drivel on in your ignorance and prejudice?
AF If you read what I wrote, you will see that I acknowledge that human BODIES are very similar to the apes.
I read what you wrote. Ninth commandment again. Do you have any conscience at all?
If you comprehended what I wrote, you would deal with the implications of the similarity of ape and human bodies, rather than drivelling along ignorantly. I asked a largely rhetorical question to set up the next one, then challenged you to think about the evidence intelligently, essentially predicting that you wouldn't. And you didn't.
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I even acknowledge that Chromosome 2 in humans does in fact appear to be fused from 2 chromosomes in chimps.
Yet you think that the claim that organisms "appear designed" has traction, when you admit that chromosome 2 appears to be fused. IOW, life does not appear to be designed, certainly not in some of its parts, but you don't care about that, you simply repeat the claim.
And even though chromosome 2 appears to have undergone an evolutionary change, you don't care about that side of the coin either. "Appearances" matter in one case, even when appearances go against your claim about "design appearances", yet appearances are "meaningless" when they go against your prejudices. You probably have sufficient native intelligence to do better than that, but your cognitive framework and unwillingness to question your a priori beliefs prevent you from using the standards that you (however poorly) tell us that we should use.
It may very well be that chromosome 2's fusion led to a speciation event. That is to say, it is evidence consistent with theoretical macroevolutionary causation. Which means that not only is it derived, it is one of those proximate causes that is necessary to effect RM + NS that we find in the genome(s). Unlike your inability to show evidence of causal processes, we present causal processes to you. You only deny them.
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But to me it is a different matter then to say definitively that they did in fact fuse. Also, let me reiterate what I have said before that my hypothesis regarding humans and apes is that humans have something additional, something invisible, that is very different from the apes, and that this difference is quite crucial. I will be presenting evidence for this soon.
If you do present actual evidence, I'll be shocked.
And of course you're uninterested in what the evidence shows. You have some great "hypothesis" (no doubt borrowed creationist/IDist tripe) that humans have something additional and invisible over the apes. With the promised evidence that has proven so disappointing in the past.
You needn't bother to present your "evidence". Like all of your "evidence", it is no doubt an unoriginal PRATT, one that we have seen too many times, and which is unconvincing even in more competent hands than your own.
Naturally, it'll be some magic that is "evidenced" by arguments that haven't been sound for over two centuries. A soul, or some such claptrap. Something that can be claimed without any real evidence, and thus is not exactly refutable in the way that empirical claims are. At least you seem to be drifting away from scientific claims, as they have never proven to be your friends.
Do you think that we have gone to grad school for nothing, that an engineer is going to use assumptions from useless old philosophies and these tired old arguments are going to trump Nietzsche and other profound thinkers? Or even if we did not know philosophy at all, that we would abandon the use of evidence to follow unevidenced claims and meaningless analogies to proclaim the old prejudices to be correct?
Btw, I see that you did not counter my post on the observed mechanisms of "macroevolution" with a post on the observed mechanisms of design. I don't wonder why.
Trivial? How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed. Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed. To me, this is in no way trivial.
Dawkins makes the mistake of writing that life appears designed,...
Is that a mistake?
What makes something appear designed or not appear designed?
What is design? What does it mean to design something?
If I use a genetic algorithm to "design" a radar system am I designing a radar system?
I would suggest the problem here is the vagueness of our language. I don't think Dawkins made a mistake.
It's not Dawkins' fault that afdave is a moron who just doesn't get it.
Well it does appear that you responded to my post on proximate causes. I thought you might have, but without any fear of being wrong I could post that you didn't counter with a post on the observed mechanisms of design. Instead, the same tedious BS is put out, with you never comprehending how you appear more and more inept and prejudiced with every incompetent statement.
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What Afdave fails to recognize in the area of origins is the importance of establishing proximate causes, of showing how one event causes another one.
AF What I am doing, Glen, is showing everyone why MY proposed proximate cause makes more sense than YOUR proposed proximate cause for explaining the phenomena in the universe.
What proximate cause? You simply tell your little lie.
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But what we need for any ID hypothesis is a designer who has been shown to design items similar to organisms.
AF Well, I cannot show Him to you any more than you can show me a fruitfly evolving into a "housefly type insect" or a "foot becoming a flipper."
I can show you a dinosaur becoming a bird. That you won't recognize the evidence as evidence is part of your ineptitude. Also, that it is evidence from the past is hardly important--all evidence inevitably comes from the past. Your problem with past evidence is another thing that sets you apart from science.
I don't know whether we can precisely show a foot turning into a flipper. Smaller bones don't fossilize well. Hardly matters, though. Tiktaalik was found in a targeted search, not to find intermediates between fish and amphibians (we already had some of those) .per se, but to find an intermediate showing the evolution of legs from fins. Deal with the evidence.
Again you show your ignorance in supposing that a fruitfly is supposed to be able to evolve into a housefly. Perhaps it could (though not identical in genetic material), but it would probably be very difficult for any number of reasons.
And it has been established that you don't care about the evidence that evolution has occurred, so you don't care that fruitflies and houseflies share many genes, and that they fit nicely into cladistic schemes.
Most importantly, yes, you cannot show "Him" to me, but you aren't interested in proximate causes. That was my point. And that you admit that you can't show "Him" to me belies your prior false claim of a proposed proximate cause. Perhaps you are so dull or ignorant as to believe that an invisible and unobserved "entity" counts as a proximate cause in science, but that's your problem.
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This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance.
AF Yes, but the key difference is that they are SO SO SO SO much more sophisticated. Ask Bill Gates ...
See, this is one of the problems with creationism/ID. Never an original thought, an old PRATT from Bill Gates who is not well educated in biology. I don't disagree with him as he meant it, true, but "sophisticated" has an anthropomorphic ring to it, and the term also belies the fact that much of adaptation isn't sophisticated in the design sense at all.
And of course you only consider your PRATT to be key, when biologists pay a good deal of attention to other aspects of the differences between life and designed objects. Mere prejudice again, based in your incomprehension and gee whiz "facts" approach to "science". That marks you as a functional dullard.
What is more, go ahead and consider the fact that life is so much more complicated, and realize that never ever have we observed a designer create anything like this. So you have no observed designer, as I pointed out previously. And you have the facts, though not the intelligence (at least not the educated intelligence) to deal with them sensibly, in order to conclude that no proximate "design" cause for life is known.
I have in many cases pointed out that, among other life aspects, the complexity of life is something that we have never observed intelligent agents to make. It sort of knocks out your analogy, although we have yet to see you abandon an argument just because you have been shown to be wrong.
I suppose I should note that aliens may in fact make machines as complex as life, for all I know. Even then we would likely be able to distinguish between those machines and life, for we have no expectation of aliens producing in ways that mimic the predictions of evolution (unless, of course, they mean to re-create life to see if they can, in which case we'd still probably do best calling it life (since it wasn't designed originally, but was only "designed" to mimic an evolved organism)).
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What is more, we aren't even satisfied with "intelligence" as a "reason" for human-made machines and art, rather we typically appeal to psychology, evolution, and social causation to explain why and how art is made (as in all historical sciences, we can't fully explain Sumerian art, but we can explain important aspects of it).
AF You're kidding, right? I will let you take this one back if you want to and I won't even bring it up again.
It's interesting that you are so ignorant that sophisticated argumentation seems ridiculous to you. Again you sneer at expertise, in order to support your ignorant prejudices, your fragile, pathetic ego.
Crack a book, go back to school, or at least learn how not to act like a fool among the knowledgeable.
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This brings up an important fact: triumphant IDists would likely impede investigation into what intelligence is and why it is the way that we find it to be--even if only by suggesting that intelligence is some kind of "universal constant" or "law".
AF Your implication that IDists are not progressive in science? What about Galileo, Newton, Hooke, Brahe, Copernicus and Huygens? They all believed in Design. Were they anti-progressive?
Another PRATT. I'm sure you've heard the appropriate arguments, and are just trolling here. What is more, I seriously doubt that all of them believed in "design" in the ID sense, though I'll leave it at that since it would be hard to demonstrate (Galileo isn't likely to refute mechanistic notions of creation which weren't current then).
Again the argumentum ad verecundiam, and your total incapacity to counter my own argument. You are one superficial "thinker".
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IDists analogize wildly to God, but then they fail utterly to be able to identify factors, like evolution, that would constrain God's designs.
AF What? Constrain God's design? Creationists accept Designed Adaptation that you call evolution. Maybe I'm not following you.
Of course you're not following me, because you have no concept of the necessity of identifying proximate constrained causation via science. You took this out of a context, which no doubt you did not understand, a context which explained how humans can be considered "proximate causes", namely, because they are constrained (by evolution, physics, etc.).
And no, I can't discuss science on your level, because you know virtually nothing about science. I made a good series of arguments regarding the identification of "design", and you uncomprehendingly settle back into your fog of incomprehension. For those with a modicum of comprehension, I repeat, we cannot identify design because we do not know of any proximate cause which would actually "design" the derivative structures we see in organisms.
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but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation.
AF Yes. I predict this will happen soon.
Of course you predict what you cannot demonstrate. It's an old dodge, kind of the old tribal/herd belief that future battles will vindicate the claims of the "authorities". Once again, you fail even to comprehend what is needed to make a compelling argument.
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Dave doesn't like macroevolution, claiming that it has not "been seen". Since, however, macroevolution is predicted to be produced by largely known mechanisms, therefore to produce the sorts of fossils, nested hierarchies, and genomes that we see, it is fair to say that we have observed it, since we are surrounded by it and are a part of it.
AF No. You have NOT observed it. You have observed what you THINK is evidence for it, but I will show you in time why this fails.
You couldn't show anyone the way out a tepee.
You also miss the fact that we are observing macroevolution all around us, and of course you simply deny excellent evidence any time it is brought up.
You're becoming so redundant, boring, and useless even as a foil to demonstrate the IDiocy of ID and creationism.
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No, we do not accept Causes that are not seen to be acting, we accept the mutations and selections of those mutations as the sort of mechanism that evolution demands and requires, both as a science of proximal causes, and as a theory peculiar to biology.
Yes. You DO accept Causes that are not seen to be acting. Again, no one has seen feet evolve into flippers, etc.
You're too lame even to know the difference between cause and accumulated effects (we may not have seen all of the mechanisms of macroevolution acting "in nature", but we've seen virtually all in the lab, at least). Perhaps some day you will know the difference between cause and effect, but today I simply shake my head at how low your intellectual capacity is.
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We have our proximate causes, then. The IDists/creationists have no cause at all, but only an analogy that on the face of it appears flawed, and which more tellingly cannot be backed up through evidence for active proximal causes.
AF No. You don't have your proximate causes, then. You don't even have an analogy.
So you can only deny the proximate causes, and cannot show that your denial has any basis in fact. I also mentioned several analogies, from languages to "microevolution", but you're too incapable of intellectual discussion even to throw out some tendentious lies about the specific analogies. Just blank denial, which in fact is your modus operandi.
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We at least have an analogy from our experience. To me, this is far more scientific.
Why yes, you have no notion of the necessity or means of backing up analogy. You don't begin to comprehend scientific justification. You have your stupidity, and want to keep it. Then keep it, just don't go lying and showing your ignorance for the rest of your life.
I knew from your first post on PT that you were too intellectually dishonest for me to have a meaningful discussion with you. I have argued this here and at PT, giving probable explanations for it.
But I have still responded to you as if you could read properly, and as if there were an inkling of curiosity, objectivity, and honesty in there somewhere. Primarily as a foil, yes, yet I often enough gave you the benefit of the doubt.
All that you have done is to disgust me. Whether they be the PRATTs, the fallacies, the outright lies, or the inability to comprehend even reasonably intellectual discussion, you are unworthy to engage in further discussion.
I made a number of good arguments, mainly for the sake of lurkers who might be suckered into the blatant nonsense that you spout. They're done, and remain available even to Dave if there is yet a speck of intellectual honesty in him. I can't step into the intellectual sewer he lives in any more, and am done with responding to him for a while (the only likely exception would be if he responded quickly to my previous post), perhaps forever. It's an intention, not a promise, but it is probable. There hasn't been much science here, other than that aimed at the uncomprehending cretinist in our midst, so I may not bother with the rest of "After the Bar Closes" for a while either
<THE DATA IS THE DATA, regardless of the source. Creationists really don't care a hoot about the beliefs of the guy digging up the fossil or mapping the genome or what have you. What we are interested in is the INTERPRETATION of the data. >
Dave,
I had to comment on this - New interpretations of existing data are generated every day in labs around the world (like mine). Such ideas are a dime-a-dozen. But these ideas only gain scientific significance after they are used to generate testable hypotheses and those hypotheses are evaluated and confirmed by the scientific method. ID/creationists DO NOT DO THIS. Until they do their "interpretations" will not be taken seriously by real scientists.
And as others have pointed out, it is clear that your knowledge of basic biology is very limited. So your criticisms are way off the mark.
What makes something appear designed or not appear designed?
What is design? What does it mean to design something?
If I use a genetic algorithm to "design" a radar system am I designing a radar system?
Oh c'mon, I've argued several times that the IDist God is "obviously only able to design using evolutionary algorithms" (genetic algorithms, whatever). Of course "what design is" is in question, which is what I was discussing in one post with respect to the fact that we don't actually stop with "design" as an explanation even when humans do it. Dave wrote, "duh, I don't get it," or its equivalent, but that's Dave for you.
I was, certainly, saying that "organisms don't appear designed" in the sense that the Nature article I mentioned noted that cell parts are "not designed". That is to say, in the sense that we should not be looking for what we might expect from an engineer, but rather we should be looking for co-option and derivation.
It is not beyond the range of possible meanings of the word "design" to say that "evolution designed the flagellum". Occasionally journals will discuss such "designs of evolution", though most of us don't prefer that language--especially not us Americans who are beset by morons.
Still, your points are reasonable in the broader sense, and not a bad addition to the total context.
Oh boy where to begin? Oh well, most of what you said has been covered by others... Just a few pointers:
First of all, please drop the Dawkins issue. If you are actually trying to make a point, it does not help you, and only makes us irritated. Like I said in my previous post (and you obviously missed it), there is no "paradox" here. Dawkins does not admit the plausibility of design; he refers to the improbability of emergence of life in it's present complexity. Those two things are connected only in your mind, that disregards evolution and thinks they were created in the first place. However, everyone agrees with what Dawkins says (well, except those medieval physiologists that believed in spontaneous generation of flies and worms and rats- and those were also good christians, you know), and that is because evolution is not a purely random process. Maybe I should say that again: Evolution is not a purely random process. I can't say whether you understand it or not, but, to use your old catchy example: Dawkins does not try to show that, although it walks and quacks like a duck, it's not- he shows that it neither walks nor quacks like a duck. Because it's not one. I dunno if you laughed and theatrically tossed his book away after reading the part you quoted, but I think maybe you should have spent some more time on it... Maybe then you'd know what I mean.
About Behe: Do you even begin to understand that, what you quoted is the very testimony that made him look like a fool in court? Probably not... OK, from the beginning: All that literature was about the evolution of the immune system. Period. Now, what Behe says in his IC theory is this: That a system is irreducibly complex when there is no possible evolutionary pathway to produce it. Not that there is "not enough evidence", or that "nothing's proved". That any attempt to come up with a scnario of origin fails a priori, because it is a scientific and logical impossibility. Well, that is what all the literature presented was about. Research that shouldn't exist. When faced with it, Behe said he didn't believe in it (although he never read it- after all, it wasn't supposed to exist)- and, when pressed, he completely forgot the "principle" of his theory and started to demand ridiculous amounts of evidence that, if they were to be demanded all the time, all of genetics and biology would be rendered useless- "unfruitful", if you like. It's like my favorite Pyramids example:
-The pyramids had to be made by aliens- saying that the egyptians made them, with the means of the time, is just impossible. I mean, look at them! Can YOU think of a way to make them?
-Well, they could have used this and this and that method, in fact the findings show...
-Look, don't bother me with all that. If you wanna prove it, you'll have to show beyond doubt exactly how many the workers were, how many hours they worked a day, how much they ate and drank each day, and also how tall they were and how much they weighed... Oh, and their names. All of them.
-...
-Hah! So, you see, My "Alien" theory remains the only possible scenario!
Dave, what Behe involuntarily demonstrated in court is that his "theory" actually says: "A system is irreducibly complex when you cannot convince me that it's not, and you can't convince me because, well, because". Dishonesty at its best- and IDers still wonder why they lost...
About the "biological machines" thing: Actually, It is your answer, the one I was expecting, that refutes your claims. You say that there are many differences between my rocks example and biological systems. That is true, of course, but there are also major, fundamental differences between living organisms and actual machines: Differences your logic dismisses, to focus on the apparent simillarities- simillarities you try to distinguish and interpret that way in the first place. That is why your logic is loaded, and that is why it is essentialy as flawed as my "volcanic rocks=marbles" example. You want your rocks to be marbles; everything will be examined under that perception.
As for quoting the part I mentioned, about the talkorigins article, I'm once again wondering: Did you actually read this past the part you quoted? Or did you quote it from somewhere else? Anyway, here you go:
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Note that my thesis does not require more than one universe to exist, although some cosmological theories propose this. Even if ours is the only universe, and that universe happened by chance, we have no basis to conclude that a universe without some form of life was so unlikely as to have required a miracle.
It's the argument from probability, Dave. One paragraph down.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I'd also like to add, Dave (not to make you feel persecuted or anything) that you started this thread with the claim that you would provide evidence for (at minimum) three contentions:
1. The Bible is literally inerrant; 2. The earth is not billions of years old, but only thousands of years old; and 3. Evolution cannot explain the origin of species.
So far, I can only point out the obvious: you have presented no, as in none, as in nada, as in the big goose egg, evidence to support any of these contentions. You've presented several thousand words arguing that the evidence showing that none of your contentions is true is not credible, but your arguments haven't held water. So it looks to me like you've set out trying to run a marathon with your shoes tied together. You haven't presented any evidence supporting even one of your contentions, let alone proving any one of them.
So. With all that in mind, would you like to start out with an easy one? Can you present evidence that the earth is only thousands of years old?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'd also like to add, Dave (not to make you feel persecuted or anything) that you started this thread with the claim that you would provide evidence for (at minimum) three contentions:
1. The Bible is literally inerrant; 2. The earth is not billions of years old, but only thousands of years old; and 3. Evolution cannot explain the origin of species.
Eric-- Have you even read this thread at all? Here's the first thing I said I would discuss ...
A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
I don't think I even touch on the things you mention anywhere in my Hypothesis, correct me please if I am wrong.
I do believe those things, but they are not covered in what I said I was going to address. Maybe I will cover them after this project.
Do you have any refutation of my evidence for Point 1?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eric-- Have you even read this thread at all? Here's the first thing I said I would discuss ...
A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
Dave, I said a long time ago that if you are trying to convince people that there is a god, you're wasting your time. Half the people here (or more) probably already believe that there is a god. Everyone here probably thinks that it is outside the realm of science to either prove or disprove there is a god.
If you're planning on proving that God exists before you move onto any of the other assertions in your hypothesis, I suggest you've got it exactly backwards, and element "A" of your hypothesis should be the last thing you attempt to prove. Otherwise, you're assuming what you're attempting to prove.
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I don't think I even touch on the things you mention anywhere in my Hypothesis, correct me please if I am wrong.
You're wrong. Your hypothesis has 16 elements, labeled "A" through "P." The inerrancy of the Bible is implied or assumed by elements C, D, E, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, O, and P. The young age of the earth is implied or assumed by elements C, D, H, I, K, M, and P. While none of the elements of your hypothesis directly touch on attempting to disprove the reality of evolution, most of your posts so far have, which leads me to wonder what you mean when you say you're not planning on addressing the issue.
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I do believe those things, but they are not covered in what I said I was going to address. Maybe I will cover them after this project.
This statement leads me to wonder if you've read this thread.
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Do you have any refutation of my evidence for Point 1? [sic]
Positing an all-powerful creator god ab initio is not a "hypothesis." It's an assumption. If you think anyone here is going to try to "prove" there is no god, you're mistaken. I doubt it's possible even in principle to "prove" there is no god.
If you're not going to try to prove (or at least provide evidence for) the three propositions I've listed, everyone is going to lose interest in this thread very quickly.
Also, I pointed out many posts ago that you claimed you had evidence to support these three assertions, and you did not object. Have you since changed your mind?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Also, I pointed out many posts ago that you claimed you had evidence to support these three assertions, and you did not object. Have you since changed your mind?
Of course AFDave has evidence. He just has to do a Google search, then throw out all the hits that don't come from AIG or any of the other loony tunes Creationist sites. Just like Behe, AFDave doesn't need to read the primary scientific literature because he already knows what lies those evil atheist scientists concoct.
Science understanding the AFDave way - it's quick, it's easy, and even an arrogant, deceitful, scientifically illiterate evangelist can do it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
There is really one really big thing I resent. And that is the idea that humans are nothing more than highly evolved animals.
and left out the last part that said I also believe this to be a factual error.
BS. You said that you resented the idea itself. Is this true or not? Do you or do you not find the very idea that humans are evolved apes offensive?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Biological systems only trivially appear to be designed.
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Trivial? How does this mesh with the fact that Richard Dawkins wrote an ENTIRE BOOK trying to tell people that this stuff IS NOT designed. Answer: A LOT of people think this stuff at least APPEARS designed. To me, this is in no way trivial.
Richard Dawkins writes popular science books. To a scientist who stuides these systems they don't look designed at all.
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I do agree. But have ever studied the differences between marble/round rocks and biological machines? I don't think you need to study this b/c this is obvious. This is not a valid refutation of my argument.
Is the fact that they don't look designed to the hundreds of physicists, computer scientists and engineers who study these systems not a refutation of your argument? The biologists tell these people how they expect the systems to have evolved, and the engineers tell us based on their knowledge of designed systems, what different properties these evolved systems should have, and indeed they do. Biological systems only appear to be designed at a glance.
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Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.
If this is what you need to agree that a system is not designed then frankly that's just tough.
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Quote This is because animals are very different from machines, even at a cursory glance.
Yes, but the key difference is that they are SO SO SO SO much more sophisticated. Ask Bill Gates ...
Quote DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we ve ever created (The Road Ahead,1996: 228).
You can use arguments from ignorance all you like it won't get you anywhere.
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Quote but if we could not find causes of evolution in the genome/environment, we would have to abandon evolution as an explanation. Yes. I predict this will happen soon.
Based on what evidence, every year we understand more and more about how evolution works, no evidence has been found that contradicts it. You can hope if you want but it is dishonest to say that there is any evidence evolution id on the verge of being disproved.
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Again, no one has seen feet evolve into flippers, etc.
But you seem to be under the impression we have no idea how it happened. Shaping limb morphology is fairly simple for evolution to do. For a start animals with toes develop a webbed foot, and then cells die off to form the toes. It would be a simple matter of altering certain gene expressions to cause a flipper like foot. Then perhaps an increase in size and fusing the toe bones, also not a problem. Thats a start.
A. Not only would I need a step-by-step, mutation by mutation analysis, I would also want to see relevant information such as what is the population size of the organism in which these mutations are occurring, what is the selective value for the mutation, are there any detrimental effects of the mutation, and many other such questions.
And I would need a step-by step, point-by point analysis, backed up by independent, third-party witnesses to subscribe to ANY of the mythological creation stories that float around in varying orders of popularity.
I thought, Dave, that you would be offering some. So far I've wasted copious amounts of my time reading your inane rants, waiting on your evidences. The old saying goes "put up or shut up." You aren't "putting up," Dave... shall I finish the thought, or can you connect the dots on your own?
To a scientist who stuides these systems they don't look designed at all.
I think that needs to be explained in more detail. I don't think afdave knows why that is. There are ways to tell an evolved system from a "designed" system and we should clue afdave into them.
One clue is suboptimal design where we can imagine making a more efficient system. Within that category are vestigial features, another clue to evolution over design.
With evolution new traits must be modifications of previously existing traits. This is called "historical constraint" and it shows up in even good "designs."
From this we can get predictions that confirm evolutionary causes. For example, "junk DNA" is expected to have lots of vestigial DNA and that is a prediction from evolution that is yet to be fully demonstrated.
But we also have to look at human designed systems and ask if we see vestigial features there. Is DOS on PCs a vestigial program?
It is obvious to me that many of you do not accept "Cosmic Fine Tuning" and "Biological Machines" as evidence that supports the idea of an Intelligent Creator (or at least Designer), in spite of the fact that Talk Origins does not refute Cosmic Fine Tuning when we all know they would if they could, and many scientists (non-YEC/ID) have written about the wonders of biological "machines" and "factories". Soooo ....
Let me backtrack and re-establish those points first.
**********************COSMIC FINE TUNING*******************************
Again, Meyer summarizes evidence for Cosmic Fine Tuning quite well ...
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THE BIG BANG AND GENERAL RELATIVITY During the twentieth century, a quiet but remarkable shift has occurred in science. Evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology now tells a very different story than did the science of the late nineteenth century. Evidence from cosmology now supports a finite, not an infinite universe, while evidence from physics and biology has reopened the question of design. In 1915-16, Albert Einstein shocked the scientific world with his theory of general relativity (Chaisson & McMillan 1993: 604-5). Though Einstein s theory challenged Newton s theory of gravity in many important respects, it also implied (as did Newton s) that the universe could not be static, but instead was simultaneously expanding and decelerating. According to relativity theory, massive bodies alter the curvature of space so as to draw nearby objects to them. Einstein s conception of gravity implied that all material bodies would congeal unless the effects of gravitation were continually counteracted by the expansion of space itself (Eddington 1930). Einstein s theory thus implied an expanding, not a static, universe. Einstein disliked this idea, in part for philosophical reasons. An actively expanding universe implied a beginning to the expansion, and thus, to the universe. As the Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann (1922: 377-86) showed, general relativity implied that, in the words of Stephen Hawking, at some time in the past (between ten and twenty thousand million years ago) the distance between neighboring galaxies must have been zero (1988: 46). Relativity theory suggested a universe of finite duration racing outward from an initial beginning in the distant past. For Einstein, however, a definite beginning to the universe seemed so counterintuitive that he introduced an arbitrary factor in his theory to eliminate the implication. In 1917, he postulated a repulsive force, expressed by his cosmological constant, of precisely the magnitude necessary to counteract the expansion that his theory implied.1 Like Newton, Einstein inadvertenly concealed an important cosmological reality implicit in his theory. Yet the heavens would soon talk back. In the 1920s-30s, Edwin Hubble, a young lawyer-turned-astronomer, made a series of observations that shocked even Einstein. While working at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in Southern California, Hubble discovered for the first time that our Milky Way galaxy is but one of many galaxies spread throughout the universe. More important, he discovered that the galaxies beyond the Milky Way are rapidly receding from ours. Hubble noticed that the light from these distant galaxies was shifted toward the red-end of the electromagnetic spectrum. This red-shift suggested recessional movement, for the same reason the so-called Doppler Effect that a train whistle drops in pitch as a train moves away from a stationary observer. Hubble also discovered that the rate at which these other galaxies retreat from ours is directly related to their distance from us just as if the universe were undergoing a spherical expansion in all directions from a singular explosive beginning the big bang (1929: 168-73). During the remainder of the twentieth century, physicists and cosmologists formulated several alternatives to the Big Bang theory that preserved an infinite universe. Some of these cosmological models were formulated for explicitly philosophical reasons. For example, in the late 1940s, Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi proposed the steady state model to explain galactic recession without invoking the objectionable notion of a beginning. According to their theory, as the universe expands new matter is generated spontaneously in the space between expanding galaxies. On this view, our galaxy is composed of matter that spontaneously popped into existence between other galaxies, which in turn came out of the empty space between other galaxies, and so on (Bondi & Gold 1948; Hoyle 1948). Thus, the steady state theory denied the need to postulate a singular beginning, and reaffirmed an infinite universe without beginning or end. By the mid-1960s, however, Hoyle s theory had run aground as the result of a discovery made by two employees of Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. According to the steady state model, the density of the universe must always remain constant, hence the creation of new matter as the universe expands. Yet in 1965, the Bell Lab researchers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, found what physicists believed to be the radiation left over from the universe s initial hot, high-density state (1965: 419-21). The discovery of this cosmic background radiation, at roughly 2.7 degrees Kelvin equivalent, proved decisive. Physicist George Gamow had predicted its existence as a consequence of the Big Bang (1946: 572-73). Yet advocates of the steady state acknowledged that, given their model, such radiation should not exist. The steady state theory also implied that galaxies should have radically different ages, but advances in observational astronomy have revealed that galactic ages cluster narrowly in the middle-age range. By the 1970s, even Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle had abandoned their theory (Kragh 1993: 403). Following the demise of the steady state model, the oscillating universe model arose as an alternative to a finite universe. Advocates of this model envisioned a universe that would expand, gradually decelerate, shrink back under the force of its own gravitation, and then, by some unknown mechanism, reinitiate its expansion, on and on, ad infinitum. But, as physicist Alan Guth showed, our knowledge of entropy suggests that the energy available to do the work would decrease with each successive cycle (Guth & Sher 1983: 505-7). Thus, presumably the universe would have reached a nullifying equilibrium long ago if it had indeed existed for an infinite amount of time. Further, recent measurements suggest that the universe has only a fraction about one-fifth of the mass required to create a gravitational contraction in the first place (Peebles 1993: 475-83; Coles & Ellis 1994: 609-13; Sawyer 1992: A5; Ross 1993: 58). Prior to the formulation of the oscillating universe theory, three astrophysicists, Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose, published a series of papers that explicated the implications of Einstein s theory of general relativity for space and time as well as matter and energy (Hawking & Penrose 1970). Previously, physicists like Friedmann showed that the density of the universe would approach an infinite value as one extrapolated the state of the universe back in time. In a series of papers written between 1966-70, Hawking and his colleagues showed that as one extrapolated back in time the curvature of space also approached infinity. But an infinitely curved space corresponds to a radius (within a sphere, for example) of zero and thus to no spatial volume. Further, since in general relativity space and time are inextricably linked, the absence of space implies the absence of time. Moreover, neither matter nor energy can exist in the absence of space. Thus, Hawking s result suggested that general relativity implies that the universe sprang into existence a finite time ago from literally nothing, at least nothing physical. In brief, general relativity implies an absolute beginning of time, before which neither time and space, nor matter and energy, would have existed. The space-time theorem of general relativity was, of course, conditional. It stated that, if general relativity obtains for the universe, then space and time themselves must have originated in the same initial explosion that created matter and energy. In a series of experiments, beginning just two years after Einstein published his results and continuing on to the present, the probable error of general relativity (estimated quantitatively) has shrunk from 10 to 1 to .05 percent, to a confirmation out to the fifth decimal place. Increasingly accurate tests conducted by NASA, such as the hydrogen maser detector carried by a NASA rocket in 1980 and 1994, have continued to shrink the probable error associated with the theory (Ross 1993: 66-67; Vessor 1980: 2081-84). Thus, general relativity now stands as one of the best confirmed theories of modern science. Yet its philosophical implications, and those of the Big Bang theory, are staggering. Taken jointly, general relativity and the Big Bang theory provide a scientific description of what Christian theologians have long described in doctrinal terms as creatio ex nihilo Creation out of nothing (again, nothing physical). These theories place a heavy demand on any proposed causal explanation of the universe, since the cause of the beginning of the universe must transcend time, space, matter, and energy.Link to article
Is this refuted at Talk Origins? No ... all he does at the end of the paragraph is point out in effect "well, maybe that's true in OUR universe, but what about other universes?" Now I don't want to get into other funky ideas like parallel universes as Faid tried to get me to do. My point is made by noting simply that T.O. agrees that Yes, in fact, OUR universe is fine tuned for life. Here's the T.O piece again.
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In recent years, creationist theologians, and even a few physicists, have heavily promoted what they claim is a remarkable fine-tuning of the basic laws and constants of physics, without which life as we know it would never have developed (Barrow, 1986; Rolston III). If the universe had appeared with slight variations in the strengths of the fundamental forces or the masses of elementary particles, that universe would be pure hydrogen at one extreme, or pure helium at the other. Neither would have allowed for the eventual production of heavy elements, such as carbon, necessary for life. Similarly, if gravity had not been many orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetism, stars would not have lived long enough to produce the elements of life. Long before they could fabricate heavy chemical elements, stars would have collapsed. Only the fact that the gravitational force was forty orders of magnitude weaker prevented this from happening. In a calculation similar to Hoyle's, mathematician Roger Penrose has estimated that the probability of a universe with our particular set of physical properties is one part in 1010123 (Penrose 1989: 343). However, neither Penrose nor anyone else can say how many of the other possible universes formed with different properties could still have lead to some form of life. If it is half, then the probability for life is fifty percent. Link to article
Again we have numerous non-YEC/non-ID authors talking about all the wonderful "adaptations" and "molecular machines" and "molecular factories" and many of them trying very hard to say "these LOOK designed, but trust us ... they are not (wink wink)." I won't bore you with Denton and Behe's examples again, but I will repeat this one. Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences, introduced this issue with an article entitled, The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines. In his article, Alberts admits that
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We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as afactory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).
And again, we have Richard Dawkins standing with Paley in amazement at nature's innovations, spending an entire chapter on the intricacies of bat echolocation, then basically saying "We know this LOOKS like a duck, WALKS like a duck, and QUACKS like a duck, but let me spend the next 8 chapters convincing you it IS NOT a duck."
Come guys, this seems like snake oil at its best.
***********************OUR EVIDENCE SO FAR****************************
We observe Cosmic Fine Tuning and we say "Hmmmm ... what a conicidence that all these parameters are just right for life to exist. If any of them were off, we would all die. How can this just be coincidence? Maybe its not!"
We observe Biological Machines and we say "Hmmm ... these are pretty sophisticated and capable little jiggers. They exhibit many technologies FAR beyond some of our own 21st century technology. How do they do that? Could these have self-assembled from the 100 or so elements on the periodic table by themselves. Hmmm ... pretty unlikely. I wonder if they could be designed? Wow! What a thought!"
Now I realize we still have a LONG way to go to prove the God of the Bible, but let's not even go there now ... we'll get there at the right time. The only thing I'm trying to do now is show you ...
HOW UNREASONABLE SOUNDING IT IS TO NOT CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY OF AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER
Forget "God" for now ... forget the Bible for now ... forget inerrancy, and the Flood and all the rest ... let's just deal with this one basic issue. Yes, Eric, we're going to get to age of the earth and all those other things, but let's just get this one out of the way first ... otherwise, the rest doesn't matter.
The two pieces of evidence -- Cosmic Fine Tuning and Bilogical Machines seem HUGE to me.
Can you really with a straight face rule out the possiblity of an Intelligent Designer (even a super alien or a super computer in space) ??
This seems like a massive logical mistake to me.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Although I have not read much about cosmic fine tuning, my concern is this: If there is no divine creator, life can only exist in a universe that has the correct constants. If there is a divine creator, life could be created in a very unhospitable universe. Does this disprove God? No, but the point is there is no proof that these constants were set by a creator. For the purposes of the argument on evolution I am prepared to accept that they are however.
BIOLOGICAL "MACHINES" DO NOT LOOK DESIGNED
I can only say this so many times, if you study biological systems they look like they have evolved. We call them "machines" because they have some trivial similarities to man made machines, that does not mean they are designed. They are complex, this does not mean they are designed. They perform functions, this does not mean they are designed. Dawkins writes popular science books, I will agree that they look designed to a layman who does not have a good grasp of the relevant topics in evolution and biochemistry. I have never used the word machine, and in all my conversations with scientists who study these systems I have never heard the word machine used to describe them. These words are used becuase anthropomorphisms make it easier to teach complex subjects. You can understand what a flagellum is if you think of it as an outboard motor, or a ribosome as a factory that makes proteins, but biologists who study them do not use these words except to teach. Saying that because biologists say the word machine means that they are designed systems is perhaps the worst and least scientific creationist argument I have ever heard.
Have you, and I'm just asking out of the sake of curiosity, ever heard of the concept of a metaphor or similie? I'm just trying to establish a baseline to work from, and want to know if I have to first explain those concept before I then point out the use of such devices by Alberts and others?
We call them "machines" because they have some trivial similarities to man made machines, that does not mean they are designed. They are complex, this does not mean they are designed. They perform functions, this does not mean they are designed. Dawkins writes popular science books, I will agree that they look designed to a layman who does not have a good grasp of the relevant topics in evolution and biochemistry.
Trivial! Trivial! I just choke on that! To me, biological systems are the most profound antithesis of "triviality" that one can possibly imagine!
Have you waded through the supposed scenario for how a flagellum supposedly could have evolved on Talk Origins?
I have and it seems to me to be First Rate Alice in Wonderland! The author proposes this and that and this and that and goes on and on proposing a myriad of things for which I can see absolutely no basis for believing it could possibly happen except for wishful, hopeful thinking.
How is this scientific to discard our intuition about things with "complex specificity" and build grand imaginary castles of how it "might have happened" when we really have never had any experience at all with it ACTUALLY happening that way? Wishful thinking par excellence if you ask me.
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Although I have not read much about cosmic fine tuning, my concern is this: If there is no divine creator, life can only exist in a universe that has the correct constants. If there is a divine creator, life could be created in a very unhospitable universe. Does this disprove God? No, but the point is there is no proof that these constants were set by a creator. For the purposes of the argument on evolution I am prepared to accept that they are however.
Well, yes life could exist in an unhospitable universe, but why in the world would the Creator do that? Then he'd have to basically be performing miracles every nano-second to sustain life. I would not postulate that. This to me has nothing to do with it. I am simply saying this -- nothing else -- that "Doggone it ... this universe sure is suited nicely for life ... how did that happen? Is there maybe, maybe, maybe a possibility that maybe, maybe, maybe "someone" could have set the parameters that way? It seems silly to not even consider this possibility.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Trivial! Trivial! I just choke on that! To me, biological systems are the most profound antithesis of "triviality" that one can possibly imagine!
Want to know what the two most important words in that statement are? "To me." To you, someone who is untrained in biology and has more of a background in engineering, they are the antithesis of triviality. However, to trained and career biologists, it is trivial, and the word "machine" is entirely a metaphor. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Very often in your posts you're using statements showing that you are arguing from personal incredulity, however that's not a position that has any grounding in this kind of debate. That you don't understand something doesn't serve as an arguement against it.
I, for example, can't get through even two paragraphs of quantum theory before my brain starts doing backflips and the words just become meaningless bunches of letters. I do not understand how quantum physics works. However the difference is that I do not then say "well, they must all be WRONG then. There's no way that dern cat can be alive and dead!"
This all gets back to a question I've asked before, and gotten no answer on: Why should your amateur and uneducated opinions be worth more than the expert opinions of entire fields of science?
Have you waded through the supposed scenario for how a flagellum supposedly could have evolved on Talk Origins?
I have and it seems to me to be First Rate Alice in Wonderland! The author proposes this and that and this and that and goes on and on proposing a myriad of things for which I can see absolutely no basis for believing it could possibly happen except for wishful, hopeful thinking.
Dave, these arguments boil down to what Dawkins calls "arguments from psersonal incredulity." You, Dave, simply cannot believe that something like a bacterial flagellum could have evolved.
Do you think that amounts to "evidence" of anything?
Also, you stated a few posts ago that your hypothesis had nothing to do with the impossibility of evolution. Nevertheless, the bulk of your posts on this and other threads discuss that very topic.
You also claimed that your hypothesis does not argue for biblical inerrancy or a young earth. Given that your actions contradict your statements, when can we expect to see actual evidence for biblical inerrancy or a young earth? Or, for that matter, evidence that evolution is impossible? Because so far, you haven't presented any "evidence" of anything.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Can you really with a straight face rule out the possiblity of an Intelligent Designer (even a super alien or a super computer in space) ??
This seems like a massive logical mistake to me.
Dave, it's not our job to prove that God doesn't exist. I've already stated that it is in all likelihood impossible to prove any such thing.
Your job is to prove to us that God does exist. After all, isn't that what your hypothesis claims?
This is exactly how basically all creationists work. They'll make some outlandish claim (e.g., it's impossible for evolution to work), without any evidence whatsoever, and then challenge the scientific community to prove them wrong.
How about you try to persuade us that your hypothesis is correct by providing evidence persuading us that it is correct, rather than just stating it and challenging us to prove that it's wrong? That's not really how science works.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How can we tell the difference the following two possibilities:
1) The universe was intentionally designed “just so” for our benefit. 2) The universe “just happened” this way, and here we are.
Your observation that the second possibility is really, really improbable is correct. But “improbable” is not the same as “impossible”. And no matter HOW improbable something is, if it is not impossible, then it is possible.
The assumption that a deity created all this is AT LEAST as cockamamie as the assumption that it just happened.
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I am simply saying this -- nothing else -- that "Doggone it ... this universe sure is suited nicely for life ... how did that happen? Is there maybe, maybe, maybe a possibility that maybe, maybe, maybe "someone" could have set the parameters that way? It seems silly to not even consider this possibility.
You are more than welcome to consider the possibility. You will not be the first person to ever do so. LOTS of people consider the possibility EVERY DAY. No one is stopping you from considering the possibility. Heck, you are even welcome to formulate a scientific hypothesis and test it. Do THIS, however, and you WILL be the first to ever do so.
Trivial! Trivial! I just choke on that! To me, biological systems are the most profound antithesis of "triviality" that one can possibly imagine!
Reading comprehension, Dave. He didn't say "biological systems are trivial." He said, the resemblance of biological systems to human-designed machines is trivial.
Not only is it trivial, it's an oversimplification that ceationists use to push how "obvious" design is. I suggested awhile back that the way we recognize elegant human design is by its simplicity, not by the seemingly needless, often redundant, complexity we see in biological systems. You did not respond.
Everyone appreciates the complexity. The difference between creationists and scientists, is that scientists don't gloss it over for the sake of a cheap analogy and then throw up their hands and say "beats me!" They investigate the complexity that exists, and try to understand its origins. "Look at this fantastic machine" is just a restatement of the problem, and thus is useless as an explanation.
-------------- The is the beauty of being me- anything that any man does I can understand. --Joe G
It is obvious to me that many of you do not accept "Cosmic Fine Tuning" and "Biological Machines" as evidence that supports the idea of an Intelligent Creator (or at least Designer), in spite of the fact that Talk Origins does not refute Cosmic Fine Tuning when we all know they would if they could, and many scientists (non-YEC/ID) have written about the wonders of biological "machines" and "factories".
"Cosmic Fine Tuning" :The fact of the matter is, we have a sample set of *ONE* universe that happens to contain life. We have NO IDEA how many other possible universes there are, or whether a different sort of life is possible in those universes. It has also been demonstrated repeatedly that life in our universe tends to evolve to fit the environment available. It has never been demonstrated that the parameters for the environment were put in place first with the preconceived idea that life would exist there later. Do you really think that liquid water was "designed" just so that fish can live in it? Ever heard of Dr. Pangloss?
"Biological Machines": The fact that certain biological structures superficially resemble human built machines in no way implies that the biological structures were purposely built also. Some people see the face of the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich – does that mean there’s an Intelligent Grilled Cheese Sandwich Designer who oversees the cooking of each?
A real flagellum looks nothing like the pretty IDiot Powerpoint drawing with its cute little gears and motors. Real flagellum parts under high magnification are squishy globs of interconnected organic molecules that react and move in response to well understood chemical reactions. The gears and motors description is an analogy only to help visualize the motions taking place.
Dave, do you think you’ll ever come up with some positive evidence for YEC that’s not based on your own personal incredulity and ignorance? I sure don’t, but please feel free to try.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Wonder how much I could get for the dump I took last night that looked exactly like Dembski?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, I'm sorry to say that, with every new post you make, you move away from the "sincerely ignorant" group that I had originally placed you, and closer to the "liars for jesus" one. It's sad- but not entirely unexpected. I will forget the fact that you essentially wrote the very same "arguments" you made in the beginning, only sticking a "well I don't buy it" below... After all, that only demonstrates your known eagerness to close your eyes to reality, in order to defend your views. I have little time right now, however, so I'm just gonna stick to the part where you're referring to me:
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Now I don't want to get into other funky ideas like parallel universes as Faid tried to get me to do. My point is made by noting simply that T.O. agrees that Yes, in fact, OUR universe is fine tuned for life.
Just what are you babbling about? I didn't try to get you to do anything: I just pointed you to the article you quote, three paragraphs down after your quote, the point you systematically ignore: The argument from probability. Now, that says nothing about parallel universes, as I'm sure you know- if you even bothered to check, that is. In fact that's exactly what it does not say: For the third time,
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Note that my thesis does not require more than one universe to exist, although some cosmological theories propose this. Even if ours is the only universe, and that universe happened by chance, we have no basis to conclude that a universe without some form of life was so unlikely as to have required a miracle.
Where are the "parallel universes", Dave? Do you think that you can keep people's attention away from what I said and mislead them by hand-waving? You can't. You're not preaching to the choir in these forums; you need new tricks. Try to get rid of the little thordaddy inside you, and maybe these discussions will help you learn something.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
afdave, cosmic fine tuning does not support creation over a natural origin of life.
In order for an observation to support one hypothesis over another, its predicted outcomes must differ under each hypothesis.
So, here's what we have.
Hypothesis: A creator god made life. Prediction: The universe should have parameters capable of supporting life. (Although, as others have pointed out, if the creator god is so omnipotent, he could have made life in an unhospitable universe also)
Hypothesis: Life arose naturally. Prediction: The universe should have parameters capable of supporting life.
Observation: The universe has parameters capable of supporting life. Conclusion: The evidence is consistent with both hypotheses.
Since the evidence is consistent with both hypotheses, this observation doesn't have any bearing on which is more likely to be correct.
And lastly, as I mentioned in parentheses above, an undefined god fails at being the object of a scientific hypothesis, simply because any prediction could be consistent with his unspecified abilities. So you should either define his abilities precisely, with precise limitations on what is possible, or admit that this is outside the realm of science.
WORDS TO LIVE BY Francis Crick in What Mad Pursuit (New York; Basic Books, 1988) p. 138
"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."
OK, Francis ...
THIS IS NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED
HOMINA, HOMINA, HOMINA
AMEN and AMEN
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
THIS IS NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed)etc. etc. etc.
So Dave, is this the sum and substance of your argument?
"It looks designed, therefore it was designed."
Aside from being unoriginal (Behe said the same thing at Dover), it barely qualifies as an "argument."
And while we're at it: if we accept your argument, and we want to know how, say, whales appeared on earth, should we bother trying to find out? Is there any point to researching the question?
Or what about anything else about existence? Is there any point in asking how, or why, questions? Isn't the answer always the same?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yes, Dave, it is counter intuitive (given religious intuitions at least). That's why it took so long for someone to see the theory of evolution.
Heliocentrism, earth going 'round the sun, is counter intuitive too -- but some clever guys figured that out hundreds of years before they figured out evolution.
Galileo and Newton never saw a spacecraft in orbit and Darwin never saw a genetic algorithm working on a computer -- they saw the consequence in their minds though.
It seems, however, you're just not equipped with the right kind of mind for that kind of vision.
Let's suppose, for the moment, that life (and, presumably, the rest of the universe) is the way it is because "God Did It." Well, presumably God (or whatever else you wish to call an "intelligent designer") used some sort of methodology, or technique, or praxis, for everything he did. The only other way He could have accomplished the creation of the universe, even in principle, is by basically "willing it into existence" (maybe just by thinking about it really hard?).
If we assume, for the sake of argument, that science isn't a complete waste of time (and, based on its explicative power over the past 500 years, I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue otherwise), then we can exclude "willing it into existence" as a possibility worth studying (at least, for the foreseeable future). Otherwise, there is no explanation, even in principle, for how the universe got to be the way it is, science is a complete waste of time, and scientists should take up needlepoint.
So, even if you assume that God (or, okay, if you want to be pedantic about it, an "intelligent designer"), created life, the universe, and everything through some sort of methodology, a scientist's task (whether that scientist believes in Darwinian Evolution or Intelligent Design) becomes trying to discover a working model of that methodology. The task remains exactly the same whether the science in question is Darwinian Evolution, or Intelligent Design. And since Darwinian Evolution already has a working theory as to how that methodology works, and Intelligent Design doesn't, the best you can say about Intelligent Design is that it's at least 140 years behind Darwinian Evolution.
If you assume, a priori, that life was not designed—that it evolved as a result of unguided and unpredictable events—then you can inquire into the natural processes by which life originated and subsequently evolved. If, on the other hand, you assume that a) life was "designed," and also b) that the putative designer's methods are at least in principle amenable to scientific inquiry, your job is no easier than the job of an evolutionary biologist who discounts the possibility of design. You've still got to determine the methods by which life's designer managed to implement its designs, which is no different from determining the methods unguided happenstance would use to accomplish the same thing. In essence, you're doing exactly the same thing that scientists who discount the possibility of design are doing, except you don't have even the skeleton of a working hypothesis as to how your putative "designer" implements his (or its) designs. An appeal to intelligent design has accomplished nothing, explained nothing, and not gotten us any closer to figuring out how life evolved on earth. Therefore, Intelligent Design is not a useful avenue for scientific inquiry, or certainly is no more useful than Darwinian Evolution that relies on unguided happenstance for evolution.
And, if you assume a priori an intelligent designer whose methods are in principle unknowable, the inquiry ends. If God designed it, and God's methods are unknowable, then what else is there to say about it? Again, this assumption is not a useful avenue for scientific inquiry. If you maintain that an intelligent designer's methods are not the proper subject of scientific inquiry, then you're not really talking about science, are you? What you're talking about is sounding increasingly less like science and more like religion.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
WORDS TO LIVE BY Francis Crick in What Mad Pursuit (New York; Basic Books, 1988) p. 138
"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."
OK, Francis ...
THIS IS NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED (but it looks designed) BUT IT'S NOT DESIGNED
HOMINA, HOMINA, HOMINA
AMEN and AMEN
(Seven popes holding stop watch) Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd NOW YOU'RE TROLLING!
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Well, let's see ... what can I leave you with for the weekend?
Hmmmm........
I think I got a little bit of agreement on the cosmic fine tuning thing ... at least for THIS universe ...
But it seems that people don't want to say biological machines are designed ...
So ... here's your thought question for the weekend ...
You all know the SETI project, right ... I don't know the current status of it ... you could probably tell me, but here's some interesting info from your favorite website, Talk Origins ...
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Claim CI190: SETI researchers expect that they can recognize artificial signals, proving that there is an objective criterion for recognizing intelligent design. Source: Dembski, William A., 1998. Science and Design. First Things 86 (Oct.): 21-27. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9810/dembski.html Talk Origins Response: SETI researchers do not expect to find recognizably designed messages in the signals they are looking for; in fact, they expect that the signal modulation would be smeared out and lost. They are looking for narrow-band signals, which are what people build and are not found in known natural radio signals (SETI Instutute n.d., Shostak 2005). The objective criterion for recognizing intelligent design is to look for things that look like what people build.
Whoa! Did you see that? Did I hear that right?!! Wait a minute, let me clean out my ears and play the tape again slowly ...
Talk Origins said ...
T h e o b j e c t i v e c r i t e r i o n f o r r e c o g n i z i n g i n t e l l i g e n t d e s i g n i s t o l o o k f o r t h i n g s t h a t l o o k l i k e w h a t p e o p l e b u i l d.
I can think of about a hundred different things inside a cell that look like what people build ... just read either Denton book you like ...
So if this is objective criteria for the SETI folks, it's good enough for us, right? They are REAL scientists, right?
Have a good weekend!
(I'm really not trying to harrass you guys ... just trying to get you to see the truth about some things)
(I won't trot out my "Seven Steps" anymore ... I got to thinking that's probably mean :-) and I'm really not trying to be mean)
(I'll be at church tomorrow so I guess I can 'confess'
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, let's see ... what can I leave you with for the weekend?
You all know the SETI project, right ... I don't know the current status of it ... you could probably tell me, but here's some interesting info from your favorite website, Talk Origins ...
Dave, given William Dembski's absolute lack of credibility when it comes to critiques of evolution, why do you even bother quoting him? Have you spent any time at talkorigins or pandasthumb or talkreason to find out what actual scientists who actually have the training to have actual opinions on evolutionary biology have to say about Dembski?
If this is what passes for "evidence" of design, I'm afraid we've all been waiting for you to come up with something interesting about the subject in vain.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ooh ooh it's the infamous SETI argument, oh noes we nevers expected it...
Well what can you do, I guess we should all confess with Dave now...
Or, maybe, you know, explain to him that the people at the SETI project are not making metaphors on purpose when they talk about products of intelligence: They mean the real thing. They are looking for actual intelligent design, not "Intelligent Design". The reason they are looking for things that people build is, well, that they are looking for "people" who build things. Somewhat like the genetic research company discussed at UD, they're for the real deal, not for loaded metaphors to apply to natural phenomena.
Dave, during tomorrow's confession, remember to also mention this little (and extremely old and worn-out) bit of trickery you tried to pull here.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
In fact, the signals actually sought by today’s SETI searches are not complex, as the ID advocates assume. We’re not looking for intricately coded messages, mathematical series, or even the aliens’ version of "I Love Lucy." Our instruments are largely insensitive to the modulation—or message—that might be conveyed by an extraterrestrial broadcast. A SETI radio signal of the type we could actually find would be a persistent, narrow-band whistle. Such a simple phenomenon appears to lack just about any degree of structure, although if it originates on a planet, we should see periodic Doppler effects as the world bearing the transmitter rotates and orbits.
And yet we still advertise that, were we to find such a signal, we could reasonably conclude that there was intelligence behind it. It sounds as if this strengthens the argument made by the ID proponents. Our sought-after signal is hardly complex, and yet we’re still going to say that we’ve found extraterrestrials. If we can get away with that, why can’t they?
Well, it’s because the credibility of the evidence is not predicated on its complexity. If SETI were to announce that we’re not alone because it had detected a signal, it would be on the basis of artificiality. An endless, sinusoidal signal – a dead simple tone – is not complex; it’s artificial. Such a tone just doesn’t seem to be generated by natural astrophysical processes. In addition, and unlike other radio emissions produced by the cosmos, such a signal is devoid of the appendages and inefficiencies nature always seems to add – for example, DNA’s junk and redundancy.
Consider pulsars – stellar objects that flash light and radio waves into space with impressive regularity. Pulsars were briefly tagged with the moniker LGM (Little Green Men) upon their discovery in 1967. Of course, these little men didn’t have much to say. Regular pulses don’t convey any information—no more than the ticking of a clock. But the real kicker is something else: inefficiency. Pulsars flash over the entire spectrum. No matter where you tune your radio telescope, the pulsar can be heard. That’s bad design, because if the pulses were intended to convey some sort of message, it would be enormously more efficient (in terms of energy costs) to confine the signal to a very narrow band. Even the most efficient natural radio emitters, interstellar clouds of gas known as masers, are profligate. Their steady signals splash over hundreds of times more radio band than the type of transmissions sought by SETI.
Imagine bright reflections of the Sun flashing off Lake Victoria, and seen from great distance. These would be similar to pulsar signals: highly regular (once ever 24 hours), and visible in preferred directions, but occupying a wide chunk of the optical spectrum. It’s not a very good hailing-signal or communications device. Lightning bolts are another example. They produce pulses of both light and radio, but the broadcast extends over just about the whole electromagnetic spectrum. That sort of bad engineering is easily recognized and laid at nature’s door. Nature, for its part, seems unoffended.
Junk, redundancy, and inefficiency characterize astrophysical signals. It seems they characterize cells and sea lions, too. These biological constructions have lots of superfluous and redundant parts, and are a long way from being optimally built or operated. They also resemble lots of other things that may be either contemporaries or historical precedents.
So that’s one point: the signals SETI seeks are really not like other examples drawn from the bestiary of complex astrophysical phenomena. That speaks to their artificiality.
The Importance of Setting
There’s another hallmark of artificiality we consider in SETI, and it’s context. Where is the signal found? Our searches often concentrate on nearby Sun-like star systems – the very type of astronomical locale we believe most likely to harbor Earth-size planets awash in liquid water. That’s where we hope to find a signal. The physics of solar systems is that of hot plasmas (stars), cool hydrocarbon gasses (big planets), and cold rock (small planets). These do not produce, so far as we can either theorize or observe, monochromatic radio signals belched into space with powers of ten billion watts or more—the type of signal we look for in SETI experiments. It’s hard to imagine how they would do this, and observations confirm that it just doesn’t seem to be their thing.
Context is important, crucially important. Imagine that we should espy a giant, green square in one of these neighboring solar systems. That would surely meet our criteria for artificiality. But a square is not overly complex. Only in the context of finding it in someone’s solar system does its minimum complexity become indicative of intelligence.
In archaeology, context is the basis of many discoveries that are imputed to the deliberate workings of intelligence. If I find a rock chipped in such a way as to give it a sharp edge, and the discovery is made in a cave, I am seduced into ascribing this to tool use by distant, fetid and furry ancestors. It is the context of the cave that makes this assumption far more likely then an alternative scenario in which I assume that the random grinding and splitting of rock has resulted in this useful geometry.
In short, the champions of Intelligent Design make two mistakes when they claim that the SETI enterprise is logically similar to their own: First, they assume that we are looking for messages, and judging our discovery on the basis of message content, whether understood or not. In fact, we’re on the lookout for very simple signals. That’s mostly a technical misunderstanding. But their second assumption, derived from the first, that complexity would imply intelligence, is also wrong. We seek artificiality, which is an organized and optimized signal coming from an astronomical environment from which neither it nor anything like it is either expected or observed: Very modest complexity, found out of context. This is clearly nothing like looking at DNA’s chemical makeup and deducing the work of a supernatural biochemist.
So the SETI people aren't just looking for "things that look like what people build.". They're looking for artificiality and context.
RTFL for once in your dishonest life, you anti-science ignorant twit.
Edited to add: looks like ericmurphy beat me to it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The objective criterion for recognizing intelligent design is to look for things that look like what people build
Cells don't look like what people build, we call them factories, motors etc because it helps us understand and teach about their function. I don't know how many times I can repeat this.
Dave, given William Dembski's absolute lack of credibility when it comes to critiques of evolution, why do you even bother quoting him? Have you spent any time at talkorigins or pandasthumb or talkreason to find out what actual scientists who actually have the training to have actual opinions on evolutionary biology have to say about Dembski?
Eric ... I'm very aware of PT and TO opinions of Dembski ... how could anyone NOT BE?
I'm not quoting Dembski, I'm quoting TALK ORIGINS !! Isn't that what you guys have been instructing me to do? I understand the claims Dembski makes about SETI and I have no knowledge about them ... that is not my point.
Did you not notice the bold print? Here it is again ...
Talk Origins (not Dembski, not AIG, not ICR) Talk Origins said ...
T h e o b j e c t i v e c r i t e r i o n f o r r e c o g n i z i n g i n t e l l i g e n t d e s i g n i s t o l o o k f o r t h i n g s t h a t l o o k l i k e w h a t p e o p l e b u i l d.
Now it does not get much plainer than that. The logical conclusion of this is if SETI looks for things that look like people build to indicate intelligent life out there somewhere, why shouldn't we also? There are oodles of things that resemble things that people build all through nature: bat "radar", bird wings, eyes like cameras, ad infinitum ... maybe there is Someone out there who designed this!
I read all you guys' links ... I know what they say ... I always do read your links if they are on topic
You cannot dodge this one ...
There is no escaping the fact that YOUR FAVORITE SITE (not Dembski) made a statement that agrees with AF Dave on one of my MAJOR POINTS--THERE IS OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE THAT BIOLOGICAL "MACHINES" LOOK DESIGNED BECAUSE THEY PROBABLY ARE DESIGNED.
I understand that this may bring frustration, but I cannot help what Talk Origins writes -- go get mad at them, not me.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Or, maybe, you know, explain to him that the people at the SETI project are not making metaphors on purpose when they talk about products of intelligence: They mean the real thing. They are looking for actual intelligent design, not "Intelligent Design". The reason they are looking for things that people build is, well, that they are looking for "people" who build things.
You don't have to explain this to me ... I already understand and agree with you ...
I ALSO am looking for ACTUAL intelligent design, not "Intelligent Design."
I ALSO am looking for "people" who build things. I just have a theory that these "people" are ONE person and he just might be known in some circles as "God."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
oooh boy, we're reeally scared now... The zombie SETI argument has come back to haunt us- to the hills, people!
...Not really.
Dave, I hope you remembered to add your stubborness and arrogance in your confession today, because seriously, I dunno which is worse- and more responsible for your total lack of understanding.
Once again: SETI does not look for "Intelligent Design" in the universe. They look for designs of intelligence. They explain that clearly in their link; too bad you didn't bother to check. You might say that they don't look for "bat ear radars" and "eye cameras": they look for radars and cameras. Their products, at least. They are not searching for complexity (which is your "argument" for ID), they're searching for simplicity out of place -like a trail of smoke over the ocean. They're looking for things that stand out of their enviroment, not fit perfectly in it. When they say "things people build" they mean j u s t t h a t (there, was that right? ). What do you think is artificial, dave? A cactus in the desert, or a steel upright pipe? And which is more complex? Hmm. And it's us that are flustrated, right?
I know of course all this is pointless by now... I have figured out there's no way to penetrate your wall of stubborness; I just want to point out that, mixing that with arrogant remarks and lame attempts at mockery, does not help your "cause" here- and only makes you look silly (yes, silly even for a young-earther).
Just FYI.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Shake it off! ... it's only ONE point you lost. It's a new day tomorrow.
I also have lost one point here at PT ... and I admitted it ... you can too. It's not that bad. It's not like this disproves your whole theory or anything.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What do you want us to admit? That biological machines are a good argument for design, no chance at the moment I'm afraid. Look how I can write stuff in bold too:
Biological systems ony have a superficial resemblance to man-made machines. Biological systems do not look designed. SETI has absolutely nothing to do with it, it isnt a comparable situation
Plus of course SETI says ID is a load of crap and has nothing to do with what they do.
Ok half a dave no problem. You will have us all 100% convinced if you produce your god and say a phone number we can speak to him, he does speak English doesn't he? Old English or New English BTW? Should be no problem for you since you have 100% certainty. how much time do you need? A gap or your saying so is not a god or a proof, just thought I would let you know that. .. .. .. sounds of grasshoppers humping just as I thought God is not provable because there is no objective proof for its existance and by definition does not exist, other than by human subjective thought, end that and even the subjective existance disapears as have thousands of dreamt up thunder,sea,sky,snake,female,male gods since man climed down from the trees. In fact half a dave you could say that gods ARE the result of human evolution as you rightly suspect and IF CD is true, destroys your T-Model God. Head back in the sand half a dave. snicker giggle
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Shake it off! ... it's only ONE point you lost. It's a new day tomorrow.
I also have lost one point here at PT ... and I admitted it ... you can too. It's not that bad. It's not like this disproves your whole theory or anything.
Face it, Dave. You have no arguments and no logic behind your assumptions, and you try to make up for that with word-playing, hand-waving, and lame mockery. Oh, and spades of denial.
It's ok to admit that you haven't the slightest clue of what I just explained, and you were unable to answer me; We already realize that's due to the fact that you don't want to, not because you can't. But if you're desperately trying to get a "point" for yourself, try to win it like we did: With arguments and evidence.
Instead, saying "H e y w h a t d o e s i t s a y h e r e y e a h t h a t s r i g h t " i n t e l l i g e n t d e s i g n " W o o h o o T. O. s u p p o r t s I D I w i n w h a t s t h a t I c a n t h e a r y o u l a l a l a" Only makes you look ridiculous and childish.
Seriously, can't you do better than that? *disappointment*
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Eric ... I'm very aware of PT and TO opinions of Dembski ... how could anyone NOT BE?
I'm not quoting Dembski, I'm quoting TALK ORIGINS !! Isn't that what you guys have been instructing me to do? I understand the claims Dembski makes about SETI and I have no knowledge about them ... that is not my point.
Dave, did you read the SETI article? Because it completely contradicts your point! What SETI is looking for is something that resembles what people would design, not what some purported "creator god" would design.
We have a very good idea of what something created by a civilization would look like, because we know firsthand what civilizations build. We have no idea what an "intelligent designer" (in the sense that the creationists mean it) would build, because we have no idea what the "intelligent designer" is like.
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T h e o b j e c t i v e c r i t e r i o n f o r r e c o g n i z i n g i n t e l l i g e n t d e s i g n i s t o l o o k f o r t h i n g s t h a t l o o k l i k e w h a t p e o p l e b u i l d.
Yes, Dave. What people build. Not what supernatural intelligences build. Do you see the distinction?
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Now it does not get much plainer than that. The logical conclusion of this is if SETI looks for things that look like people build to indicate intelligent life out there somewhere, why shouldn't we also? There are oodles of things that resemble things that people build all through nature: bat "radar", bird wings, eyes like cameras, ad infinitum ... maybe there is Someone out there who designed this!
And more to the point, Dave, you have to admit that basically nothing biological really looks like anything humans would build. Does a bat's ear look anything—anything at all—like a human-designed radar receiver? Does a bird's wing bear anything but the most superficial resemblance to a plane's wing? Does a mitochondrion look like anything humans have ever built?
You've been stating as if it's a fact that biological structures look like something humans would build, but it's far from true. Look around, Dave. Take off your creationist spectacles and really look at things.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
There are oodles of things that resemble things that people build all through nature: bat "radar", bird wings, eyes like cameras
This is similar to the 'if people copy nature nature must be designed' thread they had at UD a couple of weeks ago. Can you come up with a good reason why this makes any sense? Because I certainly can't think of one.
There are oodles of things that resemble things that people build all through nature: bat "radar", bird wings, eyes like cameras, ad infinitum ... maybe there is Someone out there who designed this!
I read all you guys' links ... I know what they say ... I always do read your links if they are on topic
You cannot dodge this one ...
There is no escaping the fact that YOUR FAVORITE SITE (not Dembski) made a statement that agrees with AF Dave on one of my MAJOR POINTS--THERE IS OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE THAT BIOLOGICAL "MACHINES" LOOK DESIGNED BECAUSE THEY PROBABLY ARE DESIGNED.
The problem with your 'fact' is that's it's untrue. There is no 'overwhelming evidence' that biological 'machines' even look designed. Not unless you're willing to provide an objective definition of looks designed.
What we have is overwhelming evidence that some people think things look designed. And in any case, a subjective judgement that something looks designed is not EVIDENCE that it is.
Which leads back to your earlier point. Yes, maybe there is Someone out there who designed this. I personally don't believe that, but I don't claim it's impossible. But "looks designed" is not really evidence for this Someone. "Looks designed, therefore maybe is designed" is just a hypothesis.
Now what you need to do is make and test some predictions. Let me get you started:
IF Someone designed all this, THEN I predict I should see X. HOWEVER, if I see Y, that would be evidence that Someone did NOT design all this.
Can you supply objective specifics for X and Y? If so, your concept of Someone may be testable. Otherwise, not.
AFDave....a question.... Do you want people to admit that the teleological argument is a strong indication of a designer? or Do you want us to admit that the teleological argument is a proof of God?
Everyone else? Are you trying to completely debunk the teleological argument? or Are you trying to argue that the teleological argument is insufficient for scientific purposes?
BTW...the teleological argument is the classical "fine-tuned" universe argument...or simply ID(philosophy)
Are you trying to completely debunk the teleological argument? or Are you trying to argue that the teleological argument is insufficient for scientific purposes?
Mostly it's that the teleological argument is insufficient for scientific purposes. However, I think the fact that neuroscience has found many natural explainations for the only organ of teleology we know - the brain - undermines teleology's use for metaphysical views.
Everyone else? Are you trying to completely debunk the teleological argument? or Are you trying to argue that the teleological argument is insufficient for scientific purposes?
How many times do we need to tell Dave that it's not possible to prove there is no god? And as far as I know, no one on this site is of the opinion that they have "proved" god doesn't exist (I happen to believe that god doesn't exist, but I don't think for a minute that I can prove it).
We've told Dave this several times already, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in. We've also informed Dave several times that we've been waiting for some sort of solid evidence in support of any of the 15 assertions he made at the beginning of this thread. So far, it appears that the only person who thinks he's provided any evidence whatsoever in support of any of those assertions is Dave himself.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How many times do we need to tell Dave that it's not possible to prove there is no god? And as far as I know, no one on this site is of the opinion that they have "proved" god doesn't exist (I happen to believe that god doesn't exist, but I don't think for a minute that I can prove it).
We've told Dave this several times already, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in. We've also informed Dave several times that we've been waiting for some sort of solid evidence in support of any of the 15 assertions he made at the beginning of this thread. So far, it appears that the only person who thinks he's provided any evidence whatsoever in support of any of those assertions is Dave himself.
Haven't you guys caught on yet that AFDave is not here to learn, or to discuss, but to PREACH.
He sees himself as an evangelical missionary, just like his father, out to save the ignorant savages.
Personally, I find his dishonest attempts at feigning interest in order to proselytize and push his anti-science agenda to be quite insulting.
I'll support anyone's right to believe their own religion, but I really don't appreciate getting lied to about it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Haven't you guys caught on yet that AFDave is not here to learn, or to discuss, but to PREACH.
Yeah, we know. And most of us probably realize we don't have a snowball's chance of convincing Dave that he's wrong. But that's okay. It's not like any of us is being forced to respond to his flaccid attempts to prove the existence of his god.
It's just kind of fun. Sort of.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How many times do we need to tell Dave that it's not possible to prove there is no god? And as far as I know, no one on this site is of the opinion that they have "proved" god doesn't exist (I happen to believe that god doesn't exist, but I don't think for a minute that I can prove it).
It certainly IS possible to disprove the qualities normally associated with God. For instance, omnipotence is self-contradictory and, therefore, cannot exist (que "the rock" question). Similarly, omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive: if we humans have free will, then God cannot know what we're going to do before we do it. Furthermore, ignoring those two contradictions, God cannot know that a disaster is going to happen and have the power to stop it and still be benevolent/morally perfect for allowing it to happen.
Oh come on UnMark.... all AFDave needs to refute your arguments is a basic understanding of philosophy...and perhaps some light googling.
Heck...i will do it for him 1. Omnipotence-all powerful...can god create a rock so heavy even he cannot lift it? This is simply a contradictory statement. This would be like asking...can God run faster than God? Also given the fact that God is all-powerful he would be able to create a rock so heavy he couldnt lift it and at the same time be able to lift it. 2. Free-will....this is more than just an issue of an omniscient God...basically just mention anything that has to do with free-will and determinism. There are several good arguments arguing for free will and determinism...the most common is that just because i can predict your action doesnt mean that your action was without choice. It was just predictable... Besides....God could be all-knowing simply because He exists outside of time. So the argument against omniscience is even less applicable to God 3. Necessary evil...perhaps the most discussed theological debate. The arguments range from "all pain is either necessary or an illusion" to the argument that death, pain, and suffering are not inherently evil.
When they say "things people build" they mean j u s t t h a t (there, was that right?).
No, Faid that is close, but not exactly what they said ... they did not say "things people build." Talk Origins said "things that look like what people build."
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But what is intelligence? Does an intelligent thing necessarily have to have any or all of these qualities:
1) Desire, wants, will 2) Foresight 3) Memory 4) Awareness of itself 5) Creativity and originality 6) Sensory organs 7) Perceptions 8) Communications
Evolution has some of those qualities, memory, creativity and a form of communication.
But evolution lacks others, like foresight, self awareness and desire. The animals it creates has some of them, but not the system that is evolution.
Does your God have all those qualities?
What does a system have to have to be called intelligent?
What SETI is looking for is something close enough to us we might talk to it. Do you talk to God?
Sure I do. You all could probably guess that I at least imagine that I communicate with God -- it's a well known claim by Christians and others -- of course I'm talking about prayer. But I have no proof to offer you of the sort you would be looking for to prove that He hears me. All I can do is offer evidence that "ET" is out there somewhere because in biological machines, we have exactly the kinds of things SETI is looking for (and apparently T.O. acknowledges this). I can point to the finely tuned universe and show you that Someone probably set all those parameters. I can look at the phenomenon of a universal "moral code" and conclude that "Someone probably created this moral code" (C.S. Lewis -- I will get into this shortly), and I can show how the Laws of Relativity make it conceivable that someone could "live outside of space and time" (even though I don't understand how this works). And this is about as far as I can go with just observations of nature. After that, I will get into "religious books", then my reasons for commencing an investigation into one particular "religious book" -- the Christian Bible. Then we will begin getting into some of the stuff you all keep asking about -- age of the earth/universe, evidence for the Flood of Noah, the changing of languages, the historicity of the Bible, the Messianic prophecies and the prophecies of Daniel regarding the nations of the world, and the amazing accuracy of human nature description of the Bible. We will deal with philosophical questions about God -- the problem of evil in the world, and we will look at some perceived Bible difficulties, among other things. Here is an overview of my approach:
(1) Observe nature and draw inferences: this only gets us so far, i.e. we conclude that there is an "ET" (or ET's) out there who is a Super-Intelligent Engineer, this ET might possibly live outside of space and time, and this "ET" might be the originator of this stange, universal "moral code" which we observe. So we hold these thoughts and move through the rest of the process.
(2) If we accept (1), then we can make some predictions, one of which would be: "This 'ET' probably can communicate to humans." How? Dunno, but there certainly are a lot of competing claims out there -- many "prophets" and "holy books" claiming to be speaking for God or Allah or whoever. Could any one of them stand up to scrutiny? So we compare some "holy books" and investigate the claims. We focus in particular on the Christian Bible. Why would we waste our time on this? Well ... several good reasons. We have reason to believe that the Christian Bible is unique among "religious books" for some pretty big reasons. Former agnostic Josh McDowell gets into this in "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I will explain some of these later, but it's enough to say for now that I have a convincing case for at least taking the time to honestly investigate the claims of the Bible.
(3) I begin investigating the Bible and I find many weird things. But I know from experience that often times truth is stranger than fiction, so I keep investigating. One by one, the supposed "difficulties" in the Bible keep falling as I learn more. By the time I am done investigating the historicity of the Bible, its amazing predictions and fulfillments, the evidence in favor of Genesis 1-11 as actual history, its accurate description of the human condition, and other factors, there is not anything sensible to me to conclude except that some Unseen, Incredible Mind somewhere caused this book--the Bible--to be written.
(4) This is the end of the evidence that I can detect with my senses. From this point forward, I have no choice but to make a "leap of faith" in some direction. My choices are to A--do nothing B--reject the evidence I have just discovered or C--put 2 and 2 together and make what appears to me to be only a small "leap of faith" and conclude that the "Mind" that superintended the writing of the Bible is the same "Mind" that created the wonders of Nature. Is this so unreasonable?
(5) Risk analysis. Having walked through this entire process, I now am faced squarely with the claim from the Bible: "Believe me and spend eternity with me when you die." (God supposedly speaking) or "Don't believe me and spend eternity separated from me. It's your choice, Dave. I won't force you. I have given you abundant evidence for My existence. If this evidence is not enough, what evidence WOULD be enough?" I have to choose, and it basically boils down to risk analysis. Which of the two possible choices seems less risky?
(6) And so I did choose. I chose to believe the Bible based on what I considered to be overwhelming evidence in favor of believing it. To me, it appears to be sheer folly to go against such evidence as I have seen.
(7) Now that I have made that choice, all I can tell you is that I am a changed man. Ask my wife. I know this is not scientific evidence. That stopped after Point 3. I can only tell you that I used to be interested in myself only. I have not become perfect (I'm too cocky and too smart-alecky among other things), but there is now a new force for good within me which many times overcomes my selfish desires--the Bible tells me that this is the Spirit of God which apparently comes and somehow "dwells within" believers. Now I genuinely care for others as well as myself and it really doesn't bother me much if people make fun of me. I have a very single minded goal in life -- to be used by my Creator for His purposes during my brief stay here on this earth. I don't know what those purposes will be during the next 40 or so years that I may have left. But right now I have a (God given?) desire to share with others the truth that I have found. They may reject it and I understand that. It's OK. Everyone has to make their own choice. But I would be remiss if I held this information to myself. Not only am I a changed man, but I can also tell you that the native people my dad worked with in Brazil are changed people. When he went there in 1950, they numbered less than 400. They were killing each other and their own babies and openly spoke about the time when they would all be gone. They asked my dad who he would preach to when they were all gone. But my dad persisted in showing them the truths in the Bible in spite of unspeakable personal difficulties. After 5 years, the chief made THE CHOICE that I speak of and the whole group turned around. Today they are a happy, productive people. Their population has blown through 3000 and is growing rapidly. They now know how to read and write, give medical care, speak Portuguese and many other productive things. They are even traveling to other villages who used to be in the same predicament as them and helping them. It is truly amazing! You can get the two books which tell the story of my dad on Amazon.com: Christ's Witchdoctor and Christ's Jungle both by Homer Dowdy.
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Ok half a dave no problem. You will have us all 100% convinced if you produce your god and say a phone number we can speak to him, he does speak English doesn't he? Old English or New English BTW? Should be no problem for you since you have 100% certainty. how much time do you need?
I would turn this around and ask, "What would it take to convince you that the God of the Christian Bible exists and is really as He is described there?" I'm serious. What would it take?
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Dave, did you read the SETI article? Because it completely contradicts your point! What SETI is looking for is something that resembles what people would design, not what some purported "creator god" would design.
We have a very good idea of what something created by a civilization would look like, because we know firsthand what civilizations build. We have no idea what an "intelligent designer" (in the sense that the creationists mean it) would build, because we have no idea what the "intelligent designer" is like.
Quote T h e o b j e c t i v e c r i t e r i o n f o r r e c o g n i z i n g i n t e l l i g e n t d e s i g n i s t o l o o k f o r t h i n g s t h a t l o o k l i k e w h a t p e o p l e b u i l d.
Yes, Dave. What people build. Not what supernatural intelligences build. Do you see the distinction?
Yes. I see the distinction, but why limit ourselves to searching for ET's that are like human "people"? Why would we not entertain the possibility of a Super-human of some sort. Are we really so narrow minded that we rule out the possibility of some advanced life form out there somewhere? And maybe this life-form has no physical body. Why do we think that having a physical body is some sort of advantage? I would actually think NOT having a physical body would be much better--my idea of what a spirit might be (if there is such a thing) is quite fun indeed. Imagine being able to walk through walls and not having to go to the doctor (sorry Faid), or be able to "beam" ourselves instantly to other parts of the universe and actually survive because we need no oxygen! I think this would be fantastic! And I think it is entirely possible and actually quite probable that there really is an "ET" out there who may in fact be more like a "Mind" with no body--a spirit, if you will, who made all these "artifacts" we find here on earth. And this has nothing to do with "religion" for me, which is why I place this in the category of science. I consider myself to basically be a sort of private SETI researcher. And my idea of how this "Mind" did it was basically that he created a perfect environment for life--the Cosmos and Earth--then placed a relatively small number of "biological machines" on Earth, which in turn diversified into the many species which existed before the Flood. A similar thing happened after the Flood -- i.e. a relatively small number of "kinds" diversified into the present diversity that we see today. I think some people think that I think God created each individual species. I do not think this. I think God basically created the original "kinds" each with their own unique DNA software, then He basically "let the software run" and let the free spirits attached to the minds of the "human biological machines" have free choices to do as they would do.
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And more to the point, Dave, you have to admit that basically nothing biological really looks like anything humans would build. Does a bat's ear look anything—anything at all—like a human-designed radar receiver? Does a bird's wing bear anything but the most superficial resemblance to a plane's wing? Does a mitochondrion look like anything humans have ever built?
You've been stating as if it's a fact that biological structures look like something humans would build, but it's far from true. Look around, Dave. Take off your creationist spectacles and really look at things.
Actually, I think that many, many things we find in Nature strongly resemble things humans would build. The difference that I observe is that they have a much higher degree of sophistication than our technology. They do appear to me to be, in fact, the "products of an advanced civilization." We all know the Bill Gates quote about DNA being software which is far advanced beyond our own software. I think he should know. And if you think about it, much of our technology already existed in Nature before we invented it. Airplanes are a perfect example. Nature had airfoils and propulsion systems before we did. Nature had vision devices before we did. Nature had "radar" before we did. Nature had submarines before we did. Nature had "robot arms and legs" before we did. Nature had food production factories before we did (plants). Nature had chemical factories before we did. Nature had assembly lines before we did. Nature had under-water breathing apparatus before we did. Nature had chemical "light sticks" before we did (fireflies). Nature had computing systems before we did (brains).
And Nature still has many things which we do not have. Dupont has studied gecko feet to understand how the adhesive works. Scientists are studying molecular machines and now are making nano-machines themselves. I constantly read about scientists observing Nature and trying to mimic it. This is great stuff! I love it! But it highlites the fact that Nature has technology far, far, far advanced beyond our own in every direction we look. If this is not evidence for and "advanced civilization" somewhere that produced this, then I don't know what is.
Many people have this strange (to me) idea that natural "technology" is somehow fundamentally different that man-made technology. Maybe it has some "vital force" or something that makes it different. Someone mentioned that it is "blobby" or something and this means it is in a different category.
I would submit to you that it is only different in degree of high-techy-ness. Other than this there is no difference at all in the physical bodies of plants and animals that we see to man-made technology. They all use the same atoms from the same periodic table as human engineers have access to. What we really observe is a brilliant software system residing in an ingenious arrangement of molecules which in turn are nothing more that atoms arranged just so, and we call this a cell. Because of the sophistication of the DNA software, cells have the ability to assemble raw materials and thus grow into organisms as diverse as giant redwoods and horse-flies.
Do you deny this?
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This is similar to the 'if people copy nature nature must be designed' thread they had at UD a couple of weeks ago. Can you come up with a good reason why this makes any sense? Because I certainly can't think of one.
Yes. It makes total sense and is very intuitively obvious to me. And people like Bill Dembski are trying to reduce it to mathematics so not only will it be intuitively obvious, but it will also be rigorously provable. (I'm not saying Bill's there yet ... I don't know much about his stuff)
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Which leads back to your earlier point. Yes, maybe there is Someone out there who designed this. I personally don't believe that, but I don't claim it's impossible. But "looks designed" is not really evidence for this Someone. "Looks designed, therefore maybe is designed" is just a hypothesis.
Now what you need to do is make and test some predictions. Let me get you started:
IF Someone designed all this, THEN I predict I should see X. HOWEVER, if I see Y, that would be evidence that Someone did NOT design all this.
Can you supply objective specifics for X and Y? If so, your concept of Someone may be testable. Otherwise, not.
I agree that it is only a hypothesis and never will be provable. Put I do make predictions. See my steps above. (and there are more besides this)
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Do you want people to admit that the teleological argument is a strong indication of a designer? or Do you want us to admit that the teleological argument is a proof of God?
The former.
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It certainly IS possible to disprove the qualities normally associated with God. For instance, omnipotence is self-contradictory and, therefore, cannot exist (que "the rock" question). Similarly, omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive: if we humans have free will, then God cannot know what we're going to do before we do it. Furthermore, ignoring those two contradictions, God cannot know that a disaster is going to happen and have the power to stop it and still be benevolent/morally perfect for allowing it to happen.
What says you about this, Dave?
PuckSR answered for me very well.
OK? There you have it. If no one has any more questions about these items, we will move along.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I would submit to you that it is only different in degree of high-techy-ness.
This is simply wrong, and I have pointed this out many times. You might look at a birds wing or whatever and see that it looks at first glance to be an efficient airfoil. However when you look at how the molecular networks are put together, and how the thing develops you see it doesn't look designed at all. These systems have the properties that we would expect if they had evolved by natural selection, not created by someone who planned ahead. There are many things in nature that seem very efficient to us, but there are also a great number of things that are horribly inneficient and badly 'designed', which is what we would expect if evolution were true. I think Francis Jacob put it best when he said evolution is a tinkerer and not an engineer, and that is exactly what we see.
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Yes. It makes total sense and is very intuitively obvious to me.
Unfortunately it seems that 'if we copy nature nature must be designed', is only intuitively obvious to people who already think nature is designed.
No, Faid that is close, but not exactly what they said ... they did not say "things people build." Talk Origins said "things that look like what people build."
(Here we go again...)
...Yes, Dave, because that's what they're looking for. A cactus in the desert does not look artificial. A steel upright pipe, however, does. No matter how less "complex" it is. Look, I don't think I can find a plainer example. Either you get it, or you don't. We both know that you're trying to create a confusion in terms, by preassuming that the way you use the term "intelligent design" is the right one, and the only possible. And we both know this isn't true. Dave, if you like to think a cactus is also artificial, then it's your right; but don't try to enforce your way on thinking on everybody else, and say that' since they're looking for steel pipes, they should also look for cactuses. SETI is not looking for loaded naive metaphors; they're looking for the real thing. Period.
Keep looking for that "point" you so desperately want, Dave: You're a long way from earning it, but who knows? You may have a good chance to get it, if you start to use real arguments.
(And this is no irony: I actually mean it. Starting to actually use argumentative logic and reasonable points to defend your position, instead of jumping from issue to issue in 4 threads, picking phrases and quotemining and hand-waving or ignoring counter-arguments, is the only way you'll keep yourself from becoming a bore for all, eventually. IMO, of course.)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
There are many things in nature that seem very efficient to us, but there are also a great number of things that are horribly inneficient and badly 'designed', which is what we would expect if evolution were true.
But it is also exactly what we would expect if the Bible were true, because it speaks of a "Curse" as well as an originally perfect "Design." I know the "Curse" idea seems strange--I have not yet explained my understanding of it--but it all makes sense if you accept the whole package. It makes perfect sense to me that a Creator designed everything perfectly, but then "cursed it" as a result of man's choice to not obey God. One of the biggest reasons I see for the Curse is to show man very clearly that "this world is not our true home." There is something better coming which our Creator will someday give us if we choose it, and we should not place too much value on our material possessions here on earth.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So, in short, you've given yourself the Perfect and Ultimate Out. If common descent is obvious, well, that's just common design. If a structure works, well, that's obviously the will of the Intelligent Designer. If a structure doesn't work, well, that's just original sin.
And at that point you wouldn't need to care about any evidence that's provide to you, as you could just pigeon hole it, and be all happy that you're "winning".
Maybe dave can provide a single example of anything anywhere such that "that's the way god chose to do it" is NOT a sufficient explanation. At least, that way we'll have some purchase, some distinction to examine in more detail. But I doubt there is any such example.
It makes perfect sense to me that a Creator designed everything perfectly, but then "cursed it" as a result of man's choice to not obey God.
You are aware, of course, that God, being all-knowing and "out of time", already knew all that when he was making the world and man in all their perfection, right? And yet he went on to impose that pointless command (not to eat a fruit, a fruit that suppoesdly did something they already could do, A fruit that had no reason to be there in the first place than to "test" them for something God knew they'd do all along when he made them), And then "cursed" them, and all their unborn children who did not even exist yet, for eternirty? And all this because he loves us? Doesn't this look like some kind of twisted game?
That was the first question I asked you, and you never answered...
Anyway, all this is NOT science, and we both know it, so nevermind.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
But it is also exactly what we would expect if the Bible were true, because it speaks of a "Curse" as well as an originally perfect "Design."
I don't mean things that are 'wrong' nesseceraly, I just mean the odd enzyme that isn't as efficient as it could be, or a pathway that has more components than it could have because it evolved that way (and no I am not talking about redundancy).
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It makes perfect sense to me that a Creator designed everything perfectly, but then "cursed it" as a result of man's choice to not obey God.
Ok so if we say God make very small molecular changes in man fair enough, even though it doesn't appear that way. Why would he then make the same changes in all other organisms, which don't have any phenotypic effect on man at all in his interaction with them You can shrug off 'bad design' but you can't escape the fact that these sytems look like they have evolved as opposed to been engineered.
But what is intelligence? Does an intelligent thing necessarily have to have any or all of these qualities:
1) Desire, wants, will 2) Foresight 3) Memory 4) Awareness of itself 5) Creativity and originality 6) Sensory organs 7) Perceptions 8) Communications
Evolution has some of those qualities, memory, creativity and a form of communication.
But evolution lacks others, like foresight, self awareness and desire. The animals it creates has some of them, but not the system that is evolution.
Does your God have all those qualities?
What does a system have to have to be called intelligent?
What SETI is looking for is something close enough to us we might talk to it. Do you talk to God?
Sure I do. You all could probably guess that I at least imagine that I communicate with God -- it's a well known claim by Christians and others -- of course I'm talking about prayer. But I have no proof to offer you of the sort you would be looking for to prove that He hears me. All I can do is offer evidence that "ET" is out there somewhere because in biological machines, we have exactly the kinds of things SETI is looking for (and apparently T.O. acknowledges this).
Dave, you're missing it. You quoted my questions, but only answered the last one; do you think that you talk to God? (You pray. But does God answer?)
I first listed 8 qualities associated with intelligence and pointed out how evolution doesn't need all of them, then I asked which of those qualities you assumed your God had. Just how mentally anthropomorphic is your vision of God?
What qualities are necessary to call something "intelligent"?
For example, how intelligent is a computer and computer program system like "Deep Blue"? That's the chess playing computer -- it has a kind of foresight, it plays chess and looks ahead, it has memory, but does it have "desire," "awareness of self," "Perceptions"?
See how different systems have different mixtures of those qualities?
Instead of exploring my questions you went off into your preaching and acting completely unaware of your audience. I bet you even frustrate other Christians with babbling preachiness, don't you?
I agree that it is only a hypothesis and never will be provable. Put I do make predictions. See my steps above. (and there are more besides this)
I hope there will be more besides this. You only listed one: "This 'ET' probably can communicate to humans." And your only cited evidence for this prediction is the Bible.
The problem there is that the Bible is more readily explained as a product of purely human activity. We know humans exist. We know they write books. We know different human groups have claimed the existence of different (and often mutually incompatible) Gods throughout history. We know humans sometimes believe things that are objectively false. We know that groups of humans sometimes share common beliefs that are objectively false.
Thus, we can explain the Bible using entirely known phenomenon, without recourse to an undemonstrated God.
Which does NOT, of course, disprove God. Nor does it disprove the Bible as His word. It just means that the Bible is not useful evidence of God communicating with us.
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We all know the Bill Gates quote about DNA being software which is far advanced beyond our own software. I think he should know.
Why? Because he's such an accomplished molecular biologist and geneticist? I submit that the real reason you 'think he should know' is that you've already reached your conclusions (God exists, He made us, etc.), and you accept or reject others' opinions based on whether they agree with those predetermined conclusions.
And that's fine with me. You should just recognize that it's faith, not evidence.
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I would turn this around and ask, "What would it take to convince you that the God of the Christian Bible exists and is really as He is described there?" I'm serious. What would it take?
Any of the following would certainly make me give it stronger consideration: * An objectively verifiable burning bush talks to me and/or to others. * A sea gets parted, preferably accompanied by a booming voice. * The earth stops rotating for a while, then starts up again, all without killing us. * A new species of dats appears suddenly, preferably in a place where there were definitely no previous dats. Molecular analysis shows that half the dats' genes came from dogs, and half from cats.
If the Bible is true, God did all those sorts of things before, so he can presumably do them again, right?
You may say that the Bible shows he already did them, and i should accept that. Unfortunately, we have no corroborating evidence that those things happened. In fact, objective evidence frequently contradicts modern translations of the Bible, e.g. regarding the age of the earth, claims for a global flood, etc.
On the other hand, we do have evidence that people sometimes make up stories like those, or misinterpret 'natural' phenomena as being the work of God.
So, if God exists, and He wants to do some of those things again now, when we're better equipped to observe and record them objectively, I'll reassess my non-belief. Or, maybe you can present actual evidence that is not more readily explained by known phenomena. You haven't done so yet, and I strongly doubt you can, but maybe I'm wrong.
But what is intelligence? Does an intelligent thing necessarily have to have any or all of these qualities:
1) Desire, wants, will 2) Foresight 3) Memory 4) Awareness of itself 5) Creativity and originality 6) Sensory organs 7) Perceptions 8) Communications
Evolution has some of those qualities, memory, creativity and a form of communication.
But evolution lacks others, like foresight, self awareness and desire. The animals it creates has some of them, but not the system that is evolution.
Does your God have all those qualities?
What does a system have to have to be called intelligent?
What SETI is looking for is something close enough to us we might talk to it. Do you talk to God?
Norm-- Didn't mean to dodge you. Here's your answers.
All I can tellyou for sure is that the Intelligent Agents that I know about do have all those items in (1) through (8), and of course the Bible claims these same attributes for God. It is my opinion that these claims are true ... however, I am not asking anyone to join me in that belief until I show my evidence supporting these claims. This is why I did not answer these in detail yet. My understanding of an intelligent agent is something similar to animal and human intelligence. I do not have rigorous criteria yet. Does God talk to me? Not in an audible voice, no. I will explain this more fully in the proper sequence.
More answers later. I'm breaking for lunch :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, if your arguing for the "philosophical validity" of the teleological argument....then you may need to stop. I, as well as most others, will admit that it is a valid argument. I will even go as far as to say that the "fine-tuned" universe argument is my rational reason for believing in God.
You need to realize however that everyone you are talking with is arguing against the scientific validity of the argument. In that case the teleological argument falls short of any sort of validity. It makes a great deal of assumption, and while those assumptions may turn out to be true....they arent scientifically valid.
Do you understand the difference between validity and factual? They are mutually exclusive concepts.
BTW....you never did explain your belief in the divinity of Jesus. Im still a little curious about that.
All I can tellyou for sure is that the Intelligent Agents that I know about do have all those items in (1) through (8), and of course the Bible claims these same attributes for God. It is my opinion that these claims are true ...
My understanding of an intelligent agent is something similar to animal and human intelligence. I do not have rigorous criteria yet.
You are using the term "Intelligent Agent" in the Dembski sense and not the Minsky sense, (as detailed in Marvin Minsky's book, "The Society of Mind").
Dembski assumes against the evidence of neuroscience and computational explorations of A.I. that intelligence is something supernatural. Minsky tried to build naturalistic intelligent machines and programs.
So, when you say that the Intelligent Agents that you know about do have all those items -- is that because you don't know about robots like Cog? Or chess playing computers like Deep Blue? -- or is it because you don't consider those things composed of intelligent agents?
And where do roaches, ants and other insects fall in your estimation of intelligence? Ants and termites do build things like people do -- homes and cities of a sort -- does that similarity imply that ants and termites are intelligent in your view?
I note that Dave has still failed to provide any of the actual evidence he claimed for his 'Big Brother Designer' type.
Did I miss something? Or does he simply assume that if he blathers on long enough, we'll forget that his unsupported assertions are, well, unsupported?
Do you understand the difference between validity and factual? They are mutually exclusive concepts.
Puck, I don't think you meant to say "mutually exclusive." I think you just meant to say independant. It's quite true that many factual concepts are even valid concepts!
Yes. I see the distinction, but why limit ourselves to searching for ET's that are like human "people"? Why would we not entertain the possibility of a Super-human of some sort. Are we really so narrow minded that we rule out the possibility of some advanced life form out there somewhere?
Because, Dave, we wouldn't know what to search for. We know of exactly one "intelligent designer": ourselves. If we have no idea what a "designer" is capable of, how would we know what to look for in its designs?
Every time we've been able to determine "design" (the pyramids, Stonehenge, etc.) it's been by direct reference to what we know humans are capable of. How would we determine, even in principle, whether a mitochondrion was "designed" if we can't even make any guesses as to the capability of the "designer"? As I pointed out in a post a few pages ago, that becomes the task of scientists whether they believe in natural or supernatural causes. And the difference is, scientists who believe in natural causes already have an idea of how something like a mitochondrion could have come about; creationists have no idea at all how a "designer" could have come up with a mitochondrion.
And if a "designer" is capable of anything, then how would go about ruling out "design"? It couldn't be done, which means the "creator god hypothesis" is unfalsifiable, if you're using "biological machines" as evidence in favor of the hypothesis.
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And I think it is entirely possible and actually quite probable that there really is an "ET" out there who may in fact be more like a "Mind" with no body--a spirit, if you will, who made all these "artifacts" we find here on earth. And this has nothing to do with "religion" for me, which is why I place this in the category of science. I consider myself to basically be a sort of private SETI researcher.
Good for you, Dave. Now, would you care to favor us with your hypothesis as to how this "ET" out there actually "made" these "artifacts"? Because evolutionary biologists already have a good idea of how these artifacts are created. What's your guess?
And, how would you go about falsifying your "ET" hypothesis? What evidence would lead you to believe that life wasn't "ET"ed into existence?
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And my idea of how this "Mind" did it was basically that he created a perfect environment for life--the Cosmos and Earth--then placed a relatively small number of "biological machines" on Earth, which in turn diversified into the many species which existed before the Flood. A similar thing happened after the Flood -- i.e. a relatively small number of "kinds" diversified into the present diversity that we see today. I think some people think that I think God created each individual species. I do not think this. I think God basically created the original "kinds" each with their own unique DNA software, then He basically "let the software run" and let the free spirits attached to the minds of the "human biological machines" have free choices to do as they would do.
Okay, Dave. How did he do it? You don't know? He just "willed them into existence"? What's the method? Because without that, you're not talking science. You're talking wild-assed speculation
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Actually, I think that many, many things we find in Nature strongly resemble things humans would build. ... Airplanes are a perfect example. Nature had airfoils and propulsion systems before we did. Nature had vision devices before we did. Nature had "radar" before we did. ...
See, here's the problem with argument by analogy. You think these natural structures resemble man-made structures; I submit that they do not. Bird wings bear only the remotest resemblance to aircraft wings. About the only thing they have in common is cross-section. Bird wings are much more similar to tetrapod limbs than they are to aircraft wings. The internal structure isn't remotely similar to aircraft wings, but there is an almost perfect one-to-one correspondence between the bones in a bird's wing and the bones in your arm.
And what human-designed thing does a mitochondrion resemble? Don't say "a factory," because no human factory looks even slightly like a mitochondrion.
The fact that two structures that have similar function have similar form isn't really evidence for anything other than the engineering constraints imposed by natural law. How many different forms of a wing are theoretically possible, Dave?
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And Nature still has many things which we do not have. Dupont has studied gecko feet to understand how the adhesive works. Scientists are studying molecular machines and now are making nano-machines themselves. I constantly read about scientists observing Nature and trying to mimic it.
And besides, you're putting the cart before the horse. The notion that human-designed structures bear resemblance to natural ones is better evidence that humans know how to copy than it is that natural structures were designed.
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This is great stuff! I love it! But it highlites the fact that Nature has technology far, far, far advanced beyond our own in every direction we look. If this is not evidence for and "advanced civilization" somewhere that produced this, then I don't know what is.
This argument would be more compelling if the earth were six thousand years old, but it isn't. Humans have had about 30,000 years to develop any sort of technology, maybe 90,000 at the outside. Meanwhile, natural processes have had almost five billion years to develop solutions to varying problems. Is it any surprise that natural solutions are often more "advanced" than human ones? Well, I guess it would be to you, but that's only because you think the earth's age is .0001% as old as it really is.
In other words, Dave, your evidence of "biological machines" is not very compelling at all. Combined with your not-very-compelling "fine-tuning" argument, I'd say you're zero-for-one so far.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No...I meant to say mutually exclusive..... The concepts of validity and factual are mutually exclusive concepts. A thing may be both valid and factual....
but validity is simply being logically valid while factual is a comment on the actual truth of an idea.
They are independent criteria of a statement...but mutally exclusive concepts
Not to be nitpicky, but you might want to look up what mutually exclusive means.
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A thing may be both valid and factual....
but validity is simply being logically valid while factual is a comment on the actual truth of an idea.
If something can be both "valid" and "factual", then the concepts of "validity" and "factual" can not be mutually exclusive. As an example, mutual exclusivity belongs to concepts such as "semantics" and "interesting discussions".
No...I meant to say mutually exclusive..... The concepts of validity and factual are mutually exclusive concepts. A thing may be both valid and factual....
but validity is simply being logically valid while factual is a comment on the actual truth of an idea.
They are independent criteria of a statement...but mutally exclusive concepts
The term "independent criteria" is good, but you're misusing the term "mutually exclusive." If the Venn diagram can have overlapping areas, then they can't be mutually exclusive.
There are many things in nature that seem very efficient to us, but there are also a great number of things that are horribly inneficient and badly 'designed', which is what we would expect if evolution were true.
But it is also exactly what we would expect if the Bible were true, because it speaks of a "Curse" as well as an originally perfect "Design."
Which makes the whole thing meaningless: ANYTHING you think is positive you explain as good design; ANYTHING you think is negative you explain as curse; since you can account for anything, post hoc, you can predict nothing and explain nothing.
Also this reflects your anthropocentric world view: the whole universe is supposed to be about US. Your only evidence for this point of view is the myths of ancient tribesmen who thought that the sun went round the earth. Some of those myths are very poetic, others are horrible, but all of them stem from ignorance rather than knowledge.
Re "Also given the fact that God is all-powerful he would be able to create a rock so heavy he couldnt lift it and at the same time be able to lift it."
Relative though to what source of gravity?
After all, presumably said rock would exceed the size of stars and such. Then again, wouldn't said rock just collapse immediately into a black hole? Oh well.
Oh come on UnMark.... all AFDave needs to refute your arguments is a basic understanding of philosophy...and perhaps some light googling.
Heck...i will do it for him....
I really do hope you were joking, Puck. Dave, I already knew was a mental midget who'd gladly claim that God can create square circles, married bachelors, and five-legged tetrapods.
Dave, I've asked before, but haven't gotten an answer: can God create another God? Can God create a better God?
That's the problem with god, every time we try to pin something on him we realize it's just projection.
Nothing in his world seems to relate much to ours.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
(5) Risk analysis. Having walked through this entire process, I now am faced squarely with the claim from the Bible: "Believe me and spend eternity with me when you die." (God supposedly speaking) or "Don't believe me and spend eternity separated from me. It's your choice, Dave. I won't force you. I have given you abundant evidence for My existence. If this evidence is not enough, what evidence WOULD be enough?" I have to choose, and it basically boils down to risk analysis. Which of the two possible choices seems less risky?
Ahhhh...it just wouldn't be the same, having a scientifically illiterate fundy proselytizer prattle on without bringing up Pascal's wager.
Gee Dave, shouldn't you subscribe to the practices of Buddhism, and Hinduism, and Islam at the same time too just to further reduce your risk? Think of it as buying extra insurance to hedge your bets. One can't be too careful about the afterlife, you know.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
No....Davey should obviously either become a Muslim or a Mormon. They were both religions dictated directly by God himself. They obviously have more validity than the New Testament of the bible which was thrown together by men.
Either that or maybe Buddhism/Hinduism, since almost everyone agrees that it is more spiritually fulfilling than Christianity...and it actually has an answer to the question of necessary evil
You are aware, of course, that God, being all-knowing and "out of time", already knew all that when he was making the world and man in all their perfection, right? And yet he went on to impose that pointless command (not to eat a fruit, a fruit that suppoesdly did something they already could do, A fruit that had no reason to be there in the first place than to "test" them for something God knew they'd do all along when he made them), And then "cursed" them, and all their unborn children who did not even exist yet, for eternirty? And all this because he loves us? Doesn't this look like some kind of twisted game?
That was the first question I asked you, and you never answered...
Anyway, all this is NOT science, and we both know it, so nevermind.
It should be science. Theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences, and it should be reinstated as such. Here's just a snippet from my argument for that from the "Ape Questions" thread.
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And I admit that I am not going to be able to "prove" to you that He did with the "Scientific Method" as you understand it. This is an extremely important point. Scientists today do not admit certain kinds of evidence into the arena and I (and Meyer, et al) believe this is an enormous mistake ... and I wrote lots more which I won't repeat here ... go read it on the other thread ...
The Genesis story makes perfect sense if you really examine it. The creation of mankind with a choice necessarily requires the possibility of evil, which by definition is "opposition to the will of the Creator." What other definition makes sense? What fun would it be for parents to have "robot children"? It's a lot more fulfilling for parents to have kids that have a free will. There is risk, to be sure. Think about Jeffrey Dahmer's mom, but every day parents all over the world deem it worth the risk. Why? Because of the greater good which may result. Their child may grow up to be the next Louis Pasteur or Mother Teresa. And even if they don't achieve to this level, there is the wonderful blessings of home and family ... riding bikes, reading stories to them, watching them take their first steps, watching them play little league ball, answering their funny questions, and on and on. Why is this any different to visualize with God? To me, it makes perfect sense that God would feel exactly the same way. Does he want an earth full of zombie robots? Of course not. He wants people that have the ability to hate His guts, but make the conscious decision to love Him ... just like human parents do also. And you can't escape this argument by saying "Well, it's different with God because supposedly He's all-powerful and all-knowing. Why doesn't He intervene and just stop all this rot?" Well, He does sometimes--like with the Flood--and He will again at the End of Time. This also is just like human parents. They intervene sometimes in the lives of their children and they choose NOT to intervene sometimes because they want the child to learn some lesson. What is so strange about this when it comes to thinking about God?
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I don't mean things that are 'wrong' nesseceraly, I just mean the odd enzyme that isn't as efficient as it could be, or a pathway that has more components than it could have because it evolved that way (and no I am not talking about redundancy).
Examples? Are you sure these less-than-optimum items could not be explained by mutational loss of function over time as Creationism predicts?
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Ok so if we say God make very small molecular changes in man fair enough, even though it doesn't appear that way. Why would he then make the same changes in all other organisms, which don't have any phenotypic effect on man at all in his interaction with them You can shrug off 'bad design' but you can't escape the fact that these sytems look like they have evolved as opposed to been engineered.
Creationists don't say God makes very small molecular changes in man. We say this ...
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Again, my Creationist Theory regarding apes and humans is that there was one pair of human "kind" ancestors and one pair of ape "kind" ancestors. Now I do not have a formal definition of "kind" yet and I admit there may have been a "monkey kind" pair as well, but this is not important for the present discussion. The general idea of Creationist Theory is that there were a relatively limited number of "kinds" created by God, and that God "programmed" enough genetic information into each separate genome so that each "kind" would be able to adapt to the various environments in which they found themselves as they spread out all over the earth. Today, of course, we find that monkeys and apes have diversified into many different species and that humans also have diversified greatly.
Of course, we say similar things about other "kinds" of organisms.
They do not at all look evolved to me. There are some things which could be construed that way. But when everything is considered including stuff like Michael Denton's sequence analysis (Talk Origin's rebuttal is lame), then the evidence is much more convincing in favor of design.
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What qualities are necessary to call something "intelligent"?
For example, how intelligent is a computer and computer program system like "Deep Blue"? That's the chess playing computer -- it has a kind of foresight, it plays chess and looks ahead, it has memory, but does it have "desire," "awareness of self," "Perceptions"?
My only experience with "intelligence" is human, animal and as you point out machine "intelligence" and they are all different. I think when more research is completed, intelligence will be more rigorously defined. Dembski obviously is all over this one and he says that it really boils down to the ability to make choices. Maybe he's right. I don't know what definitions will ultimately hold up to scrutiny. One possibility for intelligence that naturalistic scientists rule out, however, is what might be called "spirit intelligence." My theory is that what really makes me ME is some sort of immaterial "spirit" that somehow interacts with the neurons of my brain. The real "me" is the spirit and it controls and directs the conscious choices my brain makes all day long. Of course, I also theorize that there are other spirits which to a greater or lesser degree can compete with my own spirit for control of my mind. My theory includes both "evil" spirits and "good" spirits, and of course the ultimate spirit--God Himself.
Science should expand its horizons and investigate these types possibilities.
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I hope there will be more besides this. You only listed one: "This 'ET' probably can communicate to humans." And your only cited evidence for this prediction is the Bible.
The problem there is that the Bible is more readily explained as a product of purely human activity. We know humans exist. We know they write books. We know different human groups have claimed the existence of different (and often mutually incompatible) Gods throughout history. We know humans sometimes believe things that are objectively false. We know that groups of humans sometimes share common beliefs that are objectively false.
Thus, we can explain the Bible using entirely known phenomenon, without recourse to an undemonstrated God.
Which does NOT, of course, disprove God. Nor does it disprove the Bible as His word. It just means that the Bible is not useful evidence of God communicating with us.
I would challenge your next to last statement. I agree that the Book of Mormon can be easily explained as a forgery of Joseph Smith. I have my opinions about other "sacred" texts. But the Bible is so unique when compared to these other texts, that it is really in a class all by itself as Josh McDowell makes such a clear case for in "Evidence That Demands a Verdict, vol.1". My whole belief system hangs on two major premises for which I have found overwhelming supporting evidence:
A--The Wonders of Nature can best be explained by a Supernatural Agent B--The Bible can best be explained by a Supernatural Agent
Everything else I say flows naturally out of these two premises. And it is these two major premises which I am seeking to show my evidence for on this thread.
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Any of the following would certainly make me give it stronger consideration: * An objectively verifiable burning bush talks to me and/or to others. * A sea gets parted, preferably accompanied by a booming voice. * The earth stops rotating for a while, then starts up again, all without killing us. * A new species of dats appears suddenly, preferably in a place where there were definitely no previous dats. Molecular analysis shows that half the dats' genes came from dogs, and half from cats.
If the Bible is true, God did all those sorts of things before, so he can presumably do them again, right?
You may say that the Bible shows he already did them, and i should accept that. Unfortunately, we have no corroborating evidence that those things happened. In fact, objective evidence frequently contradicts modern translations of the Bible, e.g. regarding the age of the earth, claims for a global flood, etc.
On the other hand, we do have evidence that people sometimes make up stories like those, or misinterpret 'natural' phenomena as being the work of God.
So, if God exists, and He wants to do some of those things again now, when we're better equipped to observe and record them objectively, I'll reassess my non-belief. Or, maybe you can present actual evidence that is not more readily explained by known phenomena. You haven't done so yet, and I strongly doubt you can, but maybe I'm wrong.
May I submit to you the idea that God does not need to make burning bushes and part oceans anymore to show his power and brilliant intelligence? We now see different "miracles" down the tubes of our microscopes and telescopes and we don't need the other miracles anymore.
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Dave, if your arguing for the "philosophical validity" of the teleological argument....then you may need to stop. I, as well as most others, will admit that it is a valid argument. I will even go as far as to say that the "fine-tuned" universe argument is my rational reason for believing in God.
You need to realize however that everyone you are talking with is arguing against the scientific validity of the argument. In that case the teleological argument falls short of any sort of validity. It makes a great deal of assumption, and while those assumptions may turn out to be true....they arent scientifically valid.
Do you understand the difference between validity and factual? They are mutually exclusive concepts.
BTW....you never did explain your belief in the divinity of Jesus. Im still a little curious about that.
Please refer to my discussion above about my view that the definitions of science need to be expanded to what they once were in the past.
I do believe that Jesus was in fact, the Creator in a human body. Weird I know, but well supported I believe. More on that as we progresss.
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Dembski assumes against the evidence of neuroscience and computational explorations of A.I. that intelligence is something supernatural. Minsky tried to build naturalistic intelligent machines and programs.
So, when you say that the Intelligent Agents that you know about do have all those items -- is that because you don't know about robots like Cog? Or chess playing computers like Deep Blue? -- or is it because you don't consider those things composed of intelligent agents?
And where do roaches, ants and other insects fall in your estimation of intelligence? Ants and termites do build things like people do -- homes and cities of a sort -- does that similarity imply that ants and termites are intelligent in your view?
I'm not sure what I think about machine intelligence. Of course, the ultimate machine intelligence would be to take the human genome, synthesize it artificially, modify it to our liking--blond hair, blue eyes, good looking, smart, etc. and place it into an egg and let it grow. Would it be alive? I'm not talking about cloning. I'm talking about true "organism production." Weird to think about, no doubt.
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Because, Dave, we wouldn't know what to search for. We know of exactly one "intelligent designer": ourselves. If we have no idea what a "designer" is capable of, how would we know what to look for in its designs?
Every time we've been able to determine "design" (the pyramids, Stonehenge, etc.) it's been by direct reference to what we know humans are capable of. How would we determine, even in principle, whether a mitochondrion was "designed" if we can't even make any guesses as to the capability of the "designer"? As I pointed out in a post a few pages ago, that becomes the task of scientists whether they believe in natural or supernatural causes. And the difference is, scientists who believe in natural causes already have an idea of how something like a mitochondrion could have come about; creationists have no idea at all how a "designer" could have come up with a mitochondrion.
And if a "designer" is capable of anything, then how would go about ruling out "design"? It couldn't be done, which means the "creator god hypothesis" is unfalsifiable, if you're using "biological machines" as evidence in favor of the hypothesis.
Of course we do not have any idea how the Designer might have come up with a mitochondrion design. That is precisely why humans study nature to get inspiration for their own designs. But if we can figure out how He did it, maybe we can duplicate it ... this is what happens all the time and it is really cool! But just because we don't know how He did it does not make it sensible to a priori rule out the possibility that He might have and don't even allow the discussion. It also doesn't make the assertion that it happened by chance any more plausible to sensible people.
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Good for you, Dave. Now, would you care to favor us with your hypothesis as to how this "ET" out there actually "made" these "artifacts"? Because evolutionary biologists already have a good idea of how these artifacts are created. What's your guess?
And, how would you go about falsifying your "ET" hypothesis? What evidence would lead you to believe that life wasn't "ET"ed into existence?
Okay, Dave. How did he do it? You don't know? He just "willed them into existence"? What's the method? Because without that, you're not talking science. You're talking wild-assed speculation
No. I have no idea how He did it. But it's fun studying it and trying to figure it out. This is a productive form of inquiry which yields many fruitful new technologies. Your definition of science is too limited if you cannot be expansive enough to consider the possibility of Someone somewhere out there who just might have higher tech than you. My wild-assed speculation is less "wild-assed" than your wild-assed speculation. Falsification is a bogus demarcation criterion if we are talking about expanded science definitions. See Meyer's discussion.
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See, here's the problem with argument by analogy. You think these natural structures resemble man-made structures; I submit that they do not. Bird wings bear only the remotest resemblance to aircraft wings. About the only thing they have in common is cross-section. Bird wings are much more similar to tetrapod limbs than they are to aircraft wings. The internal structure isn't remotely similar to aircraft wings, but there is an almost perfect one-to-one correspondence between the bones in a bird's wing and the bones in your arm.
And what human-designed thing does a mitochondrion resemble? Don't say "a factory," because no human factory looks even slightly like a mitochondrion.
The fact that two structures that have similar function have similar form isn't really evidence for anything other than the engineering constraints imposed by natural law. How many different forms of a wing are theoretically possible, Dave?
Agreed that the internals are vastly different. And better, I might add from several perspectives. What airplane have you seen that can reproduce itself? Or feed itself? Or maintain itself? Wouldn't that be great if Boeing came up with that? American Airlines could lay off their whole maintenance division! And they wouldn't have to acquire new aircraft unless they wanted new capabilities. They could just have two existing, old aircraft "mate" and presto ... baby airliners! And for fuel, just put those airliners out to pasture ... no more fuel trucks! The possibilities are endless! Now before you say I'm crazy, just think about what we are doing with nano-technology. The airliners are a silly example, but the fact is that we are mimicking nature at an ever accelerating pace precisely because we find such brilliant designs there.
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And besides, you're putting the cart before the horse. The notion that human-designed structures bear resemblance to natural ones is better evidence that humans know how to copy than it is that natural structures were designed.
I disagree. To me it is so obvious that living systems were designed because of the higher-than-our-technology involved (by several orders of magnitude) that it stands as the 8th Wonder of the World to me that so many scientists don't see it.
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This argument would be more compelling if the earth were six thousand years old, but it isn't. Humans have had about 30,000 years to develop any sort of technology, maybe 90,000 at the outside. Meanwhile, natural processes have had almost five billion years to develop solutions to varying problems. Is it any surprise that natural solutions are often more "advanced" than human ones? Well, I guess it would be to you, but that's only because you think the earth's age is .0001% as old as it really is.
If you had 5 billion TIMES 5 billion years, it would still not be a plausible story to me, the odds are so staggeringly small for life as we see it to come into existence and develop the way evolutionists say it developed.
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Which makes the whole thing meaningless: ANYTHING you think is positive you explain as good design; ANYTHING you think is negative you explain as curse; since you can account for anything, post hoc, you can predict nothing and explain nothing.
Also this reflects your anthropocentric world view: the whole universe is supposed to be about US. Your only evidence for this point of view is the myths of ancient tribesmen who thought that the sun went round the earth. Some of those myths are very poetic, others are horrible, but all of them stem from ignorance rather than knowledge.
Creationism explains everything MUCH better than Evolution does. It explains designs in nature, it explains the human condition, it explains the fossil record, it explains coal beds and oil wells, it explains the races of mankind. It explains dinosaurs and the ice age. It has predicted many things including the ubiquitous gaps in the fossil record and support for the typological view of nature when the molecular data was examined. It has predicted "downward" evolution of increasing harmful mutations and continued loss of function over time. It predicted that the universe had a beginning and predicts that it will have an end, and many, many more things.
My evidence for the anthropocentric world view is NOT what you say. It was originally from the Bible which has been proven to be real history. This view has been recently been confirmed by science by Michael Denton and others.
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See, Dave? That's how rational people admit they were wrong.
I have admitted when I was wrong. Have you not read the "Chimp Chromosome" thread?
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I really do hope you were joking, Puck. Dave, I already knew was a mental midget who'd gladly claim that God can create square circles, married bachelors, and five-legged tetrapods.
Dave, I've asked before, but haven't gotten an answer: can God create another God? Can God create a better God?
I have no knowledge if God can do those things. To me they are silly questions.
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Ahhhh...it just wouldn't be the same, having a scientifically illiterate fundy proselytizer prattle on without bringing up Pascal's wager.
Gee Dave, shouldn't you subscribe to the practices of Buddhism, and Hinduism, and Islam at the same time too just to further reduce your risk? Think of it as buying extra insurance to hedge your bets. One can't be too careful about the afterlife, you know.
Christianity is an all-or-nothing proposition. Jesus made it quite clear that He is the only Way. If you study the Christian scriptures, you would see that the above suggestion is not an option.
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No....Davey should obviously either become a Muslim or a Mormon. They were both religions dictated directly by God himself. They obviously have more validity than the New Testament of the bible which was thrown together by men.
Either that or maybe Buddhism/Hinduism, since almost everyone agrees that it is more spiritually fulfilling than Christianity...and it actually has an answer to the question of necessary evil
No. As you will see if you stay with me, the Bible is in a class all by itself and is best explained as the sole, authoritative message of the Creator to mankind.
I know there are a lot of unfulfilled "Christians" in the world. I don't know their story. Maybe they don't really understand Christianity. I can tell you that I am fulfilled. And I know tons of spiritually fulfilled Christians who are an absolute gas to be around.
I don't know many Buddhists and even fewer Hindus. My sister tried Buddhism and later committed suicide. I've read stories about Hudson Taylor in China and his encounters with Bhuddhism and they were not pretty. Ditto for William Carey with Hinduism in India. But that's about the extent of my experience with these religions.
I am about ready to move on to my next piece of evidence for a Creator God. Does anyone have any more questions?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes. How is a 'supernatural agent' explanatory? it appears to be words strung together and declared an explanation rather than being an explanation. You do know what an explanation is, don't you?
Second question: given the examples you've provided, we must assume that God is physical and is, in fact, embodied as a matter of essential nature. Otherwise, you undercut your recourse to "it's like human intelligence but more so" -- the only examples of intelligence we have or can legitmately conceive are embodied. Intelligence is always action in the world.
Finally, please deal with the apparent fact that the world is causally closed.
They certainly don't upon cursory examination, as Dawkins has said. But taking all the evidence into account they really do.
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Of course we do not have any idea how the Designer might have come up with a mitochondrion design. That is precisely why humans study nature to get inspiration for their own designs. But if we can figure out how He did it, maybe we can duplicate it ... this is what happens all the time and it is really cool!
Im not sure this applies to nature. What does happen all the time is people use the principles of evolution.
...this is NOT science, and we both know it, so nevermind.
It should be science. Theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences, and it should be reinstated as such.
You're dangerously misinformed and a perfect example of everything that is poisonous about Christianism, fundamentalism and the intelligent design movement.
You don't know logic. You don't know what a scientific explanation is.
And when things are explained to you they don't penetrate your mental barriers.
And yet, you would have the arrogance to replace this mightly success that modern science is with your vague and backward notions of theology.
I hope one day you'll become a witness in another Dover type trial.
My whole belief system hangs on two major premises for which I have found overwhelming supporting evidence:
A--The Wonders of Nature can best be explained by a Supernatural Agent B--The Bible can best be explained by a Supernatural Agent
No, Dave. Wrong, Dave. Saying a "Supernatural agent did it" explains exactly nothing. In fact, it's the ultimate admission of intellectual defeat. When you ask, "What caused this particular natural phenomenon?" and answer, "A supernatural agent did it," that's exactly equivalent to saying "I have no idea whatsofuckingever what caused it."
You keep saying your "hypothesis" is "science," but in fact it's a "science killer." It annihilates any inquiry into how something actually happened, or what its cause was. If the answer to every question really was, "God Did It," we'd all still be living in caves.
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I am about ready to move on to my next piece of evidence for a Creator God. Does anyone have any more questions?
What do you mean, you're going to move on to your next piece of evidence? Are you under the misapprehension that you've presented any evidence of anything so far?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
My whole belief system hangs on two major premises for which I have found overwhelming supporting evidence:
A--The Wonders of Nature can best be explained by a Supernatural Agent B--The Bible can best be explained by a Supernatural Agent
Everything else I say flows naturally out of these two premises. And it is these two major premises which I am seeking to show my evidence for on this thread.
Here is a quick but important question: What possible evidence would not support such premises?
OK, let's review all Missionary AFDave's "evidence" to date:
1. Personal incredulity based on ignorance. 2. More personal incredulity based on ignorance. 3. Lie-filled article from AIG that got totally trashed. 4. Personal incredulity based on anecdotal occurrence. 5. Pascal's wager. 6. Repeated personal incredulity based on ignorance. 7. Second lie-filled article from AIG that got trashed worse than the first. 8. More repeated personal incredulity based on ignorance.
Anyone see a trend here?
I wonder what part of "personal incredulity based on ignorance DOES NOT QUALIFY as evidence" Missionary Dave just can't get through his head?
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AFDave: I am about ready to move on to my next piece of evidence for a Creator God. Does anyone have any more questions?
Yes Dave, the same questions you have consistently avoided.
1. Should all scientific findings be required to undergo a critical peer-review process before being deemed acceptable for teaching in schools?
2. Who are the best qualified people to do rigorous critical scientific peer-reviews?
3. Why should the opinion of an ignorant layman about scientific findings carry more weight than the opinions of well trained professional scientists in the relevant fields of study?
Surprise us all and provide some honest answers for once.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
If you had 5 billion TIMES 5 billion years, it would still not be a plausible story to me, the odds are so staggeringly small for life as we see it to come into existence and develop the way evolutionists say it developed.
What the phalloidin are you yammering on about now? Didn't you use the cosmic fine-tuning argument as your primary proof for God just a few days ago? Are you seriously saying that the universe is perfectly fine-tuned for life, but not fine-tuned enough for life to exist without divine intervention?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
If you had 5 billion TIMES 5 billion years, it would still not be a plausible story to me, the odds are so staggeringly small for life as we see it to come into existence and develop the way evolutionists say it developed.
That's a shame Dave. Considering that the earliest life forms on earth probably reproduced "5 billion" times faster than us and outnumbered our current population by "5 billion" times, a whole heck of a lot of evolution could occur in just 5 billion years.
I have a question for you, AFDave: When did the Global Flood occur, as referred to in Genesis ? What date was that, BCE? (Before Common Era?). Please respond.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I don't have the stomach for these afdave threads, but if he finds any legitimate evidence for a god (or time traveler or space alien) would someone make a big fuss of it for those who are not following this thread? Since no one in the history of mankind has ever provided any scientific and afdave says he has it I'm banking on one of you to share this discovery with us once afdave shows his cards.
I've always wanted to meet a god (or time traveler or space alien).
yeah, but can you prove you are who you say you are?
c'mon! let's see the evidence!
If two free plane tickets and reservations for a 2 week dive trip to the northern great barrier reef appear in my mail within the next week, I'll consider your claims truthy.
If two free plane tickets and reservations for a 2 week dive trip to the northern great barrier reef appear in my mail within the next week, I'll consider your claims truthy.
How about a monkey flying out your butt -- wouldn't that be more miraculous?
Well Dave, this "free will" conversation can, like Cain's wife, go on indefinitely: About what exactly free will is, if it includes or needs "knowledge of good and evil", if this last thing is good or bad, how god's omniscience plays into his commpassionate father games, etc. However, it does not have to: It's theology, not science. But wait, I see you disagree:
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It should be science. Theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences, and it should be reinstated as such.
Well, that's just great. After 4 threads and countless posts, the person who came here boasting that he could provide us with a "scientific theory of divine creation", using scientifisc terms and methods, now says he can do it, but first we must accept Theology as the most basic science.
Dave, call me back when you have something of interest to add in these forums. Until then, thanks for playing.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I want a flying monkey, too! Even if it comes out of my butt, it would be worth it--I could show it on Oprah and get really famous and rich. *Prays fervently*
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I want a flying monkey, too! Even if it comes out of my butt, it would be worth it--I could show it on Oprah and get really famous and rich. *Prays fervently*
Here you go:
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I am just as adept at retrofitting current data to my preconceptions as AFDave, hence I will boldly assert that this Dilbert cartoon is merely evidence that a time-travelling alien DEVIL took my idea and went BACK in time to Scott Adams, thereby depriving me of my rightful renown as founder of the Monkey-Buttology Research Institute. I protest this injustice.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
HA! This photographic http://www.retrocrush.com/100monsters/monkey3.jpg proof, (courtesy normdoering) as well as the living specimen provided by my associate, Professor Toejam, demonstrates the incontrovertible scientificalicious validity of our work here at the Monkey Buttology Research Institute. The existence of flying butt-monkeys is prima facie evidence of the woeful inadequacy of Darwinian Evolutions Theory.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quote I don't have the stomach for these afdave threads
Yeah, me either. I check them occasionally for funny lines, but 98% of it is
Quote AFDave: (some comment which makes basic errors)
Quote Argystokes, Ved, Occam, Chris Hyland, normdoering, etc: (whole bunch of data, links to papers, analysis explaining basic science)
Quote AFDave: nuh uh!
Good summary. But after having not commented for quite some time on Dave threads, mainly I'm using your post as a jump-off to discuss what is going on with Dave, .
We like to point to multiple lines of evidence for the age of the earth, and for the several lines of evidence that converge to support evolution--you know, fossils, the overall hierarchical schemata of cladistics, and the direct comparison of genomes on the smaller scale. Obviously if independent lines of evidence give the same result(s), we have attained a high confidence level.
The thing with Dave is that he has the same thing going. Now I don't agree that any of his lines are in fact sound, but the important thing is that he seems to believe them, as do many. Early on he mentioned at least some, the historicity of the Bible (which he believes is great, even though Genesis 1-11 is quite obviously incorrect, even about human length of life), the "evidence for the flood", the supposed gulf between human and animal minds, and the appearance of design.
And the fact is that this is his worldview, that is, it is how he evaluates the various lines of evidence. He evaluates evolution based upon the notion that Genesis is history, and that the flood happened. Most of us know of huge amounts of evidence against these, but he didn't achieve his worldview by evaluating evidence as scientists and judges do, he achieved them through comparing his several lines of belief, to make them all compatible.
People who argue evolution with Dave cannot penetrate the interlinked lines of belief that Dave has. Nearly all of the beliefs he espouses have been, and/or are being, attacked, yet never once is any line of attack able to overthrow the entire set of interlinked beliefs. Hit him on evolution, and he's arguing "free will" and Pascal's wager. Hit him on the Bible, and he'll point out that life "looks designed" (yes, from the standpoint of those who think all correlated complexity has to be the result of design), that humans are different from animals, and the "fact" that the geological column shows evidence of flood activity. Not that all of the examples I've brought up are what I've seen him use, but I have read enough to know that whenever he's stumped on anything he's off to some other bolster of his worldview.
People can hit him from every angle, but it's not going to make any difference, because he's evaluating everything written through a fundamentalist worldview that connects salvation, the religious view of humanity, flood, creation, redemption, and anthropocentrism into one belief system that has no room for alternative viewpoints. No fundamentalist can integrate all of the criticisms into one synthetic alternative viewpoint on a contingent basis (in fact a well-based non-religious conception of the world is achieved by few enough, other than by trusting the expertise of specialists), thus they must resort to evaluating evolution by the Bible, the Bible by "apparent design", Bible history through the "truth" about creation and the flood, humanity by fundamentalist interpretation, and the impossibility of a thoroughgoing "naturalism" by these several lines that "require a designer", or more straightforwardly, "require God".
"Paradigm shift" is one hideous cliche by now. However, I think it's the appropriate word to use for fundamentalists in the area of origins. They need to effect a colossal paradigm shift involving just about everything they believe is important before they can even begin to evaluate evolution in a manner that is open to new ideas. It is really far too much for most people by the time that they have completed their worldview, say, by their 30s (supposing that they didn't remain skeptical about fundamentalism by that time).
All criticisms of their inadequate conceptions appear insufficient to overthrow the several "lines of evidence" that they have been convinced exist for their beliefs. If we write from an integrated "scientific" perspective, this nonetheless does not cohere within their own minds, which in fact have only one set of beliefs that seem to be consistent. The huge issues, that of human superiority to other organisms, the need for the spirit to survive death, accuracy of the Bible that promised human superiority and death survival, and the impossibility of "naturalism" to explain all life, loom much larger in their minds than do inconvenient facts that they do not understand, let alone understand in a consistent manner.
Of course my point is not Dave per se, rather it is the problem of teaching science throughout a nation as religious as ours. The evidence for evolution seems paltry compared with the concepts in their minds that demand a Creator, life after death, humans as the pinnacle of creation, etc., etc. The coherence that we have achieved through much study and, roughly, science, is neither appealing as a concept to them, nor is it coherent to them.
And if people here argue evidence, Dave, the current proxy for the rest, can always shift to some other issue that, if he is not completely sure of it, at least has meaning and coherence to his mind. So he does this. Of course he doesn't follow through with "evidence" for creation, design, the flood, or whatever else he has promised, since he does what people instinctively do when they lose in one area, he shifts to an area that he thinks bolsters his first claim by extension. We may argue evolution with him, but he's arguing a whole non-scientific viewpoint against us. And no scientific argumentation is going to budge most fundamentalists from their non-scientific viewpoints.
We have our legitimate converging lines of evidence. The problem is that the fundamentalists have psychologically powerful "converging lines of evidence", that make up in cognitive coherence what they lack in evidentiary coherence. Not to us, of course, but they're not thinking like us. And if this is hardly new, I thought it might be worthwhile to note once again, perhaps even in order to keep AF Dave himself from being misunderstood, since it's all too easy to think that fundamentalists are being deliberate where they are in fact incapable of deliberately overcoming their conceptual limitations (unless they somehow get a good education more or less accidentally).
Interestingly enough, the existence of creatures such as that flying monkey would seriously undermine the credibility of the Theory of Evolution- it would be the creationist talking point from the moment it was discovered. It's just too bad that afdave doesn't recognize the fact that since God should in theory be able to create any configuration of creature that pops into his oh so grand and imaginative intelligent human-like mind, the fact that we can't find any creatures that don't fit on the tree of life, that don't have any evidence of more primitive ancestors, speaks volumes about the reality of common descent.
Glen: agreed. Beyond the psychological comfort of their worldview, there's the additional commonality that I see in people like Dembski, AFDave, etc.: the desire for power. If power is the ability to get others to think and do what you want them to (and I think it is), what these people want is to be seen as an authority figure speaking from on high, and anything counter to their assertions *must* be wrong. Science , paraphrasing Sagan, produces unlike any other mode of "knowing," but it's *hard*...it requires actual time and effort. Ex Cathedra proclamations of authority are so much easier.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
How is a 'supernatural agent' explanatory? it appears to be words strung together and declared an explanation rather than being an explanation. You do know what an explanation is, don't you?
Second question: given the examples you've provided, we must assume that God is physical and is, in fact, embodied as a matter of essential nature. Otherwise, you undercut your recourse to "it's like human intelligence but more so" -- the only examples of intelligence we have or can legitmately conceive are embodied. Intelligence is always action in the world.
Finally, please deal with the apparent fact that the world is causally closed.
You are correct that it is not explanatory in the sense that we know how the SA did it. But please note that the 'Gods of Evolution' -- i.e. Millions of Years and RM/NS also do not have any explanatory power in the sense that you use. I know you all try very hard to make it look like you have explanations, such as the stack of books displayed at the Dover trial, but these are nothing more than fancy "Alice-in-Wonderland" just so stories of how you wish it happened, or how you think it might have happened, or whatever. None of this stuff can be demonstrated experimentally and when you have tried to demonstrate evolution experimentally, we have just the opposite of what you predict, i.e. dead and damaged fruit flies, etc.
Take my Creator God Hypothesis, on the other hand. While admittedly we have no idea HOW the Creator did the things He did, at least we are honest about this and don't make up fairy tales about how we think He might have done it, unless we come across some experimental evidence that gives us a good reason to believe He did some piece of it in a certain way. My Hypothesis fits well with observed phenomena in the universe which we live in and predicts many things which actually have turned out to be true as more knowledge has been gained. My Hypothesis (the YEC has position) also has not changed over the last 140 years as yours has, and I doubt it will change. As more information turns up, the YEC position will continue to be explained more and more fully and will itself explain more and more phenomena.
I don't follow why we must assume that God is physical. I don't think I said "it's like human intelligence but more so." I think I said that my hypothesis proposes that the Mind of God is like human intelligence in some respects, but far, far more advanced and powerful in its computing ability (or something like that).
Causally closed? Please explain.
Return hugs, AFD.
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Im not sure this applies to nature. What does happen all the time is people use the principles of evolution.
For what? I hear Evos claiming that to reject ToE is to reject progress and scientific productivity. The only thing productive that I know of that comes out of ToE is Designed Adaptability and Natural Selection (which you call ambiguously ... 'evolution', i.e. we now understand that bacteria adapt to anti-biotics and develop resistance and this helps us by prompting us to develop new anti-biotics, etc. Here's a suggestion from a progressive minded YEC: instead of trying to 'stay one step ahead' of the bacteria, how about we all recognize they were designed and then chase after a smarter way to defeat them more permanently than just developing a new anti-biotic every year. That's just one suggestion. There are many more.
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You're dangerously misinformed and a perfect example of everything that is poisonous about Christianism, fundamentalism and the intelligent design movement. You don't know logic. You don't know what a scientific explanation is. And when things are explained to you they don't penetrate your mental barriers. And yet, you would have the arrogance to replace this mightly success that modern science is with your vague and backward notions of theology. I hope one day you'll become a witness in another Dover type trial.
Yes. I'm dangerous and so was Newton and Maxwell. Look out world!
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No, Dave. Wrong, Dave. Saying a "Supernatural agent did it" explains exactly nothing. In fact, it's the ultimate admission of intellectual defeat. When you ask, "What caused this particular natural phenomenon?" and answer, "A supernatural agent did it," that's exactly equivalent to saying "I have no idea whatsofuckingever what caused it."
See response to Shirley's question on this thread. I have also answered this criticism on the "Ape" thread. Please re-read it.
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You keep saying your "hypothesis" is "science," but in fact it's a "science killer." It annihilates any inquiry into how something actually happened, or what its cause was. If the answer to every question really was, "God Did It," we'd all still be living in caves.
I always think it's funny when Evos try to imply that "Their Blessed Theory" ToE is somehow responsible for all that is good in science, when in fact, the opposite is true. The General ToE is in reality a "black eye" on the otherwise beautiful face of science. Have you never read the actual writings of the founders of modern science? Do you really have no idea that most of them were theists? Many of them YECs? Living in caves! What a hoot! This is like Clinton bragging about the economy being so good when he had nothing to do with it.
Outta time. Gotta run. Tomorrow ... drum roll ...
Morality. Why do we all have a sense of it? Why do none of us live up to it perfectly? Where did it come from? How does this phenomenon give support to the Creator God Hypothesis?
Psychology ... that's science, right?
Reading assignment for tonight: Mere Chrisitanity, Part 1 - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, by C. S. Lewis.
See you tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes. I'm dangerous and so was Newton and Maxwell. Look out world!
Just having a flashback moment to Carl Sagan talking about crackpots defending themselves with "They laughed at Galileo....." and then says, "Yes, they laughed at Gallileo, they laughed at Pasteur, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."
And, Dave, put down the apologetics. I know it's nice to read things that reinforce your beliefs and all, but try picking up an actual science book (or two. Or three. Dozen.)
Here's a suggestion from a progressive minded YEC: instead of trying to 'stay one step ahead' of the bacteria, how about we all recognize they were designed and then chase after a smarter way to defeat them more permanently than just developing a new anti-biotic every year. That's just one suggestion. There are many more.
People are trying to find ways to defeat bacteria once and for all, can you please explain to me how the assumption that it is a designed entity will help?
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The General ToE is in reality a "black eye" on the otherwise beautiful face of science.
What do you mean by a black eye? If you mean it is something that you find disagreable then that's just tough. If you mean because it is wrong it's holding back science then thats just wrong. Please tell me how you would do things differently? Or how the creationist scientists say they would do it differently.
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you never read the actual writings of the founders of modern science? Do you really have no idea that most of them were theists?
Again evolution has nothing to do with God. And no you can't quote Richard Dawkins at me.
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Morality. Why do we all have a sense of it? Why do none of us live up to it perfectly? Where did it come from? How does this phenomenon give support to the Creator God Hypothesis?
Just so you know in advance, the bible predicting that people should have morals is not a valid argument. You wouldn't want to sound like Kent Hovind would you?
Oops, better go look in the mirror, you put your Christianity on backwards. Does it hurt to be as ridiculous and stupid as you are?
You got rhythm but you got no soul. Your head is planted in your ass hole. You think you're smart and that's ok Because it's more fun for me that way.
Just a little ditty I wrote. Maybe you could put it to a tune? Anyone?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Reading assignment for tonight: Mere Chrisitanity, Part 1 - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, by C. S. Lewis.
Hmmm C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity might explain why Dave laid such an egg here:
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. . . If they do not understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery . . . is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. . . . People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meat that we were to lay eggs.
Could it be, Dave, that you are taking Genesis and Noah too literally and laying an egg?
People are trying to find ways to defeat bacteria once and for all, can you please explain to me how the assumption that it is a designed entity will help?
Step one: Identify that they're designed. Step two: Identify the designer. Step three: Beat the designer up until he calls them back. Step four: Profit!
So, Dave—given your assertion on your other thread that you don't see the need to present positive evidence in favor of your "Creator God Hypothesis," should we stop waiting for it? Should we just shut this thread down since it's clear you have no intention of backing up your assertions?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The problem with Dave, is that he has to answer lots of objections and questions from several posters. Since he obviously can't answer all, and I won't blame him for that, he can freely choose which point he wants to address (sic), leaving the remaining, most relevant points unanswered. So there can't be any real debate.
Step two:Come to understand the designer is a moron for making pathogenic bacteria Step three:Abandon all faith in the "intelligent" designer Step four: go back to where we started.
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
The problem with Dave, is that he has to answer lots of objections and questions from several posters. Since he obviously can't answer all, and I won't blame him for that, he can freely choose which point he wants to address (sic), leaving the remaining, most relevant points unanswered. So there can't be any real debate.
True. When it comes to his responses, we can't blame him for a small sample size relative to the population. We CAN however blame him for poor sampling method, poor data collection from that sample, poor analysis of that data, poor inferrences from those analyses, and poor publication of the results...
And that's to say nothing of his rather flawed "experimental design", poor initial hypotheses, poor bakground research...
Or we can just make fun of him for his utter stupidity.
How does plate techtonics work Davey-dog?
What does the speed of light tell us?
Does it hurt to be so stupid?
I don't know about the rest of these folks but I for one gave you a chance. You blew it. But, in retrospect I suppose I'm not surprised. You have proven yourself to be an idiot, just like evey other YEC who comes to argue.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I've seen plenty of people on PT and AtBC who come here completely ignorant, and I applaud the endless patience afforded to them by commenters here, as the commenters try to work them through the basics. It's a very stark contrast to what the discussion with AFDave is becoming, where experts, tired of being insulted by an arrogant dimbulb, are just losing their temper and telling him what an idiot he is. I include myself in that, I lost my temper a bit. There are limits to human patience.
That's not fair to Dave. Remember, almost everyone before Darwin (and most people in America still) believed in some kind of special creation. Dave grew up the soon of a missionary -- the son of a believer who had practiced the art of convincing others. He's no doubt led a very sheltered life in which a lot of science was hidden from him.
He may be ignorant and brainwashed, but he's not necessarily stupid.
Let me amend that statement to say that the things he says are stupid. Davey-dog himself is a joke.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dave, stories of talking lions are about as impressive in a scientific discussion as watery tarts tossing swords about is in a political one (MP fans I'm sure recognize the reference).
CS Lewis is recommended reading for children. Haven't you moved past elementary school yet?
don't answer, that was rhetorical. all of us here already know the answer.
From the last day or so of comments, it looks like AFDave has lost his previous enthusiasm for arguing about the details. I think he got completely lost trying to follow you guys and had no choice but to pull back to Salvadoresque statements like "We're winning! You're on the Darwintanic!"
That picture was what I was referencing. It clearly shows his head up his ass. It's surprising that this typing isn't more muffled.
By the way, I am still reading that paper you wrote and I am curious whether you tried to measure any of the wild responses as a control group. i.e. did you watch an event in the wild and then try to recreate it with your fishy in a baggie? And if so, did you set up a categorization system for natural responses that was separate from your experimental response? -(what did you do to control for the effect of the baggie and the observer)
-I appologize if you cover that toward the end, I haven't quite finished yet.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
hate it I do to say this, but you should move that question to the thread on my paper, where'd I'd be more than happy to discuss it at length.
I hate discussing real science in a thread started by the singularity in mind that is Dave.
more on topic, I wonder if the Air Force is proud of Dave's reasoning abilities? I have friends in the AF, and I can't recall any of them who actually fly with such backwards logic and reasoning capabilities, even the religious ones.
funny enough, one of my oldest friends who went into the airforce (now flies bombers at a base in Oregon) was also named Dave. I should ask him what he thinks about AFDave's arguments...
My aquaintances who opted for military service are either out because they finished their time or are heavily into the officer thing. None were even, as far as I know, Christian.
Sorry on the other, I got confused which thread I was in.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Intelligence can be heterogeneously distributed across a person's beliefs. A person can be quite bright in certain areas, yet insane in others. Look at Jon Wells. PhD in biochemistry or something, and simultaneously a Moonie.
I do believe that Jesus was in fact, the Creator in a human body. Weird I know, but well supported I believe. More on that as we progresss.
Well supported by what? Jesus begging "his father" for an alternative to cruxifiction? Jesus's constant reference to his "father"? Jesus claiming he acted on behalf of his father? Where do you find support for the insane position that Jesus was God in corporeal form?
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Creationism explains everything MUCH better than Evolution does. It explains designs in nature, it explains the human condition, it explains the fossil record, it explains coal beds and oil wells, it explains the races of mankind. It explains dinosaurs and the ice age. It has predicted many things including the ubiquitous gaps in the fossil record and support for the typological view of nature when the molecular data was examined.
What....sorry Im new..... How does it explain a segmented fossil record? How does it explain the ice age? How does it explain dinosaurs? I can see where your coming from on some of the other ones...but your really stretching the "book" to explain the former claims.
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No. As you will see if you stay with me, the Bible is in a class all by itself and is best explained as the sole, authoritative message of the Creator to mankind.
Really? Then why does the New Testament have so many different authors? If God really wanted to speak to mankind...wouldnt he have choosen just one man....perhaps "the mouthpiece of Allah"
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I don't know many Buddhists and even fewer Hindus. My sister tried Buddhism and later committed suicide. I've read stories about Hudson Taylor in China and his encounters with Bhuddhism and they were not pretty. Ditto for William Carey with Hinduism in India. But that's about the extent of my experience with these religions.
Wow....3 people.... You may want to start telling the +1 billion people of the world who practice these 2 similiar religions that they are living a lie..... And that they are miserable..... They wont listen...because they are too happy....but you can try to tell them....
Dave keeps saying that "the Bible explains this better than evolution," or "Creationism explains that better than evolution," but so far he hasn't given a single example of how either the Bible or Creationism explains anything. Well, okay, he once said the Bible "explained" where Cain's and Abel's wives came from by asserting that Cain and Abel married their sisters, but he never said where, exactly, it says that either in the Bible or any other Christian text, nor did he give any evidence that it ever actually happened that way.
Likewise, he's now claiming that Creationism "explains" where dinosaurs came from, and that it "explains" how coal formed.
Well, Dave, it's easy enough for me to say that the FSM theory "explains" the existence of the Higgs field, but I don't think that assertion would get me any closer to that Nobel Prize I've been pining for over the last two decades.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Intelligence can be heterogeneously distributed across a person's beliefs
indeed, but what we see with AFDave is different than holes in knowledge, it's a basic difference in the way his brain processes and rationalizes logic.
to whit:
we've fed him copious amounts of information to balance his lack of intellectual knowledge on the subjects at hand, to no avail as far as i can see.
his brain is wired differently. has nothing to do with general or specific intelligence, AFAICT.
here's another example:
someone mistranslates a phrase in german and so misconstrues its meaning.
typically, if it was a matter of intelligence a quick refresher course in german would repair the matter, but if it was AFDave, my prediction would be that he would still prefer the mistranslated, misconstrued version, and state that all those who actually know how to speak german are simply wrong.
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yet insane in others
yes, that's been my leaning for a long time now. hence my broken record "projection" statements.
learning to recognize when we are utilizing pyschological defense mechanisms instead of rational thought processes is beneficial to all of us.
I'm reasonably (?) sure that in some other area which he has yet to demonstrate, AFDave can exhibit rational thought.
but not here.
perhaps "insanely stupid" would be a more comprehensive description?
I don't know many Buddhists and even fewer Hindus. My sister tried Buddhism and later committed suicide. I've read stories about Hudson Taylor in China and his encounters with Bhuddhism and they were not pretty.
According to Adherents.com, the country with the highest percentage of Buddhists is Thailand, at 95%. According to PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16179332&dopt=Abstract) Thailand's suicide rate is 7.8 per 100,000. According to religioustolerance.org, the US suicide rate is 12 per 100,000 (http://www.religioustolerance.org/sui_fact.htm I couldn't find the US suicide rate at PubMed). NIMH says in 2000, "10.6 out of every 100,000 persons died by suicide" in the US. So a brief glance at the data does not support the idea that suicide and unhappiness is high for buddhists and low for christians. In general, suicide rate tends to correlate with drastic social changes. For instance, the highest suicide levels are found in former Soviet-bloc countries.
Looks like AFDave the missionary is having quite a bad day.
Well Dave, we all know what happens to arrogant pushy missionaries, now don't we?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Excellent cartoon ... Here's one of my favorites ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDave: I asked a very simple question yesterday. I will ask it again. When did this global flood described in genesis happen? What date BCE? Don't avoid this simple question, dave, just deal with it.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Heh, I had to add this, given that AFDave thinks he's as "dangerous" as Newton and Maxwell.
You're not, Dave. You're a mediocre mind given to delusions of grandeur.
Newton spent the last two decades of his life working on the occult, numerology and the alchemical pursuit of the "philosopher's stone" that would convert "base metals" into gold, Dave. In the words of John Maynard Keynes -- who purchased Newton's notebooks and journals in 1936 -- in a lecture to the Royal Society Club in 1942. "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, He was the last of the magicians." Newton also followed the Arian heresy, Dave. He denied the divinity of Christ.
This is not to say that Newton did not accomplish great things, Dave, it's just that you're delusional enough to consider yourself of that rank. The only way you could be compared to Newton would be in the last decades of his life.
As for your comparing yourself to Maxwell..uh, no. When you publish a peer-reviewed work in physics, you let me know, Dave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC.
I don't do BCE. Jesus the Christ earned the right to get the dates named after Him.
If some other religous leader wants to have a crack at it, they are welcome.
Just be as influential as Jesus was and you too can have dates referenced to your birth!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'm glad you said that, Dave,because that agrees with what the Bible says, when one works backwards ( or forwards) using the dates and lifespans given. But there's a problem, Dave: Your whole edifice of cards balances on this one point: that the Bible is absolutely true. Yet you admit that the Global flood, wiping out all things on the face of the Earth...happened at between 2000-3000 BCE. Let's look at why you are wrong:
During this period that the BIBLE says the "global flood " happened, the records of various groups continue uninterrupted: By 2375 BC, most of Sumer was united under one king, Lugalzaggisi of Umma, Sumerian records continue on.Uninterrupted by any mention of global flooding . The earliest surviving inscriptions in Akkadian go back to 2500 B.C. and are the oldest known written records in a Semitic tongue. They continue in an unbroken record.
Egyptian history during the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC) continues unbroken by global flooding . 2200 bc is the date of oldest existing document written on papyrus, prior to that, we have inscriptions and incised clay tablets as well. The Chinese had settled in the Huang He (or "Ho" in some translations) , or Yellow River, valley of northern China by 3000 BC. In the Indus Vallley, we have the Early Harappa Phase C, 2550 BC which continues unbroken to c.1900 BC . We also have the early minoan and mycenean groups in the mediterranean, and as for the new world, Researchers publishing in the Dec. 23 edition of the scientific journal Nature date the first complex society of the Americas, from roughly 3000 to 1800 B.C. NONE of these groups were destroyed by any "global flood" NONE.
But you'll say it's all a lie, Dave, because the "dates" must be wrong, or some other similarly dishonest shit. But there's a problem with that, too, Dave.
We have to either : (1) reject the factual historicity of the Flood account; (2)accept the historicity of the Flood account, but explain away the clear Biblical dating of the event, showing the Bible is in error; or (3) accept the Biblical account and chronology, and reject the massive amount of written and archaological evidence establishing the chronology of history in the near East. This chronolgy is not just supported by radiometric dating methods (C-14, etc.), but other absolute NON-radiometric methods as well: dendrochronology, corals, varves, ice cores, stalagmite/stalactites and more. Now, how could it be that ALL of those dating methods agree that no global flood happened and that the archaeology and other sources are correct?
You are the son of a missionary and a YEC (Young-Earth Creationist) , Dave, and I sincerely doubt that there was any time in which you critically, skeptically reviewed the claims of the Bible. Similarly, you know diddly-squat about science and yet embark on this idiotic campaign to use patently fallacious and erroneous claims against people that DO know science-- I myself spent 8 years at UCLA in Archaeology and Paleoanthro, Dave-- but you choose not to actually learn, you have your predetermined answers...and have had them since your daddy first indoctrinated you. Instead what you have done and shown here time and time again, is to RETROFIT all available data to meet your initial claim of Biblical Literalism and Infallibility. Any data that does NOT fit ? Well, You claim it must be wrong, since the Bible is always right. This is not skepticism, Dave. This is manic, mindless fundamentalism.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Heh, I had to add this, given that AFDave thinks he's as "dangerous" as Newton and Maxwell.
You're not, Dave. You're a mediocre mind given to delusions of grandeur.
That is waaaaay to kind. I would compare his intellectual ability to another life form but none process less info than moronic sam freedom flying greased pig chasing head faaar up his ass moron idiot dave.
Idiot. Tell me how scientists figure out how old a fossil is. Oh yeah, your too stupid. Sorry. Hahahahahahah!
Idiot.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I suppose that we're living in the year 36 ABB*, then.
[strike]And answer the question, superdeaddude's just looking for a number, it shouldn't take that long to type.[/strike] Aaaaaaaaand, now I'm the one lacking reading comprehension
*After Beatles Breakup
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC.
Would you care to give us any evidence for this flood, Dave? I mean, other than reference to the Bible?
BTW, there is evidence for a flood at about that time (you can't get it closer than within a thousand years?), but it sure isn't evidence for a worldwide inundation. I'm wondering if you'll be able to produce it. N.B., though; the evidence doesn't really support your assertion.
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I don't do BCE. Jesus the Christ earned the right to get the dates named after Him.
For most geological events (the most recent ice age, the end of the Cretaceous, the end of the Hadean), the difference between citing dates B.C.E. and B.C. is utterly trivial. It's the difference between me saying I was born 44 years ago and saying I was born 44 years and 3 X 10^-6 seconds ago.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC.
Of course you're working hard to provide the actual scientific evidence of this, right Dave? Your mouth has been writing this check for almost a month now, but your pea brain hasn't been able to back the cash. You, me, the whole board knows you're lying about your non-existant "evidence" again, but that's just part of the con, isn't it?
Gotta hand it to ya Dave- when it comes to making a fool out of yourself in public, you're no. 1 with a bullet. Seems like you're use to being laughed at though - wonder why that is? Looks like your continued "lying for Jesus" has ticked off alot of people too. Can't say as I blame them. Having an arrogant little prick like you lie about your motives and spit on the kind offers to educate you does rub one the wrong way.
Do you really think you're doing the Lord's Work ™ with your attitude and your dishonesty?
Pathetic Dave, you're just pathetic.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Remember those three assertions you made? Biblical inerrancy, an age of the earth measured in thousands of years, and the impossibility of evolution? Just so we're clear, am I to understand that you are not planning to support any of them with actual evidence?
I just want to know whether I should continue waiting.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC.
Except that Noah's flood didn't happen, Dave. That means these dates are meaningless.
People who tell you otherwise are lying to you.
Whoops.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
In logic, there is a standard example given that if one asserts that all geese are white, the existence of one black goose negates the claim, Dave. The gaggle of black geese saying that the world did not experience the global deluge referred to in Genesis is more than enough.
Here's some other references for your perusal, dave, slight emphasis on dendro:
http://web.utk.edu/~grissino/references.htm Stuiver, Minze, et al, 1986. Radiocarbon age calibration back to 13,300 years BP and the 14 C age matching of the German Oak and US bristlecone pine chronologies. IN: Calibration issue / Stuiver, Minze, et al., Radiocarbon 28(2B): 969-979 Becker, B. & Kromer, B., 1993. The continental tree-ring record - absolute chronology, C-14 calibration and climatic-change at 11 KA. Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 103 (1-2): 67-71. Becker, B., Kromer, B. & Trimborn, P., 1991. A stable-isotope tree-ring timescale of the late glacial Holocene boundary. Nature 353 (6345): 647-649 Iversen, J. Jouzel, B. Stauffer, & J. P. Steffensen, 1992. Irregular glacial interstadials recorded in a new Greenland ice core. Nature 359: 311-313 Chang, Kwang-chih, The Archaeology of Ancient China, Yale University Press, fourth ed., 1986
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC.
I don't do BCE. Jesus the Christ earned the right to get the dates named after Him.
If some other religous leader wants to have a crack at it, they are welcome.
Just be as influential as Jesus was and you too can have dates referenced to your birth!
Many here have already addressed the issue of the Global Flood but I wish to address the issue of acronyms.
Cited from Wikipedia:
Quote
According to Peter Daniels (a Cornell University and University of Chicago trained linguist):
CE and BCE came into use in the last few decades, perhaps originally in Ancient Near Eastern studies, where (a) there are many Jewish scholars and (b) dating according to a Christian era is irrelevant. It is indeed a question of sensitivity.
However, the term "common era" has earlier antecedents. A 1716 book by English Bishop John Prideaux says, "The vulgar era, by which we now compute the years from his incarnation." In 1835, in his book Living Oracles, Alexander Campbell, wrote "The vulgar Era, or Anno Domini; the fourth year of Jesus Christ, the first of which was but eight days." In its article on Chronology, the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia uses the sentence: "Foremost among these (dating eras) is that which is now adopted by all civilized peoples and known as the Christian, Vulgar or Common Era, in the twentieth century of which we are now living."
Up until 1532, Europe used the Julian Calendar which consisted of 365 days in the year. Prior to 1 BCE, priests had been adding leap years, and that ceased until 9 CE. The inconsistancies this made in error of "time" in relation to a year has a deficit on either side of a given year by 5 years. The Gregorian Calendar was supposed to fix this, but still there is a deficit of around 5 years on either side.
So succinctly speaking there is NO accurate calendar date for Jesus especially using our current calendar system and our old one. Closest one may probably get is using the Jewish Calendar. So the argument of BC as opposed to BCE is a ludicrous one because 1BC could actually be either 6 BCE or 6 CE. Something to think about, huh? Common Era dispells that inaccuracy.
While I can't claim to have actually known either of those eminent scientists, I think I'm safe in saying: dave, you are no Jim Maxwell
It's interesting you bring up Newton, though. In addition to being a deist and a mathematician, he was also an astrologer and an alchemist. However, he's only famous for being a mathematician. I wonder why that is...
It's pretty funny that some people think I was claiming equal status with N and M in this quote! You might go read the context if you are as intellectually honest as you say you are. On the other hand, if you are as intellectually honest as I think you are, don't bother, and I'll just continue in my perception of you.
Sounds to me like everyone is very interested in hearing about my evidence for the Flood, young age of the earth, etc., so we will move quickly through the CS Lewis morality thing. It's an important foundational one, though, because it is just one more evidence for a Creator.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It's pretty funny that some people think I was claiming equal status with N and M in this quote!
You weren't? What were you doing then? To whom are you dangerous? To whom were Maxwell and Newton dangerous?
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You might go read the context if you are as intellectually honest as you say you are.
I think you must be confusing me with someone else. You claimed the realization that disease bacteria are "designed" to injure and kill people might lead to a revoultionary breakthrough in treating infectious diseases. Have you told any actual microbiologists about how they're getting it all wrong?
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On the other hand, if you are as intellectually honest as I think you are, don't bother, and I'll just continue in my perception of you.
No, Dave, I don't want to hear a bunch of YEC drivel. What I want is for you, as a person, to explain why your flood date range is occupied by people who wrote nothing of it and never vanished at that time. IF there was a global flood, all those people would have died. The general date given for the flood is 2250-2300 BCE, Dave. and even if you extend that back further, the Egyptians were still building early step pyramids, like that of Zoser.
The Egyptians didn't get wiped out, Dave. Nor the Chinese. Nor the Sumerians. Nor the Harappans. Nor the Early Amerinds. WHY? Because the Bible was wrong on this matter, Dave. If you can't address that directly, then you are more mental than I thought.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
It's so surprising to us because one has to be so ignorant of history and science to believe such a thing, and yet here is an Apollo astronaut looking for Noah's Ark.
But it turns out our military is a hotbed of fundamentalism. These are the guys fighting Muslims in Iraq.
Remember those three assertions you made? Biblical inerrancy, an age of the earth measured in thousands of years, and the impossibility of evolution? Just so we're clear, am I to understand that you are not planning to support any of them with actual evidence?
I just want to know whether I should continue waiting.
Looks like you have your answer:
Quote (afdave @ May 18 2006,06:14)
Sounds to me like everyone is very interested in hearing about my evidence for the Flood, young age of the earth, etc., so we will move quickly through the CS Lewis morality thing.
Translation: "Since everyone is asking for evidence, it's time for afdave to change the subject again."
Translation: "Since everyone is asking for evidence, it's time for afdave to change the subject again."
Qetzal-- I have not changed the subject on this thread or any other thread. I have stayed right on topic on other threads, and will continue on topic on this thread also. I have given you three good evidences for the veracity of the Bible's claims about God, namely that Someone Somewhere is a Brilliant Designer and Engineer, that Someone Somewhere probably set the parameters in the cosmos just right for life to exist, and that Someone Somewhere likely caused the universe to have a beginning because it looks like it did indeed have a beginning. And I have shown you the plausibility of the concept of some Being "living outside of time and space." Now if that is not evidence to you, then I cannot help that. It is what it is and it's excellent evidence to me. To all the lurkers out there, I trust you will have sense enough to read all my posts on this thread and make your own judgment.
And now we will look at the "Phenomenon of Morality in the Universe." Why does this provide evidence of a Creator?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I thought you'd ignore what I posted, Dave, and plow ahead without addressing it. See, this is the thing about debate, Dave -- you're supposed to address counterarguments *before* plowing ahead. You're supposed to follow a basic protocol of give-and-take.
You can't, because you can't deal with reality, you can only hope that you're "winning" with some imaginary audience of lurkers.
Before you move on in what you want to be your little monologue, Dave..address directly what I posted. THEN move on. Don't avoid my direct disagreements with your claims. If you wanted to DEBATE these issues, debate them. If you cannot, then why bother saying that you are trying to convince others of the errors in their thinking?
Have some morals and ethics before you go off stealing C.S. Lewis' inane gibberish about morality.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, let me save you another 12 pages of pointless arguing by presenting you with a 4-sentence display of your morality hypothesis:
Everything we consider moral is because God set it so in our souls.
Everything we consider immoral is because God set it so in our souls.
Everything we consider immoral that was once moral is because those people in the past were sinners.
Everything we consider moral that was once immoral is because people today are sinners.
Fair enough? And guess what? We agree. Everyone will tell you that this is as good as evidence for the existence of God as those previous three assump... evidence you gave. Now, can you move along? Not that I care, I'm just trying to save the forum some bandwidth.
BTW, I have a small request at the Ape thread. Can you do it please?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I thought you'd ignore what I posted, Dave, and plow ahead without addressing it. See, this is the thing about debate, Dave -- you're supposed to address counterarguments *before* plowing ahead. You're supposed to follow a basic protocol of give-and-take.
Your counter arguments have nothing to do with the evidence for a Creator God presented by me so far. They are all about the Flood which comes later in my sequence. If I run off down every rabbit trail out of sequence, it will do no one any good. Your question will be answered in detail in the proper sequence.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I forgot, Davey-dog, where are we in the sequence? Are we at the part where GodDidIt yet?
Hahahahahahahahaha!!!! Jesus you are stupid. Does it hurt?
I'll make you a challenge Davey-dog:
I'll debate you in a post for post debate and if you can prove me wrong in my hypothesis that you are an utter moron, then I'll let you write a post on my blog. If I win, you let me write a post on your blog.
The question will be the age of the earth. I argue for over 4 billion years, you argue for something less than that.
Idiot.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dave, you BEGAN this thread with the premise of an inerrant Bible and God. Don't LIE. I am questioning your basic PREMISES for a reason -- because as I said, your entire house of cards rests on it. There is no "proper sequence" that can avoid this fundamental issue, since you MADE it a FUNDAMENTAL issue of your argument. Deal with what I asked, Dave. Be a man. Have some ethics.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, you BEGAN this thread with the premise of an inerrant Bible and God. Don't LIE. I am questioning your basic PREMISES for a reason -- because as I said, your entire house of cards rests on it. There is no "proper sequence" that can avoid this fundamental issue, since you MADE it a FUNDAMENTAL issue of your argument. Deal with what I asked, Dave. Be a man. Have some ethics.
AF Dave said ...
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UPDATED HYPOTHESIS A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
This is my first proposal on this thread. Do you seeing anything about an "inerrant Bible"? I don't.
As for my sequence, you can also find it on this thread on May 15, but I'll repeat it for you ...
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(1) Observe nature and draw inferences: this only gets us so far, i.e. we conclude that there is an "ET" (or ET's) out there who is a Super-Intelligent Engineer, this ET might possibly live outside of space and time, and this "ET" might be the originator of this stange, universal "moral code" which we observe. So we hold these thoughts and move through the rest of the process.
(2) If we accept (1), then we can make some predictions, one of which would be: "This 'ET' probably can communicate to humans." How? Dunno, but there certainly are a lot of competing claims out there -- many "prophets" and "holy books" claiming to be speaking for God or Allah or whoever. Could any one of them stand up to scrutiny? So we compare some "holy books" and investigate the claims. We focus in particular on the Christian Bible. Why would we waste our time on this? Well ... several good reasons. We have reason to believe that the Christian Bible is unique among "religious books" for some pretty big reasons. Former agnostic Josh McDowell gets into this in "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I will explain some of these later, but it's enough to say for now that I have a convincing case for at least taking the time to honestly investigate the claims of the Bible.
(3) I begin investigating the Bible and I find many weird things. But I know from experience that often times truth is stranger than fiction, so I keep investigating. One by one, the supposed "difficulties" in the Bible keep falling as I learn more. By the time I am done investigating the historicity of the Bible, its amazing predictions and fulfillments, the evidence in favor of Genesis 1-11 as actual history, its accurate description of the human condition, and other factors, there is not anything sensible to me to conclude except that some Unseen, Incredible Mind somewhere caused this book--the Bible--to be written.
(4) This is the end of the evidence that I can detect with my senses. From this point forward, I have no choice but to make a "leap of faith" in some direction. My choices are to A--do nothing B--reject the evidence I have just discovered or C--put 2 and 2 together and make what appears to me to be only a small "leap of faith" and conclude that the "Mind" that superintended the writing of the Bible is the same "Mind" that created the wonders of Nature. Is this so unreasonable?
(5) Risk analysis. Having walked through this entire process, I now am faced squarely with the claim from the Bible: "Believe me and spend eternity with me when you die." (God supposedly speaking) or "Don't believe me and spend eternity separated from me. It's your choice, Dave. I won't force you. I have given you abundant evidence for My existence. If this evidence is not enough, what evidence WOULD be enough?" I have to choose, and it basically boils down to risk analysis. Which of the two possible choices seems less risky?
(6) And so I did choose. I chose to believe the Bible based on what I considered to be overwhelming evidence in favor of believing it. To me, it appears to be sheer folly to go against such evidence as I have seen.
(7) Now that I have made that choice, all I can tell you is that I am a changed man. Ask my wife. I know this is not scientific evidence. That stopped after Point 3. I can only tell you that I used to be interested in myself only. I have not become perfect (I'm too cocky and too smart-alecky among other things), but there is now a new force for good within me which many times overcomes my selfish desires--the Bible tells me that this is the Spirit of God which apparently comes and somehow "dwells within" believers. Now I genuinely care for others as well as myself and it really doesn't bother me much if people make fun of me. I have a very single minded goal in life -- to be used by my Creator for His purposes during my brief stay here on this earth.
Notice that I do not claim Biblical innerrancy until after the hard work of slogging through the first 3 points in this sequence.
And I am out of time for today ... The C.S. Lewis Morality argument will have to wait until tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I have given you three good evidences for the veracity of the Bible's claims about God, namely that Someone Somewhere is a Brilliant Designer and Engineer, that Someone Somewhere probably set the parameters in the cosmos just right for life to exist, and that Someone Somewhere likely caused the universe to have a beginning because it looks like it did indeed have a beginning. And I have shown you the plausibility of the concept of some Being "living outside of time and space." Now if that is not evidence to you, then I cannot help that. It is what it is and it's excellent evidence to me. To all the lurkers out there, I trust you will have sense enough to read all my posts on this thread and make your own judgment.
And now we will look at the "Phenomenon of Morality in the Universe." Why does this provide evidence of a Creator?
STOP...right there...and wait a moment....
You have not shown us evidence... You have shown us reasoning....
Let me see if I can explain the difference to you... You find a human body laying on the banks of a river...it is beaten, bloody, and bruised. You are a forensic investigator.
Evidence would be hair fibers from another person, skin cells under the fingernails. It would be any "thing" that every single person presented with the same "thing" would come to the same conclusion if given the appropriate scientific knowledge to understand the "thing".
Assuming is quite different. Assuming would be the conclusion that the person was attacked and beaten. Reasoning would be that since the body was found beaten in such an obscure location the person was most likely murdered. Reasoning is a conclusion that might be shared by most people...but is not guaranteed to be shared by most people.
So before we go any further....you have not provided us with evidence of anything. The flagellum, for example, is not evidence of an Intelligent Designer. The flagellum is an indicator of an Intelligent Designer. Assumptions might lead one to believe that a flagellum is a reason for believing in an intelligent designer...but it isnt evidence of one.
An example of "evidence" would be dinosaur bones. Without any difficulty almost anyone in the world would recognize that dinosaur bones are remains from a living animal. The way the dinosaur lived, and the time at which the dinosaur lived might be considered assumptions...but fossils are evidence of dinosaurs.
Notice in your "evidence" that you use the words "likely", "probably", "looks like", and "plausibility". These are not words used in evidence. The are words used when making assumptions. Quit lying and claiming that you have presented evidence....you havent. At best you have presented arguments...and weak ones at that.
Also...do not mention "morality in the universe". Morality does not exist on some universal scale. When one planet destroys another planet...that is not immoral. Morality is not even universal for animals. Some animals kill their own young. Some animals will readily commit cannabilism. Morality is somewhat constant for 'social animals'....but this would tend to lend evidence towards evolution rather than creation. An argument is that morality is the product of evolution...in order for societal animals to survive they developed morality. This natural morality would have evolved in different species at different times if it truly was beneficial. If morality is the divine instruction of God...then either all animals would be moral or only humans. He wouldnt have haphazardly handed out morality.
This is really about to become a painful event...your probably pulling your "universal morality" off of some website...which is even worse because it indicates that AFDave lacks original thinking skills....
WHy C.S. Lewis? WHy not Dostoyevsky? Any good philosopher knows that C&P is where it's at baby. Oh yeah, you're not a good philosopher. You're an idiot.
Please, figure out how to lessen the pressure that your head is creating in your rectum. It might be easier to read the questions you have been asked.
Tell me about the himalayas Davey-dog. Why are they so high? Why are the Appalachians so low? Why are there fossils of the same creatures on both sides of the Atlantic when the modern creatures are so dissimilar? Does your god prefer pepsi or coke?
Idiot. Answer a question. Oh yeah, I keep forgetting, you are too stupid.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Qetzal-- I have not changed the subject on this thread or any other thread. I have stayed right on topic on other threads, and will continue on topic on this thread also.
Now, we note that the OP is about evidence for God. Unfortunately, Dave has yet to present any evidence for God.
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I have given you three good evidences for the veracity of the Bible's claims about God, namely that Someone Somewhere is a Brilliant Designer and Engineer, that Someone Somewhere probably set the parameters in the cosmos just right for life to exist, and that Someone Somewhere likely caused the universe to have a beginning because it looks like it did indeed have a beginning.
Dave, it's a darn good thing you're a businessman, because you know nothing about logic or argument. Consider those three claims:
Quote
Someone Somewhere is a Brilliant Designer and Engineer
You have not provided evidence of this - you have made this assertion but failed to support it.
Quote
that Someone Somewhere probably set the parameters in the cosmos just right for life to exist,
Again, this is not evidence. This is assertion. There is no way to distinguish a case of the universe existing by chance with these characteristics and a God having set them.
In fact, the existence of humanity in a universe where the constants were not favorable to the existence of humanity would actually be something approaching evidence.
Making things up is dishonest, Dave. And dishonesty is one of those no-nos for Christians, right? So why do it?
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and that Someone Somewhere likely caused the universe to have a beginning because it looks like it did indeed have a beginning.
Hilarious. Now you're indulging in logical fallacies to support your unsupported assertions.
This is an actual logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent" For example: "If it is raining, the ground is wet. The ground is wet. Therefore it is raining." Since there exist things other than rain that cause the ground to be wet, you cannot logically conclude that it rained from a wet sidewalk.
Provide some evidence Dave; some real data. Your Bible-based presuppositions don't count as actual data.
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And I have shown you the plausibility of the concept of some Being "living outside of time and space."
No, actually you haven't. You have claimed that such a thing can exist, despite the failure of logic involved in the claim.
Quote
Now if that is not evidence to you, then I cannot help that. It is what it is and it's excellent evidence to me.
But Dave, at the risk of offending you, you're not very bright: it's not evidence. To claim it is is akin to claiming that fewmets are evidence that Bill Clinton is eight feet tall.
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To all the lurkers out there, I trust you will have sense enough to read all my posts on this thread and make your own judgment.
They have. They think you're an idiot. Should we start a thread on that topic? We could let the lurkers vote.
Quote
And now we will look at the "Phenomenon of Morality in the Universe." Why does this provide evidence of a Creator?
It doesn't, because it doesn't exist.
Do try to stop making things up and uttering falsehoods long enough to hold an actual discussion, won't you Dave? Thanks.
Dave, you BEGAN this thread with the premise of an inerrant Bible and God. Don't LIE. I am questioning your basic PREMISES for a reason -- because as I said, your entire house of cards rests on it. There is no "proper sequence" that can avoid this fundamental issue, since you MADE it a FUNDAMENTAL issue of your argument. Deal with what I asked, Dave. Be a man. Have some ethics.
AF Dave said ...
Quote
UPDATED HYPOTHESIS A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
This is my first proposal on this thread. Do you seeing anything about an "inerrant Bible"? I don't.
Dave, your memory is failing you (although you did snip this quote from your first post, so maybe it's not your memory, maybe it's your honesty). Your original "hypothesis" has 16 elements. I'll lay them out for you again:
Quote
A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose. This God created mankind with a choice of either doing his will or not doing his will, in a similar way as parents "create" babies knowing full well that their child will either do their will or not do their will. Christian Theologians commonly call the choice of NOT doing God's will "sin."
C. All of human kind descended from two genetically rich parents, Adam and Eve, but did not diversify significantly due to minimal geographic isolation. My hypothesis proposes that there was only one large "super-continent" prior to the Great Flood of Noah, thus minimizing geographic isolation and resultant natural selection and specialization/diversification. The same applies to animals except that I make no proposal as to HOW MANY animals there were initially. Obviously, there would have to be at least one pair of each 'kind' (a term to be defined later)
D. Early man was created perfectly, i.e. no deleterious genetic mutations. It is proposed that early man was vigorous, healthy and possibly taller than modern humans. Early families were very large--on the order of 30 to 50 kids per couple and lives were long, many over 900 years. Sons routinely married their sisters in the ante-diluvian world with no worries of genetic defects. The first laws prohibiting close marriages did not occur until the time of Moses by which time we assume that accumulated harmful genetic mutations would have been a significant consideration.
E. Mankind chose NOT to do God's will very early on (just as all young children choose not to do parents' will), thus prompting God to institute a system for persuading humans to admit their folly and begin doing His will, for "redeeming" humans who choose this path, and for reminding humans that the present physical world is only a "proving ground" or "training camp" for the next world which will be created at a definite point in the future. These events are commonly called the Fall and the Curse by Christian Theologians.
F. God allowed the choices of mankind to take their natural course for the most part, intervening in the affairs of men sporadically and briefly. Most of the "day-to-day management" of Planet Earth was delegated to mankind himself, similar to how modern parents delegate the day-to-day management of their children to a school or a day care center.
G. The natural result of collective disobedience to the revealed will of God was an extremely corrupt society--i.e. rampant dishonesty, injustice, murder, theft, etc.--which was terminated by God through the agency of a global, life-destroying flood--the Flood of Noah described in Genesis.
H. The Global Flood of Noah was an immense cataclysm of enormous tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic upheaval. It completely reshaped the ante-diluvian world and resulted in massive, worldwide sedimentation and fossilization, mountain range uplift, sea basin lowering, continent separation, and climate change. The Flood was survived in a floating ark by 8 humans (four couples) and one or more pairs of terrestrial, air-breathing, genetically rich animals and birds. The diversity we see in the living world today is the result of subsequent geographic separation and isolation of species and natural selection.
I. Following the Global Flood, we hypothesize an Ice Age of undetermined duration brought on by the massive climate changes induced by the Flood. It was during this time that the dinosaurs and many other species died out. Since the time of the Ice Age, the structure of the earth's crust and the climate which followed, has not changed appreciably, and uniformitarian principles may now be applied to geological studies.
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
L. God personally dictated the events of the Creation week to the first man, Adam, but then assumed a less active role in the composition of the balance of Genesis and the balance of what is now commonly called the Christian Scriptures. This role varied from active dictation in an audible voice to less obvious methods--we might call it "planting of thoughts" in the minds of the writers. This collective process is commonly called the "Inspiration of Scripture" by Christian Theologians.
M. Many cultures in geographically diverse locations around the world have legends which follow the general outline above. The reason for the variance we find in the legends is that many of them are simply oral traditions passed down through the generations without the benefit of scrupulous copying of written records that the Christian Scriptures have enjoyed. Since the Documentary Hypothesis (Graf-Wellhausen Theory) has now been thoroughly discredited, we have good reason to revert to the previously well established hypothesis that Genesis is NOT oral tradition, but rather it is a carefully copied written record of eye-witness accounts.
N. The Christian Scriptures, i.e. the 66 books of what is commonly called the Holy Bible, are essentially the WRITTEN record of what this Super-Intelligent, Super-Powerful Creator God wanted mankind to know about Himself, His Creation, and His Plans for the Future.
O. Jesus of Nazareth is the single most influential human being to ever walk Planet Earth. Also, there are over 300 specific prophecies concerning a supposed "Messiah" figure throughout the Jewish Scriptures -- what Christians call the Old Testament. These prophecies "just happen" to all converge in the life of one man of history--Jesus of Nazareth. We hypothesize that this Jesus of Nazareth was (and is) the Creator God in human form, just as he claimed to be.
P. The Christian Scriptures consisting of the Jewish Scriptures plus what is commonly called the New Testament are the most basic and foundational collection of documents for all of mankind's activities on Planet Earth--from scientific endeavor to family activities to government structure. They also are the only reliable source documents for knowing the future of Planet Earth and Mankind in relation to it. As such, these Scriptures should be the basis and starting point for all human activities from individual behaviour to family operation to nation building and governance of human affairs to scientific endeavors and the arts.
(sorry about the length, but I wanted to get this cleared up)
Here's what I said several pages ago about your "hypothesis":
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Your hypothesis has 16 elements, labeled "A" through "P." The inerrancy of the Bible is implied or assumed by elements C, D, E, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, O, and P. The young age of the earth is implied or assumed by elements C, D, H, I, K, M, and P. While none of the elements of your hypothesis directly touch on attempting to disprove the reality of evolution, most of your posts so far have, which leads me to wonder what you mean when you say you're not planning on addressing the issue.
Since you never responded to that post, I assumed you did not disagree then. Do you disagree now?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
This is my first proposal on this thread. Do you seeing anything about an "inerrant Bible"? I don't.
From the preamble in the first post of the thread:
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There is massive support for the existence of God and for the literal truth revealed in the Bible. Stay with me through all of my points and I will show it to you in terms you can understand!
So you claimed that you would show that the Bible is literally true (ie, inerrant). Go jump in a lake, Dave. Your pants are on fire.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Dave, that's hilarious. You say that you don't want to answer any objections "out of sequence," then post a sequence in which point 2 says : "So we compare some "holy books" and investigate the claims".
That is precisely what I asked about, Dave. I am investigating the claim that the Bible is any kind of inerrant work. It is YOUR premise, Dave. It is found in your "rules of engagement " to this debate/discussion, DAVE
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RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (ROE) There is massive support for the existence of God and for the literal truth revealed in the Bible.
You then set out your "UPDATED HYPOTHESIS" with EACH AND EVERY POINT A-P REFERRING TO THE GOD OF THE BIBLE AND EVENTS IN THE BIBLE.
But you say...you don't deal with the inerrancy OF the Bible...despite using figures IN the Bible for each point? You conclude point "P" by saying
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these Scriptures should be the basis and starting point for all human activities from individual behaviour to family operation to nation building and governance of human affairs to scientific endeavors and the arts
but points A onwards have nothing to do with that?
Look through this thread, Dave, you deal with issues "out of sequence" constantly, referring to the Bible constantly, but ....I can't ask you to support the veracity of that bible NOW? You're a hoot, Dave. You have no ethical spine.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Arguments about whether or not free will exist depend on causality. Causality is cause and effect, which depends on time. Causes must chronologically precede effects or you're talking gibberish. If you want to talk about beings outside of time and space you lose the ability to reliably talk about cause and effect.
Here's a thought experiment which should show you how contradictions are generated, not reduced, by this glib assertion of 'outside of time'ness.
The 'outside of time' god, knowing everything you're going to do in the future, writes it all down minute by minute and gives it to you in a book. It's now 1 pm. You read, "Bob gets his car keys at 1:01 and drives to K-mart." Do you have any ability to do otherwise? Can you choose, at 1:01, to not drive to K-mart?
Eric and Argy, thank you. Eric's listing of "elements" in which Dave implies an inerrant Bible is what led me to simply saying Biblical events and/or the Biblical God are mentioned in A-P. Because the Bible is the source of his claims about God, I merely sought to question him on the truthitudosity of said mish-mosh before he launches into the rest of his monomaniacal diatribe
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The Biblical flood occured during the year 2110 BCE. This is firmly established by the entire narrative and the Jewish calendar based as it is on 5776 years since Adam,
Also, the Biblical flood was NOT global in scope but a local one as the original Authentic Hebrew Bible makes quite clear. The operative Hebrew term is ARETZ which means "the land", NOT "the earth (planet)", the overwhelming majority of the time.
The area effected most likely included ancient Sumeria and the Masapotamian plains.
That's nice, Carol, Except the bible Genesis 7:19-20 says that all the (hills, mountains) which were under ALL the heavens were covered by the waters of the flood. Another point is that "local" floods don't last ...what, 371 days? As for it being local to only mesopotamia and sumer...well,sumer is in mesopotamia...and the Jews certainly knew of the lands called Egypt. And the bible says "under all the heavens." And if the flood was merely "local" ...well, then Noah could have gone to the Zagros mountains directly north of the mesopotamian plains. And the apostle Peter says that the "world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water." not "part of the world." I don't accept a global flood either, Carol...but AFDave does, and uses the Bible to say it was "real" and not merely a borrowing from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which it was. As for your use of ha-aretz, sure, great. except it can mean the whole earth, too, not just " the lands" or "the land"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The expression "all the heaven" (singular) is used in the Hebrew in context of "over all the land" spoken of previously, and that land is the one referred to previously in Genesis, the area where the story of Adam and Eve takes place. This is a rather common literary device in the Hebrew Bible to emphasize the completeness of the destruction in the effected area. Those of us who know the Hebrew Bible well recognize this device. It is not any different than "and all the ARETZ came to Egypt" (for food) which clearly refers to the land described earlier as being effected by the famine, not the whole earth.
As to why Noah couldn't escape to a nearby mountain, first, that is none of your business, second, if you really need to know, God wanted to make a show of his extensive and lengthy building the ark in order that folks mend their ways. That is what Noah was told to do and he obeyed.
And I could not care less about what Peter says. He wasn't there. He could be referring to that ancient cradle of civilazation there that was utterly destroyed.
And an area can certainly remain flooded for years after an inundation. New Orleans would probably still be uninhabitable had we not pumped out the water.
As to why Noah couldn't escape to a nearby mountain, first, that is none of your business
My vote for funniest stupid remark by a fundie this week. What's even more hilarious is that she goes on to answer for God, even though it's none of our business.
Carol, do you even read what you write? Or is this some peculiar form of aphasia?
As to why Noah couldn't escape to a nearby mountain, first, that is none of your business, second, if you really need to know
. I don't recall being rude to you, Carol. But your story of a local flood, from a biblical standpoint, makes no sense. What was the point of the flood? To wipe out...Who? And would that be ...only PART of mankind, Carol? A local flood wouldn't wipe out all of mankind, nor would Noah need so large a "ship" for "local" animals. The context of the flood story is UNIVERSAL sinfulness, not just local Jewish sinfulness. As for your claim that the reason why Noah couldn't go to the mountains was because God wanted to show the ark being built so locals would mend their ways...uh...no. If you can show evidence of that Biblically, do so.
As to the use of ha-aretz...uh, well, what does the genitive case indicate in Hebrew, Carol? and was it used in genesis in conjunction with ha-aretz? I won't bother with "tebel" since it never appears in the pentateuch so far as I know, but ...when the earth is created, what term is used, Carol? And consider the use of "kol" in regards to mountains and "heaven." and animals, too. Note that even the biblical apologists have spotted the use of a DOUBLE "kol" ( hence a superlative) in 7:19 Genesis..."all, ALL the mountains". I find this largely uninteresting, since I don't subscribe to this Mythology, Carol, really...I wasn't even posting to you initially.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
If you want to take up a dialogue with her, you might want to start a thread. This thread is dedicated to people showing AFDave basic evidence he's never seen before, and Dave replying that it's exactly what the bible told him would be there.
Dave, I've asked before, but haven't gotten an answer: can God create another God? Can God create a better God?
I have no knowledge if God can do those things. To me they are silly questions.
It may seem silly to you, but let me explain a bit, as it's related to this inerrancy discussion. You believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect (among other things). Okay. If God is omnipotent, he should be able to create a better God. If God can create a better God, then he isn't as perfect as the "new" God. So, either God isn't able to create a better God, and is therefore not omnipotent, or God can create a better God, and is therefore not perfect.
Can't be both, so which attribute does He have: omnipotence or perfection?
Thank you for the backhanded compliment but believe me when I tell you that you know me not at all.
Deadman,
I was not intending to be rude to you and if my remarks sounded that way I apologize. What I was hinting at with the "none of your business" remark was that Noah was following God's orders and you were questioning God's motives. You are entitled (and in Judaism even encouraged) to do so but you cannot ordain to be able to read God's mind and therefore cannot turn that into an argument for or against any particular proposition.
As to the "point" of the flood, I suggest it was to punish a local outbreak of terrible evil doing. It is far more likely that a particular and limited area went berserk than to postulate that the whole planet did so rather suddenly.
Noah needed a significantly sized ship because he was going to spend a year within it with some rather unpredictable (but indigenous) creatures.
You say the context of the flood is UNIVERSAL sinfulness, but that is nothing more than ignorant Christian apologetics based on the erroneously translated KJV. By the way, there were no Jews at the time in existence, so there could not have been Jewish sinfulness.
The notion that building the ark was a show for the local population is derived by the sages from verses in the Bible and from the fact that Noah took 120 years to build the ark. If you wish more information about this I will need to come back later, right now I am posting from memory. Since Noah did not go traveling around the planet with the ark, this further supports the idea that the flood was less than global. Otherwise the balance of humanity was not forwarned.
As for ARETZ, it is hardly ever used to refer to the planet. It sometimes refers to "what is below" and SHOMOYIM (heaven) to "what is above". When the Hebrew Bible wishes to refer to the whole planet it uses ADAMAH.
It may seem silly to you, but let me explain a bit, as it's related to this inerrancy discussion. You believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect (among other things). Okay. If God is omnipotent, he should be able to create a better God. If God can create a better God, then he isn't as perfect as the "new" God. So, either God isn't able to create a better God, and is therefore not omnipotent, or God can create a better God, and is therefore not perfect.
Can't be both, so which attribute does He have: omnipotence or perfection?
That is not necessarily true. A being that does not have to obey any laws of the universe does not necessarily have to obey the laws of logic.
Steve: Nooooooo. I have no desire to take up her apologetics. I was just responding, and I really only wanted to deal with antievolution goobers like AFDave. I'll take Toejam's hint and just tell her to errm..something.
Her claim about "why Noah couldn't escape to a nearby mountain, first, that is none of your business, second, if you really need to know.." was kind of eerie
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
@sylph: I assume your only point in saying such is to address the pointlessness of discussing the nature of god in a thread devoted to "evidence", yes?
to which i respond:
that wasn't the intent of the question AFAICT. It's more a probe of Dave's personal thought processes, in case those weren't abundantly clear by now.
I assume your only point in saying such is to address the pointlessness of discussing the nature of god in a thread devoted to "evidence", yes?
Correct. The Bible could be literally true in all respects and there still would never be any evidence as to the nature of god. His/her/it/whatever's purpose could have been to convert people away from the one true faith: Zoroastrianism, thereby damning all Christians to Zoroastrian ####.
As to why Noah couldn't escape to a nearby mountain, first, that is none of your business
My vote for funniest stupid remark by a fundie this week. What's even more hilarious is that she goes on to answer for God, even though it's none of our business.
Hmm. Maybe it's Carol's business, but just not ours?
I must remember that. If I ever say anything senseless that I can't back up, and someone calls me on it, I'll just say that is none of your business. Woo hoo!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, I've asked before, but haven't gotten an answer: can God create another God? Can God create a better God?
I have no knowledge if God can do those things. To me they are silly questions.
It may seem silly to you, but let me explain a bit, as it's related to this inerrancy discussion. You believe that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfect (among other things). Okay. If God is omnipotent, he should be able to create a better God. If God can create a better God, then he isn't as perfect as the "new" God. So, either God isn't able to create a better God, and is therefore not omnipotent, or God can create a better God, and is therefore not perfect.
Can't be both, so which attribute does He have: omnipotence or perfection?
Never mind all that: could God microwave a burrito so hot that He Himself could not eat it?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
ARTHUR: It is King Arthur, and these are my Knights of the Round Table. Whose castle is this? FRENCH GUARD: This is the castle of my master, Guy de Loimbard. ARTHUR: Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest. If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail. FRENCH GUARD: Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen. Uh, he's already got one, you see. ARTHUR: What? GALAHAD: He says they've already got one! ARTHUR: Are you sure he's got one? FRENCH GUARD: Oh, yes. It's very nice-a. (I told him we already got one.) FRENCH GUARDS: MMMMppphphhhh!!! ARTHUR: Well, u-- um, can we come up and have a look? FRENCH GUARD: Of course not! You are English types-a! ARTHUR: Well, what are you, then? FRENCH GUARD: I'm French! Why do think I have this outrrrrrrageous accent, you silly king-a?! GALAHAD: What are you doing in England? FRENCH GUARD: Mind your own business!
Carol does not believe in a young earth, or a global flood. Afdave does. You think we can pit them in a discussion to see who wins?
My bets are that Carol wil whip Afdave's A-ss. Anyone want to bet on Afdave? We could even throw GoP in, just to spice things up... come on guys, I know you want to see this!!!
This could work. Afdave is keen on talking about the topic, as is Carol...
Before we dive in, I'll answer one criticism and reproduce one quote that I especially enjoyed yesterday.
A common criticism around here ...
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Notice in your "evidence" that you use the words "likely", "probably", "looks like", and "plausibility". These are not words used in evidence. The are words used when making assumptions. Quit lying and claiming that you have presented evidence....you havent.
This person claims that my 'evidence' is not evidence at all ... he says evidence would be something like bits of hair or blood from a murder scene. Where you go wrong is this. The bits of hair and blood from the murder scene do the very same thing for the truth search that my evidence does. They make it "look like" so-and-so committed the murder and the judge really can only say that "probably" this man is guilty--he really cannot say for sure and there have been plenty of people that were erroneously prosecuted, or the reverse--they were guilty, but got let off. Sorry ... your objection doesn't fly, but I'm sure people will keep raising it around here because you all apparently have been programmed to reject certain classes of legitimate evidence. Hopefully you will see in time that this is a mistake.
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Because the Bible is the source of his claims about God, I merely sought to question him on the truthitudosity of said mish-mosh before he launches into the rest of his monomaniacal diatribe.
Masterpiece of a sentence and a really cool new word! Thanks!
For those of you in the running for most innovative insult, BWE is still in the lead by a long shot in my opinion, although I did get a good laugh at the submission by Seven Popes and at the 'none of your business' dialog between Carol and Rilke. I'm still waiting on Aftershave to 'one-up' all of these. I think he is hoping to claim the title.
******************************************
Well, now that I have regained my composure from laughing ...
Some people here sound frustrated because they want me to answer specific questions that they have such as when did the Flood occur, how do you know the earth is less than 10,000 years old, etc. Another point of confusion is that some people think that Biblical inerrancy is somehow foundational to everything I believe. So let me again clear some of this up for you.
First, my goal is to make a clear, logical defense of the theistic worldview. This involves observation of the physical universe and the phenomena we find in it, observation of human behaviour and some common problems people have with the concept of an all-powerful, omniscient, loving God.
Second, once we establish evidence for the truth of the theistic worldview, we are then ready to make some predictions that we can investigate. One of these key predictions is that this 'God' has probably communicated to humans in some way. Makes sense, right? If we have shown that there is a Super Intelligent Mind out there somewhere, it would be a safe bet that He knows how to communicate. We find many claims of this prediction in the world in the many religious writings, claims of various 'prophets', etc.
So no one gets lost ... notice that we have only used the Bible in Step One as a source of one piece of our hypothesis. We are not saying it is inerrant yet. Are you with me?
Third, we survey the various 'holy books' and realize pretty quickly that there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest in its unique characteristics. That book is the Christian Bible. We will present reasons why it is so unique, and we will commence a detailed investigation of some of its key claims.
Fourth, we will investigate the major claims of the Bible in detail but focus primarily on the major events in Genesis 1-11. We will also touch on some points of Biblical history and see how these have been confirmed by archaeology, investigate some of the 'Messianic' prophecies, and discuss the failure of the Documentary Hypothesis.
Fifth, we will argue that because of the detailed investigation that has been made in this study and by many others throughout history, it is safe to conclude that the Bible is (1) accurate in its history, (2) uncanny in its predictions, and (3) dead on in its observation of human nature. This will give us good reason to believe in its Supernatural origin and inerrancy in its original form.
So you see that I will cover all points in my Hypothesis, but not necessarily in the order the you would have chosen. But after all, this is my hypothesis, so I guess its fair for me to arrange the flow, right?
C.S. Lewis is known for his children's books, but he was also a very clear thinking apologist for the Christian faith. He was agnostic for many years, but eventually became a Christian and was very prolific in his writings which were tailored specifically for non-believers. One of his greatest non-fiction titles is Mere Christianity which not only is easy, entertaining reading, but also a clear picture of the essentials of the Christian faith stripped of all the often confusing man-made religious trappings that so often encumbers it. I highly recommend this book to everyone ... it's easy reading guys and less than 200 pages.
Section One of Mere Christianity is called "Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe" ... an intriguing title to be sure. Here's how he begins in Chapter 1: The Law of Human Nature ...
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Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?" -- "That's my seat, I was there first" -- "Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"-- [and so on.] People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grownups.
Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To he11 with your standard." Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does, there is some special excuse ... It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have.
Lewis goes on to call this the Law of Human Nature and he argues that this Law has been in operation throughout all of human history in every culture whether or not that culture had some sort of 'holy book' or not. I will not give all his arguments ... you can read the book. But suffice it to say that he ends the first chapter with two important points ...
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These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of [Human] Nature; [and] they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
The second chapter is titled Some Objections and deals with things like "Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?" Lewis dismantles this objection by noting that many times humans behave in a way contrary to our instincts, such as the man who dives into floodwaters to save a drowning man, or leaves a girl alone who he would like to have. Another objection Lewis deals with is "Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" Lewis counters that many things are mere conventions, such as driving on the right or the lefthand side of the road, but other things are real truths, such as the rules of mathematics. He shows that the Law of Human Nature belongs to the 'mathematics class' of absolute truths because it is universal throughout all ages and applies to all people with only minor variation.
In the third chapter, The Reality of the Law, Lewis re-establishes his two main points ...
(1) Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. (2) Human beings do not in fact behave in that way.
They know the Law of [Human] Nature; [and] they break it.
After some discussion of people's failed attempts to get rid of this Law, and some more discussion of how this Law differs from the Law of Gravity or other scientific laws, Lewis concludes ...
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Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing--a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real--a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.
In Chapter 4, What Lies Behind the Law, Lewis points out that throughout history with all men everywhere, there have been basically two views of the universe--the Materialistic View which includes most of you, and what he calls the Religious view, which proposes some type of Intelligence which caused the phenomena in the universe. Lewis says that ordinary science cannot tell us anything about a supposed 'Mind' outside the universe [you would agree with him and I would agree if we are talking about your definition of limited science ... I would say that the 'non-science' that Lewis is discussing here should be included in a broader definition of Science]. Lewis continues ...
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Supposing science ever became so complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, "Why is there a universe?" "Why does it go on as it does?" "Has it any meaning?" would remain just as they were?
Now the position would be quite hopeless but for this. There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know. And because of that, we know that men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey ... We want to know whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it. There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way around. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe--no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or a staircase or a fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions? In the only case where you can expect to find an answer, the answer turns out to be Yes; and in the other cases, where you do not get an answer, you see why you do not.
In Chapter 5: We Have Cause to Be Uneasy, Lewis points out that he has not got as far as the Christian God, or the God of any particular religion, and he says ...
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We have only got as far as a Somebody or Something behind the Moral Law. We are not taking anything from the Bible or from the Churches, we are trying to see what we can find out about this Somebody on our own steam ... and what we find out ... is something that gives us a shock. We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made ... the other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now from this second bit of evidence we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct--in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness ... [but the Moral Law is not] indulgent, or soft, or sympatheitc ... It is hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do. If God is like the Moral Law, then He is not soft. It is no use, at this stage, saying that what you mean by a "good" God is a God who can forgive. You are going too quickly. Only a person can forgive. And we have not yet got as far as a personal God--only as far as a power, behind the Moral Law, and more like a mind than it is like anything else. But it may still be very unlike a Person. If it is a pure impersonal mind, there may be no sense in asking it to make allowances for you or let you off, just as there is no sense in asking the multiplication table to let you off when you do your sums wrong. You are bound to get the wrong answer. And it is no use either saying that if there is a God of that sort--an impersonal absolute goodnes--then you do not like Him and are not going to bother about Him. For the trouble is that one part of you is on His side and really agrees with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let you off this one time; but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the world really and unalterably detests that sort of behaviour, then He cannot be good. On the other hand, we know that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do. That is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger--according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way.
Now my third point ... Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness. It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power--it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on your behalf, how God Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God ... All I am doing is to ask people to face the facts--to understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer. And they are very terrifying facts. I wish it was possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true. Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin with comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going throught the dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth--only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the same about religion.
Lewis obviously goes farther than is necessary to establish another piece of evidence for the existence of God, and I do to. The last portion of this is for those who accept the existence of God, but have not yet considered the claims of Christianity.
For those of you that have joined us late, we are about 2/3 done with the "First" goal listed at the beginning of this point. We have previously shown that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tunig speak powerfully about some Super Intelligent Designer outside the universe. Now, C.S. Lewis' Morality argument give us more clues as to the nature of this Designer. Next we will deal with the Problem of Evil in the World and touch on Miracles. This will complete the "First Goal" listed above and we will move to the Second.
I welcome your comments.
AF Dave
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave made a remarkably uninformed and idiotic remark,
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This person claims that my 'evidence' is not evidence at all ... he says evidence would be something like bits of hair or blood from a murder scene. Where you go wrong is this. The bits of hair and blood from the murder scene do the very same thing for the truth search that my evidence does. They make it "look like" so-and-so committed the murder and the judge really can only say that "probably" this man is guilty--he really cannot say for sure and there have been plenty of people that were erroneously prosecuted, or the reverse--they were guilty, but got let off. Sorry ... your objection doesn't fly, but I'm sure people will keep raising it around here because you all apparently have been programmed to reject certain classes of legitimate evidence. Hopefully you will see in time that this is a mistake.
Dave, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you're simply unused to discussion, logic, and argument rather than just presume you're dumb. The point being made by the poster is that you are claiming that your suppositions are evidence. This is, of course, utter nonsense, and the reason people keep asking you for evidence.
Let's take your 'murder' scene. What you are doing is the following:
you claim that the "hair and blood allow us to suppose that a murder has occured" IS THE EVIDENCE.
It's not. The hair and blood are the evidence.
You have presented nothing but suppositions based on your (apparently total) ignorance of science and logic.
But claiming that your 'suppositions' are themselves evidence is simply wrong.
Feel free to try again when you understand what evidence and supposition are; 'cause quite frankly, you don't have a clue.
(1) Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. (2) Human beings do not in fact behave in that way.
Spot the falacy/ies
First. "moral" codes differ from culture to culture. Simple example, canabilism. No "moral" problem for them cooking you in your own juice.
Secondly, you state human beings do not behave ins "that" way, ie, the universal super duper moral code. Well, give me any example of people breaking this "super duper moral code" and I will give you an example of someone "adhering" to it. Conclusion, some people act in this way, and some not. Example. Atheists are not more moral or immoral that Christians. Christians are not more moral or immoral than atheists, or Hindus etc.
you claim that the "hair and blood allow us to suppose that a murder has occured" IS THE EVIDENCE.
Rilke, Rilke ... you put that in quotes as if that's what I said. Go read it again. You are confused and yet you say I'm confused.
Combine this blunder with your nonsense about me not knowing the origin of the Portuguese language on the Evolution thread and I'm going to rank you right up there with Aftershave and BWE.
You don't want that do you? Retract it all and I will still respect you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
you claim that the "hair and blood allow us to suppose that a murder has occured" IS THE EVIDENCE.
It's not. The hair and blood are the evidence.
You have presented nothing but suppositions based on your (apparently total) ignorance of science and logic.
But claiming that your 'suppositions' are themselves evidence is simply wrong. frankly, you don't have a clue.
Good start -- but you haven't finished the argument.
David writing about it "looking like" is of course the logic of delusion. But why is the physical stuff the evidence and not the supposition Dave makes? I think that needs to be explained to him before you can get honestly frustrated with his ignorance.
I would say it's because evidence is all about physical causual connections. A bit of hair or blood establishes a causual connection to a person, "how did that bit of hair and blood get there?" The person to whom it belonged was either at the scene where it was found out it got carried there some other way.
Dave: As I posted earlier, you have no ethical spine, considering your unwillingness to actually address the disagreements people have with your claims. You, like C.S. Lewis, gloss over substantial counterarguments in pursuit of your own ego-driven goals. When I point out that your "rules for engagement " contain claims of biblical inerrancy, you avoid it and can't seem to manage the character needed to examine objections as they appear. You just plow on , stealing C.S. Lewi's tripe from "Mere Christianity" as though it were ...gosh, holy writ. Oh, and by the way-- obviously-- by using the term "truthidosity" I was merely having fun with language.
Let's see...I have read Lewis. Disagree with it thoroughly, for a number of reasons. Lewis' argument, despite your regurgitation of lengthy passages, is reducible to a simple set of claims:
1) there is a universal moral law 2) this "universal" morality must stem from a "lawgiver" 3) This lawgiver must be "god"
Now, notice that in Lewis' writing, he never really gives specific examples of univerally held moral values. He merely refers to it a sense of doing the right thing. But what is the "right thing" varies from culture to culture, from context to context. Diving into a river to save a child may or may not be "moral" depending on ...that's right...context. Using your own Bible as evidence, there are numerous examples of god ordering the deaths of innocent children. Was this bad? if so, why? god ordered it, you know. has to be "good, " right? Consider that children such as babes in arms cannot wield swords and god, being all-powerful, COULD have done otherwise than order them to die. Also note that in at least three places, the bible says children shall not bear the sins of the fathers, so you can't say they were ALREADY guilty or that they WOULD be guilty in the future -- that would be predestination-- which is antithetical to Christian tenets, isn't it?
Sociologists and Anthropologists (of which I am one, archaeo and phys anth) would and do laugh at Lewis' claims of "universal morality" because of this. Here's the challenge for you, AFDave: name a univerally held moral value. Don't say something as vapid as "cherishing life" because that is not true. Example: Human sacrifices, well, like your own Jesus, give up their lives willingly (and joyfully) at times, as did SOME amerind "sacrifices." both the sacrifice and the onlookers saw the sacrifice of life as "good" not "bad." More importantly, in this example, Lewis has not shown that ordinary instinctual behavior CANNOT account for a drive for survival, he merely glosses over the weakest possible counterarguments acting as if the theories countering his claims didn’t even exist at the time, which they did. Certainly Lewis was well aware of such simple examples as James Frazer's work. This alone shows the amazing willingness to simply force-fit available data as ...well, as you do, AFDave.
I find Lewis' claim that this "universal" moral code being "consistent" as amusing, given that Lewis, as Tolkien pointed out, was knowledgeable about Greek and Roman and other cultures that negated his claims.
Biology, Zoology, Ecology, Ethology, Anthro, Sociology, Sociobiological and Evolutionary Psych studies have shown that the basis of what WE term "moral" behavior is easily observable and explicable in non-human primates and other species. This alone shoots his claim to "no other explanation being possible"--to he11. Group dynamics--"getting along" in animal groups..lies at the heart of human "rules" and "morality," not some mystical appeal to "god." No god is needed to show that survival and reproduction of the individual is enhanced by the emergence of feedback systems to both encourage and control behaviors.
Your refusal to take up your claims of biblical inerrancy as laid out in both your rules of engagement and in your "order" of evidence reveals you to be quite the hypocrite, so I think I'll let you plow on, pointing out your inadequacies as you go.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
This person claims that my 'evidence' is not evidence at all ... he says evidence would be something like bits of hair or blood from a murder scene. Where you go wrong is this. The bits of hair and blood from the murder scene do the very same thing for the truth search that my evidence does. They make it "look like" so-and-so committed the murder and the judge really can only say that "probably" this man is guilty--he really cannot say for sure and there have been plenty of people that were erroneously prosecuted, or the reverse--they were guilty, but got let off.
Hmm...but here is the problem AFDave..... No one can dispute the fact that the hair and blood are from someone else. If they DNA test the blood...and it matches or does not match a suspect....that still argue that the evidence was "faked". The problem is that you never gave us "blood and hair".
Your not analyzing facts and coming to logical conclusions. You havent even presented any facts. You have wildly and irresponsibly made conclusions without even first presenting your "facts".
Your "proof" of God is a sad excuse even within the Theological realm. Your arguments are neither original or creative. The problem is that your also trying to pass off your philosophical proofs as "evidence". Evidence would be if we found a section of DNA that was base-4 code for the ASCII characters that made up "Hello, my name is God and I am your Creator". You can make perfectly sound arguments without evidence Dave.....but they are not arguments based on evidence. Evidence is indisputable.
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Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?" Lewis dismantles this objection by noting that many times humans behave in a way contrary to our instincts, such as the man who dives into floodwaters to save a drowning man, or leaves a girl alone who he would like to have.
You really do not understand the concept of "evolved morality". Diving into floodwaters to save a drowning man is our instinct. People put themselves in harm's way all of the time to try to save someone. It only runs counter to a "survival instinct"....and not to our general instincts.
All of the "morality" that all humans shared is also shared with dolphins, dogs, crows, and apes. In some cases humans actually violate the "universal morality" more often than other animals.
It is our herd instinct though....it evolved as a means of survival. Good deeds and altruism helps the group survive....and that is why you feel good when you are charitable. If you could step outside of your "little world" for a moment you would see that an old argument from C.S. Lewis is hardly persuasive in the face of new scientific studies.
you claim that the "hair and blood allow us to suppose that a murder has occured" IS THE EVIDENCE.
Rilke, Rilke ... you put that in quotes as if that's what I said. Go read it again. You are confused and yet you say I'm confused.
Combine this blunder with your nonsense about me not knowing the origin of the Portuguese language on the Evolution thread and I'm going to rank you right up there with Aftershave and BWE.
You don't want that do you? Retract it all and I will still respect you.
Apparently Dave doesn't understand metaphor and analogy either. A pity.
Dave, my child, you are offering unsupported assertions as evidence.
This is, of course, the sign of a fairly confused (or blatantly ignorant mind).
The funny thing is that you DON'T know the origin of the Portuguese language. You can't even get the history of Portugal correct.
Your ignorance is hilarious; almost as funny as Larry's. And I'm sure that if you just push it a little more, you could be even funnier. Yes, you too could be dumber than Larry Fafarman!
...<snip> Second, once we establish evidence for the truth of the theistic worldview, we are then ready to make some predictions that we can investigate. One of these key predictions is that this 'God' has probably communicated to humans in some way. Makes sense, right? <snip>...
That's not really a well reasoned prediction. Why assume the God who created this universe cares to talk to you? Why don't you go out and communicate with chimps? You have arrogantly assumed you're worth communicating with.
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If we have shown that there is a Super Intelligent Mind out there somewhere, it would be a safe bet that He knows how to communicate.
That's not necessarily true. And if it were true why would God desire to communicate with you? You have a "Super Intelligent Mind" compared to a mouse. Are you going out to find mice to communicate with? If you tried, you'd only scare the poor creature and then, if you finally got it comfortable with you -- could it really have a conversation with you? At best you've got a pet.
So, here you are -- one man amoung billions, sitting on a planet that is less than a spec of dust in a cathedral, and the whole of humanity just an invisible scum on the surface of that dust spec -- and you think the God that created the cathedral wants to communicate something to you?
You seem pretty #### stupid to be so arrogant.
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Third, we survey the various 'holy books' and realize pretty quickly that there is one that stands head and shoulders above the rest in its unique characteristics.
Ah, so you're a Hindu. You must obviously think the vedas is that book.
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That book is the Christian Bible.
Is it? Are you sure? Have you ever bothered to read the Koran? Or, are you just repeating the bullshit you've been told?
Now, be honest, what other holy books have you actually read?
I'm still waiting, Dave. Actually, let's forget about the Bible and evolution right now. I want to see actual, affirmative evidence that the earth is less than (I'll make it easy on you) a million years old.
I know you'll probably spend most of your time fruitlessly trying to refute the evidence that the earth is at least three orders of magnitude older than that, but I'm hoping that somewhere in there, you'll actually produce affirmative evidence for a young earth.
Are you up to the challenge, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to you?"
Before the discovery of mirror neurons I would have simply said "empathy is what is being evoked by that question." But now that we know about mirror neurons we can explain that empathy in more detail:
In the end, after the empathy is invoked, the question contains an element of unspoken threat: "If you behave that way towards us, we will behave that way toward you." That I would maintain is the key principle of that bit of moral reasoning. It has two forms: "Do unto others as they do unto you" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
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"That's my seat, I was there first"
Possesion is nine tenths of the law. Such a claim for ownership of a seat only makes sense in certain circumstances. You can't go into a diner and demand to sit where you sat last month if someone else is there.
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"Leave him alone, he isn't doing you any harm"
But he took my seat!
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He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: "To he11 with your standard."
Well, monkeys have certain standards of behavior too, they need them because they are social creatures -- thus, part of our morality is a survival instinct we aquired before we were human. The cause -- evolution, my boy, evolution. Social creatures work together to survive and breed and raise young.
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Lewis goes on to call this the Law of Human Nature and he argues that this Law has been in operation throughout all of human history in every culture whether or not that culture had some sort of 'holy book' or not.
As I already said, it goes back to long before we were human. Our ancestors were also social creatures. We can see it in lion packs, ants, termites, elephant herds...
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They know the Law of [Human] Nature; [and] they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
Do they break it? Or do we have a deeper nature that merely uses the laws as a way to avoid conflict?
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Lewis dismantles this objection by noting that many times humans behave in a way contrary to our instincts, such as the man who dives into floodwaters to save a drowning man, or leaves a girl alone who he would like to have.
Lewis apparently never studied animals closely. Dogs have died to save their masters, lions die to save their cubs.
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Another objection Lewis deals with is "Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" Lewis counters that many things are mere conventions, such as driving on the right or the lefthand side of the road, but other things are real truths, such as the rules of mathematics. He shows that the Law of Human Nature belongs to the 'mathematics class' of absolute truths because it is universal throughout all ages and applies to all people with only minor variation.
Show me the actual argument and I'll take it apart. Morality is not math in any way except the fuzziest kind.
Lewis goes on to call this the Law of Human Nature and he argues that this Law has been in operation throughout all of human history in every culture whether or not that culture had some sort of 'holy book' or not.
I am game for your challenge to debate AfDave or anyone else about the Biblical flood. And thank you for your vote of confidence.
I consider the flood issue to be one of the greatest difficulties faced by Bible admirers. The scientific evidence against a global flood a mere four thousand years ago (in 2110 BCE as I stated above) is overwhelming. If I am not mistaken, it is firmly established that a global flood reaching the altitude described in the Bible is impossible at any time, period, because there is not nearly enough water on earth for that to occur. (Perhaps some geologist wish to comment on this.) Since human beings are meant to use their God given intelligence (there is no clearer "message" from God that He wants us to reason than the fact that He provided, via the evolutionary process, for our soaring intelligence) we must either reject the Bible as divinely inspired or we close our minds to reason.
But this choice is not necessary. The Bible does NOT speak of a global flood.
Rilke-- You are foaming at the mouth because you are afraid of my wager which you know you will lose on the "Evolution" thread ... go check an encyclopedia that you have to pay for (instead of Wikipedia).
Rilke went into a tirade and called me an idiot on the "Evolution" thread because I said Portuguese was a mixture of Spanish and French. I challenged her to a wager that I'm right and now she realizes she's in a hole.
Maybe someone would loan her the money?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't know, Dave. As I said, I don't know anything about Portuguese history, and not much more about linguistics, but so far it looks like you're getting your ass handed to you on that thread. Once again.
Now, about that Theobald...
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'll do better. I took your bet with modifications to make it make sense to me. Go look. Idiot.
You know Davey-dog, I would stop insulting you if you could demonstrate a little honesty or intelligence. Either one. Read Dante's Inferno for more details on this.
But you are a wanker pure and simple. Nothing upstairs and afraid of what's going on downstairs. And, you are demonstrating behavior and thought processes that earn you the distinction of noted stupidity.
My wiener is smarter than you.
Have a nice day
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Ha. You said you wanted rebuttal, and you fail to address it. You slimy invertebrate. Why not address what I wrote? Well, maybe because you are delusional enough to believe that:
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We have previously shown that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tunig speak powerfully about some Super Intelligent Designer outside the universe. Now, C.S. Lewis' Morality argument give us more clues as to the nature of this Designer.
you've done no such thing, you lying sack of excrement. You've avoided all counterarguments each #### time, using the entire plethora of fallacies. You sicken me, baboo, but I'm quite willing to point out your lies each time.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Rilke went into a tirade and called me an idiot on the "Evolution" thread because I said Portuguese was a mixture of Spanish and French.
Your claim is simply wrong and if you had an ounce of honesty you'd admit it and move on, instead of trying to achieve by obstinacy what you can't by knowledge.
Note that I speak French and Spanish and read Latin and Portuguese (among others) and I can tell you that you are wrong.
For comparison, popping onto the very useful Euronews and grabbing an article in several languages:
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A Turquia sai em defesa da sua laicidade. Hoje, em Ancara, mais de 25 mil pessoas juntaram-se no mausoléu de Ataturk, o pai da Turquia moderna e laica. Um gesto simbólico de juízes, advogados e outros cidadăos para dizer que "a Turquia é um Estado laico e vai continuar".
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25 000 personnes criaient ce slogan ce matin devant le mausolée d'Atatürk, le fondateur de la Turquie laďque. Une manifestation spontanée, avec ŕ sa tęte des juges, procureurs et avocats, en robes. Derričre eux, une foule compacte, d'hommes, de femmes et d'enfants, tous rassemblés pour défendre la laďcité.
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Turquía amaneció conmocionada tras el ataque, ayer, contra el Consejo de Estado, bastión de la laicidad, que ha costado la vida a un juez y herido a otros cuatro. Unas 25.000 personas han desfilado ante el mausoleo de Mustafá Kemal Ataturk, fundador de la República turca, musulmana pero estrictamente laica.
Nobody in their right mind would think that Portuguese is a mixture of the other two, now would they?
[Bonus amusement points if it turns out Dave can't read any of the above]
As to the stupid-ass claim that Portuguese is a "mixture of Spanish and French, I recommend Mario Pei's "History of Latin and the Romance Languages."
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Galician-Portuguese references first appear in the 12th century, in the earliest examples of lyric poetry ...Galicia was a backwater of Spain ...The range of varieties of Brazilian Portuguese may well be greater than that of American English...For a long period, the lingua franca of Brazil was Lingua Geral (Tupi) from Indian and Southeast Asian languages: this gave way to pidgin and creole varieties of Portuguese (such as Tabanreho, Matutenho, Caipria, and Fazendeiro as well as the standard language.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Rilke-- You are foaming at the mouth because you are afraid of my wager which you know you will lose on the "Evolution" thread ... go check an encyclopedia that you have to pay for (instead of Wikipedia).
Rilke went into a tirade and called me an idiot on the "Evolution" thread because I said Portuguese was a mixture of Spanish and French. I challenged her to a wager that I'm right and now she realizes she's in a hole.
Maybe someone would loan her the money?
But Dave, you've already lost - how could we wager on that? Do you really want to wager on something that you've been shown to be wrong about?
That's not logical.
And I don't do tirades. I do laugh at stupid people (a truly bad habit, I know, and I keep meaning to do something about it).
I've check several other references: you're simply wrong, Dave. More amusing still, when you changed your claim, YOU WERE STILL WRONG.
Amazing.
But by all means bluster some more. It's interesting to watch you bluster when you're in error.
Rilke-- You are foaming at the mouth because you are afraid of my wager which you know you will lose on the "Evolution" thread ... go check an encyclopedia that you have to pay for (instead of Wikipedia).
Rilke went into a tirade and called me an idiot on the "Evolution" thread because I said Portuguese was a mixture of Spanish and French. I challenged her to a wager that I'm right and now she realizes she's in a hole.
Maybe someone would loan her the money?
Oh, by the way Dave, you said I should check a 'real' encyclopedia. So I did.
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Portuguese Portuguęs, Romance language spoken in Portugal, Brazil, and Portuguese colonial and formerly colonial territories. Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain, is a dialect of Portuguese. Written materials in Portuguese date from a property agreement of the late 12th century, and literary works appeared in the 13th and 14th centuries.
Standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon. Dialectal variation within the country is not great, but Brazilian Portuguese varies from European Portuguese in several respects, including several sound changes and some differences in verb conjugation and syntax; for example, object pronouns occur before the verb in Brazilian Portuguese, as in Spanish, but after the verb in standard Portuguese. The four major dialect groups of Portuguese are Northern Portuguese, or Galician, Central Portuguese, Southern Portuguese (including the dialect of Lisbon), and Insular Portuguese (including Brazilian and Madeiran). Portuguese is often mutually intelligible with Spanish despite differences in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary.
Typical of the Portuguese sound system is the use of nasal vowels, indicated in the orthography by m or n following the vowel (e.g., sim “yes,” bem “well”) or by the use of a tilde (~) over the vowel (măo “hand,” naçăo “nation”). In grammar its verb system is quite different from that of Spanish. Portuguese has a conjugated or personal infinitive and a future subjunctive and uses the verb ter (Latin tenere, Spanish tener “to have, to hold”) as an auxiliary verb instead of haver (Latin habere, Spanish haber “to have”; in Spanish used only as an auxiliary verb).
It's from the Encyclopedia Brittanica. I don't see much in there about a 'mixture' of French and Spanish.
It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power--it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor.
C.S. Lewis writes the same old Christian sermon: You're a sinner, you know it and don't you feel bad? When you're properly guilty and ashamed you'll magically realize the "Truth"™ of Dave's silly religion.
Any morality that's based on a non-human, unyielding structure, set above and beyond human values is dangerous to human beings.
History gives us tons of evidence of what is wrong with using Dave's moral arguments as a starting point. From the Spanish Inquisition and witch burning to Muslims flying planes into American skyscrapers. People die and suffer because they don't believe in someone else's version of god. It goes on in the Bible's Old Testament itself and cannot be separated from that religion.
Instead of our laws and morals serving us, they serve a fantasy god, and through the fantasy god they actually serve the power of those who claim to speak for that god.
Look at the kind of people that religion empowers in our world. From Osama bin Laden to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
You might want to go check the "AF Dave Wants You to Prove Evolution" thread ...
You just crashed and burned about your Portuguese thing.
It was nice knowing you :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Norm, my friend ... it's no use ... don't make it worse for your team than it already is ...
Just go call 911 and get an ambulance and they'll come and fix you and Rilke and everybody else ...
Then you will be all nice and recovered for battle on Monday morning.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
what you just did there is called "projection", Dave.
Do you know what that means?
Well, it really doesn't matter, but trust me when I say that you saying WE need to call for treatment is pretty funny, and #### near exactly what I would expect you to say.
did you know that schizophrenics often think that it's the rest of the world that's gone crazy, not themselves?
How would you solve that dilemma, Dave?
I'm of the strong opinion that the reason you have stuck it out here so long is because you are really crying out for help.
Sorry, I don't think anybody here has the background to properly help you with your particular affliction, but I hope that putting pressure on you here will perhaps get you to consider seeking treatment yourself.
there's nothing bad about mental illness; it's just like any other illness, and can be treated as such.
However, just like any other illness, if left untreated it can get worse. Moreover, since you have family, it can be contagious, in several senses. there might be a genetic component to it, in which case you need to be VERY careful about how you expose your kids to how you think, as they might as easily as an addict become just like you.
really Dave, there's nothing more clear to any of us here than the fact that you have been posting here for over a month, and have presented nothing but speculation, denial, and projection in your posts.
No hard evidence, nothing to indicate you can mentally process the arguments or information presented by any of us here WRT the ToE.
there's only one conclusion to make.
You need help.
seek it and you'll be happier. Your wife will be happier. Your kids will go farther in life.
Norm, my friend ... it's no use ... don't make it worse for your team than it already is ...
We saw you moving the goal post, Dave. The language argument is down to pointless hair splitting about what you meant. Call it a pointless mess that can never be settled.
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends Were so glad you could attend Come inside! come inside! There behind a glass is a real blade of grass Be careful as you pass. Move along! move along!
Come inside, the shows about to start Guaranteed to blow your head apart Rest assured youll get your moneys worth The greatest show in heaven, he11 or earth. Youve got to see the show, its a dynamo. Youve got to see the show, its rock and roll ....
Soon the gypsy queen in a glaze of vaseline Will perform on guillotine What a scene! what a scene! Next upon the stand will you please extend a hand To alexanders ragtime band Roll up! roll up! roll up! See the show!
Performing on a stool weve a sight to make you drool Seven virgins and a mule Keep it cool. keep it cool. We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown Were exclusively our own, All our own. all our own. Come and see the show! come and see the show! come and see the show! See the show!
You just crashed and burned about your Portuguese thing.
Um, Dave?
I have a PhD in linguistics, and I can tell you: if you say Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French, you have NO IDEA AT ALL what you're talking about.
Portuguese is most closely related to Spanish, by a long shot. It is most similar to Spanish in lexicon, grammar, and morphology. I have known speakers of one who claim they can understand the other. If you can read one, reading the other is not too difficult. Neither statement is true of French. The massive sound changes Portuguese underwent differentiating it from Spanish have NOTHING to do with French.
Besides, Dave, how can Portuguese be a 'mixture' of Spanish and French when Portugal is several hundred miles from France?
I'm afraid your approach to linguistics is just about as rigorous as your approach to biology and geology.
I assure you, Rilke's GD does not owe you any money.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'm quite sure Davey-dog will be offering a correction. I understand where he is coming from. Judging from the dates, I assume he is referring to the Auto de Partilhas being the first document written in what we can call portuguese. I think I can make an argument that he is wrong. It will in fact, prove Davey-dog's intelligence (or lack thereof) because I think either side could be debated well. I'm truly not sure if he knows something I don't. But like I promised him in that thread, I just think he is an idiot so I will do no research until he accepts or rejects my wager. Arden, I may need some help with verbs.
Davey-dog, you are an idiot.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
The problem is I haven't been following the two AFDave threads for a while, so I'm having to play catch up here.
Okay, this seems to be the 'meat' of AFD's argument:
Quote
1) AF Dave says that Spanish and Portuguese were essentially the same language until 1143 AD when Portugal broke away from Spanish control under a French nobleman by the name of Henry of Burgundy. From this point on, the languages diverged into the modern situation. The primary influence on the linguistic divergence was the French language.
And, by the same logic, because some Hessian and Polish generals helped out Washington in the Revolutionary War, American English is actually a mixture of English, German and Polish. [SARCASM]
I think Dave here is trying to say that because the French had an influence on Portuguese history, that means that 'Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish'.
So we can add linguistics to the list of disciplines that AFDave knows nothing about but thinks he knows about.
I repeat: the language that Portuguese is closest to is Spanish. By a big margin. This is exactly what we'd expect, since Portuguese borders on no language OTHER than Spanish.
Spanish and Portuguese are quite close. They share a huge amount of morphology and vocab. They even share the dozens of Arabic loans that entered Iberian Romance during the Moorish occupation of Iberia. (Words that are absent from French.)
Spanish and Portuguese are also reputed to sort-of be mutually intelligible. That is, fluent speakers of one can understand much of the other. I've never heard ANYONE claim that Portuguese and French are that way.
I think what AFDave is trying to say is "I don't understand Portuguese or Spanish, but Portuguese kinda sounds like French, and I heard the French played a role in Portuguese history. Therefore, Portuguese must be a combination of Spanish and French!"
You can see the similarities to how he argues about evolution. This is definitely a man capable of thinking the Earth is 6,000 years old.
Another point: the only way Portuguese could be a mixture of Spanish and French would be if French had the opportunity to influence Portuguese in a big way. This would involve massive bilingualism between Portuguese and French, for example with a huge influx of French speakers inhabiting Portugal, or if the Portuguese speech community bordered on the French speech community. Neither of these things happened.
It is not nearly enough for the French to have influenced the course of Portuguese history to claim this indicates Portuguese is a 'mix' of Spanish and French. And saying things like "But Portuguese and French both have nasals and that 'zh' sound!" isn't enough, either. You'd have to find ways in which Portuguese became grammatically more like French, or a large body of French loanwords in Portuguese. I challenge Dave to show us such things.
I also invite AFDave to find an article by an authority on Romance linguistics (a real linguist) who claims there is a French influence on Portuguese. Vague similarities and political connections don't prove it.
The burden of proof is on Dave here, since no linguist I can find anywhere backs him up.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Just go call 911 and get an ambulance and they'll come and fix you and Rilke and everybody else ...
Then you will be all nice and recovered for battle on Monday morning.
Wow. Dave, I had no idea you were this delusional.
If you think you've even begun to win an argument over linguistics here, you're hallucinating. You've been beaten, stabbed, shotgunned, hanged, burned, and had your ashes blown out of a cannon, and you think you've won something?
I'd hate to see what it would take to make you think you'd actually lost.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Darn you guys. Hasn't anyone ever taught you how to bait a trap? You don't just stand around drinking beer and smoking cigarettes after you set the spring.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Another point: the only way Portuguese could be a mixture of Spanish and French would be if French had the opportunity to influence Portuguese in a big way.
Uh ... er ... a big influence, huh ... like maybe thousands of French knights coming over to help Alfonso VI, maybe? Did you even read my post? Here's the part you might have missed ...
Quote
Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of thousands of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail]. Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone.
Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish + French = Portuguese.
Now if you have all three of these languages in your own family (my mother speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish and my cousin speaks fluent French), you tend to have a little better overview of these languages than the average Joe (or Rilke). I can tell you that if you have heard all three languages like I have, the mix is quite obvious.
It doesn't take a PhD in linguistics to see this, Arden.
If you want to argue something new, go start a new thread on Martin Luther, or the Catholic church, or Hitler or something else fun.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, I see that not everyone agrees with C.S. Lewis ... what a surprise! I'm not going to spend any time trying to defend Lewis. He goes into a lot of the objections raised here in the book, so go buy it and read it if you are interested. I found his argument to be a compelling piece of evidence supporting the Creator God idea.
I see that many people still don't get it that the evidence I have presented so far is, in fact good evidence. I would simply note that if a person does not want to believe something, the best thing to do is to call your ideological opponent an idiot, say his evidence is NOT evidence, etc. Oh well ... it's not like I expected anyone to agree with me anyway.
*****************************************
New question (we'll be brief on this one): Does everyone remember my argument which explains Evil in the World? You know the analogy between parents and kids. I would be interested in your comments on that ... do you think my argument is sound? If not, why not ...
If necessary, I'll restate the argument when I have more time ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish <wife> + French <knights> = Portuguese <language.>
(edits mine)
Yeah, 1+2=3 alright... More like "Dog = 4 legs = table". Dave, please.
OK, I'm having kind of a deja vu by doing this but, since I don't have time to play "Make fun of Dave" today, it will have to do for now:
Dave, check my links.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I'll go ahead and post this small piece again to remind everyone of the "Evil in the World" argument ...
The creation of mankind with a choice necessarily requires the possibility to evil, which by definition is "opposition to the will of the Creator." What other definition makes sense? What fun would it be for parents to have "robot children"? It's a lot more fulfilling for parents to have kids that have a free will. There is risk, to be sure. Think about Jeffrey Dahmer's mom, but every day parents all over the world deem it worth the risk. Why? Because of the greater good which may result. Their child maygrow up to be the next Louis Pasteur or Mother Teresa. Why is this any different to visualize with God? To me, it makes perfect sense that God would feel exactly the same way. Does he want an earth full of zombie robots? Of course not. He wants people that have the ability to hate His guts, but make the conscious decision to love Him ... just like human parents do also. And you can't escape this argument by saying "Well, it's different with God because supposedly He's all-powerful and all-knowing. Why doesn't He intervene and just stop all this rot? Well, He does sometimes--like with the Flood--and He will again at the End of Time. This also is just like human parents. They intervene sometimes in the lives of their children and they choose NOT to intervene sometimes because they want the child to learn some lesson. What is so strange about this when it comes to thinking about God?
Everyone agree with this logic?
Can we move on to Eric's age of the earth and Flood questions now?
(What links, Faid?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What logic? A string of ruminations does not constitute logic, nor a logical argument. Evil is not generally defined as "opposition to the will of the Creator". Amongst other problems, and they are legion, you are assuming your conclusion. Were this logic that would disqualify your 'argument' right there. You have yet to show that the notion of 'Creator' as you use it is meaningful and possible. You have yet to reconcile omniscience and omnipotence. Similarly you have yet to reconcile omnipotence and omnibenevolence in the face of evil [in the normal sense of the term] which has nothing to do with human action or will. You misreprsent the standard objection to your claims -- it is not the case that the argument from evil is "why doens't an all powerful and all knowing beingf stop this?", it is "how can a being described as all-knowing and all-powerful permit this in the first place". I doubt you can see the distinction, although it is more obvious than the differences between French, Spanish, and Portuguese...
But by all means, please proceed with discussino of Eric's age of the earth and flood questions. Just don't pretend that by 'moving on' anyone believes that you have settled anything you have moved past. We really would like to see you provide positive evidence for something, anything, at least once in this thread. Should you do so, we might almost conclude that miracles can occur. Since they cannot, we know a prior that you will not.
Another point: the only way Portuguese could be a mixture of Spanish and French would be if French had the opportunity to influence Portuguese in a big way.
Uh ... er ... a big influence, huh ... like maybe thousands of French knights coming over to help Alfonso VI, maybe? Did you even read my post? Here's the part you might have missed ...
Quote
Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of thousands of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail]. Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone.
Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish + French = Portuguese.
Now if you have all three of these languages in your own family (my mother speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish and my cousin speaks fluent French), you tend to have a little better overview of these languages than the average Joe (or Rilke). I can tell you that if you have heard all three languages like I have, the mix is quite obvious.
It doesn't take a PhD in linguistics to see this, Arden.
If you want to argue something new, go start a new thread on Martin Luther, or the Catholic church, or Hitler or something else fun.
'The mix is quite obvious'. The same way as a 6,000-year-old earth is 'obvious', eh, Dave?
Perhaps it takes the LACK of a PhD to see it.
Okay, Dave, it's like this. No linguistics article I've read by anyone who actually knows anything about linguistics says ANYTHING about Portuguese being a 'mix' of French and Spanish. No one.
But to you, with your lack of training think it's 'obvious'.
Okay, Dave. Prove it. So far all the evidence you've offered is 'if you've heard all three languages it's obvious'. That might be exactly what one needs to argue for Creationism, but linguistics holds itself to a higher standard than that, fortunately. Give us the evidence. You can do one of two things: you can either refer us to published linguistic articles by specialists in Romance languages where they explain how Portuguese is a mix of French and Spanish, or two, you can give us your own evidence. What would that be? Give us characteristics that Portuguese has it shares with French and not Spanish. And your impressionistic hunches about phonetics don't count. You have to produce lexicon and grammar -- a lot of it -- to prove this. Words and grammatical features French and Portuguese have but not Spanish. Cuz if your, uh, 'theory' is true, there should be plenty such examples.
Can you do that? Either references or raw data?
The burden of proof is on you, Dave. Cuz here's how it stacks up:
ONE SIDE: Dave
OTHER SIDE: Everyone else, including all linguists.
This isn't religious apologetics, Dave. You can't just make shit up and have it become true.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
...evil, which by definition is "opposition to the will of the Creator."
So, if God's will is that the worshippers of the golden calf must be killed by melting down their calf and making them drink it, that's not evil because it's God's will?
If God's will is that Muslim hijackers crash planes into our skyscrapers, that's not evil because it's God's will?
So, if you get ebola and die a horrible death, that's obviously God's will since no man decided you should get that disease?
The problem with assuming you have to do God's will is figuring out what God's will is.
Quote
What other definition makes sense?
How about a more humanist definition of "good" and "evil"? What is good is what promotes human happiness and co-operation. What is evil is that which disrupts human happiness and co-operation.
Quote
To me, it makes perfect sense that God would feel exactly the same way.
So, God must feel the same way about things that you do? Could it be that you have made God in your own image?
Lewis obviously goes farther than is necessary to establish another piece of evidence for the existence of God, and I do to.
That was a very interesting read and brought home the fact that human psyche in relation to cognition and behaviour was not Lewis' forte. The apologetic argument and appeals. I think when it comes to understanding what propels and/or compels a human, then Lawrence Kohlberg (Professor of Psychology) book "The Meaning and Measurement of Moral Development" as well as Jean Piaget (Professor of Psychology) book "Insights and Illusions of Epistemology" as well as "The Moral Judgement of the Child". Lewis was an obvious reductionist (from reading his model of Laws pertaining to mankind) and wrongly classified humans (which you'll understand reading Kohlberg and Piaget). In a nutshell, Lewis should of stayed with Children Books and kept out of the realm of philosophy and psychology.
Why doesn't He intervene and just stop all this rot? Well, He does sometimes--like with the Flood--and He will again at the End of Time. This also is just like human parents. They intervene sometimes in the lives of their children and they choose NOT to intervene sometimes because they want the child to learn some lesson. What is so strange about this when it comes to thinking about God?
Well that was a great refutation to an omnipotent/omnipresent/omniscience God. The other alternative to that, which can be logically asserted it - there is no God.
Why doesn't He intervene and just stop all this rot? Well, He does sometimes--like with the Flood--and He will again at the End of Time.
So, AFDave's 'evidence' that god intervenes on earth is (a) an event that didn't happen and (b) a mythical event that he thinks will happen in the future.
Only in religious apologetics do things that DIDN'T happen qualify as 'evidence'.
And only in religious apologetics does this DISPROVE the ideas that (a) God simply doesn't exist or (b) if God exists, he simply has no effect on earthly events.
It's no wonder that he thinks Young Earth Creationism is 'obvious'.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
the possibility to evil, which by definition is "opposition to the will of the Creator."
He then drew parallels between parenting, and god's handling of mankind. Does it follow, by extention, that parents should then subject those children who defy their will to unending, inescapable pain and torment? Where is the line drawn in this "in his image" concept? I found his explanation of "Evil in the World" to be kind of creepy.
Yikes C.S.Lewis ?? What are you trying to do half a Dave give the guy a bad name? He wrote children's stories and was not much of an expert at anything else including morality and the universe, as if there were such a thing. Next 1/2 a D will be saying eating vegitables and invading 3rd world countries to steal their oil is immoral and against God's will because the universe sets the rules...sheesh Yeah 1/2 a D manifest destiny is written in the stars....... in Portuguese French perhaps? By the way there are more French words in the English language than in the Portuguese language and the 'official' French Language of today originally came from the Germanic Frankish court/legal system and it was only widely spoken all over France displacing regional dialects around a 100 years ago so are you going to say that Portuguese is a Germanic language perhaps half a Dave? Oh thats right you don't even understand English. Have you even studied another language?Oh yeah Special English
its for special people half a Dave.
All this stuff just re-enforces half a Dave's martyr complex. "See how badly they treat me God and I still believe in you , you can count on me. When I'm done here I just know you are going to send all these bad , nasty, horrible devils disciples down, down ,down into a Nietzchian abyss ** and raise good old me up to be your right hand man dishing out morality to all the angels"
**(The underworld described in Greek and Egyptian mythology was Nietzsche's and Dante's (oh and half a Dave's) abyss. Those stories described with easily decoded metaphors commonly understood in their day, something largely lost today unless through scholarship, recognizable milestones for ones progress through and hopefully out of the abyss. Fairy tales for adults . A sort of journey through the psyche, the inner journey as Campbell and Jung described, not unlike tempory schizophrenia i.e. rearranging the brain to function in the real world. The journey through the underworld AS STORY was the treatment in those ancient times. Campbell's take on the The Egyptian book of the dead (and schizophrenia) is a very interesting read if anyone is game)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I think it would be true to say in 1/2 a D's case that his brain is frozen in a state not unlike schizophrenia i.e. unable to determine what is real and what is not. The horse in his case bolted years ago.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I once had a creationist (a creationist with an engineering degree--big surprise) tell me, in a little coffeeshop across from NCSU, that I should read Mere Christianity and that if I could refute Lewis's arguments I'd be world famous. I had a good laugh at that.
if so, could you comment on the theory that Dave is suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance, as evidenced by the rampant denial and projections he spins daily?
@steve:
Quote
that I should read Mere Christianity and that if I could refute Lewis's arguments I'd be world famous. I had a good laugh at that.
did you point him to the already world famous folks that stood in line to do just that, years ago?
see, BWE, i told you Dave was completely oblivious.
feel free to set your trap. he won't see it, even if we discuss the details.
He is too stupid to take the bait anyway. He hasn't answered a single question from anyone because he can't.
Psychosis, severe head trauma and low self esteem from his poor performance in evangelizing are my diagnosis.
My prescription: Taking up the cloth and living on a mountain. Preferrably one 6000 years old.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Let's recap. 1) AFDave says that Lewis' argument where people "feel" a sense of what is right and wrong is proof of god. 2) Others object, pointing out that Lewis deliberately overlooked the most basic counterarguments to his assertion
3) AFDave overlooks those objections and concentrates maniacally on the origins of Portuguese 4) AFDave is shown wrong in his claim that Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French
5) The original objections to Lewis' assertions remain unrefuted by AFDave
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, why is it that whenever I ask you when you're going to provide affirmative evidence for an earth less than a million years old or evidence that the Bible is correct in its description of the history of the world, you just ignore me? After all, this is the "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" thread, isn't it? Amusing as it was seeing your French + Spanish = Portuguese theory getting beaten to death with a shovel, I think it's probably time to get back to the matter at hand.
So: why do you think the earth is less than a million years old, Dave? And please, for the love of god, make your answer more interesting than, "Why, it says right here in the Bible…"
I was over my brother's place a couple of years ago—I think it was about the time the Residents' "Wormwood" CD came out—and we were talking about how arbitrary and irrational the Bible was. My brother had a copy of Marquis de Sade's autobiography on his couch at the time, and he laid a hand on top of it and said, "You might as well have based a religion on this book."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
My prescription: Taking up the cloth and living on a mountain. Preferrably one 6000 years old.
er, i don't know of any EXACTLY 6000 years old, but would it be ok if it were younger than that?
If so, I have a suggestion for Dave:
go study on top of Space Mountain at Disneyland.
-It's intelligently designed -Is less than 6000 years old -the creator of the Eden it's in shared a lot of your senses of morality -It has fun things to do when you get bored of being a hermit
At the risk of sounding as if I am defending Afdave, which is NOT my purpose at all, I am animated to make (yet again) the following point:
The impression that the God of the Old testament (OT) is a mean, vengeful and vicious God could not be further from the truth. It is based on the grotesuely distorted Christian interpretation and translation of the original Hebrew, the real and authentic Bible.
I have already debated this matter with many posters here (such as Jonboy and BWE and others) and yet the same canard keeps surfacing again and again. The reality is that the God of the OT is a merciful, forgiving, indulgent and loving God.
All you need do is read what Afdave writes and you can readily see the massive nature of Christian distortions of the Hebrew text. For example, he says that many prophesies in the OT all lead to and were fulfilled by ("converge" in his terminology) none other than Jesus. Well, if there were a iota of truth to that would you not suppose that the Jews would gladly have accepted Jesus? After all, he was one of their own! The fact is that there is not a shred of support for that statement.
The drinking of the molten golden calf (mentioned above) was a God sanctioned technique to allow Moses to ascertain who was guilty and who was innocent of the murders, rapes and robberies that occured in the chaos of his disappearance. Those who were guilty were punished, those who were innocent were not only unharmed by the potion but came out ahead. Now you may not believe this Biblical story but then you don't know that any of it occured at all. Either way, God comes out just right.
Surely you don't mean to suggest that the value or merit or correctness of a book (or paper) is to be judged by its popularity in the mass market?
By that standard, are we to put evolution to a vote and decide its merit by whether it is popularly supported? The polls have already spoken then and evolution has lost (unfortunately).
By the way, the fortunes of Landa's IN THE BEGINNING OF on Amazon rise and fall with ads that periodically appear, as to most products. Jay El's main sales are to schools and institutions, however, and the book is doing quite well. But thank you for your concern.
At the risk of sounding as if I am defending Afdave, which is NOT my purpose at all, I am animated to make (yet again) the following point:
The impression that the God of the Old testament (OT) is a mean, vengeful and vicious God could not be further from the truth. It is based on the grotesuely distorted Christian interpretation and translation of the original Hebrew, the real and authentic Bible.
Hmm…a (fictional) distorted interpretation of a (fictional) account. Is this something we should care about?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yes. I have worked in that department. I have 4 straight consecutive years in Human Development/Developmental Psychology (Social Science).
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if so, could you comment on the theory that Dave is suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance, as evidenced by the rampant denial and projections he spins daily?
Technically I would not answer something like this publically. However, I'll just sketch over it. Socially we try and maintain a form of consonance, or cognitive consonance. Even if they are opposed in paradigm or some ideology, there can still be achieved, consonance. Dissonant cognition of course is the opposite of this and Festinger (father of cognitive dissonance) ascribed this to drive like abilities, a thirst to or drive to create an atmosphere of dissonance. An example I'll use is Kent Hovind, regardless of his credibility under fire as an authority in the field of evolutionary biology, and the many refutations to his outlandish claims, he is driven to go further, with such comments as "if a car is going at the speed of light and turns on its headlights, then the headlights are going twice the speed of light". That is an outlandish claim, and totally incorrect, but he will support it heaping more outlandish claims ontop. It also is not hard for anyone (whether they have a background in psychology or not) to see via interaction with another individual, how far their dissonance goes.
But at least Carol, evidently being Jewish, seems not to believe in a vengeful god.
best to again specify that you mean that rhetorically, as I'm sure none of us here care to hear Carol expound upon whether Landa's translation of the OT defines whether the refered to deity is in fact vengeful or not.
The reason i ask is that we've been dealing with Hovind types here for years (again, reference AFDave for a perfect example), and they seem unable to utilize evidentiary argument (just as you note with reference to Hovind). the commonalities are pervasive and consistent.
I was hoping that if we start approaching the issue as if these posters might be suffering from some form of cognitive dissonance, a more productive approach might be discovered.
There has to be a more productive way to engage folks whose minds function like Hovind's does than by arguing the evidence, which seems to lead nowhere fast, or by simple ridicule which ends up being just negative reinforcement; which also doesn't appear to be very productive (well, except for the humor value).
so, not intending to put somebody on the couch, so to speak, could you point to ways you've been taught to more pragmatically converse with those apparently suffering Hovind's form of dissonance?
Air Farce Dave, When you were in the Air Force did anyone ever send you on the typical newby search for slip stream, pneumatic fluid, flight line, or prop wash? More to the point how long did you spend looking for said items. Honestly, you must have been a gold mine for old salts, not that Air Force personnel could ever get salty.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
so, not intending to put somebody on the couch, so to speak, could you point to ways you've been taught to more pragmatically converse with those apparently suffering Hovind's form of dissonance?
Usually one tries to remove the subject matter that causes such dissonance (which can be more trouble than its worth). In this type of forum, thats hard to do. It actually culminates it. Usually, when working with the individual directly, you'd have to take away the dissonance stimulus, ideally to eliminate it. Or present it to them in a manner that they have to be accountable. You can also show alternatives, to achieve a balance. Since this is behavioural, behaviours can indeed change. Even whilst dealing with belief systems, these can be changed also. Concepts of self motivation, reward, and punishment have been known methods to work. While reward and punishment are actual extremeties, self motivation is what is usually applied.
A subject has a belief that unicorns exist. While evidence is presented that unicorns dont exist, they will hold stringently to this. So you give them tasks. Such as "draw me a unicorn". The are visualising to you their belief. "Define the attributes of a Unicorn" they will then describe what they believe Unicorns do/are. (This is leading, yet it is addressing the belief directly). "Show me evidence of the Unicorn" this area is very sticky but vital none the less - this is where they are placed in a position to convince YOU its so. What happens if they don't? You tell them why and you let the subject drop. Don't be baited into an argument, let it drop. Change the subject. Disallow their ability to force it. Do this a series of times and its not so much "is it worth it" but they are self evaluating their own data.
Quick version I know. Personally, I disallow them the ability to play games with me. I disallow them emotive attacks. I refuse to focus on anything but the point at hand. Disagreeing basically nurtures their misheld beliefs. Structuring out what YOU see, removing as much means for a rebuttal as possible only allows them to assess.
Fascinating. Only thing is, since you have now voiced this, Afdave would think it is the devil tempting him (to doubt) and would resist it with all his might. It is what he has been doing ever since he came here. For him, it is an issue of heaven or ####. He will not risk going to #### by accepting anything that the "godless" people here comes up with.
The Bible tells him that in his own belief, he should be as a child. Afdave takes this to the extreme. He also believes that by the power of God's word he will sow the seeds, here, in this blog, that is needed to save some "godless" souls. The Bible promises him that God's work will not return to God without having acomplished what it was sent out to do. He is here for one reason, and one reason only. He truly believes that God has told him to "do the Lord's work" here in this blog. He also believes that the Holy Spirit will empower him to overcome the tainted way of thinking that Satan has been fermenting in this blog and it's people. He is here as God's warrior, and he won't give up. (He prays every night that God wil help him say the right things, that it will be God's words and not his own) He truly believes we will all (or some, even at least one) see the light and praise Jesus for it. If he fails, it will not be his or God's fault that we did not see the light, but we would be to blame since we rejected the truth when it was presented to us.
In all of this, Afdave has one great enemy, DOUBT. He cannot dare to doubt, for if he doubts his own faith will falter and he would have failed in his mission here. To have faith, for Afdave, is to have NO DOUBT (and keep it that way).
Also, imagine a world where Afdave will admit that he is wrong. What has he got to loose? Family, friends, maybe even spouse and kids, his whole society. If you think you will convince him, think again. He has too much to loose. He is not here to hear "our" side of the story, he is here to convince us of "God's" side of the story. To accept our views would be to "back-slide" and give in to evil. He also truly believes we are deluded and that Satan has clouded our minds. Need I go on?
What logic? A string of ruminations does not constitute logic, nor a logical argument. Evil is not generally defined as "opposition to the will of the Creator". Amongst other problems, and they are legion, you are assuming your conclusion. Were this logic that would disqualify your 'argument' right there. You have yet to show that the notion of 'Creator' as you use it is meaningful and possible. You have yet to reconcile omniscience and omnipotence. Similarly you have yet to reconcile omnipotence and omnibenevolence in the face of evil [in the normal sense of the term] which has nothing to do with human action or will. You misreprsent the standard objection to your claims -- it is not the case that the argument from evil is "why doens't an all powerful and all knowing beingf stop this?", it is "how can a being described as all-knowing and all-powerful permit this in the first place".
I do understand the claim ... I know it is that "how can a being described as all-knowing and all-powerful permit this in the first place"? And the answer is "the same way parents can permit their children to experience evil." Obviously parents are not all-powerful, but the analogy works because parents do indeed have the power to keep their children from evil. How? By not having them, or by going to Radio Shack and buying robot "children" instead of having natural children with CHOICE. God also had the power to keep us from experiencing evil, but chose not to because of the greater good that would result in the big scheme of things. He could have either not created us, or created us like little robots. That would be no fun though, just as it would be no fun for human parents. Omniscience and omnipotence are separate issues. We obviously cannot comprehend this type of thing because we have never experienced it. Why is this a proof that it is a wrong idea? To say it is wrong as you do would be equivalent to a jungle native who had never seen an airplane fly saying that "airplanes are impossible." Both are denials based upon ignorance. Truly open minded people say, "there are things I do not understand, but let me try to understand as much as I can, and I will not rule out any possibilities until I have solid evidence to do so." The notion of an Intelligent Designer is the only plausible explanation for the phenomena we find in the universe. I (with Paley) have given intuitive arguments. Bill Dembski is all about giving those intuitive arguments rigorous mathematical proofs, based on our recently acquired knowledge that life is essentially INFORMATION which assembles raw materials. While neo-Darwinism has been excellent in explaining the variation we see within specified boundaries, it is bankrupt in explaining where the information came from in the first place, and how the information was added to organisms to add new gross morphological features. The answer is Intelligent Design and this in turn supports Theism quite nicely. And Theism has no difficulties explaining the 'omnipotence and omnibenevolence problem' as I have shown.
Norm said ...
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So, if God's will is that the worshippers of the golden calf must be killed by melting down their calf and making them drink it, that's not evil because it's God's will? If God's will is that Muslim hijackers crash planes into our skyscrapers, that's not evil because it's God's will? So, if you get ebola and die a horrible death, that's obviously God's will since no man decided you should get that disease? The problem with assuming you have to do God's will is figuring out what God's will is.
You are correct that figuring out God's will is a very big deal and should not be taken lightly. We also have the question of "Why is it OK for states to execute a convicted murderer?" and the like. And the answer to all these questions really boils down to an authority question. And this in turn boils down to the question of "Is there a Creator? Or is there not?" Which is precisely why I am so interested in these questions. Here's the deal. IF there is a Creator, then it follows that HE gets to make the rules, not us. IF He says "Go destroy all the Amalekites" and He was the one that created the Amalekites, then how can we say, "No, that's wrong?" Now of course, you do have the problem of determining if it was really the Creator who created the Amalekites who is now saying go destroy them. Maybe the Jewish prophet is just a religious scheister and he's just pretending to speak for the Creator. And this should not be determined lightly. And it was not. God went to great lengths to make checks and balances with the Jewish people to make certain that the prophets were validated before they were trusted to give guidance on weighty matters such as destroying entire people groups. Contrast this with the modern claims of Jihadists. They have no authority from anywhere that has been rigorously validated by anyone.
Now regarding the obvious question of "How can God ordering the killing of people groups be considered good" the fact is that IF there is a Creator God, then there are things that we do not know or understand, and how can we say that God is not good if he orders the killing of certain people groups. In the big scheme of things, maybe He knows that He is doing the world a favor by killing them off. Killing people is a good thing under certain conditions and if done with the proper authority -- i.e. with government sanction in today's world (God has given life and death authority to governments--see Romans 13). Did it not do the Americans good to kill off those British soldiers? Look at all the good that has come to America as a result of killing those Brits and founding an independent nation. Ditto for Hitler and the Nazis (yes, I know ... Godwin ... OK fine). As for getting ebola and dying a horrible death, this too can be good if you are looking at it from God's perspective. Remember, this life is only a small portion of our total life. Humans will live forever somewhere and this short life within a physical body is nothing in the big scheme of things.
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How about a more humanist definition of "good" and "evil"? What is good is what promotes human happiness and co-operation. What is evil is that which disrupts human happiness and co-operation.
What do you mean by that? How would you apply that if you were Roosevelt and Churchill in WW2? I would really be interested to hear how your definition would play out in the hard decisions.
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So, God must feel the same way about things that you do? Could it be that you have made God in your own image?
It's logically possible, yes, but you cannot escape the empirical evidence for a real Creator God, so no, when all things are considered it makes more sense to believe that WE were created in His image, rather than vice versa.
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So, AFDave's 'evidence' that god intervenes on earth is (a) an event that didn't happen and (b) a mythical event that he thinks will happen in the future.
There is more evidence for the Global Flood of Noah than there is that George Washington lived. As for the future event which I cannot verify, I believe in this after I have established the authority of the Bible as a whole from a rigorous examination of the claims I can verify.
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He then drew parallels between parenting, and god's handling of mankind. Does it follow, by extention, that parents should then subject those children who defy their will to unending, inescapable pain and torment? Where is the line drawn in this "in his image" concept? I found his explanation of "Evil in the World" to be kind of creepy.
Actually parents in a way do subject their kids to inescapable pain and torment by not always intervening. Parents all the time choose not to intervene in the lives of kids who make bad life decisions. These kids end up in pain and torment all their lives because of their own decisions, not because the parents consigned them to this pain. Why should God be any different? He offers eternal life to anyone, but He does not force himself on anyone. If people want to choose to reject Him, it is they who are choosing their destiny, not Him.
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yes, what a surprise that everyone here doesn't see the author of fictional children's novels as authoritative in the world of science.
Do you all not realize that the children's novels are allegories of Lewis' Christian faith? He is primarily a Christian philosopher. His brilliance is shown in his children's novels because he not only writes exciting kid stuff, but also weaves in essentials of the Christian faith in a hidden sort of way.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'm cross-posting this for Dave's benefit: he has a bad habit of ignoring any argument that he is unable to deal with.
Been studying. Let's see if Dave came up with anything.
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Let me deal with Steve's little deal first. I won't bet you on that because you are correct that Henry was dead long before 1143. I composed my sentence ambiguously ... it should have read "Spanish and Portuguese were essentially the same language until 1143 AD when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. The break away was begun by a French nobleman by the name of Henry of Burgundy" -- little more specific.
Sorry, Dave, you lied, pure and simple. This isn't ambiguous:
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Spanish and Portuguese were essentially the same language until 1143 AD when Portugal broke away from Spanish control under a French nobleman by the name of Henry of Burgundy.
This is factually wrong. It is incorrect. It is a statement written by a moron so that morons will have something to read in the morning.
In fact, you just admitted that you were wrong! But your ego (typical fundie) won't let you admit that, so you attempt to claim 'ambiguity'.
Since I predicted that you would be unable to acknowledge that you made a stupid statement, I win.
Dave, we realize that you're a fool; we realize that you're ignorant of history, linguistics, philosophy, theology, science, etc. We understand that, and we pity you - really we do. It must be #### to be so illiterate that you can't even write a simple statement about history without botching it completely.
But don't you think you could show a little Christian integrity? By not lying? By admitting error? By not making yourself look any stupider than you already have?
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Again, what we are doing here, though is answering a claim by Rilke that I am an idiot for thinking Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French.
And indeed, you are an idiot for claiming that 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)' There are no other possibilities here: you are wrong.
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There will be several lessons learned here.
Are you planning to learn from any of them? I doubt it, since that would require you to actually both and understand one of our posts. Your track record isn't very good so far, I'm afraid.
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One will be that I have met many people like Rilke on these threads who are very arrogant about their supposed intellectual superiority and at the same time are quite vehement about attacking the supposed lack of intelligence they see in YECs like me.
Aha! Once again we see that the problem here is poor Dave's ego. Wound his vanity by pointing out that he's an idiot and he reacts like a cat that's had it's tail stepped on.
Dave, such vanity is blatantly unChristian. You should not let your ego get in the way of actual knowledge. That would be stupid.
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This from Rilke's source of choice (Wikipedia): Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages.Portuguese and French
Interesting. Nothing in there about Portuguese being a 'mixture of French and Spanish.'
Dave, when you cite something in your support, you really should cite that something that actually supports you. Otherwise you simply come across as illiterate and illogical. Do try harder next time, won't you? I forgive you this time, since you're clearly young and inexperienced with discussion and argument, but if you want to debate with adults you're going to need to practice.
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Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged.
Of course. That's what history books are for, Dave. Perhaps you should try reading one?
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What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of thousands of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail].
Ok, so far we've established that Burgundians helped dear old Alfonso VI. What, precisely, does this have to do with 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)'?
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Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone.
Well, for snails, perhaps. The rest of us have gotten bored waiting for you to make a point. Unfortunately, nothing you have regurgitated so far establishes 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)'.
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Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish + French = Portuguese.
Dave, I wouldn't suggest math as a career choice. I'll hope you're not an engineer, because only a moron would make such a claim.
You have stated that 'Burgundians were involved during a formative period of Portuguese politics.' This does NOT establish that 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)'.
In order to establish that fact, you'd have to deal with linguistic history.
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Now if you have all three of these languages in your own family (my mother speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish and my cousin speaks fluent French), you tend to have a little better overview of these languages than the average Joe (or Rilke).
Which does not give you any understanding of the linguistics or linguistic history of these tongues. After all, any moron can be taught language. But it takes some actual intelligence to understand it.
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I can tell you that if you have heard all three languages like I have, the mix is quite obvious.
Ah, so you have now tried two different arguments:
1) there were Burgundians in Portugal during a formative period.
2) I, Dave, personally think these languages sound mixed. That, of course, is based on the fact that you're not the one who speaks all three - you just listen to them.
Neither of these arguments establishes that 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)'?
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And if you think and are honest (I'm finding this to be a slightly scarce combo here),
You do have a problem with lying and blatant dishonesty of the intellectual kind, it's true.
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instead of just shoot your mouth off about how all YECs are stupid idiots,
I haven't. I have pointed out that you, Dave, are
1) ignorant of history 2) ignorant of science 3) ignorant of theology 4) ignorant of logic 5) ignorant of debate 6) ignorant of manners
and
7) not terribly bright.
That hardly applies to all YECs. Just you. Otherwise I'd be generalizeing.
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you can see how Wikipedia would make a statement like ...
phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. (by the way, Catalan the language of Andorra -- just below France on the map)[/quote] So? In what fashion does that establish that 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)'?
Answer: it doesn't, of course. Can you demonstrate that Portuguese possesses a mixture of French and Spanish grammar? A mixture of French and Spanish vocabulary? A mixture of French and Spanish pronunciation?
Apparently not.
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Either choice you make, I'm going to take this thread back to it's intended content and expand it a bit. I will pretty much abandon the Ape Thread now as it has served its purpose. I have successfully shown that there is nothing more than flimsy evidence which could be construed as positive support for Common Descent of Apes and Humans, although there is excellent evidence for common ancestry within the Apes as well as within all the other originally created kinds.
I see. Choosing to run away? How Christian. How brave.
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(Rilke--you probably knew about this little detail in Wikipedia, but just withheld it, right? Very honest of you)
Not at all. I presumed you might have the intelligence to read it yourself... and understand it. Apparently, I was wrong.
Let's sum up, shall we?
Dave claimed, 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)'?
Dave has tried to support this by stating that:
1) Burgundians were involved in early Portugese history.
2) Portuguese has phonetic similarities to Catalan and French.
3) Dave thinks that Portuguese sounds like Spanish and French mixed.
What are we to make of this?
1) Having Burgundians present doesn't mean that 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)' - especially since neither of these two languages existed in anything like their present form at the time. More importantly, the historical fact of the presence of Burgundians doesn't demonstrate anything about the linguistic history of the language.
2) Catalan. Well, the amusing part here is that Catalan is not French. From our ever reliable source, Wikipedia (I use it primarily because Dave seems to trust it):
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Ethnologue, its specific classification is a member of the East Iberian branch of the Ibero-Romance branch of the Gallo-Iberian branch of the Western sub complex of the Italo-Western complex of the Romance group of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. It shares many features with both Spanish and French, and is the language nearest to Occitan, and is often thought of as a sort of "transitory" language between the Iberian and Gallic languages when comparing the modern descendants of Latin.
So claiming, as Dave did, that the Wikipedia quote concerning the Catalan pronunciation was meaningless.
More importantly, the statement that Portuguese is phoenetically similar to French does nothing to establish the truth of 'Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed)' unless Dave also demonstrates that Portuguese is ALSO PHOENETICALLY SIMILAR TO SPANISH.'
Which he has, of course, not done.
Finally, (3) - Dave's personal opinion that the language sounds that way. Not actual evidence, Dave - just your personal opinion.
And your personal opinion, as established by your unfortunate ignorance noted above, has been determined to be worthless.
Finally summary:
1) Dave made a blatantly incorrect statement.
2) When called on it, rather than demonstrate any intellectual integrity by admitting his mistake, he stated something quite different (ignoring his original error).
3) When called on the fact that his [i]different statement was also wrong, he denied it and offered money to salve his ego.
4) Finally brought to bay, he offered various clippings and his personal opinion to try to establish that his second statement was still correct.
5) But his clippings do not establish the truth of his original statement; and his personal opinion is valueless.
Dave, it is unChristian to lie; and disappointing to see you show so little intellectual integrity.
You are, I'm sorry to say, a moron.
But I appreciate that you're not very good at this 'debate' thing, and we'd like to help you learn more.
The first thing to learn is to admit your mistakes and errors, and not commit sins in covering them up.
Christ would like that. I understand he's your hero; you could do worse than try to emulate him.
If there is anything else we can do to help, you just let us know.
While neo-Darwinism has been excellent in explaining the variation we see within specified boundaries, it is bankrupt in explaining where the information came from in the first place
If you are referring to the origin of life this is a seperate issue form evolution. Also do you know what you mean by Darwinism?
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and how the information was added to organisms to add new gross morphological features.
Which particular gross morphological features require all this new information as opposed to rearragement or duplication and divergence of old information?
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IF He says "Go destroy all the Amalekites" and He was the one that created the Amalekites, then how can we say, "No, that's wrong?"
Well it depends on what the Amalekites did.
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There is more evidence for the Global Flood of Noah than there is that George Washington lived.
Air Farce Dave, When you were in the Air Force did anyone ever send you on the typical newby search for slip stream, pneumatic fluid, flight line, or prop wash? More to the point how long did you spend looking for said items.
He couldn't have found a wing-nut even if you loaned him the mirror.
Ethnologue, its specific classification is a member of the East Iberian branch of the Ibero-Romance branch of the Gallo-Iberian branch of the Western sub complex of the Italo-Western complex of the Romance group of the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. It shares many features with both Spanish and French, and is the language nearest to Occitan, and is often thought of as a sort of "transitory" language between the Iberian and Gallic languages when comparing the modern descendants of Latin.
'Transitory'? I think this person meant to say 'transitional'.
Anyway, this is the ironic thing, in that one could kinda sorta maybe make a case that CATALAN is "Spanish + French". But it's still closer to Spanish.
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There is more evidence for the Global Flood of Noah than there is that George Washington lived.
Dave, the vast majority of geologists -- people FAR better informed than you, including many Christians -- agree that the Global Flood NEVER HAPPENED. Why do they disagree with you? They know more than you, and yet they do not share your opinion. Why is this? Because they're all wicked?
Do you think geologists who don't believe in the Flood are all going to he11?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Ah. And once again, Dave demonstrates ignorance of another topic. In this case, one that he should understand: theology. Apparently, he doesn't.
[quote]I do understand the claim ... I know it is that "how can a being described as all-knowing and all-powerful permit this in the first place"? And the answer is "the same way parents can permit their children to experience evil."[/quote] Unfortunately for Dave's case, this analogy is invalid, parents are not God. (Much as I'm sure Dave would like his children to THINK that they are.) [quote]Obviously parents are not all-powerful, but the analogy works because parents do indeed have the power to keep their children from evil.[/quote] No, actually they don't. Otherwise the instances of child murder would not occur.
But having an invalid analogy hasn't ever stopped Dave before. [quote]How? By not having them, or by going to Radio Shack and buying robot "children" instead of having natural children with CHOICE.[/quote] Oh, Dave, Dave, Dave. You really need to learn some logic, my child:
A person X cannot prevent person Y from doing Z by preventing the existence of person Y. If person Y doesn't exist then they cannot be prevented.
[quote]God also had the power to keep us from experiencing evil, but chose not to because of the greater good that would result in the big scheme of things.[/quote] Unsupported assertion and fatuous nonsense. Prove it.
[quote]He could have either not created us, or created us like little robots. That would be no fun though, just as it would be no fun for human parents.[/quote] And this demonstrates how little Dave understands theology.
God could have created beings who freely and of their own volition choose the right. In other words, God (being God) could create beings who freely chose not to sin. We know that such a condition can exist (based on Christian scripture) since heaven exists.
In other words, Dave is reduced to denying the truth of his own sacred scriptures in order to avoid the embarrassment of demonstrating his ignorance of those self-same scriptures. Like Uncommon Descent, you simply can't buy this kind of entertainment value.
[quote]Omniscience and omnipotence are separate issues.[/quote] Wow! What a dazzling observation! What a pity that folks have been making it for a couple of thousand years or more.
[quote]We obviously cannot comprehend this type of thing because we have never experienced it.[/quote] Certainly Dave hasn't. [quote]Why is this a proof that it is a wrong idea?[/quote] It's not. But we've demonstrated that Dave doesn't understand 'proof'. [quote]To say it is wrong as you do would be equivalent to a jungle native who had never seen an airplane fly saying that "airplanes are impossible." Both are denials based upon ignorance. Truly open minded people say, "there are things I do not understand, but let me try to understand as much as I can, and I will not rule out any possibilities until I have solid evidence to do so."[/quote] And only a moron would make such an argument. Therefore Dave is a moron. QED.
Quote
The notion of an Intelligent Designer is the only plausible explanation for the phenomena we find in the universe.
Factually incorrect statement, based on your personal ignorance.
Quote
I (with Paley) have given intuitive arguments.
Actually, you have given no arguments at all. To give an argument would imply that you have given evidence. To give evidence would imply that you have pointed out facts about the universe.
You have not done so.
You have offered your personal opinions as unsupported assertions and stated that they are facts.
Poor Dave.
Quote
Bill Dembski is all about giving those intuitive arguments rigorous mathematical proofs, based on our recently acquired knowledge that life is essentially INFORMATION which assembles raw materials.
ANd has conspicuously failed to do so. Dembski's 'filter' is a joke that has never been applied. Never.
Quote
While neo-Darwinism has been excellent in explaining the variation we see within specified boundaries, it is bankrupt in explaining where the information came from in the first place, and how the information was added to organisms to add new gross morphological features.
So speaks the man ignorant of such simple counter-arguments as Avida.
Quote
The answer is Intelligent Design and this in turn supports Theism quite nicely.
Oddly enough, it doesn't. ID is worse theology than it is science.
But since Dave, like every other scientifically illiterate fundie we deal with can't even define his terms (such as 'information', it's unlikely that he can actually try to argue his point.
Quote
And Theism has no difficulties explaining the 'omnipotence and omnibenevolence problem' as I have shown.
Gosh - and when are you going to 'show' that? So far, you haven't. The POE remains insoluable.
Norm:
Quote
So, if God's will is that the worshippers of the golden calf must be killed by melting down their calf and making them drink it, that's not evil because it's God's will? If God's will is that Muslim hijackers crash planes into our skyscrapers, that's not evil because it's God's will? So, if you get ebola and die a horrible death, that's obviously God's will since no man decided you should get that disease? The problem with assuming you have to do God's will is figuring out what God's will is.
Dave pontificated thusly:
Quote
You are correct that figuring out God's will is a very big deal and should not be taken lightly. We also have the question of "Why is it OK for states to execute a convicted murderer?" and the like. And the answer to all these questions really boils down to an authority question. And this in turn boils down to the question of "Is there a Creator? Or is there not?" Which is precisely why I am so interested in these questions. Here's the deal. IF there is a Creator, then it follows that HE gets to make the rules, not us. IF He says "Go destroy all the Amalekites" and He was the one that created the Amalekites, then how can we say, "No, that's wrong?" Now of course, you do have the problem of determining if it was really the Creator who created the Amalekites who is now saying go destroy them. Maybe the Jewish prophet is just a religious scheister and he's just pretending to speak for the Creator. And this should not be determined lightly. And it was not. God went to great lengths to make checks and balances with the Jewish people to make certain that the prophets were validated before they were trusted to give guidance on weighty matters such as destroying entire people groups. Contrast this with the modern claims of Jihadists. They have no authority from anywhere that has been rigorously validated by anyone.
Excellent! So whatever God says, goes. And if tomorrow God ordered you to murder your children, sell your wife into slavery, and castrate yourself, you'd do it, because that's what God wants. And when God orders Muslims to burn every copy of the Bible as pure blasphemy, that's what God wants too.
Sadistic little bastard you worship, Dave.
Quote
Now regarding the obvious question of "How can God ordering the killing of people groups be considered good" the fact is that IF there is a Creator God, then there are things that we do not know or understand, and how can we say that God is not good if he orders the killing of certain people groups. In the big scheme of things, maybe He knows that He is doing the world a favor by killing them off. Killing people is a good thing under certain conditions and if done with the proper authority -- i.e. with government sanction in today's world (God has given life and death authority to governments--see Romans 13). Did it not do the Americans good to kill off those British soldiers? Look at all the good that has come to America as a result of killing those Brits and founding an independent nation. Ditto for Hitler and the Nazis (yes, I know ... Godwin ... OK fine). As for getting ebola and dying a horrible death, this too can be good if you are looking at it from God's perspective. Remember, this life is only a small portion of our total life. Humans will live forever somewhere and this short life within a physical body is nothing in the big scheme of things.
Ah! And another piece of creationist boilerplate gets trotted out:
If something good happens, that's what God wants.
If something awful happens, that's what God wants.
I'm too stupid to understand that God is violating the moral rules She laid down for humans to follow; I'm too stupid to see the logical contradictions in the concept of God; so I'm just going to worship God no matter what horrible things (tsunami, anyone) God does.
Quote
So, God must feel the same way about things that you do? Could it be that you have made God in your own image?
Dave opined:
Quote
It's logically possible, yes, but you cannot escape the empirical evidence for a real Creator God, so no, when all things are considered it makes more sense to believe that WE were created in His image, rather than vice versa.
Since Dave has not offered any empirical evidence for God, his argument is moot.
Quote
So, AFDave's 'evidence' that god intervenes on earth is (a) an event that didn't happen and (b) a mythical event that he thinks will happen in the future.
Dave sputtered:
Quote
There is more evidence for the Global Flood of Noah than there is that George Washington lived. As for the future event which I cannot verify, I believe in this after I have established the authority of the Bible as a whole from a rigorous examination of the claims I can verify.
There is no good evidence for the flood, Dave. None whatsoever. And all of the other evidence from geology and paleontology and history and a few other fields contradict it.
The Bible is a tissue of lies, distortions, and dull stories. And some really good smut. Come to think of it, maybe there is some reason to read it!
Quote
He then drew parallels between parenting, and god's handling of mankind. Does it follow, by extention, that parents should then subject those children who defy their will to unending, inescapable pain and torment? Where is the line drawn in this "in his image" concept? I found his explanation of "Evil in the World" to be kind of creepy.
Dave made another meaningless rejoinder:
Quote
Actually parents in a way do subject their kids to inescapable pain and torment by not always intervening.
I see. Parents subject their children to eternal torment for finite transgressions? Parents murder their children for no known reason?
Quote
Parents all the time choose not to intervene in the lives of kids who make bad life decisions. These kids end up in pain and torment all their lives because of their own decisions, not because the parents consigned them to this pain.
So, Dave: if your child decided to drink acid and bleach mixed together, you would let him? If your child chose to take a blowtorch to your wife, you'd let him? If your child chose to cut his hands off with an axe, you'd let him?
You're one nasty dude, my child.
Quote
Why should God be any different?
Why, indeed. We see from the Bible that God does things like that all the time. He kills innocents; he murders just and good men; he lies; he punishes unjustly.
Everything you'd want an omnipotent being to do.
Quote
He offers eternal life to anyone, but He does not force himself on anyone. If people want to choose to reject Him, it is they who are choosing their destiny, not Him.
Proof?
Quote
yes, what a surprise that everyone here doesn't see the author of fictional children's novels as authoritative in the world of science.
Dave again:
Quote
Do you all not realize that the children's novels are allegories of Lewis' Christian faith? He is primarily a Christian philosopher. His brilliance is shown in his children's novels because he not only writes exciting kid stuff, but also weaves in essentials of the Christian faith in a hidden sort of way.
Hidden? How oblivious are you? Lewis is blatant in his Christian symbolism.
Are you really that dense?
I repeat: you can't buy entertainment like this. It's a pity though that Dave can't come up with an original attempted argument. I'd pay good money to see one.
a) All humans know what's moral and what's not, because of a Universal Moral Law, derived from an Eternal Source of Pure Good, and
b) When this Eternal Source of Pure Good tells us we should do something blatantly against the Universal Moral Law, well, it's OK, because we humans can't really know what's moral and what's not... Only the Source can.
...Did you hear that muffled cry? It was poor Mr. C.S.Lewis going down the pipes, as Davey flushed the toilet.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
This quote is just brilliantly funny. Look at these two sentences together. Thanks for making my morning, Dave!
Quote (afdave @ , )
Truly open minded people say, "there are things I do not understand, but let me try to understand as much as I can, and I will not rule out any possibilities until I have solid evidence to do so." The notion of an Intelligent Designer is the only plausible explanation for the phenomena we find in the universe.[emphasis Dave's]
Here's the deal. IF there is a Creator, then it follows that HE gets to make the rules, not us. IF He says "Go destroy all the Amalekites" and He was the one that created the Amalekites, then how can we say, "No, that's wrong?"
Yeah! And if I want to kill my children, and I was the one who created my children, then how can you say, "No, that's wrong?"
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
And if I want to marry a goat because god tells me to, then who am I to criticize?
Are you taking my bet 1/2 a Dave? I just looked and saw that you are logged in so I know you are reading.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
And Dave, we're not mean to you because you're ignorant. We help ignorant people, and we like to do so, and we like when people help us when we're ignorant about something. We're mean to you because you're extremely ignorant and yet you think you know better than us. Just FYI.
I don't like hurting people, Dave. I don't need a god to tell me about ethics or morals. I feel bad that you are wrong. I feel bad that you think the way you do.
(Deuteronomy 24:16) The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
(II Chronicles 25:4) But he slew not their children, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin.
(Ezek. 18:19) The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.
I am sorry you feel otherwise.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I don't like hurting people, Dave. I don't need a god to tell me about ethics or morals. I feel bad that you are wrong. I feel bad that you think the way you do.
(Deuteronomy 24:16) The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.
(II Chronicles 25:4) But he slew not their children, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin.
(Ezek. 18:19) The son will not bear the punishment for the father’s iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son’s iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself.
I am sorry you feel otherwise.
More importantly, those verses demolish the entire 'Curse' thing that Dave was blaming all that nasty evolution on. After all, God isn't going to punish Adam's children for their father's sin?
And if I want to marry a goat because god tells me to, then who am I to criticize?
I thought you said god was into sheep? something about him going off with a sheep for 30 years or sumat?
'Sumat'? Are you from northern England originally? 'Cause the only other person I've known who used that term was from West Yorkshire...
(Tho I think he usually spells it 'summat'.)
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I thought you said god was into sheep? something about him going off with a sheep for 30 years or sumat?
And I get left with the darn goat. Rrrgh.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
... and we like when people help us when we're ignorant about something.
Yes. So you should be very happy right now since I've helped you so much :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
... and we like when people help us when we're ignorant about something.
Yes. So you should be very happy right now since I've helped you so much :-)
Oh, Dave? You might try addressing the Portuguese issue. I'm afraid you continue to be mistaken.
Just for you, my child, since I know you wouldn't want to fail to address something:
Dave, I realize you have reading comprehension problems and you are a chronic liar. (Naughty, that: Jesus is weeping for you right now). So I'll repeat this for your benefit.
What's most amusing about Dave at the moment is the fact that he's struggling so badly making an argument: the accuracy of his original statement having been swiftly and thoroughly shown to be non-existent.
Let's consider: what would it take to show that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish?
Option 1) A linguistic history of the language showing that it had developed from these two other tongues.
Unfortunately option 1 is eliminated because these languages did not exist when Portuguese developed.
Option 2) Show, by linguistic analysis, that Portuguese is comprised of an admixture of French and Spanish vocabulary; French and Spanish grammar; and French and Spanish pronunciation.
Unfortunately, option 2 is eliminated because Dave can't actually show those things.
Now Dave, we realize that you can continue to make yourself look like a fool by persisting in your inability to admit that your first statement was idiotically wrong; your second statement a cover-up AND idiotically wrong; and your continuing statements a cover-up, irrelevant, AND idiotically wrong.
Or you can demonstrate some intellectual credibility and Christian ethics by admitting that you were mistaken, that you lied, and that you're ignorant.
Feel free to start any time.
Remember - we are trying to help you. I know that arguments and discussion with adults can be trying and hard, but if you just persevere and do your homework, you'll be ready for it!
Dave, doesn't it bother you to be wrong all the time? Wouldn't you like to be right occasionally? Do you really like looking like a fool?
I mean, if you honestly enjoy looking stupid, we're more than happy to oblige: you're fun to laugh at, I'll grant you that.
It should be science. Theology was once known as the Queen of Sciences, and it should be reinstated as such.
Amen and amen. Stupid and immoral evolutionists think they can ignore theology, but evolutionism is nothing but theology. It is the religion of self-worship where any man can crown himself a diety. True, the average evolutionist, having a God-given void in his head, fails to live out the implications of his amoral ontology, and often will act as moral as any Christian. However, I think we can both agree about the abominable consequences that the self-deifying leaders of the evolutionist movement have wrought upon humanity, such as this guy,this guy, or this guy.
However, although I hate to agree with the evolutionists; I have to admit C. S. Lewis is pretty pathetic as a theologian and apologist. Lewis, not unlike McDowell, and other popular Jesus feaks, mistakenly assume the Socratic position and try to argue Christian truth on the basis of "evidence" as defined by the enemies of the gospel using their own autonomous reasoning.
Autonomous human reasoning is worthless as a tool to come to any conclusions about anything. Mankind, being affected by sin, can only reason from the implications of his presuppositions; he can only reason in a circle. Hence, the truth of the Bible must be pre-supposed, and not argued for in order to ground any knowledge claims at all. You might want to study the theology of Cornelius Van Til for more enlightenment.
Autonomous human reasoning is worthless as a tool to come to any conclusions about mankin[d]. Mankind, being affected by sin, can only reason from the implications of his presuppositions; he can only reason in a circle.
I don't know, Bill. It seems to me that an inevitable consequence of this belief is a belief that science is a waste of time, and scientists should take up needlepoint.
So, Bill—is science a waste of time?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Amen and amen. Stupid and immoral evolutionists think they can ignore theology, but evolutionism is nothing but theology. It is the religion of self-worship where any man can crown himself a diety. True, the average evolutionist, having a God-given void in his head, fails to live out the implications of his amoral ontology, and often will act as moral as any Christian. However, I think we can both agree about the abominable consequences that the self-deifying leaders of the evolutionist movement have wrought upon humanity, such as this guy, this guy, or this guy.
GOP, this is gross self-parody even for you. Are you hung over today, or something? Or just given up on the whole 'objective scientist' thing? You're talking like some idiot at Uncommon Descent, and I thought you were a tad smarter than that.
Oh, BTW, as an 'average evolutionist', I'm sorry I disappoint you by "failing to live out the implications of my amoral ontology". Would it make you happier if I went out and committed some crimes, to vindicate your cartoonish preconceptions? You know, to prove that your preconceptions aren't, you know, full of shit?
PS: Castro, Chomsky and Kim Jong Il have all "wrought abominable consequences upon humanity"? Dare I ask who Chomsky has killed? And why Castro and Kim Jong-Il are representatives of evolution?
Really, whatever you're on, cut the dose, Paley.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I think we can both agree about the abominable consequences that the self-deifying leaders of the evolutionist movement have wrought upon humanity
And they are the leaders of the evolutionist movement how?
Are you kidding? Kim Jong-il gets published in Science practically every other month.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Autonomous human reasoning is worthless as a tool to come to any conclusions about anything.
Ehhhhhhhhh, whatta you know?
Of course human reasoning is worthless, I mean just look where it has got us, typing on keyboards to send messages instantly across the globe to put down human reasoning and threaten people with our atomic bombs. Flying planes into skyscrapers and creating global warming and melting our ice caps. He's got a point, something about the human mind is pretty futile and pointless.
Autonomous human reasoning is worthless as a tool to come to any conclusions about anything.
dang.
Yeah, I guess this means Paley consults his Bible first before he figures out whether his car needs an oil change.
Let's hope his faith healer keeps him healthy.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Today we will begin focusing exclusively on this thread. This has been my intent all along, but there were some interesting side issues that needed separate treatment.
I would like to say thanks to all of you for your input on my "Creator God Hypothesis" so far. I have updated it and re-posted it on my own personal blog site. It may undergo some more revisions as we move along here, so check over there periodically for the latest version. My blog is <a href="airdave.blogspot.com" target="_blank">here</a>.
Many of you have given me some interesting dialog. What has been the most interesting experience to me so far is the solidity of the case for a theistic worldview. I truly expected to hear some rock solid arguments against theism, but what I found were mostly vacuous arguments, such as "your evidence is not evidence" and "it looks designed but it isn't" and "well, we may have cosmic fine tuning for this universe, but what about other possible ones?" etc. etc. Also, I have found that many evolutionary biologists really don't have much to say about theism at all--I guess they have never given it much thought--and so they often just resort to name calling and goofy remarks.
I did get some pretty good dialog on the Ape/Human questions and we did turn up an error that AIG had made. This dialog was also valuable to me because it confirmed for me the huge differences that exist between apes and humans and showed me that while there are some obvious similarities, there is no solid case for common ancestry.
We will now continue presenting the points of the Creator God Hypothesis and showing the fallacies of macroevolutionary theory along the way. Referring to my outline on my blog site, we are beginning Step 2 and Point B.
Again, Step 1 and 2 are as follows ...
Quote
(1) Observe nature and draw inferences: In particular, we observe Biological Machines, Cosmic Fine Tuning, the Laws of Relativity and the Universal Moral Code. This only gets us so far, i.e. we conclude that there is a Super-Intelligent Engineer, who possibly lives outside of space and time, and who might be the originator of this stange, universal "moral code" which we observe. So we hold these thoughts and move through the rest of the process.
(2) If we accept (1), then we can make some predictions, one of which would be: "This Intelligent Designer probably can communicate to humans." How? We don't know, but there certainly are a lot of competing claims out there -- many "prophets" and "holy books" claiming to be speaking for God or Allah or whoever. Could any one of them stand up to scrutiny? So we compare some "holy books" and investigate the claims. We focus in particular on the Christian Bible. Why would we waste our time on this? Well ... several good reasons. We have reason to believe that the Christian Bible is unique among "religious books" for some pretty big reasons. Former agnostic Josh McDowell gets into this in "Evidence that Demands a Verdict."
And Points A and B of my Hypothesis are ...
Quote
A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose. This God created mankind with a choice of either doing his will or not doing his will, in a similar way as parents "create" babies knowing full well that their child will either do their will or not do their will. Christian Theologians commonly call the choice of NOT doing God's will "sin."
We will not get into the details of the comparison of 'religious books' discussed in Step 2 above in this particular study. There are numerous books on this topic and I trust that you all can get those and read them for yourselves. It should be obvious that the Christian Bible is unique among books--I have found that most of you are quite familiar with it--and we are justified in spending the time to consider some of its claims, which I think you all are wanting me to do anyway, judging from the numerous questions about the Flood, the Age of the Earth, Cain's wife, etc.
We do need to cover off Point B of my Hypothesis so our next topic will be "The Anthropic Principle" in which we will look at some objections to Michael Denton's claims in his book, "Nature's Destiny." We have already covered the issue of Choice and how this necessitates the concept of 'Evil.' This will complete our discussion of Point B in my Hypothesis.
Following this, we will begin looking at specific claims of the Bible, with the first being the Age of the Earth. We will follow this with a lengthy discussion of evidence for the Global Flood of Noah, followed by other Biblical claims such as the Changing of the Languages, and a discussion of Biblical 'kinds.' We will also examine the Documentary Hypothesis and discuss the 'Tablet Theory' of Genesis authorship and discuss the origin of the 7 day week (Yes, Faid, I know you think you answered this already, but you don't know my arguments yet). Our goal is to provide solid evidence for the truth of Genesis 1-11.
I may have more time to dive into this later today, but if not, see you in the morning! Again ... hop on over to my blog site and review my outline so you are well prepared to refute me!
(If anyone wants to try to 'prove' Evolution to me or talk more about Apes and Humans, please do so here as I will be focusing on this thread only now)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Following this, we will begin looking at specific claims of the Bible, with the first being the Age of the Earth. We will follow this with a lengthy discussion of evidence for the Global Flood of Noah, followed by other Biblical claims such as the Changing of the Languages, and a discussion of Biblical 'kinds.' We will also examine the Documentary Hypothesis and discuss the 'Tablet Theory' of Genesis authorship and discuss the origin of the 7 day week (Yes, Faid, I know you think you answered this already, but you don't know my arguments yet). Our goal is to provide solid evidence for the truth of Genesis 1-11.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
god it hurts to laugh so hard.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
whew
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
Ohh man,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Davey, I'm glad we're going to start with the age of the earth. I predict that we will end with it too.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Why don't we skip gradeschool and go straight to grad school again: Explain radioactive halflife davey. How is it consistent with a young earth?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
AFDave tries valiantly to steer discussion away from the reality-based realm about which he knows nothing, and to steer it toward YEC talking points and low-rent Fundamentalist Protestant apologetics. He still wants to bring us all to Jesus. He wants to brag to his pastor that he single-handedly 'converted' a bunch of wicked secular humanist evolutionists with his knowledge and devastating rhetorical skills. Noah's Flood and the Tower of Babel make total scientific sense, and he wants to share this knowledge with us, of course in a very objective way. He knows that if he has to tell a few lies to do this, Jesus will of course understand.
He also wants to start with a clean slate. He hopes we'll all forget all the questions he's ignored and all the times we've pointed out how nonsensical his statements are. This is fine. Jesus is more important than all those things. In the bigger sense, anything a Christian says is 'more right' than anything a nonchristian says.
I think it's time to start ignoring this guy, personally. This shit is getting old.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Laugh all you will. One day, you're going to log in, and what are you going to see? Ghost will have posted a geocentric model of the heavens which explains everything, including Foucault's Pendulum...AFDave will have a thorough analysis of the GULO sequences for all major phyla which makes any similarities indeed appear coincidental...Paley will bring forth a model of nodes and connections and graph theory analysis which shows, to the trained eye, that heterosexual marriages are not only hubs on a scale free network, but that introducing homosexual hubs induces mathematical instability...and thordaddy will present the legal arguments why, it turns out after all, allowing homosexual marriage actually illegalizes heterosexual marriage.
There was a lieutenant named Dave, Whose faith made him foolishly brave. Though he thought he was bright, His brains were a fright. His ignorance made him a knave.
AFDave will also have a thorough treatment of the linguistic similarities of Portuguese and French. -it's like they even look like they came from the same language, see? I was right.
And he will show why plate tectonics didn't happen. It just looks that way.
and, owww! jesus, you'll never guess where that flying monkey came from!
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Ok I missed the discussion over the weekend.... but i dont feel like I missed much....
AFDave is still trying to lecture...and not engaging in any form of intercourse....
He does hint at a truth, but completely missed the boat
Quote
Also, I have found that many evolutionary biologists really don't have much to say about theism at all--I guess they have never given it much thought
Now Dave is trying to make some implication that Evolutionary Biologists cannot be theists....but he does highlight an interesting point. Many times these "discussions" turn into a Science vs. Theology debate. Im not talking about Dave's Theology vs Science....many people on this forum are well-versed in the scientific realm. Very few people on this forum are well-versed in the theological realm. It makes for some of the most pointless discussions ever.
Now, Dave honestly doesnt care either way. I could post a theological rebuttal of his position or a scientific rebuttal. Dave is going to plow ahead. I doubt he even cares if anyone listens to him. Dave, your dishonest approach to intellectual discourse is embarassing. I feel sorry for the religious denomination that claims you as a member.
Dave, I thought I had better cross post this, in case you forgot that you embarrassed yourself over your loss on the whole Portuguese thing. After all, we know you've got some memory and honesty problems.
Oh, goodie! 2nd Lt. Dave is back to provide amusement, entertainment, and a source of fun.
2nd Lt. Dave, shall we look at your statements again? Sure we should.
2nd Lt. Dave said
Quote
Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed).
This is, of course, utter nonsense. By citing various sources (available on the internet so that 2nd Lt. Dave and the lurkers could check them for accuracy) we demonstrated this.
2nd Lt. Dave, embarrassed by his stupid remark, tried to change it to
Quote
Spanish and Portuguese were essentially the same language until 1143 AD when Portugal broke away from Spanish control under a French nobleman by the name of Henry of Burgundy. From this point on, the languages diverged into the modern situation. The primary influence on the linguistic divergence was the French language.
Now this is even funnier, since it's easy to demonstrate (and we did, using easily available sources that 2nd Lt. Dave should have had easy access to) that this entire statement is a lie. Henry was already dead; French was not the primary linguistic influence on the divergence, etc.
2nd Lt. Dave - continuing his usual unChristian behavior, then started bloviating, ranting, raving, and behaving like the four-year old that we have seen him to be.
He then tried to demonstrate that he was right (even though he was completely wrong) by offering the following wacko piece of nonsense:
1) Lots of French guys were present in Portugal around 1143.
2) French and Catalan had some influence on the phonetics of Portuguese.
3) 2nd Lt. Dave thinks the languages sound alike.
We pointed out (swiftly and accurately) that this did nothing to prove 2nd Lt. Dave's claim about the admixture of French and Spanish: the presence of a group of noblemen in a given area does not correlate to a linguistic change (and since French as we know it didn't exist then, 2nd Lt. Dave's original statement is still fewmets); in order for Portuguese to be French and Spanish mixed, 2nd Lt. Dave would have had to show that Spanish and French elements were both present (which his claim above does NOT show); and that 2nd Lt. Dave's personal opinion is worth as much as water-logged TP).
We also predicted that 2nd Lt. Dave's ego would be unable to bear the fact that he had shown himself to be
* ignorant * stupid * unChristian
I am happy to state that we have been proved correct on every point. I am particularly interested in 2nd. Lt. Dave's extremely unChristian, immoral, dishonest, and deceitful behavior. Puzzling, but explainable when we realize that YECs are not, after all Christians.
It has been a pleasure making you look like an idiot, 2nd. Lt. Dave, but I admit it was all too easy. Is this the reason you never got to be even a full lieutenant? General idiocy?
But I salute you sir, for your determination to be a public moron! Power to you!
Stick up for your God-given right to be a moron! You earned it, 2nd Lt. Dave!
Young Dave was a second lieutenant, With "ignorance" stitched on his pennant. He made people laugh, 'For his posts were all daft; his embarassment always immanent.
Rilke-- I'm past Portuguese now ... got anything to defend Evolution? Maybe some new great discovery that will finally make the lightbulb come on for me?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
First you need to get through tectonics. Then we can start with evolution.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
First you need to get through tectonics. Then we can start with evolution.
I haven't been paying attention, has AFD explicitly rejected plate tectonics?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Well, 6000 years. He is certainly rejecting it at some level.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
oh goody so you concede on the portuguese = french + Spanish
Thankyou half a Dave
Glad you saw the light
It must be a great relief to you to admit your were wrong
Now why did you delete one of your threads?
What comment caused a tear in your little cosmic bubble D/2?
You can tell me .....no ones listening...I promise I won't tell a soul.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
He assuredly did not concede on the Portuguese issue. He said he's "past that" now. Like he won the argument and he's moving on to new conquests.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Well Arden I think he conceded he has said it is past because he lost big time.
Isn't that right D/2 ?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Don't ask Dave about fossil fuels. He knows that because coal can be made in a relatively short amount of time, that all of it had to have been formed that way.
Hey, we make diamonds in factories all the time. All the ones we dig out of the ground must have been formed in a short amount of time too.
India will probably also be much smaller since it will have had another 50 million years to keep crashing into Asia.
The idea of 'New Himalayas' in southern Europe is pretty cool.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Not so quick Ved. Oil is trapped in faults under the earths crust and the process happens over millions of years nothing D/2 can say can change that fact. Besides practically all of the fossil fuels source material was on the surface of the earth or the surface of the sea floor long before the dinosaurs arrived. Explain that in what ? The time in between the man made cave paintings around the world between 50 and 20 thousand years ago and now?
nah D/2 is p1ss!ng in the wind.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Don't ask Dave about fossil fuels. He knows that because coal can be made in a relatively short amount of time, that all of it had to have been formed that way.
Hey, we make diamonds in factories all the time. All the ones we dig out of the ground must have been formed in a short amount of time too.
Very good, Grasshopper. Truly you have mastered thinking like a IDC expert.
Now for your next lesson, go off into the wilderness and concentrate until you have fully assimilated the following logic:
1) there are things science cannot explain.
2) therefore science cannot explain anything.
3) therefore, Creationism must be true.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Many of you have given me some interesting dialog. What has been the most interesting experience to me so far is the solidity of the case for a theistic worldview. I truly expected to hear some rock solid arguments against theism, but what I found were mostly vacuous arguments, such as "your evidence is not evidence" and "it looks designed but it isn't" and "well, we may have cosmic fine tuning for this universe, but what about other possible ones?" etc. etc.
Dave, Dave, Dave.
If you came here for "rock solid arguments against theism," you totally came to the wrong place. You should go to an atheist website. There's nothing about the theory of evolution that excludes the existence of God. For all anyone knows, God laid down the laws of physics, and sat back to watch what happened. What happened was the slow evolution of life from its earliest beginnings in non-living matter (covered by theories of abiogenesis) through the incredible diversity of life we currently see (the Theory of Evolution).
The evidence we have provided you, through argument and reference to primary and secondary sources, is conclusive. Only a deluded fool (and I hate to sound condescending, Dave, but that really does describe you) could possible think otherwise. Shit (I was going to say "he11," but it didn't get past the DMV), half the ID community accepts common descent with modification. Guys like Behe accept 99% of the Theory of Evolution but their religious beliefs won't let them take that last teeny tiny baby step.
But at least guys like Behe accept the notion that the earth isn't a few hundred years older than the pyramids.
Quote
what I found were mostly vacuous arguments, such as "your evidence is not evidence"
Well, Dave, you haven't actually supplied any evidence. I know you're puzzled when we say that, but it's nevertheless true. You have not cited a single piece of evidence. Oh, you've made arguments ("It looks designed because it was designed," "The universe is fine-tuned for life"), but arguments aren't evidence. They just aren't. You've had this explained to you over and over, and by this point it's clear you're incapable (or unwilling) to make the distinction.
Quote
Also, I have found that many evolutionary biologists really don't have much to say about theism at all--I guess they have never given it much thought--and so they often just resort to name calling and goofy remarks.
Think about what you just said, Dave, and then re-read what I said in my first paragraph here. Theism is a religious concept, which is outside science's purview. Biologists don't think much about theism for the same reason they don't think much about aesthetics or music theory or stamp collecting. Do engineers think much about the implications wine tasting has for circuit design?
Quote
I did get some pretty good dialog on the Ape/Human questions and we did turn up an error that AIG had made. This dialog was also valuable to me because it confirmed for me the huge differences that exist between apes and humans and showed me that while there are some obvious similarities, there is no solid case for common ancestry.
This is where it's clear how delusional you really are, Dave. The case for chromosomal fusion is iron-clad, and it's conclusive evidence for a common ancestry for humans and chimps. It's only one piece of evidence, and yet it's probably enough for any open-minded person. The case for the broken GULO gene indicating common ancestry is just as strong. You don't see it that way because you either refuse to understand or are incapable of understanding what the evidence even is.
That you still persist in your beliefs that humans have always been humans and chimps have always been chimps is evidence of nothing so much as your own blockheadedness.
So, given your abject failure even to understand the biochemical evidence for a common ancestry of humans and chimps, let alone actually attempt to refute it, I guess we should turn to what should be a somewhat simpler topic for you. First you need to a) understand the evidence for an earth billions of years old, and then b) try to explain why that evidence does not mean what the entire scientific community thinks it means. Given your hapless flailing about in the fields of genetics and biochemistry, I don't have high hopes for your understanding of nuclear and quantum physics, but as always I'll be willing to listen.
But if there's one thing you've accomplished here, Dave, it's giving us some insight into the mind of a young-earth creationist. It's been fascinating to see how someone can be at the same time seemingly intelligent and well-spoken, and yet be able to maintain a simply astonishing opacity of mind. A "deliberate opacity of mind," I believe it's called.
So while you may not be learning much about science here, Dave, we're learning quite a bit about human nature. Anyone who thinks that all humans are naturally rational beings need merely spend some time here to be persuaded otherwise.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Maybe some new great discovery that will finally make the lightbulb come on for me?
I...
You know, this one's just too easy. Even I have standards.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE I predict that Michael Denton will probably go down in history as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th Century. Henry Morris may actually claim the leading title for his leadership of the modern Creationist revival, but there is no doubt that men like Michael Denton, Michael Behe and William Dembski will be names long remembered once the rotting corpse of Darwin's General Theory of Evolution is buried and forgotten.
And so we take one more look at one of my favorite books, "Nature's Destiny" by Michael Denton and discuss briefly, the Anthropic Principle. From the fly-leaf of the book ...
Quote
In Nature's Destiny, Michael Denton marshals a stunning range of biological, chemical, and physical evidence to answer systematically a simple question: Could life elsewhere in the universe be significantly different from life on earth? Must it rely on carbon, water, DNA, amino acids, and proteins? COuld there be an alternative to DNA, or could DNA be constructed out of different components? Could cells be designed differently? From these building blocks he dares to ask the boldest questions: Is it possible there are life forms radically different from those realized during the course of evolution on Earth? And even: Is a Homo sapiens--like creature the only possible highly intelligent species, given the laws of biology that exist throughout the universe?
The stunning answer to this last question is yes. Life is highly constrained by the laws of nature. If, for example, the ratio between strong and weak chemical bonds had not been what it is, if the thermal properties of water were not precisely what they are, if the atmosphere of the Earth had not had just the right properties to filter out harmful radiation, then a flourishing biosphere such as exists on Earth would be impossible. For like to develop beyond the most primitive stage hinted at by the famous Mars fossils requires an earthlike planet, with earthlike atmosphere and oceans.
Over the past twenty years, such physicists as Freeman Dyson, Fred Hoyle, Martin Rees and Paul Davies have argued that the universe is fine-tuned for carbon-based life. Now, Michael Denton extends their argument all the way from the carbon atom to advanced and complex life forms closely resembling ourselves, showing that our biosphere is central to nature's destiny. Though we may have six-fingered cousins elsewhere, the laws of nature are tuned to reach an endpoint in mankind.
Denton goes on to make an excellent case for his claims and concludes with this ...
Quote
All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact ... As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in these final days of the second millenium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished--the "defender of the anthropocentric faith.
Now for some objections from our good friends at Talk Origins ...
Quote
The claim assumes life in its present form is a given; it applies not to life but to life only as we know it. The same outcome results if life is fine-tuned to the cosmos.
Yes. Life in its present form IS a given. (This author is bright! No. You cannot fine tune life, then build a cosmos. Sorry, doesn't work that way. You know ... gotta do site prep then build the foundation before you build the house. See? (Wow, these are convincing rebuttals, guys. I can see why you got taken in!
Quote
We do not know what fundamental conditions would rule out any possibility of any life. For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible.
Oh yeah, sure. The old "alternate universe" theory. I know of an alternate universe in Alice and Wonderland.
Quote
Indeed, many examples of fine-tuning are evidence that life is fine-tuned to the cosmos, not vice versa. This is exactly what evolution proposes.
This author couldn't think of a new rebuttal, so he re-used the second half of the first one.
Quote
If the universe is fine-tuned for life, why is life such an extremely rare part of it?
Good question. Worth investigating. But that doesn't argue against the fact that it is indeed fine tuned for life. Try reading the Bible for clues to WHY it is here and no place else.
Quote
Many fine-tuning claims are based on numbers being the "same order of magnitude," but this phrase gets stretched beyond its original meaning to buttress design arguments; sometimes numbers more than one-thousandfold different are called the same order of magnitude (Klee 2002).
Gimme a break. Elsewhere on the Talk Origins site, the authors had ample opportunity to refute Cosmic Fine Tuning and they did not. Why not? Because they could not. You can see this Here.
Quote
How fine is "fine" anyway? That question can only be answered by a human judgment call, which reduces or removes objective value from the anthropic principle argument.
No, it is very objective. Sorry. It's very well defined. Read Dyson, Hoyle, Rees, Davies and Denton.
Quote
The fine-tuning claim is weakened by the fact that some physical constants are dependent on others, so the anthropic principle may rest on only a very few initial conditions that are really fundamental (Kane et al. 2000). It is further weakened by the fact that different initial conditions sometimes lead to essentially the same outcomes, as with the initial mass of stars and their formation of heavy metals (Nakamura et al. 1997), or that the tuning may not be very fine, as with the resonance window for helium fusion within the sun (Livio et al. 1989). For all we know, a universe substantially different from ours may be improbable or even impossible.
Maybe so, but are you telling me that this weakening is a big deal when you are talking about some 70 different parameters that have to be right for life to exist? Come on.
Quote
If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it. There is nothing to rule out the possibility of multiple universes, most of which would be unsuitable for life. We happen to find ourselves in one where life is conveniently possible because we cannot very well be anywhere else.
Oh boy. The brain damage is bad. Call the neuro-surgeon! Wow. That is a brilliant statement: "If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it." I think there's an echo. Isn't that what we've been saying? I thought I just got through saying this very thing ... "If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it." How exactly is this a rebuttal of my argument? Oh, and of course the multiple universe thing again, which Faid told me had been dropped, but here it is again.
Quote
Intelligent design is not a logical conclusion of fine tuning. Fine tuning says nothing about motives or methods, which is how design is defined. (The scarcity of life and multi-billion-year delay in it appearing argue against life being a motive.) Fine-tuning, if it exists, may result from other causes, as yet unknown, or for no reason at all (Drange 2000).
Well, it is a logical conclusion in OUR universe. But I understand ... you guys are in a different one. Sure, there could be other causes. Like chance for example, with a probability of 1 in 50 gazillion googolplex.
Quote
In fact, the anthropic principle is an argument against an omnipotent creator. If God can do anything, he could create life in a universe whose conditions do not allow for it.
OK. So the anthropic principle might argue against an omnipotent creator if you are in one of those alternate universes, but again, in this universe, it argues FOR one. Fine. Postulate a God anyway you like. But the fact is humans are here and the universe is fine tuned for them. The fun question is WHY? Again, enter the Bible.
OK. Fire away if you can! I'll cut and paste some of your "Ape Objections" onto this thread so you don't think I abandoned you. As for Portuguese ... you guys can go argue that one among yourselves. You don't like what I have to say anyway, so why would you want me involved? To me it sounds like "The sky is blue. No it's not ... you're an idiot. Yes it is, see, look at it. It's not EXACTLY blue, see, it's really Royal Blue. And here we have all these sources that don't say anything about it being blue to prove that it's Royal Blue. Come argue with us, please, Davy. We really want to show you how smart we are and how dumb you are. OK? Please?"
Until manana! Or manhao! (for you Portuguese fans) (I don't know how to do the tildes)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If the universe is fine-tuned for life, why is life such an extremely rare part of it?
Good question. Worth investigating. But that doesn't argue against the fact that it is indeed fine tuned for life.
Of course it does, Dave. The universe is so poorly tuned for life that as far as we can tell it's extremely, unbelievably, astonishingly rare. As far as anyone knows, Dave, the only place life exists is right here on earth.
We've got a universe ~46 bilion light years wide, and life exists on one planet about 7,200 miles wide. Does that really give you a warm fuzzy feeling about how congenial this universe is for life? The universe can just, barely, under incredibly unlikely circumstances, sustain the barest little crumb of life.
Unless I'm mistaken, Dave, an omnipotent "Creator God" had infinite freedom in how He designed the universe. (Do you disagree? If so, please explain). Is there some reason why God did not design the universe so that life could exist virtually anywhere? Maybe God just doesn't really like life very much, so he tucked it away in an inconspicuous spot (like that unsightly stain on the carpet you cover up by parking a sofa over it) where he'd never have to look at it again?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Rilke-- I'm past Portuguese now ... got anything to defend Evolution? Maybe some new great discovery that will finally make the lightbulb come on for me?
Thanks Dave, for admitting you were wrong. Brave of you to risk the embarassment.
THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE I predict that Michael Denton will probably go down in history as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th Century. Henry Morris may actually claim the leading title for his leadership of the modern Creationist revival, but there is no doubt that men like Michael Denton, Michael Behe and William Dembski will be names long remembered once the rotting corpse of Darwin's General Theory of Evolution is buried and forgotten.
And so we take one more look at one of my favorite books, "Nature's Destiny" by Michael Denton and discuss briefly, the Anthropic Principle. From the fly-leaf of the book ...
Quote
In Nature's Destiny, Michael Denton marshals a stunning range of biological, chemical, and physical evidence to answer systematically a simple question: Could life elsewhere in the universe be significantly different from life on earth? Must it rely on carbon, water, DNA, amino acids, and proteins? COuld there be an alternative to DNA, or could DNA be constructed out of different components? Could cells be designed differently? From these building blocks he dares to ask the boldest questions: Is it possible there are life forms radically different from those realized during the course of evolution on Earth? And even: Is a Homo sapiens--like creature the only possible highly intelligent species, given the laws of biology that exist throughout the universe?
The stunning answer to this last question is yes. Life is highly constrained by the laws of nature. If, for example, the ratio between strong and weak chemical bonds had not been what it is, if the thermal properties of water were not precisely what they are, if the atmosphere of the Earth had not had just the right properties to filter out harmful radiation, then a flourishing biosphere such as exists on Earth would be impossible. For like to develop beyond the most primitive stage hinted at by the famous Mars fossils requires an earthlike planet, with earthlike atmosphere and oceans.
Over the past twenty years, such physicists as Freeman Dyson, Fred Hoyle, Martin Rees and Paul Davies have argued that the universe is fine-tuned for carbon-based life. Now, Michael Denton extends their argument all the way from the carbon atom to advanced and complex life forms closely resembling ourselves, showing that our biosphere is central to nature's destiny. Though we may have six-fingered cousins elsewhere, the laws of nature are tuned to reach an endpoint in mankind.
Denton goes on to make an excellent case for his claims and concludes with this ...
Quote
All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact ... As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in these final days of the second millenium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished--the "defender of the anthropocentric faith.
Now for some objections from our good friends at Talk Origins ...
Quote
The claim assumes life in its present form is a given; it applies not to life but to life only as we know it. The same outcome results if life is fine-tuned to the cosmos.
Yes. Life in its present form IS a given. (This author is bright! No. You cannot fine tune life, then build a cosmos. Sorry, doesn't work that way. You know ... gotta do site prep then build the foundation before you build the house. See? (Wow, these are convincing rebuttals, guys. I can see why you got taken in!
Quote
We do not know what fundamental conditions would rule out any possibility of any life. For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible.
Oh yeah, sure. The old "alternate universe" theory. I know of an alternate universe in Alice and Wonderland.
Quote
Indeed, many examples of fine-tuning are evidence that life is fine-tuned to the cosmos, not vice versa. This is exactly what evolution proposes.
This author couldn't think of a new rebuttal, so he re-used the second half of the first one.
Quote
If the universe is fine-tuned for life, why is life such an extremely rare part of it?
Good question. Worth investigating. But that doesn't argue against the fact that it is indeed fine tuned for life. Try reading the Bible for clues to WHY it is here and no place else.
Quote
Many fine-tuning claims are based on numbers being the "same order of magnitude," but this phrase gets stretched beyond its original meaning to buttress design arguments; sometimes numbers more than one-thousandfold different are called the same order of magnitude (Klee 2002).
Gimme a break. Elsewhere on the Talk Origins site, the authors had ample opportunity to refute Cosmic Fine Tuning and they did not. Why not? Because they could not. You can see this Here.
Quote
How fine is "fine" anyway? That question can only be answered by a human judgment call, which reduces or removes objective value from the anthropic principle argument.
No, it is very objective. Sorry. It's very well defined. Read Dyson, Hoyle, Rees, Davies and Denton.
Quote
The fine-tuning claim is weakened by the fact that some physical constants are dependent on others, so the anthropic principle may rest on only a very few initial conditions that are really fundamental (Kane et al. 2000). It is further weakened by the fact that different initial conditions sometimes lead to essentially the same outcomes, as with the initial mass of stars and their formation of heavy metals (Nakamura et al. 1997), or that the tuning may not be very fine, as with the resonance window for helium fusion within the sun (Livio et al. 1989). For all we know, a universe substantially different from ours may be improbable or even impossible.
Maybe so, but are you telling me that this weakening is a big deal when you are talking about some 70 different parameters that have to be right for life to exist? Come on.
Quote
If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it. There is nothing to rule out the possibility of multiple universes, most of which would be unsuitable for life. We happen to find ourselves in one where life is conveniently possible because we cannot very well be anywhere else.
Oh boy. The brain damage is bad. Call the neuro-surgeon! Wow. That is a brilliant statement: "If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it." I think there's an echo. Isn't that what we've been saying? I thought I just got through saying this very thing ... "If part of the universe were not suitable for life, we would not be here to think about it." How exactly is this a rebuttal of my argument? Oh, and of course the multiple universe thing again, which Faid told me had been dropped, but here it is again.
Quote
Intelligent design is not a logical conclusion of fine tuning. Fine tuning says nothing about motives or methods, which is how design is defined. (The scarcity of life and multi-billion-year delay in it appearing argue against life being a motive.) Fine-tuning, if it exists, may result from other causes, as yet unknown, or for no reason at all (Drange 2000).
Well, it is a logical conclusion in OUR universe. But I understand ... you guys are in a different one. Sure, there could be other causes. Like chance for example, with a probability of 1 in 50 gazillion googolplex.
Quote
In fact, the anthropic principle is an argument against an omnipotent creator. If God can do anything, he could create life in a universe whose conditions do not allow for it.
OK. So the anthropic principle might argue against an omnipotent creator if you are in one of those alternate universes, but again, in this universe, it argues FOR one. Fine. Postulate a God anyway you like. But the fact is humans are here and the universe is fine tuned for them. The fun question is WHY? Again, enter the Bible.
OK. Fire away if you can! I'll cut and paste some of your "Ape Objections" onto this thread so you don't think I abandoned you. As for Portuguese ... you guys can go argue that one among yourselves. You don't like what I have to say anyway, so why would you want me involved? To me it sounds like "The sky is blue. No it's not ... you're an idiot. Yes it is, see, look at it. It's not EXACTLY blue, see, it's really Royal Blue. And here we have all these sources that don't say anything about it being blue to prove that it's Royal Blue. Come argue with us, please, Davy. We really want to show you how smart we are and how dumb you are. OK? Please?"
Until manana! Or manhao! (for you Portuguese fans) (I don't know how to do the tildes)
Dave posted some words in a thread, That showed that his knowledge was read From pages of men Who were smarter than him Since nothing is found in his head.
THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE I predict that Michael Denton will probably go down in history as one of the most influential scientists of the 20th Century. Henry Morris may actually claim the leading title for his leadership of the modern Creationist revival, but there is no doubt that men like Michael Denton, Michael Behe and William Dembski will be names long remembered once the rotting corpse of Darwin's General Theory of Evolution is buried and forgotten.
Don't forget Jack Chick.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
As for Portuguese ... you guys can go argue that one among yourselves. You don't like what I have to say anyway, so why would you want me involved? To me it sounds like "The sky is blue. No it's not ... you're an idiot. Yes it is, see, look at it. It's not EXACTLY blue, see, it's really Royal Blue. And here we have all these sources that don't say anything about it being blue to prove that it's Royal Blue. Come argue with us, please, Davy. We really want to show you how smart we are and how dumb you are. OK? Please?"
All well and good Dave, but can you please explain to me why all the linguists disagree with you?
Is it because they're all liberals? All atheists?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
As for Portuguese ... you guys can go argue that one among yourselves. You don't like what I have to say anyway, so why would you want me involved? To me it sounds like "The sky is blue. No it's not ... you're an idiot. Yes it is, see, look at it. It's not EXACTLY blue, see, it's really Royal Blue. And here we have all these sources that don't say anything about it being blue to prove that it's Royal Blue. Come argue with us, please, Davy. We really want to show you how smart we are and how dumb you are. OK? Please?"
Small Davey admitted his error, With weasel words showing his terror Of knowing that we Are much smarter than he, And can trim all his crap with a parer.
Small Davey admitted his error, With weasel words showing his terror Of knowing that we Are much smarter than he, And can trim all his crap with a parer.
What's the difference between AFDave and a non-cowardly pilot?
A non-cowardly pilot breaks ground and flies into the wind...
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, I'm going to give you a little advice on this "cosmic fine-tuning" argument of yours. It will save you a lot of typing, and it will save us a lot of wading through pointless repetition of arguments we've all heard a million times before.
I've said before that you have yet to present any actual "evidence" to support your "creator god hypothesis." This is as true now as it was when you started out, but with regard to your "cosmological fine tuning" argument, lack of evidence isn't the problem. There's plenty of evidence (none of which, I should point out, you have actually bothered to present) that if various physical parameters were even slightly different (the cosmological constant would be a big one), not only could life not exist in the universe; the universe itself could not exist.
You don't need to show us evidence of this, Dave, because we've all seen the evidence before. The problem in this case isn't with your evidence. It's with your argument.
The "fine tuning" argument simply isn't that compelling, Dave. As half a dozen people have pointed out, what would truly be persuasive is if we found life in a universe that wasn't tuned for it. That's the weak anthropic principle. After all, an omnipotent god certainly could sustain life in a universe manifestly unsuited for it.
But given that God presumably had infinite freedom in how he designed the universe, and assuming that he actually likes life (an assumption that may not be warranted), he could have done a lot better job of it and made the universe vastly, astronomically more congenial to life if that had been his aim. So your argument as to why the universe is not infinitely better suited to life comes down to the usual "God works in mysterious ways" apologetic.
So my advice, Dave, is to admit defeat on this issue and move on to the next. I know it's hard to continue an argument when you keep losing the points you make to support it, but it's really the only way I see to move forward here. The argument simply isn't persuasive.
Now, I know you weren't persuaded by the arguments for common descent, but that isn't surprising given your manifest inability to even understand the arguments or the evidence supporting them. We all understand the "fine tuning" argument; we just think it's a crappy argument.
Next on the agenda: why the earth isn't as old as every scientist on the planet thinks it is. Take it away, Dave!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hey guys, I just poured a glass of water and the water took the exact shape of the glass. I am not kidding, there is an amazingly small probability that the water will arrange itself into the exact shape of the glass, but it does. Must be divine intervention!
which Faid told me had been dropped, but here it is again.
Hey Dave, since you posted the link to TalkOrigins again, how about taking the big step this time and actually looking three paragraphs down, like I've told you to a dozen times, instead of putting words into my mouth? You think I forgot your little gognitive dissonance on this issue, or do you think that bailing out of a debate where things are not looking favorably, and bringing it up again when noone remembers it, claiming you have won, helps your case? Anyway, for the nth time, this is what you would see, if you had the guts to look:
Quote
Note that my thesis does not require more than one universe to exist, although some cosmological theories propose this. Even if ours is the only universe, and that universe happened by chance, we have no basis to conclude that a universe without some form of life was so unlikely as to have required a miracle.
As for the Portuguese language issue... Your stubborness is only matched by your cowardice. Did you read the links you yourself asked me to provide? Maybe then you'll understand why you're actually claiming that the sky actually is yellow with green dots...
Dave, I was actually hoping for more from you at first. You seemed like a straightforward, honest guy, however deluded. Unfortunately, your overall performance on this forum so far has made me change my mind. I now think you might be the most dishonest (with yourself first , but also with others) young-earther to ever come here (with the possible exception of Cordova). And with the Portuguese thing, where I'm sure you have realized by now how devastatingly WRONG you were, you demonstrated that it's not, in fact, the belief in your God you're trying to protect with your tricks and denial and pretense: It's your own inflated ego.
So, I'll let others who are more qualified and more patient to utterly lay your ludicrous YEC "arguments" to waste.
I'm actually really sorry for you. You probably don't believe it, but I am. Maybe you should pray for enlightment and deliverance from arrogance to your version of a deity: I'm just sad I can't help you.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Hey guys, I just poured a glass of water and the water took the exact shape of the glass. I am not kidding, there is an amazingly small probability that the water will arrange itself into the exact shape of the glass, but it does. Must be divine intervention!
“It is seldom that you see a new stable structure appearing spontaneously in a completely symmetric environment,” explains Tomas Bohr, a physicist at the Technical University of Denmark. “Usually you have to do something to break the symmetry. But we’re not doing anything to break the symmetry. The system does it all by itself.”
I'm glad you are leaving my thread. I would rather have people respond to me who care about representing ToE well (that is honestly). I've had several. I'll probably have a few more.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You are frustrating to be sure. Your Bible theories are old hat and you are not the first to raise them. ToE is important for science. Christistianity is not. But if you are really serious about learning, you need to start with the age of the Earth. The genome doesn't make sense except in light of goelogic time. If you can prove that the Earth is less than, say, a few billion years old, then you will have disproved evolution and all its trappings anyway.
Before you do that though, you should explain plate tectonics (continental drift) so that we can assess your current understanding and start from wherever you really are.
I would ask that you begin by accepting that you are generally delusional but I suppose that is too much to ask.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I'm glad you are leaving my thread. I would rather have people respond to me who care about representing ToE well (that is honestly). I've had several. I'll probably have a few more.
Actually, Dave, we really haven't been responding to you, since you've given us so little to respond to. Mostly it's been you haplessly trying to respond to us.
You've said as much yourself. This thread is ostensibly not about the Theory of Evolution. It's supposedly about AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis. But most of the discussion so far has been about what you perceive to be weaknesses in the ToE.
This is just like all the other creationist/IDist cant we've been reading. There's never any positive evidence for either position. It's always been sniping at evolution.
So…how are we doing on that refutation of radiometric dating and plate tectonics?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'm glad you are leaving my thread. I would rather have people respond to me who care about representing ToE well (that is honestly). I've had several. I'll probably have a few more.
You had me too, Dave, but you lost me. And you calling me dishonest is the clearest case of projection you have demonstrated so far. I have never ignored your arguments, refuse to address them, repeat questions you have already answered, deliberately distort your answer's meaning, or bail out from one thread to claim victory in our confortation in another. Let alone put words in your mouth. YOU have done all this, Dave.
But don't worry, I'll stick around; I'll just enjoy the show, without taking you seriously anymore.
PS. And it's blue, dave. The sky is blue.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
but there is no doubt that men like Michael Denton, Michael Behe and William Dembski will be names long remembered once the rotting corpse of Darwin's General Theory of Evolution is buried and forgotten
aftard needs a reality check. And perhaps he could provide us some evidence of his latest little theory?
Behe's own univeristy has a public disclaimer on their web site distancing themselves from Behe's nonsense. Behe will be remembered from his mindless testimony ala Kitzmiller as the guy who said astrology was scientific and the guy who ignores evidence that conflicts with his "theories".
Dembski has more degrees than I have ex-wives and so far he has amounted to nothing. He teaches at a marginal theology school that is probably not even accredited. No one in the math or science community thinks much of him at all. Without the cultute war and his specific IDC role, he is nothing, a garden variety loser. His theology is just as lame as his math. He is a good propagandist without a moral compass, I'll give you that.
Yeah these guys will be remembered alright, but not the reasons they'd prefer.
For a corpse to rot it must first die yet ToE rages on in modern science and education. No sign of ToE even catching a cold. Looks healthier than ever. A bunch of ignorant creationists yapping at the heels of ToE does not constitute its death or demise, silly. That has been going on for 150 years and ToE just gets stronger with every bit of new and confirming evidence while the loons (creationists) look more foolish.
aftard, you can click your heels together all day long and pray or chant for things to be different, but the reality is you have chosen the side of the ignorant and uneducated.
I'd hold off on sending out the invites to celebrate the death of ToE.
I'm glad you are leaving my thread. I would rather have people respond to me who care about representing ToE well (that is honestly). I've had several. I'll probably have a few more.
Dave's hopes have gone down the drain, Of proving that France and that Spain, Had given their speech To enlighten and teach The poor Portuguese how to say "plain".
"Good evening, y'all. I'm Tovah McQueen. (And I'm Belma Buttons.) And this is, reality check. The show where you leave your delusions at the door, sit yo' ass down, open up wide for a big ole' slice of truth, with a side of wisdom. "
Yes indeed, it's overdue time for an aftard reality check...
Did you even read my post on why fine tuning does not distinguish between a designer and natural origins of the universe?
Put simply, given that life exists in this universe, both hypotheses predict the same thing: the universe will be able to support life. How do you not see this?
Now, you could say: 'ah, but fine tuning seems so unlikely, it points to a designer!' However, in order to make this claim, which is a probabilistic one, you MUST have data on other universes, and have a detailed model on how the parameters of universes are generated. Do you have these? If you do, you really should publish them.
To elaborate, Dave, we don't really know enough about the physical laws of the universe to say how improbable the values of these various constants are. For all we know, there is an underlying logic to physical law that strongly constrains those constants to their measured values. In other words, it's possible that the only universe that makes logical sense is one in which those constants take on the values they have. That is most certainly the hope of the theoretical physics community.
Now it may happen that physical constants are only loosely constrained, or may not be constrained at all. If the universe we can observe turns out to be only one of many (or possibly of infinitely many), that's not a problem at all. Given a large enough number of possible universes, a universe with the parameters ours has becomes a certainty, eliminating the need for a deity.
Given only one universe (ours) but strongly constrained parameters, the need for a deity is also eliminated.
Given only one universe, where there's no rhyme or reason to the values physical parameters must take, one is reduced to appeals to either blind luck (either good or bad depending on whether you think existence is a good thing) or divine intervention, but I'm not sure one can make a strong argument that one is more likely than another. I have no philosophical problem with an extremely unlikely set of parameters happening purely by chance, because extremely unlikely things happen all the time. Just this instant, a particular photon, a remnant of the cosmic microwave background, impacted my TV, producing a tiny smidgen of static. What are the chances that that particular photon, that sprang into existence almost 14 billion years ago, happened to strike my TV at this particular instant in time? That 25-inch screen makes for a pretty tiny target from 14 billion light years away, don't you think?
This is why your "fine tuning" argument is so weak, Dave. The best you can say is that it's an argument from ignorance. We don't know why all those parameters take the values they do, so you suggest we give up and just say "goddidit."
I suggest you find another argument.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Course, we explained all this at great length to Dave Heddle, and he refused to get it, and he's about 10x smarter than AFDave, so don't get your hopes up, people.
Quote
didn't BWE just spend about an hour or so compling a bunch of statements of this very nature in the other thread?
I don't know, I don't read very long posts. For example, that Panda's Thumb commenter, what's his name? Glenn Davidson? That guy thinks he's writing features for the NYT magazine.
Not to disregard the ongoing topics, but I do notice the usage of "authority" on particular matters. I read an article today which I enjoyed very much.
As follows:
Eric Cornell, Why is the Sky Blue? ( What Was God Thinking? Science Can't Tell )
Scientists, this is a call to action, but also one to inaction. Why am I the messenger? Because my years of scientific research have made me a renowned expert on my topic: God. Just kidding. You'll soon see what I mean. Let me pose you a question, not about God but about the heavens: "Why is the sky blue?" I offer two answers: 1) The sky is blue because of the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering; 2) The sky is blue because blue is the color God wants it to be.
My scientific research has been in areas connected to optical phenomena, and I can tell you a lot about the Rayleigh-scattering answer. Neither I nor any other scientist, however, has anything scientific to say about answer No. 2, the God answer. Not to say that the God answer is unscientific, just that the methods of science don't speak to that answer.
Before we understood Rayleigh scattering, there was no scientifically satisfactory explanation for the sky's blueness. The idea that the sky is blue because God wants it to be blue existed before scientists came to understand Rayleigh scattering, and it continues to exist today, not in the least undermined by our advance in scientific understanding. The religious explanation has been supplemented — but not supplanted — by advances in scientific knowledge. We now may, if we care to, think of Rayleigh scattering as the method God has chosen to implement his color scheme.
Right now there is a U.S. federal trial under way in Dover, Pennsylvania, over a school policy requiring teachers to tell students about “intelligent design” before teaching evolution. The central idea of intelligent design is that nature is the way it is because God wants it to be that way. This is not an assertion that can be tested in a scientific way, but studied in the right context, it is an interesting notion. As a theological idea, intelligent design is exciting. Listen: If nature is the way it is because God wants it to be that way, then, by looking at nature, one can learn what it is that God wants! The microscope and the telescope are no longer merely scientific instruments; they are windows into the mind of God.
But as exciting as intelligent design is in theology, it is a boring idea in science. Science isn't about knowing the mind of God; it's about understanding nature and the reasons for things. The thrill is that our ignorance our knowledge; the exciting part is what we don't understand yet. If you want to recruit future scientists, you don't draw a box around all our scientific understanding to date and say, “Everything outside this box we can explain only by invoking God's will.” In 1855, no one told the future Lord Rayleigh that the scientific reason for the sky's blueness is that God wants it that way. Or if someone did tell him that, we can all be happy that the youth was plucky enough to ignore them. For science, intelligent design is a dead-end idea.
My call to action for scientists is, Work to ensure that the intelligent-design hypothesis is taught where it can contribute to the vitality of a field (as it could perhaps in theology class) and not taught in science class, where it would suck the excitement out of one of humankind's great ongoing adventures.
Now for my call to inaction: most scientists will concede that as powerful as science is, it can teach us nothing about values, ethics, morals or, for that matter, God. Don't go about pretending otherwise! For example, science can try to predict how human activity may change the climate, but science can't tell us whether those changes would be good or bad.
Should scientists, as humans, make judgments on ethics, morals, values and religion? Absolutely. Should we act on these judgments, in an effort to do good? You bet. Should we make use of the goodwill we may have accumulated through our scientific achievements to help us do good? Why not? Just don't claim that your science tells you “what is good” ... or “what is God.”
Act: fight to keep intelligent design out of science classrooms! Don't act: don't say science disproves intelligent design. Stick with the plainest truth: science says nothing about intelligent design, and intelligent design brings nothing to science, and should be taught in theology, not science classes. My value judgment is that further progress in science will be good for humanity. My argument here is offered in the spirit of trying to preserve science from its foes — but also from its friends.
Eric Cornell won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001.
In the title of this particular thread, the words "Creator God Hypothesis" are used. I feel that is an apt description - a "hypothesis". As the Creator God assertion is tentative with no empirical value within science, then it is appropriately a hypothesis.
Why do Intelligent Designers (and/or those who support Intelligent Design) proselytize their ideology for fiercely in the face of science? This is something I have tossed around for awhile. Intelligent Design does not fit the criteria of science (thats a given), yet Intelligent Designers are combative enough to approach scientists "demanding" explanations for some flaw in science. I consider this a "Eureka Complex" (a term I devised, obviously). Waiting for a particular moment where the respondant says, "I don't know" before leaping in with their non scientific assertion. It's also interesting to note that philosophy is utilised more by the Intelligent Designer than science itself. If science is applied, its in a negative tone.
A question I have been asking for years, which has not been answered (and actually blatantly avoided and ignored) is:
Hypothetically, say science is wrong. Hypothetically, evolution is incorrect. Then give the Intelligent Design model using scientific methodology. Evolution would fail under scientific methodology, then show how Intelligent Design will excel above it, using scientific methodology.
All too often, scientists are put in a position to defend that which requires no defence. Intelligent Designers apply this a worthy and mainly successful technique - why?
I still occasionally check out the pointless attempts to get AFDave to understand even the bases for scientific thinking. So today I see that he has an idea of how Portuguese arose, one totally divorced from linguistic theory and the evidence that shows, well, how Portuguese arose (I rather suspect that some few written records go way back, as they do for the evolution of the French language).
What strikes me is that he resorts to derivation in this case in order to "explain" how Portuguese became what it is. At least it's the proper way of thinking, however naive, instead of the old "poof, God did it" method. Were he consistent, he'd be telling us that all evidence of derivation is meaningless, that no language can change, either through horizontal or vertical transfer.
So we can use derivation to establish cause in the matter of the Portuguese language? Good. Then let's. Only we'll actually deal with evidence, instead of refitting every bit of evidence into Dave's prejudices. And we'll do the same with genetic evidence, noting horizontal genetic transfers where these occur, and the abundant evidence for vertical evolution where it appears.
English actually did change due to horizontal transfers from the French, though before,during, and after the transfers it evolved more "vertically" (with some horizontal transfers happening throughout its existence).
Evolution works both horizontally and vertically, so I'm willing to accept his capitulation to one method of evolution, no matter how strenuous his denial of the one kind that he thinks is verboten. And he's also capitulated to the fact that derivation can be shown via similarities. All he'd have to do now is to open his mind, study up to the level of a competent high school biology student, and he'd actually follow the evidence for once, instead of pitifully and ignorantly "explaining away" everything that points to evolution.
Only we know that he won't. There is only one "principle" driving AFDave in this issue, it being that evolution is wrong. His admission that horizontal evolution can be established via the evidence of similarity is merely accidental, an object lesson to the teachable that denial is futile unless one really likes looking foolish.
Is there a problem with considering "authority" in certain ways?
I do not consider C.S Lewis an authority on Morals, nor on the Laws of Man. I would consider Skinner, Kohlberg and even Gilligan, an authority on Morals.
I am currently completing an Essay for my Social Science Research Class which looks at validity, credibility and reliability of authoritative sources in relation to research in general. I find it interesting when using a source, how objective that source is. Was C.S Lewis a reliable source, credible and valid? No. A statement such as "in all of us there is a natural desire to reach communion with God".
Simplistically, would I go ask a Janitor with no higher education to give me an analysis of Mendel's Genetics? Would I seek out C.S Lewis to give me an analysis on Psychology?
Otherwise authoritative sources are good, if they are credible.
Hypothetically, say science is wrong. Hypothetically, evolution is incorrect. Then give the Intelligent Design model using scientific methodology. Evolution would fail under scientific methodology, then show how Intelligent Design will excel above it, using scientific methodology.
don't think you're the first to ask this. We often ask it of UDites that come to PT, more or less.
for example several of us (including myself) asked Salvador Cordova that very question in one of his infrequent visits to PT, and Wesley Elsberry essentially asked the same question of Dembski in a debate some years back, which related to what science ID was planning on doing.
if you want to see what their response looks like, ask Wesley. It's quite humorous, but I'll paraphrase here:
"uhh, yeah, that's a good question, I think we're working on it; expect an answer soon."
Look, perhaps you have noticed by treading through AFDave's endless monologue ('cause that's what it is from his perspective), that these folks are mentally INCAPABLE of answering that question. Nor does it affect their ability to spin a tale to promulgate their worldview.
You'll never see an answer to that, or an answer even as to how one could begin to construct and experiment to test the currently non-existent scientific hypothesis of "intelligent design".
It really doesn't even qualify as a hypothesis, by any real definition of the term. It only qualifies as an idea, and not one that is even based on any objective observation.
I guess, all I'm really saying is:
Join the club. What you are asking them is a great question, but it's no magic bullet.
EDIT:
ahhh, here's a great example:
Wesley frames the question thusly:
Quote
Basically, I said that I had been at the 1997 “Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise” conference where the ID advocates said that they didn’t have a scientific hypothesis of ID and a means of testing it, but that they were working on it. I asked Dembski what progress ID had made in the intervening years.
Here is the response (from AMNH Debate Transcript):
WD (William Dembski):
Quote
Well, let me answer you in two parts. One, if you throw enough money at researchers, you’ll be getting research, right. So I think, uh, I think the, you know, the, the research you’re citing, I don’t mean to dismiss it, I think there’s a lot of good stuff being done, but it’s certainly, the moneys, the research funds are the evolutionary side, we don’t have very much funding, we’re not getting funding from NSF and NIH, so it’s a mainly, mainly private at this point. And I would say yes, we have our work cut out for us. In 1997 we met at a conference, but there was a conference later that year that which was a private gathering, titled “A Consultation on Intelligent Design”, Where the idea was to try to jump start this as a research program. We weren’t there at the time. So, you know, I, I agree, we’ve got our work cut out for us, but, uh, we’re making some slow, slow progress. You know I think uh, we’re still at the point, I mean, I think that my, my work in No Free Lunch and um, Design Inference was trying to lay some theoretical foundations. And, Uh, you know. But I, I do see, there’s, there’s some good work being done, and, I can, I can list some for you. We are getting some stuff into the peer reviewed literature, it’s not, it’s not a whole lot, you know. So yeah, we’ve got our work cut out.
and that's from a supposed "leader" of the ID movement.
If it had anything to do with science, ID would have been embraced, just like it's twin "creation science" would have years before.
There is, however, no way apparently to demonstrate that to the likes of AFDave. Isn't it readily apparent why that is after a month of examining his mental masturbation?
If it had anything to do with science, ID would have been embraced, just like it's twin "creation science" would have years before.
There is, however, no way apparently to demonstrate that to the likes of AFDave. Isn't it readily apparent why that is after a month of examining his mental masturbation?
Hello, Sir Toejam,
Indeed, for me it would be like clubbing a baby seal, slapping a corpse to make it go ouch, etc. I think it was Voltaire that said "It takes two to make a truth; one to speak it, the other to hear" - if I could coax someone into believing that I can levitate at will, shoot flames from my fingers, and recite the 2005 Complete Set of Britannica Encyclopedia, then wouldn't I be justified in my method of thinking? Then again it could be purposeful dissonance, purposeful attempt at dissension - any publicity is good publicity right? Hahaha.
By the way, as for Dembski's quote, I would LOVE to be paid for my research, for some its their job, for others its an ambition, for me its a paper requirement.
By the way, as for Dembski's quote, I would LOVE to be paid for my research,
I feel your pain.
Dembksi was essentially lying, btw. Not only has the DI never actually funded any research (only PR), but money to do actual research was offered (some NGO - IIRC the Templeton Foundation), and grudgingly rejected by Dembski et. al. when they couldn't even produce a single hypothesis or experimental design to test.
as to published papers in the peer reviewed literature... more lies. To date, not a single experiment to support ID has EVER been published in any scientific journal.
the papers he is referring to really are just ID mental masturbation (no evidence or experiments, just attempts to poke holes in current ToE), or are provably completely unrelated to ID itself.
the funny thing is, this isn't hard to find out as the DI put up a list of these so called "peer reviewed" works last year.
Questions from the "Ape/Human" and "God Hypothesis" threads ... Renier ... [quote]Afdave, I don't get this "Common Design" thing. Back to the broken Vitamin C gene. Was it broken BEFORE the fall of man, or did it break AFTERWARDS?
If before, then humans were not made perfect, right? If after, then why the he11 did it break in much the same way as that of chimps, and then trace it back futher to other apes. BS laddy.
Let's say it broke afterwards (after the apple). Why so similar, and why in such a way as to look like common descent? You saw the nice little graphics that the people showed you about how the mutations are related. [/quote] Well, Renier, I cannot say for sure since I was not there (as Ken Ham likes to say), but there are some pretty simple possible answers if you open your mind up a little. My theory is that it broke AFTERWARDS. The reason the GULO gene is so similar is because ... drum roll ... Apes and Humans are so similar!! Now, that wasn't too difficult, was it? For those of you that still don't get it, just think of the old Ford analogy. Remember I said that Aerostars and Fiestas are 95% similar, like Chimps and Humans? (Well, I don't know if it's 95, but probably close enough for the analogy). OK. Now all Fords have alternators, right? And probably the Aerostar alternator is going to be a little bigger than than the Fiesta alternator, maybe even a few design differences. So the alternator is like the functional GULO gene, OK. Is everyone with me? Now ... what happens after about 5 years of driving these cars? The alternators might break. Pretty believeable, right? Do they break in the same way? Maybe, maybe not. Now, where did these two vehicles come from? A COMMON DESIGNER. Imagine that! Now why is this so hard for you to picture with Apes and Humans?
Chris Hyland ...
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No, it is the fact that the mutations are the same, which is evidence that we share a common ancestor. It isnt just based on sequence identity. It is the mutations that have occured that are the important part, but you seem to be ignoring this point.
How am ignoring this? Here is what Jeannot said ...
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you can't consider the loss of function alone as a valid evidence for common descent, because hundreds of mutations can break a gene.
Your statement and Jeannot's seem to contradict.
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No, but everyone who has claimed to base their arguments on Denton has ended up spouting nonsense. Read the old Shi thread for an example.
I don't doubt that you have encountered some non-sensical YECs here. So just because some other guy quotes Denton and spouts nonsense means all quotes of Denton are nonsense? Why not try refuting what Denton specifically says?
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By the way, could you give the specific reference to this "medieval encyclopedia" you rely on? I'm curious to learn how little Burgundy was able to spare thousands of knights for such a distant enterprise, and what language those knights were speaking.
Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 10, 1988, American Council of Learned Societies, p. 39 and following. Did I say "thousands"? Well, even Creos make misquotes once in a while. I should have said "several contingents", which is the exact wording of this article. I read "thousands" somewhere else, but failed to get the reference. Do you really think it was not thousands? Also, someone asked about word comparisons. Here you go. I hope the table comes out OK.
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Now everyone who speaks both Spanish and Portuguese (as I do) knows the similarities b/t those two. But this table shows something which is not as commonly known - the similarities of Portuguese to French. This is why I don't need to spend hours and hours researching documents with Arden. This is so obvious, folks. Anyone with their eyes open can see the commonality with the French language. Also, I have noticed that many of you lose focus on the goal of a discussion. Again, let me remind you that my goal on the Portuguese thing was not to make a rigorous research project out of it. My goal was simply to show Rilke that she does not help the cause of evolutionists by ranting and raving about how idiotic Creos are, which is what she did. While it may turn out after Arden spends hours and hours of rigorous research that my "Portuguese is Spanish mixed with French" statement is overly simplistic, it certainly is not idiotic to say this, and it doesn't help evolutionists look bright to just blindly blather that "Creos are idiots". But again, I have no desire to spend hours and hours on this. I proved my point. There are 3 lines of strong evidence that support that my statement was not idiotic, even though it may prove simplistic. If Rilke wants to disagree with me in the future, I might suggest using the "Jstockwell" approach which makes evolutionists sound a lot more sane. I do have to ask ... why would you want to spend hours and hours proving the Portuguese thing? It does seem to me like you are trying to prove that "the sky is royal blue" instead of just "blue."
But Arden and Rilke and Faid-- If you insist on doing a major research project on Portuguese, please do me a favor and start a new thread for it. THX.
Eric Murphy ...
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The "fine tuning" argument simply isn't that compelling, Dave. As half a dozen people have pointed out, what would truly be persuasive is if we found life in a universe that wasn't tuned for it. That's the weak anthropic principle. After all, an omnipotent god certainly could sustain life in a universe manifestly unsuited for it.
But given that God presumably had infinite freedom in how he designed the universe, and assuming that he actually likes life (an assumption that may not be warranted), he could have done a lot better job of it and made the universe vastly, astronomically more congenial to life if that had been his aim. So your argument as to why the universe is not infinitely better suited to life comes down to the usual "God works in mysterious ways" apologetic.
There seems to be a common misunderstanding among evolutionists that Creationists think we invoke "GODDIDIT" at every turn, thus killing scientific inquiry. This is the opposite of what we do (well, can't speak for everyone ... when I say we, I mean at least ICR, AIG and CRS). Creationists understand natural laws very well and look for them in everything they investigate. But Creationists have an expanded concept of Natural Law, namely that THERE ARE NATURAL LAWS WHICH WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT YET, and THERE COULD BE AN INTELLIGENCE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE WHO DOES KNOW ABOUT THESE OTHER NATURAL LAWS AND WHO USES THEM. Now ... why is it so unreasonable to think this? To me, Creationists are much more open minded in the sense that they are forward thinking and willing to investigate ALL possibilities, not just 'naturalistic' ones. Keep in mind that I have never said, "Cosmic Fine Tuning proves there is a God." I say "Cosmic Fine Tuning" is remarkable and seems to defy staggering odds with what we know presently. Yes, we could discover multiple universes and then we might see that the odds are not so staggering after all. But we haven't yet. So the best explanation that we know of today is that Someone set the parameters, because the odds against them being set as they are are so large. Note that these parameters are both complex (there are a lot of them) and they are specified (if you change any of them, everything dies). I don't necessarily agree with everything Bill Dembski is doing, but here is where he shines, in my opinion. Specified complexity does not arise by chance. It requires intelligence. Why would scientists like yourselves be closed minded to this possibility? It seems to me that YOUR mindset, not ours is less progressive. The same logic applies to Biological Machines. The best explanation we know of today is that "Someone designed them." This is because evolution does not provide the necessary mechanisms to create the machines, and we observe intelligence every day making cool machines, i.e. human intelligence. We are very familiar with a quite reasonable explanation already. Why would we not even propose the idea and test it. Of course, something may come along to make us discard Intelligent Design. But nothing has yet. As I said, true macroevolution has not been demonstrated yet, and in my opinion never will.
Eric Murphy ...
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I'm really glad you're abandoning your anti-evolution argument, Dave, beacuse it's become incredibly tedious.
I decided to keep it alive. Go check out my questions on bacterial anti-biotic resistance.
Arden ...
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I sorta don't see the point of responding to AFD anymore, tho some of the linguistic discussions are still interesting. The less they have to do with AFD, the more interesting they are.
Good. Stay away then. That way I will be able to dismantle evolutionary arguments and establish Creationist arguments unopposed.
Aftershave ...
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Missionary AFDave sobs ... BTW Dave, I was right about you washing out of T-38 training, wasn't I?
Uh ... where did you come up with that? Why don't you start a new thread to investigate me? If you do you'll find that I graduated with honors in my EE degree, then got selected for the creme-de-la-creme Euro Nato Joint Jet Pilot Training (ENJJPT) at Sheppard AFB in Texas. This was UPT for fighter pilots and served all of NATO. Everyone who graduated got assigned to fighter or instructor duty. I graduated 4th out of a class of 40 and got instructor duty in T-38's which was an absolute blast. I got married and then lost interest in fighters because of all the deployments and also my "afterburner urges" were fulfilled already. So go ahead and blather on about my career if you want to, but you are just making yourself look stupider and stupider with every new post. On the other hand, if you want me to think you are intelligent, try studying "Jstockwell." He's the most intelligent sounding person I have yet encountered here.
I guess if you can't come up with anything intelligent on your own to say about Evolution, maybe you could start a thread on Rocket Science. Didn't you tell me you are some kind of rocket scientist?
Rilke ...
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Dave posted some words in a thread, That showed that his knowledge was read From pages of men Who were smarter than him Since nothing is found in his head.
I like your poetry, but do you have to repost my ENTIRE post? Sure takes up alot of space. What's the point of that??
Oh, by the way, I also like to write poetry. You will see mine in the form of a soon-to-be-released new Dynamation called "The Watchmaker" at www.kids4truth.com. See, we want to get to these kids with the truth at a young age, so that they will not go wrong in science like you did when they grow up.
Drew Headley ...
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AFDave's anthropic argument is like saying if somebody wins the lottery it must have been rigged because the chances are so slim.
This betrays your ignorance of the comparison. With the lottery, someone always wins everytime you draw a number. In other words, there is no "specificity." With the anthropic principle there is an extremely high degree of specificity.
Drew again ...
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Hey guys, I just poured a glass of water and the water took the exact shape of the glass. I am not kidding, there is an amazingly small probability that the water will arrange itself into the exact shape of the glass, but it does. Must be divine intervention!
Stop Drew, before I conclude you are not a scientist. Right now I think you are simply a scientist who has said some goofy things.
Chris Hyland ...
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You seem to be using arguments about the probabilities of universal constants taking certain values, how do you calculate these? Thanks.
I didn't calculate them which is why I just used the general 1 to 50 gazillion googolplex to illustrate the enormity of the odds against a finely tuned universe.
Faid ...
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Note that my thesis does not require more than one universe to exist, although some cosmological theories propose this. Even if ours is the only universe, and that universe happened by chance, we have no basis to conclude that a universe without some form of life was so unlikely as to have required a miracle.
See my discussions with others on alternate universes.
BWE ...
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If you can prove that the Earth is less than, say, a few billion years old, then you will have disproved evolution and all its trappings anyway. I would ask that you begin by accepting that you are generally delusional but I suppose that is too much to ask.
I would like to know how many of you would sign on to BWE's promise. Because I am going to do just that. Will you all become Creationists if I do?
I would like to admonish all the professional "insulters" here to take notes from BWE. In spite of the fact that he hurls insults regularly, I actually get a big laugh out of each one, and ironically, I have come to like the guy. There's just no way a guy could get mad at BWE when he insults you so creatively. I won't embarrass those of you who aren't very good insulters, but you probably know who you are. Here's a hint: just read it before you post it ... if it makes you laugh, then it's probably funny and worth posting for entertainment value.
Mr Christopher ...
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Behe's own univeristy has a public disclaimer on their web site distancing themselves from Behe's nonsense ... Dembski has more degrees than I have ex-wives and so far he has amounted to nothing ... For a corpse to rot it must first die yet ToE rages on in modern science and education. No sign of ToE even catching a cold. Looks healthier than ever.
Weren't Galileo and Copernicus "science outcasts" as well? Now they look pretty smart, though, don't they? Goofy argument, Mr Christopher.
Jstockwell ...
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afdave,
Did you even read my post on why fine tuning does not distinguish between a designer and natural origins of the universe?
Put simply, given that life exists in this universe, both hypotheses predict the same thing: the universe will be able to support life. How do you not see this?
Now, you could say: 'ah, but fine tuning seems so unlikely, it points to a designer!' However, in order to make this claim, which is a probabilistic one, you MUST have data on other universes, and have a detailed model on how the parameters of universes are generated. Do you have these? If you do, you really should publish them.
No. I do not have to have data on other universes. Science takes what it knows NOW, and forms hypotheses. Then if we turn up some new info on some other alternate universe, we will modify the hypothesis if we are forced to. This happened with Newton when Einstein came along, but it did not negate Newton's work. The best hypothesis that we have right now considering data from all scientific disciplines is the "God Hypothesis" (or Super-ET or Intelligent Designer Hypothesis or whatever label you want to give it). No one has a clue about abiogenesis, macroevolution in organisms has no empirical proof (in fact the opposite of what is predicted actually happens), etc. etc., so the best explanation that we have today is the God Hypothesis. Not to say there won't be a better explanation not requiring a 'God' at some point, but there's not one now.
Steve Story ...
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I don't know, I don't read very long posts. For example, that Panda's Thumb commenter, what's his name? Glenn Davidson? That guy thinks he's writing features for the NYT magazine.
Hey now, you be nice to Glen Davidson. I like him. He hasn't called me a "cretin" in a long time!
Fractatious ...
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Why do Intelligent Designers (and/or those who support Intelligent Design) proselytize their ideology for fiercely in the face of science? This is something I have tossed around for awhile.
Because the evolutionary science establishment cannot see the forest for the trees. They are so blinded by their beloved theory that they are overlooking the most obvious evidence for Intelligent Design that it is quite ludicrous. The only choice then for YECers and IDers is to "go public." Since scientists are not educating the public responsibly in the area of origins, someone must. So we do. We are basically doing a political "end run" around obstinate, head-in-the-sand scientists. Note that we only oppose a small portion of what scientists do. There is much good work that scientists are doing in spite of their "evolution glasses." We do not oppose this.
Fractatious ...
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A question I have been asking for years, which has not been answered (and actually blatantly avoided and ignored) is:
Hypothetically, say science is wrong. Hypothetically, evolution is incorrect. Then give the Intelligent Design model using scientific methodology. Evolution would fail under scientific methodology, then show how Intelligent Design will excel above it, using scientific methodology.
I'm not up as much on the ID research program ... maybe it is non-existent as of yet. But I can tell you that the Creation research program is doing very well with excellent organizations such as ICR, CRS and AIG. And no government funding!
Fractatious ...
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Simplistically, would I go ask a Janitor with no higher education to give me an analysis of Mendel's Genetics? Would I seek out C.S Lewis to give me an analysis on Psychology?
Surely you cannot really believe that C.S. Lewis is like a janitor? Do you know nothing of his credentials? Look, I don't agree with Dan Brown either, but I recognize that the man is brilliant and talented. If you are going to discredit Lewis, one of the most influential Christian philosophers of the 20th century, you need something better than what you have given.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Because the evolutionary science establishment cannot see the forest for the trees.
I snipped this portion, thought about it briefly and decided not to answer this as its already been covered numerous times on this very thread and I don't cultivate or encourage repitition where it comes down to almost blow-for-blow semantics. Your position is clear. I disagree with it, but its clear.
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Surely you cannot really believe that C.S. Lewis is like a janitor? Do you know nothing of his credentials? Look, I don't agree with Dan Brown either, but I recognize that the man is brilliant and talented. If you are going to discredit Lewis, one of the most influential Christian philosophers of the 20th century, you need something better than what you have given.
I find it vaguely interesting that you will take an analogy based on credentials and assume that I meant that Lewis was a Janitor - why did you do that?
Anyway I am aware of his history even (quote biographer, Alan Jacob based on letters that Lewis sent to Arthur Greeves) with Lewis "fascination in sadomasochism and sexual torture". I am aware that he was a professor of Literature (English). I am also aware that he was NOT a psychologist, his understanding of morality pays no semblance in regards to humans, to those leaders of psychology.
Now everyone who speaks both Spanish and Portuguese (as I do) knows the similarities b/t those two.
Which shows nothing about Portuguese being a mixture of French and Spanish
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But this table shows something which is not as commonly known - the similarities of Portuguese to French.
Which shows nothing about Portuguese being a mixture of French and Spanish.
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This is why I don't need to spend hours and hours researching documents with Arden. This is so obvious, folks. Anyone with their eyes open can see the commonality with the French language.
Which shows nothing about Portuguese being a mixture of French and Spanish.
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Also, I have noticed that many of you lose focus on the goal of a discussion. Again, let me remind you that my goal on the Portuguese thing was not to make a rigorous research project out of it.
You made an incorrect statement. You lied about it. You lied about it using incorrect history. You were caught both in your lies and your ignorance.
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My goal was simply to show Rilke that she does not help the cause of evolutionists by ranting and raving about how idiotic Creos are, which is what she did.
I pointed out that you were wrong. You lied about my response, then too.
The Bible says folks should not lie. But young Davey ignores that to try To recover some grace When there's egg on his face And he'd rather not break down and cry.
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While it may turn out after Arden spends hours and hours of rigorous research that my "Portuguese is Spanish mixed with French" statement is overly simplistic, it certainly is not idiotic to say this, and it doesn't help evolutionists look bright to just blindly blather that "Creos are idiots".
We pointed out that you were wrong; you lied about that.
You're not ignorant and stupid 'cause you're a creo. You're ignorant and stupid AND you're a creo.
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But again, I have no desire to spend hours and hours on this. I proved my point.
No, actually you didn't. You simply lied.
Young Dave says the Bible's his book, But we think he should give it a look, For it says not to say, Such big falsehoods each day, If you want to get off the he11-hook!
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There are 3 lines of strong evidence that support that my statement was not idiotic, even though it may prove simplistic.
You provided no evidence whatever to support your case.
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If Rilke wants to disagree with me in the future, I might suggest using the "Jstockwell" approach which makes evolutionists sound a lot more sane.
But Dave, you're here to make fun of. I would engage in intelligent discussion...with an intelligent person.
You're not.
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I do have to ask ... why would you want to spend hours and hours proving the Portuguese thing? It does seem to me like you are trying to prove that "the sky is royal blue" instead of just "blue."
It took me thirty seconds to google the truth. I'm sorry it took you hours to be wrong.
Young Davey is such a known liar, That if he were caught in a fire, While burning to death, With his last bated breath, He'd say, "it's not a fire, 'tis a tire."
The reason the GULO gene is so similar is because ... drum roll ... Apes and Humans are so similar!!
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Your statement and Jeannot's seem to contradict.
No, the fact that the genes are broken is not evidence for common descent, but the fact that all the breaks are the same is. It is not just the sequence similarity, it is the fact that all the mutations that occured after the break are the same. This is about the fifth time I have said this.
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Why not try refuting what Denton specifically says?
I am not taking my past experiences as proof of having refuted Denton. Perhaps you could summarise for me?
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Creationists are much more open minded in the sense that they are forward thinking and willing to investigate ALL possibilities, not just 'naturalistic' ones
Could you please explain to us how to investigate non-natural possibilities?
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The same logic applies to Biological Machines. The best explanation we know of today is that "Someone designed them."
You still haven't explained this in any depth.
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and we observe intelligence every day making cool machines, i.e. human intelligence.
Isn't this rather similar to saying that mountains exist because of giant moles?
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This is because evolution does not provide the necessary mechanisms to create the machines
Only if you have a very narrow idea of what evolution is.
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Why would we not even propose the idea and test it.
How would we test it?
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I didn't calculate them which is why I just used the general 1 to 50 gazillion googolplex to illustrate the enormity of the odds against a finely tuned universe.
Well, Renier, I cannot say for sure since I was not there (as Ken Ham likes to say), but there are some pretty simple possible answers if you open your mind up a little. My theory is that it broke AFTERWARDS. The reason the GULO gene is so similar is because ... drum roll ... Apes and Humans are so similar!! Now, that wasn't too difficult, was it? For those of you that still don't get it, just think of the old Ford analogy. Remember I said that Aerostars and Fiestas are 95% similar, like Chimps and Humans? (Well, I don't know if it's 95, but probably close enough for the analogy). OK. Now all Fords have alternators, right? And probably the Aerostar alternator is going to be a little bigger than than the Fiesta alternator, maybe even a few design differences. So the alternator is like the functional GULO gene, OK. Is everyone with me? Now ... what happens after about 5 years of driving these cars? The alternators might break. Pretty believeable, right? Do they break in the same way? Maybe, maybe not. Now, where did these two vehicles come from? A COMMON DESIGNER. Imagine that! Now why is this so hard for you to picture with Apes and Humans?
Dave, you can't even keep the relevance of your own analogies straight. The problem is not just one of Aeorstars and Fiestas.
Look at the sequence data scattered throughout this thread (edit: sorry, the ape thread -- I get lost trying to follow Dave as he bounces around) that show chimps and humans are MORE SIMILAR than chimps and gorillas, or chimps and orangutans, or gorillas and orangutans... Even better (though highly unlikely), read up on the actual genetic context, in toto, within which we discuss apes, humans and vitamin C.
To be relevant, your car analogy must reflect your premise of "created kinds", and I've adapted it accordingly. Now, you put chimps, gorillas and orangutans in one "kind" (the most concrete definition of any kind you've given). You put humans in a separate, special kind. So riddle me this...
If the ape (Ford) kind was originally created, and then "evolved" (okay, degenerated since the Fall) into Fiesta (chimps), Aerostar (gorillas) and Taurus (orangutans), then what the ****ing he!! is that Toyota Echo (humans) doing in there, sharing MORE similarities to the freakin' Fiesta (chimps) than any other Ford vehicle (ape), not only in how it is designed (lots and lots of functional genetic sequences), but in exactly how its alternator, cupholders and silly little handles above the doors have fallen apart since it was designed (lots and lots of non-functional sequences, such as pseudogenes like GULO)? What kind of industrial espionage and manufacturing piracy is your Creator involved in here?
I know you will now argue for the similar purpose/market of the Ford Fiesta and Toyota Echo, but that doesn't help you one bit with the "kind" problem: doesn't your "theory" positively demand that the original created kinds be more similar to each other than to another kind? Else what is the purpose or meaning of this whole "kinds" thing anyway? If the human kind shares MORE common "design" with a certain member of the ape kind than either shares with the other ape kinds, what does this mean to you?
This is why I don't need to spend hours and hours researching documents with Arden. This is so obvious, folks.
And THIS kind of "reasoning" is why it is generally a safe bet to assume the worst when it comes to attempted rational discourse with Creationists.
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There seems to be a common misunderstanding among evolutionists that Creationists think we invoke "GODDIDIT" at every turn, thus killing scientific inquiry. This is the opposite of what we do (well, can't speak for everyone ... when I say we, I mean at least ICR, AIG and CRS).... Yes, we could discover multiple universes and then we might see that the odds are not so staggering after all. But we haven't yet. So the best explanation that we know of today is that Someone set the parameters, because the odds against them being set as they are are so large. Note that these parameters are both complex (there are a lot of them) and they are specified (if you change any of them, everything dies). I don't necessarily agree with everything Bill Dembski is doing, but here is where he shines, in my opinion. Specified complexity does not arise by chance. It requires intelligence. Why would scientists like yourselves be closed minded to this possibility? It seems to me that YOUR mindset, not ours is less progressive. The same logic applies to Biological Machines. The best explanation we know of today is that "Someone designed them." This is because evolution does not provide the necessary mechanisms to create the machines, and we observe intelligence every day making cool machines, i.e. human intelligence. We are very familiar with a quite reasonable explanation already. Why would we not even propose the idea and test it. Of course, something may come along to make us discard Intelligent Design. But nothing has yet. As I said, true macroevolution has not been demonstrated yet, and in my opinion never will.
Glad you didn't invoke "GODDIDIT" there, Dave.
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See, we want to get to these kids with the truth at a young age, so that they will not go wrong in science like you did when they grow up.
Scary, Dave. Just plain scary. Never come near my kids, and I'll return the favour, m'kay? By the way, I thought you were most interested in discovering the "truth" (as we are)? Indoctrination first, eh?
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I didn't calculate them which is why I just used the general 1 to 50 gazillion googolplex to illustrate the enormity of the odds against a finely tuned universe.
Erm...Dave...if you give a number as an answer, there #### well better be a calculation involved, no matter what the margin of error in the result. Back of the envelope is fine (so long as it is represented as such), but we better be able to look at the freaking envelope. Welcome to science, big guy. You're not allowed to pull numbers out of your a$$.
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I would like to know how many of you would sign on to BWE's promise. Because I am going to do just that. Will you all become Creationists if I do?
Oh, he11 yeah. Dave, if you can provide me with rigorous positive evidence that the earth is less than one billion years old (i.e., evidence that matches the standard set by the many independent methods of estimation establishing the current accepted age) , I will join the church of your chosing and pray/observe accordingly. If you get anywhere near the 6,000 years you believe in, I will even do so sincerely. I'll be watching, but I won't be practicing any hymns yet.
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Because the evolutionary science establishment cannot see the forest for the trees. They are so blinded by their beloved theory that they are overlooking the most obvious evidence for Intelligent Design that it is quite ludicrous. The only choice then for YECers and IDers is to "go public." Since scientists are not educating the public responsibly in the area of origins, someone must. So we do. We are basically doing a political "end run" around obstinate, head-in-the-sand scientists. Note that we only oppose a small portion of what scientists do. There is much good work that scientists are doing in spite of their "evolution glasses." We do not oppose this.
Ah, it's been a while since I've marvelled at such breathtaking hypocrisy and rationalization. Good show! Well, no, I guess that's not quite true, seeing as how we get your American news networks up here. But good show anyways -- I missed my dose of Jon Stewart last night (#### reruns), and this is almost as good!
Well, Renier, I cannot say for sure since I was not there (as Ken Ham likes to say)
You know what really gets my goat? It's that "argument" that Ken Ham uses. "Were the scientists there in the beginning? NO! God was there, He knows what happened."
This argument is pure BS. Here's why. Let's just go ahead and hand it to Ham, and say that he's right, that God was there in the beginning, and of course, he knows better than modern scientists how the universe, and the earth, and mankind were "created" because He witnessed it. This would be some excellent information to get our hands on, indeed. The only problem is with the fucking priests who say they know what God knows. Bull. I don't buy it for a second. For each of the 6 billion people on the planet there is a different opinion of what God is. And there is no credible evidence of Him ever communicating with anyone.
If Ken Ham could persuade God Himself to debate the scientists in any forum, I might think that He had a chance of beating the scientists. But, it's not God that scientists are arguing with, it's assclown priests like Ham.
You seem to be using arguments about the probabilities of universal constants taking certain values, how do you calculate these? Thanks.
I didn't calculate them which is why I just used the general 1 to 50 gazillion googolplex to illustrate the enormity of the odds against a finely tuned universe.
Pretty much every single biologist, geologist, oceanographer, meteorologist, geneticist, and any other -ist will believe in god/creationism if you can prove that the earth is less than 4 billion years. I'd start with that basic info I posted in the new thread for your young earth evidence.
I am happy with my current religion but hey, if yours turns out to be right then all my hard work will have paid off. I will spend eternity with all the folks I like.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
AFDave's anthropic argument is like saying if somebody wins the lottery it must have been rigged because the chances are so slim.
This betrays your ignorance of the comparison. With the lottery, someone always wins everytime you draw a number. In other words, there is no "specificity." With the anthropic principle there is an extremely high degree of specificity.
Drew again ...
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Hey guys, I just poured a glass of water and the water took the exact shape of the glass. I am not kidding, there is an amazingly small probability that the water will arrange itself into the exact shape of the glass, but it does. Must be divine intervention!
Stop Drew, before I conclude you are not a scientist. Right now I think you are simply a scientist who has said some goofy things.
You are wrong, somebody does not always win the lottery. That is how jackpots can get so high periodically, because nobody wins for a while.
Yes, what I am saying is goofy because the points you make are goofy too. My example, while sarcastic, does illustrate a point. If the constants are constrained by laws we do not know about yet, then the probability of the universe being able to sustain life could be quiet high. Honestly, I am not a cosmologist so the answer eludes me.
There seems to be a common misunderstanding among evolutionists that Creationists think we invoke "GODDIDIT" at every turn, thus killing scientific inquiry. This is the opposite of what we do (well, can't speak for everyone ... when I say we, I mean at least ICR, AIG and CRS). Creationists understand natural laws very well and look for them in everything they investigate. But Creationists have an expanded concept of Natural Law, namely that THERE ARE NATURAL LAWS WHICH WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT YET, and THERE COULD BE AN INTELLIGENCE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE WHO DOES KNOW ABOUT THESE OTHER NATURAL LAWS AND WHO USES THEM.
No, Dave. It's not that Creationists are more "open-minded" than scientists. It's that they're lazier.
Scientists are well aware that there is natural law out there that is poorly understood (that's the understatement of the century). The difference is that Creationists seem content to assume that "someone" out there understands them, and therefore everything's okay.
Scientists, on the other hand, work for a manifestly downscale wage, most of the them, in a concerted effort to understand those natural laws. They do actual, you know, research. They spend their lives trying to figure stuff out. It should be clear to you by now, based on your reading of Creationist writers, that Creationists don't actually do research. They spend all their time attempting to critique other peoples' research.
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Now ... why is it so unreasonable to think this? To me, Creationists are much more open minded in the sense that they are forward thinking and willing to investigate ALL possibilities, not just 'naturalistic' ones.
Except they don't, Dave. They don't do any actual "investigation." I'd like you to point the rest of us to an actual paper, done by an actual creationist, describing actual research (you know, the kind where you have to wear a lab coat and actually do stuff, not just sit at a desk and read other peoples' papers).
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Keep in mind that I have never said, "Cosmic Fine Tuning proves there is a God." I say "Cosmic Fine Tuning" is remarkable and seems to defy staggering odds with what we know presently.
But the problem is, that's where you stop, Dave. You don't go out there and see if you can figure out why the physical parameters are the way they are. People like Lee Smolin, and Lisa Randall, and Murray Gell-Mann, and Stephen Hawking, and Edward Witten are out there every single day trying to figure this out. Meanwhile, the creationists are out there doing what amounts to saying "Goddidit," even if that's not the literal word they're using.
Until Creationists actually go out there in the big wild world and get their hands dirty doing actual research, no one in the scientific community is going to take them seriously. And the fact that you take them seriously is one of the principal reasons no one here takes you seriously.
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Yes, we could discover multiple universes and then we might see that the odds are not so staggering after all. But we haven't yet. So the best explanation that we know of today is that Someone set the parameters, because the odds against them being set as they are are so large.
But see, Dave, this is the part you're not getting. Saying someone set those parameters doesn't explain anything, until you figure out how that someone managed to set them. Until you do that, it's just so much hand-waving.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave's anthropic argument is like saying if somebody wins the lottery it must have been rigged because the chances are so slim.
This betrays your ignorance of the comparison. With the lottery, someone always wins everytime you draw a number. In other words, there is no "specificity." With the anthropic principle there is an extremely high degree of specificity.
Drew again ...
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Hey guys, I just poured a glass of water and the water took the exact shape of the glass. I am not kidding, there is an amazingly small probability that the water will arrange itself into the exact shape of the glass, but it does. Must be divine intervention!
Stop Drew, before I conclude you are not a scientist. Right now I think you are simply a scientist who has said some goofy things.
You are wrong, somebody does not always win the lottery. That is how jackpots can get so high periodically, because nobody wins for a while.
Yes, what I am saying is goofy because the points you make are goofy too. My example, while sarcastic, does illustrate a point. If the constants are constrained by laws we do not know about yet, then the probability of the universe being able to sustain life could be quiet high. Honestly, I am not a cosmologist so the answer eludes me.
Well, the interesting thing is that in the 'evolution lottery' somebody always wins: the survivors. And this is the specificity.
That's why Dembski's filter is such nonsense. CSI is a matter of drawing bull's-eyes after the fact and then claiming, "wow! Look at that! How improbable!"
There is an inherent presupposition on the part of fundies that the current biodiversity IS WHAT GOD INTENDED. Particularly man.
What's really funny is that fundies can't see that 'beam' in their own eye. It's puzzling.
Well, I promised I'd respond to AFD if he said anything moronic about linguistics again, and, well he did!
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Did I say "thousands"? Well, even Creos make misquotes once in a while. I should have said "several contingents", which is the exact wording of this article. I read "thousands" somewhere else, but failed to get the reference. Do you really think it was not thousands? Also, someone asked about word comparisons. Here you go. I hope the table comes out OK.
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Now everyone who speaks both Spanish and Portuguese (as I do) knows the similarities b/t those two. But this table shows something which is not as commonly known - the similarities of Portuguese to French. This is why I don't need to spend hours and hours researching documents with Arden.
"I got me a gut hunch! That counts for way more them citified linguist-types with all their book-larnin!"
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This is so obvious, folks.
Only if you're ignorant. It's also 'obvious' that the sun goes around the earth, no?
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Anyone with their eyes open can see the commonality with the French language.
'Eyes open'? All the linguists who disagree with you have their eyes shut?
I dont know how you're defining 'commonality', but if you think 'things in common' prove that Portuguese is Spanish and French 'mixed', you're deluded. OF COURSE PORTUGUESE AND FRENCH HAVE THINGS IN COMMON, THEY'RE BOTH ROMANCE LANGUAGES!
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Also, I have noticed that many of you lose focus on the goal of a discussion. Again, let me remind you that my goal on the Portuguese thing was not to make a rigorous research project out of it.
You have a gift for understatement.
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My goal was simply to show Rilke that she does not help the cause of evolutionists by ranting and raving about how idiotic Creos are, which is what she did. While it may turn out after Arden spends hours and hours of rigorous research that my "Portuguese is Spanish mixed with French" statement is overly simplistic,
Not 'overly simplistic'. False.
It didn't take me hours and hours of rigorous research, linguists before me have done all that research, and that's the conclusion THEY came up with.
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it certainly is not idiotic to say this, and it doesn't help evolutionists look bright to just blindly blather that "Creos are idiots". But again, I have no desire to spend hours and hours on this. I proved my point.
You're delusional, Dave. Hate to tell you.
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There are 3 lines of strong evidence that support that my statement was not idiotic, even though it may prove simplistic.
Again, not simplistic. False.
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If Rilke wants to disagree with me in the future, I might suggest using the "Jstockwell" approach which makes evolutionists sound a lot more sane. I do have to ask ... why would you want to spend hours and hours proving the Portuguese thing?
Well, I think we're fascinated that you could say something so ignorant with such self-assurance, and then REFUSE to admit you were wrong after being continually refuted for 3-4 days. Sort of like watching a train wreck in slow motion. As I said earlier, if you'd admitted you had your facts wrong last weekend, this subject would have gone away quite promptly.
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But Arden and Rilke and Faid-- If you insist on doing a major research project on Portuguese, please do me a favor and start a new thread for it. THX.
Not worth it. As much as I enjoy linguistic discussions, this isn't a linguistics board, plus we've already given you a mountain of evidence, which you've ignored. It would serve no purpose.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Why would scientists like yourselves be closed minded to this possibility? It seems to me that YOUR mindset, not ours is less progressive. The same logic applies to Biological Machines. The best explanation we know of today is that "Someone designed them."
Dave, it's not that scientists are closed to the possibility of supernatural explanations. It's that time and again, appeal to supernatural explanations hasn't gotten science anywhere. Do you think if Einstein had said to himself, well, lightspeed must be a constant in Maxwell's equations because god planned it that way, he would have gotten anywhere in his investigations?
Do you remember where I said a while back that, if you want to posit an "Intelligent Designer" as an explanation for some natural phenomenon, you still have to explain how that designer accomplishes his designs? That's the point, Dave. Show me where, in any of your arguments about how God finely tuned the cosmos, or how God created these biological machines, you explain how he accomplished it. And saying he "willed them into existence," because, you know, he's all omnipotent and really smart and everything," just doesn't cut it.
Scientists want to know why the world is the way it is, Dave. Creationists can't be bothered to find out.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Did I say "thousands"? Well, even Creos make misquotes once in a while. I should have said "several contingents", which is the exact wording of this article. I read "thousands" somewhere else, but failed to get the reference. Do you really think it was not thousands? Also, someone asked about word comparisons. Here you go. I hope the table comes out OK.
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Now everyone who speaks both Spanish and Portuguese (as I do) knows the similarities b/t those two. But this table shows something which is not as commonly known - the similarities of Portuguese to French. This is why I don't need to spend hours and hours researching documents with Arden. This is so obvious, folks. Anyone with their eyes open can see the commonality with the French language.
Dave, you are aware that Spanish, French, and Portuguese are all Romance languages, right? Meaning that they're descended (with modification) from Latin? That they're pretty closely related, and only started to diffuse from their ancestral tongue (Latin) within the last thousand years or so, right?
So is anyone the least bit surprised that all three languages are pretty similar? I don't know about you, but given even my limited understanding of linguistics, I'm not remotely surprised that all three languages share a great deal of similarities (as all three of them do to Italian and Romanian). That does not—not by a long shot—demonstrate that Portuguese is "a mixture of French and Spanish," any more than your sister is a mixture of you and your brother (not to get too kinky about it).
Sorry, Dave, but this argument by similarity is really boneheaded when it comes to languages.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, the problem with your statement about Portugese is that it was just too simplistic.
You said that Portugese is a mix between Spanish and French. In other words, you're saying that the entire definition of Portugese is that it is a combination of those two neighboring languages, because you didn't say that there was anything else to it. You could have added "among other things" to your statement, and it would have done alot to get yourself off the hook you're on now.
Now, you may be a little bit correct, in that there are a few ways in which this is statement is true.
The problem is, others here were able to come up with dozens of ways in which your statement is not true.
So, if your statement was just a little bit true and a whole lot untrue, which would be a better way of describing your statement: true, or false?
We are basically doing a political "end run" around obstinate, head-in-the-sand scientists.
...in lieu of doing any research whatsoever.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I'm really glad you're abandoning your anti-evolution argument, Dave, beacuse it's become incredibly tedious.
I decided to keep it alive. Go check out my questions on bacterial anti-biotic resistance.
Gee, Dave. I was really hoping. To, you know, keep the tedium index to a breatheable level around here.
Do you honestly think your "bacteria don't evolve, they lose function" argument is new or original, or that we haven't all heard it a million times before and laughed at its boneheadedness?
Look at the source for your quote, Dave. Doesn't that make you the least bit suspicious? How many times have we told you that if you really want to find out what evolution is all about, if you're actually open-minded about the subject, you'll read actual books on evolution from people who actually know what they're talking about. Your insistence on citing things like AiG and the Creation Research Institute just make us laugh. Those guys are clowns, and we know it. You really should know it by now too.
Also, if you think macroevolution has not been demonstrated but that common design has been, will you please explain to us how common design explains nested hierarchies? And where do penis worms fit into your phylogenetic tree? I'm really curious about that last one. Based on your "similarity" arguments, I can make a few guesses...
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No, the fact that the genes are broken is not evidence for common descent, but the fact that all the breaks are the same is. It is not just the sequence similarity, it is the fact that all the mutations that occured after the break are the same. This is about the fifth time I have said this.
I seem to recall that at least two other people said they were NOT claiming that all the breaks are the same. I think what may be going on here is that you guys are saying that (1) both are broken and (2) they are 95% similar. From this you conclude that the gene was broken in a supposed common ancestor, then transmitted along two separate lines of evolution.
Now what I am saying is this: If both are broken and they are 95% similar ... big deal. Fiestas are 95% similar to Aerostars and their alternators are also 95% similar, and guess what ... they are both susceptible to breaking ... maybe even in the same way! But they share a Common Designer! Ditto for Apes and Humans!
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I am not taking my past experiences as proof of having refuted Denton. Perhaps you could summarise for me?
I think I did already. Please refute Denton point by point if you can.
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Could you please explain to us how to investigate non-natural possibilities?
I have been demonstrating how on this thread. I know it's not comfortable and is a different way of thinking than what you are used to, but it is the only way to really determine truth. Science today must be expanded to include the possibility of non-natural events or it becomes artificially myopic. Remember, the definition of non-natural is simply natural laws which WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT. Are we so proud to think we know all the natural laws which COULD ever exist? I'm not.
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You still haven't explained this [biological machines] in any depth.
One can only explain something in as much detail as one knows TODAY. Tomorrow we may know more and we may be able to explain in further detail. I fully expect Dembski and Co. to come up with rigorous mathematical ways to investigate irreducible complexity. Intuition is all we have at the moment. But my intuition explains the data better than your obvious Fairy Tale (no offense ... I know it's not YOUR fairy tale, necessarily).
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Only if you have a very narrow idea of what evolution is.
The only definition that makes scientific sense is one which can be demonstrated in the lab. This would be what I call microevolution and I agree with this. I just don't agree with macroevolution because no one has demo'ed it.
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If the ape (Ford) kind was originally created, and then "evolved" (okay, degenerated since the Fall) into Fiesta (chimps), Aerostar (gorillas) and Taurus (orangutans), then what the ****ing he!! is that Toyota Echo (humans) doing in there, sharing MORE similarities to the freakin' Fiesta (chimps) than any other Ford vehicle (ape), not only in how it is designed (lots and lots of functional genetic sequences), but in exactly how its alternator, cupholders and silly little handles above the doors have fallen apart since it was designed (lots and lots of non-functional sequences, such as pseudogenes like GULO)? What kind of industrial espionage and manufacturing piracy is your Creator involved in here?
I know you will now argue for the similar purpose/market of the Ford Fiesta and Toyota Echo, but that doesn't help you one bit with the "kind" problem: doesn't your "theory" positively demand that the original created kinds be more similar to each other than to another kind? Else what is the purpose or meaning of this whole "kinds" thing anyway? If the human kind shares MORE common "design" with a certain member of the ape kind than either shares with the other ape kinds, what does this mean to you?
No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
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Scary, Dave. Just plain scary. Never come near my kids, and I'll return the favour, m'kay? By the way, I thought you were most interested in discovering the "truth" (as we are)? Indoctrination first, eh?
It's indoctrination if it's lies you are teaching, such as macroevolutionary theory. If it is the truth you are teaching, then it's not generally thought of as indocrination, but simply 'teaching.' You and I just have different views.
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Erm...Dave...if you give a number as an answer, there #### well better be a calculation involved, no matter what the margin of error in the result. Back of the envelope is fine (so long as it is represented as such), but we better be able to look at the freaking envelope. Welcome to science, big guy. You're not allowed to pull numbers out of your a$$.
50 gazillion googolplex is not a number last time I checked. Is it a number to you?
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Oh, he11 yeah. Dave, if you can provide me with rigorous positive evidence that the earth is less than one billion years old (i.e., evidence that matches the standard set by the many independent methods of estimation establishing the current accepted age) , I will join the church of your chosing and pray/observe accordingly. If you get anywhere near the 6,000 years you believe in, I will even do so sincerely. I'll be watching, but I won't be practicing any hymns yet.
Cool. You can start warming up on Amazing Grace ... (you know, the part about "a WRETCH like you") (just kidding, just kidding ... don't get offended)
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You know what really gets my goat? It's that "argument" that Ken Ham uses. "Were the scientists there in the beginning? NO! God was there, He knows what happened."
This argument is pure BS. Here's why. Let's just go ahead and hand it to Ham, and say that he's right, that God was there in the beginning, and of course, he knows better than modern scientists how the universe, and the earth, and mankind were "created" because He witnessed it. This would be some excellent information to get our hands on, indeed. The only problem is with the fucking priests who say they know what God knows. Bull. I don't buy it for a second. For each of the 6 billion people on the planet there is a different opinion of what God is. And there is no credible evidence of Him ever communicating with anyone.
If Ken Ham could persuade God Himself to debate the scientists in any forum, I might think that He had a chance of beating the scientists. But, it's not God that scientists are arguing with, it's assclown priests like Ham.
You make a good point, but you misunderstand Ken Ham. It would be irresponsible to quote the Bible if we (and Ken) had not done our homework and determined that the Bible is truly a Supernatural book and that it is in fact the message of God to mankind. Only after this hard work is done is it appropriate to say "God was there and He can tell us." The good news is that this hard work has been done. I'm planning on walking you through a little of it.
Drew Headley ...
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You are wrong, somebody does not always win the lottery. That is how jackpots can get so high periodically, because nobody wins for a while.
Oops. You're right. I was moving a little too fast. The comparison is still not valid though because the lottery is not "specified complexity." The cosmic parameters are. All of them have to be a SPECIFIC value for life to work.
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If the constants are constrained by laws we do not know about yet, then the probability of the universe being able to sustain life could be quiet high.
It could be quite high IF we learn about the new laws, agreed. But we do not know about any new laws now. Science is about observing what we can TODAY, then making reasonable hypotheses. Then if we learn something new tomorrow, we modify our hypothesis.
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No, Dave. It's not that Creationists are more "open-minded" than scientists. It's that they're lazier.
Scientists are well aware that there is natural law out there that is poorly understood (that's the understatement of the century). The difference is that Creationists seem content to assume that "someone" out there understands them, and therefore everything's okay.
Scientists, on the other hand, work for a manifestly downscale wage, most of the them, in a concerted effort to understand those natural laws. They do actual, you know, research. They spend their lives trying to figure stuff out. It should be clear to you by now, based on your reading of Creationist writers, that Creationists don't actually do research. They spend all their time attempting to critique other peoples' research.
How can you say they are lazier when most of the scientists who founded modern science were creationists? Creationists have PLENTY of research going on. Check with ICR and CRS. Even AIG has a Technical journal now that catalogues real, scientific research. Now I cannot speak for DI. You may be correct when you say they do not do research. But give them time.
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But the problem is, that's where you stop, Dave. You don't go out there and see if you can figure out why the physical parameters are the way they are. People like Lee Smolin, and Lisa Randall, and Murray Gell-Mann, and Stephen Hawking, and Edward Witten are out there every single day trying to figure this out. Meanwhile, the creationists are out there doing what amounts to saying "Goddidit," even if that's not the literal word they're using.
Why stop there? No one else does. You don't. Congress sure doesn't. Congress writes laws which are INTRICATELY TIED to their understanding of what a human being really is. Mao Tse Tung had an idea a what humans are and I like our Congress' idea better. But that's just me. That's why I don't stop. I do all I can and Creation scientist ARE doing lots of their own original research, but you are correct ... it only takes us so far. Then we have to make the hard decisions about government and war and taxes and so on, based on the best information we can get from the scientists on what a human being really is.
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Dave, it's not that scientists are closed to the possibility of supernatural explanations. It's that time and again, appeal to supernatural explanations hasn't gotten science anywhere. Do you think if Einstein had said to himself, well, lightspeed must be a constant in Maxwell's equations because god planned it that way, he would have gotten anywhere in his investigations?
I want to do a research project to show you that a Design Hypothesis makes for MORE PRODUCTIVE scientists than ToE does. I have not researched this, but I have an idea it is true. And I would start by saying look at all the time that is wasted by people who try to come up with "how the immune system might have evolved" and so on. So much time is wasted speculating and writing "Alice in Wonderland" stories, that at the very least, we could put those good minds to work doing something more productive than that!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Uh ... where did you come up with that? Why don't you start a new thread to investigate me?
Sorry Dave for hurting your sensitive feelings yet again. I keep forgetting about your delicate little feminine side. Does your nose bleed every 28 days too?
Here's an idea for you Dave while you dry your tears. If you want to show that you're not an intellectually dishonest coward, then answer these questions that I've now put to you six times:
1. Should all scientific findings be required to undergo a critical peer-review process before being deemed acceptable for teaching in schools?
2. Who are the best qualified people to do rigorous critical scientific peer-reviews?
3. Why should the opinion of an ignorant layman about scientific findings carry more weight than the opinions of well trained professional scientists in the relevant fields of study?
I'll keep asking and embarrassing you until you explain your YEC position on this issue, might as well deal with it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Look at the source for your quote, Dave. Doesn't that make you the least bit suspicious? How many times have we told you that if you really want to find out what evolution is all about, if you're actually open-minded about the subject, you'll read actual books on evolution from people who actually know what they're talking about. Your insistence on citing things like AiG and the Creation Research Institute just make us laugh. Those guys are clowns, and we know it. You really should know it by now too.
I thought I was doing what you always are asking me to do ... quote a REAL SCIENTIST who REALLY WEARS A LAB COAT and you know ... does REAL WORK! Am I mistaken?
ARDEN ... THIS IS GOD SPEAKING ... IF YOU WANT TO ARGUE PORTUGUESE, PLEASE START A NEW THREAD ... THIS THREAD IS ABOUT "THE CREATOR GOD HYPOTHESIS" ... HENCE THE CREATIVE TITLE.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If the human kind shares MORE common "design" with a certain member of the ape kind than either shares with the other ape kinds, what does this mean to you?
No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
As my preteen daughter would say, "Duh!?"
(Hard to capture that unmistakable rising intonation in print.)
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
Dave, that this is news to you is appalling! It's what everyone's been saying all along! How could you not know this? Even if you hadn't picked it up here, how could you have missed this, doing even the most cursory research into primate evolution?!
God, Dave, statements like this really drive home how unreachable you really are. How many times have I pointed you to the Tree of Life website? Didn't you bother to even look at this?
My God, Dave. You're not even pretending to try!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I want to do a research project to show you that a Design Hypothesis makes for MORE PRODUCTIVE scientists than ToE does.
Sweet. I think EVERYONE here would love to see your abstract.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
ARDEN ... THIS IS GOD SPEAKING ... IF YOU WANT TO ARGUE PORTUGUESE, PLEASE START A NEW THREAD ... THIS THREAD IS ABOUT "THE CREATOR GOD HYPOTHESIS" ... HENCE THE CREATIVE TITLE.
Interesting debating style AFD has:
1) make unsupported statement 2) get refuted 3) make new assertions which do not support your original statement. 4) ignore objections to your original assertion 5) declare that you've 'won'. 6) get refuted some more 7) repeat steps 3-6 for several days 8) complain that the person you're debating isn't using the right thread for his objections.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, that this is news to you is appalling! It's what everyone's been saying all along! How could you not know this? Even if you hadn't picked it up here, how could you have missed this, doing even the most cursory research into primate evolution?!
That's the risk you run depending on Answers in Genesis for your research.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
That's an excerpt from page 1138 of "AFDave's collection of basic things he should have known before he went off running his mouth about what was related to what"
I think what may be going on here is that you guys are saying that (1) both are broken and (2) they are 95% similar. From this you conclude that the gene was broken in a supposed common ancestor, then transmitted along two separate lines of evolution.
No we conclude that they were broken in a common ancestor becuase they share the same mutations.
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I think I did already. Please refute Denton point by point if you can.
I recall you mentioning Denton but I dont think you spelled out what his argument is.
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Remember, the definition of non-natural is simply natural laws which WE DON'T KNOW ABOUT. Are we so proud to think we know all the natural laws which COULD ever exist? I'm not.
No and scientists don't presume that. If we make observations that don't fit in with natural laws then we must search for new ones eg. Newtonian -> Einsteinian physics.
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But my intuition explains the data better than your obvious Fairy Tale
What specifi fairy tale is that. We can make predicitons regarding biological machines based on the processes of evolution we are aware of. Can you do that? (And, they will be complex doesn't count).
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No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
Yes.
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50 gazillion googolplex is not a number last time I checked. Is it a number to you?
I am just curious how you are able to assign any kind of probability to universal constants.
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And I would start by saying look at all the time that is wasted by people who try to come up with "how the immune system might have evolved" and so on. So much time is wasted speculating and writing "Alice in Wonderland" stories, that at the very least, we could put those good minds to work doing something more productive than that!
Understanding the evolution of biological systems gives us valuable insights into their function.
No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
I found the usage of that quote interesting - interesting enough to use it and alter a few words around, such as:
No one has EVER told me actual Intelligent Design MODEL such as; X designed Y using Z methods, the overwhelming evidence which supports Z methods is P, therefore X is true.
Dave thought that his own intuition, Should replace evolution's position, But since that demands, That he understands - He's lost in a hopeless position.
How can you say they are lazier when most of the scientists who founded modern science were creationists?
Yeah, Dave, they were. A hundred a fifty years ago. They aren't any more. Times have changed, but Creationists haven't. Which is why they spend more time criticizing research from the 19th century than from the 21st.
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Creationists have PLENTY of research going on. Check with ICR and CRS. Even AIG has a Technical journal now that catalogues real, scientific research. Now I cannot speak for DI. You may be correct when you say they do not do research. But give them time.
No, Dave. They're not doing any research. None. Find us a peer-reviewed paper where a Creationist actually gets in there in a lab, or goes out to a sedimentary deposit with his trowel and his magnifying glass, and does some actual research. You can't, because such papers do not exist.
When you say "research," Dave, you mean something different from what scientists mean. "Scientific research" doesn't just mean reading papers from other scientists and sniping at their results. It means actually trying to figure stuff out. How far have creationists gotten in their explanations for the Standard Model in particle physics? How far have YECs gotten in their research in the earth's magnetic field? How far have the irreducible complexity guys like Behe gotten in figuring out how bacterial flagella came to be? Do creationists have any insight into why the muon is so much heavier than an electron? Because God wanted it that way?
They haven't gotten anywhere, Dave. Why? Because they're not even looking.
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But the problem is, that's where you stop, Dave. You don't go out there and see if you can figure out why the physical parameters are the way they are. People like Lee Smolin, and Lisa Randall, and Murray Gell-Mann, and Stephen Hawking, and Edward Witten are out there every single day trying to figure this out. Meanwhile, the creationists are out there doing what amounts to saying "Goddidit," even if that's not the literal word they're using.
Why stop there? No one else does.
Dave, that's my question, not yours. Why does Creationism stop with "Goddidit"? When are they going to start asking how Goddidit? They're not even asking that question.
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Dave, it's not that scientists are closed to the possibility of supernatural explanations. It's that time and again, appeal to supernatural explanations hasn't gotten science anywhere. Do you think if Einstein had said to himself, well, lightspeed must be a constant in Maxwell's equations because god planned it that way, he would have gotten anywhere in his investigations?
I want to do a research project to show you that a Design Hypothesis makes for MORE PRODUCTIVE scientists than ToE does. I have not researched this, but I have an idea it is true. And I would start by saying look at all the time that is wasted by people who try to come up with "how the immune system might have evolved" and so on.
No! Dave, stop. That's not research. That's metaresearch, research about research (but if you did do such research, you would find that tens of thousands of papers are published every year by evolutionary biologists, and zero (0) papers are published by creationists). That's all you creationist guys do. If you want to show us how a Design Hypothesis is MORE PRODUCTIVE than ToE is, then go out there, and use your design hypothesis to explain something about the real world. Don't tell us how it could explain something. Show us how it does explain something. So far, creationists are batting zero with actually giving us an understanding of anything. Great, you guys say bacterial flagella cannot have evolved. Good for you. Now show us how they got here. And "Goddiddit," in case it's not clear, is not going to cut it.
Get your lab coat on and get to work, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Rilke's granddaughter has the best response to AFDave of all of us.
AFDave, since he walked through the door, Has been a creationist bore "Your Darwinist proofs, "Are all due to Poofs! As for my schooling, less is more!"
Rilke's granddaughter has the best response to AFDave of all of us.
AFDave, since he walked through the door, Has been a creationist bore "Your Darwinist proofs, "Are all due to Poofs!" O can't someone pull the trapdoor?
But how does that man from Nantucket fit into this?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I got married and then lost interest in fighters because of all the deployments and also my "afterburner urges" were fulfilled already.
So Dave went into the military because he couldn't get laid? War as a sublimation for sex. Typical guy (no offense meant to all the other folks here of the male persuasion).
Rilke-- afterburners are things on jets that make them go fast. They are not parts of the male anatomy.
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You said that Portugese is a mix between Spanish and French. In other words, you're saying that the entire definition of Portugese is that it is a combination of those two neighboring languages, because you didn't say that there was anything else to it. You could have added "among other things" to your statement, and it would have done alot to get yourself off the hook you're on now.
WOnderful. Here you go then. Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French among other things. Happy now? Go tell Rilke and Arden and Faid that you are happy.
AFTERSHAVE ... THIS IS GOD SPEAKING ... GET A LIFE ... GO START YOUR OWN THREAD SO YOU CAN CONTEMPLATE YOUR NAVEL IN PEACE AND I WON'T HAVE TO WATCH.
(Oh ... I see you already did and no one wants to play. Did you not notice that Wesley doesn't like to proliferate threads for me? I'm content with 2.)
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Dave, that this is news to you is appalling! It's what everyone's been saying all along! How could you not know this? Even if you hadn't picked it up here, how could you have missed this, doing even the most cursory research into primate evolution?!
God, Dave, statements like this really drive home how unreachable you really are. How many times have I pointed you to the Tree of Life website? Didn't you bother to even look at this?
Oh yes. I've looked at your made up tree many times. It's just that no one has ever shown me how much genetic similarity there is between Chimps-Humans vs. for instance Apes-Gorillas. Do you have that data? Are you telling me that Chimp to Human is for instance 98% and Chimp to Gorilla is only 95%? Or something like that?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AIR FORCE DAVE! THIS IS GOD SPEAKING. STOP IT RIGHT NOW, YOU'RE MAKING MY FOLLOWERS LOOK STUPID.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French among other things.
But... but... it's not 'a mix of Spanish and French among other things'...
Oh, never mind.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, that this is news to you is appalling! It's what everyone's been saying all along! How could you not know this? Even if you hadn't picked it up here, how could you have missed this, doing even the most cursory research into primate evolution?!
God, Dave, statements like this really drive home how unreachable you really are. How many times have I pointed you to the Tree of Life website? Didn't you bother to even look at this?
Oh yes. I've looked at your made up tree many times. It's just that no one has ever shown me how much genetic similarity there is between Chimps-Humans vs. for instance Apes-Gorillas. Do you have that data? Are you telling me that Chimp to Human is for instance 98% and Chimp to Gorilla is only 95%? Or something like that?
Dave, this has been demonstrated multiple times. If you want to find out how genetically close humans and chimps are compared to chimps and gorillas, do a little research.
Did you see the references section at the bottom of the page, Dave? There are dozens of references. Where do you think that phylogenetic tree came from? (A hint: it's not from Creationist research). This paper might be a good place to start: "Gagneux, P. and A. Varki. 2001. Genetic differences between humans and great apes. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 18:2—13." Do I have to go to the library and get the periodicals for you?
The thing that's appalling, Dave, isn't that you don't believe that humans and chimps are more closely related than either is to gorillas. It's that you'd never even heard the claim before in the first place!
That's why we think your stumbling around in the thickets of comparative genetics is so entertaining, Dave. Not because you don't believe the evidence; but because you don't even know what the evidence is.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave...I'm an engineer(like you)...and I think I need to point something out to you....
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Remember I said that Aerostars and Fiestas are 95% similar, like Chimps and Humans? (Well, I don't know if it's 95, but probably close enough for the analogy). OK. Now all Fords have alternators, right? And probably the Aerostar alternator is going to be a little bigger than than the Fiesta alternator, maybe even a few design differences.
Why are these cars so similiar? Because the engineers modified the existing design rather than re-designing a new car. The car has evolved....(with intelligent designers) When an engineer has come along and re-designed a car from scratch..we wind up with drastically different cars.
Now...everyone will agree that a designer exists....you have missed this point as well.
Dave, when they invented the transistor....did we go back and completely redesign circuits? No.... We substituted.... This actually caused massive problems...since simpler solutions frequently existed if we would have been working with the technology from scratch.
You are positing a super-intelligent "engineer"...who obviously wouldnt take shortcuts and would redesign everything from scratch. If the IDer is taking shortcuts(like your ford example) then I doubt he is God. It sounds more to me like he is an idiot...maybe even a mindless algorithm?
50 gazillion googolplex is not a number last time I checked. Is it a number to you?
Tee hee. Whoops. Missed the "gazillion" part. Chalk it up to an oversight on my part. Mind you,it's not within 50 gazillion googolplex orders of magnitude as this one...
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No one has EVER told me that Humans and Chimps share more genetic similarity than say Chimps and Gorillas. Is this true?
Wow. Just...wow. You can sing and dance about percentages and similarities all you like, Dave. But at this point, you may as well abandon anything from the fields of molecular biology and genetics, because you obviously don't have a clue what the he11 you're talking about. All this talk about genes and chromosomes and pseudogenes and...and you didn't know this? Wow. There is no way someone could have actually read those dozens of pages of posts you have prompted, all pertaining to your initial claims in the realm of genetics, and NOT know this basic fact. I'm speechless. Wow.
Autonomous human reasoning is worthless as a tool to come to any conclusions about mankin[d]. Mankind, being affected by sin, can only reason from the implications of his presuppositions; he can only reason in a circle.
Eric writes:
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I don't know, Bill. It seems to me that an inevitable consequence of this belief is a belief that science is a waste of time, and scientists should take up needlepoint.
So, Bill—is science a waste of time?
No Eric, science is not a waste of time. It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true. So, to use bring up Arden's point, I do not need to consult the Bible to figure out when to change the oil, but knowledge of when to change the oil depends upon the Bible being true.
In addition, science does not depend upon automous human reason. If so, what is the point of science education? Students are not required to do every single experiement and observe every single piece of evidence by themselves. They are given the results via textbooks and journals, to be accepted on faith. What are journal results? They are testimony. No different from the testimony of those who observed Christ's empty tomb. Textbooks are compiled from third and fourth hand testimony is not physical evidence, but human testimony, to be accepted on faith.
Ultimately, the ultimate wellspring of human knowledge had to be some kind of testimony. This testimony is God's revelation beginning in the Garden of Eden. This is the only way to ground human knowledge.
Don't worry about it. I suppose gouging 'among other things' out of AFD was all the concession we'll get.
From everything I can tell, Portuguese is just a normal straight descendant of West Iberian Romance, closest to the dialects it's adjacent to (big surprise), i.e., Spanish, and with some French loan words from the 18th century. If it looks like French, well, so does Spanish, Romanian, Italian, Sardinian, Catalan, and Romansch, because they're all Romance languages. That's what language families do, look alike. It's not an accident that my brother and I have the same hair and the same forehead. It doesn't mean we're a 'mix'.
(Ved: Sorry if this sounds testy, it's not directed at you, since it sounds like you understand all this perfectly well.)
And indeed, if AFD doesn't want us to belabor this anymore, he can quit saying foolish things about it.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
So, to use bring up Arden's point, I do not need to consult the Bible to figure out when to change the oil, but knowledge of when to change the oil depnds upon the Bible being true.
Rilke's granddaughter has the best response to AFDave of all of us.
AFDave, since he walked through the door, Has been a creationist bore "Your Darwinist proofs, "Are all due to Poofs! As for my schooling, less is more!"
Hey, Dave, here's a really interesting one among many. Not only do the bulk of genetic data examined support that chimps are closer to humans than they are to gorillas, it turns out that this relationship holds for the pattern of gene activity in our brains (actually, in that very part of our brains that handles cognitive tasks):
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Title: Sister grouping of chimpanzees and humans as revealed by genome-wide phylogenetic analysis of brain gene expression profiles Author(s): Uddin M, Wildman DE, Liu GZ, Xu WB, Johnson RM, Hof PR, Kapatos G, Grossman LI, Goodman M Source: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 101 (9): 2957-2962 MAR 2 2004 Document Type: Article Language: English Cited References: 50 Times Cited: 32 Find Related Records Information Abstract: Gene expression profiles from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of human, chimpanzee, gorilla, and macaque samples provide clues about genetic regulatory changes in human and other catarrhine primate brains. The ACC, a cerebral neocortical region, has human-specific histological features. Physiologically, an individual's ACC displays increased activity during that individual's performance of cognitive tasks. Of approximate to45,000 probe sets on microarray chips representing transcripts of all or most human genes, approximate to16,000 were commonly detected in human ACC samples and comparable numbers, 14,00015,000, in gorilla and chimpanzee ACC samples. Phylogenetic results obtained from gene expression profiles contradict the traditional expectation that the non-human African apes (i.e., chimpanzee and gorilla) should be more like each other than either should be like humans. Instead, the chimpanzee ACC profiles are more like the human than like the gorilla; these profiles demonstrate that chimpanzees are the sister group of humans. Moreover, for those unambiguous expression changes mapping to important biological processes and molecular functions that statistically are significantly represented in the data, the chimpanzee clade shows at least as much apparent regulatory evolution as does the human clade. Among important changes in the ancestry of both humans and chimpanzees, but to a greater extent in humans, are the up-regulated expression profiles of aerobic energy metabolism genes and neuronal function-related genes, suggesting that increased neuronal activity required increased supplies of energy.
AFTERSHAVE ... THIS IS GOD SPEAKING ... GET A LIFE ... GO START YOUR OWN THREAD SO YOU CAN CONTEMPLATE YOUR NAVEL IN PEACE AND I WON'T HAVE TO WATCH.
Sorry sweetie - this is a public BB, so if you don't like public criticism, too bad. Or as the Russians say, tough shitski.
Now you could get me to quit hounding you if actually grew some testicles and tried to answer the tough questions on issues that you yourself raised.
But we both know that's not your style, right washout? It's way easier for you to keep lying and avoiding, which is all we've seen you do so far.
BTW, the new thread I started is specifically for your YEC evidence. All that has to happen now is for you to quit spewing hot air and actually provide some.
Ta for now Dearie
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
It's not your total inability to understand the broken GULO issue. I expected that.
It's not your perfect denial of the indisputable fact that Portuguese already existed as a separate language long before your supposed "mixing" of French and Spanish to produce it. I expected that, too.
It's not even that, after pointing you, for the tenth time, to the part in TO that says we don't need alternate universes, you reply by saying "See what I have to say about alternate universes". I expected no less.
Oh no. The fatal blow was this:
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Look, I don't agree with Dan Brown either, but I recognize that the man is brilliant and talented.
All.
Hope.
Lost.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
WOnderful. Here you go then. Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French among other things. Happy now? Go tell Rilke and Arden and Faid that you are happy.
Poor Dave can't admit that we've won, And showed that of facts he had none, For Spanish and French, Can't be joined with a wrench, To make Portuguese under the son!
It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true.
This is not true.
Firstly, at least parts of the Bible are not true, in that it contains statements that are mutually contradictory, and statements which are provably false.
Secondly, why would the existence of any form of knowledge depend at all on the Bible being true? Where's the connection?
Oh yes. I've looked at your made up tree many times. It's just that no one has ever shown me how much genetic similarity there is between Chimps-Humans vs. for instance Apes-Gorillas. Do you have that data? Are you telling me that Chimp to Human is for instance 98% and Chimp to Gorilla is only 95%? Or something like that?
This is where a bit of research before spouting off really helps, Dave. Here you go, from:
Hacia. (2001). Genome of the apes. Trends In Genetics 17(11): 637-645.
I've gone to the effort of adapting Table 1 into % similarity (as opposed to % difference) to make it exactly what you requested (feel free to check out the original reference). What follows then is the type of genetic sequence analyzed, % similarity between humans and chimps (HC), % similarity between humans and gorillas (HG), then % similarity between chimps and gorillas (CG), in that order.
There. Notice how, no matter where we look at the DNA, HC is greater than CG? Notice how HG and and CG tend to be very similar values, but both less than HC? Could I optimistically cast past experience aside and assume that, just this once, you might understand how this corresponds to a pattern of common ancestry, with gorillas separating from the human-chimp line earlier than humans and chimps themselves diverged (i.e., that "made up" tree)? Can you see what kind of trouble this genetic evidence spells for your "ape" and "human" kinds?
Pretty soon we will have a fully sequenced gorilla genome to put the nail in the coffin (i.e., we haven't looked everywhere yet), but the data are statistically significant: chimps and humans are more similar than chimps and gorillas. If you want to stuff your God into the final rapidly closing gap (i.e., the fact that we have not yet fully sequenced the gorilla genome), feel free, but it will be awfully cramped for him in a few years.
Glad to hear you don't think science is a waste of time, Bill.
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It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true.
No it doesn't, because the Bible is not true. It's wrong on the age of the earth by six orders of magnitude. The Bible could be completely wrong about everything, and that wouldn't affect science, or humans' ability to do science, in the slightest.
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In addition, science does not depend upon automous human reason. If so, what is the point of science education? Students are not required to do every single experiement and observe every single piece of evidence by themselves.
But the point is, Bill (and this is what sets science apart from faith), in principle they could do the experiments and verify the results. No one has to take scientific results on faith. Everyone has to take the truth of the Bible on faith.
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They are given the results via textbooks and journals, to be accepted on faith. What are journal results? They are testimony. No different from the testimony of those who observed Christ's empty tomb. Textbooks are compiled from third and fourth hand testimony is not physical evidence, but human testimony, to be accepted on faith.
Nope. Here's where you're wrong, Bill. A properly-written scientific paper gives you all the information, including methodologies, to go out and perform the experiment yourself and see if you get the same results. That's why they're called "reproducible results." No faith required. If I don't think the speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000,000 m/s, I can go out and do the experiment myself. If I don't think humans and chimps have the same mutations in the same busted gene for vitamin C production, I can go find out for myself.
As for whether Christ's tomb was empty: how would we go about determining the truth of that statement?
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Ultimately, the ultimate wellspring of human knowledge had to be some kind of testimony.
Not for science. If you don't believe the testimony, go out and look yourself. That's what Pons and Fleischer found out.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What can I say -- I appear to be quite masochistic when it comes to drive-by davings.
Speaking of masochistic, I wonder if Dave realizes this is but a preview of the type of smackdown he's about to receive when it comes to the age of the earth?
Dave, while this poor wretch (cute! not offended in the least) warms up on Amazing Grace, perhaps you should meditate upon how well you UNDERSTAND exactly what evidence you've been TOLD not to believe.
As ericmurphy pointed out, your disbelief is on safe ground -- if you want to wave your bible and claim it trumps all, that's fine, but don't try to claim the science is on your side when you don't even know what the science says. Also, you might want to reflect on your knowledge, education and sources. Is it possible that someone who does understand what it is they are actively denying has kept some information from you (think chromosome fusions, chimp-human vs. chimp-gorilla similarities, etc.)? Is there a reason that the Creationist "researchers" who are actually active in science (e.g., publishing papers of any type in journals) not only avoid contesting such established facts as the age of the earth and common descent of apes in the literature, but also prove impossible to nail down on whether or not they actually disbelieve these established facts (think Behe, Meyer, Dembski, etc.)? Do you REALLY know enough to prove the entire realm of actual science wrong, Dave? Is your assessment of your own knowledge at all affected by running into brick walls full-tilt with basic high-school material? Food for thought.
Aaaaaaammmaaayyyyyzzzziiiiiingggg Grace...
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Of course, I expect Dave to say that even 1% difference is meaningless.
Let's hope he didn't think the same thing when targeting missiles from a distance, eh?
I seem to recall that at least two other people said they were NOT claiming that all the breaks are the same. I think what may be going on here is that you guys are saying that (1) both are broken and (2) they are 95% similar. From this you conclude that the gene was broken in a supposed common ancestor, then transmitted along two separate lines of evolution.
Now what I am saying is this: If both are broken and they are 95% similar ... big deal. Fiestas are 95% similar to Aerostars and their alternators are also 95% similar, and guess what ... they are both susceptible to breaking ... maybe even in the same way! But they share a Common Designer! Ditto for Apes and Humans!b
Dave, how many times do we have to rehash this? I you don't want to hear, say it right now, it'll save us some time.
This is the LAST time, read my words carefully.
The data : primates can synthesize vitamin C and all they also have a broken copy GULO. Guinea pigs have also a broken GULO a can't live without vit C. Now, since GULO wasn't broken in the common ancestor of primates and guinea pigs (otherwise, all rodents would need some vitamin C to survive), common descent predicts that it broke independently in primates and guinea pigs. However it is highly probable that the gene broke in the common ancestor of primates. Do you know how many primates and mammals species there are? If you did, you could have calculated the probability for the inactivation of GULO in primates as a result of chance. This is, if I am correct : 1/the combination of (number of primate species) from (number of species that have GULO, ie at least all mammals). Think hard Dave, you can understand. If not, get a book on probabilities. Guess what, this probability is ZERO, even excel can't give the precise result because the computer can't handle it. Well, you could say it proves nothing and that a probability of a single event is meaningless. True, but primates were already known to share a common ancestor, before the GULO story. Think about it.
Anyway, if you still want to maintain that this is the result of chance, read the following. There are thousands of ways to beak a gene : insertions and deletions at any site, stop signals, etc. As predicted, primates share lots of common 'errors' in GULO like the deletion of the same exons (portions of gene) by which they differ from guinea pigs. However, mutations are not frequent (something like 10^-6 per site per generation), they can only happen one at a time in a given copy of a gene (in a gamete). Hence, a gene inactivation is the consequence of only one mutational event, not two or ten simultaneous mutations. Can you follow this reasoning, Dave? Think hard, until you get it, then you may go on. So, theory predicts that most detected 'errors' freely accumulated after the inactivation of the gene. Thus, some mutations accumulated in the common ancestor of different primates species, and other occurred after their divergence (speciation), this process is the same regarding neutral mutations in working genes. That's why we expect the nested hierarchy (phylogeny) based on errors in GULO to reflect the phylogenies built with data from other genes. [And we certainly don't expect chimps and humans to be 100% identical in GULO.] Guess what? the prediction is verified. The probability of this observation resulting from independent mutations, is so small you can't even imagine. Not to mention that we have hundreds of peudogenes like GULO in our genome.
Now tell us your alternative. Common design of broken functions, God playing with us wicked primates?
Or if you don't understand, feel free to admit it.
And BTW Dave, a gene is nowhere near a car alternator. A gene doesn't do any job by itself, it's translated. Get a biology textbook, then try to express correct arguments, thanks.
No it doesn't, because the Bible is not true. It's wrong on the age of the earth by six orders of magnitude.
Clouser, Clouser..., Clouser!
(sung to the tune of Beetlegeuse)
SHHHHHHHH!!!! She'll HEAR you!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
And BTW Dave, a gene is nowhere near a car alternator. A gene doesn't do any job by itself, it's translated. Get a biology textbook, then try to express correct arguments.
Good point, Jean.
Now, picture this, Dave. You're an engineer, so you're familiar with schematics. Now, picture, not the alternator, but the drawings and specifications for the alternator. You look at five different cars. All have the same model alternator, but some are made by some contractors and some are made by others. You want to figure out if any are made by the same contractor.
You compare the plans and specs for all five alternators. You find numerous spelling errors, reversed signs, etc. in all of them. But you note that in specs for two of the models, the exact same errors occur, mixed in with other random errors. I.e., not all of the errors in those two are identical, but some of them are, and are not identical to the errors in any of the other three.
All of the specs have errors, but two of them have two or three errors that are identical. Are those two more, or less, or equally, related to each other as they are to the other alternators? And is one of those two alternators more, less, or equally likely to have been based on the design of the other than the other three are?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The data : primates can synthesize vitamin C and all they also have a broken copy GULO. Guinea pigs have also a broken GULO a can't live without vit C. Now, since GULO wasn't broken in the common ancestor of primates and guinea pigs (otherwise, all rodents would need some vitamin C to survive), common descent predicts that it broke independently in primates and guinea pigs.
I say "Cosmic Fine Tuning" is remarkable and seems to defy staggering odds with what we know presently. Yes, we could discover multiple universes and then we might see that the odds are not so staggering after all. But we haven't yet.
No. I do not have to have data on other universes. Science takes what it knows NOW, and forms hypotheses. Then if we turn up some new info on some other alternate universe, we will modify the hypothesis if we are forced to. This happened with Newton when Einstein came along, but it did not negate Newton's work. The best hypothesis that we have right now considering data from all scientific disciplines is the "God Hypothesis" (or Super-ET or Intelligent Designer Hypothesis or whatever label you want to give it). No one has a clue about abiogenesis, macroevolution in organisms has no empirical proof (in fact the opposite of what is predicted actually happens), etc. etc., so the best explanation that we have today is the God Hypothesis. Not to say there won't be a better explanation not requiring a 'God' at some point, but there's not one now.
afdave,
Thanks for responding. You still don't see the problem though. You state that the reason you find 'cosmic fine tuning' remarkable is that you feel it defies staggering odds. But this is an assumption with no basis in reality. You have no idea of the odds. No one does. Therefore this is not a scientific statement. It's just a feeling that you personally have. Can you explain how you came up with the odds against fine tuning?
Science does work with what we know now. That's just it. What we KNOW. We don't know one way or the other whether fine tuning is remarkable or not. So stop trying to claim it as evidence.
Science does work with what we know now. That's just it. What we KNOW. We don't know one way or the other whether fine tuning is remarkable or not. So stop trying to claim it as evidence
It doesnt matter... AFDave is a hyper-Christian... hyper-christians are well-known for interchangebly using the words "know" and "believe"...they also confused "faith" with "fact"..... Dave isnt trying to make a logical argument...or a scientific one. In Dave's mind....his belief is justification enough for it being true.... He is only humoring us(because we want rational justification for the obvious) and trying to provide us with enough justification that we will 'believe'(or in hyper-christian speak "know")
I would guess that in a couple of pages...Dave will try to use Descartes 'proof of God'....since it follows the same pattern of relying heavily on assumptions.
No it doesn't, because the Bible is not true. It's wrong on the age of the earth by six orders of magnitude.
Clouser, Clouser..., Clouser!
(sung to the tune of Beetlegeuse)
SHHHHHHHH!!!! She'll HEAR you!
I keep wondering if, perhaps, Carol Clouser might not be the best person to have a go with 'ol AFDave. Having read the stuff Dave has written elsewhere it's obvious that he is 1111% YEC and seeing as how Clouser's/Landa's purpose is to address YEC'ers specifically, he seems tailor made for her. My own creationist friends aren't really so cerebral that Landa's book had much of an impact, but she might be able to get through to Dave. As Flint has said, the problem is not the science Dave doesn't know. It is the bible he thinks he knows. So I'm game.
Clouser... Clouser... Clouser!
What do you say Carol. Here is a perfect chance to you to demonstrate that you can help creationists. Have a go at it.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
It is probably imprudent at this point to try to try and educate AFD any further on scientific matters. He's admitted he isn't interested in the science. What he wants is science's best arguments for things that contradict his literal reading of the Bible so that he preemptively teach the 6 year olds the "refutations" for the evidence. That way, when they hear the evidence at school or read it in a book, they'll think "I've heard this before, and that nice man Dave Hawkins showed me why it was wrong," without examining the evidence for themselves. Remember the very first thing he said when he came here? "Give the 5 best arguments for evolution in your own words."
At this point it really is time to force Dave to come up with arguments and evidences of his "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis," which should really be just as amusing as watching him dance around scientific explanations with deliberate obtuseness. You know, annoying Lenny style, or variations thereof. Otherwise we're just helping him lie for Jesus.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
At this point it really is time to force Dave to come up with arguments and evidences of his "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis," which should really be just as amusing ...
Ask him to define "kinds."
I've said it before and I'll say it again, if there's a weakest link in creationist conceptions -- it's their notion of the kinds God created that then "microevolved," not "macroevolved."
yeah, it always ends up becoming a discussion of "baraminology" without them even realizing it.
look, I'm going to throw this out there again...
Dave is NOT here to learn the arguments for evolutionary theory to correct his knowledge.
he is ONLY here to learn what the current arguments are that he must figure out a way to obfuscate for the kids we wants to indoctrinate.
as far as i can tell, all evidentiary arguments are doing at this point is just giving him more homework to do; more lies he must create to protect the children.
I got lost for a bit. Did he mention Plate tectonics?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
BWE did he mention plate techtonics ? Bah no way..... that 100% proves Genisis wrong Dave can't even fill his car up without secretly saying "thankyou god for lying about Genisis" because he knows that the evil oil was buried by sediment before dinosaurs even existed conspiracy will get to him.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true.
A monotypic group (like the mesopatamians or mesoamericans, and pre neolithic asians and africans) had knowledge, without reading scripture that did not depend on the Bible being true.. did not depend on it period. Then what?
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Students are not required to do every single experiement and observe every single piece of evidence by themselves. They are given the results via textbooks and journals, to be accepted on faith.
But if students wished to replicate those experiments (which many have, and will continue to do), this does not require faith. Unlike Intelligent Design and Creationism, it presents the research methodology in order to be replicated, in order to derive similar results, in order to be critiqued, and expanded upon. How do you think Intelligent Designers and Creationists get their negative information concerning science? Scientists conduct research, conduct experiments and register their findings. Those findings are made available. This is done so the flaws can be ironed out - for the Intelligent Designers and Creationists however, they do not view it as such - "why has science made this available?" a student of science will probably say "to show the method and to better both the research and experiment", the Intelligent Designer and Creationist will probably answer, "to prove science wrong, and God right".
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What are journal results? They are testimony. No different from the testimony of those who observed Christ's empty tomb.
Journal results are recordings, they are recordings of a specific piece of research. How many times was Christ's tomb opened? How many accounts were given for this? Though I understand a need to (for the theistic person) correlate scientific methodology with religious faith, I fail to see how they can be compared with any great substance. One main point: Science does not require belief or faith, science requires scientific method. If it did, I would of prayed my way through my degree and probably got it.
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This testimony is God's revelation beginning in the Garden of Eden. This is the only way to ground human knowledge.
Interesting - religion subverted science to the point that it was considered magic. Gallileo was put on trial for his support of the Copernicusian Model. Bruno was burnt alive for it. From a historical perspective it is valid to state that the adherents to testimonial of God's revelation would rather isolate human knowledge, instead of watching it grow.
Interesting - religion subverted science to the point that it was considered magic. Gallileo was put on trial for his support of the Copernicusian Model. Bruno was burnt alive for it.
Um, Fractatious, maybe Ghost isn't the best person to use this argument to...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
No Eric, science is not a waste of time. It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true. So, to use bring up Arden's point, I do not need to consult the Bible to figure out when to change the oil, but knowledge of when to change the oil depends upon the Bible being true.
AHHHHHHH I love the smell of retard in the morning.
Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but do people agree that GoP has gotten a lot more explicit about the whole Biblical literalness/Creationism routine lately? Seems to be he used to keep that stuff hidden a little better, and acted more like he was trying to do science. Now he sounds like your average armchair scientist shmuck at UD. Why the change, I wonder.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but do people agree that GoP has gotten a lot more explicit about the whole Biblical literalness/Creationism routine lately?
He's been watching Dave spout biblical nonsense, and noted that he didn't get banned from posting, so he figures it's safe to come out of the closet, as it were.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, while you're parsing the sequence similarities between chimps, humans and gorillas, I have this nagging fear that once again you're going to miss the point. Those similarities are interesting, but they aren't as relevant as this is going to be. (I nevertheless eagerly await your response.)
In the meantime, please pay attention to this post. It’s going to be long, but I’m really going to try to meet you halfway. It is often said by some overzealous "evolutionists" that Creationism makes no testable predictions. While this is often true (“goddidit” predicts nothing), it is by no means universal: there are many places where Creationists say “goddiditthisway”. We’re going to talk about one of those. The age of the earth is another great example yet to come, but we’re going to talk about the relationship between humans and (other) apes. We’re going to assume that your theory (I’ll bite the bullet and avoid the scare-quotes) is, as you have claimed many times, “just as good” as ours. We’re going to use our respective theories to make predictions. You game?
A few notes before we begin: When I make predictions on your behalf regarding Creation theory, I will disregard age of the earth, resulting rates of mutation, etc., and assume only the following (correct me if I’m wrong on either): (1) God originally created a human kind and an ape kind, the latter of which includes gorillas and chimpanzees; and (2) DNA is a valuable tool for examining and comparing exactly how God designed his creations. Are you okay with those? I will use parentheses to denote phylogenies, with H=humans, C=chimpanzees, G=gorillas. For example, (H(CG)) represents a phylogeny where chimps and gorillas are most similar and humans are an outgroup, whereas (G(HC)) represents a phylogeny where humans and chimps are most similar and gorillas are an outgroup. Finally, note that when we talk about frequencies of predicted phylogenies below, these are the percentages of sequences for which two species are predicted to be more closely related than the third. These percentages are not the same as actual sequence similarity. In other words, don’t get confused with the percentages below and the percentage sequence similarities in my earlier post – they’re related, in that the percentages we’re talking about here reflect how often chimps are more similar to gorillas, etc., but they are not the same thing.
All good? Away we go.
Let’s assume it is 1985, and you and I are in a coffee shop having a congenial scientific discussion about the new-fangled genetic technology that is just being developed (and won’t really come into its own for another 10-20 years or so). We’ve been over the same old ground many times about your Creation theory and my theory of evolution, including why you distrust dating methods, why you distrust the fossil record, etc. These are accepted areas of disagreement. Today (1985), we’re going to use our theories to predict what genetics will reveal about the relationships between humans, chimpanzees and gorillas.
Specifically, we’re interested in novel mutations. We both believe these are random changes in the genome. I think they are responsible (along with natural selection and a host of other mechanisms) for the diversity of life on earth, whereas you think they reflect degeneration of God’s Creation since the Fall. This disagreement in views won’t matter. Since we only have the back of the envelope, we’re going to simplify mutation as completely random changes in any sequence of DNA that occur at the same rate in each of our three species. We’re going to assume that the rate at which these random novel mutations accumulate is dependent only upon time, but we’re going to keep time relative (so as to avoid that whole millions vs. thousands of years problem).
We start with a few null hypotheses that neither of us believes. We believe genetics will reveal some sort of phylogenetic relationship (as opposed to none, or a purely random relationship). For example, from the evolutionary perspective, if humans, chimps and gorillas were unrelated, or if they diverged from a common ancestor at the exact same time, I might predict that when we look at their genomes, 1/3 of my predicted phylogenies would be (H(CG)), 1/3 would be (C(HG)), and 1/3 would be (G(CH)). However, the fossil record gives me good reason not to believe the null hypothesis (which doesn’t mean we don’t check it!. Similarly, from a Creationist perspective, if humans, chimps and gorillas were created as separate kinds, you might predict the same 1/3 for each phylogeny. However, you believe chimps and gorillas were created as part of a single “ape” kind, and even if they weren’t, you might predict “common design” to create the appearance of relationships that would refute the null hypothesis.
So I start with my Theory of Evolution prediction, based on what we know of the fossil record in 1985 (the timelines have changed a bit since then).
Predicted initial conditions: Humans, chimps and gorillas shared a common ancestor as recent as approximately 8 million years ago. From that LCA (8 mya), the gorillas diverged from the line that would eventually become both humans and chimps. Humans and chimps themselves diverged about 5 million years ago.
Predicted genetic relationships: If we assume random, time-based mutations occurring independently in each line, then we can expect that each of the three phylogenies may be produced, depending on the sequence we are looking at. For example, if a novel mutation in a given sequence occurs independently in the human line, than phylogenies based on that sequence will group chimps and gorillas: (H(CG)). If the mutation occurs in the gorilla line, the sequence will group humans and chimps (G(CH)). However, we should be able to roughly estimate the frequencies at which these predicted phylogenies will occur, based on the ancestry pattern found in the fossil record and the relative timeframes for each lineage to mutate.
As in our null hypotheses, if they all diverged from the LCA at the same time, we would predict a 33% occurrence of each "tree". However, I believe they diverged in the manner and times above. Chimps and humans shared a lineage for 3 million of the 8 million total years, and this would tend to increase the frequency of (G(HC)) phylogenies by an amount we can estimate. I therefore predict the following frequency of phylogenies:
(G(HC)) = 39% (from independent mutations in the gorilla line: 0.5*(3/8)+0.33*(5/8)) + 19% (from accumulation of mutations in the shared human-chimp line: 0.5*(3/8) = 58%
(C(HG)) = 21% (from independent mutations in the chimp line: 0.33*(5/8))
(H(CG)) = 21% (from independent mutations in the human line: 0.33*(5/8))
So I predict 58% of the sequences we look at will group humans and chimps as closer to each other than to gorillas, 21% will group humans and gorillas as closer to each other than to chimps, and 21% will group chimps and gorillas as closer to each other than to humans.
You then counter with Creationist Theory.
Initial conditions: the human kind and the ape kind were separately created, and never shared a common ancestor. Already we’re in trouble, because we have no information on the genome of those two ancestral kinds. We have reason to suspect they were similar (common design, like Escorts and Tauri in 1985), but we don’t know how similar. We can’t do the same kind of relative calculations that I did by assuming one common ancestor (which do not require knowledge of its actual genome, just that it was shared). However, we do know that any differences between these two ancestral kinds should inflate the frequency of (H(CG)) phylogenies predicted. So right from the initial conditions, you predict that, when we look at a lot of genes to get overall frequencies, the predicted frequency of the relationship (H(CG)) will be greater than 33%.
Creationist Prediction: We don’t have any information on when (relative to initial Creation – actual years don’t matter for this) chimpanzees and gorillas diverged via “microevolution” (changes within a Created kind). However, we know it was some time since the Fall. Without relative time-spans like I had, we can’t do similar estimates like I did, but we can predict that the shared ancestry of chimps and gorillas prior to divergence will increase the frequencies of (H(CG)) even further (as it did for the (G(HC)) phylogenies in my example).
So you end up predicting that more than (far more than?) 33% of sequences we look at will group chimps and gorillas as closer to each other than to humans, less than 33% of sequences will group humans and gorillas as closer to each other than to chimps, and less than 33% of sequences will group humans and chimps as closer to each other than to gorillas.
So, armed with our predictions, we meet back up in a bar 20 years later to discuss the results. I bring along some papers from the prolific new genetics literature. Specifically, I show you the following:
Satta, Y., J. Klein, and N. Takahata. 2000. DNA archives and our nearest relative: the trichotomy problem revisited. Mol. Phyl. Evol. 14:259–275.
Chen, F.-C., and W.-H. Li. 2001. Genomic divergence between humans and other hominoids and the effective population size of the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 68:444–456.
O’hUigin, C., Y. Satta, N. Takahata, and J. Klein. 2002. Contribution of homoplasy and of ancestral polymorphism to the evolution of genes in anthropoid primates. Mol. Biol. Evol. 19:1501–1513.
Kitano et al. 2004. Human-Specific Amino Acid Changes Found in 103 Protein-Coding Genes. Mol. Biol. Evol.:936-944.
Combined, these studies examined hundreds of sequences for their predicted phylogenies. Each one found that, on average, approximately 60% of these sequences predicted the (G(HC)) tree (i.e., humans and chimps closer to each other than to gorillas), and the remaining 40% predicted the remaining two trees in roughly equal frequencies (i.e., humans and gorillas closer to each other than to chimps, and chimps and gorillas closer to each other than to humans). (You can look this up if you don’t believe me Dave – I’m more than halfway here.)
I order you a double scotch (you’re gonna need it! as we pull out the faded napkin and look at our predictions.
Incorygible, you are possessed of unlimited patience...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Spectacular post, incorygible, but I predict that either a) Dave won't respond, or b) he will respond in a way the reveals a deep misunderstanding of what you're talking about, which will lead to two dozen posts from others trying to explain over and over again the parts he doesn't get, which will lead, a day or two from now, to Dave declaring victory once again.
This will lead to another one or two individuals giving up on Dave as uneducable, but will provide a few minutes' entertainment for the rest of us.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Incorygible, you are possessed of unlimited patience...
Maybe. But the observation that chimp DNA is more similar to human DNA than it is to gorilla DNA seems to be entirely new to Dave. Like others, I am very interested in seeing how his brain processes this information, since it has serious ramifications for his "Creator God Hypothesis" that require only the simplest inductive logic and math.
Above, when showing that the ToE accurately predicts observations that are completely opposed to Dave's CGH, I assume only the following (we'll see if I'm too hasty in those assumptions):
(1) Dave understands the concept and relevance of DNA sequence similarity in the most general sense (as he has indicated by his 95% Fiestas and Aerostars "common design" analogy). (2) Dave accepts that DNA sequences are a cornerstone of genetics, biology, "microevolution", medicine, etc., measured by the type of "real" scientists in labs that he can trust, and he therefore will not ignore or refute reliable and statistically significant sequence data. (3) Dave believes humans were created as one kind, while chimps and gorillas were originally created as part of a singular "ape" kind. (4) Dave believes the Creator made these kinds distinct and perfect, and ramdom mutations were not designed (in particular, they were not designed to fool us into believing in common descent). (5) Dave, as an engineer, can apply simple math and inductive logic. (6) Dave, again as a successful engineer (not to mention pilot, businessman and upstanding citizen) can approach the problem rationally and logically.
We'll see which of these assumptions doesn't hold. My money is on some combination of 2, 5 and 6.
(1) AF Dave finds a very recent (2005) scholarly article by a real scientist who "you know ... really wears a lab coat and does experiments" (there Eric, are you happy?). Here's the title and source for the article ...
(2) AF Dave's assertion that scientists are wanting to jump off of "HMS Darwin" got another instance of support yesterday from a biochemist and computer programmer named 'skeptic' ... here are some excerpts from what he said on his 'Reinventing Evolutionary Theory' thread ...
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We [evolutionists] are losing the PR battle. Given those assumptions (mine), here's my thoughts: Current evolutionary theory is fatally flawed because we lack the ability to perform experiments, collect data, and make predictions. Its obvious that this [trying to discuss how to salvage ToE with ATBC people] is a waste of time. Its a shame but very revealing about the current state of evolutionary theory. Right now it is much more important to defend at all costs then to actually engage in science. Pity.
Telling comments. You can see 'skeptics' full comments on his thread or you can see my analysis of his comments and how they relate to Dr. Anderson's paper on Steve Story's 'Prove Evolution to AF Dave' thread.
(3) AF Dave revealed he had never been told that Humans are genetically closer to Chimpanzees than Gorillas are. After I got severely chastised by Eric Murphy for this knowledge gap, Incorygible went to the trouble to provide the sequence differences for Humans, Chimps and Gorillas. Thanks, Incorygible. I also have to thank Incorygible for just giving me DATA. So many times I receive DATA PLUS SPIN from evolutionary biologists and so I have to go to the trouble of trying to extract the spin so I can just look at the data objectively and draw my own conclusions. I will answer Incorygible shortly, but first, one more news item.
(4) Creationists are routinely accused here at ATBC of being lazy, i.e. don't want to get our hands dirty and do real research, etc. Well, I'm finding that this is just so much rhetoric. There are many excellent creationist research projects going on and the volume of research is growing quickly because more and more scientists are jumping off "HMS Darwin" and becoming creationists. Some recent projects of interest to me are the Mt. Saint Helens research, the RATE project, and the upcoming GENE project.
and finally ...
(5) For those of you who may tired of riding on "HMS Darwin", there's hope for you ... I gave this to 'skeptic' and I will pass it on to you ...
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(1) Accept the fact that the current definition of science is not broad enough to explain Origins. The definition needs to be expanded to something like the Henry Morris definition, which can include what used to be called "The Queen of Sciences: Theology" (2) Start reading Henry Morris ... you know ... founder of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR)? ... the father of the modern creationist movement that recently died ... BTW, NCSE (which Wesley is a part of) had a nice writeup on him when he died in February HERE. Read his "The Genesis Flood" then his "Scientific Creationism". If you want calm, scholarly stuff, Morris is the guy. I will warn you that Morris believes in Biblical inerrancy, but this is a separate topic. You do not have to subscribe to Biblical inerrancy to benefit from Morris. For your purposes, just realize that the Book of Genesis is a source of possible hypotheses. You can always investigate the Biblical inerrancy question later if you like. (3) Subscribe to the free "Acts and Facts" from ICR and the Creation Research Quarterly from the Creation Research Society at http://www.creationresearch.org/. The CRS is a large international creationist organization of scientists doing various research projects on creationist topics. You could also subscribe to Answers in Genesis' Technical Journal (AIG-TJ). The other materials from AIG are more geared for the non-scientific public. (4) Go to www.trueorigin.org for lots of good "Darwin dissent" articles from real scientists. Contrary to what the folks at PT would have you believe, there are many, many Darwin dissenters in the world.
Now, before we move along on the Creator God Hypothesis, I do owe Incorygible an answer on the Human-Chimp-Gorilla thing and I want to answer others questions as well ...
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This is where a bit of research before spouting off really helps, Dave. Here you go, from:
Hacia. (2001). Genome of the apes. Trends In Genetics 17(11): 637-645.
I've gone to the effort of adapting Table 1 into % similarity (as opposed to % difference) to make it exactly what you requested (feel free to check out the original reference). What follows then is the type of genetic sequence analyzed, % similarity between humans and chimps (HC), % similarity between humans and gorillas (HG), then % similarity between chimps and gorillas (CG), in that order.
Now, I know that everyone is just frothing at the mouth about how stupid AF Dave is because "how could he not see that humans are closer to chimps than gorillas are?"
But once again, as is so often the case when you finally get the DATA and not the SPIN (like the pretty Evolution Trees), you see that there is absoutely nothing to get excited about. Incorygible is speechless and Eric Murphy can't believe how blind I am, and the reason for your shock is ...
ONE HALF OF ONE LOUSY PERCENTAGE POINT???
Come on, guys. I thought maybe you were talking about HC=98% and CG=93% (or even CG=95%). But 1/2 of 1%? The highest you can get is 1.4% on non-coding? Please.
But you know what? Even IF we did have HC=98% and CG=95%, this proves nothing with regard to Common Descent Theory. Here's why:
Remember our analogy with languages that we went through from the 'Ape Thread'? Well, as more is known it is looking like genomes of organisms may in fact be much more like language than was originally thought. And after all, why shouldn't they be? In the biological world you have 4 bases (like strokes that comprise letters of the alphabet), which code for 64 (20 used) amino acids by use of the ingenious triplet 'codons' (analogous to how strokes can be arranged into letters). Then these 'letters' are arranged in particular sequences to code for all the thousands of proteins which organisms need. What will be interesting to learn with further research is to see if there are 'words,' 'sentences,' 'paragraphs,' and so on in the genetic code. I would have to guess the answer will be YES. And if it is, there are some large implications.
In human language, we can easily create all kinds of situations which may be analogous to the genetic situation. Here are some examples:
Sentence 1: "You are all under strict orders from the Commander to not attack the fortress." Sentence 2: "You are all under strict orders from the Commander to attack the fortress."
Almost identical sentences if you are just comparing sequences, but hugely different meanings and results if both orders are carried out.
or ...
Sentence 1: "My dog was running around and barking all over my deck." Sentence 2: "My dog was running around and barfing all over my deck."
Wow! Really, really small 'sequence difference' ... but oh boy, what a difference in meaning!
Notice also that we can create virtually the same meaning by simply using very different word choices ...
Sentence 1: "I took a nice walk through the woods, and enjoyed listening to the singing of the birds and the chirping of the crickets." Sentence 2: "I strolled contentedly through the trees, and savoured the sound of the wildlife."
Way, way different sentences if you are comparing sequence differences, but essentially the same meaning.
So here's my point, guys ...
Yes, the fact that HC is a hair breadth closer than CG lends a tiny, tiny bit of support to Common Descent Theory. And yes, the similarity among all apes and humans lends a tiny, tiny bit of support to Common Descent Theory. And yes, the fact that GULO is broken (if that's what it turns out to be) in Apes and Humans lends a tiny bit of support as well.
But the really big news is that ALL THESE ARE JUST TINY EVIDENCES WHICH LEND SUPPORT. They in no way close the case, and the fact is that Common Design Theory can explain them just as well ... better, in fact, if you take other Ape/Human issues into consideration.
Remember, to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call The Big Three: Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record.
I predict that as more is known about the genomes, and how similar they may be to human languages, that this too will turn into an insurmountable obstacle for Common Descent Theory.
Now having said all this, let us return to Incorygibles analogy ...
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To be relevant, your car analogy must reflect your premise of "created kinds", and I've adapted it accordingly. Now, you put chimps, gorillas and orangutans in one "kind" (the most concrete definition of any kind you've given). You put humans in a separate, special kind. So riddle me this...
If the ape (Ford) kind was originally created, and then "evolved" (okay, degenerated since the Fall) into Fiesta (chimps), Aerostar (gorillas) and Taurus (orangutans), then what the ****ing he!! is that Toyota Echo (humans) doing in there, sharing MORE similarities to the freakin' Fiesta (chimps) than any other Ford vehicle (ape), not only in how it is designed (lots and lots of functional genetic sequences), but in exactly how its alternator, cupholders and silly little handles above the doors have fallen apart since it was designed (lots and lots of non-functional sequences, such as pseudogenes like GULO)? What kind of industrial espionage and manufacturing piracy is your Creator involved in here?
You don't have a Toyota Echo. You have an Expedition if all you are comparing is the genetic sequences. Remember, Common Design theory says there is only ONE designer. So you don't have Toyota and Ford making cars ... you just have Ford, so to speak. Now to make the analogy complete, what creationists are saying is this: yes, the designs are similar, yes, they use similar physical parts, like alternators, and yes, these parts sometimes break in the same way. So with humans, we have a Ford Expedition, if you will, which is very similar in its physical body to the other Fords, no one questions this. But what if all Expeditions were delivered with GPS guidance and On Star and the other Fords were not? This would be a significant difference from a very small addition of "on-board" hardware.
This is my theory of the situation we have with humans. Physical bodies which are very similar to apes, but some addtional "on board" hardware and software and even some "meta-ware" (that we know nothing about) that is not readily detected by comparing sequence differences, which puts humans in a completely different class than apes. Of course, the analogy is limited, because my theory holds that most of the key differences b/t apes and humans have nothing at all to do with physical "hardware" at all, but mainly consist of immaterial differences, namely that humans have some sort of "spirit" and/or "soul" which apes do not have. Again, I cannot prove this, and one CANNOT prove it using the scientific tools that you all limit yourselves to, but nevertheless, there is much support for this theory.
And for some questions ...
Eric Murphy ...
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No, Dave. They're not doing any research. None. Find us a peer-reviewed paper where a Creationist actually gets in there in a lab, or goes out to a sedimentary deposit with his trowel and his magnifying glass, and does some actual research. You can't, because such papers do not exist.
When you say "research," Dave, you mean something different from what scientists mean. "Scientific research" doesn't just mean reading papers from other scientists and sniping at their results. It means actually trying to figure stuff out.
They are doing mountains of research. See the ICR and CRS links I gave you. They do NOT have government funding like many universities do, so they are not doing as much as could be done if more money was available, but they are doing a pretty good job, considering the limited funds and minority status in academia.
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Dave, that's my question, not yours. Why does Creationism stop with "Goddidit"? When are they going to start asking how Goddidit? They're not even asking that question.
I, and all creationists would LOVE to know how God did it. Everything new we discover in biology and cosmology and many other fields tells us more and more how God did it. One of these days, we may find out the natural law that Jesus used (that we don't know about) to walk on water. Wouldn't that be neat? Personally, I would like to apply this technology to golf balls :-)
Argystokes ...
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1. Did humans have an immune system before the fall? 2. If so, why? If not, where did it come from?
Good question. I'll look into it and see if anything can be determined.
PuckSR ...
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Why are these cars so similiar? Because the engineers modified the existing design rather than re-designing a new car. The car has evolved....(with intelligent designers) When an engineer has come along and re-designed a car from scratch..we wind up with drastically different cars.
The big difference between human designers and God is that the God Hypothesis proposes that God already knows all the technology tricks. He doesn't need to learn anything like human engineers do.
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Now...everyone will agree that a designer exists....you have missed this point as well.
You're kidding me. Really? Can I get everyone here to agree with PuckSR on this?
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Dave, when they invented the transistor....did we go back and completely redesign circuits? No.... We substituted.... This actually caused massive problems...since simpler solutions frequently existed if we would have been working with the technology from scratch.
You are positing a super-intelligent "engineer"...who obviously wouldnt take shortcuts and would redesign everything from scratch. If the IDer is taking shortcuts(like your ford example) then I doubt he is God. It sounds more to me like he is an idiot...maybe even a mindless algorithm?
Why would he not use basic designs for components and re-use them in different organisms? Why would this make Him an idiot?
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afdave,
Thanks for responding. You still don't see the problem though. You state that the reason you find 'cosmic fine tuning' remarkable is that you feel it defies staggering odds. But this is an assumption with no basis in reality. You have no idea of the odds. No one does. Therefore this is not a scientific statement. It's just a feeling that you personally have. Can you explain how you came up with the odds against fine tuning?
Science does work with what we know now. That's just it. What we KNOW. We don't know one way or the other whether fine tuning is remarkable or not. So stop trying to claim it as evidence.
Actually, I think the physicists who I cited regarding Cosmic Fine Tuning do get into calculating the odds. But we do not even need to calculate the odds to know that they must be very high if there are even close to 70 parameters and most of them have to be very close to a particular value for life to be possible. We only need our intuition for this. And you cannot truthfully say that this is an assumption with no basis in reality. The exact opposite is true. It is based ENTIRELY on the only reality which matters in scientific endeavor ...
THE REALITY WHICH WE KNOW, OBSERVE AND EXPERIENCE NOW.
Again, if we discover other universes, fine. Our hypothesis can change to adjust to the new reality. But for now, this universe is the only reality we know.
Why is this such a foreign concept to scientists? It seems that you all tell me ... "Get real, Dave, use evidence, Dave, you can't base anything on pie-in-the-sky, Dave." And I respond with evidence from what we know and you guys do backflips and say "Oh, well yes, I know that's fine and good for THIS universe, but what about other universes. We know that we've never seen a fruit fly 'evolve' in any productive way, but we think it could, given millions of years!"
Come on, guys! You guys are the ones who seem to be living in a fairy tale, with the magical "EVOLUTIONDIDIT" invoked every step of the way.
(Wow! As I was posting this, I just saw Arden's big long post, and a few others. I'll have to digest those later. Gotta run now.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Actually, I think the physicists who I cited regarding Cosmic Fine Tuning do get into calculating the odds. But we do not even need to calculate the odds to know that they must be very high if there are even close to 70 parameters and most of them have to be very close to a particular value for life to be possible. We only need our intuition for this.
And this is a classic example of why what Dave is doing is child-abuse, pure and simple. He wants to shut off children's brains; force them to NOT THINK, just the way he does. It's not his ignorance of science that comes through this particular statement; it's his complete and total inability to reason.
You have to wonder how folks like this can tie their own shoelaces, let alone type. It's amazing.
incorygible you're incorrigibly optimistic a fatal flaw when dealing with the blackhole of intelligence THE D/2.
Something like the V2 the D/2 is launched vertically at birth and kept in a state of sublime ignorance on a ballistic trajectory that reaches a region of subspace where a partial vacuum boils off reason for a period of several years. Cosmic radiation sterilizes the neurons responsible for creative thought and once the device returns to the earths surface a zombie chip is quickly inserted as soon as the device opens its mouth. These devices perform such a realistic rendition of a human that normal 'earthlings' fail to recognize the automaton however the loud whirring of a preprogrammed mechanical brain are easily recognized when the correct buttons are pushed. When that happens the re-entrant script is started and a predictable stream of evangelizing commences, the script is unmodifiable and no new information can be inserted into the script except by pastors with the correct key..unless they are Pastors themselves..in which case go back to line 0.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Argystokes ... Quote 1. Did humans have an immune system before the fall? 2. If so, why? If not, where did it come from? Good question. I'll look into it and see if anything can be determined.
Hey, remember that part where I said, "If the answer is, 'I don't know,' what would you predict?"
How about some predictions of your Creator God Hypothesis, and fewer analogies?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
And there we have it. A pilot presumably once in charge of finely calibrated instrumentation can't accept the relevance of "one half of one lousy percentage point", despite the fact that it refers to literally millions of data points examined, despite the fact that, as in the original paper, we're really talking about relative differences averaging around 50%, and despite the fact that these results are demonstrably statistically significant (p<<0.001). In other words, there is far (far! less than a one-in-a-thousand chance that this pattern arose by chance. Dave, for an engineer, you really don't know much about math and numbers.
I really don't know which way this tips the idiot vs. liar scale.
Come on, guys. I thought maybe you were talking about HC=98% and CG=93% (or even CG=95%). But 1/2 of 1%? The highest you can get is 1.4% on non-coding? Please.
But you know what? Even IF we did have HC=98% and CG=95%, this proves nothing with regard to Common Descent Theor
Dave, if you knew anything about statistics, you would have realised that 1% of homology, when based on millions of nucleotides, is highly significant. But it you prefer, we can show you the distances between humans, chimps and gibbons.
And of course, it doesn't prove common descent, just that humans are a particular species of apes.
Nope. Your link's busted. But I without reading the article, I can pretty much guarantee it will not have an explanation of the methodology used in Dr. Anderson's "experiment," if he actually did one, which is a pity, because without insight into his methodology, we have no idea whether his results are credible. But given the nature of the publication he's writing in (a "peer-reviewed journal"? Yeah, right), I'm pretty sure we can guess anyway. I'm going to guess that he actually didn't do any kind of experiment at all, but basically did a meta-analysis of others' experiments, which is what I warned you about yesterday. After all, what kind of experiment would he do, Dave?
The journal is the Creation Research Society Quarterly and Anderson didn't do any research; it's just another creationist argument from ignorance. Anderson's not even doing science any more; he's director of the Van Andel Creationist Research Center - another worthless non-science shack in the wilderness.
You don't have a Toyota Echo. You have an Expedition if all you are comparing is the genetic sequences. Remember, Common Design theory says there is only ONE designer. So you don't have Toyota and Ford making cars ... you just have Ford, so to speak. Now to make the analogy complete, what creationists are saying is this: yes, the designs are similar, yes, they use similar physical parts, like alternators, and yes, these parts sometimes break in the same way. So with humans, we have a Ford Expedition, if you will, which is very similar in its physical body to the other Fords, no one questions this. But what if all Expeditions were delivered with GPS guidance and On Star and the other Fords were not? This would be a significant difference from a very small addition of "on-board" hardware.
This is my theory of the situation we have with humans. Physical bodies which are very similar to apes, but some addtional "on board" hardware and software and even some "meta-ware" (that we know nothing about) that is not readily detected by comparing sequence differences, which puts humans in a completely different class than apes. Of course, the analogy is limited, because my theory holds that most of the key differences b/t apes and humans have nothing at all to do with physical "hardware" at all, but mainly consist of immaterial differences, namely that humans have some sort of "spirit" and/or "soul" which apes do not have. Again, I cannot prove this, and one CANNOT prove it using the scientific tools that you all limit yourselves to, but nevertheless, there is much support for this theory.
So, your prized analogy for your "Common Design Theory" is now:
1. All cars are Fords. There can be no other designer. 2. They all tend to look similar. 3. We cannot tell anything about the chronological development of Ford models -- or compare one model to another -- by examining the specs, blueprints, design records, factory machinery, etc. 4. The choice of cars is a metaphysical one.
Dave, in case you didn't notice, this analogy has no bearing on automotive or biological reality, and neither does your theory. Same goes for your language analogy -- mere word salad.
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[But the really big news is that ALL THESE ARE JUST TINY EVIDENCES WHICH LEND SUPPORT. They in no way close the case, and the fact is that Common Design Theory can explain them just as well ... better, in fact, if you take other Ape/Human issues into consideration.
When you get around to reading that really long post, please notice how well your foolishness was anticipated. I pity those kids, Dave. I knew your variety "truth" didn't include, you know, actual science or reason or logical consistency, but I had at least hoped -- with an engineer as a mentor -- it would include actual math and an ability to use numbers and words as symbols for reality.
(1) AF Dave finds a very recent (2005) scholarly article by a real scientist who "you know ... really wears a lab coat and does experiments" (there Eric, are you happy?). Here's the title and source for the article ...
Nope. Your link's busted. But I without reading the article, I can pretty much guarantee it will not have an explanation of the methodology used in Dr. Anderson's "experiment," if he actually did one, which is a pity, because without insight into his methodology, we have no idea whether his results are credible. But given the nature of the publication he's writing in (a "peer-reviewed journal"? Yeah, right), I'm pretty sure we can guess anyway. I'm going to guess that he actually didn't do any kind of experiment at all, but basically did a meta-analysis of others' experiments, which is what I warned you about yesterday. After all, what kind of experiment would he do, Dave? Prove that bacteria don't develop resistance? Or that bacteria don't evolve into puppies or kittens? If his experiment lasts less than a few million years, I can't imagine what he would be trying to prove, anyway.
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(2) AF Dave's assertion that scientists are wanting to jump off of "HMS Darwin" got another instance of support yesterday from a biochemist and computer programmer named 'skeptic' ... here are some excerpts from what he said on his 'Reinventing Evolutionary Theory' thread ... Telling comments. You can see 'skeptics' full comments on his thread or you can see my analysis of his comments and how they relate to Dr. Anderson's paper on Steve Story's 'Prove Evolution to AF Dave' thread.
Dave, you'll note that this guy is not a biologist (no, biochemists are not biologists). The number of actual professional biologists out there who doubt evolution is statistically insignificant. You're delusional if you think the scientific community is bailing on evolution. This is an artifact of your reading habits. If you would get out of CRSQ and AiG, and read Nature or Science, or any of the various professional journals, you'd see that the number of scientists who are "jumping ship" is miniscule.
How many actual life scientists are on the DI's list? Have you heard of the Steves Project, Dave?
You're engaging in wishful thinking here, dude.
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(3) AF Dave revealed he had never been told that Humans are genetically closer to Chimpanzees than Gorillas are. After I got severely chastised by Eric Murphy for this knowledge gap, Incorygible went to the trouble to provide the sequence differences for Humans, Chimps and Gorillas. Thanks, Incorygible. I also have to thank Incorygible for just giving me DATA.
Dave, as I pointed out twice, the problem isn't that you haven't seen the data, or disagree with the data, or think the whole idea of phylogenetic trees is bogus. The problem is, you'd never even heard of the claim before. What's appalling is that here you are, expressing all kinds of opinions about the relationships among great apes, when you have such abysmal ignorance of the most basic parts of the story. The fact that you had no idea humans were claimed to be more closely related to chimps than chimps are to gorillas is the final nail in the coffin of whatever credibility you ever had when you said you were willing to be educated. You're not even bothering to look like you're interested in the evidence for evolution. You claimed you'd looked at the tree of life website, but given this huge hole in your knowledge, that's a difficult claim for anyone to believe.
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(4) Creationists are routinely accused here at ATBC of being lazy, i.e. don't want to get our hands dirty and do real research, etc. Well, I'm finding that this is just so much rhetoric. There are many excellent creationist research projects going on and the volume of research is growing quickly because more and more scientists are jumping off "HMS Darwin" and becoming creationists. Some recent projects of interest to me are the Mt. Saint Helens research, the RATE project, and the upcoming GENE project.
Nope. Put your money where your mouth is, Dave. Point us to actual papers, published in actual peer-reviewed journals (not creationist journals) where creationist scientists are actually doing research on anything. Preferably it would be research on something other than trying to poke holes in evolutionary theory, like maybe a paper on how the intelligent designer actually designs stuff, but any actual paper would be acceptable.
But before you get all excited waving your one or two papers around (if you can find them; if they exist), I should probably point out that papers by evolutionists outnumber papers by creationists by somewhere between three and five orders of magnitude in any given years. So much for your theory that creationism is a "more effective" research program than evolution.
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and finally ...
(5) For those of you who may tired of riding on "HMS Darwin", there's hope for you ... I gave this to 'skeptic' and I will pass it on to you ...
Dave, is a quote from one disaffected biochemist supposed to mean something to us? There are tens of thousands of life scientists out there all over the world. How surprised should we be if, occasionally, one of them has some sort of religious epiphany and subsequently takes leave of his senses?
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Now, I know that everyone is just frothing at the mouth about how stupid AF Dave is because "how could he not see that humans are closer to chimps than gorillas are?"
No. Again, Dave, that's not why everyone is laughing at you. After all, from a layman's perspective, chimps don't look any more like humans than they look like gorillas. The reason they're laughing at you is because you're so thoroughly ignorant on a subject you presume to have an opinion on that you were completely unaware of this very basic assertion.
That's the part I can't get over.
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But once again, as is so often the case when you finally get the DATA and not the SPIN (like the pretty Evolution Trees), you see that there is absoutely nothing to get excited about. Incorygible is speechless and Eric Murphy can't believe how blind I am, and the reason for your shock is ...
ONE HALF OF ONE LOUSY PERCENTAGE POINT???
Come on, guys. I thought maybe you were talking about HC=98% and CG=93% (or even CG=95%). But 1/2 of 1%? The highest you can get is 1.4% on non-coding? Please.
Dave, how many base pairs do you suppose there are in the human genome? Are you aware that "half a lousy percent" is something like twenty million base pairs? If you knew the first thing about genetics…
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[b]Yes, the fact that HC is a hair breadth closer than CG lends a tiny, tiny bit of support to Common Descent Theory. And yes, the similarity among all apes and humans lends a tiny, tiny bit of support to Common Descent Theory. And yes, the fact that GULO is broken (if that's what it turns out to be) in Apes and Humans lends a tiny bit of support as well.
It's not a hair's breadth. It's twice as close, Dave. As I predicted, your response indicates a breathtaking misunderstanding of what Incorygible was trying to tell you.
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But the really big news is that ALL THESE ARE JUST TINY EVIDENCES WHICH LEND SUPPORT. They in no way close the case, and the fact is that Common Design Theory can explain them just as well ... better, in fact, if you take other Ape/Human issues into consideration.</b>
Dave, you've got literally millions of pieces of evidence that support evolution. You've looked at about three of them. How big is an iron atom, Dave? Is it possible that if you took enough iron atoms, along with some other stuff, it could ever be a big enough pile to create a battleship?
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Remember, to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call [b]The Big Three:</b> Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record.
1. Hominid civilizations is not a prediction of common descent. It's a prediction of Dave's. 2. Non-biological differences cannot possibly be a prediction of common descent, and besides, you have no idea whether the non-biological differences between humans and chimps is enormous or tiny. 3. The fossil record doesn't convince you, but that's hardly surprising given your ideological biases. The fossil record of hominidae is a lot more extensive than you think it is, because you've never even looked at it. You have no idea how many fossil hominids have ever even been found. Nor do you have the training or expertise to evaluate that record in any event.
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I predict that as more is known about the genomes, and how similar they may be to human languages, that this too will turn into an insurmountable obstacle for Common Descent Theory.
I don't have to predict you will turn out to be wrong; I already know you're wrong based on what we know about genomes now. Given that human languages also demonstrate common descent with modification and nested hierarchies, the similarity they have to genomes will strengthen, not weaken, evolution.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
It is a form of circular reasoning used by intellectually dishonest people such as yourself.
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Ad nauseam is a Latin term used to describe something that has been continuing "to the point of nausea." For example "This topic has been discussed ad nauseam": it has been discussed extensively and everyone has tired of it. It is a form of proof by assertion.
Argumentum ad nauseam or argument from repetition or Argumentum ad infinitum is the false proof of a statement by (prolonged) repetition, possibly by different people. This logical fallacy is commonly used as a form of rhetoric by politicians, and it is one of the mechanisms of reinforcing urban legends. In its extreme form, it can also be a form of brainwashing. In common usage the statement "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" is often used to allude to the same concept, which self referentially has been attributed diversely to Lenin, Goebbels, Hitler and Stalin among others, when little evidence can be found to support most of these historical figures having said this.
Modern politics is fraught with examples of argumentum ad nauseam, and wide acceptance of many policies and perspectives is driven in part by the endless repetition of slogans. The exercise of argumentum ad nauseam can be widely observed in the distribution of "talking points," which are collections of short phrases that are issued to members of modern political parties for recitation to achieve maximum message repetition.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, I managed to find your Anderson article, and exactly as I suspected, Dr. Anderson does not cite to any actual original research in the article. In other words, he did no experiment whatsoever. What he did was an analysis of other peoples' research, using other peoples' data, and basically reinterpreted their data from his own creationist viewpoint.
If this is what you think amounts to "research," Dave, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ignore your other claims about "mountains" of research being done by creationists. What you're talking about isn't research, pure and simple. In the same way that what you describe as "evidence" (e.g., cosmic fine tuning, "biological machines") isn't evidence; it's argument.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hey Dave, if 1,4% is insignificant now, then maybe it's safe to consider humans and chimps IDENTICAL? Whaddaya say?
Your attempts to argue in scientific terms become more pathetic all the time.
As for your favorite language example- I've explained it before, but here it is again:
"My dog was running around and barking all over my deck."
"o skylos moy etrehe gyro gyro kai gabgize pano sto katastroma mou".
Quite different, eh? Well guess what, they say the same thing.
The fact that words with totally different meanings can be almost identical (or the other way round) means absolutely nothing, dave. The origins of language (all languages) is arbitrary. Unlike DNA coding, there is no (metaphysical?) connection between the word itself and what it represents. Unless you believe in Kabbalah, of course...
Did you even think of the implications for evolution, if your language-based gene model were true? A single point mutation could create a flagellum out of whatever, a fully formed flipper or wing out of a limb, and yes, even a dog out of a cat.
Hey, Dave, I think that evolution is not as easy as you think it is. Maybe you should read a little Denton...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave, I'm going to cross-post this here in case you haven't read the thread where I originally posted it, the "Reserved for AFDave's YEC evidence" thread. I'm guessing you haven't actually visited that thread yet, so you probably haven't read this:
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I think it's just a little significant that Dave has yet to even post to this thread. I can't imagine he doesn't know it's here. It only adds further confirmation (if any were needed) that Dave doesn't actually have any YEC evidence.
You do realize, Dave, that your absence from that thread is pretty powerful evidence that you do not, in fact, have any evidence whatsoever for your "Creator God Hypothesis," don't you?
We always suspected so anyway, but it's interesting that you've shown so little interest in disabusing us of the notion.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Okay, AFDave: Let's begin again. Your broken link should be this one.. This paper is not "research" it is a literature review, and a poorly done one at that.
A cursory search for papers that directly contradict what "Kevin Anderson, Ph.D." was saying in his "review of the literature" comes up with some fast results:
http://aac.asm.org/cgi/content/full/48/4/1289 "Effect of rpoB Mutations Conferring Rifampin Resistance on Fitness of Mycobacterium tuberculosis" Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, April 2004, p. 1289-1294, Vol. 48, No. 4
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... resistance mutations appear to confer no cost (<1% reduction in fitness), at least as measured by in vitro assay systems. For example, certain rpsL mutations (streptomycin resistance) in M. tuberculosis , Escherichia coli, and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium , katG mutations (isoniazid resistance) in M. tuberculosis , and gyrA and parC mutations (fluoroquinolone resistance) in Streptococcus pneumoniae confer no measurable reduction in growth rate.
Also :
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Fitness costs conferred by mutations that [do]alter target molecules may also be partly or fully ameliorated by compensatory mutations without loss of resistance. Such compensatory evolution has been observed in vitro, in experimental animals, and in clinical situations. Thus, the occurrence of cost-free mutations and compensatory evolution suggests that antibiotic-resistant bacteria will not disappear as a result of restricted use of antibiotics
Your boy, Kevin Anderson, also claims that no mutations resulting in drug resistance have been identified. He somehow believes that lateral transfer happens miraculously:
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Spontaneous mutation does provide a potential genetic mechanism for the origin of these genes, but such an origin has never been demonstrated
Point mutations in the dihydrofolate reductase and dihydropteroate synthase genes of Plasmodium falciparum and resistance to sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in Sri Lanka. Hapuarachchi HC, et al (2006). Am J Trop Med Hyg 74: 198-204
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Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) is the second-line treatment for Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Sri Lanka. Resistance to SP is caused by point mutations in the dihydrofolate reductase (Pf-dhfr) and dihydropteroate synthase (Pf-dhps) genes of P. falciparum.
As to your claim that " to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call The Big Three: Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record"
Uh, Dave, we are hominids. We have civilizations. For you to ask for "civilizations " for our hominid and hominoid forebears, is amusing, though, if *THAT* is what you meant.
There are in fact enormous differences both anatomically (and genetically, as in Svaante Paabo's work on Neanderthalensis) that can be shown in our ancestors. You are just ignorant of the literature and ..well, just about everything. Including the fossil record, which is more than enough to show you wrong by itself. The lineage of fossils from Australopiths to H. habilis to H. erectus to transitional H. sapiens to H. sapiens sapiens...includes thousands of fossil specimens. Your argument will be to say that the differences anatomically are "not enough." as if you had some basic knowledge of the subject. Silly invertebrate.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"My dog was running around and barking all over my deck."
"o skylos moy etrehe gyro gyro kai gabgize pano sto katastroma mou".
Errr... Greek? Would have got it sooner except the latin orthography...
Yup, it's my mommy tongue... I didn't count on dave's compy being able to display Greek characters, though, hence the Greeklish.
It's fun to use the wrong alphabets :> Davayt'e govorit' po-russkiy! Eto n'e trudno,ochen' int'er'esniy yazyk. Ty n'e po-russkiy chita'esh? Normalno- zna'esh, Chukcha n'e chitatel', Chukcha pisatel'...
Note to Dave: No, Russian is not a mixture of French and Greek
Dave, this comment may perplex you, so I thought I'd elucidate:
Quote (deadman_932 @ May 25 2006,13:57)
Okay, AFDave: Let's begin again. Your broken link should be this one.. This paper is not "research" it is a literature review, and a poorly done one at that.
See, there are basically two kinds of scientific papers. One kind, let's call it a "research" paper, is basically a report of a scientist's actual primary research, whether it's a lab experiment, an observation (we're talking astronomy here), or a field expedition (paleontology, geology, etc.). The paper will first give a summary of what the research was intended to accomplish, what the scientist expected to see, what he or she actually saw, and whether the results confirm or disconfirm a particular hypothesis. The paper will then give an explanation of the methods used, such that someone else should be able to duplicate the research. Then there will be a big long section on what the scientist actually did, usually accompanied by some sort of empirical data, possibly in the form of charts or graphs. The paper will the present an interpretation of the data, explain what its effect is on the hypothesis in question, and will probably end with a conclusion and suggestions for further research.
The other kind of paper, which we'll call a "survey" paper (also known as a literature review), presents no original research. It will basically summarise the research done by others in a particular field (the Theobald article on TalkOrigins is an example of this sort of paper). Survey papers often include charts and graphs, but they're compiled from other peoples' research, and as a result the paper will be peppered with references to other papers.
Now. Why is Anderson's literature review a poor one? Simple. He cherry picks bits and pieces of other peoples' research that he believes supports his conclusion (in this case, that bacterial resistance to antibiotics does not support evolution). Why is this a problem? Because it gives people like you, Dave, who are non-specialists, a distinctly incorrect picture of what the research (all the research, not just bits and pieces of it here and there) really demonstrates.
Let me analogize. An attorney gives me an assignment, to do a memorandum of the current state of the law with respect to the fiduciary duty of real estate brokers to both parties to a transaction. We're representing a client who is a broker who's been accused of violating that fiduciary duty, so obviously we want to minimize the scope of that duty. Now, when I do my research, do I emphasize case law that minimizes that duty and ignore case law that broadens it? Not if I want to keep my job, I don't. It's not doing anyone, least of all our client, any good to misrepresent the case law, because ultimately it will be to the detriment of our case.
Dr. Anderson is doing the same thing to you, Dave, and to your detriment. He's de-emphasizing research contrary to his conclusion, while spotlighting evidence that appears to support it. There's a word for this, Dave. It's called "lying."
Generally, people dislike being lied to. But you actually seem to like it, so long as those lies comport with your preconceived notions about things.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Uh oh. Sounds like AFD found the talking point he's gonna use to snowjob the kids at his Sunday school...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Uh oh. Sounds like AFD found the talking point he's gonna use to snowjob the kids at his Sunday school...
We can only hope that the kids are smart enough to (eventually) realize (even if Dave-the-engineer isn't):
1% of 100 = 1 1% of 1,000 = 10 1% of 10,000 = 100 1% of 100,000 = 1,000 1% of 1,000,000 = 10,000 1% of 10,000,000 = 100,000
Furthermore, we can only hope that they are taught well enough by folks other than Dave to actually apply math and logic to figure out the following doesn't make much sense:
100,000 differences between humans and chimps = different kinds (human and ape) 200,000 differences between chimps and gorillas = same kind (ape) 200,000 differences between humans and gorillas = different kinds (human and ape)
Then, if we're really lucky, some might be bright enough to realize that 100,000 differences between humans and chimps + 100,000 SHARED differences between humans and chimps vs. gorillas = a pretty good likelihood of common descent (and a serious problem for human and ape "kinds").
A few will eventually be able to do some stats and figure out exactly what "pretty good likelihood" means.
A few will learn something about quantifying error and uncertainty and realize exactly why "one half of one lousy percentage point" was a silly thing to shriek at a teacher.
Finally, the odd one who gets some real education might begin to see a connection between this, a few hundred thousand more differences in orangutans, monkeys, etc., chromosome fusions, the fossil record, bacterial antibiotic resistance, tens of thousands of scientists, hundreds of thousands of papers...
Dave doesn't just disbelieve all this -- he doesn't understand it -- so he won't be the one to teach them, and it looks pretty bleak. Personally, I do tend to agree with child "abuse". But maybe, just maybe, we can hope that one day a child will be the father of the man. Some kids sniff out bu11sh1t pretty well.
Note to Dave: No, Russian is not a mixture of French and Greek
Actually, dave should argue that, with all the Bavarian princes and nobles coming to Greece with King Otto after the end of Ottoman rule, well, Greek just has to be a mixture of Turkish and German.
LOLZORZ
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Wow! I was only off by a factor of 2! Do I win a consolation prize?
Dave, what's the genetic similarity between humans and mice? What's the genetic similarity between humans and fruit flies? Both of these answers can be found in five minutes on Google.
"My dog was running around and barking all over my deck."
"o skylos moy etrehe gyro gyro kai gabgize pano sto katastroma mou".
Errr... Greek? Would have got it sooner except the latin orthography...
Yup, it's my mommy tongue... I didn't count on dave's compy being able to display Greek characters, though, hence the Greeklish.
It's fun to use the wrong alphabets :> Davayt'e govorit' po-russkiy! Eto n'e trudno,ochen' int'er'esniy yazyk. Ty n'e po-russkiy chita'esh? Normalno- zna'esh, Chukcha n'e chitatel', Chukcha pisatel'...
Note to Dave: No, Russian is not a mixture of French and Greek
Hey, yob tvoju mat'!
(Just kidding.)
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
"No, no - is idiom. Very rich and complicated, nothing to do with your mother." - William Gibson, Idoru.
I had something to do with your mother last night. Commie.-ds
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Hello, I...well, this is my first time. I mean, my first post! My technique may be lacking, but I have enthusiasm and could probably do this for hours.
afDave, I would first like to thank you for your numerous threads. I have been following them avidly since they began, and they have provided me with the opportunity to learn more in several disparate fields: genetics, linguistics, the nature of the scientific process, etc.
I do, however, have one question for you that has, to my knowledge, not yet been raised by anyone else here. You have used the term "General Theory of Evolution" in several places, and I wonder what you mean by that. I admit to having simply a layman's understanding of evolution, but I have read fairly extensively in the topic (including slow slogging through certain complicated bits of Futuyma's "Evolutionary Biology," 3rd ed., a gift from my wife) and have never come across the term. Now, I do have some idea as to where you might have picked up the phrase "General Theory of Evolution," but it would not be right for me simply to guess. Could you please explain where you found this term, and what it entails? Many thanks!
But the really big news is that ALL THESE ARE JUST TINY EVIDENCES WHICH LEND SUPPORT. They in no way close the case, and the fact is that Common Design Theory can explain them just as well ... better, in fact, if you take other Ape/Human issues into consideration.
Remember, to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call The Big Three: Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record.
I predict that as more is known about the genomes, and how similar they may be to human languages, that this too will turn into an insurmountable obstacle for Common Descent Theory.
Wow! I was only off by a factor of 2! Do I win a consolation prize?
Dave, what's the genetic similarity between humans and mice? What's the genetic similarity between humans and fruit flies? Both of these answers can be found in five minutes on Google.
humans and grass?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I've pointed this out to Dave before, to little effect (he never even acknowledged the post).
Dave, Chimps and humans are pretty much as close as two organims can get to each other and not be the same species. Same thing for gorillas and orangs (although not quite as close as chimps). All great apes should really be in the same genus, if primate taxonomy were based less on human exceptionalism.
As I've said before, humans and starfish are pretty closely related in the grand scheme of things, as both are deuterostomes (as opposed to things like clams, insects, and worms, which are all protostomes). But even those non-deuterostomes are pretty close to humans, compared to e.g. mushrooms, which are fungi. All of them are a lot more closely related to each other than any of them is to, say, grass, which is a vascular plant. And humans and grasses, both eukaryotes, are very closely related compared, to, eg. e. coli bacteria. And what about viruses? Those things are way out in some other galaxy, comparatively speaking.
If you'd spend some quality time studying taxonomy, Dave (and before you say taxonomy is a "fairy tale," keep in mind that the science predates Darwin, and its founder, Carl Linnaeus, was unquestionably a creationist, taxonomy being dependent purely on classification and having nothing to do with evolution), you'd discover that humans and gibbons are incredibly closely related to each other, to say nothing of humans and chimps. So your "one half of one lousy percentage point" argument starts to look pretty asthmatic, doesn't it? It really all comes down to a pathetically narrow perspective on life, which leads to my final piece of advice in this post: you need to get out more, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, what's the genetic similarity between humans and mice? What's the genetic similarity between humans and fruit flies? Both of these answers can be found in five minutes on Google.
Humans and mice:
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"Among the findings are that mice and human beings both carry about 30,000 genes. Differences within these individual genes -- the precise sequences of the four-letter DNA code -- spell out the obvious differences between the two mammalian species. On a letter-by-letter basis, the genes are 85 percent the same."
Humans and fruit flies:
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"Humans and fruit flies are closely related. Of the fly's 13,601 genes, scientists believe that possibly two-thirds may have counterparts in humans."
That took me about three minutes. Kind of puts that "one half of one lousy percentage point" in perspective, doesn't it, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Wow! I was only off by a factor of 2! Do I win a consolation prize?
Dave, what's the genetic similarity between humans and mice? What's the genetic similarity between humans and fruit flies? Both of these answers can be found in five minutes on Google.
humans and grass?
Humans and mice both have hair, five toes on each foot and an affinity for cheese. This month's publication of a draft of the mouse genome shows that genetically, too, we have much in common: 99 percent of our genes are also in mice: http://query.nytimes.com/gst....49C8B63
Scientists have unravelled virtually the entire genetic code of the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). The work will be enormously helpful in figuring out the more complex genome of humans: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/647139.stm
Quote It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true. No it doesn't, because the Bible is not true. It's wrong on the age of the earth by six orders of magnitude. The Bible could be completely wrong about everything, and that wouldn't affect science, or humans' ability to do science, in the slightest.
How do you know this? You only have the beliefs of the scientists to go on. Since nobody was there; there is no firsthand evidence. With respect to this issue, you do not even have the illusion of "reproducibility" you allude to in your subsequent paragraphs. The only "evidence" that the age of the earth is four billion years as opposed to its actual age of six thosand years are question-begging assumptions based on the evolutionists' artificially constructed belief system. However, don't feel bad, circular reasoning based on such artificially constructed belief systems is all autonomous human reason is capable of.
Eric writes:
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Quote They are given the results via textbooks and journals, to be accepted on faith. What are journal results? They are testimony. No different from the testimony of those who observed Christ's empty tomb. Textbooks are compiled from third and fourth hand testimony is not physical evidence, but human testimony, to be accepted on faith. Nope. Here's where you're wrong, Bill. A properly-written scientific paper gives you all the information, including methodologies, to go out and perform the experiment yourself and see if you get the same results. That's why they're called "reproducible results." No faith required. If I don't think the speed of light in a vacuum is 300,000,000 m/s, I can go out and do the experiment myself. If I don't think humans and chimps have the same mutations in the same busted gene for vitamin C production, I can go find out for myself.
No event is truly reproducible. Each one is a single, isolated particular. When you tie your shoes today, it is not the same event as when you tied your shoes yesterday. You think these particular events are the same as the universals you attempt to apprehend by studying them. They are not. If scientist x does an experiment measuring the speed of light, and comes up with a measurement of let's say, 200,000,000 m/s, contrary to the accepted value, that in no way--by itself-- provides evidence that scientist is mistaken or lying, even if all of the others obtain the accepted value; for there is no reason, at least no reason that can be discovered by automonous human reason, that the event witnessed by scientist x should have anything to do with other events observed by his colleagues. What evidence is there the sun will rise tomorrow? It is only that men see this every day. How many times do we have to see it before it becomes a "fact?" What is the magic number? There is none. Autonomous human reason reaches its bankrupt end.
You mistakenly start with universals--your so-called "Laws of Nature" as the scientific community teaches them-- and them attempt to determine the truth of particular claims--such as whether the creation of the universe described in the Book of Genesis--actually happened, with reference to them. This is a completely hollow approach. Particulars are logically prior to universals, for the reasons discussed above. You need an approah to determine what particulars actually happen before you can threorize about them. Hence, you need to rely upon testimony, and this is an act of faith, and only the faith in the truth of the Bible provides a framework to justify knowledge claims.
To further bolster my case, you claim you can check the vaue of the speed of light if you are skeptical. I claim you can't do this. If you attempted to measure the speed of light and got a value of 200,000,000 m/s, you would not doubt the claims of the scientists, but only your own experimental skill. How is this different from a nine-year old who prays every day for a bicycle for Christmas, then fails to get it, concludes he has not prayed hard enough? (I've taken a few undergraduate science classes, so I know what students think when they get the "wrong" values in their lab assignments.) Therefore, you have no means to check those claims, you have only faith in trust in the secular priests in their white lab coats. I put my faith and trust in the Bible. Unlike yours, my faith and trust provides meta-justification for knowledge claims, while your does not.
I heard that the FAA took away some pilot's license the other day. When he asked them why, they said:
"Last month, when you flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco, you landed your plane on a freeway, two miles short of the airport! If you don't understand the difference between the airport and a freeway two miles away, you shouldn't be flying"
The pilot's response:
"It's a 400 mile flight! You're taking away my license because I missed the airport by ONE HALF OF ONE LOUSY PERCENTAGE POINT???
It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true.
A monotypic group (like the mesopatamians or mesoamericans, and pre neolithic asians and africans) had knowledge, without reading scripture that did not depend on the Bible being true.. did not depend on it period. Then what?
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Students are not required to do every single experiement and observe every single piece of evidence by themselves. They are given the results via textbooks and journals, to be accepted on faith.
But if students wished to replicate those experiments (which many have, and will continue to do), this does not require faith. Unlike Intelligent Design and Creationism, it presents the research methodology in order to be replicated, in order to derive similar results, in order to be critiqued, and expanded upon. How do you think Intelligent Designers and Creationists get their negative information concerning science? Scientists conduct research, conduct experiments and register their findings. Those findings are made available. This is done so the flaws can be ironed out - for the Intelligent Designers and Creationists however, they do not view it as such - "why has science made this available?" a student of science will probably say "to show the method and to better both the research and experiment", the Intelligent Designer and Creationist will probably answer, "to prove science wrong, and God right".
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What are journal results? They are testimony. No different from the testimony of those who observed Christ's empty tomb.
Journal results are recordings, they are recordings of a specific piece of research. How many times was Christ's tomb opened? How many accounts were given for this? Though I understand a need to (for the theistic person) correlate scientific methodology with religious faith, I fail to see how they can be compared with any great substance. One main point: Science does not require belief or faith, science requires scientific method. If it did, I would of prayed my way through my degree and probably got it.
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This testimony is God's revelation beginning in the Garden of Eden. This is the only way to ground human knowledge.
Interesting - religion subverted science to the point that it was considered magic. Gallileo was put on trial for his support of the Copernicusian Model. Bruno was burnt alive for it. From a historical perspective it is valid to state that the adherents to testimonial of God's revelation would rather isolate human knowledge, instead of watching it grow.
Hello, Fractious One!
You need to improve your reading comprehension skills. I specifically said the Bible was not necessary to have knowledge, but only to meta-justify knowledge. (I noticed you quoted me correctly and then claimed I said the opposite of what I actually did. You are a true idiot.) An Aztec priest has the knowledge of how to kill adolescent girls by bashing their skulls in, but he has no reason to believe such skull-bashing techniques will work tomorrow, no more than he has any reason to believe that such measures will keep the sun warm and the rains coming, for what do any of those things have to do with each other? All he has are the question-begging assumptions of his own culturally-bound traditions. Evolutionists have different cultural traditions, but no more means of meta-justifying knowledge. As far as the rest of your point go, why don't read my bresponse to Eric, and grok it thoroughly before responding.
Actually, I think the physicists who I cited regarding Cosmic Fine Tuning do get into calculating the odds. But we do not even need to calculate the odds to know that they must be very high if there are even close to 70 parameters and most of them have to be very close to a particular value for life to be possible. We only need our intuition for this. And you cannot truthfully say that this is an assumption with no basis in reality. The exact opposite is true.
The cutting edge research in String/M Hypothesis (it is not a theory! and Loop Quantum Gravity indicate that many of the constants are related. So instead of "70" different parameters, there may only be a few.... Or perhaps none at all - the parameters may be completely defined with no fine-tuning at all!
Can we please move on to age of the earth/universe? I've only stuck around this thread to see if we'll ever cover it.
Ghost of Paley: Congratulations. What you wrote is undoubtedly the kind of epistemic mental masturbation that got you awestruck swoons in your Intro to Philosophy class.
You are relying on hyper-relativism. Like -- oh, a manic Heraclitus or Protagoras -- you claim that all is in flux, hence no universals can be true. Then you claim that only particulars can be true. But, Paley, once you begin racing down the epistemological road to solipsism, you cannot stop partway and claim some superior stance..let's see how true your particulars are:
If Paley knows that he has a True Bible, then Paley knows that he is not a brain in a vat. Paley does not know that he is not a brain in a vat. Therefore, Paley does not know that he has a True Bible.
You cannot claim the bible as "metajustification" at all, can you? If you say you can, refute what I just said.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You need to improve your reading comprehension skills. I specifically said the Bible was not necessary to have knowledge, but only to meta-justify knowledge. (I noticed you quoted me correctly and then claimed I said the opposite of what I actually did. You are a true idiot.) An Aztec priest has the knowledge of how to kill adolescent girls by bashing their skulls in, but he has no reason to believe such skull-bashing techniques will work tomorrow, no more than he has any reason to believe that such measures will keep the sun warm and the rains coming, for what do any of those things have to do with each other? All he has are the question-begging assumptions of his own culturally-bound traditions. Evolutionists have different cultural traditions, but no more means of meta-justifying knowledge. As far as the rest of your point go, why don't read my bresponse to Eric, and grok it thoroughly before responding.
Wouldn't the Aztec priest say that all you have are the "question-begging assumptions of [your] own culturally-bound traditions"? I mean, if he has justification for his knowledge from his gods can't he reason the same way you are?
How do you know this? You only have the beliefs of the scientists to go on. Since nobody was there; there is no firsthand evidence.
Bill, you're losing me here. What kind of epistemological mushy-headedness is this? How do you "know" that the Bible is true? Because your faith tells you so? Is your faith that the Bible is correct somehow more valid than my belief that the thousands of working scientists out there who have devoted collective millennia of their lives to figuring out how the world works?
Frankly, I don't think so.
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With respect to this issue, you do not even have the illusion of "reproducibility" you allude to in your subsequent paragraphs. The only "evidence" that the age of the earth is four billion years as opposed to its actual age of six thosand years are question-begging assumptions based on the evolutionists' artificially constructed belief system.
The only "evidence" you have that the world is 6,000 years old is one source: a copy of a copy of a copy of a bad translation of a haphazard collection of tales that were passed down for generations orally before there was even a written language to record it in. I'll take the reasoning abilities of generations of scientists over faith any day. I think your assumptions are way less defensible than mine. I guess we'll just have to disagree on this subject, but in the meantime, would you care to enlighten me on exactly what these "question-begging assumptions" are that you and Mr. Hawkins have been alluding to? So far, it looks like so much hand-waving to me.
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However, don't feel bad, circular reasoning based on such artificially constructed belief systems is all autonomous human reason is capable of.
Actually, I don't feel bad at all. I understand the difference between circular reasoning and inductive reasoning based on a dozen converging lines of evidence, all supporting each other. I also understand the difference between any kind of reasoning, and blind faith.
Eric writes:
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No event is truly reproducible. Each one is a single, isolated particular.
Oh, come off it, Bill. Don't be ridiculous. Of course there's a chance the sun won't rise tomorrow. Tell you what: I'll put my entire life savings up against the change in your pocket that it does. Are you willing to honestly take that bet?
The mass of the electron has been measured millions of times, and every time it comes up the same. Some guy forgets to get his units right, and comes up with a mass of 500,000 grams. Does that shake my confidence in what the real figure is? What do you think?
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You mistakenly start with universals--your so-called "Laws of Nature" as the scientific community teaches them-- and them attempt to determine the truth of particular claims--such as whether the creation of the universe described in the Book of Genesis--actually happened, with reference to them. This is a completely hollow approach.
You're right, Bill! What have I been thinking all these years? I see it all now! To every question, the answer is always the same. Jay-sus! What a fool I've been!
Sorry to be facetious, Bill, but seriously.
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To further bolster my case, you claim you can check the vaue of the speed of light if you are skeptical. I claim you can't do this. If you attempted to measure the speed of light and got a value of 200,000,000 m/s, you would not doubt the claims of the scientists, but only your own experimental skill.
You're arguing practicality. I'm arguing principle. You're saying that no matter how hard I try, no matter how dedicated I become, it can't be done.
And besides, you've got it totally wrong. If I measured the speed of light now, and got some weird answer (50 MPH; 2E35 m/s) I'd know something was wrong, because the actual value has been established conclusively. But what about, say the mass of the Higgs boson? No one knows what it is (although there are theoretical reasons to believe it's somewhere within a range of values). The first hundred stabs at a value might not even be that close. But as thousands, then tens of thousands, then millions of Higgs bosons are measured, and the all those energies converge on a particular value…you're claiming that scientists have no justification for believing that value is the correct one?
But what if the values don't converge, you might ask? Well, either there's something wrong with the methodology, or there's something wrong with the theory. But is the answer really there in your Bible, Bill, as to the One True Value?
In other words, you rule inductive reasoning out as invalid a priori?
As for the experimental skill, Bill, surely you know that it's possible to identify possible sources of error, don't you? Or, maybe you don't. Maybe you think there's no possible way to detect errors in the Bible.
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How is this different from a nine-year old who prays every day for a bicycle for Christmas, then fails to get it, concludes he has not prayed hard enough?
Here's how it's different, Bill. You publish a paper that sets forth your methodology. Lots of your colleagues scratch their heads over what appears to be an error. Eventually, someone figures out what it is. A few other people look at it, agree that there's the problem, so you fix that problem, and guess what? 300,000,000 m/s.
Or, you get a probability of something happening that's greater than one. Well, something's wrong somewhere! Hopefully, your own Feynmann will come along with a workaround.
Thusly, more or less, slowly or quickly, progress gets made.
In the meantime, Bill studies his one source of all evidence, and comes to the conclusion that the earth is 6,000 years old.
Sorry, Bill, but my money's on the Feynmanns of the world.
And I was starting to respect you intellectually, Bill. Well, I guess I still do respect you intellectually. I just question your judgment. I think that's where the problem is.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
An Aztec priest has the knowledge of how to kill adolescent girls by bashing their skulls in, but he has no reason to believe such skull-bashing techniques will work tomorrow, no more than he has any reason to believe that such measures will keep the sun warm and the rains coming, for what do any of those things have to do with each other? All he has are the question-begging assumptions of his own culturally-bound traditions. Evolutionists have different cultural traditions, but no more means of meta-justifying knowledge.
I'm sorry, Bill, but I honestly don't see the distinction between Mr. Aztec priest and Mr. Paley. What does Bill have, other than (let me pull the quote here)
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question-begging assumptions of his own culturally-bound traditions.
?
How are you any different from our Mezoamerican friend, Bill? Does it all come down to some sort of "My god is studlier than your god" argument? There are lots of holy books out there, some more entertaining reading than others (man, that Mayan stuff is out there). What makes yours so special?
And in the meantime, mon vieux, suddenly you're sounding just like M. Derrida, from where I'm sitting! Who'd a thunk it?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Your post was on epistemology, Paley. I suggest you read up on it.
The subject involves the origins and nature of knowledge -- and its relation to ideas of truth and belief (or faith, if you will). In a succinct phrase, it's about "How you claim to know what you claim to know." You use relativism to claim that Science has no particularly good claim to "knowing," then state that your faith in the bible "meta-justifies" your claims to knowing. But you fail to justify your claim about your faith being meaningful in relation to epistemology. As I said :
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If Paley knows that he has a True Bible, then Paley knows that he is not a brain in a vat.
Paley does not know that he is not a brain in a vat.
Therefore, Paley does not know that he has a True Bible.
You cannot claim the bible as "meta-justification" at all... If you say you can, refute what I just said.
The reason I tossed that out was your bizarre concatenation of claims/conclusions, Paley. To wit:
Fractatious quotes you as saying:
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It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true
She cites the example of the Aztecs, among others. Then you say :
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I specifically said the Bible was not necessary to have knowledge, but only to meta-justify knowledge
while you insulted her as "a true idiot"
Let's look at the logical extensions of your "logic."
I can only read your statement to mean that you believe that the Bible is true for all time, regardless of its temporal oral/written status. That the Aztecs "need" the Bible for what they "knew" to be true...to be true. This is amusing. The Aztecs probably did indeed offer up sacrifices ( If you don't accept that, then I can mention cultures that definitely did). I could also mention cultures that definitely "knew" it true that cannibalism of select parts of ritual sacrifices would lead to the magical importation of desired qualities into their own bodies. This would mean, by your logic, that what they "knew" to be true could only be true due to..the bible. This is the first time that I've heard of the Bible used as justification for the epistemic "truth" of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism. Good Job!!!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Paley, you don't have to present your model. I believe it already. Now, can you tell me a good reason for you to arbitarily stop at the bible, and not take your revolutionary, irrefutable and totally unoriginal logic to its unavoidable conclusion- Solipsism?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
You need to improve your reading comprehension skills.
As a newbie to this board, it takes time to build up an identity. Also as a newbie, I have an added advantage of identifying personalities already present on the board. So, I'll probably be saying this rather frequently (I imagine), but, "emotives really don't work on me, either on boards, in emails or in live chat". So, moving right along...
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I specifically said the Bible was not necessary to have knowledge, but only to meta-justify knowledge.
"But only to meta-justify knowledge": that statement was not present. So you didn't "specifically say.." I reiterated that point for a reason (see below).
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(I noticed you quoted me correctly and then claimed I said the opposite of what I actually did. You are a true idiot.)
I did quote you correctly. I also never made a claim, I made an analogy, which ended with a question. In the perchance I am misunderstood, I purposely structure out my statements so I *am* perfectly understood. Your statement came across in the same way I made an analogy. I ended with a question to gauge your thoughts on why you said what you said. So I'll restate my question in another way based again on your exact words:
You said: It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true.
It is possible for humans to have knowledge of what? Because you say "Scripture" then it has theological connotations. The existence however (according to your statement) depends upon the "Bible" being true. So this is a theological statement. I could take it to a cognitive debate but I will save that. Knowledge of God is possible, without scripture, but that knowledge relies on a biblical truth? How?
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Evolutionists have different cultural traditions, but no more means of meta-justifying knowledge. As far as the rest of your point go, why don't read my bresponse to Eric, and grok it thoroughly before responding.
The evolutionary position is a tenuous as the theological position?
Deadman stated it correctly, you utilised epistemology. Its your epistemology versus empiricalism.
Ghost, in case you start calling me names for misunderstanding your position, too, I retract my previous statement. You are not a Solipsist; you are a Tlönist: (Sorry guys, I know it's long, but it's interesting)
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Amongst the doctrines of Tlön, none has merited the scandalous reception accorded to materialism. Some thinkers have formulated it with less clarity than fervor, as one might put forth a paradox. In order to facilitate the comprehension of this inconceivable thesis, a heresiarch of the eleventh century (3) devised the sophism of the nine copper coins, whose scandalous renown is in Tlön equivalent to that of the Eleatic paradoxes. There are many versions of this "specious reasoning," which vary the number of coins and the number of discoveries; the following is the most common:
On Tuesday, X crosses a deserted road and loses nine copper coins. On Thursday, Y finds in the road four coins, somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain. On Friday, Z discovers three coins in the road. On Friday morning, X finds two coins in the corridor of his house. The heresiarch would deduce from this story the reality - i.e., the continuity - of the nine coins which were recovered. It is absurd (he affirmed) to imagine that four of the coins have not existed between Tuesday and Thursday, three between Tuesday and Friday afternoon, two between Tuesday and Friday morning. It is logical to think that they have existed - at least in some secret way, hidden from the comprehension of men - at every moment of those three periods.
The language of Tlön resists the formulation of this paradox; most people did not even understand it. The defenders of common sense at first did no more than negate the veracity of the anecdote. They repeated that it was a verbal fallacy, based on the rash application of two neologisms not authorized by usage and alien to all rigorous thought: the verbs "find" and "lose," which beg the question, because they presuppose the identity of the first and of the last nine coins. They recalled that all nouns (man, coin, Thursday, Wednesday, rain) have only a metaphorical value. They denounced the treacherous circumstance "somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain," which presupposes what is trying to be demonstrated: the persistence of the four coins from Tuesday to Thursday. They explained that equality is one thing and identity another, and formulated a kind of reductio ad absurdum: the hypothetical case of nine men who on nine nights suffer a severe pain. Would it not be ridiculous - they questioned - to pretend that this pain is one and the same? They said that the heresiarch was prompted only by the blasphemous intention of attributing the divine category of being to some simple coins and that at times he negated plurality and at other times did not. They argued: if equality implies identity, one would also have to admit that the nine coins are one.
Unbelievably, these refutations were not definitive. A hundred years after the problem was stated, a thinker no less brilliant than the heresiarch but of orthodox tradition formulated a very daring hypothesis. This happy conjecture affirmed that there is only one subject, that this indivisible subject is every being in the universe and that these beings are the organs and masks of the divinity. X is Y and is Z. Z discovers three coins because he remembers that X lost them; X finds two in the corridor because he remembers that the others have been found... The Eleventh Volume suggests that three prime reasons determined the complete victory of this idealist pantheism. The first, its repudiation of solipsism; the second, the possibility of preserving the psychological basis of the sciences; the third, the possibility of preserving the cult of the gods.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
This quote from PT. Thought it might just help Afdave and GoP. I doubt it though, but it is worth a try.
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Posted by fnxtr on May 25, 2006 03:06 PM (e)
FL is guilty of what Sherry Tepper in “The Fresco” called worshipping Scripture instead of God.
From the religious viewpoint, God made the 4-billion+-year-old rocks and gave us the ability to learn about them, but Scripture disagrees with the evidence God gave us.
Who you gonna believe, FL? The world God made, or the Scripture men wrote?
Faid you're an an incredibly patient pathologist for a deranged GOP. Bon chance.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Ghost of Paley: Congratulations. What you wrote is undoubtedly the kind of epistemic mental masturbation that got you awestruck swoons in your Intro to Philosophy class.
You are relying on hyper-relativism. Like -- oh, a manic Heraclitus or Protagoras -- you claim that all is in flux, hence no universals can be true. Then you claim that only particulars can be true. But, Paley, once you begin racing down the epistemological road to solipsism, you cannot stop partway and claim some superior stance..let's see how true your particulars are:
If Paley knows that he has a True Bible, then Paley knows that he is not a brain in a vat. Paley does not know that he is not a brain in a vat. Therefore, Paley does not know that he has a True Bible.
You cannot claim the bible as "metajustification" at all, can you? If you say you can, refute what I just said
In order to answer your "brain in a vat" question, it is instructive to recall DesCartes' original formulation of this problem. If there was a demon with infinite powers of deception, who created a world of illusions around us impossible to penetrate, it would be impossible to know this. I know I am not such a "Brain in a vat" because of my faith in the authority of God's Word. Satan, and by extension all his minions, are fallen beings with limited powers, so they have not the powers DesCartes proposed in his Meditations.
I realize this is indeed faith and not proof, but my faith gives me the ability to account for the real world and sidestep perceptual skepticism. All you have is your own autonomous reason. Now, the ball's back in your court. Prove to me, using your own autonomous reason, the you are not a Brain in a Vat!.
Interesting how GoP so easily wrenched this whole thread away from AFD. Any way we can drop both of them plus Thordaddy into a single thread, slam the door shut, leave them alone to fight it out, and then deal with whichever one's still left standing in a month?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Interesting how GoP so easily wrenched this whole thread away from AFD. Any way we can drop both of them plus Thordaddy into a single thread, slam the door shut, leave them alone to fight it out, and then deal with whichever one's still left standing in a month?
Kinda like watching three squirrels trying to...er...gather...the same nut, ain't it?
Prove to me, using your own autonomous reason, the you are not a Brain in a Vat!.
That's completely unnecessary for the purposes of science. Science doesn't have to be anything but pragmatic, so it easily avoids the trap of solipism. We use methodological naturalism because it works.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Hello everyone! Let's review some highlites from yesterday.
First, I'd like to clearly depict the Human-Chimp-Gorilla debate so we all are on the same page. Are you ready?
THE EXPERTS SAY THAT . . .
THIS GUY AND THIS GUY
ARE MORE CLOSELY RELATED THAN . . .
THIS GUY AND THIS GUY
OK? Are we clear? This is scientists that say this, mind you ... the cream of the intellectual crop. The barons of academia.
Why do they say this? Well because the genetic similarities are closer for Humans and Chimps than for Chimps and Gorillas, of course. You idiot! How could you not know that? Were you born in a cave? Look at this data ...
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Hacia. (2001). Genome of the apes. Trends In Genetics 17(11): 637-645.
I've gone to the effort of adapting Table 1 into % similarity (as opposed to % difference) to make it exactly what you requested (feel free to check out the original reference). What follows then is the type of genetic sequence analyzed, % similarity between humans and chimps (HC), % similarity between humans and gorillas (HG), then % similarity between chimps and gorillas (CG), in that order.
Look ... the HC relationship is a whopping 1/2 of 1% closer than the CG relationship. Any idiot can see that! Where have you been?!!
Well, all you normal, non-scientist people out there ... I think that just settles it for me. I'm calling my Congressman right now and asking him to sponsor a bill to fund a new Department of Ape Education (DOAE ... you know, similar to the DOE we have now) so that Chimps can get Pell Grants and go to college. Yeah, they may have to take special ed classes at first, but they'll get up to speed soon enough! I mean, after all, look at how close they are to humans! The data proves it! This is from a REAL researcher, too! Not one of those fake Creationist researchers.
Yes, yes. We're having fun now. Thanks also Incorygible for the lengthy analysis of predictions that Creationists and Evolutionists might make. I will comment on that further.
In other news ...
* Aftershave is hanging out on a dead end thread hoping I'll come visit him. Arden has correctly guessed that I won't show. I would guess that Arden has been around the block a time or two more than Aftershave.
* Eric Murphy has always impressed me as being quite level headed, but yesterday he came up with a nice blooper something to the effect of "Dave, you know if you don't show up on Aftershave's thread, you are admitting defeat, don't you?" To quote someone famous, I have to say "Wow!" just "Wow!" So now anyone can defeat anyone else's arguments simply by starting a new thread and noting that the person does not show. Eric, let me throw you a rope, my friend. Come back up!
* Jeannot has been sticking to scientific sounding arguments until yesterday ... he's gotten tired and finally joined the "Insult Hurlers" with something to the effect of "Dave, don't you get tired of looking like a buffoon in public? Are you a masochist?" Three things, Jeannot ... (1) there was a guy that lived about 2000 years ago that looked pretty silly in public ... now all the dates in Western Society are all based on his birth (2) have you ever heard of a guy named John G. Paton? He looked pretty silly when he went to the New Hebrides as a missionary and was surrounded by cannibals ... but now you can vacation there and not get eaten for breakfast! Not so silly now, was he? (3) hang in there ... it's hard work defending a dying theory ... but I know you can do it if you persevere.
Oh, I almost forgot a fourth thing ... what was that Pharoah's name that opposed Moses? Oh ... I just can't think of it ... can you? Hmmm ... Moses ... smart guy who did an absolutely outrageous, stupid, insane thing (went camping with a bunch of nomads) ... now he's one of the most famous men in history (see my blog at airdave.blogspot.com) ... CANNOT remember that Pharoah's name ... CAN remember Moses' name ... not so silly after all, now was he?!
* Several of you commented on my "Resistant Bacteria" article in this thread. I will transfer your comments to the "Evolution" thread and answer them.
* Hey Paley, how about starting your own thread? You seem like a celebrity around here ... I'm sure people would like to argue with you.
OK, let's deal with some questions and comments before moving on ...
Is there a reason that the Creationist "researchers" who are actually active in science (e.g., publishing papers of any type in journals) not only avoid contesting such established facts as the age of the earth and common descent of apes in the literature, but also prove impossible to nail down on whether or not they actually disbelieve these established facts (think Behe, Meyer, Dembski, etc.)? Do you REALLY know enough to prove the entire realm of actual science wrong, Dave?
Incorygible, ICR and CRS and now AIG have been publishing creationist papers in Technical Journals for a long time now. CRS since 1964 or something. They do actual research all the time and I have a feeling you are intelligent enough to look on the web and see some of this. The problem is that people like you simply don't accept people like them as actually doing science. Too bad. Your loss. (Oh, Eric ... I do know the difference in a research report and an analysis report, and I know Dr. Anderson's was not an original research report, but literature surveys are quite valuable. Your people use them all the time too.)
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You compare the plans and specs for all five alternators. You find numerous spelling errors, reversed signs, etc. in all of them. But you note that in specs for two of the models, the exact same errors occur, mixed in with other random errors. I.e., not all of the errors in those two are identical, but some of them are, and are not identical to the errors in any of the other three.
Here we go again, rehashing Dr. Max's line of reasoning. We already debunked this ... remember?
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, if there's a weakest link in creationist conceptions -- it's their notion of the kinds God created that then "microevolved," not "macroevolved."
One does not need to be able to identify all the original kinds in order to have a valid hypothesis that there were, in fact, distinct created kinds.
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And there we have it. A pilot presumably once in charge of finely calibrated instrumentation can't accept the relevance of "one half of one lousy percentage point", despite the fact that it refers to literally millions of data points examined, despite the fact that, as in the original paper, we're really talking about relative differences averaging around 50%, and despite the fact that these results are demonstrably statistically significant (p<<0.001). In other words, there is far (far! less than a one-in-a-thousand chance that this pattern arose by chance. Dave, for an engineer, you really don't know much about math and numbers. I really don't know which way this tips the idiot vs. liar scale.
Stick to biology, Incorygible. You do very well coming up with nice tables, but you are out to lunch in analyzing them. Also, you people who are slinging around the millions of nucleotides that are identical (or hundreds or thousands, or whatever it is) as if this helps your case, listen to me -- Why do you think everyone talks about the PERCENT difference or similarity instead of the actual numbers of nucleotides? It's because the actual number of nucleotides don't matter. The percent matters. And guess what ... it doesn't mean squat that Humans and Gorillas and Chimps are all within a half a % or so. That's like saying they look alike. OK. SO they look alike in some ways. I already knew that. Tell me something I don't know. It is simply not determinative between Common Descent and Common Design. We have to look at many other factors if we want to determine between Common Descent and Common Design. I have gone over this several times.
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Dave, if you knew anything about statistics, you would have realised that 1% of homology, when based on millions of nucleotides, is highly significant. But it you prefer, we can show you the distances between humans, chimps and gibbons.
See above.
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And of course, it doesn't prove common descent, just that humans are a particular species of apes.
Yes. Of course. See pictures above.
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The journal is the Creation Research Society Quarterly and Anderson didn't do any research; it's just another creationist argument from ignorance. Anderson's not even doing science any more; he's director of the Van Andel Creationist Research Center - another worthless non-science shack in the wilderness.
Translation: "anyone who doesn't agree with us is by definition, not a scientist and a looney."
Jstockwell ...
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afdave, I tried to approach your questions with civility, but now you've convinced me. You are hopelessly lost in ignorance.
Wow, J. You lasted for two posts? Or was it three? You sounded so intelligent too. What will the team do now? I guess you weren't the distance runner I thought you were. I do sympathize ... it's difficult trying to defend an indefensible theory.
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Dave, you've got literally millions of pieces of evidence that support evolution. You've looked at about three of them. How big is an iron atom, Dave? Is it possible that if you took enough iron atoms, along with some other stuff, it could ever be a big enough pile to create a battleship?
You don't have millions of pieces of evidence, my friend. You have a few equivocal pieces of evidence, and they are being systematically dismantled as time goes on.
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1. Hominid civilizations is not a prediction of common descent. It's a prediction of Dave's. 2. Non-biological differences cannot possibly be a prediction of common descent, and besides, you have no idea whether the non-biological differences between humans and chimps is enormous or tiny. 3. The fossil record doesn't convince you, but that's hardly surprising given your ideological biases. The fossil record of hominidae is a lot more extensive than you think it is, because you've never even looked at it. You have no idea how many fossil hominids have ever even been found. Nor do you have the training or expertise to evaluate that record in any event.
'Homonoid' (there, is that better?) civilizations SHOULD BE a prediction of ToE and they were early on. They are not any more because no one found any. You are seriously telling me that I have no idea whether the non-biological differences between humans and chimps is enormous or tiny? Dial 911. They'll help you. I have looked at the fossil record and creationist scientists much more knowledgeable than me have also looked at them and I am telling you, they are unconvincing.
Faid ...
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As for your favorite language example- I've explained it before, but here it is again:
"My dog was running around and barking all over my deck."
"o skylos moy etrehe gyro gyro kai gabgize pano sto katastroma mou".
Quite different, eh? Well guess what, they say the same thing.
Faid-- This proves MY point, not yours. But thanks for agreeing with me inadvertently.
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The fact that words with totally different meanings can be almost identical (or the other way round) means absolutely nothing, dave. The origins of language (all languages) is arbitrary. Unlike DNA coding, there is no (metaphysical?) connection between the word itself and what it represents. Unless you believe in Kabbalah, of course...
No connection, huh? OK, then let's do an operation on you and splice any old sequence into your genes (can they do that?) and see what happens?
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Did you even think of the implications for evolution, if your language-based gene model were true? A single point mutation could create a flagellum out of whatever, a fully formed flipper or wing out of a limb, and yes, even a dog out of a cat.
Yes. I've thought of that. It's a good consideration. But remember, my little sentence "My dog was running around and barking all over my deck" is a very small sentence (a genetic snippet?) in a very large book (the genome). You cannot make the huge change from a dog "book" to a cat "book" by changing one letter of one sentence. My point is and always has been that you cannot define the enormous differences between apes and humans by simply comparing genetic sequences.
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As to your claim that to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call The Big Three: Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record"
Uh, Dave, we are hominids. We have civilizations. For you to ask for "civilizations " for our hominid and hominoid forebears, is amusing, though, if *THAT* is what you meant.
There are in fact enormous differences both anatomically (and genetically, as in Svaante Paabo's work on Neanderthalensis) that can be shown in our ancestors. You are just ignorant of the literature and ..well, just about everything. Including the fossil record, which is more than enough to show you wrong by itself. The lineage of fossils from Australopiths to H. habilis to H. erectus to transitional H. sapiens to H. sapiens sapiens...includes thousands of fossil specimens. Your argument will be to say that the differences anatomically are "not enough." as if you had some basic knowledge of the subject. Silly invertebrate.
They are not LIVING, Deadman. My statement says that there should be LIVING hominid (OK ... homonoid) civilizations.
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Hello, I...well, this is my first time. I mean, my first post! My technique may be lacking, but I have enthusiasm and could probably do this for hours.
afDave, I would first like to thank you for your numerous threads. I have been following them avidly since they began, and they have provided me with the opportunity to learn more in several disparate fields: genetics, linguistics, the nature of the scientific process, etc.
I do, however, have one question for you that has, to my knowledge, not yet been raised by anyone else here. You have used the term "General Theory of Evolution" in several places, and I wonder what you mean by that. I admit to having simply a layman's understanding of evolution, but I have read fairly extensively in the topic (including slow slogging through certain complicated bits of Futuyma's "Evolutionary Biology," 3rd ed., a gift from my wife) and have never come across the term. Now, I do have some idea as to where you might have picked up the phrase "General Theory of Evolution," but it would not be right for me simply to guess. Could you please explain where you found this term, and what it entails? Many thanks!
It is very hard to nail evolutionists down on terminology, so I use my own which I think helps differentiate concepts best. When I say General Theory of Evolution, I mean "All Evo Baloney" which for me includes abiogenesis for which ToE advocates don't even have a theory, and macroevolution, and all uniformitarian geological assumptions, such "the rocks are billions of years old" and the "Grand Canyon was formed by the Colorado river over millions of years" and other related malarkey. It's handy to just lump all the baloney together under one name -- "The General Theory of Evolution." Can be confusing, though, I admit. You will hear me most often just talking about "macroevolution" and "abiogenesis" and "uniformitarian geology" etc.
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If you'd spend some quality time studying taxonomy, Dave (and before you say taxonomy is a "fairy tale," keep in mind that the science predates Darwin, and its founder, Carl Linnaeus, was unquestionably a creationist, taxonomy being dependent purely on classification and having nothing to do with evolution), you'd discover that humans and gibbons are incredibly closely related to each other, to say nothing of humans and chimps. So your "one half of one lousy percentage point" argument starts to look pretty asthmatic, doesn't it? It really all comes down to a pathetically narrow perspective on life, which leads to my final piece of advice in this post: you need to get out more, Dave.
I do NOT say taxonomy is a fairy tale. I say Darwinism is a fairy tale. Taxonomy is great. I especially like how Denton points out that the science of molecular biology has largely confirmed the PRE-DARWIN taxonomy of Linnaeus. Evolutionists were hoping that molecular biology would somehow demonstrate that their evolutionary trees had support at the molecular level. Denton shows (in Evolution: a Theory in Crisis) that comparison of genetic sequence differences shows conclusively that no species can be thought of as 'ancestral' to any other. The evolutionist response to this that "oh, but if you could get the genetic sequences of fossil creatures, this would be different" is just a hoot! Just a hoot!
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"It's a 400 mile flight! You're taking away my license because I missed the airport by ONE HALF OF ONE LOUSY PERCENTAGE POINT???
This guy is in a fantasy world. How is this analogous? We're talking about organisms that are 98% similar at the physical level? What are you talking about?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, you didn't have to take up that much time and space to say all that. I can sum up your argument MUCH more succinctly:
What are you guys, nuts? Of course I'm right! It's just obvious!!! What's with all you eggheady types???
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
(3) hang in there ... it's hard work defending a dying theory ... but I know you can do it if you persevere.
I will give Dave credit - his experience and knowledge on this particular subject is unsurpassed.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Well, that's two down, if we can just lure Thordaddy in here, we'd be set.
I bet if we started talking about homosexuals, he'd wander in. Time to bait the trap!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I will give Dave credit - his experience and knowledge on this particular subject is unsurpassed.
Good comeback, improv ... I like guys with creative responses ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I will give Dave credit - his experience and knowledge on this particular subject is unsurpassed.
Good comeback, improv ... I like guys with creative responses ...
Thanks. I could tell you didn't like the rational ones, so I figured I try something different.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I think what's basically going on is that AFD is trying out the 'lecture' he's going to give one of these weekends at his church. He'll wow the audience with his experiences out among the liberal atheist science types, and he'll tell a few homespun jokes about what it was like to debate them, and how they never did have any good answers for his questions, but sure enough he figured out how all that science-stuff works, and he'll explain how all that evolution is just plain silly! I mean, come on, now, chimps more like humans than gorillas? Now, common sense tells me that can't be true! His audience will chuckle heartily, convinced of how silly evilution is, and that certainly it must be a 'theory in crisis'.
Now, why he's bothering to regale US with this lecture, I don't know. Rehearsal?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Once again, I'm amused at you, Paley. You select out ONLY *PART* of the overall argument I make, then answer it in circular fashion. I stated it clearly, unlike you in your previous posts, so I can only assume that you -- like most of your ilk -- are simply avoiding *that* reality, along with others. (like the tragic logical extension of your claim that the Aztec "truth" is justified by the bible).
I said quite clearly:
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If Paley knows that he has a True Bible, then Paley knows that he is not a brain in a vat. Paley does not know that he is not a brain in a vat. Therefore, Paley does not know that he has a True Bible.
You said your "special" faith allowed you "meta-justification" of your epistemic claims. I say you're as full of shite as an outhouse. I point out that your stance is fallacious. You say you know your stance is true..because of faith.
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I know I am not such a "Brain in a vat" because of my faith in the authority of God's Word
In this fallacy of circular reasoning, often called begging the question, you assume to be true what you are supposed to be proving.
You cannot invoke the Bible or your faith in it as "meta-justification" in anything -- because you cannot rely on it or claims of god to show you "know" any such thing about you NOT being a brain in a vat.
I don't and didn't claim to have "meta-justification" for my epistemology, Paley. You did. I showed *your* claim to be as hollow as your YEC dreams. That is all I wanted to do, and all I did do.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hello everyone! Let's review some highlites from yesterday.
First, I'd like to clearly depict the Human-Chimp-Gorilla debate so we all are on the same page. Are you ready?
THE EXPERTS SAY THAT . . .
THIS GUY AND THIS GUY
ARE MORE CLOSELY RELATED THAN . . .
THIS GUY AND THIS GUY
OK? Are we clear? This is scientists that say this, mind you ... the cream of the intellectual crop. The barons of academia.
And what's more, we're right.
We also say that the earth goes round the sun. Now you can post a picture of the sun rising and the sun setting, and say "Look! The scientists say that this is caused by the earth rotating! Ha ha ha!"
Hint, Dave: your ignorance makew your opinions about natural science worthless. Swallow your pride, it goeth before a fall.
How do you know this? You only have the beliefs of the scientists to go on. Since nobody was there; there is no firsthand evidence.
Bill, you're losing me here. What kind of epistemological mushy-headedness is this? How do you "know" that the Bible is true? Because your faith tells you so? Is your faith that the Bible is correct somehow more valid than my belief that the thousands of working scientists out there who have devoted collective millennia of their lives to figuring out how the world works?
Frankly, I don't think so.
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With respect to this issue, you do not even have the illusion of "reproducibility" you allude to in your subsequent paragraphs. The only "evidence" that the age of the earth is four billion years as opposed to its actual age of six thosand years are question-begging assumptions based on the evolutionists' artificially constructed belief system.
The only "evidence" you have that the world is 6,000 years old is one source: a copy of a copy of a copy of a bad translation of a haphazard collection of tales that were passed down for generations orally before there was even a written language to record it in. I'll take the reasoning abilities of generations of scientists over faith any day. I think your assumptions are way less defensible than mine. I guess we'll just have to disagree on this subject, but in the meantime, would you care to enlighten me on exactly what these "question-begging assumptions" are that you and Mr. Hawkins have been alluding to? So far, it looks like so much hand-waving to me.
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However, don't feel bad, circular reasoning based on such artificially constructed belief systems is all autonomous human reason is capable of.
Actually, I don't feel bad at all. I understand the difference between circular reasoning and inductive reasoning based on a dozen converging lines of evidence, all supporting each other. I also understand the difference between any kind of reasoning, and blind faith.
Eric writes:
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No event is truly reproducible. Each one is a single, isolated particular.
Oh, come off it, Bill. Don't be ridiculous. Of course there's a chance the sun won't rise tomorrow. Tell you what: I'll put my entire life savings up against the change in your pocket that it does. Are you willing to honestly take that bet?
The mass of the electron has been measured millions of times, and every time it comes up the same. Some guy forgets to get his units right, and comes up with a mass of 500,000 grams. Does that shake my confidence in what the real figure is? What do you think?
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You mistakenly start with universals--your so-called "Laws of Nature" as the scientific community teaches them-- and them attempt to determine the truth of particular claims--such as whether the creation of the universe described in the Book of Genesis--actually happened, with reference to them. This is a completely hollow approach.
You're right, Bill! What have I been thinking all these years? I see it all now! To every question, the answer is always the same. Jay-sus! What a fool I've been!
Sorry to be facetious, Bill, but seriously.
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To further bolster my case, you claim you can check the vaue of the speed of light if you are skeptical. I claim you can't do this. If you attempted to measure the speed of light and got a value of 200,000,000 m/s, you would not doubt the claims of the scientists, but only your own experimental skill.
You're arguing practicality. I'm arguing principle. You're saying that no matter how hard I try, no matter how dedicated I become, it can't be done.
And besides, you've got it totally wrong. If I measured the speed of light now, and got some weird answer (50 MPH; 2E35 m/s) I'd know something was wrong, because the actual value has been established conclusively. But what about, say the mass of the Higgs boson? No one knows what it is (although there are theoretical reasons to believe it's somewhere within a range of values). The first hundred stabs at a value might not even be that close. But as thousands, then tens of thousands, then millions of Higgs bosons are measured, and the all those energies converge on a particular value…you're claiming that scientists have no justification for believing that value is the correct one?
But what if the values don't converge, you might ask? Well, either there's something wrong with the methodology, or there's something wrong with the theory. But is the answer really there in your Bible, Bill, as to the One True Value?
In other words, you rule inductive reasoning out as invalid a priori?
As for the experimental skill, Bill, surely you know that it's possible to identify possible sources of error, don't you? Or, maybe you don't. Maybe you think there's no possible way to detect errors in the Bible.
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How is this different from a nine-year old who prays every day for a bicycle for Christmas, then fails to get it, concludes he has not prayed hard enough?
Here's how it's different, Bill. You publish a paper that sets forth your methodology. Lots of your colleagues scratch their heads over what appears to be an error. Eventually, someone figures out what it is. A few other people look at it, agree that there's the problem, so you fix that problem, and guess what? 300,000,000 m/s.
Or, you get a probability of something happening that's greater than one. Well, something's wrong somewhere! Hopefully, your own Feynmann will come along with a workaround.
Thusly, more or less, slowly or quickly, progress gets made.
In the meantime, Bill studies his one source of all evidence, and comes to the conclusion that the earth is 6,000 years old.
Sorry, Bill, but my money's on the Feynmanns of the world.
And I was starting to respect you intellectually, Bill. Well, I guess I still do respect you intellectually. I just question your judgment. I think that's where the problem is.
Eric, you fail to divine my meaning. I do not rule out inductive reasoning a priori. I only claim such resoning can not be grounded in autonomous human intellect. Continuing with David Hume's problem of determining if the sun will rise, both of us know it will, and I would be a fool to make the sort of bet you proposed. The difference is that I can meta-justify my knowledge from the Bible. Genesis states God ordained the greater light to rule the day (sun), and the lesser light to rule the night (moon). This is how the knowledge of this event can be properly grounded.
You claim there is some small "probability" that the sun will not rise. Well, what is that probability? From the point of view of autonomous reason, proability can only be known if we already have access to all the particulars--such as the probability of drawing an ace based on the fact you have a standard fifty-two card deck. You do not have direct access to all of time, so you can not know all of these particulars. Hence, you can not ground this knowledge in deductive probability. For the Biblically grounded reasons given above, although I am not certain about God's will concerning the rising of the sun tomorrow, I can know that if it fails to rise means it is his time to end this world. Therefore, even if I win this bet it will be impossible to collect upon it.
As far as your distinction between principle and practicality goes. Practiaclity--that is, particulars--is all we have direct access to using our sin-cursed minds. You give the example of doing a test over and over again and then seeing if the results converge, such as the case with the speed of light. However, the only ones capable of doing this are the scientific community--the same community of high priests of the evolutionist religion whose opinions are being questioned. You are back to the beginning of the same circle that you started in. Now, I am not saying the accepted value of the speed of light is wrong, only that it can not be known by autonomous human reason alone.
I'm glad that you admit you trust the opinions of this community as opposed to those of the Bible. Now, we are on the same page. So, tell me, how does scientific opinion account for human morality? The Bible can do this just fine. The knowledge of good and evil is beyond the scope of science, but can be accounted for using the Bible as a guide. Hence, my epistemological foundations are more cogent than yours. The ball's back in your court.
One does not need to be able to identify all the original kinds in order to have a valid hypothesis that there were, in fact, distinct created kinds.
Yeah! He doesn't need to ape your pathetic level of detail!
Nice verb choice, BTW.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
As for you, Dave, I'll only ask you to clarify AND cite your sources for your claim that:
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'Homonoid' (there, is that better?) civilizations SHOULD BE a prediction of ToE and they were early on.
I doubt you can. Darwin was only aware of Neanderthalensis (1857). He published The Origin in 1859. I know of no time when he proposed that neanders would/should be shown to have "civilizations"
Also, Dave, before you use big, unfamiliar (to you) words like "hominid," "hominoid," and "civilization," I suggest you look each one up. You're confusing the first two.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Your post was on epistemology, Paley. I suggest you read up on it.
The subject involves the origins and nature of knowledge -- and its relation to ideas of truth and belief (or faith, if you will). In a succinct phrase, it's about "How you claim to know what you claim to know." You use relativism to claim that Science has no particularly good claim to "knowing," then state that your faith in the bible "meta-justifies" your claims to knowing. But you fail to justify your claim about your faith being meaningful in relation to epistemology. As I said :
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If Paley knows that he has a True Bible, then Paley knows that he is not a brain in a vat.
Paley does not know that he is not a brain in a vat.
Therefore, Paley does not know that he has a True Bible.
You cannot claim the bible as "meta-justification" at all... If you say you can, refute what I just said.
The reason I tossed that out was your bizarre concatenation of claims/conclusions, Paley. To wit:
Fractatious quotes you as saying:
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It is possible for humans to have knowledge without reading a word of Scripture, but the existence of that knowledge depends on the Bible being true
She cites the example of the Aztecs, among others. Then you say :
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I specifically said the Bible was not necessary to have knowledge, but only to meta-justify knowledge
while you insulted her as "a true idiot"
Let's look at the logical extensions of your "logic."
I can only read your statement to mean that you believe that the Bible is true for all time, regardless of its temporal oral/written status. That the Aztecs "need" the Bible for what they "knew" to be true...to be true. This is amusing. The Aztecs probably did indeed offer up sacrifices ( If you don't accept that, then I can mention cultures that definitely did). I could also mention cultures that definitely "knew" it true that cannibalism of select parts of ritual sacrifices would lead to the magical importation of desired qualities into their own bodies. This would mean, by your logic, that what they "knew" to be true could only be true due to..the bible. This is the first time that I've heard of the Bible used as justification for the epistemic "truth" of ritual sacrifice and cannibalism. Good Job!!!
Deadman:
First, learn the difference between the physical and moral realms or else improve your reading comprehension. I only claim Aztec preists had knowledge of how to kill adolescent girls by bashing their skulls in, not that such an abominable practice is morally justified in any way! In addition, nowhere did I claim such practices had the kind of significance such priests assumed. Since their gods were mere figments of their imagination, or perhaps demons, they had no power to make the crops grow, ensure victory in battle, or any of those other things, despite what the Aztecs believed. This is no different than Eric's point about the speed of light. The evolutionist priesthood claims to have the correct speed of light, even though they can't meta-justify such knowledge, I'll admit they're probably correct. This does not mean they are correct about the alleged "relationship" between apes and humans. Again, you can have knowledge without the Bible, but you can not have knowledge that you have knowledge without it.
In addition, I'm glad you brought up moral questions. The Bible can account for human moral knowledge, while science can not, even if it can account for knowledge of the physical world. One you leave the realm of physis and enter the realm of nomos all science is worthless, but the Bible still stands strong as ever!
Finally, I was wondering if the non de plume "Deadman" is meant to be a reflection or your intellect, your smell, or some combination thereof.
Again, you can have knowledge without the Bible, but you can not have knowledge that you have knowledge without it.
And again, this is irrelevant for scientific purposes. We rely on methodological naturalism because it works.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Finally, I was wondering if the non de plume "Deadman" is meant to be a reflection or your intellect, your smell, or some combination thereof.
Good one. I recommend you insult his mother next. That should finish him off.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Once again, I'm amused at you, Paley. You select out ONLY *PART* of the overall argument I make, then answer it in circular fashion. I stated it clearly, unlike you in your previous posts, so I can only assume that you -- like most of your ilk -- are simply avoiding *that* reality, along with others. (like the tragic logical extension of your claim that the Aztec "truth" is justified by the bible).
I said quite clearly:
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If Paley knows that he has a True Bible, then Paley knows that he is not a brain in a vat. Paley does not know that he is not a brain in a vat. Therefore, Paley does not know that he has a True Bible.
You said your "special" faith allowed you "meta-justification" of your epistemic claims. I say you're as full of shite as an outhouse. I point out that your stance is fallacious. You say you know your stance is true..because of faith.
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I know I am not such a "Brain in a vat" because of my faith in the authority of God's Word
In this fallacy of circular reasoning, often called begging the question, you assume to be true what you are supposed to be proving.
You cannot invoke the Bible or your faith in it as "meta-justification" in anything -- because you cannot rely on it or claims of god to show you "know" any such thing about you NOT being a brain in a vat.
I don't and didn't claim to have "meta-justification" for my epistemology, Paley. You did. I showed *your* claim to be as hollow as your YEC dreams. That is all I wanted to do, and all I did do.
Well Deadman, you're actually correct; I am a sinner too. As such, I have no choice but to reason in a circle. As the theologian Cornelius Van Til put it, you can either reason in a circle or reason in a vicious circle. However, the circle I reason in provides a metajustification for all types of knowledge, while your vicious circle does not.
Again, you can have knowledge without the Bible, but you can not have knowledge that you have knowledge without it.
Wow.
This exact same logic would also hold for the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Satanic Bible, Dianetics, the Bhagavad Gita, and Steal This Book.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Bill, you and I can't really have this argument. Sorry.
Here's the problem. In order for you and I to discusss this subject constructively, we would have to first agree on a few foundational issues. Principal among them, of course, would be the proposition that the Bible is the revealed word of God, and that one can divine His will from a study of the Bible. On that very fundamental point, you and I simply do not agree enough to take this discussion further.
For example:
Quote (The Ghost of Paley @ May 26 2006,12:26)
Eric, you fail to divine my meaning. I do not rule out inductive reasoning a priori. I only claim such resoning can not be grounded in autonomous human intellect.
The problem is, from my perspective, the Bible itself is grounded in autonomous human intellect, not the product of divine inspiration. Therefore, everything in the Bible is subject to the same errors, misconceptions, flawed reasoning, and stupidities as any other creation of man. From my perspective, the principal difference between the Bible and more recent accounts of experience is that the Bible was written by men (not by God) with extremely limited experience of the world.
Scientific knowledge has (as I suspect even you would be forced to admit) proceeded by leaps and bounds since the time Genesis was written. This is why I trust what scientists now believe to be true more than I trust the beliefs of fallible, ignorant people six millennia ago.
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Continuing with David Hume's problem of determining if the sun will rise, both of us know it will, and I would be a fool to make the sort of bet you proposed. The difference is that I can meta-justify my knowledge from the Bible.
But you can't, Bill. At least, not with me. As far as I'm concerned, the Bible has no more epistemic validity than the X-Men movie that's about to lower the average quality at Cannes.
Sorry, I'm sure you think I'm a godless heathen for saying so, but it's not like I haven't spent a significant portion of the last 40 years thinking about this, and I doubt anything you can say will change my mind on the topic.
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I'm glad that you admit you trust the opinions of this community as opposed to those of the Bible. Now, we are on the same page. So, tell me, how does scientific opinion account for human morality? The Bible can do this just fine. The knowledge of good and evil is beyond the scope of science, but can be accounted for using the Bible as a guide. Hence, my epistemological foundations are more cogent than yours. The ball's back in your court.
I wouldn't use the term "admit" (brag might be more appropriate! ), but to answer your question: the short answer is that science does not account for human morality. A longer answer would be that evolutionary theory could account for human morality on the basis that societies that can avoid killing themselves off have a greater fitness than those that cannot, and therefore have a higher probability for success, etc. etc. etc., but the larger point is that the Bible cannot account for human morality either, Bill. The Bible is a collection of tales, told by human beings, in an attempt to a) explain the world around us, and b) to provide a blueprint for a successful human society. In essence, I would say that science provides at least as good an accounting for the existence of the Bible as the Bible provides for human morality.
I can see where this discussion is headed, Bill, and frankly thinking about it makes me weary. We'll end up at loggerheads over the ultimate provenance of the Bible, and I suspect neither of us will make any headway convincing the other. So, instead, I suggest you concentrate on your cosmological model, where at least we should be able to play by the same rules. On this topic, we're not just not playing by the same rules; we're not even playing the same game.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
"Hey boss." "Yeah Terry, what is it?" "I did those studies on wear, and friction coefficients, and we should tell our customers to change the oil every 5,000 miles." "How can you meta-justify that?" "Huh?" "How can you meta-justify that?" "Uh...I ran a bunch of car engines in various conditions and had Frank measure the wear and tear with micrometers and such." "No, that's justification, how can you meta-justify it?" "What? Dude, it's an engine. We studied it. We know when to change the oil." "Is the bible true?" "What? I don't know." "Well, Terry, when to change the oil depends on whether or not the bible is true." "What are you talking about? I just figured out when to change the oil." "Did you prove the bible was true?" "No." "Well, then you didn't really prove when to change the oil. Get back to me when you've proven it." "You're a retard."
Jeannot has been sticking to scientific sounding arguments until yesterday ... he's gotten tired and finally joined the "Insult Hurlers" with something to the effect of "Dave, don't you get tired of looking like a buffoon in public?..."
Sorry Dave, that's just what you are. If you can't get a single sientific argument, at least you seem to have understood my last post. It's impossible to discuss biology with you, or even science in general. That would require a minimum level of education and honesty. Man, you don't even know were you come from. I pity you. You should really go back to AiG with you friends YEC, but don't try to argue with educated people here.
Eric Murphy has always impressed me as being quite level headed, but yesterday he came up with a nice blooper something to the effect of "Dave, you know if you don't show up on Aftershave's thread, you are admitting defeat, don't you?" To quote someone famous, I have to say "Wow!" just "Wow!" So now anyone can defeat anyone else's arguments simply by starting a new thread and noting that the person does not show. Eric, let me throw you a rope, my friend. Come back up!
Dave, again you're confusing "evidence" with "proof." Your unwillingness to post on the "YEC evidence" thread is evidence that you don't have any such evidence. That's not the same thing (not even close) to saying your failure to do so is "proof" that you don't have anything.
I also never said anything about your admitting defeat. You're making assumptions that aren't warranted by what I said. I don't expect you'll ever admit defeat, even when you are defeated (and experience backs me up on that belief).
But I do not now, nor have I ever, expected you to actually come up with affirmative evidence for a young earth. Your unwillingness to post on a thread asking for exactly that evidence is further evidence that I'm correct in my expectation.
But it's evidence, not proof. Are we clear on the difference now?
That being said, I'll now provide my brand-new hypothesis (what can I say? I'm not the quickest on the draw around there) that Dave never had any intention of supporting his hypothesis. His actual intent was to make outlandish assertions about the evidence in support of evolution, to provoke rebuttals, that he could then poke holes in not with the people here, who can see through Dave's arguments with their eyes closed, but with the people he sees at church on Sundays.
But again, Dave, this is only a hypothesis, backed up with a certain amount of evidence. It's an easily falsifiable hypothesis, too, if you can show me that you actually plan to defend your hypothesis with some evidence which, I cannot fail to point out, you have not yet done.
So have at it man!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh, Eric ... I do know the difference in a research report and an analysis report, and I know Dr. Anderson's was not an original research report, but literature surveys are quite valuable. Your people use them all the time too.
Dave, again, you're missing the point.
I wasn't saying that literature reviews are any less valuable than papers describing original research. The problem with Dr. Anderson's paper is that he completely distorts the actual state of the literature, making his paper not just worthless, but actively harmful (look how he's skewed your understanding of the evidence, Dave).
But again, Dave, I challenge you to find an actual research paper that actually describes an actual experiment, that has ever been done by a creationist that is anything other than a reinterpretation of data already accumulated by real scientists. I already know you can't do it, because real scientists have done exhaustive searches of the literature, and such papers simply do not exist.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You compare the plans and specs for all five alternators. You find numerous spelling errors, reversed signs, etc. in all of them. But you note that in specs for two of the models, the exact same errors occur, mixed in with other random errors. I.e., not all of the errors in those two are identical, but some of them are, and are not identical to the errors in any of the other three.
Here we go again, rehashing Dr. Max's line of reasoning. We already debunked this ... remember?
No, Dave, "we" didn't "debunk" Max's line of reasoning. You believe you've debunked it, but have you noticed that you didn't persuade anyone? You couldn't even persuade anyone that you understand Max's line of reasoning.
Yet another example of Dave claiming victory when everyone else knows he's been beheaded.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And there we have it. A pilot presumably once in charge of finely calibrated instrumentation can't accept the relevance of "one half of one lousy percentage point", despite the fact that it refers to literally millions of data points examined, despite the fact that, as in the original paper, we're really talking about relative differences averaging around 50%, and despite the fact that these results are demonstrably statistically significant (p<<0.001). In other words, there is far (far! less than a one-in-a-thousand chance that this pattern arose by chance. Dave, for an engineer, you really don't know much about math and numbers. I really don't know which way this tips the idiot vs. liar scale
. Stick to biology, Incorygible. You do very well coming up with nice tables, but you are out to lunch in analyzing them. Also, you people who are slinging around the millions of nucleotides that are identical (or hundreds or thousands, or whatever it is) as if this helps your case, listen to me -- Why do you think everyone talks about the PERCENT difference or similarity instead of the actual numbers of nucleotides? It's because the actual number of nucleotides don't matter. The percent matters. And guess what ... it doesn't mean squat that Humans and Gorillas and Chimps are all within a half a % or so. That's like saying they look alike. OK. SO they look alike in some ways. I already knew that. Tell me something I don't know. It is simply not determinative between Common Descent and Common Design. We have to look at many other factors if we want to determine between Common Descent and Common Design. I have gone over this several times.
Dave:
I'd stick to biology if I could, but it turns out my degree is a joint one between the Dept. of Eco/Evo and the Dept. of Math. Meanwhile...
You can't do math. You have no idea what numbers are actually important. You certainly can't place them in anything close to a relevant context. Please feel free to fly the plane I'm having designed for you -- the landing gear falls off on only one measely percentage point of all touchdowns. Enjoy.
I look forward to your reply to that long post where I actually took your agrandized "hypothesis", drew inferences that you would be hard-pressed to challenge, and tested them against real independent data. I did more with your hypothesis than you ever could or will. Too bad that one testable nugget turned out to be horribly, horribly wrong. Of course, I'm sure your response will just (yet again) demonstrate that you can't do science, either.
You're an ignorant, arrogant fool, Dave, but it's nice that you make it so plain to see in so many ways. I'm done pointing it out to you in sublime detail.
But before I go, I'd like to thank you. Human evolution was always a sidenote in my education. Oh, I knew the basics and the numbers, but I'd never actually delved into the primary literature. In that long post, where I conducted the little mathematical exercise to see what evolutionary theory might have predicted prior to genetics, I had absolutely no idea the numbers would turn out so bloody close to the genetic data. (Oh, I knew they'd be better than yours, but that's not saying much.) It was quite the thrill (the thrill of actual science, Dave -- you'll NEVER know it) to take my hypothesis and simplistic model, test it blindly (assumptions, simplifications and all) against good, prolific, independent data, and see it supported. Very fun. I think it will be a good exercise for my students.
Thanks again, Dave. Nice known' ya.
At this point, I'll turn this thread over to ghost of paley. He seems to be itchin' for it.
You know, Dave, what's driving everyone crazy here is that you've been totally, completely, comphrehensively wrong about every single thing you've said about evolution. Even simple things, like "there are only a few teeny tiny little pieces of evidence here and there, and they're all being rapidly refuted." Statements like that earn you nothing but contempt here.
In general, I try to maintain a civil tone in my posts (except with Thordaddy, who richly deserves whatever he gets), but you're really testing my patience. When someone breezes into a discussion group populated by geneticists, biologists, zoologists, etc., and posts a few pictures of humans, chimps, and gorillas, as if that demonstrates anything other than an abysmal ignorance of science in general, to say nothing of evolutionary biology, I can't imagine he'd be surprised when he gets heaped with scorn.
I have to admit, Dave, I've mainly responded to you for the entertainment value. But beyond a certain point, utter, screaming ignorance starts to wear thin, especially when it's accompanied by the kind of arrogance demonstrated by a guy with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering who believes he's qualified to go head-to-head with people with graduate degrees in actually relevant fields.
The truth is, Dave, you haven't given anyone here anything to think about, other than to marvel at how someone who obviously isn't completely stupid can be so utterly blinded by ideology. Your arguments are laugable, comical. And after a while, they get wearisome, especially when you continue to assert victory on subjects where your arguments have been annihilated, laid waste, and otherwise hammered into the ground.
Sorry for the rant, but you're starting to get under my skin, and not for the reasons you think you are.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
At this point, I'll turn this thread over to ghost of paley. He seems to be itchin' for it.
So is there any possible way we can provoke GoP & AFD into getting into an argument with each other?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
Okay, Steve.
I see what you're doing.
Stop right there.
You purposely picked out some AFD idiocy on language in hopes of provoking me into actually responding to him. Worse, arguing with him.
Poking the gorilla with a stick, as it were.
Well, it won't work, okay? ? ?
(However, my amusement WAS piqued by this:)
Quote
created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so)
I would love to hear how the True Christians Dave has read came up with '12 or so'. It's sort of like speculating on the tooth fairy's shoe size.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
Just out of curiosity, Dave: what's your null hypothesis here? Also, what data would you accept as having falsified your hypothesis about languages?
If you can't think of a way for your hypothesis to be falsified, then how will you ever know if it's wrong?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
[quote=afdave,May 26 2006,11:39][/quote] Ooooh boy. Yet another post from La-La Land by Dave... this time with pictures! Wheee!
Has everybody noticed how, the more sincere his posts get, the more evident his inability to understand even the basics of science, along with his childish behavior, become?
Anyway Dave, once again, I'll be responding to the parts where I'm concerned (although it's hard to resist to make fun of your assertion that you "debunked" Max, when in fact you proved to be unable to grasp anything he says, but anyway).
Quote
Faid-- This proves MY point, not yours. But thanks for agreeing with me inadvertently.
Oh really? Please be as kind as to demonstrate how this proves your point. That is, without accidentally debunking yourself and looking like a fool. To help you, let me say again that my point is that human language is in its essence arbitrary, and therefore any simillarities and/or differences between words have nothing to do with the meanings they have in the real world. Well?
Quote
No connection, huh? OK, then let's do an operation on you and splice any old sequence into your genes (can they do that?) and see what happens?
What, any old sequence? Well, if anything haqppens at all, I'll probably get cancer. But tell me, what do you think would happen to you, dave? Would you grow flippers or feathers, perhaps? A tentacle? How about just an extra limb? That can't be that hard. Or maybe get covered with scales? Elephant ears? Chicken feet? Come on, the possibilities are endless... ...No need to feel embarrassed- I don't blame you. It's natural to have such a flawed perception of genetics, when your only knowledge about it comes from B-movies and comic books.
Quote
thought of that. It's a good consideration. But remember, my little sentence "My dog was running around and barking all over my deck" is a very small sentence (a genetic snippet?) in a very large book (the genome). You cannot make the huge change from a dog "book" to a cat "book" by changing one letter of one sentence.
Dave, dave, dave... That is what YOU are saying. A simple change in a "letter" changes the meaning to something completely different, although equally meaningful- That is your "language" analogy, remember? That is how you explain the 98% human-chimp simillarity, remember? Or are you gonna jump from one contrary argument to the other when the previous is refuted, like you did with the GULO gene?
Anyway... By spotting tell-tale signs like "that man 2000 years ago" and "remember that Pharaoh's name?", I predict that your posts will get more and more amusing as you run out of sciency-looking "arguments" from your favorite sources. Especially since you gave up all pretense about your true motives for coming here. Which reminds me: When you show your cute comparison picture as a slide to those poor kids (as I'm sure you intend to), why not have this follow it:
* Aftershave is hanging out on a dead end thread hoping I'll come visit him. Arden has correctly guessed that I won't show. I would guess that Arden has been around the block a time or two more than Aftershave.
Of course Dave, we have all know from the start that you wouldn't post anything on the "AFDave's YEC evidence" thread because you have NO YEC evidence TO post. Zip. Nada. Zilch. None.
The thread was only started to highlight the fact of what an arrogant but ignorant liar you are. Face it Washout, your only value here now is for comic relief. It's a hoot seeing fundy clowns like you strut and crow, and manage to get almost every last bit of scientific information dead wrong. Does being that stupid cause you actual physical pain, or have you gotten use to it by now?
It's a shame you're such a chickenshit and run from all the serious challenges to your "hypothesis". You seem to be used to being thought a coward - I bet you've been hearing it your whole life, right?
If you every decide to stand and fight instead of running away, here are the questions on peer review for the seventh time:
1. Should all scientific findings be required to undergo a critical peer-review process before being deemed acceptable for teaching in schools?
2. Who are the best qualified people to do rigorous critical scientific peer-reviews?
3. Why should the opinion of an ignorant layman about scientific findings carry more weight than the opinions of well trained professional scientists in the relevant fields of study?
Call us when you decide to slink out of your chicken coop.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Yet another example of Dave claiming victory when everyone else knows he's been beheaded.
I'm not claiming victory ... I'm not that audacious. But I do feel it's appropriate to add the rest of the data into my posts that you guys like to leave out.
I don't know if either side will ever be able to claim victory in a complete sense. I just feel your evidence on the Ape/Human thing is not real solid ...
...and of course I like poking fun with jokes and pictures!
Don't get mad. Just get even, see?! Post your own goofy pictures! I like creative insulting and creative debating. After all, this is not a stuffy peer-reviewed journal is it?
Eric, seriously ... Wesley has specifically asked for me not to have a THIRD thread. I can understand this and agree. I see no reason to proliferate threads. I'm not even sure how long I'll keep the "Evolution" thread alive. This thread is keeping me plenty busy as it is.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDAVE KNIGHT: I'm invincible! ARTHUR: You're a looney. AFDAVE KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then. [whop] [ARTHUR chops the AFDAVE KNIGHT's last leg off] AFDAVE KNIGHT: Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw. ARTHUR: Come, Patsy. AFDAVE KNIGHT: Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Aftershave-- Lighten up man ... or you're going to have to go see a shrink ... have some fun!
Actually Dave, I'm having great fun! It's been a while since we've seen any Fundy fanatic with his head stuck up his ass as far as you have managed. You have your pinhead shoved in so deep you need a glass belly button as a porthole to see out.
Oh, and besides cowardly ignoring my questions again, you also forgot to answer Joe the Ordinary Guy's question:
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I'm beginning to notice that we have developed roles in this "debate". I'm starting to think it's getting to be about time to jump in here and fulfil the duties of my role. Hmmm. What do you suppose I might be about to say?
GoP? 1/2 a Dave? T-diddy?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
As for you, Dave, I'll only ask you to clarify AND cite your sources for your claim that: (AFDaveKnight says)
Quote
'Homonoid' (there, is that better?) civilizations SHOULD BE a prediction of ToE and they were early on.
I doubt you can. Darwin was only aware of Neanderthalensis (1857). He published The Origin in 1859. I know of no time when he proposed that neanders would/should be shown to have "civilizations"
Also, Dave, before you use big, unfamiliar (to you) words like "hominid," "hominoid," and "civilization," I suggest you look each one up. You're confusing the first two.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Okay, Steve. You win. You successfully provoked me.
Quote
We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
This is totally wrong. After the Tower of Babel, there were no more or less than forty-seven languages created. Exactly that number.
Prove me wrong, God Boy, PROVE ME WRONG!!!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Hey, I'm still waiting for my finale! Get in line! (I love that "It's AFDave, sir -- he won't engage!" quote from earlier).
I'm waiting for Dave to show me exactly why a key component of his thread-title hypothesis that I tested for him (and found completely unable to predict observations) can't really be tested, dontcha know. But I'm sure he'll just rant and rave about how the reality isn't real and statistically significant isn't significant. Maybe I'll get another ape picture. (On the plus side, by looking at things in a different way, we're talking about 20 and 33 and 60 percent, so maybe the numbers will mean something to him!
Dave, actually, evolutionary biologists already did declare victory, a long time ago. Did you not get the memo?
The truth is, there is no competing theory for the development of life on earth. Creationism is not a "theory." It's a wild guess. ID isn't even a wild guess.
Quote (afdave @ May 26 2006,14:16)
I just feel your evidence on the Ape/Human thing is not real solid ...
Dave, the reasons you don't think the evidence is solid is because you don't understand the evidence. You're simply not equipped to make credibility assessments of evidence you don't understand in the first place. So your incredulity is vastly unimpressive.
Quote
Don't get mad. Just get even, see?!
No can do, Dave. The problem is, you don't have the basic toolkit necessary to play this game. I'm far from being a trained scientist, believe me, but I have some understanding of the basic tools scientists use to make headway in reducing the bounds of the unknown and increasing the area of the known. You don't know what those tools are, and as a result, we end up just talking past each other. Your comment about "half of one lousy percent" is a perfect example of this. If you had any idea of how close other organisms are to humans genetically, you never would have made that statement.
Quote
Eric, seriously ... Wesley has specifically asked for me not to have a THIRD thread. I can understand this and agree. I see no reason to proliferate threads. I'm not even sure how long I'll keep the "Evolution" thread alive. This thread is keeping me plenty busy as it is.
We're not asking you to start a new thread, Dave. The thread is already there. It's a challenge to you, to support your assertions. You haven't done so, which leads one to suspect that you cannot do so. Again, not proof, but evidence.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
This is totally wrong. After the Tower of Babel, there were no more or less than forty-seven languages created. Exactly that number.
Forty six and a half. AFDave informs me that Polish is simply a mixture of Creole and Japanese.
No, Dave told me that Icelandic is actually half a language. That gets the total back to 47.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'm with dave's logic. I've looked at british 'english' and american 'english', and while they're about 98% similar, this doesn't mean anything about some 'common ancestor' english. As far as I can tell, each language with individually poofed into existence. And all the experts who unanimously say otherwise are wrong.
I'm with dave's logic. I've looked at british 'english' and american 'english', and while they're about 98% similar, this doesn't mean anything about some 'common ancestor' english. As far as I can tell, each language with individually poofed into existence. And all the experts who unanimously say otherwise are wrong.
As I understand it, the Tower of Babel was sort of a sloppy, imprecise affair. After the Tower had been zapped and everybody came to, not all of them had different languages. Some of them were standing off to the side, and thus were only sort of grazed. These people still spoke the same languages, but with different accents. I'm told this is where Cockney comes from.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Hello everyone! Let's review some highlites from yesterday.
First, I'd like to clearly depict the Human-Chimp-Gorilla debate so we all are on the same page. Are you ready?
THE EXPERTS SAY THAT . . .
THIS GUY AND THIS GUY
ARE MORE CLOSELY RELATED THAN . . .
THIS GUY AND THIS GUY
OK? Are we clear? This is scientists that say this, mind you ... the cream of the intellectual crop. The barons of academia.
And what's more, we're right.
We also say that the earth goes round the sun. Now you can post a picture of the sun rising and the sun setting, and say "Look! The scientists say that this is caused by the earth rotating! Ha ha ha!"
Hint, Dave: your ignorance makew your opinions about natural science worthless. Swallow your pride, it goeth before a fall.
That's because the sun really does rise and set just like the Bible says. for all their talk of "empiricism," evolutionistic presuppositions just take men on flights of fantasy. It is Biblical presuppositions that really help us explain how the world really is. The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly!
It is the same with the relationship between apes and humans. It's obvious from looking at them gorillas and chimps are more like each other than humans and chimps--even humans as ugly as Dawkins! The Bible explains this all along, while evolutionists play with their Nimrodian mysticism of "genetic testing" in order to "prove" the opposite. How can people be so immoral and stupid?!
The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly!
Is GOP a satire? or is he serious -- it's so hard to tell these days.
* Hey Paley, how about starting your own thread? You seem like a celebrity around here ... I'm sure people would like to argue with you.
Dave, brother in Christ, as a military man I think you are aware of the paramount importance of the distinction between friend and foe. Which one do you consider me to be, and why?
That's because the sun really does rise and set just like the Bible says. for all their talk of "empiricism," evolutionistic presuppositions just take men on flights of fantasy. It is Biblical presuppositions that really help us explain how the world really is. The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly
Okay, now either someone has taken over Paley's brain, or he's just fucking with us. Objectively, there's no way to distinguish between the two.
Quote
* Hey Paley, how about starting your own thread? You seem like a celebrity around here ... I'm sure people would like to argue with you.
But, um, I thought Paley had started his own thread here! Like, three or four of them!?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
That's because the sun really does rise and set just like the Bible says. for all their talk of "empiricism," evolutionistic presuppositions just take men on flights of fantasy. It is Biblical presuppositions that really help us explain how the world really is. The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly!
Bill, just to refresh my memory: according to the Bible, is the earth an oblate spheroid, or is it an infinite plane? Or is it some other thing? A cube, perhaps?
I honestly don't know, so please enlighten me. If that's really the word.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
"22": It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
"23": That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
(KJV Isaiah 41:21-23)
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly! )
One more question, Bill: was Isaac Newton an "evolutionist"? Or was Gallileo?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
That's because the sun really does rise and set just like the Bible says.
What is it exactly, that raises and lowers the sun in the sky?
Quote
How can people be so immoral and stupid?!
Obviously we like doing stuff like killing babies. Even if this were true, it's interesting that apparently such an act would be morally equivalent, in your eyes, to not worshipping God.
With AFDave, the delusion seems real. I'd be willing to bet a goodly sum that he views himself as a "knight of jesus" jousting with the heathens..all to compensate for whatever lack of self-esteem drives him (personally, I think it's his father's doing).
Paley, on the other hand, reminds me of the immature 30-year-old that calls up talk radio stations to boost his ego. He does a drive-by announcement of a ridiculous geocentric model like the weird kid in class basically begging: "Look at meeeeee!!"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hmm... I wonder if Ghost is gonna throw the entire theory of relativity out the window, too...
Anyway, and considering his latest solipsistic tendencies, I think it would be safer if he was kept away from experiments involving single photons and prisms... (wink wink -if only I could remember who wrote that novel...)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it.
I'm now ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that Ghost of Paley is the most elegant of trolls; but just to play along, I'd LOVE to know how he explains the precession of the Foucault pendulum which hangs outside my office.
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
Just out of curiosity, Dave: what's your null hypothesis here? Also, what data would you accept as having falsified your hypothesis about languages?
If you can't think of a way for your hypothesis to be falsified, then how will you ever know if it's wrong?
ericmurphy, I keep wanting to ask AirFarceDave to explain to me how his hypothesis is constrained, but I am quite certain he wouldn't even know what that meant and therefore don't see the point. (And no fair anybody explaining it to him!) I'll also admit that I can't be certain that I am myself using the word properly. Is a question of constraint the same as or similar to your questions?
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
I'm now ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that Ghost of Paley is the most elegant of trolls; but just to play along, I'd LOVE to know how he explains the precession of the Foucault pendulum which hangs outside my office.
I can't wait either. He's nuts if he thinks he can explain it.
Aftershave-- Lighten up man ... or you're going to have to go see a shrink ... have some fun!
Actually Dave, I'm having great fun! It's been a while since we've seen any Fundy fanatic with his head stuck up his ass as far as you have managed. You have your pinhead shoved in so deep you need a glass belly button as a porthole to see out.
Oh, and besides cowardly ignoring my questions again, you also forgot to answer Joe the Ordinary Guy's question:
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
I think that everyone who posts to Dave's threads should add this quote:
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
to the end of the post just to continually highlight that AirFarceDave has no evidence. Lurkers can't help but realize the totally farcical nature of his (should I even deign to call them) "arguments".
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
This is totally wrong. After the Tower of Babel, there were no more or less than forty-seven languages created. Exactly that number.
Forty six and a half. AFDave informs me that Polish is simply a mixture of Creole and Japanese.
Hey, its only 46. I have Polish friends that I love to listen to speaking (I think it is a prettier language than French) and they have informed me that you forgot to include the Inuit Influence of 1387 when a seal hunting fleet was blown off course and landed at Gdansk.
Edit- Hey AFDave:
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
That's because the sun really does rise and set just like the Bible says. for all their talk of "empiricism," evolutionistic presuppositions just take men on flights of fantasy. It is Biblical presuppositions that really help us explain how the world really is. The earth sits at the center and all other heavenly bodies revolve around it. (The powerful model convincing to anybody save the most stubborn evolutionist will be posted in another thread shortly
Okay, now either someone has taken over Paley's brain, or he's just fucking with us. Objectively, there's no way to distinguish between the two.
Quote
* Hey Paley, how about starting your own thread? You seem like a celebrity around here ... I'm sure people would like to argue with you.
But, um, I thought Paley had started his own thread here! Like, three or four of them!?
Paley is feeling neglected because AirFarce is getting all the attention.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
I think that everyone who posts to Dave's threads should add this quote:
shortest trend in history?
Sorry STJ, I have several response windows open at the same time and lose track.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
Hmm... I wonder if Ghost is gonna throw the entire theory of relativity out the window, too...
Relativity? I think he'll have to toss out Newtonian gravitation as well. Otherwise, how is he going to get the sun to go around the earth?
I seem to remember Bill saying something about the driving force in his model being electromagnetism, not gravity. Presumably Bill is aware that the net electromagnetic attraction between two electrically-neutral objects is zero.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
ericmurphy, I keep wanting to ask AirFarceDave to explain to me how his hypothesis is constrained, but I am quite certain he wouldn't even know what that meant and therefore don't see the point. (And no fair anybody explaining it to him!) I'll also admit that I can't be certain that I am myself using the word properly. Is a question of constraint the same as or similar to your questions?
Well, both concepts impinge on falsifiability, but they aren't synonymous. I'm going to decline to explain the difference for now, to see if a) Dave responds, and b) if his response makes any sense.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In my first year of physics, I had an astro guy who liked putting quack ideas on tests, and asking what kind of problems the idea had or what kind of experiments you'd do to disprove them. gravity is just an electromagnetic effect was one such quack idea.
Dave, brother in Christ, as a military man I think you are aware of the paramount importance of the distinction between friend and foe. Which one do you consider me to be, and why?
I don't know you well enough to know if you are friend or foe ... I suppose it depends on what topic you are arguing ...
I've never met a geocentrist before and this topic would seem appropriate on a different thread, since it has nothing to do with any of my points.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I've never met a geocentrist before and this topic would seem appropriate on a different thread, since it has nothing to do with any of my points.
Sure it does, Dave. It has to do with this point:
Quote
P. The Christian Scriptures consisting of the Jewish Scriptures plus what is commonly called the New Testament are the most basic and foundational collection of documents for all of mankind's activities on Planet Earth--from scientific endeavor to family activities to government structure. They also are the only reliable source documents for knowing the future of Planet Earth and Mankind in relation to it. As such, these Scriptures should be the basis and starting point for all human activities from individual behaviour to family operation to nation building and governance of human affairs to scientific endeavors and the arts. [emph. mine]
Where do you suppose Bill's geocentrism comes from, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Anyway, and considering his latest solipsistic tendencies, I think it would be safer if he was kept away from experiments involving single photons and prisms... (wink wink -if only I could remember who wrote that novel...)
Robert Anton Wilson?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OA: (AirFarceDave), You have your pinhead shoved in so deep you need a glass belly button as a porthole to see out.
Quote
sir_toejam:Daaammmmnn! That's a gud un!
Original or plucked?
If original, I think you should trademark that immediately.
Plucked. I've been using that for over 35 years now, but can't take credit. As a kid I swiped it from my older brother, who picked it up on his tour of duty in VietNam. When he got back he would talk about "getting a case of the ass at those G*ddamm glass belly button REMFs"
-------------------------------- AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I have analyzed your '1985 Evolutionary Predictions' piece ...
Questions ...
You say you start with the fossil record back in 1985 ...
1) How did you come up with the 8mya and 5mya numbers? 2) On what basis did you propose that gorillas diverged at 8mya, then chimps and humans diverged at 5mya?
Thanks!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, I'm getting the message that people want to hear my YEC evidence more often ... every post maybe? OK, why not.
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR
A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos--Hoyle, Penrose, etc. (2) Biological machines--Dawkins, Alberts, Denton, Behe (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (4) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims
[next on the agenda] B) YEC predicts a Young Earth (<10,000 years old) (1) Wrong assumptions for radio-metric dating explained (2) Multitude of young earth physical evidences explored (3) Why history books say world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier (4) RATE project explained (5) Why Kevin Henke fails in his 'RATE Debunking'
C) The Antediluvian World (1) Cain's wife (2) The origin of civilization (3) Misunderstandings about cavemen (4) Kinds and speciation ... and more
D) The Global Flood (1) Huge water-laid sediments all over the earth (2) Volcanism, tectonics and mountain forming (3) The Grand Canyon and Mt. Saint Helens ... and more
(This agenda may change in order as I get feedback and of course will expand ...)
We will repost this as often as people ask for it. I am working on creating links to my blog which will have all the supporting evidence summarized neatly.
Appleton said ...
Quote
Hey! He wasn't a flight school washout. He has seat time in both the T-38 and the UH-1, both of which are Phase 3 aircraft. He just couldn't finish his B-2 Training.
Good work Appleton ... just curious ... where did you find the info? Oh ... and I didn't apply to the B-2 program. Had no interest in being a bomber guy ... too boring. I asked for the B-2 Sim Instructor position as a comfy "getting out" job.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Anyway, and considering his latest solipsistic tendencies, I think it would be safer if he was kept away from experiments involving single photons and prisms... (wink wink -if only I could remember who wrote that novel...)
Robert Anton Wilson?
Hey, could be! All I remember is that it was about some scientist who believed that humanity's collective consciousness actually shapes reality, and modifies it as time goes by- and that's why the Earth was flat once, with the planets orbiting it, etc. And he had a plan to make reality collapse or something, involving a photon, a prism and... a mouse? Something like that. Totally up GoP's alley, if you ask me.
Anyway, if Paley ditches gravity and gets stuck with electromagnetism, and at the same time has to disregard Einsteinian relativity, then I predict his thread will soon turn to "Geocentricism II: Return of the Aether".
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
[snip]SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR[snip]
Dave, you are not finished yet. Now you have to show how this evidence supports the hypothesis, and only this hypothesis. You have to show how this hypothesis explains the evidence and does so better than the alternative hypothesis. You have to show us your testing of the hypothesis.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
AFDave would you please explain how your creator god hypothesis is constrained. No I won't explain what that means and how it applies to scientific hypotheses. It would probably be good for you to figure it out yourself. And Wikipedia won't be as helpful as you might hope. Yes, I figured out it means what I thought it meant and I got it from a real science book (written by a real scientist). You do have some of those, don't you Dave?
Oh, and by the way,
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Why AREN'T you presenting your YEC evidence?
OK. I'll change it now.
Quote
AFDave,
Just a quick question: Do you have any evidence that isn't standard creationist boilerplate, decades old, and was wrong even when new?
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
Anyway, if Paley ditches gravity and gets stuck with electromagnetism, and at the same time has to disregard Einsteinian relativity, then I predict his thread will soon turn to "Geocentricism II: Return of the Aether".
Too late; the aether is already a part of Bill's cosmology. Give the LUCA thread a gander.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Anyway, if Paley ditches gravity and gets stuck with electromagnetism, and at the same time has to disregard Einsteinian relativity, then I predict his thread will soon turn to "Geocentricism II: Return of the Aether".
Too late; the aether is already a part of Bill's cosmology. Give the LUCA thread a gander.
...
WHAAAAAA?
Does the Phlogiston have its place in there somewhere, too? I mean, if gravity doesn't exist, and everything is simply drawn towards the Center of the Universe, then how does the Sun ignite? (or stay in one piece, for that matter?)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
With AFDave, the delusion seems real. I'd be willing to bet a goodly sum that he views himself as a "knight of jesus" jousting with the heathens..all to compensate for whatever lack of self-esteem drives him (personally, I think it's his father's doing).
Mommies hairy helper. Yes AFDave never had a chance it was all over for him by about 7 years old. The best that can be said for him is that he is a functioning delusional with a pathological desire to martyr himself for some godhead personality cult (The son of Nortius Maximus)...by being really brave and taking one a Blog.....Heroic. Crucifixion? Good. Out of the door. Line on the left. One cross each. Next.
As Freud said it protects their minds from reality and his mothers fear of death
Quote
Paley, on the other hand, reminds me of the immature 30-year-old that calls up talk radio stations to boost his ego. He does a drive-by announcement of a ridiculous geocentric model like the weird kid in class basically begging: "Look at meeeeee!!"
Even GoP doesn't believe that ...he just thinks that any idiotic idea can be won in debate..masdebate is his case with added wrist action.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR
A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos--Hoyle, Penrose, etc. (2) Biological machines--Dawkins, Alberts, Denton, Behe (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (4) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims
[next on the agenda] B) YEC predicts a Young Earth (<10,000 years old) (1) Wrong assumptions for radio-metric dating explained (2) Multitude of young earth physical evidences explored (3) Why world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier (4) RATE project explained (5) Why Kevin Henke fails in his 'RATE Debunking' C) The Antediluvian World (1) Cain's wife (2) The origin of civilization (3) Misunderstandings about cavemen (4) Kinds and speciation ... and more D) The Global Flood (1) Huge water-laid sediments all over the earth (2) Volcanism and tectonics (3) The Grand Canyon and Mt. Saint Helens ... and more
(This agenda may change in order as I get feedback ... we'll see)
We will repost this as often as people ask for it. I am working on creating links to by blog which will have all the supporting evidence summarized neatly.
Quote
I think that these things should be answered before Incorygible gives you any more answers. Right, Incorygible?
Hey Argy ... this betrays your mistaken impression that I wanted some info from Incorygible.
If you will recall, he said it was important to him to hear my analysis of his piece.
I'm just trying to accomodate his request ... if he doesn't care after all, then why should I? My goals will be realized easier if he does not respond.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
mmm, I think we are not asking AFDave the good questions. He doesn't know squat about the scientific method.
First, we should ask him to describe precisely his two hypothesis : his Creator God hypothesis, AND the alternative, ie the Non-Creator God hypothesis. Then, he shall provide any possible observations that could falsify the former, hence confirming the latter. For example: what a poorly tuned universe would look like (considering that we exist of course), what would be a non-machine living being... Lastly, he shall explain why these observations could not possibly be compatible with a creator God.
Forget it jeannot there are no questions D/2 can parse. He is beyond help. Argumentum ad nausium is his stock in trade, cheaper by the infinity. Note how he trys to set the adgenda he will NEVER be educated. Sickening I know, a crime against humanity? Absolutely.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Evidence: support for the truth of a proposition, especially that derived from empirical observation and experiment. Evidence in science is distinct from that in law and other fields, largely due to its application in proving/disproving hypotheses. Recommended Reading: Karl R. Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery (Routledge, 1992).
You presented argument and conjecture, Dave. Even in a courtroom, however -- as people like you have seen time and again-- you'd still lose.
Oh, and Davey-boy? As far as your idea of linking to your blog is concerned : that's a big negatory, Whiskey Delta. Post it here -- I wouldn't want to give your crap site "hits"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos--Hoyle, Penrose, etc. (2) Biological machines--Dawkins, Alberts, Denton, Behe (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (4) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims
Hang on...I'm not actually going to roast Dave for presenting this as evidence...after all...he is just following in a long line of "god proofs"...
However, Dave you seriously need to consider the error of the "Universal moral code". While several teleological arguments can be constructed from #1 and #2....#3 falls far short.
If you need some help with this...realize that C.S. Lewis is the only one who makes this claim. While morality is a heavily studied topic in philosophy(Kant for example)...no one else has ever proposed universal morality.
AFDAVE...I am more than willing to engage in a PHILOSOPHICAL discussion on proof for God. I will agree with everyone though that you are not providing "Scientific" evidence for God.
Let's take Darwin's Theory...since it seems to be popularly disputed as scientific among YEC types. Darwin looked at nature, and formed a conjecture(that organisms evolved by natural selection). He then looked for wonderful examples of this(finches). He then proposed that we apply his model to all organisms and see if we could find exception.
The fine-tuned argument is not universal like evolution. 1. Your arguing on the uniqueness of reality(a singular thing)...this would be like Darwin creating his theory from only 1 finch 2. Whenever an ID argument is presented....several less than ideal examples can be presented that do not represent a finely-tuned argument. The role of the creator could be changed to fit these organisms(he is not a perfect-tuned creator)....but that then becomes an even vaguer term to prove
AFDAVE...I am more than willing to engage in a PHILOSOPHICAL discussion on proof for God. I will agree with everyone though that you are not providing "Scientific" evidence for God.
Puck, we tried to explain that to dave, like, 20 pages ago. At least I did, when I still thought he was sincere about his reasons for coming here. Don't bother.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I have analyzed your '1985 Evolutionary Predictions' piece ...
Questions ...
You say you start with the fossil record back in 1985 ...
1) How did you come up with the 8mya and 5mya numbers? 2) On what basis did you propose that gorillas diverged at 8mya, then chimps and humans diverged at 5mya?
Thanks!
Dave, are you engaging? This must be some kind of trick! I wasn't going to reply further, but this is a fair question. Unfortunately, I can only give you a general answer at the moment.
To get my estimates from the fossil record (and I should have been more accurate and said anything "non-genetic"), I initially searched ISI Web of Science abstracts from 1976-1985. Unfortunately, I couldn't immediately find the information I was looking for in the abstracts themselves with a few quick search strings. Online publication access doesn't generally go back that far (so I couldn't read the full papers I wanted to read), and you'll forgive me if I wasn't about to take any more time away from my actual work to trek across campus to the stacks. Luckily, our lab library has a dusty shelf of old texts on human evolution (everything from Louis Leaky to Desmond Morris). I picked an old physical anthropology textbook off the shelf (looked to be for an old undergrad course). If I recall correctly, it was a 2nd edition published in 1987, which I figured was close enough. I know the simplified numbers I used were the midpoints of ranges (4-6 mya and 5-10 mya, IIRC). However, for the exact bibliographic information, you'll have to wait until I'm actually back in the lab (middle of next week) and get a chance to look it up again. Okay?
In the meantime, maybe you could start on explaining why the Creation Theory prediction was QUALITATIVELY wrong?
Thanks.
Edit: Also, Dave, please keep in mind that I know those numbers have changed (and say so in my original post). For example, Dawkins (2004) gives 6 mya for chimps and 7 mya for gorillas, which would have made the numbers match up less well. What actually matters isn't the mya, but the time shared vs. time separate. For example, 3/8 shared (HC) that I used in our back-of-the-envelope calculation, vs. 1/7 shared (HC) that I would use if I started from Dawkins. So the value of the numbers I arrived at, while remarkably close to the genetic data, is probably just a coincidence, and could easily have been different (and I am well aware of this). So fun as it was to think that, if I had that textbook in '85 and had made my prediction, I would have been bang-on, this isn't really the point (kind of a fluke). The point is that evolutionary theory points us in the right direction (and gets us pretty close), and creation theory points us in the wrong direction. I'd be grateful if you could address that. Thanks.
I'm not so concerned with the labels we use for the discussion. I'm happy to accomodate people in that regard.
My interest lies in the substance.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
(3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
yeah and the Lard said "Thou shalt not disobey the Law of Gravity" etc etc etc
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Hey Argy ... this betrays your mistaken impression that I wanted some info from Incorygible.
Hmm, I wonder where I got that impression?
Quote
Incorygible--
I have analyzed your '1985 Evolutionary Predictions' piece ...
Questions ...
You say you start with the fossil record back in 1985 ...
1) How did you come up with the 8mya and 5mya numbers? 2) On what basis did you propose that gorillas diverged at 8mya, then chimps and humans diverged at 5mya?
...
Quote
If you will recall, he said it was important to him to hear my analysis of his piece.
Ah, so your analysis is "I dunno, I'm too lazy to look up some of the pertinant information. You look it up for me, but don't get back to me." Got it.
Oh, and do you predict that humans had an immune system before the fall? If so, why, and if not, where did it come from?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
D) The Global Flood (1) Huge water-laid sediments all over the earth (2) Volcanism and tectonics (3) The Grand Canyon and Mt. Saint Helens ... and more
Dave, "water-laid sediments" all over the Earth are interspersed with "wind-laid sediments", igneous rocks that were not formed underwataer, paleosols that take thousands of years to form and were not formed underwater, animal tracks, and all sorts of things that didn't happen in a flood. There is no one global layer of sediment that a flood would have left. That is, the water-laid sediments all over the Earth are evidence that there was no global flood.
Volcanism and tectonics are not evidence for or against a global flood.
The Grand Canyon was not formed by a global flood or runoff from one, of that we can be sure. Incised meanders are only one of the most obvious reasons why:
.
Mt. St. Helens is irrelevant to the global flood. The "little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River", formed shortly after the 1980's eruption, is also irrelevant to the the flood and the Grand Canyon. As has been pointed out many times in many forums, the canyon of the North Fork of the Toutle River (and any other "canyons" in the area, such as Engineer's Canyon) was not cut in solid rock; it was cut in soft, unconsolidated ash. We can see this easily because the walls of the canyon are not near-vertical (as we see in the Grand Canyon), but instead are near 45 degrees:
The debris avalanche that triggered the eruption slid north into Spirit Lake and west 25 kilometers down the North Fork Toutle River valley, covering the valley floor with unconsolidated debris to an average depth of 45 meters and as much as 180 meters in some places. Rapid erosion resulting from the breaching of numerous ponds and lakes on the deposit and surface runoff have produced a new drainage system on the avalanche. Streams following the initial drainage pattern quickly eroded narrow channels because of the generally steep slopes and the readily erodible character of the avalanche deposit.
{emphasis added - JonF}
Note the "generally steep slopes" ... the water that cut the "canyon" was moving a lot faster than the water that cut the Crand Canyon, 'cause the slope was steeper.
There's also the old and misleading "one-fortieth the size of" the Grand Canyon claim. It's more realistic to compare volume removed, which results in the Grand Canyon being over 100,000 times larger than this Toutle River "canyon".
Another typical claim is that the "canyon" was cut 140 feet deep. There's disagreement about this. There are topographic profiles measured February 24, 1982 and March 20, 1982 (before and after the mudslide) which indicate that the "canyon" was cut between 15 and 34 feet deep; see Science against Evolution - Mt. St. Helens Misinformation.
The "global flood" is a non-starter. It was obvious 200 years ago that no such flood occurred, and the evidence we have gathered since then only affirns that conclusion.
None of your claimed "evidence" is evidence for your position, and most of it isn't evidence at all.
JonF-- Anxious aren't we? We're not to the Flood yet. Next topic is age of the earth. But no need to repost all of Kevin Henke's 25,000 word rebuttal to preempt me. We all know where to find all the relevant docs.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'm not so concerned with the labels we use for the discussion. I'm happy to accomodate people in that regard.
My interest lies in the substance.
The labels are incredibly important AFDave.... Depending on the type of discussion we are having... I could either argue that: you cannot possibly prove anything(except your own existence to yourself) you can prove anything with mere "common sense" You can prove anything with empirical or absolute data
You seem to fall into the "common sense" category...which would be a philosophical category...where the data is not nearly as important as the logic. The data can be assumed to be correct...and we are instead left evaluating your reasoning.
In science the data and the logic MUST be proven(to a degree). You are completely avoiding the issue of proving your DATA...and honestly your doing a rather poor job of validating your reasoning(it can be done...your just not doing it).
Labels are important...if i punch you in the face it is assault...if we label the encounter as a "boxing match" then I'm merely being a good competitor... So please...choose a label...
Are we having a philosophical discussion on the nature of God and everything...or is this a scientific discussion?
JonF-- Anxious aren't we? We're not to the Flood yet. Next topic is age of the earth. But no need to repost all of Kevin Henke's 25,000 word rebuttal to preempt me. We all know where to find all the relevant docs
translation:
"*sigh* yes, yes, I know I'm absolutely wrong, but I have to plow ahead with my idiocy anyway. It's a tenet of my "faith", so bear with me."
Hey davey:
I'm wondering if you would throw a hissy fit if somebody filed a civil suit against one of your beloved kids indoctrination institutions for child abuse?
I'm genuinely curious to see your input over on the child abuse thread.
JonF-- Anxious aren't we? We're not to the Flood yet. Next topic is age of the earth. But no need to repost all of Kevin Henke's 25,000 word rebuttal to preempt me. We all know where to find all the relevant docs.
Nice way to avoid acknowledging that you're wrong...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
JonF-- Anxious aren't we? We're not to the Flood yet. Next topic is age of the earth.
Yup. But that's one's so easy to refute it's like shooting fish in a barrel Bet you're going to spout the same ol' PRATTs; "assumptions", "helium in zircons", "14C in coal & diamonds", "recent lava dated as millions of years old", ... . Don't bother until you can identify the one and only one premise upon which radiometric dating is based, and can identify the evidence for that premise. But of course you won't. You'll just cut & paste the same crap we've all seen a thousand times.
The RATE group's "findings" can easily be torn apart, and have been, without reference to Henke. It's a good, thing, too, 'cause you don't have a prayer of understanding what he wrote. One question; why haven't they tested any more zircons? The answer is obvious ...
DaveTard2, you might want to grow a pair of balls and respond to what I posted on your "prove evolution to Davetard2" thread.
Where I was forced to answer your objections....to a post I made HERE....on your OTHER thread that I had never even posted on....until today, you slimy little chickenshit.
Next time, have the nerve to answer my objections on the same thread I post them on and not run off to another thread to whine about it there, weasel-boy
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, and DaveTard2? You might want to take a note on how I answered each and every one of your whiny WRONG-ASS claims DIRECTLY, THOROUGHLY and without YOUR avoidance, "distract them to another topic" or "change your terms/goalpost-moving" tactics. One day, you might have the moral and ethical spine to try that, but I doubt you'll ever have the brain
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You know, Bill and Dave have both been saying this forever now, and neither one has ever vouchsafed to us what exactly these "wrong assumptions" are.
I know going in that both Dave and Bill are wrong. But I can't wait to see in exactly which way they're wrong.
Well, obviously you are assuming they weren't made recently, with the exact mixture of parent/daughter isotopes which you'd have if you'd started with the parent much longer ago. You would assume that if you weren't into 'special pleading'. Not being into 'special pleading' means you're probably not a creationist.
Well, obviously you are assuming they weren't made recently, with the exact mixture of parent/daughter isotopes which you'd have if you'd started with the parent much longer ago. You would assume that if you weren't into 'special pleading'. Not being into 'special pleading' means you're probably not a creationist.
I'm also noticing that there are lots of other pieces of evidence that all point towards an earth about 4.5E10 years old. Not only would all the radiometric data have to be wrong; all that other evidence would have to be wrong too.
As I pointed out to Dave way back at the beginning of this thread, if he wants to show the earth is only 6,000 years old, he can't just refute a few pieces of evidence here and there. He has to refute essentially all of it, because the evidence is cumulative.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Next time, have the nerve to answer my objections on the same thread I post them on and not run off to another thread to whine about it there, weasel-boy
Next time, put your objections where they belong ... on the thread where my original post was.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't think DaveTard2 *really* has a clue for what he's going to have to deal with. Not just radiometrics that contradict his young earth crapola -- I mentioned dendrochronology, corals, varves, ice cores, stalagmite/stalactites a few pages back ...and there's soooooo much more that you folks are all aware of....it's hardly a wonder that he avoids so much. The contortions involved in each one are going to be funny as he11.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
DaveTard2: Your post was on this thread, stupid. You regurgitated Kevin Anderson's stuff HERE. I responded quickly HERE. YOU never mentioned it was on some other thread...because you never responded to ME.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
(3) Why world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier
Hey DT2, when you trot out your 'evidence' that world history begins "5500 years ago, not earlier" don't forget to explain prehistoric art like the cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc and Lascaux, which have been reliably dated to 17,000 years B.P. (before present).
To lying cowards like AFDT2, this is what is known as a 'pre-emptive strike'.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
If he follows the behavior Sir Terriblename and I are discussing, for each piece of evidence you present, he'll come up with some possible scenario in which the evidence could be imperfect. If you demonstrate a dozen pieces of evidence, he'll create a dozen special pleads against them.
If he follows the behavior Sir Terriblename and I are discussing, for each piece of evidence you present, he'll come up with some possible scenario in which the evidence could be imperfect. If you demonstrate a dozen pieces of evidence, he'll create a dozen special pleads against them.
I'm wondering…has anyone ever seen a "hypothesis" that entirely involves criticism of some other hypothesis? Or, even weirder—a hypothesis that entirely involves criticism of an actual theory?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
DaveTard2: Your post was on this thread, stupid. You regurgitated Kevin Anderson's stuff HERE. I responded quickly HERE. YOU never mentioned it was on some other thread...because you never responded to ME.
Tell me your address and I will have a seeing eye dog delivered to you so he can lead you to the "Prove Evolution" thread, which is where I posted Anderson's article.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Tell me your address and I will have a seeing eye dog delivered to you so he can lead you to the "Prove Evolution" thread, which is where I posted Anderson's article.
OK Washout, tell us your address and we will have a seeing eye dog delivered to you so he can lead you to the " Reserved for AFDave's YEC evidence " thread, where you can post your often promised but never delivered 'evidence' for a 6000 year old Earth.
Fair is fair, right?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
AF DAVE'S MANY OBVIOUS EVIDENCES FOR A YOUNG EARTH AND SHORT HISTORY OF MANKIND
OK, Eric Murphy, the time has finally arrived, the moment you have been waiting for ... the moment when AF Dave finally discusses evidence for a young earth. Mark it down. It is about 8:30am on Sunday morning, May 28, 2006 ... a truly momentous day in ATBC history.
I especially hope that BWE and Incorygible are listening now because we have a committment from them that if I am successful in showing that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, they will become Creationists. I understand that Incorygible is already working on "Amazing Grace" and BWE is learning some new vocabulary words :-)
World Book encyclopedia is a favorite resource of mine for handy access to popular information written by respected experts in the various fields. I also like World Book because it is decidedly non-creationist in its treatment of science, as are all encyclopedias that I am aware of. It is also quite popular with families and is a favorite of children. I am especially interested in what children are reading because of my involvement with authoring children's materials.
So we take a gander at the "World History" article in World Book and what do we find?
We find the single most damaging set of statements ever to be uttered against the supposed 2 million year time scale of human life ...
Quote
World Book. World, History of the. People have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing.
Now if that little statement (and many like it in similar publications) doesn't make some synapses start firing in the brains of evolutionists, then their synapses are broken!
World Book is saying that "people have lived for 2 MILLION years" but they didn't figure out how to write until the last 0.275% of that time period?
You are telling me that people knew how to write for LESS THAN 1/3 OF 1% OF THE TIME THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UPON THE EARTH?
(OK. With Aftershave's cave paintings dated at an equivocal 15,000 ya, we can expand this to a whopping 1%)
And you guys are the intelligent ones? If I've EVER seen a case of stretching the truth to conform to preconceived notions (which Creos are routinely accused of), this is the Poster Case.
Just stop and think how insane this is!! People went along dumbly for 1,994,500 years, never learning to write. Then, all of a sudden, wonder of wonders, THEY MAGICALLY LEARN TO WRITE AND "HISTORY BEGINS."
Sorry, guys, but I have a better explanation.
Mine is this ...
1) In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) 2) God created mankind perfect, a complete Homo Sapiens 3) The first man Adam was taught how to write directly by God 4) All of Adam's kids learned to write from their dad 5) And so on ... 6) Adam recorded the events of Creation on stone tablets 7) Adam's descendants also recorded the events of Creation and other events 8) These tablets were carefully preserved and eventually handed down to Moses, who recorded them on in the Pentateuch
Obviously, we are saying nothing about the age of the earth with the "World History Argument" except indirectly. We will get to direct evidence of a young earth as well. But the World History argument does argue powerfully in favor of the Biblical timescale for the history of mankind, and argues indirectly for a young age for the earth itself.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That does it, he's starting to talk about himself in the 3rd person.
Afdave says"Afdave considered becoming an adult once but having been infantalised by his domineering Fundie mother since a child grew scared."
D/2 there are some interesting psychology papers discussing the pathology of children who talk about themselves in the third person why don't you have a google?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
10,000 years or 6,000 years ? make your frigging mind up D/2. And an abrahamic deity taught Adam to write did he?
That's nice where are the school books? You HAVE the school books RIGHT?
As a child or an adult, what language?
Who taught Adam to speak?
Where was Adam's mother while all this was going on?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
World Book. World, History of the. People have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing.
This is the social science researcher in me curious. But do you have "Author. (Year). Title. Extract. (Edition). Location: Publisher. (page entry)" handy? Also, the social science researcher in me is asking for the reliability of the source (not necessarily the authenticity except for the reference). Possibly both phylogenic and geologic support.
In addition I'd just like to add:
Egypt - Thoth was credited with the origins of writing and the written word (Egyptian Book of the Dead).
Sumer - Enlil was credited with the origins of writing and the written word.
Mesoamerica - Itzamna was credited with the origins of writing and the written word.
Three Gods. The era is the Mesolithic. Conforms with the time frame given by "World Book."
Dear Dumbass Davetard2: I realize you have the cognitive abilities of a child, so I will explain this to you like I would to a small, particularly stupid child-- let's start.
For starters, let's call your two threads here the HYPOTHESIS (davetard's creator god hypothesis shite) and EVOLUTION ( prove evolution to davetard) threads. Got that, dave? two threads...one Hypothesis, the other Evolution...
now, little DaveTard, look at my post ...my very FIRST post ( the one posted yesterday, stupid) on your EVOLUTION thread...what does it say? Why, it says that I had never posted on it before....never even read through it...ever....before.
Now, a logical person might assume then, that I HAD NEVER READ THROUGH that thread before and could not possibly know what it contained until that point...correct?
But here, on your HYPOTHESIS thread....TODAY...you say that ..I should KNOW that you had posted there? HOW would I know that, since I have told yu that I didn't read through it in the past ( until yesterday, stupid?)
Nww, DaveTard, try using whatever remains of an adult mind you have left in your mentally-diseased brain...Add up the clues, DaveTard...and tell me ....
IF I first saw your Kevin Anderson post HERE (page 17,May 25 2006,12:06) on the HYPOTHESIS thread....and I say that on your EVOLUTION thread....why would you magically expect me to know what your EVOLUTION thread had on it...before I ever read it?
I realize you're mentally ill, dave...and it's not that I dislike theism in general...i don't, personally. In fact, I think it's needed for stupid shits like you that couldn't form their own ethical and moral code on their own. What I hate is people like you that are willing to lie each and every day for their religion, DaveTard. Each time you raise your slimy serpentine head, I will put my boot on it, DaveTard. Now address what I put in my EVOLUTION post about Kevin Anderson, and your cognitive dissonance.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Guys you are wasting you're time if you even think that D/2 will address any of your comments.
He is here to preach nothing else.
This is a litle practice pulpit for him.
The best thing to do is agree on one question and dig in until he says uncle (which he won't, he'll just run away like a 2 year old). In any case the more opertunity you give him to dodge the longer he will stay.
So how about it? One question each, the simpler the better.
When I say simple I mean the sort of thing you would say to a child.
That is what we are dealing with here. D/2 IS A CHILD he is PYSICALLY UNABLE to act in a cognitive adult fashion on these issues.
D/2 can only progress by ...don't laugh...being born again.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dear DaveTard: your current argument ( based on incredulity) for YEC....is that humans lived on the planet a long time, but you find it incredible that they only developed writing ...recently.
Well, DaveTard...guess what? some groups didn't develop it until VERY recently or not at all...Consider Sequoyah, who first gave the Cherokee a written form of their language ....in 1821
You see, DaveTard, for many, many cultures, written language is just not a priority...it's cumbersom, requires a syllabary or ideographs and is just...not...needed.
So your argument from incredulity on the subject of written language is just as stupid as I would expect, DaveTard. It comes late..because oral language works just fine...humans lived in small groups up to about 10-15,000 years ago, DaveTard...most groups were in bands of 50, or tribes, later chiefdoms, then small proto-states, and finally state-level systems....it is only in the latter stages of this roughly outlined social complexity that interactions become so complex that writing becomes paramount.
Consider the Amerind groups you claim to have lived with, DaveTard. I am half Mescalero Apache. Did the groups you say you lived with NEED a written language to get along? There's an old joke I used to use in the very few times I ever taught cultural anthro as a Grad student, DaveTard...and it goes like this:
While an anthropologist was visiting the Kung!-San (bushmen) in the Namib desert, he asked them..why they didn't take advantage of the goods and foods afforded by agriculturalism and instead stuck with their age-old practices of Hunter-Gathering...and an old man replied: "why plant, when there are so many mongongo nuts?" In a word....they didn't NEED the social complexification offered...they got along just fine, stupid. Just as most people on this planet got along fine without a written language up to recent centuries
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
World Book is saying that "people have lived for 2 MILLION years" but they didn't figure out how to write until the last 0.275% of that time period?
You are telling me that people knew how to write for LESS THAN 1/3 OF 1% OF THE TIME THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UPON THE EARTH?
That is indeed what the evidence says, Dave. Care to see some of that evidence?
Cave and rock paintings on cave walls can be dated to prehistoric times and the people who made them certainly were not living in any garden of Eden. Rock paintings were made since the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago. They didn't write but they were getting closer to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.
We can't say exactly how language developed, in the sense of whether it was primarily brain hardware that was evolving or whether cultural advances working on an already capable and plastic brain let us figure out a new invention, but we can show you it was evolving with this kind of evidence.
Monkeys can learn some limited language skills and children who don't learn to speak or write early enough often never manage to aquire the ability (like wolf children).
THEY MAGICALLY LEARN TO WRITE AND "HISTORY BEGINS."
Magically? Of course. Everyone knows humans are too stupid to invent anything. Did God also teach Adam math, physics, computer science, biology, metallurgy, engineering, music, theatre, home economics...? Or only writing?
That has to be one of the stupidest arguments I’ve seen in years. The evidence is that some humans have been using writing for about 5500 years? Therefore – young earth? You are manufacturing your evidence from nothing. You openly claim the bible as your ultimate authority. I find nothing in my bible about God teaching Adam to write or Adam recording the creation events on stone tablets. Try again.
World Book. World, History of the. People have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing.
Now if that little statement (and many like it in similar publications) doesn't make some synapses start firing in the brains of evolutionists, then their synapses are broken!
Dave, how's this: most Native American cultures never developed a written language at all.
How does that fit in with your hypothesis?
I have to say, that's about the dumbest argument I've ever heard for a young earth. Are we starting at the bottom and working our way down?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Perhaps because the topic is human history, after reading AFDave's post about writing as evidence for a young Earth, I found myself reflecting on the fact that there has probably never been, anywhere or at any time, a culture with access to as much information as Americans have now. The most plebeian American has so much accumulated knowledge at his fingertips that it makes the library at Alexandria look pitiful by comparison.
None of this knowledge came easily. We struggled to know the things we know now. In some cases-- I'm thinking of Madame Curie-- lives were sacrificed for it.
That someone would turn their nose up at such an inheritance strikes me as one of the saddest and most disappointing commentaries I can imagine.
You've had to days to answer a simple, pointed question (about the inability of your hypothesis to predict observed reality) and didn't bother. I can only think it has something to do with this...
Quote
My goals will be realized easier if he does not respond.
So please, go ahead with your efforts to realize those 'goals' -- you seem to have gone on with your rant anyway, and I can't be bothered to make your job any more difficult by asking questions and actually expecting rational support for your 'argument'.
You know, almost every day on my way into work, I pass a crazy homeless man who always calls out to me that he "is a hostage of terrorists". Bought him a coffee once, and had an hour-long discussion. The similarity between his insane word salad and yours is striking -- at times, it almost seems to indicate a somewhat capable mind behind it, just for a moment then it's gone. Our conversation was interesting at the time, but we've gone back to our original ranter/ranted-at daily ritual. His argument about the terrorists wasn't about to get me to dig in my own neck for the chip (as he had), and your ridiculous argument about writing (why writing? why not speech? why not agriculture? why not...) isn't about to get me to sing Amazing Grace.
Continue with your regularly scheduled programming, Dave.
Well Dave I think we can say you really F###KED THAT UP.
Now tell us all about how mommy wouldn't let you play with the native girls in Brazil or wherever.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Now if that little statement (and many like it in similar publications) doesn't make some synapses start firing in the brains of evolutionists, then their synapses are broken!
World Book is saying that "people have lived for 2 MILLION years" but they didn't figure out how to write until the last 0.275% of that time period?
You are telling me that people knew how to write for LESS THAN 1/3 OF 1% OF THE TIME THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UPON THE EARTH?
Yes.
And you writing everything in caps does not make your argument any more compelling.
Quote
(OK. With Aftershave's cave paintings dated at an equivocal 15,000 ya, we can expand this to a whopping 1%)
And you guys are the intelligent ones? If I've EVER seen a case of stretching the truth to conform to preconceived notions (which Creos are routinely accused of), this is the Poster Case.
Just stop and think how insane this is!! People went along dumbly for 1,994,500 years, never learning to write. Then, all of a sudden, wonder of wonders, THEY MAGICALLY LEARN TO WRITE AND "HISTORY BEGINS."
(Why do you consider this 'magic'?)
Wait, wait, wait, wait. I think we may have here THE stupidest thing AFD has ever said, and final proof of his complete ignorance of how educated people reason.
AFD's proof of a 5,000-year-old-earth:
1) Writing only developed a few thousand years ago.
2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without writing!
3) Therefore, people were created just before writing occurred. ~5,000 years ago.
Jesus fucking christ, this is unimaginably stupid.
AFD's cheesy incredulity -- for which there is really no REASON at all -- trumps massive geological evidence, massive archaeological evidence, massive genetic evidence, all of that: never mind it: Dave the retired Air Force pilot finds all humans living 99.99% of their existence without writing 'impossible to believe'. Don't ask him why, he can't explain it, but it's still 'impossible'.
So therefore it's not true. Therefore geology, archaeology, genetics are all to be ignored.
Writing is thought to have only been INDEPENDENTLY invented three times (at most) in human history. Once in China, once in Mesopotamia, and once in Mesoamerica (Mexico). Every other example of writing appears to have been ultimately derived or inspired by one of those three examples. The invention of writing de novo is extremely rare. It's not something the human brain naturally does. And I can't imagine someone being so boneheaded as to think that the infrequency of the invention of writing is so implausible that it must count as evidence that invalidates geology, archaeology, and genetics.
Dave, if you really want to stay this stupid, that's your business, but seriously, you have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about, and you're making Christians look like the most stupid, superstitious people imaginable. You have no idea how much stupidity like this drives intelligent people away from Christianity, or embarrasses other more rational Christians.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Go ahead, be blunt. The sentence you want is "Dave ripped this incredibly stupid idea off from some creationist website".
That talkorigins page also raises a very worthwhile point in that writing is only created (or needed, or wanted) in agricultural societies. Only in agricultural societies is there the desire for record-keeping. And, what do you know, writing starts appearing not long after the advent of agriculture in the 3 places that invented writing -- tho writing is so hard for the human brain to think of out of nowhere, that most agricultural societies STILL didn't think of it on their own.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
AFD's cheesy incredulity -- for which there is really no REASON at all
Well actually there is, his brain is wired to do that. His neurons are wired by his upbringing and are irretrievably fixed in pattern that provides a reality he is incapable of changing. Every stimulus that questions that reality causes him to scour creationist anti-science websites for 'truthiness' he feels it in his gut. You know there are more nerve endings in your gut.......(the Colbert mandate)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, I'm only mildly interested in your delusional alternative-to-reality history, but just for argument's sake, if what you say were true, it raises some questions. Adam wrote down God's dictation on stone tablets. Later, Cain and Abel were born. What did Adam use to teach his sons how to read and write? Did they go out to a quarry and make stone tablets to do lessons on? Did they have to do this generation after generation to teach the written language? If they didn't make more early on, how many people could learn to write from just one set of tablets? What kind of stone do you think they used? Marble? Limestone?
Yeah, I've heard this argument used before. It was by some guy called Half-Life on IIDB a few months ago. That guy actually realized (or pretended to realize) the error of his ways and freaked out a bit, then disappeared.
Questions for Dave: 1. How do you know the writing is 5500 years old 2. Immune system before the fall...?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Ok AFDave... Im sure your getting heavily roasted for your evidence of a 10,000 year-old earth....
I'm simply going to point out the problems with your "hypothesis"
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Mine is this ...
1) In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1) 2) God created mankind perfect, a complete Homo Sapiens 3) The first man Adam was taught how to write directly by God 4) All of Adam's kids learned to write from their dad 5) And so on ... 6) Adam recorded the events of Creation on stone tablets 7) Adam's descendants also recorded the events of Creation and other events 8) These tablets were carefully preserved and eventually handed down to Moses, who recorded them on in the Pentateuch
Except.... No evidence exists of any of this... Even most "very creationist" biblical scholars would debate this scenario If Adam(and friends) wrote down the early history of humanity(and I assume that is where we get the bible) then how do we know that the bible is accurate? The bible is only accurate if considered as "divinely inspired" and if God "divinely inspired" the Bible...then he could have written it much later...(perhaps when the bible is assumed to be written, after the time of Moses). What language did Adam write in? Also...if God taught Adam the "One" language that was eventually split out the tower of Babel...then how do you explain the existence of other written languages before the tower of Babel? Also...How do you explain the fact that the Tower of Babel event occurred only 102 years after Noah's Flood? In 102 years, Noah's descendents rebuilt the population enough to have a large enough workforce to build the Tower of Babel(and split into all of the different languages of the world?)
What's really remarkable about AFD's argument from incredulity is that he evidently has no problem at all dismissing all the evidence against a young earth provided by geology, archaeology, astronomy, genetics, etc. -- he's more than happy to ignore it all -- and yet he considers the fact that writing wasn't invented til a few thousand years ago as more than compelling enough to trash all the evidence for a 4.55 billion-year-old earth.
Some amazingly inconsistent standards of what constitutes 'evidence' here.
I think fundamentalism is not merely poor scholarship and poor science, it is actually the opposite of learning. Everything that is necessary for the acquisition of real knowledge is actively rejected. It's not just ignorance, it goes further than that -- it's actual antiknowledge.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
1) Writing only developed a few thousand years ago.
2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without writing!
3) Therefore, people were created just before writing occurred. ~5,000 years ago.
Jesus fucking christ, this is unimaginably stupid.
normdoering's proof of a 40-year-old-earth:
1) Personal computers only developed a few decades ago.
2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without personal computers! How would they roast fundies on evolution forums? How could they buy pizza?
3) Therefore, people were created just before personal computers occurred. About 40 years ago.
I can't believe people could exist without cars, concrete, steel, airplanes, televisions, printing presses, perspective art...
(what's up with this thread? Since PuckSR posted on May 28 2006,15:16, posts only show up in the reply page and on the ATBC page, not in the thread) -edit: page 30 is showing up now...
Dave, What did Adam use to write down God's words in stone? A hammer and chisel?
ha norm, your post reminds me of a friend whose life has been so thoroughly transformed by the internet that he refers to anything pre-1993 or so as 'prehistoric'.
I think fundamentalism is not merely poor scholarship and poor science, it is actually the opposite of learning. Everything that is necessary for the acquisition of real knowledge is actively rejected. It's not just ignorance, it goes further than that -- it's actual antiknowledge.
I fully agree. True learning requires reason and questioning. Fundamentalism rejects reason and forbids questioning. Antiknowledge indeed.
Quote (afdave @ May 28 2006,08:42)
I am especially interested in what children are reading because of my involvement with authoring children's materials.
The very thought disgusts me. Better they should learn from chimpanzees.
Ye Gods, I have just come back from a trip and found this amazing post 1) Writing only developed a few thousand years ago.
2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without writing!
3) Therefore, people were created just before writing occurred. ~5,000 years ago.
I just can't belive it. I am totally staggered. I just didn't think anyone could be this illogical. I am just totally perplexed.
And I wonder why we didn't sort out all mathmatics as the same time we sorted out all writing
Well, to be fair, that's my summation of AFD's argument.
AFD's scarcely more logical version was a few messages above that and went as follows:
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World Book encyclopedia is a favorite resource of mine for handy access to popular information written by respected experts in the various fields. I also like World Book because it is decidedly non-creationist in its treatment of science, as are all encyclopedias that I am aware of. It is also quite popular with families and is a favorite of children. I am especially interested in what children are reading because of my involvement with authoring children's materials.
So we take a gander at the "World History" article in World Book and what do we find?
We find the single most damaging set of statements ever to be uttered against the supposed 2 million year time scale of human life ... Quote World Book. World, History of the. People have probably lived on the earth about 2 million years. But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing.
Now if that little statement (and many like it in similar publications) doesn't make some synapses start firing in the brains of evolutionists, then their synapses are broken!
World Book is saying that "people have lived for 2 MILLION years" but they didn't figure out how to write until the last 0.275% of that time period?
You are telling me that people knew how to write for LESS THAN 1/3 OF 1% OF THE TIME THAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UPON THE EARTH?
(OK. With Aftershave's cave paintings dated at an equivocal 15,000 ya, we can expand this to a whopping 1%)
And you guys are the intelligent ones? If I've EVER seen a case of stretching the truth to conform to preconceived notions (which Creos are routinely accused of), this is the Poster Case.
Just stop and think how insane this is!! People went along dumbly for 1,994,500 years, never learning to write. Then, all of a sudden, wonder of wonders, THEY MAGICALLY LEARN TO WRITE AND "HISTORY BEGINS."
As you can see, I shortened his argument somewhat, but I didn't misrepresent it at all.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
AirFarceDaveTard2 has now been reduced to scurrying to and fro like a cockroach with the kitchen light turned on.
Over on his blog, AFDT2 writes
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I have gleaned some valuable information over at Panda's Thumb, particularly about the mindset of evolutionary biologists.
Oh, you mean the mindset that requires actual peer-reviewed results, and doesn't accept ignorance-based personal incredulity as evidence? That's a brand new concept for you I'm sure.
Also, thanks to you AFDT2, we now have had a look at the mindset of an arrogant, dumbass, lying, shit-for-brains creationist stooge. It ain't pretty, that's for sure. It would be funny, except for your stated desire to abuse children by teaching them the same lies you swallowed up to the hilt.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
You know, I was going to do this big long post about how, for most of the 190,000 or so (not two million, for crying out loud) years humans have existed on earth, they existed mostly in small bands of several dozen people, all of whom had known each other from birth. Rarely would they meet anyone they hadn't known all their lives, and when they did, usually a fight would break out. For the first 180,000 or so of those years, those humans were hunter-gatherers who had no use whatsoever for written language, and not much use for spoken language either (how many different words do you suppose your average human needed 150,000 years ago, Dave?). It wasn't until the advent of agriculture that humans really needed a way to write things down.
I thought about writing all that out, but then I thought, why bother. Who am I trying to persuade here? Dave?
But I have to admit: Dave managed not to meet even my low expectations for what he considers "evidence" of a young earth. And he still doesn't get the distinction between "evidence" and "argument."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
For the first 180,000 or so of those years, those humans were hunter-gatherers who had no use whatsoever for written language, and not much use for spoken language either (how many different words do you suppose your average human needed 150,000 years ago, Dave?). It wasn't until the advent of agriculture that humans really needed a way to write things down.
I agree with most of this but not all. The consensus seems to be that humans didn't really need to write things down til agriculture. Also, it's not until agriculture that societies have a large class of people not immediately involved in food gathering and hunting, which is something a society needs in order to think up and develop writing.
However, I have big misgivings about this statement:
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For the first 180,000 or so of those years, those humans were hunter-gatherers who had no use whatsoever for written language, and not much use for spoken language either (how many different words do you suppose your average human needed 150,000 years ago, Dave?)
'Not much use for spoken language'? ? ?
I hope the implication here isn't that hunter-gatherers don't need many words or have simple languages, because that unquestionably is not true. Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. On the order of tens of thousands of words.
Languages only develop vocabularies in the 6 figures when they become literary languages spoken by people in large numbers of different areas and in a wide variety of livelihoods. But I assure you, the languages of hunter gatherers are not impoverished in any way at all, lexically or grammatically, and there's no reason to think the situation was any different 20,000 or 100,000 years ago.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'm not so concerned with the labels we use for the discussion. I'm happy to accomodate people in that regard.
My interest lies in the substance. Report this post to a moderator
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k.e Posted: May 27 2006,14:24 Substance? .....abuse
HAHAHAHAHA! Dave, you are stupid. Really really stupid. And i mean that in the most insulting, derogatory, disparaging, offensive, belittling, uncomplimentary way possible. Not only are you stupid, but your religious ideas are stupid. The supreme gods of stupidity bow before your relentless onslaught. It's stupider than if the worlds top 10 million psychic mediums all sat criss-cross applesauce at the north pole during the most powerful aurora in history and channelled stupidity from its cosmic wellspring. You can twist mere thoughtlessness and ignorance into the poetic stupidity. Indeed, you have no choice. You are driven to do so by the muses that insire you. The same muses that inspired rodney dangerfield, Dan quayle, GWB, the later chevy chase, Montel Williams, Nixon's decision to tape white house conversations, General Custer- what's a few injuns mean to me?, the Edsel, New Coke, the Charge of the Light Brigade and of course, Dr. Dino.
Your stupidity defies physical laws governing the upper limits of stupidity. Your posts compound the stupidity of your previous posts (A fact considered impossible by the late Stupidologist, Alfred E. Neuman).
Your lack of any other quality besides stupidity throws many parts of quantum theory into a state of flux. You refute the notion of zen as the sound of one hand clapping. If you could see your own stupidity, a quantum vortex would appear due to the exponential stupidity that would be generated and the universe would revert to its singular state out of shame. You have no redeming qualities that do not fully incorporate your stupidity as their core feature.
In short, you are an idiot.
That quality is duly entered into the record.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
... Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. ... there's no reason to think the situation was any different 20,000 or 100,000 years ago.
I tend to agree, it's the most likely possibility. However, you can't know for sure that those so called "stone age tribes" are really stone age people genetically. You can't know they were just like that since the stone age. They might have been people who broke off from the earliest civilizations and went backwards a bit but still carried our mutant genes.
However, I have big misgivings about this statement:
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ericmurphy said on May 28 2006,16:26
For the first 180,000 or so of those years, those humans were hunter-gatherers who had no use whatsoever for written language, and not much use for spoken language either (how many different words do you suppose your average human needed 150,000 years ago, Dave?)
'Not much use for spoken language'? ? ?
I hope the implication here isn't that hunter-gatherers don't need many words or have simple languages, because that unquestionably is not true. Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. On the order of tens of thousands of words.
Not to step on your toes Arden, I have learned a lot from you, I would like to add that I have read about hypotheses concerning the selection pressure that language exerted on human brains. Once the larynx dropped, and we started talking, the advantage it conferred was so powerful that language development would have been rapid. Pressure on brain development would have been equally potent and the feedback cycle was on. Languages would have become very complex, very quickly. Sorry I don't have any links, I can't remember where I read this and I don't have time to google. I'm playing hooky from chores as it is.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
Dear DaveTard2: I came back to read what other people thought of your stupid idea and have a laugh, then I started wondering where you got the idea that we, as humans, Homo sapiens sapiens...are 2 million years old, and it hit me -- that's where most people place H. habilis.
Do you realize what this means, Dave? It means at least two things: (1) You don't know how to "read" a Linnean binomial and (2) You're so stupid as to think that ANYTHING any taxon with "Homo" in front of it = modern humans.
DaveTard, beyond your mere dishonesty, willingness to dissemble, avoid, divert, shift the goalposts and use every fallacy known to man, you're stupid.
I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid, depleted uranium stupid. Stupid... so stupid it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid, meta-stupid... supra-stupid.
You're stupid collapsed on itself, Dave-- so far that even the single neuron you had popped ITSELF out of existence. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid.You broadcast more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid.You're like some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid uncontaminated by any recognizable intelligence. Ur-stupid, antediluvian, pre-eukaryotic stupid.
It is my sincere hope that your children grow up to be smarter than you are, DaveTard, and see that you're an idiot, as any moderately intelligent person would. Whether they give you pity or scorn is not my concern.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I hope the implication here isn't that hunter-gatherers don't need many words or have simple languages, because that unquestionably is not true. Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. On the order of tens of thousands of words.
No, I didn't mean to imply that hunter-gatherers from 150,000 years ago didn't have a rich and complex language (although IIRC there's some evidence that early—150 kya—H. sapiens had not developed the neurological structures necessary for complex language). I meant that it probably wasn't a necessity in their day-to-day lives.
Obviously, someone today with a vocabulary of a couple of hundred words (especially here in the first world) would be essentially unemployable. But I imagine that in an early holocene hunter-gatherer society, even being completely mute wouldn't have been a huge disadvantage. At least, for an individual. Obviously an entire society of mute people would be at a distinct competitive disadvantage.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dear DaveTard2: I came back to read what other people thought of your stupid idea and have a laugh, ...
... beyond your mere dishonesty, willingness to dissemble, avoid, divert, shift the goalposts and use every fallacy known to man, you're stupid.
I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid, depleted uranium stupid. Stupid... so stupid it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid, meta-stupid... supra-stupid.
You're stupid collapsed on itself, Dave-- so far that even the single neuron you had popped ITSELF out of existence. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid.You broadcast more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid.You're like some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid uncontaminated by any recognizable intelligence. Ur-stupid, antediluvian, pre-eukaryotic stupid.
It is my sincere hope that your children grow up to be smarter than you are, DaveTard, and see that you're an idiot, as any moderately intelligent person would. Whether they give you pity or scorn is not my concern.
Talk about taking the ball and running with it
-And 1/2 a dave,
You know deep down that your ideas are so stupid that they merit a new lexicon just to describe them. Unfortunately, you are as stupid as your ideas so you are unable to change.
I'm sorry, but it only takes a little brain to understand that you are regurgitating others' ideas and that you do not have ideas yourself. Amoeba understand your arguments better than you do. I take that back, I'm not sorry.
You were so gleeful when you heard me say thta I'd be a creo if you could prove the Earth was less than 4 b. years old. You didn't do it. And do you know why? Because you are so stupid that you sit on your tv and watch your couch. Because your stupid is higher than a mountain, deeper than water, denser than an element with an atomic weight of infinity. Your stupid is the kind of stupid that wannabees dream about. Your stupid is a combination of Catalan, Vulgar Latin, and stupid. With stupid making up the majority.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
It's a wonder god couldn't figure out anything better than clay tablets.
Wonder what language? oh yeah, 1 part vulgar latin, 1 part pig latin, 1 part dubby bubby and 99,999,999,999,999,999,997 parts stupid. Davey, want to argue that french had anything to do with it?
1/2 a Dave is the human equivelent of zero?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
stevestory, thanks for asking afDave what he thinks of the revised "Big Daddy?". Several pages of posts ago I asked afDave what he meant by, and where he had found, the term "General Theory of Evolution." He replied:
"It is very hard to nail evolutionists down on terminology, so I use my own which I think helps differentiate concepts best. When I say General Theory of Evolution, I mean "All Evo Baloney" which for me includes abiogenesis for which ToE advocates don't even have a theory, and macroevolution, and all uniformitarian geological assumptions, such "the rocks are billions of years old" and the "Grand Canyon was formed by the Colorado river over millions of years" and other related malarkey. It's handy to just lump all the baloney together under one name -- "The General Theory of Evolution." Can be confusing, though, I admit. You will hear me most often just talking about "macroevolution" and "abiogenesis" and "uniformitarian geology" etc."
Now, that is pretty much what I would expect from him. Arrogance, ignorance, and a complete dismissal of everything that doesn't conform to his idolatrous, almost obscene worship of the bileball. But here is my point: the term "General Theory of Evolution" is straight outta Hovind, and is used by Hovind as shorthand for the six points the professor in "Big Daddy?" writes out on the chalkboard at the urging of True Christian White Boy. So it appears to me that afDave, despite his early assertion that he relies only upon respectable "scientific" sites and organizations as ICR and AiG, is really just a wannabe Hovind. I wonder when he's going to open up a lame theme park (I mean, really, have you looked at Hovind's own pictures of the park? LAME! LAME! LAME! LAME!.
But, afDave, I find I have something else to thank you for. You see, a while ago I made the decision that I was going to really try to engage a creationist, any creationist, in a discussion as to why he or she rejected mainstream science. No debate, just discussion, with the aim of gaining some better understanding of what drives people to such decisions. I would have been glad to discuss with this creationist my reasons for rejecting religious stories as trustworthy explanations of the history and workings of the universe. But, thanks in no small part to you, afDave, I see now that such a discussion would more than likely be futile. I should also thank Michael Behe, William Dembski, Kent Hovind, everyone at AiG and ICR, Casey Luskin, Nancy Pearcy, and so many others, for showing me that rational engagement with creationists about their creationism (getting all metacognitive here) is, ultimately, impossible.
BWE: I tip my hat to you -- you inspired me to greater heights of elucidating the awe-inspiring stupidity of DaveTard2. And yeah, I gotta agree with you, clamboy. That level of fucked-upness is simply impenetrable. But, as you say, more time for grog.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You've had to days to answer a simple, pointed question (about the inability of your hypothesis to predict observed reality) and didn't bother. I can only think it has something to do with this...
No ... I'm quite happy to finish this discussion, but the ball is in your court. You were going to tell me on what basis you made the 8mya and 5mya assumptions.
You said it was a fair question and you would get right back to me as soon as you could. If you do not, I will make some assumptions about your statements.
As for the rest of you ... I'll answer Monday morning.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But Davey Dickhead, He did answer you. Now, how about plate tectonics. Evidence for a Young Earth? The human/ writing thing was simply too dumb for a real response. Let's try tectonics. You have a pretty good understanding you say. What is it?
You see, I thought I had a good understanding but now I'm not sure. And I did offer to become a brainwashed fundie like you if you could provide evidence of a young earth. You are aware that you haven't yet provided a single piece of evidence for any of your claims, right?
The time for taking you seriously passed long, long ago, before your mother or your grandfather were born. Before the mountains began to rise on the western shored of the continents that became the Americas. Before the pterydactyl first started its first flight millions and ,millions of years ago.
(this just came to me but I have no doubt it was divinely inspired) Here's what really happened:
Long, long ago, before your mother or your grandfather was born, when Mother Earth and Father Sky were still children, they played games in the dark room of night. As they played, the door to the room opened just a crack. A small piece of light entered the room. Father Sky jumped on it and covered it with his hands. Mother Earth moved closer to see the wonder but Father Sky turned his back to her in jealousy. Mother Earth waited to see what he would do with it.
Father Sky hunched over his new plaything, molding it and shaping it with his hands. Mother Earth moved closer to see what he had done. Father Sky brought his hands up to his chest and threw them up into the darkness as if he was releasing a sparrow. A blinding flash filled the room.
As the two watched, the heavens sprang forth. The children squealed in delight. Father Sky went out to play in his new creation, ignoring Mother Earth as he rushed. He hurled stars into planets and took delight in the fiery chaos.
Mother Earth, watching from a distance, soon grew tired of this violent game. She quietly left her place and hid herself in the form of a small planet far from where Father Sky was playing. She began sculpting the raw materials of the world she created into animal and plant forms. Presently, she made a game where her forms would grow and change into other forms. She shared her love of beauty, joy and contentment with her creations.
Eventually, she made a creature wild and beautiful covered with hair and walking on two feet. She called the creature Haman. She created men and women and gave them the gift of speech so she could talk to them.
The creatures learned to see the beauty she had created in the sunrises and sunsets. They learned to laugh when the icy water from a waterfall fell over their heads and shoulders. And when they got old or fell prey to an accident, they were not afraid because their bodies returned to Mother Earth and she reshaped their bodies into new bodies. And they took delight in the wildness of her creation. Mother Earth was happy.
Father Sky went into a rage when he discovered Mother Earth had gone off without telling him and he started searching the universe for her. When he finally discovered her trick, he hid on the planet’s moon and watched her. He grew fascinated with her creations and learned to make wild things himself. He spent a good deal of time watching her hamans. Their rituals, games and diversions, intrigued him but he didn’t know what beauty was, so he didn’t understand most of what they were doing.
He decided to punish Mother Earth for hiding from him so he changed her into the planet forever. Then he made his own creations that he called Ooman (because he liked it better than Haman). They were like Mother Earth’s hamans but that they had no hair on their entire bodies and they were cunning. They liked to mold and shape the surface of their planet to fit their desires. They built houses to escape the wind and the rain. They diverted water from the rivers to water their crops. And Father Sky was pleased. Ooman was also cruel. He hunted the hamans and made war on them. Father sky gave them the gift of fire to help his ooman. Ooman used the fire to burn the forests and chase the humans off the land. They made weapons out of the trees and rocks that mother Earth had made and killed the hamans mercilessly. The Hamans went to Mother Earth and asked for her help. She created a giant upheaval in the planet’s crust, which killed many of Father Sky’s ooman and created caves and other hiding places for her hamans to escape the hunters.
Now ooman was clever and cunning and cruel for the most part, but one young man among them was not as cruel as the rest. He didn’t enjoy killing. He killed only what he could eat and no more. He rarely hunted hamans and only went when others in his tribe forced him to go. Mother Earth had a plan.
She went to this ooman in the disguise of a young woman in his tribe. She taught him the language of the hamans and convinced him that he should go and meet them.
Father Sky, realizing what she was up to, decided to rid the world of the hamans once and for all. He gathered all the oomans together and made them go and chase all the hamans to the edge of a great cliff overlooking the sea where they would either be slaughtered or be pushed to their deaths. Because he started in secret, Mother Earth only had time to hide one of her hamans, a young girl, in a cave before the rest of her people were driven to the edge of the cliff.
Because the hamans were not afraid of death, they simply threw themselves over the edge of the cliff to escape the onslaught of the oomans. Mother Earth wept in pity and sorrow as she saw her wonderful creation being destroyed by the oomans. But before any of them hit the water below, she changed them into dolphins and they swam away into the ocean where they still play and enjoy the beauty of Mother Earth today.
The oomans, bewildered by the magic of Mother Earth, went up to the edge of the cliff to peer at the wonder below. But the weight of so many made the cliff grow unstable and it collapsed into the sea taking every ooman with it. Except one. The one Mother Earth had taught the language of the hamans to, could not bear the thought of driving them into the sea so he stayed back. He was standing near the mouth of the cave where the young girl was hiding. When everything was over, she came out from her hiding place and was surprised to see him. Mother Earth cast a spell on them and they fell in love. Their children were cunning and clever, but they also loved beauty and play. She decided the children should be called Human. Ever since, humans have looked out to the oceans and appreciated the wildness of nature.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
You've had to days to answer a simple, pointed question (about the inability of your hypothesis to predict observed reality) and didn't bother. I can only think it has something to do with this...
No ... I'm quite happy to finish this discussion, but the ball is in your court. You were going to tell me on what basis you made the 8mya and 5mya assumptions.
You said it was a fair question and you would get right back to me as soon as you could. If you do not, I will make some assumptions about your statements.
As for the rest of you ... I'll answer Monday morning.
Make whatever assumptions you want, Davey Boy. You do anyway, and your obfuscation marks you as a lying coward. My question about your hypothesis being qualitatively wrong is absolutely independent of any bibiliographic details you demand from my own, and you could answer it now if you had an ounce of integrity. Unless your hypothesis is nothing more than demanding infinite degrees of "pathetic detail" from mine? That's not the case, is it Davey? If you stupidly think the simple statement, "I have analyzed your piece" puts the ball in my court, then let me tell you, "I have analyzed the Bible and the claims of YECs". There. I'm done with your dishonest, dissembling BS. Others can poke and prod you bemusedly when it comes to your hilarious age of the earth 'arguments'.
(Note for everybody else: when I get the chance, I will post the citation for exactly what physical anthro. text I used, in case you were curious. But I resolutely refuse to respond directly to afdave's crap ever again. "Uneducable" is right, and Arden, I've finally esxausted my apparently "unlimited" well of patience.)
AFDave's like a car wreck. It's hard not to watch. But the board would be better if everyone followed your refusal.
After his World Book encyclopedia 'evidence', I'm only going along because I want to see him cite from another peer-reviewed scientific literature source like Reader's Digest
Ya gotta admit though, stupidity and hubris of his magnitude is rare, even for a brain damaged Creationist.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
He is inspirational is some kind of a wierd way. (But, a quick glance at my "blog" would show that I have a wierd sense of inspiration.)
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
AFDave: go read this and let us know what you think.
I think my favorite panel is the one that claims protons shouldn't be able to stick together in the nucleus because "like charges repel each other."
Hmm…Chick has evidently heard of gluons. Which presumably means he's heard of the strong force. Which presumably means he knows the ratio of the strength of the strong force to the strength of the electroweak force. And presumably he's familar with quark confinement and asymptotic freedom. Which presumably means he knows he's lying.
He's lying to you, Dave.
Ask not to whom the Creationist lies, Dave. The Creationist lies to you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Deadman and BWE did a great impression of Mad TV's Reality Check.
I almost expected the "... and we ARE through" at the end.
bravo!
You know, it's often pointed out that it's the creobots providing the source of humor on these threads, but really it's the rest of the gallery here that does it. Dave is just a bore.
... Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. ... there's no reason to think the situation was any different 20,000 or 100,000 years ago.
I tend to agree, it's the most likely possibility. However, you can't know for sure that those so called "stone age tribes" are really stone age people genetically. You can't know they were just like that since the stone age. They might have been people who broke off from the earliest civilizations and went backwards a bit but still carried our mutant genes.
Is there really such a thing as being 'stone age genetically'? I thought everyone was stone age if you went back 8,000-10,000 years...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I have read about hypotheses concerning the selection pressure that language exerted on human brains. Once the larynx dropped, and we started talking, the advantage it conferred was so powerful that language development would have been rapid. Pressure on brain development would have been equally potent and the feedback cycle was on. Languages would have become very complex, very quickly.
This is interesting -- and actually, the theory behind the development of human speech is a part of linguistics I don't know much about. (Linguistics is actually quite fragmented.) But the business of languages becoming complex probably would have happened tens of thousands of years ago, since really, for as long as people have been looking at languages, there does not appear to be anything one can call a 'primitive' language.
But I would bet that nascent language 50K~100K years ago or whenever would have been a VERY potent advantage in natural selection, especially for a time period when there humans were so few in number.
It's still a controversial topic whether Neandertals had language, and one can't help but wonder if they didn't and whether that was a factor in why homo sapiens was able to push Neandertals into oblivion after they'd been so well adapted for so long.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Arden: I had a minor sort of interest in the area for a short time ( my office mate was a linguist...possibly the cunning type, but I never asked her)...anyhoo..I was led to Joseph Greenberg and Lyle Campbell. Fun to read, mostly based on comparative methods. For the neanders, that was the hyoid bone presence. I suspect they had language...####, even Joan Silk's work on macaques shows communication to be pretty intense even without a "true language" Dean Falk's stuff ( and Ralph Holloway) on the development of communication areas in primate brains (broca's , sylvian fissure, wernicke's ) as shown in endocasts is pretty neat, too.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Is there really such a thing as being 'stone age genetically'? I thought everyone was stone age if you went back 8,000-10,000 years...
I think what Norm's trying to say is that people 8-10,000 years ago could have been different, physiologically, from people 100,000 years ago. Can't remember the source, but I seem to remember reading about some evidence that the human pharynx underwent rather rapid evolution sometime in the past 30-70,000 years, and that earlier humans may not have been physiologically capable of speech.
In any event, Dave's figure of two million years is completely bogus, and as I and others have pointed out, small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers scattered thinly all over the globe probably had neither the need nor the opportunity to develop a written form of whatever language they did speak, regardless of that language's complexity.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hah, talk about serendipity: I was poking around on the Santa Fe Institute page and found this: The Santa Fe Institute project on the evolution of language. http://ehl.santafe.edu/intro1.htm
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I think what Norm's trying to say is that people 8-10,000 years ago could have been different, physiologically, from people 100,000 years ago. Can't remember the source, but I seem to remember reading about some evidence that the human pharynx underwent rather rapid evolution sometime in the past 30-70,000 years, and that earlier humans may not have been physiologically capable of speech.
Actually, I don't recall anything about the human pharynx. I was thinking of articles like this:
FYI (the source of my info in the little prediction exercise):
Lewin, R. 1984. Human Evolution: an illustrated introduction. Freeman, New York.
Stein, P.L. and Rowe, B.M. 1989. Physical Anthropology (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill , New York.
The Lewin text provides some good estimates of time bp (including the 5-10 and 4-6 that I ended up using), whereas Stein and Rowe further review fossil finds, comparative morphology, early protein sequence data, etc., and provide a series of (sometimes conflicting and often uncertain) dates (e.g., compare chapters 13 and 14), including those above). Interestingly, back then, the timeline with gorillas splitting off earlier was the new kid on the block in the marketplace of ideas, though I get the feeling it had more traction in the primary literature than in undergrad texts. Stein and Rowe still seemed to settle on placing gorillas in Panidae with chimps, but highlighted this was questionable. Lewin's second edition (1989) is updated to less equivocally show the gorillas branching off first.
In framing my prediction, I ran with this "new" perspective (I could be accused of employing the benefit of hindsight, to be sure, but it beats wilfull blindness). I suppose I could have gone with the old timeline (or the general uncertainty at the time), and run into the same problem as Dave's CGH (i.e., predicting more similarity between gorillas and chimps, or no definitive prediction at all). Of course, in our little scenario, I would have revised that theory when the data came in (just as the field actually did -- hello, science!, while the baraminology sect would continue to hide, deny and obfuscate their little "theory" right up until now.
Anyhow, as only one key participant in this discussion seems to have missed (thereby exhausting my patience), the key point relevant to this thread is NOT that evolutionary science at the time generated the right prediction (though it very well might have, and it was fun to try) -- it could have been wrong, but eventually revised to accomodate the new data. The point, which you all know already, and which remains completely unaddressed by its proponent, is that a definitive prediction of the "CGH" is dead wrong.
I'll let others show why what is perhaps the most important prediction (i.e., a 6,000-year-old universe) is similarly out to lunch.
RECENT, ABRUPT APPEARANCE OF CIVILIZATION MAKES A GOOD CASE FOR ACCURACY OF GENESIS RECORD
Fractatious...[quote]This is the social science researcher in me curious. But do you have "Author. (Year). Title. Extract. (Edition). Location: Publisher. [/quote] World Book 1993 edition. Publisher: World Book. But look at any World Almanac or any "World history" article in any encyclopedia. You will find roughly the same thing.
Deadman ... [quote]some groups didn't develop it until VERY recently or not at all...Consider Sequoyah, who first gave the Cherokee a written form of their language ....in 1821[/quote] Two problems for you to overcome here ...
1) There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined. Most of the ancient civilizations had writing (the Inca I think did not) so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing in the past, but gradually lost the ability (sort of like in America, almost everyone used to be able to read and write, but now the percentage has declined coincident with government schooling)
2) Even if some people never developed writing as you say, it is still not plausible that most of the ancient civilizations suddenly developed writing after 1,994,500 years of no writing. Even if you use a figure of 200,000 years, it is implausible.
The only reason evolutionists say they believe this is because they need long ages to support their theory.
Norm ... [quote]Cave and rock paintings on cave walls can be dated to prehistoric times and the people who made them certainly were not living in any garden of Eden. Rock paintings were made since the Upper Paleolithic, 40,000 years ago. They didn't write but they were getting closer to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.[/quote] Yes, I am aware of this. How do you know they were made so long ago? Why couldn't they just as easily been made during historic times (<6000 ya)?? I'm sure you are right that they were not done in the Garden of Eden. The Genesis record is pretty clear that mankind was cast out of the Garden. People have lived in caves at various times throughout history. Probably some do today. But this is no better evidence for evolution as it is for 'devolution' or simply personal preference. It is quite conceivable that some people might have preferred living in caves for whatever reason.
Eric ...[quote]I have to say, that's about the dumbest argument I've ever heard for a young earth. Are we starting at the bottom and working our way down? [/quote] No. If you think about it, the dumb thing is to say that humans existed for 1,994,500 (or 194,000) years before learning to write. The sensible explanation is that ...
Written history begins about 6000 ya. This is because mankind appeared about 6000 ya. Mankind appeared about 6000 ya because the earth was probably created about 6000 ya. Yes, we need to look at radiometric dating and other factors, but the fact that written history only begins 6000 ya should really arouse our suspicions.
Edmund...[quote]That someone would turn their nose up at such an inheritance strikes me as one of the saddest and most disappointing commentaries I can imagine.[/quote] Yes, it is quite sad that modern scientists would turn their nose up at 1500 years of acceptance of settled Biblical history (>3000 years if you are just talking about Genesis 1-11) and invent the Grand "Goo-to-You" Fairy Tale.
Arden...
Quote
AFD's cheesy incredulity -- for which there is really no REASON at all -- trumps massive geological evidence, massive archaeological evidence, massive genetic evidence, all of that: never mind it:
Oh no. We're not going to ignore it. We're just going to proceed one thing at a time. You have to admit that this is a good argument for the recent appearance of the human race, which in turn is good indirect evidence that maybe, just maybe, the earth might not be quite so old as evolutionists would have us believe.
Arden ...
Quote
The invention of writing de novo is extremely rare. It's not something the human brain naturally does.
Hmmm...so maybe it's not so dumb after all to think that God taught Adam how to write.
Arden...
Quote
You have no idea how much stupidity like this drives intelligent people away from Christianity, or embarrasses other more rational Christians.
Actually, ICR and AIG style creationism is attracting numerous scientists with advanced degrees, and the pace is accelerating. Students are challenging their professors like never before and many are jumping ship (that is HMS Darwin) and becoming YECs. There has been a Creation Research Society now for over 40 years and there are at least two peer-reviewed creationist technical journals.
If you want to talk about embarrassing things, try methodological naturalism and macroevolutionary theory. Evolutionists say embarrassing things like like "gorillas diverged at 8mya and humans and chimps diverged at 5mya and humans have been around for 2mya ... oh, but we don't have any written history before 6000 ya ... oops!"
Arden...
Quote
And, what do you know, writing starts appearing not long after the advent of agriculture in the 3 places that invented writing
What do you know! Yes. The beginning of agriculture, music and metallurgy is recorded in Genesis 4, and of course, writing was no doubt already happening as well ... we will examine this shortly. Then after the Dispersion at Babel, you would have several separate civilizations springing up simultaneously in separate locations each with agriculture, writing, science, excellent architecture, etc. The Bible is the source for my hypothesis and it is truly amazing how well the data fits.
Incorygible...
Quote
So please, go ahead with your efforts to realize those 'goals' -- you seem to have gone on with your rant anyway, and I can't be bothered to make your job any more difficult by asking questions and actually expecting rational support for your 'argument'.
I simply meant that if no one has any substantive arguments against my hypotheses, then we will make it through the points more quickly. The information you have given me has been very substantive. Your "1985 Evolution Predictions" are substantive as well. However, you appear to be making some big assumptions about gorillas diverging at 8mya and humans and chimps diverging at 5mya. I'm not concerned about the exact citation of your source. What I am interested in is the basis, or justification of your assumptions. Did someone find a gorilla fossil in 8my old rocks? How were these rocks dated? Ditto for chimps and humans. As for creationist predictions, I have given these several times. Maybe I will summarize them and post them on my blog.
Ved...
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Dave, I'm only mildly interested in your delusional alternative-to-reality history, but just for argument's sake, if what you say were true, it raises some questions. Adam wrote down God's dictation on stone tablets. Later, Cain and Abel were born. What did Adam use to teach his sons how to read and write? Did they go out to a quarry and make stone tablets to do lessons on? Did they have to do this generation after generation to teach the written language? If they didn't make more early on, how many people could learn to write from just one set of tablets? What kind of stone do you think they used? Marble? Limestone?
It's a good question and we are only able to speculate about some of it. But everyone is familiar with the massive quantities of stone tablets that have been unearthed in the last century. All these same questions apply to these cultures. What we do know from archaeological finds is that ancient cultures had very advanced civilizations, with writing, agriculture, science, astronomy, medicine, schools, and so on. The builders of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh knew the constant PI, the length of the solar year (365.24 days), the earth-sun distance, and the polar diameter of the earth, among other amazing things. There are many good reasons to think that much of mankind's early knowledge came directly from God to the first man Adam, then was carefully passed down to subsequent generations through some form of schooling. It is interesting to speculate about "stone tablet school." We do know that writing was a specialized trade among many cultures. So no doubt Adam selected one or two of his children to be scribes, who in turn passed on the trade. We say that writing on stone tablets is primitive, which it is in many ways. But you do have to admit that it is much more permanent than many of our forms of writing today.
Argystokes...
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How do you know the writing is 5500 years old?
This would be a good question for World Book or for the authors of numerous other similar accounts of World History. I obviously have not done the original research on how this is determined. I just took a non-YEC source as my authority.
PuckSR ...
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Except.... No evidence exists of any of this... Even most "very creationist" biblical scholars would debate this scenario If Adam(and friends) wrote down the early history of humanity(and I assume that is where we get the bible) then how do we know that the bible is accurate? The bible is only accurate if considered as "divinely inspired" and if God "divinely inspired" the Bible...then he could have written it much later...(perhaps when the bible is assumed to be written, after the time of Moses). What language did Adam write in? Also...if God taught Adam the "One" language that was eventually split out the tower of Babel...then how do you explain the existence of other written languages before the tower of Babel? Also...How do you explain the fact that the Tower of Babel event occurred only 102 years after Noah's Flood? In 102 years, Noah's descendents rebuilt the population enough to have a large enough workforce to build the Tower of Babel(and split into all of the different languages of the world?)
We know the Bible is accurate only after examining it and testing it against known science and history. Only then can we feel confident to say it is probably inerrant. Yes, God could have inspired the writing of the Bible in many different ways. However, creation scientists look for evidence of how God did things (something we are ironically accused of not doing). And the evidence we have suggests the scenario that I have outlined. It also makes the most sense if you think about it. Why wouldn't God want man to have eyewitness accounts of all of the important events in earth's history? We do not know what language Adam wrote in. We can only speculate. We will cover the Flood and Tower of Babel shortly.
Arden...
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What's really remarkable about AFD's argument from incredulity is that he evidently has no problem at all dismissing all the evidence against a young earth provided by geology, archaeology, astronomy, genetics, etc.
Oh no. We're not going to ignore it. We just had to pick a starting point. I like this one as a starting point because it is so often overlooked, but it is huge.
Arden...
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I think fundamentalism is not merely poor scholarship and poor science, it is actually the opposite of learning. Everything that is necessary for the acquisition of real knowledge is actively rejected. It's not just ignorance, it goes further than that -- it's actual antiknowledge.
Before you commit yourself to that position, remember ... it was 'fundies' that refused to worship the Roman emperor and were thrown to the lions for their 'fundiness.' The wonder of this combined with the excellent reputation of Christians led to the Chrisitanization of the empire in the 4th century, which in turn led to the most advanced and prosperous civilization the world has ever known--what we call Western Civilization. It was 'fundies' led by Martin Luther who saved the European continent from the darkness of a Papacy gone mad. It was 'fundies' like William Tyndale who was burned at the stake for his good scholarship in translating the Bible into English, which in turn led to the King of England making an official English translation which was widely circulated throughout England and was credited by Queen Victoria as the "secret of England's greatness." It was 'fundies' who founded a new nation in the new world, a nation in which it was recognized that 'all men are created equal,' quite a novel idea at the time--an idea which you directly benefit from, I might add. It was fundies who founded Harvard, Princeton, Yale and many other leading institutions for the express purpose of training preachers to go throughout the new country and start churches so that we would have a strong foundation of morality upon which to build our nation.
You should be ashamed of 'fundy bashing.' Of course there are some redneck, screwball fundies. But there are redneck, screwball non-fundies as well. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
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normdoering's proof of a 40-year-old-earth: 1) Personal computers only developed a few decades ago. 2) I can't imagine that people lived for millions of years without personal computers! How would they roast fundies on evolution forums? How could they buy pizza? 3) Therefore, people were created just before personal computers occurred. About 40 years ago. I can't believe people could exist without cars, concrete, steel, airplanes, televisions, printing presses, perspective art...
Cute, but this does not achieve what you are wanting it to achieve for the simple reason that we do have written history of humans back to 5500 or 6000 ya. So of course, your little imaginary theory dies immediately. My theory does not die though because we have no records prior to 5500 ya. The only basis for saying that humans have been around for 2 million years is to try to accomodate your pet theory of evolution of all life on earth. If you were not trying to defend that theory, you would have no basis for saying that mankind (or the earth) was any older that about 6000 years.
Midnight Voice...
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And I wonder why we didn't sort out all mathmatics as the same time we sorted out all writing
You mean you are not aware of the advanced math, science and astronomy possessed by ancient civilizations? It is entirely reasonable to speculate that God taught many things to Adam including writing, math, science, medicine, astronomy, metallurgy, etc. The fact that the ancient civilizations had all this supports this idea well. Why should this not be so?
Aftershave...
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Oh, you mean the mindset that requires actual peer-reviewed results, and doesn't accept ignorance-based personal incredulity as evidence? That's a brand new concept for you I'm sure.
Also, thanks to you AFDT2, we now have had a look at the mindset of an arrogant, dumbass, lying, shit-for-brains creationist stooge. It ain't pretty, that's for sure. It would be funny, except for your stated desire to abuse children by teaching them the same lies you swallowed up to the hilt.
Creationists write in peer-reviewed journals. Evos just don't like them. Abusing children? Putting creationist materials in kid-friendly format on the web is child abuse? Wow. Just wow.
Eric...
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You know, I was going to do this big long post about how, for most of the 190,000 or so (not two million, for crying out loud) years humans have existed on earth, they existed mostly in small bands of several dozen people, all of whom had known each other from birth. Rarely would they meet anyone they hadn't known all their lives, and when they did, usually a fight would break out. For the first 180,000 or so of those years, those humans were hunter-gatherers who had no use whatsoever for written language, and not much use for spoken language either (how many different words do you suppose your average human needed 150,000 years ago, Dave?). It wasn't until the advent of agriculture that humans really needed a way to write things down.
Oh really? Where did you get this scenario from? Or to be more specific, what is the basis for this fairy tale scenario? I would guess that someone made this up because they didn't like the Bible's version of history, then various evolutionary 'prehistorians' copied it down to the present. Eric, just because you read a scenario about prehistoric humans doesn't mean it is true. If you are a scientist concerned with evidence, you would know that the evidence supports the sudden appearance of civilization and it's subsequent demise. The hunter gatherers you speak of are the result of 'devolution,' not evolution, if you want to be consistent with the evidence.
But what is your real priority, Eric? To be consistent with the evidence? Or to defend the Religion of Evolution at all cost?
Arden...
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I hope the implication here isn't that hunter-gatherers don't need many words or have simple languages, because that unquestionably is not true. Linguists know quite a lot about the languages of stone-age hunter gatherers (many such languages are still spoken, or were spoken til recently), and they have huge vocabularies, just as big as those of preliterary agricultural societies. On the order of tens of thousands of words.
Languages only develop vocabularies in the 6 figures when they become literary languages spoken by people in large numbers of different areas and in a wide variety of livelihoods. But I assure you, the languages of hunter gatherers are not impoverished in any way at all, lexically or grammatically, and there's no reason to think the situation was any different 20,000 or 100,000 years ago.
Arden, we agree finally on two paragraphs! The only thing we don't agree on is the number of years. And I will point out again that what Arden is saying here supports the idea that civilization (agriculture, writing, complex vocabulary, science, metallurgy, etc.) appeared abruptly on planet earth. And of course, this is consistent with the source of my hypothesis, the Bible.
BWE...
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HAHAHAHAHA! Dave, you are stupid. Really really stupid. And i mean that in the most insulting, derogatory, disparaging, offensive, belittling, uncomplimentary way possible. Not only are you stupid, but your religious ideas are stupid. The supreme gods of stupidity bow before your relentless onslaught. It's stupider than if the worlds top 10 million psychic mediums all sat criss-cross applesauce at the north pole during the most powerful aurora in history and channelled stupidity from its cosmic wellspring. You can twist mere thoughtlessness and ignorance into the poetic stupidity. Indeed, you have no choice. You are driven to do so by the muses that insire you. The same muses that inspired rodney dangerfield, Dan quayle, GWB, the later chevy chase, Montel Williams, Nixon's decision to tape white house conversations, General Custer- what's a few injuns mean to me?, the Edsel, New Coke, the Charge of the Light Brigade and of course, Dr. Dino.
Your stupidity defies physical laws governing the upper limits of stupidity. Your posts compound the stupidity of your previous posts (A fact considered impossible by the late Stupidologist, Alfred E. Neuman).
Your lack of any other quality besides stupidity throws many parts of quantum theory into a state of flux. You refute the notion of zen as the sound of one hand clapping. If you could see your own stupidity, a quantum vortex would appear due to the exponential stupidity that would be generated and the universe would revert to its singular state out of shame. You have no redeming qualities that do not fully incorporate your stupidity as their core feature.
We now institute the official AF Dave 'Insultometer' which rates insults on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most creative and entertaining. This one gets a 9. The only entry to receive a 10 so far was also submitted by BWE when he said, 'AF Dave, I can run faster, jump higher and screw better than you!'
Norm...
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I tend to agree, it's the most likely possibility. However, you can't know for sure that those so called "stone age tribes" are really stone age people genetically. You can't know they were just like that since the stone age. They might have been people who broke off from the earliest civilizations and went backwards a bit but still carried our mutant genes.
Wow! Another statement I agree with. What's going on? Is the sky falling?
Deadman...
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I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid, depleted uranium stupid. Stupid... so stupid it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid, meta-stupid... supra-stupid.
You're stupid collapsed on itself, Dave-- so far that even the single neuron you had popped ITSELF out of existence. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid.You broadcast more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid.You're like some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid uncontaminated by any recognizable intelligence. Ur-stupid, antediluvian, pre-eukaryotic stupid.
AF Dave Insultometer Score: 8, maybe 9.
BWE...
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Because you are so stupid that you sit on your tv and watch your couch. Because your stupid is higher than a mountain, deeper than water, denser than an element with an atomic weight of infinity. Your stupid is the kind of stupid that wannabees dream about. Your stupid is a combination of Catalan, Vulgar Latin, and stupid. With stupid making up the majority.
This gets a 7. Your losing your touch, BWE.
Eric...
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In any event, Dave's figure of two million years is completely bogus
Why don't you call up the history professor that wrote the World Book article and tell him that you are more of an authority than he is on this subject.
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Well, despite the fact that people on this forum think otherwise, the fact remains that most historians agree that written history extends only back to around 6000 ya. Whether you like it or not, this creates a very embarrassing situation for evolutionists to try to explain even if you compress your time scale down to 200,000 years or so for H. sapiens sapiens, which you really cannot do. Why wouldn't earlier Homo varieties come up with some form of simple writing? Language had to evolve, right? Why shouldn't writing have evolved also?
It is still very implausible that H. sapiens sapiens lived on the earth for 194,000 years (or 144,000 or whatever), then voila! ... everybody learns to write all of a sudden. Now maybe I could buy into it if you are talking about 20,000 years instead of 200,000.
Combine the fact of the abrupt appearance of civilization with the fact that evolutionists really have no idea of how humans really evolved (they speculate a lot), and then put all the dating methods under a microscope and discover all the huge errors (which we will do), and you have a very strong case for special creation of humans, just as the Bible describes.
Laugh if you like, but you may not get the last laugh.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
How do you know they were made so long ago? Why couldn't they just as easily been made during historic times (<6000 ya)?? I'm sure you are right that they were not done in the Garden of Eden.
One wonders (even if one doesn't ask directly ) why these early Advanced Civilizations, reading and writing their stone tablets so soon after Creation and Divine Providence, would be so disparate in their thoughts as to the source of their creation and near-perfect knowledge. Further, one might wonder how we in the present age -- fallen, sinful, stupid souls that we are -- would pick one stone tablet over another to find our Maker again. We really might wonder why we should instead find the 'truth' in a book written 4,000 years later... Maybe it's a practical choice? Too few virgins to sacrifice these days?
Anyhow, as only one key participant in this discussion seems to have missed (thereby exhausting my patience), the key point relevant to this thread is NOT that evolutionary science at the time generated the right prediction (though it very well might have, and it was fun to try) -- it could have been wrong, but eventually revised to accomodate the new data. The point, which you all know already, and which remains completely unaddressed by its proponent, is that a definitive prediction of the "CGH" is dead wrong.
I'll let others show why what is perhaps the most important prediction (i.e., a 6,000-year-old universe) is similarly out to lunch.
Thanks for the reference. But it does not address why you feel justified in proposing the 8mya and 5mya timeframes for the events in question.
My contention is that these are arbitrary ... simply made up ... and if they are, then your 'predictions' are worthless and arbitrary. Or are they perhaps based on radiometric dating of the rocks containing the fossils? What wild assumptions were made to obtain these dates?
Creationists, on the other hand have made many predictions including the finiteness of the universe, the possibility of a being existing "outside of space and time," the anthropocentric principle, the abrupt appearance of civilization, the ubiquitous gaps in the fossil record, the confirmation by molecular biology of the 'separateness' of life on earth as described by Linnaeus, to name a few.
You will find that creationist predictions mostly have been confirmed.
I think the reason you are frustrated is because you have gone to a lot of trouble trying to defend an indefensible theory -- ToE -- and I'm not buying it because it is unconvincing.
Why not become a creationist and experience the pleasure of doing real science and having new experiments confirm your predictions?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If God struck down a bunch of ancient Mesopotamians for trying to build the tower of Babel and reach Heaven via the sky, why didn't He strike down Yuri Gagarin and Niel Armstrong, who not only tried to reach Heaven via the sky, BUT ACTUALLY GOT THERE?
Further, one might wonder how we in the present age -- fallen, sinful, stupid souls that we are -- would pick one stone tablet over another to find our Maker again.
Perhaps Dave should consider using the Code of Hammurabi instead of the Bible:
One wonders (even if one doesn't ask directly ) why these early Advanced Civilizations, reading and writing their stone tablets so soon after Creation and Divine Providence, would be so disparate in their thoughts as to the source of their creation and near-perfect knowledge. Further, one might wonder how we in the present age -- fallen, sinful, stupid souls that we are -- would pick one stone tablet over another to find our Maker again. We really might wonder why we should instead find the 'truth' in a book written 4,000 years later... Maybe it's a practical choice? Too few virgins to sacrifice these days?
Creationists have a very plausible theory for that. It is quite reasonable to guess that there was a small group of very conscientious scribes following Adam who maintained and passed down the true, written record throughout the generations. This is well known to have occurred with the Jewish sriptures, why should it not have happened with a certain small group of Adam's descendants as well? It is also quite believable that there were many corrupted versions of this history that were not passed down so scrupulously (oral tradition, written records with embellishments, corruptions, etc.), hence the many versions which sound similar. There is a very good case that these early, scrupulously copied records were eventually handed down to Moses and the Jewish nation, who in turn preserved them and of course, we still have them today.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Instead, I must stubbornly and shortsightedly finish a manuscript for submission to Nature later today (citing years of published "wild assumptions," and making a few more based on a decade-long experiment) instead of doing "real science" with a crazy ex-pilot fundie on the internet.
At least I've confirmed that special pleading is, indeed, the most frustrating logical fallacy, and the one I most detest. I've never seen so much of it at one time, and now I'll remember not engage it in the future.
Cute, but this does not achieve what you are wanting it to achieve for the simple reason that we do have written history of humans back to 5500 or 6000 ya.
We don't need written history because we have something much better -- ancient artifacts that are older than written history -- stone tools, carvings, cave paintings, etc. etc..
The artifacts are dated using several methods and all the dates come up older than your first writings.
If we consider not just alphabetic systems, but broader symbolic systems we can find older examples, like incised "counting tokens" about 9,000 years ago in the neolithic fertile crescent:
The advent of a writing system seems to coincide with the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to more permanent agrarian encampments when it became necessary to count ones property, whether it be parcels of land, animals or measures of grain or to transfer that property to another individual or another settlement.
The oldest known (homo erectus-) man-made notches are on a bear-skull from the lower Acheulian period, dated to about 430,000 years ago (Haarmann 1997: 674). As to the interpretation, it is quite debatable whether these notches "seem to be related to some religious ideas of the Azykh people" (ibid.), ie. if they are records of symbol usage. There are also indications of symbolic capacity of the Neanderthal people 150-200,000 years ago (Haarmann 1997: 675), the available specimen showing "... an example of archaic man's sense of abstraction and symmetry" (ibid.).
The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan....found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm
That's rather far from the Biblical lands.
At any rate, there is a partial record of written languages themselves evolving. Writting doesn't just pop onto the scene any more than human beings do.
Anyone who tells you different is lying to you and it can be proved if you have an open mind. Something you apparently don't have.
Why not become a creationist and experience the pleasure of doing real science and having new experiments confirm your predictions?
You mean, like this:
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It is quite reasonable to guess that there was a small group of very conscientious scribes following Adam who maintained and passed down the true, written record throughout the generations. This is well known to have occurred with the Jewish sriptures, why should it not have happened with a certain small group of Adam's descendants as well?
Why bother with all that pseudoscientific peer-reviewed experimental evidence stuff, when you can have reasonable guesses instead? I mean, what could possibly be more scientific than that?
Creationists have a very plausible theory for that. It is quite reasonable to guess that there was a small group of very conscientious scribes following Adam who maintained and passed down the true, written record throughout the generations.
Once again AFDT2 resorts to by far the strongest technique available to a Creationist - the ability to make sh*t up as he goes along.
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Creationists write in peer-reviewed journals
That's correct, sometimes they do, but NOT on topics relevant to the YEC position. They DON'T write papers that present positive evidence for a literal Bible.
And since you now want to discuss peer-review, please tell what you know about the scientific peer-review process:
1. Should all scientific findings be required to undergo a critical peer-review process before being deemed acceptable for teaching in schools?
2. Who are the best qualified people to do rigorous critical scientific peer-reviews?
3. Why should the opinion of an ignorant layman about scientific findings carry more weight than the opinions of well trained professional scientists in the relevant fields of study?
Eighth time I've asked you these, you cowardly Liar-for-Jesus.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The first known examples of writing may have been unearthed at an archaeological dig in Pakistan....found on fragments of pottery dating back 5500 years: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/334517.stm
Neolithic graves in central China may hide the world's earliest writing, if the "signs" carved into 8,600-year-old tortoise shells can be deciphered by academics.
You know, I was going to do this big long post about how, for most of the 190,000 or so (not two million, for crying out loud) years humans have existed on earth, they existed mostly in small bands of several dozen people, all of whom had known each other from birth. Rarely would they meet anyone they hadn't known all their lives, and when they did, usually a fight would break out. For the first 180,000 or so of those years, those humans were hunter-gatherers who had no use whatsoever for written language, and not much use for spoken language either (how many different words do you suppose your average human needed 150,000 years ago, Dave?). It wasn't until the advent of agriculture that humans really needed a way to write things down.
Oh really? Where did you get this scenario from? Or to be more specific, what is the basis for this fairy tale scenario?
More later (actually, probably tomorrow), but in the meantime: Dave, when are you going to get it through your skull that your precious Bible is nothing but one big, long, tedious fairytale?
You have the same problem Mr. Paley does. Your faith tells you the Bible is true. Clearly nothing else does, because the Bible is flat out contradicted by virtually every other piece of evidence out there. You can't see, or evaluate, that evidence, because your faith blinds you just as thoroughly as Bill's faith blinds him.
Get over it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Why bother with all that pseudoscientific peer-reviewed experimental evidence stuff, when you can have reasonable guesses instead? I mean, what could possibly be more scientific than that?
Reasonable guesses are good sources for hypotheses. You do this as well when you talk about various species diverging at X mya and so on. Then you go out and look for evidence to support it. It turns out that this reasonable guess has some good evidence supporting it. We will get into that as we progress through the points.
By the way, I think Aftershave was poking fun at the author of my World Book article.
You can poke fun if you like, but his name is John Morris Roberts. He is (or was in 1993) the warden of Merton College of Oxford University and the author of numerous historical works.
So Aftershave ... Are you saying that Oxford is not a credible source of history?
Is that your postion?
Eric said ...
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You have the same problem Mr. Paley does. Your faith tells you the Bible is true. Clearly nothing else does, because the Bible is flat out contradicted by virtually every other piece of evidence out there. You can't see, or evaluate, that evidence, because your faith blinds you just as thoroughly as Bill's faith blinds him.
Get over it.
Again, Eric ... My faith does not tell me the Bible is true. How many times do I have to say this? The evidence convinces me that the Bible is true. I have not yet given you all this evidence, but we have begun.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Mass Spectrometry has dated prehistoric cave paintings in south central France at about 30,000 years old, a discovery which has the art world rethinking its origins.
The charcoal etchings on a cave wall depict horses, rhinoceros and a deer. The drawings were discovered in 1994 at a narrow entrance to several underground chambers in a rocky escarpment in the Ardeche region in France.
Scientists of the Laboratory for Climate and Environment Studies at the France's CEA-CNRS research centre carried out carbon dating of tiny fragments of the charcoal. They used accelerator mass spectrometry, which separates and counts radioactive carbon isotopes residual in the charcoal and found the drawings to be between 29 700 and 32 400 years old.
This finding makes the drawings significantly older than those of Lascaux caves in the Pyrenees in Southwest France which are dated at around 17 000 years old. The drawings in the Chauvet caves show that early European dwellers were just as skilled at art as the humans who followed 13 000 years later.
Prehistorians, who have traditionally interpreted the evolution of prehistoric art as a steady progression from simple to more complex representations, may have to reconsider existing theories of the origins of art as a result of these findings.
Yet the oldest known objects considered to be art are far older than the French cave paintings and precede the existence of anatomically modern humans, the Homo sapiens. A tiny stone carving found in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in 1981 is estimated at 233 000 years old. And pigments and paint-grinding equipment found in a cave in 2000 at Twin Rivers, near Lusaka in Zambia, are believed to be between 350 000 and 400 000 years old.
... all the clues are there, as he explains: "When you examine a painted line under the magnifying glass, you notice that what appears as a continuous, unbroken line is in fact full of tiny gaps caused by erosion." Check. With time, the inner spaces in the sketches should fill up with micro-crystallisations, with concretions covering up the works... All these clues are confirmed.
...carbon 14 dating analyses showed that one buffalo and two rhinoceros were no less than 31,000 years old. Suddenly, the cave paintings at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc found themselves promoted to the rank of "the oldest known to date" by the Ministry of Culture
What flaw can you find in the dating methods, Dave?
You have to ignore mountains of evidence to believe the Bible's origin stories.
The evidence I see says that you, dave, are lying to yourself about how you have reached your beliefs.
Well, I just realized that trying to address dave's latest display of absolute absurdity is as futile as it is tiresome.
"humans didn't exist, because writing didn't exist!"
"And why isn't it, simply (and obviously), that humans existed, but hadn't developed writing yet, like steelworking or sea sailing or flight or computers?"
"Ah, but if they existed, we'd have written records by them! We don't, therefore they didn't exist!"
" "
Seriously dave, can't you do better than that? Or do you think your arrogant assertions and delusional comments can make up for complete lack of relevant education and plain logic?
Just two small points:
Why do you accept scientific dating when it demonstrates that a Pyramid (or a hut, or a pot) is 5000 years old, and absolutely deny it when it demonstrates that a cave painting (or a dwelling, or an axe) is 20000 years old? which is the difference (if any) that makes the one a valid scientific conclusion, and the other a made-up atheist conspiracy, dave? Do you even know or care, dave?
Since ancient Egyptians knew, as you say, the true value of Pi (which jews thought it was three), not to mention the diameter of the Earth (!!!!!!!!!, which the Book That Explains Everything says absolutely nothing about, do you know any good reason why I shouldn't start worshipping Isis and Osiris? Hmmm?
Dave, honestly: You suck at this indoctrination business. I can think of 3-4 pro-creationism "arguments" off the top of my head that are way better than yours (if served to the public properly). At least they make you go "whaa?" for just a moment, before realizing the scam and laughing your a$$ off. With yours, it seems we go to step 2 immediately.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave, are you going to answer my immune system question? I'm beginning to think you are insincere about your belief in your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis. In case you forgot,
Does your hypothesis predict that humans had an immune system before the fall, or not? If so, why, and if not, where did it come from?
Is there something particularly embarrassing about this question that makes you ignore it repeatedly?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
It is also quite believable that there were many corrupted versions of this history that were not passed down so scrupulously
State Trooper God and his partner Satan pull over a suspicous car on I-95. As they so often do, he and his partner interview the two passengers separately. The two then meet back at the patrol car to determine how to proceed. Satan tells God that the passenger told him he was on his way to meet Mohammed and Allah and recieve his reward of 70 virgins. God says "These jokers are lying, they can't keep their story straight. The white dude told me he's on his way to meet Jesus in Heaven"
The pair determine they have probable cause, pop the trunk and find that it's full of fertilizer. Satan starts sharpening his claws when God says "I got this one" and throws the pair into the sun. Satan laughs and says "How far through eternity did that guy think he could make 70 virgins last??"
(sorry my avatar's giving you trouble BWE maybe I should rehost it or publish it to a gif. It's not like I've made the flash game of life interactive there... yet)
afdave, thanks for the reply. You may have missed my other little question which gets at why I was asking about the stone tablets, which was: what did Adam use to carve the tablets, a hammer and chisel? A steel hammer and chisel? A copper one? Even if God taught Adam all about metallurgy, Adam would still need to make all the tools he would need to make the tools to make a hammer and chisel. Why can't we find Adam's tools? The earliest metal tools we can find are copper. Did God only mention copper to Adam? And I'm curious about the many stone tablets that you say have been found. I don't know which ones you're referring to or why they are important evidence for your claims. Can you elaborate?
More questions. Where in the Bible does it say that God told Adam much detail about anything like your example of metallurgy. Also, WHEN did God do this? Before A+E ate the apple everything was perfect, right? God of course told Adam about himself and about how He made Adam, but how much about the rest of creation did He reveal at that time? He wouldn't have told Adam how to make hammers and chisels before they needed clothes would he? Then, after the pair disobeyed him and learned right from wrong, and God got angry and cursed them and all creation and cast them from the Garden of Eden, did God sit down and tell Adam how to make the clothes he would need, and how to make the hammers and chisels he would need to teach the children that he now would have to have how to read? Do you see where I'm going with this? Adam didn't need to know much of anything besides "God is awesome" before the fall, and after the fall, why would God be so generous as to then tell Adam all the stuff he'd need to know?
If you've got THE TRUTH, I don't want any speculation, just so stories, fairy tales, etc.
DaveTard2: To fully educate you on paleoanthropology and archaeology would require years, I suspect, and even though both are my areas of specialization (North American prehistory), I don't want to waste years on you. Therefore -- I will list a few of your quotes in one large block quote, easily seen as separate statements. I will address each one as thoroughly as my patience permits, and raise some questions for you to respond to.
*IF* you are even vaguely honorable, you will address fully each one, as I do yours. Don't cherry-pick and try to answer only some of them, answer each as completely as you can.
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(1)It is still very implausible that H. sapiens sapiens lived on the earth for 194,000 years (or 144,000 or whatever), then voila! ... everybody learns to write all of a sudden. Now maybe I could buy into it if you are talking about 20,000 years instead of 200,000. *********************************************** (2)Written history begins about 6000 ya. This is because mankind appeared about 6000 ya. Mankind appeared about 6000 ya because the earth was probably created about 6000 ya. *********************************************** (3)There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined. Most of the ancient civilizations had writing ...so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing *********************************************** (4)If you are a scientist concerned with evidence, you would know that the evidence supports the sudden appearance of civilization and it's subsequent demise. The hunter gatherers you speak of are the result of 'devolution,' not evolution, if you want to be consistent with the evidence. ***********************************************
Now, as to your overall claim--you contend that because writing only appeared late in the history of H. Sapiens, that it is unreasonable to assume humans lived earlier. In your view, the late appearance of writing means that humans appeared at that time, and that any groups that have no writing...lost it by "devolution." I find this offensive on any number of levels.
For your claim to be "true" you have to pretend that virtually all science, from archaeology, archaeoastronomy to zoology, all dating methods-- both relative and absolute, are false, you have to pretend that the math, chemistry, physics, biology, and dozens of more branches of science--along with literally millions of scientists worldwide that practice them--are wrong, and are systematically involved in a massive coverup the scale of which has never been seen on this planet. You have to assume that they are doing so just because they are against your "Biblical" dating. This is amusing.
I would like you to think for a moment, DaveTard2: why is it that you don't see a "list of 500 scientists against" Radiometrics and other absolute dating methods? It is primarily because it would have to overturn physics, Dave...by showing that the accepted values for literally dozens of kinds of elemental decay rates, both alpha and beta, would need to be ACCELLERATED by 10-20 orders of magnitude. This is a lot, in case you don't know, Dave. See Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1986. Radiometric Dating, Geologic Time, And The Age Of The Earth: A Reply To "Scientific" Creationism, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 86-110. 76 pp. This is just an aside, Dave. Let's deal with your claims now.
(1-2) You say that you find it hard to believe that modern humans could exist for about 200 thousand years ( not 2 million, Dave--That is about the time of the emergence of the genus Homo, not modern humans, as I mentioned in my previous post that showed you could not read a Linnean binomial and thought that all "Homo" = modern sapiens sapiens.). This is called an argument from incredulity, DaveTard. It is a fallacy.
I will now say why you are wrong. Set aside your magical beliefs in the special creation of mankind, DaveTard. Consider that humans at 10,000 years ago were already present in areas all across the globe. This is shown by archaeology and concomitant dating methods, not all of which are radiometrically dependent on decay rates, DaveTard. In an earlier post, I mentioned things like dendrochronology, which all by itself says that the Earth is older than your given dating, DaveTard. I could add dozens of other methods, like ice cores, paleomagnetism, varves, corals, stalactites/stalagmites, obsidian hydration, thermoluminescence and fission-track dating. These all also have to be wrong.
Now, I ask you Dave: why do we find humans already present across the globe, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, from South Africa to Australia at 10,000 BCE? How did they get there if the Earth was created at 4004 BCE? THINK about it, Dave...THEY ARE ALREADY IN THOSE PLACES AT THAT TIME AND BEFORE IT.
In order to support the Bible, you have to start making things up, DaveTard. And it is when you and people like the ICR and AIG begin disagreeing with the millions of other scientists I mentioned.
Note that even the dendrochronology for the Middle East disagrees with the YEC position Dave, just to take one minor example.
At any rate Dave, let's look at why WRITTEN language only develops late in the H. sapiens sequence.
For the majority, the vast, vast majority of H. sapiens existence, humans lived in small groups. Bands, they are commonly called, of 50-200 people. Scientists like myself, who study these things, show that the earliest emergence of H. sapiens sapiens occurs in Africa, where the archaeology, genetic studies and paleoanthropology all agree. No earlier fossils of H. sapiens have been found anywhere else, etc. These bands begin to "fission" and disperse, eventually moving across all the major land masses LONG, LONG before your Bible suggests, DaveTard, so again, you and ICR, etc. must begin to lie about that.
Population levels begin to rise as groups move across the landscape and exploit environments-- bands fission and begin to fill entire geographic areas, newcomers arrive, etc. Social complexity levels increase, and tribes and chiefdoms emerge. Eventually, the shite begins to hit the fan. If the environment was open and population expanded, excess population could be accommodated by the splitting up of social groups and the colonization of new areas. However, many environments are circumscribed. Circumscription may be physical or social. Islands and alluvial plains in deserts are physically circumscribed areas. Valleys, such as those riverine areas where most "civilizations " develop...are circumscribed. Social circumscription exists when the possibility of fissioning and colonization is blocked by neighboring populations. This happens at different rates in differing areas, DaveTard, and in marginally fecund areas it may not happen at all.
It is at the circumscription points that things begin to happen. Like the emergence of pre-state and state level systems. We can see this perfectly in the middle east, for example, where pre-agriculturalists begin exploiting domestication of plants and animals gradually... societies like the Natufian preagriculturals begin to engage in the "Neolithic Revolution." Globally, we only begin to see this from between 15,000-7000 BCE, depending on the area. This is because of the enormous numbers of variables involved. Some complex cultures, as in the American Northwest and Scandinavian Mesolithic Cultures and even Australian aborigines..."farmed" aquacultures...some never develop even basic agriculture, or even make pots, because they DON'T NEED them. NEED DRIVES technology/cultures and the continuity of technologies, DaveTard...and this NEED can include written language.
The earliest writings that we have are generally either mystical in nature (as the early "oracle bone" tortoiseshell and bone inscriptions of China) or --far more commonly -- to record-keeping in complex agricultural/pastoral/agrarian societies, where tallies have to be kept of grain storage or herds and individual/family/clan producers of it. WRITING emerges late because social complexity emerges late, and complex systems often REQUIRE means like writing (or the Incan QUIPU) to keep track of things. No magic and no mystery, DaveTard, and all...ALL the available data agree with this. Now, On to your other stupid claims.
(3-4)You say that the ancestors of Amerinds had written languages, DaveTard, and yet there is no evidence of this. NONE. At European contact, there were thousands of different tribes/bands and hundreds upon hundreds of languages differing from each other as much as Chinese and English do today. Of those cultures, you only see writing in ..what, DaveTard? That's right, State-level systems like the Aztec and Maya...why? Because they needed and had the leisure time to develop them. What few Codices that do survive show mainly mythic references, but there are strong suggestions in the Spanish literature and that of the Incan Quipu that other written works involved...record keeping and tallies.
Now my questions, DaveTard:
(1) What is your evidence that Amerinds other than the Maya and Aztec had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a large-scale culture that HAD written language and lost it.
(2) Why is the dendrochronological record of the U.S. wrong, DaveTard? Be precise and specific. Cite your data and evidence.
************************************** On a completely unrelated note: I like your little cellular automata flash-thing, Ved. And I generally HATE macromedia flash.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
If God struck down a bunch of ancient Mesopotamians for trying to build the tower of Babel and reach Heaven via the sky, why didn't He strike down Yuri Gagarin and Niel Armstrong, who not only tried to reach Heaven via the sky, BUT ACTUALLY GOT THERE?
dam*n, if space is "heaven", no wonder I gave up on xianity.
who would want to spend their eternity floating in a cold harsh, relative vaccuum?
The evidence convinces me that the Bible is true. I have not yet given you all this evidence, but we have begun.
So far, the evidence convinces me that the davetard is delusional.
Could you answer these questions, Dave:
1) According to astronomers there are stars millions and billions of light years away from Earth. Wouldn't the light from those stars have take millions and billions of years to reach us? Or, did God create the light radiating from each star to earth so that an astronomer would conclude they look as if the rays had left their stars millions or billions of years ago?
There are also old trees and fossil containing tree rings which give the impression that the trees have been around for hundreds or thousands of years.
3) The climate record for the last 40,000 years was brought to light by ice cores taken in the artic and Greenland. Are they all wrong? http://corior.blogspot.com/2006....es.html
See Dalrymple, G. Brent, 1986. Radiometric Dating, Geologic Time, And The Age Of The Earth: A Reply To "Scientific" Creationism, U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 86-110. 76 pp.
Reasonable guesses are good sources for hypotheses. You do this as well when you talk about various species diverging at X mya and so on. Then you go out and look for evidence to support it. It turns out that this reasonable guess has some good evidence supporting it.
No there isn't. There's no evidence at all for this Adam-carved-the-creation-story-on-a-stone-tablet idea. Not even Genesis talks about it. Why is it that the Universe described in the first chapter of Genesis is completely different to the one obseverd today?
I've seen the idea that YEC's have used the argument of variable decay rates before, but haven't seen the exact source of that argument, only the repercussions from it.
namely:
the idea that if radioactive decay rates had changed as much as the creos would like to fit their YE theory, the entire earth would be a smoking wasteland of radioactivity.
IIRC, a similar argument to variable decay rates has also been put forward by YEC's wrt the speed of light, and the rate of plate movement in tectonic theory.
Norm: Yeah, the accelerated decay crap is part of their RATE nonsense (Radio isotopes and the Age of The Earth) The ICR's crap is cited by idiots like Woodmorappe and others and is found here for starters. Let me quote one bit of it:
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Recent experiments commissioned by the RATE project1 indicate that "1.5 billion years" worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago
Smoking wasteland indeed.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
RECENT, ABRUPT APPEARANCE OF CIVILIZATION MAKES A GOOD CASE FOR ACCURACY OF GENESIS RECORD
Only if you're really, really gullible. Especially considering that everything else makes a really strong case for an earth at least four billion years old. Only the really deluded would think that civilization would appear on earth only a few hundred years after its formation. How long do you think it takes a ball of iron weighing 10E24 kg to cool down enough to have a solid surface, Dave?
Oh, right—God just "poofed" it into existence.
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1) There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined. Most of the ancient civilizations had writing (the Inca I think did not) so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing in the past, but gradually lost the ability (sort of like in America, almost everyone used to be able to read and write, but now the percentage has declined coincident with government schooling)
Would you care to favor us with some of this "much evidence, Dave? Or are you just pulling this "evidence" out of your butt.
In the meantime, there's plentiful evidence of human habitation in the New World dating back at least 12,000 years, and some evidence that may push the date back 30,000 years. But of course that evidence is based on "wrong assumptions," right?
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2) Even if some people never developed writing as you say, it is still not plausible that most of the ancient civilizations suddenly developed writing after 1,994,500 years of no writing. Even if you use a figure of 200,000 years, it is implausible.
Amazing that Dave can be so incredulous about actual evidence, but so incredibly credulous, gullible even, when it comes to his Bible fairy tales.
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The only reason evolutionists say they believe this is because they need long ages to support their theory.
No, they say it because all of the evidence points that way, and none of it points any other way.
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Eric ...
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I have to say, that's about the dumbest argument I've ever heard for a young earth. Are we starting at the bottom and working our way down?
No. If you think about it, the dumb thing is to say that humans existed for 1,994,500 (or 194,000) years before learning to write. The sensible explanation is that ...
Would you care to explain exactly why that is, Dave? Is it because you, personally, have a hard time believing it? Is this the theory of Dave's incredulity? Given your gullibility on other subjects, that's hardly a solid argument.
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Written history begins about 6000 ya. This is because mankind appeared about 6000 ya. Mankind appeared about 6000 ya because the earth was probably created about 6000 ya. Yes, we need to look at radiometric dating and other factors, but the fact that written history only begins 6000 ya should really arouse our suspicions.
Why should it, Dave? I have no trouble believing there was nothing alive on the planet but bacteria for two billion years. I have a great deal of trouble believing that God just "poofed" the earth into existence on, e.g. a Wednesday, and the surface was cool enough for Adam to be trotting around in his skivvies on a Saturday.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Actually, the RATE group has figured out that the only thing that can accelerate decay rates is a miracle, and the only explanation for (at least) the lead in zircons is radioactive decay, so they've admitted that they're just putting up a scientific facade to fool the choir. From HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY:
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The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth — at today’s rates — of nuclear decay occurred.
From the start, several members of the steering committee were convinced that episodes of greatly accelerated nuclear decay rates had occurred within thousands of years ago. For the preservation of life, such episodes seem possible only under special circumstances: (1) before God created living things, (2) after the Fall but well beneath the biosphere, and (3) during the year of the Genesis Flood, when the occupants of Noah's ark would be safe from most radiation (Humphreys, 2000, pp. 340-341).
...
Thus our new diffusion data support the main hypothesis of the RATE research initiative: that God drastically accelerated the decay rates of long half-life nuclei during the earth's recent past. For a feasibility study of this hypothesisincluding God's possible purposes for such acceleration, Biblical passages hinting at it, disposal of excess heat, preserving life on earth, and effects on stars, see Humphreys (2000, pp. 333-379). The last three problems are not yet fully solved, but we expect to see progress on them in future papers.
I don't see why the last three are problems; if God can magic all decay rates up by a factor of a million or so, why can't He magic away the heat, magic away the radiation, and magic away all other effects? What's a few more miracles among friends?
Re "and the surface was cool enough for Adam to be trotting around in his skivvies on a Saturday. "
That would be his fig leaves, not his skivvies.
Henry
Are fig leaves more flame-retardant than skivvies?
I hope Adam was a competent furniture maker. The idea of sitting on a ground of molten iron and silicon wearing just a fig leaf kind of makes me wince…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Even if some people never developed writing as you say, it is still not plausible that most of the ancient civilizations suddenly developed writing after 1,994,500 years of no writing. Even if you use a figure of 200,000 years, it is implausible.
Who proposed that civilization existed 200,000 years ago? It might be easier to tie the development of writing with the rise of civilization, but somehow, I feel there may not even be a close correlation there, either.
If you want to claim it's implausible that humans could have existed for many thousands of years without writing, you have to provide evidence that humans are unable to exist, at least in a social group, if not in a family group or individually, without the ability to write. Alas for you, you have already admitted that several societies do and have existed in exactly that condition. Surmising that they must have lost the skill doesn't negate the fact that, indeed, human societies can function across numerous generations without writing anything. That makes it clear that the earliest date we can put to recorded history has no necessary relationship to when humans first appeared on earth.
Your evidence doesn’t convince, because your conclusions are not supported by it.
After seeing Dave try to defend his "written language goes back as far as the entire universe" argument for biblical inerrancy, one thing has really jumped out at me. It's amazing how unbelievably low Dave's standards are for "evidence" he thinks supports his young-earth-creationism, and how ridiculously high it is for everything else. It's kind of entertaining how he can dismiss entire scientific disciplines (like physics, astronomy, biology, etc.) by calling them "fairy tales," despite not understanding the first thing about them. And at the same time, he seems to believe every single word in the Bible is right from the mouth of God to the hands of whoever wrote it all down.
He says it's not religion that persuades him the earth is a bit older than the pyramids, but the "evidence." Well, given that Dave still doesn't understand the distinction between "evidence" and "argument," that's not surprising.
Dave hasn't even managed to meet my pretty-low expectations for evidence. In fact, near as I can tell, he still hasn't provided any.
So, one more time, Dave: what evidence would you accept as falsifying your theory that the birth of human written language is essentially contemporaneous with the birth of the universe?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I think i tend to take T.O. too much for granted. the archive there is getting pretty big. Hard to find anything in "creation" (pun intended) that isn't in there at this point, and I don't think I've seen a new creationist claim that wasn't covered in the index in quite some time.
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It's kind of entertaining how he can dismiss entire scientific disciplines
and
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Amazing that Dave can be so incredulous about actual evidence, but so incredibly credulous, gullible even, when it comes to his Bible fairy tales.
sums up why I think we all stay for the show. It's so freaky that it's hard to turn away from.
Has anybody here ever met someone in person who is like the AFDave we see here?
I think i tend to take T.O. too much for granted. the archive there is getting pretty big. Hard to find anything in "creation" (pun intended) that isn't in there at this point, and I don't think I've seen a new creationist claim that wasn't covered in the index in quite some time.
I know, sometimes i see an argument and I don't quite recognize it, and go to TO and am amazed to find it already covered. I mean, they've got like 500 arguments covered. It's a pretty impressive job.
if God can magic all decay rates up by a factor of a million or so, why can't He magic away the heat, magic away the radiation, and magic away all other effects? What's a few more miracles among friends?
a few more than anyone has ever independently documented and confirmed?
AFDave, how do you intend to use your multiple ATBC threads to develop your pedagogical material?
Because you're so confident in your arguments, the most effective method would be to simply link to these debates, or print them out un-edited. What could be more powerful than to encourage your students to read your blow-by-blow confrontation and defeat of "evos," as hosted on their own site? This would demonstrate the strength of the YEC position, provide your students with a model for effective argumentation against ToE, and encourage them to "explore the controversy" on their own. (If you use print-outs, of course you'd include linked material, however unconvincing, counter to your postion.)
If you choose to depart from your best arguments as posted, I encourage you to open a thread for your edited materials. It would be interesting to see how your arguments respond to environmental pressure.
Sorry about that. I should have suggested another thread subject to moderation. Some synaptical twitch prompted the thought that AFDave might be publicly shamed into honesty, which is a fundamental value of the faith he professes to practice. O tempores, o mores, o fat f*ck!ng chance.
By the way, I think Aftershave was poking fun at the author of my World Book article.
No DaveTard2, I was poking fun at you for being such a mental midget as to think one line from a high school level overview somehow negates 10 million other pieces of evidence about the history of early humans.
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You can poke fun if you like, but his name is John Morris Roberts. He is (or was in 1993) the warden of Merton College of Oxford University and the author of numerous historical works.
So Aftershave ... Are you saying that Oxford is not a credible source of history?
Is that your postion?
Of course not you f*cking moron. My position is that you took this simple one line generalization about human history from a high school level reference
"But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing."
and somehow, with a leap of intellectually dishonest tarditude unseen in these parts, extrapolated that into
"this is evidence that the whole world and all life on it was created only 6000 years ago"
I used to think your were just a confused but otherwise normal guy. Seems like you won't be satisfied, however, until you convince everyone that you're the biggest f*cking idiot on the planet. Well DaveTard2, all I can say is: mission accomplished.
Washout, your desperation is becoming more apparent with each passing day. Your arguments are getting smoked before they even leave the hangar, and you look more and more like a complete lying dork with each post.
Did your father teach you to it was OK to lie to the 'ignorant savages' because it was for their own good? Or are you just a naturally born cowardly lying piece of dung?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, I've got a suggestion, read The Science of God by Gerald Schroeder, I think you'll like it.
Sorry guys, but at least it will change the direction of his arguements.
If he's going to read that, he should read Mark Perakh's absolute shredding of pretty much every one of Schroeder's points. Right here would be a good place to start.
Not that reading Perakh would help Dave; he doesn't believe anything that contradicts his world view anyway.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, just out of curiosity: how far away do you think the Andromeda galaxy is? I'm not looking for an exact figure. Within an order of magnitude will do.
Feel free to look it up. I'm not sure it's mentioned in the Bible, though.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now he probably won't read, so this thread will just be more of the same. Don't you crave variety? LOL
He would never read Perakh's criticism (or annihilation; take your pick) anyway, and I'm not sure I can bear to listen to Dave's misapprehension of Schroeder's arguments in any event.
It's bad enough listening to Dave mangle linguistics and genetics; all we need is for him to mangle quantum physics and general relativity as well.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
dam*n, if space is "heaven", no wonder I gave up on xianity.
Well, OK, I guess that Genesis just says the Babel people were trying to reach "the sky" or "the heavens" rather than capital-haitch Heaven.
But I did have a semi-serious point; if Genesis really describes historical events, then it seems God wanted to punish the Babylonian humans for trying to do something God-like. These days, humans have far more god-like powers (including the ability to smite whole cities out of existence in an instant) than the Babylonians ever had. Yet God does not now express an opinion on this impudence. I just wonder why that should be.
Why is it that it has yet to occur to anyone in this ridiculous debate that it all worked backwards. It is precisely because of the 5500 year span of recorded human history (not just any writing) that the ancients were encouraged to assume a roughly 6000 year old humanity (and earth) and they then proceeded to read this idea into the Bible.
But the original Hebrew Bible says no such thing. Sure, it speaks of an individual by the name of Adam and Jewish chronology places that individual at about 6000 years ago, but nowhere does the Bible state that this individual is the first human to appear on earth. Nor does it say anything about God teaching this individual writing. This is just another made up Christian distortion of the real Bible, a book most of them cannot understand properly in the original.
Genesis does not state that "God made Adam on the sixth day" but that "God made the human during the sixth era" referring to the evolution of humanity as a process guided by God. The Hebrew HA-ADAM can only mean "the human" because if it refers to the individual by the name of Adam it is referring to him as "the Adam". That is like referring to me as "the Carol".
So Afdave has neither science nor the Bible to support his off the top of his head ideas. He and his Christian friends are comitting the grave sin of willfully distorting the Bible. What else is new?
Sorry I am late. Did anyone mention VARVES to Afdave? It's the ones in Greenland, right? I recall Saladin shooting Gish down in flames with that one simple piece of evidence. Anyone here thinks afdave will do better than Gish?
RIDICULE, SCORN AND 'JUST-SO' STORIES ARE EVOLUTIONISTS PRIMARY TOOLS
I'm out of town for two days ... back Thursday morning ... we will dive in to your beloved dating methods then. It appears that you all seem to think that everything hangs on long ages. Maybe this explains why you desperately cling to your dating methods in spite of the fact that they were thoroughly discredited 20 years ago.
Let's review what we have done so far ...
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR
(A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos--Hoyle, Penrose, etc. (2) Biological machines--Dawkins, Alberts, Denton, Behe (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (4) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims
[next on the agenda] (B) YEC predicts a Young Earth (<10,000 years old) (1) Why world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier (2) Wrong assumptions for radio-metric dating explained (3) Multitude of young earth physical evidences explored (4) RATE project explained (5) Why Kevin Henke fails in his 'RATE Debunking'
A1 was a pretty easy win. You guys came at me with "what about multiple universes?" and "this is not evidence" and "if God is omnipotent, He could make life in an unhospitable universe" and of course the standard "you're an idiot, you're stupid, etc."
I had a lot of fun with A2. We talked about how Richard Dawkins, "the self-anointed high priest" of the Evolution Religion basically agreed with Paley about how biological machines look designed, but they are not, wink, wink. He essentially says, "It looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck ... but let me take up 8 chapters of my book explaining why it's not really a duck." It is also funny to see how Denton and Behe have been magically transformed by evolutionists from scientists into "pseudo-scientists" just because they think evolution is inadequate.
On A3, I got a lot of "C.S. Lewis is a children's author" and other assorted "missing the point" statements. I was reminded with this point just how myopic the scientific community has become. They have tunnel vision only for evidence that you can measure with an instrument of some sort. And furthermore, if the evidence contradicts the central dogma of the Evolution Religion, then it is "not evidence."
We did not spend much time on A4, but it is powerful evidence that the Bible is correct when it speaks of God dwelling outside of space and time.
We spent some time on Ape/Human issues and at first it looked like you might have something when we were discussing the chimp chromosome thing. But your answers to the "Big Three" problems were lame, then you guys took me on a very long rabbit trail about broken GULO only to be shown that what we have is that "the morphologies and genetic sequences of apes and humans are very similar." OK. I knew that already. But this does not prove they had a common ancestor.
I showed you that resistant bacteria is a foundational evidence for macroevolutionary theory and that it is inadequate because it involves loss of function, not gain. Many of you didn't even know that your own Talk Origins site uses this as an evidence for macroevolution.
Now you are trying to get me to believe it is plausible that mankind suddenly developed writing in at least three simultaneous civilizations no longer ago than about 5500 years in spite of the fact that H. sapiens has been on earth for 200,000 years. And you say I'm the one making up fairy tales!
I guess this is why I sense so much emotion coming from some of you. You are getting madder and madder and trying to come up with new names to call me and so on. I guess this is understandable when your arguments sound ridiculous and you don't know what else to say. I guess it is also embarrassing to be shown the truth by a layman.
And we've got a long way to go through this outline. What names will you be calling me by the time I get to D3?
Maybe Wesley will just ban me by that time ... we'll see!
Your next reading assignment is "Scientific Creationism" by Henry Morris and all the RATE documents ... especially the Henke and Humphreys documents listed at www.trueorigin.org.
(Mixed in with all the insults and non-arguments in the past day or so, there have been a couple of good points worth addressing. I will get to those when I return.)
See you Thursday!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
A1) fine tuning is a post hoc fallacy with a sample of one, and no way to calculate anything other than humans can live in this universe. No god needed.
A2) Lots of things, like snowflakes " look designed" but are not anything but a product of natural forces. No god needed, This includes biological organisms, too, baboo. If you can prove otherwise, do so.
A3) C.S. Lewis' claims about universal morality were revealed as not only wrong, but vapid.
A4) Dave got slaughtered on that one, too
And Dave has yet to respond to the spanking he got on his YEC claims so far. Arguments from incredulity about written languages were addressed thoroughly and Dave is running scared. Score: Dave 0 Reality 4
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, you have yet to say why Fine tuning is an argument for God. Saying well it's so improbable isn't a good argument unless you have some evidence that it is improbable. You have yet to present any.
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I had a lot of fun with A2
Again you have yet to present any science. We are waiting.
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But your answers to the "Big Three" problems were lame, then you guys took me on a very long rabbit trail about broken GULO only to be shown that what we have is that "the morphologies and genetic sequences of apes and humans are very similar." OK. I knew that already. But this does not prove they had a common ancestor.
You are now ignoring things we say.
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I showed you that resistant bacteria is a foundational evidence for macroevolutionary theory and that it is inadequate because it involves loss of function, not gain. Many of you didn't even know that your own Talk Origins site uses this as an evidence for macroevolution.
Nothing is evidence on its own, this is one piece of evidence. You have yet to explain why evolution cannot occur due to loss.
Dave by just ignoring the people who are actually adressing your points you're showing yourself to be either very ignorant or very childish.
Oh, yeh, I forgot that nonsense claim about antibiotic resistance and Dave's claims concerning Kevin Anderson's demonstrably false claims, which I posted responses to, with specific examples countering them.
IN particular, I cited examples where there was NO "loss" of function and instead a co-opted gain in antibiotic resistance on top of it. He said he wasn't qualified to judge those cited articles, but thinks he's right, regardless. Silly boy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I was reminded with this point just how myopic the scientific community has become. They have tunnel vision only for evidence that you can measure with an instrument of some sort.
Um, that's because the kind of evidence that you measure with an instrument of some sort is what scientific evidence actually *is*. Relax that constraint, and you can prove absolutely anything by, well, ridcule, scorn and "just-so" stories. Relax that constraint, and literally anything can be true if you believe hard enough. Your world is the world of Nineteen Eighty Four.
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And furthermore, if the evidence contradicts the central dogma of the Evolution Religion, then it is "not evidence."
You don't understand what scientific evidence actually is. That is your central problem. You don't understand the difference between a hypothesis and the evidence that supports or contradicts that hypothesis. Or worse, you don't know that there *is* a difference.
But I'm hardly the first person to point that out, and until you manage to make the switch from read-only mode to read/write, the only thing interesting about this thread will be not whether you'll trip up, but just how hard you'll fall.
then you guys took me on a very long rabbit trail about broken GULO only to be shown that what we have is that "the morphologies and genetic sequences of apes and humans are very similar." OK. I knew that already
That's all dave took away from that whole discussion? That's... too bad. Well. Not a total waste, anyway. I learned some things about it I hadn't known.
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Nothing is evidence on its own, this is one piece of evidence.
I'm pretty sure that what Chris means is that no one piece of evidence is absolute proof on its own. But some of these individual pieces are pretty compelling, nonetheless. For instance, the GULO story. Dave's dismissing it with "I knew that already", aside from missing the point, doesn't explain it. Evolution explains it.
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I showed you that resistant bacteria is a foundational evidence for macroevolutionary theory and that it is inadequate because it involves loss of function, not gain.
Perhaps I breezed by that one too fast, having decided after noting his ICR affiliation that the author was an idiot. This guy is claiming that all antibiotic resistance mechanisms (phosphorylations, hydrolyses, membrane pumps as well as mutations in antibiotic-binding RNA sequences) are loss of function? Or has dave, once again in his haste to grasp any sciencey-sounding straw to justify his "skepticism", just completely misunderstood?
It is also funny to see how Denton and Behe have been magically transformed by evolutionists from scientists into "pseudo-scientists" just because they think evolution is inadequate.
No it is not because they *think* evolution is inadequate that they are regarded as pseudoscientists, it is because they have failed to show the evidence that demonstrates evolution is inadequate.
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Now you are trying to get me to believe it is plausible that mankind suddenly developed writing in at least three simultaneous civilizations no longer ago than about 5500 years in spite of the fact that H. sapiens has been on earth for 200,000 years. And you say I'm the one making up fairy tales!
No they are not trying to get you to *believe* anything, they are showing you evidence which suggests that it is true. You are aguing from incredulity. You cannot believe it therefore it must be false. If everyone thought like that, we'd still be burining unpopular old women at the stake as witches. Well, whatever rings your bell, but just don't expect anyone else to regard it as *science*.
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And we've got a long way to go through this outline. What names will you be calling me by the time I get to D3?
What makes you think anyone will still be listening to you when you get to D3?
So half a Dave you admit you are wrong on the age of the earth (by ommision).
Thankyou.
You know when I suggested that some swarthy middle eastern guy with a big nose and holes in his hands and feet said "Do not cast pearls before swine" as an instruction to not waste time with stupid people, he was D/2, refering to the likes of you.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
And we've got a long way to go through this outline. What names will you be calling me by the time I get to D3?
No names besides the ones your record here has earned you, dave. At least, not by me.
You see, I do not think you are an idiot. Not because of what you believe. Like I've told you before (I wonder if you even paid attention), I think that people must be judged for their actions, not their beliefs. And when you say this:
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A1 was a pretty easy win. You guys came at me with "what about multiple universes?"
You are LYING, dave. Period. There's just no way around it anymore. I have pointed you a dozen times (literally, I believe) to the link you posted, three paragraphs down, where it says we don't need multiple universes. I quoted the darnn thing more times than I can remember. You deliberately ignored me every time. Then you say this.
Dave: Even an actual retard (one below border intelligence) would understand people are trying to tell him something and would address it, even to say "I don't understand", or "that can't be right". So in your case there is just no alternative: First you are being deliberately evasive, and then you say that all we founded our disagreement on (besides semantics and name-calling) is parallel universes. And you are obviously, blatantly, shamelessly, lying.
So, there's no point to address any of your other ridiculous claims -about how you won the GULO debate, or the resistant bacteria issue- where all you did was demonstrate your complete inability to understand basic terms in biology and genetics. I tend not to take Liars-for-Jesus seriously enough to bother pointing their flaws to them. Again, others who are more patient can once again pulverize your absurd claims- not that it will make any difference to you, of course. Not if little children still buy them, right dave? You go ahead and smash our arguments with your fiery blade of truth, you poor deluded thing. I can only hope that this ridiculous mix of ignorance, stone-headed stubborness and arrogance is just your internet persona, and not the way you really are in everyday life. For your sake.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
By the way, I apologise for insulting Fractatious and "turn me on" deadmun earlier in this thread. I also realise I haven't fully responded to their counterarguments. So I will paste their arguments on the geocentric thread and respond to them while I'm arguing my model. Believe it or not, their complaints tie in with my model. Please Fractatious, no references to tampons.
And we've got a long way to go through this outline. What names will you be calling me by the time I get to D3?
No names besides the ones your record here has earned you, dave. At least, not by me.
You see, I do not think you are an idiot. Not because of what you believe. Like I've told you before (I wonder if you even paid attention), I think that people must be judged for their actions, not their beliefs. And when you say this:
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A1 was a pretty easy win. You guys came at me with "what about multiple universes?"
You are LYING, dave. Period. There's just no way around it anymore. I have pointed you a dozen times (literally, I believe) to the link you posted, three paragraphs down, where it says we don't need multiple universes. I quoted the darnn thing more times than I can remember. You deliberately ignored me every time. Then you say this.
Dave: Even an actual retard (one below border intelligence) would understand people are trying to tell him something and would address it, even to say "I don't understand", or "that can't be right". So in your case there is just no alternative: First you are being deliberately evasive, and then you say that all we founded our disagreement on (besides semantics and name-calling) is parallel universes. And you are obviously, blatantly, shamelessly, lying.
So, there's no point to address any of your other ridiculous claims -about how you won the GULO debate, or the resistant bacteria issue- where all you did was to demonstrate your complete inability to understand basic terms in biology and genetics. I tend not to take Liars-for-Jesus seriously enough to bother pointing their flaws to them. Again, others who are more patient can once again pulverize your absurd claims- not that it will make any difference to you, of course. Not if little children still buy them, right dave? You go ahead and smash our arguments with your fiery blade of truth, you poor deluded thing. I can only hope that this ridiculous mix of ignorance, stone-headed stubborness and arrogance is just your internet persona, and not the way you really are in everyday life. For your sake.
Well, yes. As many of us have pointed out, Dave's basic problem isn't intelligence per se - it's the fact that he's a liar, pure and simple.
That's what Christianity does best: provides liars with a defense mechanism; provides cowards with some cover so that they don't have to face the real world; provides excuses for murder, child-abuse, rape, slavery - pretty much any ill you can name.
As Nietzsche correctly pointed out, there was only ever one Christian...and he got nailed to a tree. The rest cover up their inability to actually live the way that Christ demanded that they live by worshipping of false idols, and lying in the name of their god.
If Dave weren't abusing children by forcing them not to think, the whole thing would be hilarious (it's pretty darn funny as it is).
A1 was a pretty easy win. You guys came at me with "what about multiple universes?" and "this is not evidence" and "if God is omnipotent, He could make life in an unhospitable universe" and of course the standard "you're an idiot, you're stupid, etc."
Here goes Dave again, thinking he's "won" something.
I told you 20 posts ago why your "cosmic fine tuning" argument isn't going anywhere. As evidence I point to the fact that you have not persuaded a single person on this thread that "cosmic fine tuning" is any kind of evidence for God. Yet you once again proclaim yourself a "winner."
Black Knight, indeed, Dave. I suggest you rent "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" to see how accurately we've characterized you.
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I guess this is why I sense so much emotion coming from some of you. You are getting madder and madder and trying to come up with new names to call me and so on. I guess this is understandable when your arguments sound ridiculous and you don't know what else to say. I guess it is also embarrassing to be shown the truth by a layman.
Don't flatter yourself, Dave. The reason you're seeing so much frustration is because you're such a cement-head. People patiently explain to you over and over why you're desperately, hilariously wrong, but you keep ignoring them, misconstruing what they're saying, deliberately misinterpreting the evidence, and then cheerfully declaring victory. Can you imagine that might be just a little exasperating?
The idea that you've given anyone any reason to doubt evolution here is laughable. The only insight you've given anyone is into just how unreachable creationists really are.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC "EVIDENCE" PRESENTED SO FAR
Lots of physical parameters appear to have tightly constrained values in order for life to exist on earth. There must be a god!
Dave personally thinks living organisms look like machines. There must be a god!
Everyone knows right from wrong. There must be a god!
The Special and General Theories of Relativity exist. There must be a god!
So far, that seems to be about it (except, Dave hasn't even discussed that last one—watching him flail around in the weeds of relativity theory should be pretty amusing). Has he persuaded anyone yet?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
hey can someone start posting updates on this in another thread. Its getting really grating to read through all of the topic just to watch Dave make an ass out of himself. AFDave is clearly more delusional than Dembski and Co.. So could we have a "watcher" thread for this too?
Maybe giving a day-to-day update on what insanely bad argument Dave is making this week? I think even Will Dembski would stand mouth agap when watching someone claim that C.S. Lewis presented evidence for God.....with Universal Morality.
AiG doesn't even get this crazy.... They once tried to explain the stars with the concept of "degrading C" or variable C(which is actually at least partially grounded in actual physics).... But to claim evidence via C.S. Lewis? That is just hilarious
Yes, he has persuaded me that he is far more brain damaged than I thought was humanly possible.
He has persuaded me that he can persist in his delusions in spite of all the evidence against them.
He has persuaded me that he lives in his own mental fundy world and not in reality.
Ditto.
And I'd add the persuasive lesson that the tangled webs of lying, self-deception, delusion, ignorance, arrogance, psychosis, and wilfull blindness are more irreducibly complex than I ever thought possible for people outside a padded cell.
I used to get a kick out of Dave's morning "summaries". It was like watching a running TV series (e.g., Prison Break or 24) where the "previously on" intro montage had absolutely nothing to do with what you had seen in prior weeks. You thought you watched Michael et al. escape the prison and Bauer rescue whatever family member had been kidnapped by terrorists, only to find a "summary" the following week contains something only loosely recognizable as the plot, the characters look different, the gang is still twiddling their thumbs in jail, and Jack didn't even have a daughter (where'd you get that idea?). Entertaining for a while, but soon becomes repetitive and stale, and the rush of complete bewilderment is numbed. Like watching Cronenberg, eventually unreality doesn't surprise and prompts only a yawn.
My only entertainment from Dave's little rant today was the ironic coincidence of Coldplay on the stereo as I read it:
AFDAVE KNIGHT: I'm invincible! ARTHUR: You're a looney. AFDAVE KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then. [whop] [ARTHUR chops the AFDAVE KNIGHT's last leg off]
AFDAVE KNIGHT: Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw.
AFDAVE KNIGHT: Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Okay, Dave, you ignored me the last time I asked, but I want you to know that your inability to explain the accepted value is absolutely fatal to your theory that God created the universe 6,000 years ago. So, I'm going to ask you one more time:
What's the distance to the Andromeda galaxy?
Your continued failure to answer will probably be taken by everyone here as an utter admission of defeat on your part. We already know you've been routed, had all your appendages amputated, etc., but failing to answer this very simple, straightforward question will be hard to interpret any other way than that you know you've been defeated, but can't admit it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
hey can someone start posting updates on this in another thread. Its getting really grating to read through all of the topic just to watch Dave make an ass out of himself.
Yeah. There are way too many dave threads, and generally I stay away from this one, since its title pretty much admits it's religion, not science, and I don't care about individuals' religions. I suggest everyone with any comments that have anything to do with the scientific pretensions of dave's "hypothesis" migrate to the "YEC evidence" thread.
But while I'm here, a couple of comments:
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he has persuaded me that he is far more brain damaged than I thought was humanly possible.
He has persuaded me that he can persist in his delusions in spite of all the evidence against them.
He has persuaded me that he lives in his own mental fundy world and not in reality.
I guess the $64,000 question (or whatever it's worth in 2006 dollars) is how atypical is dave? Is he just more outspoken than that the rest of the 45% or so of Americans that polls always report as basically subscribing to YEC? Are the rest of them really basically sane, but at least nominally accept this bit of irrationality for more or less social reasons?
and on this, from Rilke's Granddaughter:
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That's what Christianity does best: provides liars with a defense mechanism; provides cowards with some cover so that they don't have to face the real world; provides excuses for murder, child-abuse, rape, slavery - pretty much any ill you can name.
Ouch! I'm not a big fan of christianity (in fact I named my son "Julian" after the last Roman emperor who tried to disestablish it as the official religion of the western world). But let's be fair. I mean, think Wilberforce (the abolitionist, not Huxley's foil), think Martin Luther King Jr, think all those clergy that took a stand against the Vietnam war, think the Rev in the Doonesbury strip...
There's an interview with Karen Armstrong on Salon Magazine that looks kind of interesting (I'm not sure if you need a subscription, or if you can read it if you agree to be subjected to ads):
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Armstrong now calls herself a "freelance monotheist." It's easy to understand her appeal in today's world of spiritual seekers. As an ex-nun, she resonates with people who've fallen out with organized religion. Armstrong has little patience for literal readings of the Bible, but argues that sacred texts yield profound insights if we read them as myth and poetry.
I think Dave wants to become a martyr here, and be like crucified in public. Seriously. The more you insult him, the better he feels.
I do believe you are right, jeannot. After all, there's no denying that comments like this:
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I guess this is why I sense so much emotion coming from some of you. You are getting madder and madder and trying to come up with new names to call me and so on. I guess this is understandable when your arguments sound ridiculous and you don't know what else to say. I guess it is also embarrassing to be shown the truth by a layman.
Are intentionally provoking. He's trying to irritate us, in order to be able to interpret our angry remarks as admissions of defeat (since the only other "arguments" he has are essentially "I don't buy it" and "Come on, it's obvious!").
The funny thing is that he really doesn't have to try and be irritating: It's his amazing display of combined ignorance and cement-headedness that flustrates and angers us -and, of course, his intentional ignoring, evading and distorting of our arguments. His childish attempts to mock and gloat are just cute.
I, of course, am angry for another reason, too: for giving him too much credit at first. Seems like I'll never learn...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I don't see the point to continue. Dave's clearly shown he won't consider any argument from us, and he's not interested in convincing us either. He just wants to preach and be called an idiot, so he could show his friends or family how he manages to make evolutionists lose their cool. So far he's been successful, and since his game becomes boring or truly irritating, we should end it. I suggest we ignore him, and just discuss languages, the Bible, civilizations and evolution in general as if he were absent.
I think Dave wants to become a martyr here, and be like crucified in public. Seriously. The more you insult him, the better he feels.
No, actually Dave claims that he's developing some course material for publishing on the web, and he's using our responses to 'vet' it and improve it.
That's one of the reasons he's oblivious to reason: he doesn't care; he's already written his material, he's incapable of understanding the science that refutes his claims; he's incapable of dealing with criticism; he's incapable of pretty much anything but spouting his nonsense.
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR
(A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos--Hoyle, Penrose, etc. (2) Biological machines--Dawkins, Alberts, Denton, Behe (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (4) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims
Dave dave dave, Didn't you read my story? Father sky molded a piece of light into the universe. Believe me when I tell you.
Mother Earth molded life out of her body.
The moral code we have now is a combination of Yin and Yang. Hamans and Oomans. Jeeze. Can't you read either?
Pop Quiz: Why do humans look out to the sea Dave?
Relativity? Relative to the dark room of night, that's what. Man they make dumber and dumber religions all the time. Where do you get your info? Wherever it is, it's a bad source.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I don't see the point to continue. Dave's clearly shown he won't consider any argument from us, and he's not interested in convincing us either. He just wants to preach and be called an idiot, so he could show his friends or family how he manages to make evolutionists lose their cool. So far he's been successful, and since his game becomes boring or truly irritating, we should end it. I suggest we ignore him, and just discuss languages, the Bible, civilizations and evolution in general as if he were absent.
What he said.
Yes, it's obvious that engaging AFD serves no purpose at all. The most worthwhile parts of this thread have always been when we "discuss[ed] languages, the Bible, civilizations and evolution in general as if he were absent."
So I recommend we do that on a different AFD-less thread. I think the AFD threads should just be abandoned.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The truth is that the "discussion" with Afdave hasn't moved an inch since the beginning. This is what I wrote on Apr. 24 on PT, and I think that everything that came after only shows it to have been correct then as it is now. I copy this in to demonstrate that those of us who are harsh at the beginning have abundant reason to be:
"Afdave shows his incompetence, ignorance, and general stupidity:
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Macro-evolutionary theory that declares as fact that all life on earth came from a single-celled organism by ‘All Powerful Mutations and Natural Selection over Millions and Millions of Years’ makes about as much sense to people as Communist Theory.
Communist theory, like other pseudosciences (it has certainly claimed the “science” mantle), has made plenty of sense to a whole lot of people.
If you want to make an intelligent comment, Afdave, try learning some science and addressing the actual issues. Anyone stupid enough to think that the flood explains the geological column isn’t even close to being able to think about these things, let alone to comment in fora where people do think.
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The truth is … AIG and ICR have TWO, maybe THREE cards in their favor …
Charlatans and liars generally do have several cards in their favor.
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(1) they have a large number of very competent scientists
An idiot like Afdave could hardly know that, even if it were true. And if he did know that, he could back up this particular untruth.
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(2) a lot of what they say actually rings true with many people and
So does the Da Vinci code rot. You don’t even have a concept of what scientific argumenation is about, do you Afdave?
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(3) they are well organized.
Not doing any research, they have nothing to do but to organize, and to put out BS that morons like Afdave will believe.
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Evolutionists on the other hand have very competent scientists, but they are hanging on to a discredited model for explaining life on earth … one which doesn’t ring very true with the public.
Back that up, fundie moron.
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BTW, I would ONLY recommend the two Creationist organizations mentioned above … you guys are correct that there are many incompetent groups out there.
Since these two are the poster children for pseudoscience, this only demonstrates how they appeal to dullards like Afdave.
Moving to the other stuff, actually, I rather think that the theocracy scare tactics are about as useless and meaningless as any “argument” can be. At best it’s counterproductive, since we managed for a very long time to avoid theocracy while creationism was taught without qualms. It’s the blindspot on our side that helps the scientific nonsense to sell, since even if ID were to end up forcing theocracy upon us, very few IDists/creationists presently have that goal in mind. They won’t believe it, and, since they disbelieve that claim by “evolutionists”, they are naturally ill-disposed to understanding what we do get right (most are too close-minded to listen in any event, but some would).
One more thing: I have no idea why anyone treated Afdave like he was open-minded about anything. He came in here with a bunch of ill-conceived and false accusations, and he turned out to be nothing other than a fundie ignoramus. And even if he hadn’t turned out to be that species of moron, he clearly wasn’t any kind of intellectual or scientist.
Okay, but I want to find out how far away Dave thinks the Andromeda galaxy is. Just, you know, for entertainment purposes.
There is no Andromeda galaxy. It's just an illusion constructed for God's computer game. You see, you're just a programmed synthetic personality in one of these games:
Clearly, all afdave wants to do is post his absurd ideas, then declare “victory” without any attempt to provide evidence, or even anything resembling reasoning, much less responding to counter-argument and dealing with evidence contrary to his position. (Sigh) Personally, I got a kick out of his “mankind appeared 5500 years ago because that’s when writing appeared” thing. I loved how he offered exactly no reason why it would be implausible that humans could exist without writing. Simply a statement that “it’s not plausible”, so he wins. However, one part of his theory about god teaching Adam to write got me thinking.
He claimed Adam was created perfect. I wonder, what are the attributes of a perfect human? Alas, the bible reveals very little, but from Genesis 2&3 we can infer a little something about afdave’s peculiar reality. Clearly, perfect humans have absolutely no concept of good and evil. I’m less certain whether they are mortal. I mean there was also a “tree of life”, the fruit of which confers immortality. Do you just eat it once, or do you have to eat it regularly? The funny thing is that the tree of life was not forbidden until after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. One has to wonder, if Adam had run and ate some tree of life fruit before god came walking in the garden, would that have blown the whole “you shall surely die” thing?
Anyway, I seems to me that Adam was screwed. Before he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he couldn’t possibly have known that doing something god said not to would be a bad thing – simply because he didn’t yet know anything about good and evil. (I believe the christian definition of evil is generally whatever is contrary to the will of god, right?) So he didn’t know he was being bad until after he had already been bad. And then he really got his a** kicked.
If I pulled that kind of crap on my kids…
Of course I didn’t find anything about the writing lessons, or Adam’s stone tablets and student scribes.
You know, I was going to do this big long post about how, for most of the 190,000 or so (not two million, for crying out loud) years humans have existed on earth, they existed mostly in small bands of several dozen people, all of whom had known each other from birth.
Oh really? Where did you get this scenario from? Or to be more specific, what is the basis for this fairy tale scenario?
Where did I get this scenario from, Dave? Oh, just about any book or article that deals with early humans. Not your one stupid fairy-tale. Dozens of articles, books, papers, etc. The entire scientific community supports this scenario, Dave. What, do you think there's some sort of massive conspiracy to discredit the Bible? I've got news for you, Dave: there doesn't need to be a conspiracy, because the Bible is self-discrediting.
That's from the first page of a google search on "early homo sapiens," Dave. That research took me five seconds to type in, and returned almost three million hits. The vast majority of those articles place the emergence of anatomically modern H. sapiens at between 100,000 and 400,000 years ago. And guess which ones don't? The ones from those paragons of scientific credibility, the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis. Those articles are outnumbered by real ones by about two or three hundred to one.
But I should believe your one book of myths?
Quote
I would guess that someone made this up because they didn't like the Bible's version of history, then various evolutionary 'prehistorians' copied it down to the present.
What do you mean, "someone"? You think one guy came up with the idea that humans have been around for ~200,000 years? That's what you just don't get, Dave. Thousands of scientists, working over the past 150 years, have been accumulating evidence regarding human ancestry, and all of those scientists have contributed evidence that humans had already existed for 200,000 years when you think God "poofed" the universe into existence.
Quote
Eric, just because you read a scenario about prehistoric humans doesn't mean it is true.
Dave, just because your stupid fairy-tale Bible says something doesn't mean it's true. But when I read countless articles and books, and they all tell me something, and then provide actual evidence—you know, bones, artifacts, graves, cave paintings—that what they're saying is true, and then I see the pathetic writings of ignorant scribes, which one do you think I'm going to believe.
Quote
If you are a scientist concerned with evidence, you would know that the evidence supports the sudden appearance of civilization and it's subsequent demise.
Dave, you don't even know what the evidence is. You have no idea what evidence even means. You wouldn't know evidence if it chomped a bite out of your butt. The real evidence shows a slow progression of civilizations, growing by fits and starts, here and there, over tens of thousands of years. And where did you get the idea that civilization has suffered a "demise"? Are we not living in a civilization?
Quote
The hunter gatherers you speak of are the result of 'devolution,' not evolution, if you want to be consistent with the evidence.
Right, and that evidence shows that hunter-gatherers predated civilization by tens of thousands of years. So explain to me how hunter-gatherers could have "devolved" from a civilization that didn't even exist yet?
No wonder everyone here thinks you're mentally retarded.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
There is no Andromeda galaxy. It's just an illusion constructed for God's computer game. You see, you're just a programmed synthetic personality in one of these games:
You are being far far far more accomodating than this guy deserves. You gave him a shot. He missed. Now you get to hurl insults the way his god hurls thunderbolts or rewards human sacrifice. So hurl away buddy, it's all good fun now.
God Dog Odg Ogd Dgo Gdo dam mad dog god. Read a few of the posts on my blog. It might lighten your mood.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
You are being far far far more accomodating than this guy deserves. You gave him a shot. He missed. Now you get to hurl insults the way his god hurls thunderbolts or rewards human sacrifice. So hurl away buddy, it's all good fun now.
God Dog Odg Ogd Dgo Gdo dam mad dog god. Read a few of the posts on my blog. It might lighten your mood.
Yep, Dave's made himself a target. Once he starts referring to the work of scientists who have given decades of their lives as "fairy tales," and dismisses gigabytes of evidence directly contradicting virtually everything in his Big Red Book of Tall Tales For the Terminally Gullible, I don't really feel the need to be nice anymore.
But obviously Dave doesn't mind. He keeps coming back for more.
The dyslexic amnesiac agnostic lays awake nights pondering the existence of Dog. Which sounds a lot more productive than Dave's mission to corrupt the youth of America.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The dyslexic amnesiacinsomniac agnostic lays awake nights pondering the existence of Dog. Which sounds a lot more productive than Dave's mission to corrupt the youth of America.
Guys, guys... Don't get your hopes up waiting for dave to present his evidence for a young earth... IMO, here's a small summary of what will happen:
1. Dave presents some copypasted "arguments" from his favorite sites (with a generous dose of mocking and gloating).
2. Dave waits for a while as his pathetic arguments are easily refuted. Then he promptly ignores the arguments he doesn't like, distorts and mangles the rest to turn then into beatable strawmen (or simply make fun of them), and at the same time copy/pastes again some pathetic rebuttal attempts from his AiG heroes.
3. Dave waits again, as those of us who still have the patience explain our arguments over and over again and point him to the real evidence. Then, in a long, BOLD-TITLED post, he ironically posts one of those ridiculous pre-cut debate-enders creationists use: Say, how some live snail was supposedly carbon-dated and found to be thousands of years old, or maybe a picture of a fossilized tree trunk found upright, supposedly "penetrating" ages of sediments.
4. From that point on, Dave proceeds to a complete system shut-down: As those of us who still bother try to explain to him how silly what he posted really is, he responds with ironical posts like "Come on, a tree STANDING UPRIGHT? Through MILLIONS of years? How DESPERATE must you silly evos be to believe T*H*A*T?". Throws some more "HMS Darwin" crap in there as well for the flavor, and absolutely refuses to listen or provide a meaningful response to anything else.
5. Dave waits as our expected (and justified) angry posts now pile up. Then, in his familliar humble christian style, he posts another "SUMMARY OF AFDAVE'S EVIDENCE", where he boasts about how he clobbered us up reel gooood in this issue as well, and how our insults and anger alone are proof of our ultimate defeat.
...Did I forget something?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Faid: I think you pretty much covered it. An honest debate over the evidence would be nice, but AFDave simply can't allow that--not only would he be forced to learn about science, but also the shortcomings of his YEC fellows.
If Human Endogenous Retroviruses cause Dave's brain to go to "white noise " mode, imagine what might happen if he had to question his Daddy's dogma.
Cranial implosion is my guess.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
That's why I like folks like Dave: ignorant and proud of it! Predictable and proud of it! Utterly non-christian and proud of it!
That's why I don't like folks like Dave: child molesters. There is no essential difference between Dave and some onanist obsessed with eight-year-olds.
Hey that's an insult to Nus Butters,,,,er But Nussers,,,er Tus Bettus,,Dang,,,where did I put my ticket. The end is nigh and I want my jeBus. dang D/2 you have made me a creo Bus nutter.
Actually that probably explains why those guys went nuts in the first place.
Ah Is layin on de hands 4dlord ...more Soma D/2 and then the ecstasy ...er rapture with extra Cletus Delroy frothing in the aisles.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I would just like to point out that, as soon as I discovered what he was about, er, my first post, I immediately made sport of him:
Quote
Posted: May 17 2006,10:36 Well well well. The time has come.
Dave, you are an idiot. Your vacant mind is incapable of synthesizing information into understanding.
I sincerely hope that your children do not end up as misguided as you. Not for them but for me.
Your head is crammed securely up your ass and you have nothing valuable to say. Your god is a pathetic little provincial bigman who can't even say boo to my god because my god is so much stronger and braver than your god. And my god makes better things than your god.
Also, I can run faster, jump higher and screw better than you can.
Your friends don't really like you; they are just pretending.
I for one, got some small amount of perverse pleasure out of him. I wrote a poem or two, a childrens' short story, worked up some pretty good random insults and learned a thing or three about languages, (unfortunately not portuguese which I am interested in a little-maybe a new thread someday?)
You can learn something by reading the thread called "anatomy of a creo argument" or something like that. I cut and pasted all his responses from one of his threads so you can look at them in a linnear fashion. They make more sense that way. Relatively speaking. It gives you some perspective anyway. (it is long but don't say you don't have time to read it, your posts take longer to write) [Anatomy thread here]
The thing is, he can't be taught and he doesn't earn respect so he is fair game. See here.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
The dyslexic amnesiacinsomniac agnostic lays awake nights pondering the existence of Dog. Which sounds a lot more productive than Dave's mission to corrupt the youth of America.
Oops. Thanks. That's what happens when you listen to speed metal and type at the same time…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Guys, guys... Don't get your hopes up waiting for dave to present his evidence for a young earth...
I, for one, don't think yacking (I wouldn't call it "debating" or "arguing") with Dave is a complete waste of time. For one thing, I actually learn stuff. Not from Dave, of course, but a lot of the people who post to this thread are working scientists who have interesting things to say on all sorts of topics. And I really don't mind that Dave keeps thinking he's "winning" his "arguments" (although I do sort of feel bad for his kids).
And Dave's "evidence" is pretty entertaining. His "Portuguese = Spanish + French" detour was a barrel of laughs, but I think he's outdone himself with his "written language goes back 5,500 years, so the whole universe must have begun 6,000 years ago (even though I'll grant those cave paintings might have been done 10,000 or 15,000 years ago)." That'll be tough to top. I'm trying to picture what he can say next that could be more fatuous, but I'm sure Dave will exceed my expectations when it comes to sheer, hilarious inanity.
I'm looking forward to it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Guys, guys... Don't get your hopes up waiting for dave to present his evidence for a young earth...
I, for one, don't think yacking (I wouldn't call it "debating" or "arguing") with Dave is a complete waste of time. For one thing, I actually learn stuff. Not from Dave, of course, but a lot of the people who post to this thread are working scientists who have interesting things to say on all sorts of topics. And I really don't mind that Dave keeps thinking he's "winning" his "arguments" (although I do sort of feel bad for his kids).
And Dave's "evidence" is pretty entertaining. His "Portuguese = Spanish + French" detour was a barrel of laughs, but I think he's outdone himself with his "written language goes back 5,500 years, so the whole universe must have begun 6,000 years ago (even though I'll grant those cave paintings might have been done 10,000 or 15,000 years ago)." That'll be tough to top. I'm trying to picture what he can say next that could be more fatuous, but I'm sure Dave will exceed my expectations when it comes to sheer, hilarious inanity.
I'm looking forward to it.
I'm not sure I agree. I'm afraid that I lose IQ points whenever I read any of AFD's posts. Which, when you get right down to it, is essentially their intended purpose...
I think that after you've spent enough time in a sufficiently deep morass of profound stupidity, it stops being fun after a while.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The whole episode raises some questions in my mind about the variables and trade-offs involved in dealing with these people. Dembski, for instance, is every bit as ideologically blinded and willfully dishonest as AFDave, I think. But he's still fun to throw facts at and watch his logical acrobatics. Is it just the level of sophistication in his weaseling? At what time does a cost-benefit sort of analysis determine that the amusement/heuristic value of a fanatic is overridden by the depth of their weaseling?
Obviously, each case is unique -- despite the tiresome use of the same old arguments, but is it *just* Dembski's "status" as a "figurehead" that makes him continually fun to poke at? I mean, if what AFDave says is true....why isn't it still a good thing to confront him on every level (reasonably) possible, if he intends on inflicting his bizarre abuses of science and logic on kids?
I am unwilling to suggest to anyone *else* that they are wasting their time on dealing with AFDave -- because it's unclear in my mind that it IS a waste of my time to at least make fun of him and point out the errors in his claims, just as I would with Dembski or anyone of their kind. AFDave has shown the kind of blindness, willful lying, proud ignorance and utter fanatical use of every underhanded rhetorical device/fallacy I can imagine. No doubt about it. But how is he all that different from Hovind/Behe/Dembski?
The only thing that gave me pause was the idea that we are feeding AFDave information that he's simply too lazy/stupid to digest himself.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
If you knew anything about Ken Ham at all, you would know that he recieved degrees from the Queensland Institute of Technology and University of Queensland, among others. And you don't know whether or not what he writes is unscientific! And you don't want to admit that radiocarbon dating does have problems, simply because the problems were addressed by "nonscientific organizations". Give me some proof that those organizations are unscientific. Scorpionman 22:14, 6 April 2006 (UTC) Scientific method •Jim62sch• 01:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC) If Ken Ham is the guy I think he is, there's a backstory you're ignoring. You see, I went to UQ and QUT too, and I got degrees there. There was someone, who I don't know by name as people were too polite to mention it to me, who as a practising Christian enrolled in geology at the age of 40 expressly to learn the science so he could debunk it in order to defend the ideals and teachings of Creationism. He got his undergraduate degrees, that much is true, because the majority of the degree is learning what sediments are, and what igneous rocks are, etcetera, which does not rely on arguments about the age of the Earth. The way I heard the story, this fellow even managed to pass isotopic geochemistry subjects, which isn't hard to do if you do the maths right and parrot the right answers. Anecdotally, my prof told me this guy was a pain in the ass because, at every field exposure, out would come vigorous criticisms with a creationist angle. Turbidites, he said, weren't proof of uniformitarisnism and the law of superposition, etcetera. The typical inchoate ramblings of someone pushing an agenda uphill against reasonable scientific evidence. Then he enrolled in UQ for his Honours and did his work on some Holocene volcanics around the Cairns region, which are only a few thousand years old. It was a thesis which involved directly dating the volcanics, by argon-argon I believe, or if not, by K-Ar. The end result was that he invented some mechanism by which pressure variations within the magma chamber, which he intensively modelled and came up with a swag of maths for, changed the isotopic composition of the argon gas and the potassium within the ablite crystals and gave an artificially old age. The real age of these volcanic rocks? 6,000 years according to his maths. I was told he'd been failed, because although ou can come up with any number of explanations to derive the age you wanted, the fact is that there was no evidence of this guy's "pressure variation" mechanism at work within the magma chamber and, taking his isotopic measurements without them, the age of 42,000 years was obtained according to conventional science, which matched with fossil assemblages trapped within the interflow sediments. So, if that guy I've heard about is this Ken Ham...who gives a toss about what he says backed up with his BSc in geology? Its not scienctific when you twist the data to fit your model and preconceptions about isotopic decay as much as it isn't science to claim you've cloned humans when you haven't. Rolinator 05:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC) Take your complaints to Answers in Genesis. Tell them all this "information" about Ken Ham. By the way, you got this from the Queensland Institute? Who all said this? Your biased-toward-evolutionism professor? I wouldn't trust that. Scorpionman 17:10, 8 April 2006 (UTC) I ask again for some proof that these organizations are unscientific. The scientific method is not proof against them. Explain why. And you don't want to admit the problems with radiocarbon dating, do you? There are problems with it as there are with every dating method. If you don't think there are problems with it then you are not being scientific, you are being dogmatic. A true scientist will admit the problems with his methods. Scorpionman 02:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC) Generally scientific organizations don't have... oh I don't know... statements of faith? And btw, carbon dating is highly irrelevant to dating the age of the earth. JoshuaZ 02:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC) Okay, never mind carbon dating. The problem is with radiometric dating. Every method is going to have faults. However, nobody here seems to want to admit that radiometric dating has problems. Scorpionman 15:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC) Er, carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating, and there are about 30 (at least) different types of radiometric dating. Do you want to be more specifci? JoshuaZ 15:25, 7 April 2006 (UTC) I shouldn't really have to be. If carbon dating is a form of radiometric dating, which is what's used to determine the earth's age, then it's relevant to the age of the earth, unlike what you said above. Scorpionman 16:46, 7 April 2006 (UTC) No, it really isn't relevant because its pretty different from other forms of radioactive dating in almost all respects and only works up to about 50,000 years, so it has almost no bearing on the age of the earth whatsoever. P.S. So you're discriminating against AiG because they have a statement of faith? You're going to have to do better than that. Go to [3] for a long list of scientists and professionals who are associated with AiG. Scorpionman 16:46, 7 April 2006 (UTC) No, I'm not disciminating against them, but saying that it makes what they are doing not science. Does for example the Smithsonian make scientists sign a statement of faith? JoshuaZ 02:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC) P.P.S Take a look at Project_Steve. Lets have none of this again. This article is about science, not faith pretending to be science. Jefffire 16:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC) You didn't even go to the link, did you? Or don't you want to admit that there are a good number of scientists believing YEC? And the "faith pretending to be science" is evolution. I'm not going to get into a big debate on evolution, but I can say that the numerous gaps in the fossil record as well as the fact that speciation can't be observed makes evolution unscientific. Bacteria becoming more resistant to antibiotics; that's not speciation, nor is it really evolution. People being born that are different from their parents aren't evolving; they're still humans, they still have the same organs and facial features, they just don't look exactly the same as their parents. If you want to counter this, you'd better take it to my talk page otherwise we'll clutter up this talk page. Scorpionman 18:22, 7 April 2006 (UTC) Speciation has been observed, see CB910. —Gabbe 00:29, 8 April 2006 (UTC) Sure, you always can find some scientists that believe something. That does not make it science. If you have good scientific articles about it, bring them on, otherwise, let believe be believe. KimvdLinde 18:36, 7 April 2006 (UTC) So the fact that "most" scientists believe evolution doesn't make it true, does it? And scientific articles about what? What do you want to see scientific articles about? The inclusion criteria for Wikipedia isn't "truth". As the truth is very elusive, we settle for providing the viewpoint of the significant majority of scholars on the subject. See WP:NPOV#Pseudoscience and WP:NPOV#Undue weight. Wikipedia doesn't affirm the validity of Evolution, it merely asserts that it is the majority viewpoint among biologists. —Gabbe 08:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC) Just how radical was this "speciation"? For instance, the sticklebacks split into different species. They're still fish, and they're still sticklebacks! Scorpionman 01:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
The comments by Yuk Yuk Yec are also entertainingly boneheaded, tho he doesn't put off the same 'arrogant 16-year-old Christian' vibes of Scorpionman, just a geek who thinks a claim becomes true if you repeat it enough times...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Is it just the level of sophistication in his weaseling?
not to put too fine a point on it, but:
yes.
I think it is for most anyway.
If you're not proficient in mathematics, biology, or information theory, he comes across much more credible than he really is.
there is also this little niggling thing in the back of my mind that he's simply running an "experiment" to collect some cash. I doubt that's all of it; he exhibits the same signs of dissonance from time to time that Nelson and Behe do, but there is some history to the man that suggests he at least thinks he is playing a game.
You might have missed the whole "street theatre" episode, but he did detail a small bit about how he started in this mess, and while it looked about half like pure backpeddaling, it did lend at least a bit of credence to the "I'm just doing this for fun and profit" MO.
I personally would break it down from the evidence presented so far like this:
75% pure dissonance 25% actual dishonesty for fun and profit
It's trying to figure out the correct proportions of each that keep Dembski interesting in my book; all of his pseudointellectual claptrap was shredded years ago.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Dear Air Force Dave Our very fundie fave From 30,000 feet A brain of concrete Says he's a YEC On a heavenly trek Doing mach three For his beloved sky daddy Afterburners aglow The Babble in tow Pulling nine G's On bended knees Evo's be damned He's been Ken Ham'd Within his refrains Projection now reigns Pump-action reloading Irony meters exploding Lost in sky pixie recursion The tap your toes wishful version Uh... Raven Leader We've got a bleeder A noachian flood Of sky pixie crud Roger Tango J Help's on the way We'll cover your six While you work the fix The Evo's at bat Rat-ta-tat-tat Shot down in flames He none-the-less claims To have won the battle With more clap-trap prattle
Meanwhile back at the base The rest of the human race Just can't figure out What Dave's all about Amid the psychosis Here's the diagnosis His brain appears warped He's been sky pixie dorked! Though it's not totally hollow So a few details follow A pinch of confusion Mixed with delusion And in a trance Much arrogance A dab of authoritarianism Adds to the schism Plus scriptures du jour Literally to the core Reinforced every week On Sunday's ya think? A stinky religious brew Left tightly covered to stew Protected by shields From entire scientific fields A long silence follows The cosmos swallows Then a brilliant poof! And a majorly stupid goof! Space-time fabric is torn As Air Force Dave is born The silence forever broken With sky pixie fantasies spoken The Truth is mine The crime sublime Reality's all wrong The Babble's my song On the children I prey In my loving sky daddy's way
After all, life's way too complex And sprinkled with pixie dust flecks So con all the children and elves Before they can think for themselves While threatening torture eternal For failure to kiss-ass infernal Obviously love of this kind Comes from a very sick mind
And on and on it goes Forever tilting at percieved foes Zoomin' through the skies Spreadin' YECie lies Shields to the max Who needs the facts? Always claiming victory Just hilarious to see Left to his delusion We're now at conclusion Lost in the fundie mists A wild wild YEC exists Not to be tamed In humor he's framed And hung on the wall Up head, third stall
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
For Dembski, the %-dissonance/%-fun&profit may vary from day to day. But the bottom line for him is it's a job.
Think about it. Imagine (and it will take imagination! ) that some piece of evidence surfaces tomorrow that vindicates ID. I'll be surprised. I'll be fascinated. And I'll continue doing the job I'm doing. (I'm not paid to "believe in" or defend evolution.)
On the other hand imagine some piece of evidence surfaces that shows ID to be untenable (shouldn't take too much imagination.) If Dembski admits it, that's the end of his job and his career.
Having committed the sin of honesty, he would be an apostate, and unemployable by any of the organizations that have supported him in the past. If it were just about the money, of course, he could launch a new career exposing the dark side of creationism. But I don't think it is; I think that, fundamentally, he's a fundamentalist.
Ichthyic: that's kinda what I think. Dembski comes up with new ways of baffling with bullshit and DaveTard2 is much more low-level on the continuum of the antievos. This makes Dembski inherently more fun to poke at, since he's re-packaging the same old arguments from incredulity, god of the gaps and other fallacies in newer wrapping . I *do* get bored of AFDave's crap more easily, since I've seen it so many times.
On that note, here's something amusing about Hovind: Fractatious once tried to get him to debate online and Hovind set up this list of "debate rules" that basically made it a presentation, not an actual debate. But what was interesting was Hovind's near-dyslexic use of language in the e-mail exchange. I think it was a indicator of his underlying motivations...he's embarassed of his ignorance but is somehow (too lazy?) unable to "fix" it. Read his "thesis" excerpts and it's pretty obvious there, too. So, what he seems to do is to use his tactics against a "suitable" target in an effort to boost his ego.
AFDaveTard seems to be pretty much the same ( from yesterday) :
Quote
I guess it is also embarrassing to be shown the truth by a layman.
DaveTard2 and Hovind types aren't "producers, " they're leeches, but DaveTard2 wants to POSE as an academic, per his "Hypothesis." And even though Dembski has a pocketful of degrees, his whole stance seems to be the same,basically, just more driven and less lazy. Making him a more interesting target, since he's just more productive
It's all still interesting to me, and I still think I'll step on DaveTard's slimy serpentine head every time it appears. Mostly by mocking, per stevestory. I'm used to taking that approach with plain ol' fundamentalists in debate, and he's headed into really old ground with his Biblical YEC crap, so it won't be like I'm offering him any "new" info he can subvert/caricature. I hope no one gets irritated at me continuing to try to thwart his child-brainwashing efforts. I'd much rather discuss languages, the really neat stuff I picked up on antibiotic resistance, the motives of these assholes, etc. but I will be taking an occasional moment to step on DaveTard2's claims and laugh at him.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hey, I actually think that AFDave has proven the existence of God to me.
More Later! ! ! ! ! ! !
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
Think about it. Imagine (and it will take imagination! ) that some piece of evidence surfaces tomorrow that vindicates ID. I'll be surprised. I'll be fascinated.
and you can bet that it wouldn't have come from any "research" the IDiots did. It would of course come from folks who actually do research, namely the biologists. a great argument as to why if these dolts actually "believed" in ID as a concept, they'd stop kocking the "darwinists" and start trying to do some actual research.
OTOH, maybe Dave's fungal fubarishness will generate evidence of ID, huh?
God, I kill me.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
DaveTard2 and Hovind types aren't "producers, " they're leeches, but DaveTard2 wants to POSE as an academic, per his "Hypothesis."
yes. In fact, somebody round these parts created the term:
"pseudointellectual intellectualism"
which kind of fits Davey boy to a "T".
Quote
(I'd much rather discuss)...the really neat stuff I picked up on antibiotic resistance
so let's.
I do wish there could be less threads started for the likes of T-diddy, AFDave, and Gawp, and more along the lines of what you just mentioned.
So grab your references on AR, and start a new thread where we can take a gander and comment on something of real intellectual significance to contrast against the endless idiocy of AFDave and co.
It might not go for as many pages, but I personally would be happy to see it.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Dear Air Force Dave Our very fundie fave From 30,000 feet A brain of concrete....
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Best belly laugh I've had in a while!
One of the major draws for me here is not battling the fundy boobs; it's the intelligence, humor, and clever wit of the regulars. Good job to all!
P.S. Looks like old AirFarceDaveTard2 has gone Tango Uniform!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
One of the major draws for me here is not battling the fundy boobs; it's the intelligence, humor, and clever wit of the regulars. Good job to all!
Oh, yeah, the fundies are just source material.
Yes, Dave's random, unguided comments are merely the seed, which are then acted upon by the decidedly non-random pressure of real scientists' comments.
Or something like that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
NEWS ITEMS ABOUT CREATIONISM AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Hello everyone! I know everyone missed having me around yesterday to pick on. But now I am back and you can start having fun again. I noticed that some people are very interested in my AF career so I gave a few more details on my blog profile ... you can have a look if you like at airdave.blogspot.com
I got caught up on my reading of Bill Dembski's blog and found some very interesting stuff ... I have told you on several occasions about very smart people who were skeptics, but eventually wound up becoming Christians ... here are a couple identified by Dembski ...
Quote
People Who Left Atheism Because of ID Antony Flew, professor emeritus at Reading University, was a leading 20th-century intellectual and author of many books including “Atheistic Humanism.” Although as a youth Flew was a devoted Christian, during his teens he rejected Christianity because of his study of Darwinism. He concluded that evolution could fully account for the creation of all life – and that no need existed for a Creator who had been put out of work by science. Flew eventually became a leading defender of atheism for over half a century.
Flew kept reading and thinking about this topic, though, and eventually came back to the theism of his youth. His conversion was primarily because of his study of intelligent design. As he told The Associated Press, his views were now similar to the “American ‘Intelligent Design’ theorists who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe.” Michael Behe’s and William Dembski’s books were especially influential. Flew added that an argument from design, “assures us that there is a God” and that DNA research has provided us with “a new and enormously powerful argument” for design. Flew stresses that the main reason for “believing in a First Cause God is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.” He states that his whole life has been guided by the principle of Socrates, “follow the evidence where it leads” and, in this case, it led him to theism.
The second is Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Timothy Johnson. Johnson is most well-known as an ABC News medical correspondent, and for his many documentaries. His new book on intelligent design titled “Finding God in the Questions,” a New York Times best-seller, both defends intelligent design and reviews his own spiritual journey beginning from his childhood religious beliefs to his acceptance of skepticism, then back to belief. He discusses in detail why, as a scientist, intelligent design was critical in his journey from agnosticism to belief.
Johnson graduated from high school as valedictorian and, after two years of college, decided to become a minister. His theology studies at the University of Chicago, instead of deepening his faith, caused him to lose it. In his words, “under the challenge of some very bright and skeptical teachers at the University of Chicago” he began to “doubt most everything” he had learned. This included the belief that the Bible was God’s word, that Jesus was God’s son, and that God rules the universe. No longer a believer, he graduated and was ordained but did not enter the ministry. He elected to study medicine, partly because of his seminary field placements in hospitals.
He came to believe in God only after many years of examining in detail the major questions that trouble many of us. He began by questioning the evolutionary belief that the universe is a product of only time, natural law, and chance. After extensively studying the scientific research, especially intelligent design, Johnson concluded that our inner and outer universes are not only far too vast and complex to be the result of natural forces but are constructed so as to force the conclusion that they were created by an intelligent designer. Johnson concluded the footprints are found everywhere, from the human conscience to our basic need to form the complex social relationships that shape our lives.
Johnson cites the major intelligent design literature, which he recommends highly. His journey parallels that of many people today and is why intelligent design has been a major means for many to convert from atheism to theism, and why courts rule teaching it is religious advocacy. The above are only two case histories involving conversion from atheism to theism because of intelligent design discussed in a book I edited that will be published this fall by Master Books.
Now I know that there are some of you who once claimed to be Christians as well, but have now rejected Christianity as both of these men did ... maybe you never really had true Christianity which involves a personal relationship with the Creator. There are many flavors of false Christianity in the world today, and I probably would have rejected Christianity also if I had one of those flavors.
But there is a true version and the fact is, true Biblical Christianity is the only thing that offers satisfying answers to life's mysteries--whether you are studying biology, cosmology, origins, history, human nature, government, the family and many other subjects.
Those of you who have never read the Bible, you at least owe it to yourselves to read it. Don't pick and choose little snippets. Just read it straight through. If you only have time to read a little, read the Book of Romans, then John. Then go back and start at Genesis. Warning: your life may never be the same!
Here's one more nugget from Dembski that I just love because I believe it relates so well to Creationism and ID ...
Quote
Ignore, Laugh, Fight, Win First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi
Where are we with Creationism and ID? We are way past 'Ignore' judging from how much IDers and Creos are mentioned at Panda's Thumb. And we are past 'Laugh' and well into 'Fight' although there is still plenty of laughter going on.
I guess it is only a matter of time before the 'Win' stage ...
Of course, I really don't care to win any arguments just for winning's sake. What I really care about is the truth, which I hope that all of you will embrace at least on your deathbeds, if not before.
***********************************************
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
NEWS ITEMS ABOUT CREATIONISM AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Hello everyone! I know everyone missed having me around yesterday to pick on. But now I am back and you can start having fun again. I noticed that some people are very interested in my AF career so I gave a few more details on my blog profile ... you can have a look if you like at airdave.blogspot.com
I got caught up on my reading of Bill Dembski's blog and found some very interesting stuff ... I have told you on several occasions about very smart people who were skeptics, but eventually wound up becoming Christians ... here are a couple identified by Dembski ...
Quote
People Who Left Atheism Because of ID Antony Flew, professor emeritus at Reading University, was a leading 20th-century intellectual and author of many books including “Atheistic Humanism.” Although as a youth Flew was a devoted Christian, during his teens he rejected Christianity because of his study of Darwinism. He concluded that evolution could fully account for the creation of all life – and that no need existed for a Creator who had been put out of work by science. Flew eventually became a leading defender of atheism for over half a century.
Flew kept reading and thinking about this topic, though, and eventually came back to the theism of his youth. His conversion was primarily because of his study of intelligent design. As he told The Associated Press, his views were now similar to the “American ‘Intelligent Design’ theorists who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe.” Michael Behe’s and William Dembski’s books were especially influential. Flew added that an argument from design, “assures us that there is a God” and that DNA research has provided us with “a new and enormously powerful argument” for design. Flew stresses that the main reason for “believing in a First Cause God is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.” He states that his whole life has been guided by the principle of Socrates, “follow the evidence where it leads” and, in this case, it led him to theism.
The second is Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Timothy Johnson. Johnson is most well-known as an ABC News medical correspondent, and for his many documentaries. His new book on intelligent design titled “Finding God in the Questions,” a New York Times best-seller, both defends intelligent design and reviews his own spiritual journey beginning from his childhood religious beliefs to his acceptance of skepticism, then back to belief. He discusses in detail why, as a scientist, intelligent design was critical in his journey from agnosticism to belief.
Johnson graduated from high school as valedictorian and, after two years of college, decided to become a minister. His theology studies at the University of Chicago, instead of deepening his faith, caused him to lose it. In his words, “under the challenge of some very bright and skeptical teachers at the University of Chicago” he began to “doubt most everything” he had learned. This included the belief that the Bible was God’s word, that Jesus was God’s son, and that God rules the universe. No longer a believer, he graduated and was ordained but did not enter the ministry. He elected to study medicine, partly because of his seminary field placements in hospitals.
He came to believe in God only after many years of examining in detail the major questions that trouble many of us. He began by questioning the evolutionary belief that the universe is a product of only time, natural law, and chance. After extensively studying the scientific research, especially intelligent design, Johnson concluded that our inner and outer universes are not only far too vast and complex to be the result of natural forces but are constructed so as to force the conclusion that they were created by an intelligent designer. Johnson concluded the footprints are found everywhere, from the human conscience to our basic need to form the complex social relationships that shape our lives.
Johnson cites the major intelligent design literature, which he recommends highly. His journey parallels that of many people today and is why intelligent design has been a major means for many to convert from atheism to theism, and why courts rule teaching it is religious advocacy. The above are only two case histories involving conversion from atheism to theism because of intelligent design discussed in a book I edited that will be published this fall by Master Books.
Now I know that there are some of you who once claimed to be Christians as well, but have now rejected Christianity as both of these men did ... maybe you never really had true Christianity which involves a personal relationship with the Creator. There are many flavors of false Christianity in the world today, and I probably would have rejected Christianity also if I had one of those flavors.
But there is a true version and the fact is, true Biblical Christianity is the only thing that offers satisfying answers to life's mysteries--whether you are studying biology, cosmology, origins, history, human nature, government, the family and many other subjects.
Those of you who have never read the Bible, you at least owe it to yourselves to read it. Don't pick and choose little snippets. Just read it straight through. If you only have time to read a little, read the Book of Romans, then John. Then go back and start at Genesis. Warning: your life may never be the same!
Here's one more nugget from Dembski that I just love because I believe it relates so well to Creationism and ID ...
Quote
Ignore, Laugh, Fight, Win First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi
Where are we with Creationism and ID? We are way past 'Ignore' judging from how much IDers and Creos are mentioned at Panda's Thumb. And we are past 'Laugh' and well into 'Fight' although there is still plenty of laughter going on.
I guess it is only a matter of time before the 'Win' stage ...
Of course, I really don't care to win any arguments just for winning's sake. What I really care about is the truth, which I hope that all of you will embrace at least on your deathbeds, if not before.
***********************************************
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
THE RATE GROUP, ASSUMPTIONS, AND HENKE VS. HUMPHREYS
Well ... enough 'News Items' for now ... more tomorrow. Let's dive into the RATE Project. Now I did mention Henry Morris' book, Scientific Creationsim, but I will not discuss it here, simply because it is rather old and will only distract from more important issues. The 'Old or Young' chapter in that book can pretty much be summed up in one word - 'Assumptions'. The bottom line with radioisotope dating and radiocarbon dating is that assumptions must be made in order to use either method. And of course, the basic uniformitarian assumption is found in the Bible in II Peter 3:4 - that all things continue as they were from the beginning. Uniformitarians do not believe in a Creation event or a Global Flood event. Now, I'm sure you all will correct me if I am wrong, but I think the major assumptions that are made with radioisotope dating are ...
1) The system being dated is a closed system 2) The system must initially have contained none of its daughter component 3) The process rate must always have been the same
There may be other assumptions as well, but these I think are the most important. Now I will not get into the technical details of U/Th/Pb and Ar dating and so on, because it is not necessary. I only need to make two points here ...
1) If there is a good chance that there was, in fact, a Creation Event or a Global Flood event, then these assumptions may very well be wrong. 2) A Creation event is harder to prove, but there is evidence for it and I have already shown you a little of this evidence, but the Global Flood is one of the easiest events in world history to prove. The evidence is massive and we will examine it soon.
It stands as one of the wonders of the modern world that there is so much evidence of the Global Flood literally screaming at us from the rocks, and yet so many scientists dismiss it as a myth.
Friends, I'm here to tell you today that the Global Flood of Noah was a real event. It was an event of staggering proportions and enormous implications, not the least of which could have easily been the nullification of one or more of the dating assumptions listed above. Any scientific conversation about the age of the earth is really a non-starter if it does not at least acknowledge the Flood event, and possibly also the Creation event. The Global Flood is truly one of those 'elephants in the living room' events.
Two more things to say about radiometric dating:
1) There are many, many items which give a very young age for the earth which I'm sure all of you are very familiar with and no doubt have tried to discredit. Institute for Creation Research (ICR) lists 14 of them here - http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp 2) Even if radiometric dating were accurate and the earth was 5 billion years old, this would not give evolution enough time to occur. The fact is that quadrillions or quintillions of years would not be enough to overcome the odds of the first simple life form coming into existenece. But as we will see, you don't even have billions.
Of course, the RATE Group acknowledges both a Creation Event and a Flood Event and the hot item for them right now is the Helium in Zircons. Now I am sure that you all are quite familiar with this raging debate (actually you all probably would say that there IS no debate ... Humphreys is a Creo/Wacko ... end of story, right?) Well, as usual, I disagree ... I think there is a debate, but I will not say that the case is completely closed. There are many things the RATE Group does not know, but there are many things that they DO know, and we will look into the Henke/Humphreys debate to see what we can learn.
QUICK SUMMARY OF THE RATE GROUP'S HELIUM IN ZIRCON PROJECT The Mystery to be Solved: '1.5 billion year old' zircons contain lots of helium. This is surprising, because helium diffuses rapidly out of most minerals. What's going on here??!!
1974 -- Los Alamos geoscientists drill into some granitic rock looking for geothermal energy sources. They extracted the zircon and measured for U, Th and Pb and came up with 1.5 billion years of nuclear decay making the usual uniformitarian assumptions (no Creo, Bible thumping going on here). 1982 -- Oak Ridge National Labs scientists published the percentage of helium still retained in the zircons: 58% at the shallowest depth, decreasing with higher T and P in the borehole, which confimed that diffusion had been happening. These zircons were tiny and hot, yet they had retained huge amounts of helium! (still no Bible thumping, guys) 1999 -- Dr. Russell Humphreys gets the bright idea to get some zircon samples and test the diffusion rates. At this time, the only reported helium diffusion data for zircons were ambiguous. Slow rates = 1.5 billion years, Faster rates predicted by Humphreys = 6000 years. 2000 -- Humphreys, et. al. publishes numerical predictions for the diffusivity of helium in zircons based on his hypothesis that the earth is about 6000 years old. 2000 -- RATE group commissions a blind experiment by the one of the world's most respected experimenters in the field -- Ken Farley of Cal Tech -- to test the diffusion rates of sample zircons (Farley is NOT a Bible thumper, guys, in fact he is a long ager like you) http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~farley/index.html 2003 -- Cal Tech confirms RATE Group's predictions giving major support to the 6000 year old earth hypothesis. Three sets of data were received: 2001-data from another site, 2002-Initial data from RATE Group site, 2003-Add'l data from RATE Group site. All three sets of data line up with Humphreys predictions published in 2000.
Now Henke can say whatever he wants about a lot of things, but no matter what he says, it is astounding that a scientist could make such accurate predictions about diffusion rates in zircons over two years before the test was made. (Did someone here say creationists don't make predictions? Was that Incorygible?)
As I said, there are several issues that Henke has with Humphreys' experiment, but what I find most interesting is which issue he talks about first in his revised rebuttal. Everyone knows that Henke listed 15 objections to the Humphreys project, everyone also knows that Humphreys answered them all, and that Henke revised his objections. Now we can debate each point and certainly we should, but I find it interesting that after Humphreys' rebuttal, Henke brings up a new issue which he had not mentioned before ... the fact that the zircons were tested under vacuum.
This raises several questions we should ask Henke. 1) Why didn't you bring this up initially? 2) Why is it listed first in your revised critique?
I don't know about you, but it makes me think that Humphreys was pretty successful in answering his claims the first time, so Henke had to come up with something new. Lucky for me, I understand the vacuum issue very well and it is easily answered and disposed of. Let's take a look ...
HENKE'S VACUUM TESTING 'BAIT-AND-SWITCH' Here is Henke's claim ...
Quote
First of all, his helium diffusion experiments were performed under a vacuum rather than at realistic pressures that model the subsurface conditions at Fenton Hill (about 200 to 1,200 bars; Winkler, 1979, p. 5). McDougall and Harrison (1999), Dalrymple and Lanphere (1969) and many other researchers have already shown that the diffusion of noble gases in silicate minerals may decrease by at least 3-6 orders of magnitude at a given temperature if the studies are performed under pressure rather than in a vacuum.
Now the reason this is a bait and switch is this ...
Henke baits you with the words diffusion, noble gases, and silicate minerals which is, in fact, what we are talking about. So the casual reader who doesn't do any digging will say "Wow, see ... there it is ... Humphreys is refuted ... end of story."
The problem is that if you look into the details of the cited experiments, you will find that they are done on mica, with Argon, and with water involved. Oops! Henke forgot to mention those little details in the opening paragraphs. And oops! They really matter a lot!
1) The tests Henke cited involve micas which are softs and are very much susceptible to pressure variations because of the space betwee atoms. Zircons are not. 2) The tests Henke cited involve water. Tests on dry micas will be different than on wet micas. 3) The tests involved Argon which is a much larger atom than helium, so helium is much less susceptible to pressure because of this.
Humphreys also asks Henke why Farley has not published any experiments which yield a significant pressure effect in zircons, which he would if he could. The simple answer, of course, is that he cannot because the effect is negligible.
Of course, there are other issues which Henke brings up and I will be glad to go through them with you if anyone thinks some particular ones have merit. One of the more prominent ones seems to be the claim of 'misidentifying and/or mishandling the rocks.' See Henke's quote below ...
Quote
Besides lithological and chemical dissimilarities, the ages of the Jemez Granodiorite and the overlying gneiss that Humphreys et al. (2003a,b; 2004) actually studied are noticeably different. Zartman (1979) provides a date of 1500 ± 20 million years old for the biotite granodiorite (Jemez) at a depth of 2,903.8 meters. Not surprisingly, the zircons from the Precambrian gneiss at 750 meters depth provide a somewhat younger date of 1439.3 ± 1.8 million years old (Appendix A of Humphreys et al., 2003a). http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/original.html (Improper Sample ID Section)
OK. So let's give Henke the benefit of the doubt. If we do, what we have is around 1.4 billion years of decay vs. 1.5 billion years of decay. Big deal! This is like making a big deal that gorillas are 98.5% similar to humans and chimps are only 98.0% similar. Big deal! There's nothing here, guys. Whether we are talking about 1.4B or 1.5B has no impact whatsoever on the overwhelming conclusions of the experiment.
Considering all the non-radiometric dating indications of a young earth and considering the equivocal nature of Henke's criticisms, I cannot imagine how you guys can still be holding onto your evolutionary scenarios that all life on earth evolved over millions and millions of years.
Quadrillions of years isn't enough, and ...
Even your beloved radiometric dating--which makes you think there is enough time for evolution to occur--is proving to be just another lousy assumption.
It's an exciting time to be a creationist and there is still room on the train!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And once again, 2nd Lt. Dave gets the facts wrong.
Quote
Now I know that there are some of you who once claimed to be Christians as well, but have now rejected Christianity as both of these men did ... maybe you never really had true Christianity which involves a personal relationship with the Creator. There are many flavors of false Christianity in the world today, and I probably would have rejected Christianity also if I had one of those flavors.
Flew didn't become a Christian - he has become a partial deist; and he has rejected ID now that he's found out that it's vacuous.
I wouldn't expect you to know this; you'd have had to google to find that out:
Quote
Philosopher Antony Flew, famous as an atheist for most of his career, briefly became a convert to ID a while ago, before suddenly recanting (as reported here, he said, "I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction"). I don't know his current position but his skeptical credentials on this issue are tattered.
From someone who claimed to be a google-expert, that's a shocking inability to use a computer.
Poor Davey is a little fool, His brain just doesn't think, And everything that Davey says, is sure to make us blink.
Cheer up, Dave! When you grow up, you too can learn to check your facts and google things. It's easy!
Quote
But there is a true version and the fact is, true Biblical Christianity is the only thing that offers satisfying answers to life's mysteries--whether you are studying biology, cosmology, origins, history, human nature, government, the family and many other subjects.
Since the Bible doesn't speak to most of those things, and when it's done it's demonstrably wrong, that would be a silly statement.
Poor Davey is a silly fool, He doesn't have a clue, The Bible's worthless as a source For anything but __.
Quote
Those of you who have never read the Bible, you at least owe it to yourselves to read it. Don't pick and choose little snippets. Just read it straight through. If you only have time to read a little, read the Book of Romans, then John. Then go back and start at Genesis. Warning: your life may never be the same!
I've read it cover to cover over a dozen times in varying translations; I've studied it for years; I've read dozens of books on it.
To any actually intelligent person, it's crap.
Quote
Here's one more nugget from Dembski that I just love because I believe it relates so well to Creationism and ID ...
Quote Ignore, Laugh, Fight, Win First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi
Where are we with Creationism and ID? We are way past 'Ignore' judging from how much IDers and Creos are mentioned at Panda's Thumb. And we are past 'Laugh' and well into 'Fight' although there is still plenty of laughter going on.
We're at the laughing stage. We'll always be at the laughing stage.
Creationism is for morons, Dave. Wake up and smell the reality of the world. Otherwise we'll just keep laughing at you. Like all your buddies in the Air Force did. Like your children will when they grow up and find out how deluded, psychotic, and generally stupid their father is.
Do you really want your children to hate you for lying to them? Are you really that bad a parent?
Quote
I guess it is only a matter of time before the 'Win' stage ...
Eternity is a matter of time.
Quote
Of course, I really don't care to win any arguments just for winning's sake. What I really care about is the truth, which I hope that all of you will embrace at least on your deathbeds, if not before.
Well, you've lost every single 'argument' you've tried to make here, so I'm glad that winning's not important to you.
Poor Davey tried to argue that, The moon is made of cheese. We told him not to scrunch his face, Because we knew it'd freeze.
Dave, you have yet to say why Fine tuning is an argument for God. Saying well it's so improbable isn't a good argument unless you have some evidence that it is improbable. You have yet to present any.
Actually, I have. Cosmic Fine Tuning is excellent evidence for an Intelligent Designer because it is complex and specified. What we have essentially are 70 or so parameters which must be exactly what they are, or life would not exist. Now this can be compared to 70 dice with a lot more than 6 faces. This is the 'complexity' part. If the 70 dice have to be particular numbers, then this is the 'specificity' part. Now I think you can see that if I specified a certain sequence of 70 dice rolls, it would be intuitively obvious that the probability of achieving it is extremely small. Well it gets even smaller with the actual physical parameters of the universe because there are much more than 6 possibilities and most of them have to be very precise. And yet the parameters are the way they are ... just right for life to exist. I submit to you that it defies all sound logic and rational thinking to rule out the possibility of Intelligent Design. You guys are missing the elephant in the living room.
Quote
Again you have yet to present any science [for the Biological Machine evidence]. We are waiting.
I cannot explain this one any more clearly than I have already explained it. I guess this is one of those things that some people get and some people don't. I'm at a loss to understand how scientists cannot see this one. Again, you guys are missing the elephant in the living room. Apparently a lot of smart ones are beginning to see the elephant . (see Dembski's examples above)
Quote
You are now ignoring things we say.[about chimps]
I have not ignored the substantive arguments, of which there were many. The problem is that upon detailed investigation, your collective arguments did not hold up. Sorry if you don't like it that I don't agree, but I have not ignored the issues.
Russell ...
Quote
For instance, the GULO story. Dave's dismissing it with "I knew that already", aside from missing the point, doesn't explain it. Evolution explains it.
I didn't miss the point. Renier claims this is powerful evidence for common ancestry of apes and humans and refers me to the Dr. Max article. Max claims the situation is comparable to a copyright case in which errors were copied. This leads me to believe that the GULO errors are identical in humans and apes. This belief is furthered by Faid's links which show a small segment of ape and human DNA in which there is a common deletion. Then Jeannot informs me that the GULO gene may or may not have 'broken' in the same way, and Argystokes suggests we 'do some science' and check all the animal kingdom to see if the 'broken GULO' is really broken at all. Maybe it has a function we do not know about. Incorygible (I think it was him) jumps in and tells me that the reason we believe in common ancestry is because the 'error is so similar.' Well big deal, I say ... The entire genome is very similar. WHy is it significant that the 'broken GULO' is so similar? Also, look at guinea pigs. They have broken GULO too, but it broke independently. Why couldn't human and ape GULO break independently. Then of course we got into how humans are supposedly more closely related to chimps than gorillas are. I had not heard this and thought that you guys had some great proof for this. Turns out all you had was 'one lousy half of one percent' of sequence similarity. And you guys were making such a big deal out of how stupid I was for not knowing this. As for explaining the similarities, common ancestry does no better than common design. I can speculate about common design just as good as you can about common descent and they are both speculation if all we are going on is fossils and genetics. To evaluate one over the other, you have to consider what I call 'The Big Three' which I have done. It is then that you see how inadequate the common ancestry picture looks.
Since speaking to a doctor friend recently, the chimp chromosome thing has reopened in my mind. While I do recognize that it is tempting to postulate the fusing of chimp chromosomes '2A and 2B' (for lack of better terminology) to produce human chromosome 2, he informed me that there are many chromosome fusions that occur, but that they are all harmful. Is this true? If so, my question is ... how do you reconcile a harmful event (2A + 2B = 2) with the success of human evolution (i.e. they turned out smarter, better looking, etc. than chimps) (well ... I take that back ... I'm not sure if BWE's better looking) :-)
Quote
Perhaps I breezed by that one too fast, having decided after noting his ICR affiliation that the author was an idiot. This guy is claiming that all antibiotic resistance mechanisms (phosphorylations, hydrolyses, membrane pumps as well as mutations in antibiotic-binding RNA sequences) are loss of function? Or has dave, once again in his haste to grasp any sciencey-sounding straw to justify his "skepticism", just completely misunderstood?
I don't think I have misunderstood at all. This issue was amazing. Most people here at ATBC were not even aware that bacterial resistance is used as evidence for macroevolution until I showed them that their own Talk Origins does this. Dr. Anderson shows many examples of a loss of function conferring resistance on bacteria. Do you have a paper showing a gain? Drew Headley referred me to the nylon-eating bacteria example, but I think Faid disposed of that one for me. Am I wrong?
Nebogipfel ...
Quote
No it is not because they [Behe and Denton] *think* evolution is inadequate that they are regarded as pseudoscientists, it is because they have failed to show the evidence that demonstrates evolution is inadequate.
Could that be because you guys have a myopic view of 'evidence?' Just a thought.
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No they are not trying to get you to *believe* anything [about the abrupt appearance of civilization and writing], they are showing you evidence which suggests that it is true. You are aguing from incredulity. You cannot believe it therefore it must be false.
No. The only 'evidence' they have that it is true is carbon dating of cave paintings which is based upon faulty assumptions and doesn't really help the case anyway. I am not arguing from incredulity ... you guys should really stop saying this ... it makes you look dumb. I am simply observing facts and drawing reasonable inferences. It is highly unlikely that humans would live for 195,000 years without ever writing anything down. Gimme a break!
Chris Hyland ...
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Exactly, but Dave seems to think that each piece of evidence we present must prove that man evolved from single celled organisms on its own.
No I don't. I understand that you have many things that support your theory. I understand quite clearly that I must dismantle each of them one by one. That is exactly what I am doing at this forum. We're making good progress toward that goal.
Faid ...
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A1 was a pretty easy win. You guys came at me with "what about multiple universes?" You are LYING, dave. Period.
I am not lying. Talk Origins is quite clear that multiple universes is an option for evolutionists and several on this thread have said so also. I understand that there are other wild theories besides multiple universes, but it is not lying to say that this is one of the theories.
Eric Murphy ...
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The Special and General Theories of Relativity exist. There must be a god!
So far, that seems to be about it (except, Dave hasn't even discussed that last one—watching him flail around in the weeds of relativity theory should be pretty amusing). Has he persuaded anyone yet?
Eric, the first three don't show there is a God, but they show that there is an Intelligent Designer and an Originator of Morality. I find it interesting that you people here say there is no universal moral code and yet you appeal to one every day right here on this thread, namely, you talk about how high your own morals are (we are honest scientists) and how low mine are (I'm a liar, I'm arrogant, etc.). To be consistent with the postion with your contention that there is no moral code, you would have to admit that I may have a different moral code than you. If this is the case, you cannot say I am wrong because why do you get to impose your moral code on me? I can have my moral code, right? What if my moral code says it's OK to lie? Where do you get off correcting me? (Now ... don't go misquoting me ... I don't think this). The truth is that there is a universal moral code and you and I both appeal to it every day, yet neither of us can live up to it perfectly. So C. S. Lewis is right and he is also right that there has to be an Originator of this Moral Code.
As for Relativity, you are correct that I am not equipped to get into it. All I have ever pointed out is that the Laws of Relativity speak of this weird phenomenon called Length Contraction and Time Dilation. The very fact that these concepts truly exist is evidence which supports (not proves) the claims of the Bible when it says that God dwells outside space and time.
PuckSR ...
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AiG doesn't even get this crazy.... They once tried to explain the stars with the concept of "degrading C" or variable C(which is actually at least partially grounded in actual physics).... But to claim evidence via C.S. Lewis? That is just hilarious
You seem to have the mistaken impression that I am engaged in a scientific debate based on the assumptions of methodolgical naturalism. You are mistaken. I am engaged (whether you engage me or not) in a scientific debate based upon the pre-Darwinian conception of science ... you know ... back in the days when Theology was the Queen of Sciences ... back before the fog of Darwinism spread over the planet.
Eric Murphy ...
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What's the distance to the Andromeda galaxy?
So you don't think I'm avoiding you ... My answer is "I don't know, but probably really, really far." I'm guessing you are getting into the issue of starlight not having enough time to get here in 6000 years? We will get into that later. It's a good question.
Jeannot ...
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I think Dave wants to become a martyr here, and be like crucified in public. Seriously. The more you insult him, the better he feels.
No. I don't care about being a martyr. I think it would be great if you guys got your eyes opened. But I am under no illusions that it will happen ... maybe on your deathbeds.
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I suggest we ignore him, and just discuss languages, the Bible, civilizations and evolution in general as if he were absent.
Yes. Agree with yoursleves, pat each other on the back, practice your YEC insults on nobody. That sounds fun!
Rod said ...
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Of course I didn’t find anything about the writing lessons, or Adam’s stone tablets and student scribes.
The theory does not come from the Bible which is why you did not find it there. This theory comes from "Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis" by Professor of Assyriology D.J. Wiseman described here http://www.trueorigin.org/tablet.asp and by other authors. I have ordered the book and intend to study it further as it is a fascinating topic.
Eric ...
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Where did I get this scenario from, Dave? Oh, just about any book or article that deals with early humans. Not your one stupid fairy-tale. Dozens of articles, books, papers, etc. The entire scientific community supports this scenario, Dave.
Yes. The science 'lemmings' whose greatest fear is to be an outcast in the eyes of their hallowed peers.
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That's from the first page of a google search on "early homo sapiens," Dave. That research took me five seconds to type in, and returned almost three million hits. The vast majority of those articles place the emergence of anatomically modern H. sapiens at between 100,000 and 400,000 years ago. And guess which ones don't? The ones from those paragons of scientific credibility, the Discovery Institute and Answers in Genesis. Those articles are outnumbered by real ones by about two or three hundred to one.
But I should believe your one book of myths?
I didn't ask you to believe the Bible yet. I told you it is a source for possible hypotheses. I only proposed that it is highly unlikely that humans could have lived for 195,000 or more years without ever writing anything down. Is that so hard to comprehend?
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What do you mean, "someone"? You think one guy came up with the idea that humans have been around for ~200,000 years? That's what you just don't get, Dave. Thousands of scientists, working over the past 150 years, have been accumulating evidence regarding human ancestry, and all of those scientists have contributed evidence that humans had already existed for 200,000 years when you think God "poofed" the universe into existence.
Of course someone proposed it first. Then all the scientists jumped on board like lemmings because the idea was fashionable and nobody wants to be left out.
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Right, and that evidence shows that hunter-gatherers predated civilization by tens of thousands of years. So explain to me how hunter-gatherers could have "devolved" from a civilization that didn't even exist yet?
Precisely my point. There were no civilizations for them to devolve from because there were most likely no civilizations prior to about 6000 ya.
Rilke ...
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That's why I don't like folks like Dave: child molesters. There is no essential difference between Dave and some onanist obsessed with eight-year-olds.
Hey guys ... here's your poster woman for your cause. She will no doubt add a great deal of credibility to the case for evolution. Maybe PBS could do a series on why creationists are like child molesters. That would go over big with the American public.
Until tomorrow!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Poor Davey is a wordy fool, With nonsense he does gush, It's possible that this is 'cause, It all comes from his .
Dave, when are you going to make an actual argument? We're waiting to help you refine those classes so you can engage in your usual pederastic pursuits, but you have to give us something to discuss.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I will hereby consider your silence regarding my immune system question, which I have asked half a dozen times, to be admission that your model cannot make any prediction regarding this. I won't be back.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
That's why I don't like folks like Dave: child molesters. There is no essential difference between Dave and some onanist obsessed with eight-year-olds.
Dave said,
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Hey guys ... here's your poster woman for your cause. She will no doubt add a great deal of credibility to the case for evolution. Maybe PBS could do a series on why creationists are like child molesters. That would go over big with the American public.
I'm glad you're not denying that you're a child molester, Dave. That's the first step in your cure.
But do it soon; think of your children (or rather, perhaps you should NOT think of your children).
But at least get help before your kids have to see you in jail.
But thanks for admitting that you molest children. That's a start.
half a Dave is an amateur theologian and as such has only to abide by the ethics and morals of the amateur theologians club (Apologies to PBVXI), realtors and PR wonks, except he can collect money with no other promise than to relieve the givers guilt, whereas the others can't (legally).
now THAT requires one #### of a thick skin!
So D/2 do you pay or do you collect?
(Mammon stupid, we already know you collect foreskins)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
While I think a case could be made that AFDave's intentional deception of children and his discouragement of their critical thinking may be a form of abuse, I think accusations of molestation are over the top and inappropriate. Unless you can demonstrate that Dave derives some sexual pleasure from brainwashing the kids, you ought to stop referring to Dave as a child molestor.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
[Russell:]For instance, the GULO story. Dave's dismissing it with "I knew that already", aside from missing the point, doesn't explain it. Evolution explains it.[
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I didn't miss the point.
It's abundantly clear that (a) you did miss the point, and that (b) you don't understand the subject nearly well enough to begin to understand how you missed the point. I can't fix that. This will be my last post on this thread. Have a nice life.
As for Relativity, you are correct that I am not equipped to get into it. All I have ever pointed out is that the Laws of Relativity speak of this weird phenomenon called Length Contraction and Time Dilation. The very fact that these concepts truly exist is evidence which supports (not proves) the claims of the Bible when it says that God dwells outside space and time.
How do you get God existing outside of space and time from length contraction and time dilation if they are effects of spacetime itself? You should really read up on special relativity before you make such pronouncements.
Can you explain to us why it is that pretty much every geologist in the world agrees that radiometric dating is a useful and accurate method of determining the age of the earth, and that all of the applicable radiometric dating methods all converge on the same value? Why is it that the only people who doubt radiometric dating as a valid method are fundamentalist Christians, Dave? How many atheists or agnostics doubt the accuracy of radiometric dating? Could it be because one's belief in the accuracy of objective dating methods varies inversely in proportion to the strength of one's religious beliefs? After all, Behe admitted at the Dover trial that belief in ID correlates strongly with religious belief.
But you expect us to believe you're persuaded by the "evidence." Right.
Quote (afdave @ June 01 2006,11:29)
The bottom line with radioisotope dating and radiocarbon dating is that assumptions must be made in order to use either method.
Can you think of a method of determining anything that doesn't involve some underlying "assumptions"? Your whole worldview depends on one entirely indefensible assumption: that the Bible is literally true. Which, quite frankly, is hilarious.
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1) The system being dated is a closed system 2) The system must initially have contained none of its daughter component 3) The process rate must always have been the same
There may be other assumptions as well, but these I think are the most important. Now I will not get into the technical details of U/Th/Pb and Ar dating and so on, because it is not necessary.
No, you won't get into the technical details because you don't understand them.
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I only need to make two points here ...
1) If there is a good chance that there was, in fact, a Creation Event or a Global Flood event, then these assumptions may very well be wrong.
A global flood would have no effect whatsoever on non-sedimentary rock. Tell, me, Dave, how a global flood would have an effect on igneous rock recovered from a mile below ground level.
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2) A Creation event is harder to prove, but there is evidence for it and I have already shown you a little of this evidence, but the Global Flood is one of the easiest events in world history to prove. The evidence is massive and we will examine it soon.
Actually, it's even easier to disprove. Tell me, Dave: where does the water come from to inundate the entire globe. And, what happens to it once the flood is over? Where does it drain to?
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It stands as one of the wonders of the modern world that there is so much evidence of the Global Flood literally screaming at us from the rocks, and yet so many scientists dismiss it as a myth.
So where is the "evidence," Dave? Why is it taking you so long to produce it? Could it be because you don't really understand the difference between "evidence" and "rank speculation, unhindered by easily ascertainable facts?"
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Friends, I'm here to tell you today that the Global Flood of Noah was a real event.
And we should believe you why?
Tell me, Dave. Have you ever done the math on the volume of water necessary to cover the surface of the earth to depth of, say, 20 feet? And does that "surface of the earth" cover places like the Deccan Traps in India, which have an average altitude of over 4,000 feet and covers 200,000 square miles? Or does it only cover low-lying areas? A significant portion of the African continent is at an altitude over 2,000 feet. Same for western North America. Did the water in this global flood follow the contours of the earth beneath it (which would clearly have required supernatural intervention), or was it all a uniform height above current sea level? If, e.g., Denver was covered in water to a depth of 20 feet, most of Bangladesh was covered in water to a depth of over a mile.
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It was an event of staggering proportions and enormous implications, not the least of which could have easily been the nullification of one or more of the dating assumptions listed above.
Nope. See above.
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Any scientific conversation about the age of the earth is really a non-starter if it does not at least acknowledge the Flood event, and possibly also the Creation event. The Global Flood is truly one of those 'elephants in the living room' events.
Dave, how much land was still above water during the flood? Were the Appalachians? The Alps? The Andes? Most of central Asia? Are you starting to get my point here? Even excluding mountain ranges, the earth's surface varies from several hundred feet below sea level to over a mile above sea level. How deep was the water in this global flood?
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Even if radiometric dating were accurate and the earth was 5 billion years old, this would not give evolution enough time to occur. The fact is that quadrillions or quintillions of years would not be enough to overcome the odds of the first simple life form coming into existenece. But as we will see, you don't even have billions.
Where did you pick this "quadrillions of years" figure, Dave? Out of your own butt, or someone else's butt?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
While I think a case could be made that AFDave's intentional deception of children and his discouragement of their critical thinking may be a form of abuse, I think accusations of molestation are over the top and inappropriate. Unless you can demonstrate that Dave derives some sexual pleasure from brainwashing the kids, you ought to stop referring to Dave as a child molestor.
You are correct, sir. My information only extends to the confirmation that Dave engages in child abuse.
Dave, I apologize for implying that molest children.
On the other hand, I will point out that lying to children and deliberately stunting their intellectual development is child abuse, and for that accusation, I will not apologize.
Cool AFDaveTard2, you're still here! I would have bet the farm that you finally wised up to what a fool you have made of yourself and vanished but NO, you're too dense for even that. You're still here to entertain us with your babbling idiocy and feeble attempts to "save our souls" Bet no one ever lost money overestimating your stupidity level, have they Washout?
I won't bother rebutting your latest batch of Creto PRATT bullsh*t about radiometric dating or Da Flud - any 6th grader with a search engine could do it in 5 minutes. Also, we both know that you’re an intellectually dishonest coward and will ignore the contradicting data that will be presented anyway. I just want to ask you:
The IDiot crowd bends over backwards and screams bloody murder telling us that ID has nothing to do with religion. Yet here you are, citing articles by the head IDiots Dumbski and Behe about how ID supports a literal Biblical creation.
One of those statements must be a lie. Which one is it?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
It stands as one of the wonders of the modern world that there is so much evidence of the Global Flood literally screaming at us from the rocks, and yet so many scientists dismiss it as a myth.
Friends, I'm here to tell you today that the Global Flood of Noah was a real event.
What evidence?
Lets look at some non-radioactive dating ideas:
We human beings have been using compasses for hundreds of years, we expect them to point North. The magnetic compass is an old Chinese invention, probaly first made in China during the Qin dynasty hundreds of years before Christ was born. There is evidence the Greeks used compasses too. By the 10th century, the idea had been brought to Europe, probably from China, by Arab traders and from then on their north pointing property is too well known to deny.
However, a million years ago, compasses would have pointed South, before that, North, and so on, because the earth's magnetic field flips its direction from time to time. It does not flip at regular intervals, so dating is only approximate. The magnetic field recorded in the rocks has been "normal" for all our recorded history, pointing the same direction as now. We think for 200,000 years.
The reversals are recorded in the rocks of the mid-Atlantic ridges. The rocks contain iron and when the volcanic flows cool, the iron in them is aligned parallel to the prevailing magnetic field at that time. This means the mid-ocean ridges preserve a record of magnetic field reversals. As the hot rock emerges from the ridge, it is pushed away in both directions by more emerging rock. This pushing out to both sides causes magnetic "stripes", or anomalies, that are symmetrical about the ridges. Because the reversal pattern is irregular, but the same all over the world, it can be used like tree rings to date rocks by examining the pattern of magnetization that they preserve.
This "magnetostratigraphy" has been verified by direct sampling of sea floor rocks and age determinations.
Now, our magnetic field has flipped hundreds of times, lets say it has flipped 200 times (it's flipped more than that but I can't give you a precise number). Now, divide 4,000 or 10,000 years by 200 for a young earth's magnetic flips, at 4,000 you get a flip about every 20 years. At 10,000 divided by 200 you get a flip about every 50 years. That certainly hasn't happened since the 10th century.
How, afdave, do you explain the magnetic stripping of the mid-ocean ridges?
Also, if plate tectonics and a 4,000 year old young earth are both true then the coast of Africa would have to be moving at more than a third of a mile per year to get from the mid-Atlantic ridge to where it is now. But today it's not spreading faster than your fingernail grows.
How, afdave, do you explain that? Do you reject plate tectonics?
I'm still trying to figure out how second-hand speculation qualifies as evidence. Now it seems that where the "authoritative" bible fails to provide evidence or explanation, we just turn to the writings of someone who has thought up clearly fictional possible explanations, and claim that as factual evidence.
BTW - at the time Adam gets the boot from Eden, god observes that having eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil made Adam like them (Yes, the plural. I guess it's along the line of the royal we, or maybe the trinity talking to themselves?). We assume god is perfect, so prior to eating, Adam was not, in fact, perfect? Or even like god?
I can't find anything about god teaching Adam about metallurgy and such, either. Suppose someone out there has thought up a good story about how that happened? If someone thought up a story, that would be evidence, no?
Silly OA, they're both lies! Yet, if you could only think as they do, you would see that either or both can be true, and either or both can be false, depending on context. Your obsession with reality denies you the pleasure of believing two contradictory things at the same time. AFDave knows that there'e no such thing as the real world, it's all a matter of convincing yourself of the right interpretation. If you believe you rise up off the floor, and someone else believes they see you doing it, well, it must really happen!
I submit to you that it defies all sound logic and rational thinking to rule out the possibility of Intelligent Design.
I'm not, Im just saying there isn't enough evidence to conclude ID.
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Actually, I have. Cosmic Fine Tuning is excellent evidence for an Intelligent Designer because it is complex and specified. What we have essentially are 70 or so parameters which must be exactly what they are, or life would not exist. Now this can be compared to 70 dice ...
Firstly you don't know that some form of life couldn't exist if they were different. Secondly how do you know that you can assume that all values have equal probability. Just to clarify, I am not saying I can disprove that fine tuning is the result of a designer, I am saying we don't have enough information to make in informed conclusion.
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I cannot explain this one any more clearly than I have already explained it. I guess this is one of those things that some people get and some people don't. I'm at a loss to understand how scientists cannot see this one.
You must understand though as a scientist arguments along the lines of 'listen it's just obvious ok' do not really hold much sway with me.
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Turns out all you had was 'one lousy half of one percent' of sequence similarity.
If our genome was a hundred bases long I would agree with you. You are aware that half a percent is 16 million bases right?
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If so, my question is ... how do you reconcile a harmful event (2A + 2B = 2) with the success of human evolution (i.e. they turned out smarter, better looking, etc. than chimps)
Not all chromosome rearragements are harmful. No one is saying that it is this fusion that has caused the phenotypic differences between humans and chimps on its own.
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I understand that you have many things that support your theory. I understand quite clearly that I must dismantle each of them one by one. That is exactly what I am doing at this forum. We're making good progress toward that goal.
Could that be because you guys have a myopic view of 'evidence?' Just a thought.
This to me is a key point of difference between real scientists and creationists. Several people have commented on it, but could I ask the real scientists here for their opinions of exactly WHY science's definition of "evidence" is what it is? AFDave mischaracterizes it as "myopic" but what is the correct description? "Focused"? "Undistracted"? "Tangible"? It would have to be a word or phrase that could not be applied to AFDave's myriad offerings of conjecture and opinion.
It is baffling that AFDave and his ilk cannot see the difference between "evidence" and "conjecture". Words have meanings. If you distort them to mean something other than their meaning, you REDUCE the likelihood of communication.
AFDaveTard2: I don't intend on responding to your RATE claims ( although there are perfectly good responses to Humphrey's claims---that invalidate his claims entirely). CalTech is right down the street from me, AFDave...wouldn't it be nice if you had a fat quote from Farley at Caltech on this matter? All you have to do is answer the questions I asked earlier on "language and writing" , AFDave. Until you begin to respond to the actual questions put to you...I'm not going to deal with you.
Beyond your refusal to questions regarding your assertions ( like your claim that the lack of written language in the Americas reflects a "devolution" from previously literate cultures...) there's another reason I am going to not feed you, AFDave:
I don't believe your little charade here is to gather material for "children's education" at all, AFDave. I believe what you want most is the imprimateur of groups like ICR. So you come here, spew your claims, get responses that you can re-package and show to ...oh, ICR members...so you can get their "approval" and access to their built-in audience. That is the real reason you are here, I would wager. Beyond being merely intellectually lazy. You want to make money off kids and their parents. You need the backing of Christian groups and their audiences.
Until you begin responding honestly to specific questions concerning your claims, AFDave...I'm not going to do your research for you, nor provide you with fodder for your exploitation of others. The ball is in your court, AFDave...play fair, or take your YEC ball and go home.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Can we talk about the flood yet Dave? Let me know when I can pull this out:
Quote (http://www.inu.net/skeptic/flood.html @ ,)
The Ark, so decreed that great naval architect in the sky, was to be built entirely of Gopher wood, and its dimensions were to be 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits height (Gen. 6:14-15.) Although the perceived length of a cubit may vary4, based on an average length of 18 inches, that translates into 450 feet by 75 feet by 45 feet. This presented our farmer-turned-ship-builder with a daunting problem because the Ark would have broken apart with the first wave. According to Robert A. Moore (Creation/Evolution XI, vol 4, no. 1, pages. 4-5) there is an upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of a wooden ship. Beyond this a wooden ship is subjected to great stress and the hull cannot be maintained watertight. This is the major reason why the naval industry turned from wood construction to iron and steel in the 1850s. In that regard, the largest wooden ship ever built, the six-masted schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall length. It required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly that it had to be pumped constantly. It was declared unseaworthy and too long for wood construction. Yet the ark was deemed to be over 100 feet longer.
Just an interesting tidbit. Though, I guess if God is performing miracles for you it doesn't matter how flimsy your ship is.
Air Force Dave, the clueless, is having a sweet dream Floating on a column of light he's the sky pixie queen Drifting among the clouds in the sky so blue With no Evo's to bug him, could it be true? No more major battles of the pesky Evo kind Oh the heavenly thoughts that course through his mind No need for evidence... wild conjecture will do Why even the Babble can be literally true Logic and reason have gone down the tubes And it's open season on the children and rubes If perchance they won't buy it hook, line, and sinker Threaten them with torture, that'll silence their thinker All the earth's children conned to the max Living a life full of YEC fantasy without any facts Growing up with minds stunted and warped Sold out to a sky pixie so Dave could get porked Yep... ol' Davey's grinning like the Cheshire cat He's running the asylum without the Evo's at bat And just like Jimmy Swaggart way back in '87 He'll be pushin' sky pixie crap until he gets to heaven
A singing... If I die before I wake At least in heaven I'll be great Cause right now on earth I can't do jack Without those Evo's calling me a quack!
------------
Folks, sometimes ya just gotta laugh So I'm off to wander the laughter filled halls And all because a sky pixie's got Dave by the balls Quack... quack... quack...
I understand that you have many things that support your theory. I understand quite clearly that I must dismantle each of them one by one. That is exactly what I am doing at this forum. We're making good progress toward that goal.
No, Dave. You are making no, as in "not any," progress towards "dismantling" any evidence of an earth billions of years old. The only person you're persuading here is yourself.
You make some bald assertion. Then your assertion gets ripped to shreds, hemorrhaging from a million cuts, bleeding to death there on the ground. You then declare victory and move onto the next bald assertion. Which again gets eviscerated from a dozen different directions.
And, let's not forget, virtually all of your assertions are essentially criticisms of evidence supporting evolution! So far, you've tried to argue that "cosmic fine tuning" and "biological machines" are evidence for a creator, but you haven't provided evidence for either one. You haven't provided any evidence for a global flood, either.
You're essentially right where you started a month ago, Dave.
I asked you (twice) how far away the Andromeda galaxy is, and you finally answered that you don't know. You're apparently too lazy to do a 30 second google search that would have given you the answer. I ran the search "andromeda galaxy distance," which returned 291,000 hits, and the answer was in the second sentence of the first hit on the list. It probably took me less than five seconds to find the answer (if I hadn't known it to begin with), but then I'm on a T1. If you're on a dial-up connection, it might have taken a bit longer.
So here's another question for you, Dave: how much water was involved in your global flood? Another one: to what level above current sea level did the global flood raise sea levels? Another one: was the water a uniform height above the underlying terrain (which would have required suspension of the laws of physics), or was the water a uniform height above sea level?
You expect us to believe your "global flood" fairy tale, but you don't even know the most basic "facts" about it. Is it any wonder we don't find anything you say credible?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
To keep the water out, Noah used a force-field generator given to him by the Asgard.
ITYM the Aesir, who live in Asgard. Since Asgard is accessed via Bifrost the rainbow bridge, and the rainbow only exists after the flood, they could not have reached Noah to give him the forcefield generator. Clearly it was actually given to him by Galadriel.
...the hot item for them right now is the Helium in Zircons. Now I am sure that you all are quite familiar with this raging debate ...
Anyone actually familiar with any Helium in Zircons debate? I'm not. I googled it and it seems to be a purely creationist ploy, not a real scientific debate.
You'll see a few critics there saying sensible things like: "...no geochronologists use helium retention to tell the age of a rock (or a zircon crystal), because it is known to be subject to all kinds of problems."
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helium is very small and non-reactive, so it leaks out of zircon crystals quite quickly, especially if the zircon is even slightly heated. When warm, the zircon expands slightly, and becomes very permeable (leaky) with respect to helium, although not so with respect to lead and uranium. Above the critical closure temperature, zircon is "open" (leaky), whereas below, it is "closed" (or sealed). However, zircons also become quite leaky merely by sitting around for a while since they cooled below their closure temperature, because the decay of uranium atoms blasts tiny holes in the zircon (literally, the explosive expulsion of helium ions from the uranium creates (surprise) holes just large enough for helium to escape through.
Because helium escapes readily whereas lead and uranium don't, it is not a problem to say that the zircon has a certain number of years worth of helium but is a different number of years old by uranium-lead dating. Nor is it a problem to say that the zircon has a high closure temperature for lead but a low closure temperature for helium, or that it is closed with respect to lead but simultaneously open with respect to helium.
In other words, the whole debate is irrelevant to actual dating methods used to determine the age of things.
These would be examples of dating methods actually used:
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How does Carbon-14 dating work?
1. Cosmic rays from the sun strike Nitrogen 14 atoms in the atmosphere and cause them to turn into radioactive Carbon 14, which combines with oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide.
2. Living things are in equilibrium with the atmosphere, and the radioactive carbon dioxide is absorbed and used by plants. The radioactive carbon dioxide gets into the food chain and the carbon cycle.
3. All living things contain a constant ratio of Carbon 14 to Carbon 12. (1 in a trillion).
4. At death, Carbon 14 exchange ceases and any Carbon 14 in the tissues of the organism begins to decay to Nitrogen 14, and is not replenished by new C-14.
5. The change in the Carbon 14 to Carbon 12 ratio is the basis for dating.
6. The half-life is so short (5730 years) that this method can only be used on materials less than 70,000 years old. Archaeological dating uses this method.) Also useful for dating the Pleistocene Epoch (Ice Ages).
7. Assumes that the rate of Carbon 14 production (and hence the amount of cosmic rays striking the Earth) has been constant (through the past 70,000 years).
Fission Track Dating Charged particles from radioactive decay pass through mineral's crystal lattice and leave trails of damage called FISSION TRACKS. These trails are due to the spontaneous fission of uranium.
Procedure to study:
* Enlarge tracks by etching in acid (so that they may be visible with light microscope) * See readily with electron microscope * Count the etched tracks (or note track density in an area)
Useful in dating:
* Micas (up to 50,000 tracks per cm squared) * Tektites * Natural and synthetic (manmade) glass
Reheating "anneals" or heals the tracks.
The number of tracks per unit area is a function of age and uranium concentration.
Here you go, Dave. Another search ("helium zircon radiometric") that took about a second to run and provided results in the first hit.
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Few areas of science have posed a greater challenge to Young-Earth Creationism than radiometric dating of rocks and minerals. These techniques, which have been in use for nearly a hundred years, show that rocks from the earth and moon, as well as some meteorites, are as old as 4.0 to 4.5 billion years. That observation is clearly at odds with the belief that world is only around 6000 years old. To counter the conclusions of radiometric dating creationists have formed the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth) Group. This team, supported by several creationist organizations, exists to disprove the validity of radiometric dating. RATE’s latest undertaking concerns some microscopic zircon crystals recovered from a well near Fenton Hill, NM. The argument, presented in a creationist journal[1] goes like this: The rock formation is radiometrically dated at about 1.5 billion years of age. The zircons contain uranium and thorium which have decayed to their daughter products including helium. Most of the radiogenic helium is still present in the zircon crystals. If the crystals were really 1.5 billion years old the helium should have all diffused out into the surrounding mineral formations. Thus, the crystals cannot really be 1.5 billion years old rather they are only a few thousand years old. Otherwise the helium would be gone. The RATE research includes some limited analyses of helium contents of some zircon crystals, some diffusion rate measurements and calculations to support their claims about the short time of the diffusion process. A general critique of this work by Dr. Kevin R. Henke appears elsewhere[2] and I will not repeat most of those issues here, beyond mentioning that there are some serious questions as to how RATE calculated the ratios of theoretical to actual residual helium contents in the zircons (their Q/Q0 values). Rather, I will discuss the ability of the RATE conclusions to predict what is observed in other studies of helium in zircon crystals.
Any valid scientific theory must have predictive power. The authors of the RATE zircon-helium study claim that their primary thesis, that the earth is only 6000 years old, is vindicated by their calculations of the expected residual helium levels in the Fenton Hill zircon crystals. They claim that their "theory" has predictive power because they can use it to correctly calculate the remaining helium levels in zircons from various depths (and temperatures) in the well. The question remains, can this theory accurately predict the radiogenic helium levels in zircon specimens from sites other than the Fenton Hill well? To answer this question, I will make some predictions based on RATE’s data and conclusions and then compare them with field observations.
First, one needs to consider why anyone is interested in the helium levels in zircon crystals. Natural zircons (ZrSiO4) often contain uranium and thorium which decay (through a series of steps) to lead and helium.[3] The ratios of uranium and thorium to the corresponding daughter product lead isotopes can be used to date the time of formation of the crystal, based on the known half-lives of the original uranium and thorium isotopes. In theory, the helium contents can also be used for dating the crystals, but generally are not because at elevated temperatures the helium will rapidly diffuse out. In recent years, researchers like Dr. Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology and Dr. Peter Reiners of Yale University have used helium-based age measurements to determine something of the cooling history of the zircon crystals. The uranium/lead age gives the time of initial formation, while the helium age tells when the crystal cooled to a temperature at which the helium was essentially all retained. These techniques can also be applied to other minerals such as titanate and apatite. Farley and Reiners and have developed the sophisticated laboratory equipment needed to accurately analyze microscopic crystals for the different isotopes of concern.[4]
To make any predictions about diffusion of helium out of crystals, one needs a diffusion rate at the temperature of concern. Table II of the RATE study[5] presents diffusion rates for helium in the Fenton Hill zircons over a range of temperatures. That data is reproduced in Figure 1, below. The diffusion rates are plotted on semilog axes against the reciprocal of the temperature in degrees Kelvin. The result is a line with a negative slope, which is typical of the Arrhenius Law behavior of a thermally activated process. Note that at lower temperatures the line breaks into a shallower slope. That indicates a different diffusion activation energy and hence that a different diffusion process is rate controlling. While such behavior is more typical in polycrystals where grain boundary diffusion becomes rate controlling at lower temperatures, there is apparently some structural factor in these monocrystals that promotes low temperature diffusion. In any case, the low temperature diffusion rates are critical for this discussion. Figure 2 shows the diffusion rate data for the four lowest temperatures evaluated in that study (175, 205, 225 and 255EC). The data points definitely form a straight line. Extrapolating these data can be a little risky so I will not try to extend the trend line much farther than the range of abscissa values covered by the four existing data points. That extrapolation will extend nearly to a value of 0.00268 or about 100EC. The diffusion rate extrapolated to that temperature is approximately 1E-18 cm2/sec.
The next step of this analysis is to estimate the rate at which helium would diffuse out of a zircon crystal at 100EC. For that calculation I used the degassing formula that estimates the average helium level left in the crystal after some diffusion time. That formula is given as an infinite series of the following expression.[6]
Where CO = the original helium concentration, C = the average concentration at some time t, D = the diffusivity and R = the particle radius. To estimate the remaining helium levels at various times I calculated the first 20 terms of the series (higher order terms are so small as to be irrelevant to the total). Figure 3 shows, for various times, the predicted helium level, as a fraction of the original for zircon crystals of 30 micron radius and a diffusion rate of 1E-18 cm2/sec. That radius is typical of the zircons studied by the RATE group and others and the diffusion rate is extrapolated from their data. The figure shows that the helium concentration needs nearly 50,000 years to drop to approximately 0.1 times the original level, while nearly 100,000 years are needed for the residual level to reach 0.02 times the original.
Having made these predictions, the next step is to compare them with data from studies on zircons that are found at ambient temperatures and are not likely to have been at elevated temperature during the last 6000 years (RATE’s estimate of the age of the earth). There are several studies in the literature that report such data. The first was published by Reiners, Farley and Hickes[7]. In that work, zircon specimens were obtained from the Gold Butte formation in southeastern Nevada (near Lake Mead). That is an unusual formation which geologists interpret as having formed vertically about 1.5 billion years ago (roughly the same age as the Fenton Hill formation). About 15 million years ago this igneous rock mass was tilted on its side as the earth’s crust shifted, exposing rock that had previously been buried as deep as 15 km (about 9 miles). After the formation had tilted the deeper rock quickly cooled. The authors reasoned that the rock closest to the surface before tilting would have probably cooled sooner that the deeper rock. To estimate the time of cooling they measured the age as indicated by the uranium, thorium and helium contents for zircons from different locations along the now tilting rock formation. Keep in mind that the helium dating method gives the time at which the rock cooled to low temperature, not its total age. Their results indicated that the deepest rocks (near 15 km from the original ground surface) did not cool until about 15 million years ago, or about the time the vertical rock formation tilted and the lower level rock was brought to the surface where it could cool. Rock which had been at shallower depths before tilting (about 4 km or 2.4 miles) showed helium-based ages of over 160 million years. That stands to reason since rock closer to the surface would have cooled sooner than deeper rock. Reiners has demonstrated very similar results for helium based ages of crystals of the mineral titanate also extracted from various positions along the Gold Butte[8]. The zircons from the deepest section, prior to tilting, have helium contents only about 1 percent of the theoretical helium that should have formed during 1.5 billion years of radioactive decay. The helium level of the uppermost rocks is about 10 percent of the theoretical maximum. Those helium levels are hard to reconcile with RATE’s ideas about the age of the earth. According to RATE this rock formation is only about 6000 years old. How then could zircons from near the surface (at temperatures even lower than the 100EC I used for my diffusion calculation) have lost so much of their helium?
In a similar work, Reiners[9] reported the ages of zircons found in Missouri River sediments. He found that most of the zircons with uranium/lead ages greater than 1.2 billion years had helium-based ages less than 50 million years. Some had helium ages of only 50 - 70 million years. Reiners also reported that zircons from sediments in the Kamchatka region of Siberia showed helium-based ages less than ten percent of the uranium/lead ages.[10] Reiners’ colleague, Ian Campbell, conducted similar experiments on sediments from the Ganges and Indus Rivers of India[11] and found even more dramatic results with helium ages often less than one percent of the uranium/lead age. Figure 4, below, shows a plot of data from Campbell’s article, comparing the uranium/lead and helium ages of these sediments. The heavy line added to the plot represents a ratio of one percent. Thus, many of the zircons from these sediments have helium ages of less than one percent of the uranium/lead age as well as correspondingly low helium contents. The results of helium measurements from these detrital samples are significant because there is no conceivable scenario for those zircons to have been exposed to elevated temperature (>100EC) during the last 6000 years. These sediments must have been eroded from near the surface in the mountains of northern India. To have eroded during the last 6000 years they could not have been at great depths beneath the surface. Thus, they could not have been exposed to elevated temperatures during the last 6000 years. This leaves the question of how the zircons that have certainly been at low temperatures during a time span that exceeds the creationist estimate of the age of the earth could have lost most of their helium. There simply has not been enough time for the helium to have diffused out. Clearly the real answer to this question is that the zircons are millions or billions of years old and that most of the helium diffused out during a time when the crystals were exposed to higher temperatures that corresponded to much faster diffusion rates. The trouble is that RATE’s idea of the age of the earth does not admit enough time for that to have happened.
The RATE study claims to have correctly predicted the helium contents of zircons from various depths (and temperatures) in the Fenton Hill well. That may or may not be the case, depending on the validity of the residual helium calculations in that study. In any case, the RATE "theory" totally fails to predict the helium contents of other zircons found at different sites in Asia and North America. The zircons have clearly lost more helium than could be explained by 6000 years of diffusion at low temperatures.
In the interest of responsible science, the RATE team members should carefully consider why their results are so different from everyone else’s. In particular they should have more carefully evaluated the possibility that helium from external sources got into their zircons and added to the radiogenic helium formed by uranium and thorium decay. They should have also considered the very complex thermal and geologic history of a site so close to a volcano[12]. They should have examined whether their specimen preparation technique might have induced some unusual behavior in the zircon crystals that accelerated the diffusion rate measurements. Finally, they should have repeated their lower temperature (down to at least 100C) experiments with helium in the zircons from the Fenton Hill well to show that they had reproducible results. Real science needs to be duplicated to prove its validity. RATE certainly has no grounds to declare the entire science of radiometric dating to be invalid based on a study that apparently involved only two published diffusion tests (only one of which actually showed the low temperature fast diffusion rates essential to their "theory"). In short, RATE needs to do a better job of explaining their results if they want to be taken seriously by mainstream scientists.
I thank Dr. Kevin R, Henke, University of Kentucky, for his critical review of this paper.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
[b] There are many flavors of false Christianity in the world today, and I probably would have rejected Christianity also if I had one of those flavors.
But there is a true version and the fact is, true Biblical Christianity is the only thing that offers satisfying answers to life's mysteries--whether you are studying biology, cosmology, origins, history, human nature, government, the family and many other subjects.
Wait a minute, are these "flavors" or "kinds" of Christianity?
YEC is the only TRUE Christianity! OEC is false, ID is false. Catholics, Protestants, Coptics, etc, are all false unless they believe EXACTLY what you believe. (Which flavor of Christianity tastes like chicken Dave, 'cause that's the flavor for me!
You can argue here all you want Dave, there's no science in your arguments. It's ALL about religion for you. That's why your kind inevitably falls back on the "Science is a religion" argument.
Since there are Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, atheist, agnostic, etc. scientists all over the world, it's obvious that argument is fallacious too.
Just in case a few lurkers don't know how full of it Dave is ...
Quote (afdave @ June 01 2006,11:29)
Now, I'm sure you all will correct me if I am wrong, but I think the major assumptions that are made with radioisotope dating are ...
1) The system being dated is a closed system
Wrong. Standard ignorant fundy error.
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2) The system must initially have contained none of its daughter component
Wrong. Standard ignorant fundy error.
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3) The process rate must always have been the same
Sort of right, but the word "assumption", with its connotation of "untested" is not a good choice. I prefer "premise", becaue the constancy of radioactive decay has been tested six ways from Sunday.
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There may be other assumptions as well, but these I think are the most important. Now I will not get into the technical details of U/Th/Pb and Ar dating and so on, because it is not necessary.
It's pretty obvious that you have no idea of the details.
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2) Even if radiometric dating were accurate and the earth was 5 billion years old, this would not give evolution enough time to occur. The fact is that quadrillions or quintillions of years would not be enough to overcome the odds of the first simple life form coming into existenece.
Please show your calculations. You won't. We all know you're just making this up.
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2003 -- Cal Tech confirms RATE Group's predictions giving major support to the 6000 year old earth hypothesis. Three sets of data were received: 2001-data from another site, 2002-Initial data from RATE Group site, 2003-Add'l data from RATE Group site. All three sets of data line up with Humphreys predictions published in 2000.
Sorry, they just don't line up. It takes a lot of wishful thinking to pretend that they line up.
The RATE group may actually have come up with an interesting anomaly, but there's nowhere near enough evidence yet to call the mainstream age of the Earth into question. When the RATE group has run tests on thousands of zircons from different formations and strata and come up with consistent results, when they have something other than hand-waving to establish the validity of their diffusion calculations, when they can demonstrate that they know the history of the zircons well enough to make valid diffusion calculations ... then and only then they'll have something worthy of investigation.
Of course they're not testing more zircons, and they're not doing any diffusion investigations, and they don't care about establishing validity. They've achieved their goal, and they're done; they've fooled the gullible true beleivers like Davie-poo.
... could I ask the real scientists here for their opinions of exactly WHY science's definition of "evidence" is what it is? AFDave mischaracterizes it as "myopic" but what is the correct description? "Focused"? "Undistracted"? "Tangible"? It would have to be a word or phrase that could not be applied to AFDave's myriad offerings of conjecture and opinion.
Precise, relevant, provisional, consistent, parsimonious (Occam's Razor), Empirically testable and falsifiable, based upon multiple observations, often in the form of controlled, repeated experiments, correctable & dynamic....
As for Relativity, you are correct that I am not equipped to get into it. All I have ever pointed out is that the Laws of Relativity speak of this weird phenomenon called Length Contraction and Time Dilation. The very fact that these concepts truly exist is evidence which supports (not proves) the claims of the Bible when it says that God dwells outside space and time.
Dave, when you say things like this, the only rational conclusion to be made is that you have almost no ability to reason at all. Can you explain how you get from the Lorentz contractions to an argument that God exists outside of time? All the Lorentz contractions show with respect to time is that time does not flow at the same rate in all reference frames. This argument is like saying that if it rains tomorrow, that means the trout live in trees. One simply does not remotely follow from the other.
Modern particle accelerators routinely accelerate subatomic particles to 99% and more of the speed of light. Unstable particles traveling this fast have been observed to survive much longer than they do at lower velocities, demonstrating that time travels more slowly at their velocities. Does this in any way imply that these particles exist "outside of time"? Of course not.
The Large Hadron Collider can accerate gold nuclei to 99% and more of the speed of light. At that velocity, a gold nucleus is a paper-thin disk, its diameter in the direction of travel a tiny fraction of its diameter at right angles to its direction of travel. Does this in any way imply that the nucleus exists "outside of space"? Of course not.
You know, you think assumptions like radioactive decay being relatively constant are iffy. Well what category would you put statements like this?
The longer you go on, the less sense you make.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric, the first three don't show there is a God, but they show that there is an Intelligent Designer and an Originator of Morality. I find it interesting that you people here say there is no universal moral code and yet you appeal to one every day right here on this thread, namely, you talk about how high your own morals are (we are honest scientists) and how low mine are (I'm a liar, I'm arrogant, etc.). To be consistent with the postion with your contention that there is no moral code, you would have to admit that I may have a different moral code than you. If this is the case, you cannot say I am wrong because why do you get to impose your moral code on me? I can have my moral code, right? What if my moral code says it's OK to lie? Where do you get off correcting me? (Now ... don't go misquoting me ... I don't think this). The truth is that there is a universal moral code and you and I both appeal to it every day, yet neither of us can live up to it perfectly. So C. S. Lewis is right and he is also right that there has to be an Originator of this Moral Code.
Dave, here's another leap of illogic you make that's just hilarious in its ineptitude.
How is saying that you, and I, and some other guy on the other side of the planet have a moral code equivalent to saying that there's a "universal moral code"? Do you see how utterly brain-dead that assertion is?
No one here has ever contended "that there is no moral code." What kind of crazed misreading of anyone's post gave you that absurd notion? Not that this has anything to do with anything (other than your hairball logic), but even if I claimed that there is no moral code, why would that logically require that I admit that you may have a different moral code from me? What it would logically require me to say is that neither you nor I even have a moral code! Again, one simply does not remotely follow from the other.
In fact, your assertion that you and I may have different moral codes, that, e.g., your code may allow you to morally lie, completely demolishes your own argument that there is a "universal moral code"! Don't you see that, Dave? The mere fact that some people can have a moral code that is in some sense "superior" to other people's moral code is conclusive evidence that there is no "universal moral code." If it were universal, everyone would subscribe to it!
And even if you personally do not believe there is more than one moral code, you're still wrong. There are lots of moral codes out there such that what for one person is completely immoral is completely moral for another. What's your feeling about gay sex, Dave (god, I hope this doesn't attract Thordaddy)? My guess is that you believe it's immoral (and even if you don't, plenty of people do). I don't think it's immoral at all. In fact, I believe that homophobia itself is immoral! And what about the abortion debate? Are you still prepared to argue that there's a universal moral code that everyone subscribes to?
God, Dave, you're really losing it. Not only is your science laughable; your logic is comically dumb. I hate to sound personal, but for crying out loud!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave claims victory, says he crushes the atheist inspired Theory of Evolution and provides irrefutable evidence for YEC and a literal Bible by posting a peach cobbler recipe he found while perusing The Ladies Home Journal.
Film at 11.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Can we talk about the flood yet Dave? Let me know when I can pull this out:
Quote (http://www.inu.net/skeptic/flood.html @ ,)
The Ark, so decreed that great naval architect in the sky, was to be built entirely of Gopher wood, and its dimensions were to be 300 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits height (Gen. 6:14-15.) Although the perceived length of a cubit may vary4, based on an average length of 18 inches, that translates into 450 feet by 75 feet by 45 feet. This presented our farmer-turned-ship-builder with a daunting problem because the Ark would have broken apart with the first wave. According to Robert A. Moore (Creation/Evolution XI, vol 4, no. 1, pages. 4-5) there is an upper limit, in the region of 300 feet, on the length of a wooden ship. Beyond this a wooden ship is subjected to great stress and the hull cannot be maintained watertight. This is the major reason why the naval industry turned from wood construction to iron and steel in the 1850s. In that regard, the largest wooden ship ever built, the six-masted schooner U.S.S. Wyoming, measured 329 feet in overall length. It required diagonal iron strapping for support and leaked so badly that it had to be pumped constantly. It was declared unseaworthy and too long for wood construction. Yet the ark was deemed to be over 100 feet longer.
Just an interesting tidbit. Though, I guess if God is performing miracles for you it doesn't matter how flimsy your ship is.
Noah should have used Pykrete.
So if "The-Almighty-Christian-God-Who-Commits-Genocide-When-Nobody-Plays-With-Him" is in enough of a miracle mood to hold together the ark that couldn't possibly float without a miracle, why bother with the ark in the first place?
Just wonderin'.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
What's sad about this is, because he was able to cherry-pick some good lessons from the bible, AFDave has gotten so committed to the rest of the malarkey that he's unable to think, and makes an a55 of himself over and over.
As a lurker, I have got to hand it to you guys for your patience. AFDave is channelling stuff to you straight from AIG. Even though he mentions TO he obviously hasn't read it as most of what he mentions has been dealt with there. If he had read it then he would be trying refute what TO says. Wake me up if he actually says anything that is new.
Michael
AFDave My Prediction: AFDave: The world was flat at the time of the flood (Quote out of context some bible verses) so there was not really that much water required. Also that the water was held up in the "vaults" of heaven. This layer by the way protected the early people against radiation. We don't have this protection anymore and so our DNA has been degrading ever since. Also throw in something about the grand canyon looking like the mud gullies in Mount St Helen. Mutter about fossil layering reproducing where the animals were struck down in flood
Reality Based People: Talk about Physics of that much rain washing out all of the oxygen in the air. "Kinds" not making much sense. Asking about what happened to insects and salt water fish and trees and what did they eat after they came off the ark and no Koala fossils in the middle east. etc etc etc
AFDave: Non Sequitor response to criticisms
same old same old. I should replace AFDave as I know most of this off the top of my head.
You seem to have the mistaken impression that I am engaged in a scientific debate based on the assumptions of methodolgical naturalism. You are mistaken. I am engaged (whether you engage me or not) in a scientific debate based upon the pre-Darwinian conception of science...
So you're not engaged in a scientific debate at all. Thanks for clearing that up.
Actually, replace "pre-Darwinian" in that paragraph with "pre-Enlightenment", and this is one of the first rational things you've said in 40+ pages. The problem is, the pre-Enlightenment notion of science was based superstition, arguments from ingnorance, incredulity and authority (usually the authority of the Pope); all the traits, in fact, you've exhibited in your monologues (apart from the Pope).
You see, this is why people don't take you seriously. You challenge them to a game of chess, and once they've set the pieces up, you draw a tic-tac-toe board, put an X in the centre square, and claim victory.
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a scientific debate based upon the pre-Darwinian conception of science..... back in the days when Theology was the Queen of Sciences ... back before the fog of Darwinism spread over the planet.
...back in the days when heretics could be burnt at the stake for questioning Biblical inerrency...back in the days when unpopular old women could be hanged as witches because someone heard someone else say they saw them flying on a broomstick...back in the days when disease was treated by drilling holes in your skull to let the evil spirits out... Fine, Dave, if you want to live in the Middle Ages, you stay there. For all its faults, I'll stay in the 21st century, thanks very much.
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'lemmings' whose greatest fear is to be an outcast in the eyes of their hallowed peers.
Bit of projection there, maybe...?
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I only proposed that it is highly unlikely that humans could have lived for 195,000 or more years without ever writing anything down. Is that so hard to comprehend?
But that's the great thing about the scientific method, which you dislike so much, Dave! It gives a means of objectively discovering which stories are probably true, and which are probably false. We can actually study the evidence and come to an objective conclusion about whether humans existed for 195,000 without writing anything down regardless of whether it sounds highly unlikely or not. Now back when Theology was the "Queen of Sciences", of course, you had to believe what the biblical literalists (or the Pope) told you to believe, regardless of how "likely" it sounded. Otherwise there was a big pile of kindling waiting for you. Still feel so romantic about the Middle Ages now?
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I think it would be great if you guys got your eyes opened. But I am under no illusions that it will happen ... maybe on your deathbeds.
Dave, if you want to preach, try just being good husband and father, and when people ask you what your secret is, tell them it's your faith in Jesus. Trust me, you'll win more converts that way than Behe, Dembski and Denton put together. Now, if you'll excuse me, there's a log in my own eye that I must attend to...
Lou So if "The-Almighty-Christian-God-Who-Commits-Genocide-When-Nobody-Plays-With-Him"
Whoa neddy ...tell that to Osama and the Dave Turds.
I DID see PBXVI do that little number at camp fun fun fun.... Auschwich. I can only say if one calls to a wailing wall for an answer, one can only get back an echo. Thats fine....... blame the echo......
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Since speaking to a doctor friend recently, the chimp chromosome thing has reopened in my mind. While I do recognize that it is tempting to postulate the fusing of chimp chromosomes '2A and 2B' (for lack of better terminology) to produce human chromosome 2, he informed me that there are many chromosome fusions that occur, but that they are all harmful. Is this true?
I am not arguing from incredulity ... you guys should really stop saying this ... it makes you look dumb. (...) It is highly unlikely that humans would live for 195,000 years without ever writing anything down. Gimme a break!
Best AFDavism so far.
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I am not lying. Talk Origins is quite clear that multiple universes is an option for evolutionists and several on this thread have said so also. I understand that there are other wild theories besides multiple universes, but it is not lying to say that this is one of the theories.
You are lying NOW. Unless you can point me to the post where you stopped ignoring me, addressed this "wild theory" and attempted to refute it. But you can't, because all you ever argued against is the impossibility of alternate universes. And certainly not the point addressed only a few paragraphs down your favorite TO quote, in spite of me calling you on it a dozen times. And you still haven't. Because you still haven't bothered to check. Give it a rest. You're not fooling anyone.
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The truth is that there is a universal moral code and you and I both appeal to it every day, yet neither of us can live up to it perfectly. So C. S. Lewis is right and he is also right that there has to be an Originator of this Moral Code.
"Our society shares the same moral code, therefore God made it". Another memorable AFDavism.
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All I have ever pointed out is that the Laws of Relativity speak of this weird phenomenon called Length Contraction and Time Dilation. The very fact that these concepts truly exist is evidence which supports (not proves) the claims of the Bible when it says that God dwells outside space and time.
Suure, dave. Can you explain why? Hmm? Oh wait, I see it now: it's the old "Gimme a break, it's obvious" argument. Whoa, I never saw that coming.
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You seem to have the mistaken impression that I am engaged in a scientific debate based on the assumptions of methodolgical naturalism. You are mistaken.
Funny, I thought you started this thread to prove that you can present a "scientific theory" based on Lenny's steps, which are just that... Did I miss something, dave?
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you know ... back in the days when Theology was the Queen of Sciences ... back before the fog of Darwinism spread over the planet.
Ah, the good olod days... When research and experiment and every "scientific" claim had to be backed up by church-approved authority, and people believed the 4 fluids theory because some ancient dude said so... When you could get into serious trouble for saying that the heart is a pump, or that there is some unseen factor that transmits disease. Man, the possibilities in the 21st century are endless. I can't wait to start chopping limbs to treat fractures, and drain blood to treat fevers. Oh, and BTW, you do know that scientists knew how amazingly old the earth was before Darwin, right?
In short: You're getting boring, dave. Sorry. Get on with your young earth and flood evidence (and sorry, but the RATE project is not it: If science was valid or productive or credible the way those guys tried to do it, Everyone would have a cold-fusion generator in his house by now. Look it up). Hurry, because GoP with his hypedense frictionless crystalline Aether will get quite more interesting...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
What I have always wondered at is the ability of theist fundies such as our dear clown Dave here to lie outright and yet somehow reconcile that with their ostensible Christian beliefs.
How do they do that? Doublethink? Stupidity? Some peculiar epinephrin-triggered shunt that the rest of us don't have?
Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 02 2006,12:19)
What I have always wondered at is the ability of theist fundies such as our dear clown Dave here to lie outright and yet somehow reconcile that with their ostensible Christian beliefs.
How do they do that? Doublethink? Stupidity? Some peculiar epinephrin-triggered shunt that the rest of us don't have?
Anyone have any ideas?
Well, I s'pose that, as this "Creator God" (I always hear this phrase with a televangellist voice in my head), who is the founder of the Universal Moral Law, can break it anytime They feels like it, so the faithful can easily disregard it, when they feel they do their Creator God's bidding. ...Simple as that.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Well, I see that there are no objections to what I wrote yesterday about the Henke article. There are objections to other items and some very good questions about a lot of different topics and we will get to them in due course.
I do want to stay focused on the RATE Group projects because it is quite exciting research that is happening with some of the best scientists (Sandia, Oak Ridge, Los Alamos guys) and labs in the world. It is nice to know that the only real opposition that I have heard of is that by Dr. Henke found here www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html
My opinion is that Dr. Humphreys disposes of the criticism well as I outlined yesterday.
I found it interesting that Norm had not heard of anyone using helium to date rocks. That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm. Pioneers get laughed at but they keep pressing on because they care about the truth, not peer pressure. Remember Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler? Same deal here.
Eric Murphy apparently had no comment on my discussion of Dr. Kevin Henke's criticism of the RATE Group's Zircon Experiment, but he did bring up a new objection by another author found here http://www.answersincreation.org/RATE_critique_he-zr.htm which I will answer.
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Their results indicated that the deepest rocks (near 15 km from the original ground surface) did not cool until about 15 million years ago, or about the time the vertical rock formation tilted and the lower level rock was brought to the surface where it could cool. Rock which had been at shallower depths before tilting (about 4 km or 2.4 miles) showed helium-based ages of over 160 million years. That stands to reason since rock closer to the surface would have cooled sooner than deeper rock. Reiners has demonstrated very similar results for helium based ages of crystals of the mineral titanate also extracted from various positions along the Gold Butte[8]. The zircons from the deepest section, prior to tilting, have helium contents only about 1 percent of the theoretical helium that should have formed during 1.5 billion years of radioactive decay. The helium level of the uppermost rocks is about 10 percent of the theoretical maximum. Those helium levels are hard to reconcile with RATE’s ideas about the age of the earth. According to RATE this rock formation is only about 6000 years old. How then could zircons from near the surface (at temperatures even lower than the 100EC I used for my diffusion calculation) have lost so much of their helium?
Eric, if the rock formation was originally at a depth of 15km, then tilted to a shallower depth, then it is obvious to me why it lost so much of its helium. Notice that the Fenton Hill zircons retained progressively less of their helium at deeper locations: 1000m - 58%, 2170m - 27%, and 2900m - 17%. At 15,000m we would expect very little helium to be retained. 10% @ 4000m and 1% @ 15,000 does not look anomalous to me at all. Why is this a problem for the RATE Group results?
In the second example given, Dr. Christman speaks of zircons in sediments and asserts that there is no possbile way that these zircons could have been exposed to elevated temperatures in the last 6000 years and yet they only have 1% helium retention. But if they are in sediments, it is obvious to me that they could have been dislodged by any number of mechanisms from somewhere deep within the earth at which depth they would have experienced high temperatures and rapid helium loss.
My last point is ... why wouldn't Dr. Henke have brought up these issues in either one of his Humphreys rebuttals if he thought they were worhtwhile objections? It seems that Talk Origins is a much better place to put rebuttals than the Christian site you referred to.
JonF...
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Quote (afdave @ June 01 2006,11:29) 1) The system being dated is a closed system Wrong. Standard ignorant fundy error.
No. This is rather an example of tunnel vision long-ager geologists who won't consider the possibility that maybe the sample they are dating had some outside influence in the past that they have not considered.
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2) The system must initially have contained none of its daughter component Wrong. Standard ignorant fundy error.
No. To be accurate, the sample must contain NO daughter components. Of course this is highly unlikely, so the long-ager geologists have to make some sort of unwarranted assumptions about how much of the daughter component was initially present. Despite their fancy charts, the truth is that this is impossible, so their dates are invalid.
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3) The process rate must always have been the same Sort of right, but the word "assumption", with its connotation of "untested" is not a good choice. I prefer "premise", becaue the constancy of radioactive decay has been tested six ways from Sunday.
Oh really? What do you do with this quote then? (non-fundy, non-YEC) (Don't tell me 'Well, look at the date-1982' because I will say 'Yes. Look at the date. Why do you not understand this when it was written 24 years ago? The RATE Group is all over this and has been for years)
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Jueneman, Frederic B., “Secular Catastrophism,” Industrial Research and Development (June 1982), p. 21. “The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radiodecay rates of uranium and thorium. Such ‘confirmation’ may be short-lived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man. “The mechanism for resetting such nuclear clocks is not clear, but knowledge has never really stood in our way in the quest for ignorance. Meanwhile, such prehistoric ‘creatures’ as Nessie from Loch Ness or Champ from Lake Champlain, as well as others, may not be avatars at all, but survivors from the last catastrophe.
Drew ...
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How do you get God existing outside of space and time from length contraction and time dilation if they are effects of spacetime itself? You should really read up on special relativity before you make such pronouncements.
You don't get God existing from this. One thing I have learned here at ATBC is that you guys make up things I supposedly say. What the Laws of Relativity do is simply show you that space and time are finite entities whereas before Einstein, no one knew this, although the Bible clearly taught this. Now do you understand?
**************************************
And I will leave you with this ...
ATBCers like to say that no good scientist would ever be a creationist. But as usual, they are wrong. There are entire creationist groups that meet regularly at Los Alamos, Sandia and Oak Ridge, plus many major universities around the world. Here's a link which list those willing to have their names listed on the ICR website, which is a very small sampling of the total number. Creation Scientists
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What the Laws of Relativity do is simply show you that space and time are finite entities whereas before Einstein, no one knew this, although the Bible clearly taught this. Now do you understand?
How exactly do the "Laws of Relativity" show that?
My Prediction: AFDave: The world was flat at the time of the flood (Quote out of context some bible verses) so there was not really that much water required.
Ooh, I can't wait to hear Dave's explanation for how God took a flat earth and balled it up into a sphere without a) killing anyone, and b) without anyone noticing. Maybe he did it at night when everyone was asleep?
I think Bystander might be a more interesting replacement for AF Dave; what does everyone else think?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What the Laws of Relativity do is simply show you that space and time are finite entities whereas before Einstein, no one knew this, although the Bible clearly taught this. Now do you understand?
How exactly do the "Laws of Relativity" show that?
Aaand steve beats me to it.
Also:
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I found it interesting that Norm had not heard of anyone using helium to date rocks. That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm.
MUAHAHAHAHAHA
...Ok, dave, now you're doing a better job. Keep it up!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
What I have always wondered at is the ability of theist fundies such as our dear clown Dave here to lie outright and yet somehow reconcile that with their ostensible Christian beliefs.
How do they do that? Doublethink? Stupidity? Some peculiar epinephrin-triggered shunt that the rest of us don't have?
Anyone have any ideas?
Well I'm sure that you know about partisans already, and probably have even heard of the study mentioned in the link below. Like the article says (my paraphrase), you're bound to be thinking, "Well, duh".
But it does give us one more way of pointing out how people like Afdave merely react to ideas that they don't already ascribe to. I, at least, think it's worth bringing up again, obviously not for afdave, but for people who have opened a way into their brains for contrary notions. Anyway, here's the most objective answer to your question possible:
To elaborate a bit more, it is never a lie (in their conception) if they don't admit doubts into their minds. We may accuse, but if he adheres "to his faith", and does not "doubt" at all (that is, if he doesn't admit to the flicker of doubt), he may say "what he believes is true" without any violation.
It is important to these people not to own any doubts, even for a second, because they do fear that this would compromise their honesty. This kind of denial that we all are capable of is generally reinforced in the fundamentalist religions, not with the words I use, of course, but in the condemnation of any doubts, or "lack of faith". I know this not only from psychology studies, but also from my own fundamentalist past (up to age 15), where one learns to guard against owning any doubts, thus allowing one to say and "believe" absurd things without fear of being dishonest.
It is not necessarily personally dishonest, then, depending on definition. It is intellectually dishonest in virtually all of its definitions. I would tend to think that eventually personal honesty has to take account of intellectual dishonesty (as I maintain was my teenage experience), however, or the former is at best superfluous. Perhaps it is as I think, however, that eventually the intellectual and the personal do find an equilibrium, so that intellectual dishonesty has to be matched by personal dishonesty at some stage in life, unless, of course, one becomes intellectually honest.
How do you get God existing outside of space and time from length contraction and time dilation if they are effects of spacetime itself? You should really read up on special relativity before you make such pronouncements.
You don't get God existing from this. One thing I have learned here at ATBC is that you guys make up things I supposedly say. What the Laws of Relativity do is simply show you that space and time are finite entities whereas before Einstein, no one knew this, although the Bible clearly taught this. Now do you understand?
You said:
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You don't get God existing from this.
I said:
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How do you get God existing outside of space and time from length contraction and time dilation if they are effects of spacetime itself?
I never said anything about the existence of God, just the idea that it exists outside of space and time. My original comment was in response to your statement:
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The very fact that these concepts truly exist is evidence which supports (not proves) the claims of the Bible when it says that God dwells outside space and time.
Now please do not accuse me, even indirectly, of misrepresenting your position again like you said here:
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One thing I have learned here at ATBC is that you guys make up things I supposedly say.
Edit: I also second stevestory's question, how do you get the finiteness of the universe out of relativity? And even if the universe is finite, how does that demonstrate that God exists outside of it except by possibility?
How exactly do the "Laws of Relativity" show that?
Something tells me that explaining this again to a guy who doesn't understand that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning are good evidence for an Intelligent Designer, is probably a waste of time. Oh well, I tried.
We've moved on ... the topic is now the RATE Group and helium and zircons. Do you have anything that could salvage your buddy, Kevin Henke, part time instructor at the world famous geological lab (?) of the Univ of Kentucky? Or was it W. Va.? He's up against a Sandia guy and he needs your help ... will you resuce him?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
How exactly do the "Laws of Relativity" show that?
Something tells me that explaining this again to a guy who doesn't understand that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning are good evidence for an Intelligent Designer, is probably a waste of time. Oh well, I tried.
Wow, way to dodge there chief. If I recall correctly, stevestory has a degree in physics.
Well, I see that there are no objections to what I wrote yesterday about the Henke article.
That's not quite true, afdave. Did you miss what I posted on June 01 2006,16:33 ?
I pretty much call your stolen argument a red herring.
No geochronologists uses helium retention to tell the age of a rock or a zircon crystal. It was already known to be subject to all kinds of problems.
Helium leaks out of zircon crystals in an inconsistent manner. When warm, the zircon expands slightly, and becomes more permeable, or leaky, to helium, but not so with respect to lead and uranium.
It is not a problem to say that the zircon has a high closure temperature for lead but a low closure temperature for helium, or that it is closed with respect to lead but simultaneously open with respect to helium.
ericmurphy also dealt with your claim right after I did. He found a better article.
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I found it interesting that Norm had not heard of anyone using helium to date rocks. That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm.
No, it's because they're frauds.
You can't use helium in zircon to date rocks because it won't date consistently, because how much helium leaks depends on things you can't know just by measuring the helium -- like how hot the zircon has been in the past. That's what I had said, though not so explicitly, but you didn't seem to register that -- perhaps because you can't draw conclusions logically.
How exactly do the "Laws of Relativity" show that?
Something tells me that explaining this again to a guy who doesn't understand that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning are good evidence for an Intelligent Designer, is probably a waste of time. Oh well, I tried.
We've moved on ... the topic is now the RATE Group and helium and zircons. Do you have anything that could salvage your buddy, Kevin Henke, part time instructor at the world famous geological lab (?) of the Univ of Kentucky? Or was it W. Va.? He's up against a Sandia guy and he needs your help ... will you resuce him?
So on top of being ignorant of science, theology, christianity, physics, PORTUGUESE, etc....
While reading about the sad state of "research" conducted by RATE, I found THIS ARTICLE. It suggests that a few years in the petroleum industry shook Glenn Morton's (a former YEC) belief system rather badly.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
How exactly do the "Laws of Relativity" show that?
Something tells me that explaining this again to a guy who doesn't understand that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning are good evidence for an Intelligent Designer, is probably a waste of time. Oh well, I tried.
Do I understand correctly that your rebuttal is "if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you?" Is that the best you can do to explain the implications of relativity?
I'd almost suspect that you didn't know and were using condescension to mask ignorance. I mean really, that is so eighth grade. Surely, you can juke your way around that with a little more finesse.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Eric Murphy apparently had no comment on my discussion of Dr. Kevin Henke's criticism of the RATE Group's Zircon Experiment, but he did bring up a new objection by another author found here http://www.answersincreation.org/RATE_critique_he-zr.htm which I will answer.
I had no comment on the Henke criticism because, as you might have noticed, Dave, I don't respond to every strand of spaghetti you toss at the wall. There are only so many hours in the day; and frankly I've got better things to do with my time than rebut every single wrong thing you say. I have to pick the ones I can blow away with minimal effort.
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Eric, if the rock formation was originally at a depth of 15km, then tilted to a shallower depth, then it is obvious to me why it lost so much of its helium. Notice that the Fenton Hill zircons retained progressively less of their helium at deeper locations: 1000m - 58%, 2170m - 27%, and 2900m - 17%. At 15,000m we would expect very little helium to be retained. 10% @ 4000m and 1% @ 15,000 does not look anomalous to me at all. Why is this a problem for the RATE Group results?
This is why the RATE results are worthless, Dave, and you'd know this if you actually understood the article I posted. RATE looked at an extremely limited sample of zircons, and even the results they got were equivocal. Against that we've got millions upon millions of samples that support radiometric dating. Finding a few samples here and there which give erroneous results does not, not not not justify tossing out an entire methodology. As the article points out, the RATE group should have wondered why their results were at odds with all the other results out there, and they should have tried to duplicate their results, which they failed to do. This is why the RATE group is not doing science, Dave. You don't just stop your research whenever you get a result or two that you like.
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In the second example given, Dr. Christman speaks of zircons in sediments and asserts that there is no possbile way that these zircons could have been exposed to elevated temperatures in the last 6000 years and yet they only have 1% helium retention. But if they are in sediments, it is obvious to me that they could have been dislodged by any number of mechanisms from somewhere deep within the earth at which depth they would have experienced high temperatures and rapid helium loss.
It might be obvious to you, Dave, but since you have absolutely no training in geology or radiometric dating, why should we give you more credibility than someone who does it for a living? Would you trust my circuit diagrams more than you would a professional engineer?
So can you explain how settlements that haven't moved in 6,000 years could somehow have ended up deep underground? Do you have a mechanism in mind? Are you aware of the fact that sedimentary rocks are formed at the surface? Or are you just doing your usual wild speculating without reference to external reality?
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My last point is ... why wouldn't Dr. Henke have brought up these issues in either one of his Humphreys rebuttals if he thought they were worhtwhile objections? It seems that Talk Origins is a much better place to put rebuttals than the Christian site you referred to.
Is that your objection, Dave? That you didn't see the criticisms of the RATE data where you expected to see them? Perhaps you could contact Dr. Henke and ask him yourself? It can't be that hard to get his e-mail address, if you actually could be bothered to do any actual research.
Dave, the RATE experiment looked at two samples, only one of which supported their conclusion. Do you honestly expect the entire field of radiometric dating to be tossed out the window based on two flawed results?
Do you think we're impressed by the fact that you've never heard of any other criticisms of the RATE results? You'd never heard of the criticism I found, which took all of five seconds to find! How hard were you looking? My guess is this is another case of deliberate ignorance on your part, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Something tells me that explaining this again to a guy who doesn't understand that Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning are good evidence for an Intelligent Designer, is probably a waste of time. Oh well, I tried.
Dave, "cosmic fine tuning" and "biological machines" aren't "evidence" for anything. At the very best, they're argument. I've pointed this out to you at least three or four times, and you've never responded. It's as if you don't understand the difference.
Also, as I've pointed out at least once or twice before, the argument from "cosmic fine tuning" is simply unpersuasive. No one knows whether "cosmic fine tuning" is a result of random chance, or is the result of an underlying physical law that requires them to take the values they have.
You can't keep ignoring arguments you don't like, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
One more thing, Dave. Current cosmological theory suggests that space and time did indeed have a beginng, 13.7 billion (not 6,000) years ago. Does this mean that space and time are finite?
No.
Where do you get the idea that General Relativity predicts that space and time are finite, Dave? That both are bounded in the past does not indicate that they are also bounded in the future. Current data suggest that cosmic expansion is accelerating, not decelerating. If the universe does not recollapse, time and space will continue indefinitely in the future.
Think of the natural numbers, i.e., 1, 2, 3…, Dave. Those numbers are bounded by zero on one side, and what, exactly, at the other side? Are the natural numbers not infinite because they stop at zero?
Also, isn't it just a bit weird, everyone, that Dave uses STR to try to prove the existence of God, but ignores the implications of GTR (of which STR is just a special case; hence the name) that demonstrate that the universe is not 6,000 years old, but in fact is two million orders of magnitude older than that?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Gosh, AFarceDave ignores questions and anything contrary to his myopic...no, I should say blind..."view." Color me surprised.
I find it interesting that the ICR group used...well, LIES--to even get the cooked results they did. They faked a "Mining Company" ("Zodiac Minerals and Manufacturing") just to get Ken Farley's lab to do the analysis.
Lies on top of lies are not surprising from the ICR, they've done that time and again.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, the RATE experiment looked at two samples, only one of which supported their conclusion. Do you honestly expect the entire field of radiometric dating to be tossed out the window based on two flawed results?
As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know There are known unknowns. That is to say We know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, The ones we don't know We don't know.
The rate of helium leakage in zircon is one of the known unknowns. Not as Dave thinks an unknown unknown.
And even if it were an unknown unknown it still wouldn't contradict the known knowns.
It means you can't use the amount of helium left in a sample to prove anything either way, because the amount of helium remaining in a sample depends intimately on the history of the sample over time. In most if not all cases, that history is simply not known well enough to correct for all possible helium losses.
This is why helium is not used for radiometric dating analysis. The RATE guys aren't "pioneers," Dave; they're wrong.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In all of these efforts, the creationists make abundant use of a simple tactic: They lie. They lie continually, they lie prodigiously, and they lie because they must. The idea that the Bible could serve to explain nature collapsed in the 1800s, under an overwhelming mass of scientific information that discredited any naive, literal reading of Genesis, but the creationists have to deny that this ever happened. They also must deny all that science has learned since then about the history of Earth and Earth's organisms -- and the only way to do this is to tell lies. They tell lies about nature, lies about science and lies about their own doctrines and aims, and they change the lies, from time to time, to fit prevailing circumstances.
he must have had AirFarceDaveTard2 in mind.
I wonder if we can really blame AFDT2 for his f*cked up mental state. It seems he was taught as a child by his Missionary father that it is OK to lie in order to push your religious agenda. AFDT2 was also never allowed to develop critical thinking skills, but instead was taught that rote regurgitation of memorized Bible verses was all the data he would ever need to consider.
I feel almost guilty watching Washout Dave get the snot knocked out of him and his "YEC evidence" day after day after day - almost. There still has to be some level of personal accountability, and if AirFarceDave keeps being a liar and a coward then should still be held responsible for his own actions. It's just a pity, the bad light he shines on other Christians with his continued dishonest and craven behavior.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Quote (afdave @ June 01 2006,11:29) 1) The system being dated is a closed system Wrong. Standard ignorant fundy error.
No. This is rather an example of tunnel vision long-ager geologists who won't consider the possibility that maybe the sample they are dating had some outside influence in the past that they have not considered.
Sorry, Dave, I'm right, you're wrong, and most (if not all) of the creationist web sites which fed you all you know about radiometric dating are wrong. Isochron dating is virtually guaranteed to detect if the system has not been closed, and in that case no date is produced. Concordia-Discordia dating and Ar-Ar dating are also essentially guaranteed to detect if the system has not been closed and, in many cases, produce a valid date anyway.
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2) The system must initially have contained none of its daughter component Wrong. Standard ignorant fundy error.
No. To be accurate, the sample must contain NO daughter components. Of course this is highly unlikely, so the long-ager geologists have to make some sort of unwarranted assumptions about how much of the daughter component was initially present. Despite their fancy charts, the truth is that this is impossible, so their dates are invalid.
Sorry, Dave, I'm right, you're wrong, and most (if not all) of the creationist web sites which fed you all you know about radiometric dating are wrong. The amount of initial daughter product is a result of isochron and Ar-Ar methods, not an assumption of any kind. You put in the data, turn the crank, and out comes the age and the amount of initial daughter product. No assumption involved.
For concordia-discordia dating, we apply the method to minerals (e.g. zircons) which so strongly reject lead at solidification that it is physically impossible for there to be any significicant lead in a fresh zircon. Your pals the RATE group acknowledge this in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY:
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Samples 1 through 3 had helium retentions of 58, 27, and 17 percent. The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth --at today's rates --of nuclear decay occurred.
{empasis in original}. So, Davey-me-lad, the RATE group denies your claim, as does every exposition of how isochron, Ar-Ar, and concordia-discordia dating work. The RATE group knows that zero-initial-daughter in zircons is not an assumption.
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3) The process rate must always have been the same Sort of right, but the word "assumption", with its connotation of "untested" is not a good choice. I prefer "premise", becaue the constancy of radioactive decay has been tested six ways from Sunday.
O really? What do you do with this quote then? (non-fundy, non-YEC) (Don't tell me 'Well, look at the date-1982' because I will say 'Yes. Look at the date. Why do you not understand this when it was written 24 years ago? The RATE Group is all over this and has been for years)
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Jueneman, Frederic B., “Secular Catastrophism,” Industrial Research and Development (June 1982), p. 21. “The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radiodecay rates of uranium and thorium. Such ‘confirmation’ may be short-lived, as nature is not to be discovered quite so easily. There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radiodecay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago but, rather, within the age and memory of man. “The mechanism for resetting such nuclear clocks is not clear, but knowledge has never really stood in our way in the quest for ignorance. Meanwhile, such prehistoric ‘creatures’ as Nessie from Loch Ness or Champ from Lake Champlain, as well as others, may not be avatars at all, but survivors from the last catastrophe.
Why, I notice that his column was entitled "Scientific Speculation" (do ya know what speculation is, Davie-poo?); I note that he produces no evidence that there is any mechanism that resets the nuclear clocks or changes the decay rates; and I note the mountains of evidence for constant nuclear decay rates ... and I conclude that his speculation is bootless and fruitless.
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ATBCers like to say that no good scientist would ever be a creationist. But as usual, they are wrong. There are entire creationist groups that meet regularly at Los Alamos, Sandia and Oak Ridge, plus many major universities around the world. Here's a link which list those willing to have their names listed on the ICR website, which is a very small sampling of the total number. Creation Scientists
Science is decided by the evidence, not by majority or minority rule.
I found it interesting that Norm had not heard of anyone using helium to date rocks. That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm.
ROTFLMAO! Davey-wavey, the very first radiometric date was obtained by Ernest Rutherford in 1905 ... using helium! But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped; so they developed the much-more-robust methods in common use today. But helium dating is still used in a few circumstances
ATBCers like to say that no good scientist would ever be a creationist. But as usual, they are wrong. There are entire creationist groups that meet regularly at Los Alamos, Sandia and Oak Ridge, plus many major universities around the world. Here's a link which list those willing to have their names listed on the ICR website, which is a very small sampling of the total number. Creation Scientists
I count 82 scientists on the ICR list, Dave. Would you care to speculate as to why only a "very small sampling" of creationist scientists would be unwilling to add their name to the ICR list? Is it because they lack the courage of their convictions?
Currently the "Steves List" has something like 700 scientists on it. All of them are named "Steve" or some variation thereon. People named "Steve" (or some variation thereon) are about 1% of the population.
Does that give you any hint as to the relative numbers of creationists and evolutionists, Dave?
Not that popularity has anything to do with science.
Anyone else have numbers on the number of peer-reviewed papers supporting evolution by members of the "Steves project," compared to the number of peer-reviewed papers supporting young-earth creationism by all creationists combined?
And by the way, Dave—creationist papers "peer-reviewed" by other creationists don't really count for much in the real world.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm. Pioneers get laughed at but they keep pressing on because they care about the truth, not peer pressure. Remember Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler? Same deal here.
Interesting you should bring up Kepler. Kepler originally came up with a model of the solar system based the planets having circular orbits related to the Pythagorean solids. These were regarded as being "perfect" in some mystical way, so obviously God, the Great Designer, would have based his Creation on them.
Guess what Kepler did next. He used his model to make predictions of where the planets should be, and he compared the predictions his model made with the actual positions recorded by astronomers.
He discovered to his astonishment that the observed positions did not match the predictions of his model. Then he did something truly revolutionary. He junked his model, and started again with a new one based on the planets having elliptical orbits. He didn't cling to his notion that a perfect God must have designed the orbits of the planets in perfect circles. He adapted his way of thinking in the light of empirical evidence.
As a result, we have Kepler's three laws of planetary motion, and mankind knew a little bit more about the Cosmos than we did before. All because Kepler "myopically" kept focussed on whether or not the emprical data actually matched the predictions of his model. All because of that nasty, atheistical methodological naturalism you'd like to get rid of.
If you had your way Dave, we really would still be living in the Middle Ages.
The scientific method, Dave. Best thing since sliced bread
Oh yeah, remind me, who was it who laughed the hardest at Galileo and Copernicus? Why, those devout, God-fearing Biblical literalists... Who's having the last laugh now...?
...demonstrate that the universe is not 6,000 years old, but in fact is two million orders of magnitude older than that?
I know Dave claims we never correct each other, but you meant two million TIMES, right?
That, or since there's only room for God "outside time and space" in the past (and not necessarily the future), God hasn't been able to do much for a REALLY, REALLY long time!
It's just a pity, the bad light he shines on other Christians with his continued dishonest and craven behavior.
well, yes and no.
Does a schizophrenic claims of scientific knowledge have any bearing on how we view other scientists?
Ever see "A Beautiful Mind"?
no, I don't think Davey sheds a poor light on xians, but rather a poor light on the rest of us for letting the kind of cognitive dissonance that leads to this behavior go untreated for so long.
Davey has about as much to do with xianity as schizophenia has to do with advanced mathematics.
I do hope that someday the kind of malady suffered by thousands of folks like AFDave will be recognized as such, and treated accordingly.
I have my doubts tho; it does seem that funding for mental health care has taken a severe nose dive over the last 10 years or so. Many hospitals in CA, for example, have even closed their mental health care depts. completely. I assume it's a simple matter of economics, combined with the apparent "stigma" associated with mental disease as opposed to others, but it's still troubling.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
the very first radiometric date was obtained by Ernest Rutherford in 1905 ... using helium! But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped; so they developed the much-more-robust methods in common use today.
If that's true (I assume it is) then the RATE group has to be a fraud and not just wrong.
I'm no expert on dating methods and I don't claim to be, I didn't know Rutherford used helium in 1905 until now -- but the RATE guys are supposed to be experts and aware of that history. If they are, then they lied, if they're not aware, then they aren't the experts they pretend to be. Either way it equals fraud, not a mistake.
But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped;
the very first radiometric date was obtained by Ernest Rutherford in 1905 ... using helium! But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped; so they developed the much-more-robust methods in common use today.
If that's true (I assume it is) then the RATE group has to be a fraud and not just wrong.
Yup, it's true. Should you want to check on me: Rutherford, E., 1906. Radioactive Transformations, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp187-188.
Current Research: (U-Th)/He chronometry The decay of uranium and thorium to helium provides a versatile and robust way of dating a variety of geologic events. This technique can be used to constrain thermal histories of rocks through a range of temperatures, and is commonly used to figure out the timing and rate of orogenic events and the development of topography. Using (U-Th)/He thermochronology in this way I work with a wide range of geomorphologists, structural geologists, and tectonicists to address problems related to uplift, erosion, faulting, and other orogenic issues. He dating is also used in a wide range of other applications, including dating young volcanic rocks, establishing thermal histories of faults, and constraining histories of sedimentary basins. In the (U-Th)/He Chronometry Lab here at Yale we work on applications such as these all over the world. Much of the most exciting work however, comes in figuring out new ways to use He dating, such as how to date other types of minerals (e.g., garnet, zircon, etc.), using crystal-size-age relationships to elucidate extremely low-T (40-70° C) thermal histories of rocks, and applying He dating to novel problems.
Hmmm... figuring out new uses for He dates, huh ... like zircons, maybe ... hmmm, what an idea! Evolutionists habitually miss 'elephants in the living room' and it seems that this is one of them. This is a really big deal and you shouldn't miss it. The amazing thing about the Fenton Hill zircons is the incredibly high He retention. Does that not make little lights go off in your heads for the very reasons that you all have been mentioning? Namely, that if rocks get hot, they lose their He. Here's the deal, guys. I agree that if these rocks had gotten hot and there was only 1% retention or even 10%, you are right ... not a good candidate for dating. But 58%??!! Come on! These zircons should NOT have this much He! And look at the three levels they sampled. The lower you get, the more that is lost. Why? Because it's hotter. Now, I'm not an expert on dating either (again, for those of you who think I am taking on scientists myself, I assure you, I am not ... I am merely 'sic-ing' Creo scientists on Evo scientists and watching the fireworks) , but this sure smells true to me. I can tell you that I'll be going to the RATE conference in Dallas on Sept 30 and asking a lot of questions. But even with my limited knowledge, it appears pretty obvious that there is only one explanation for so much He in these zircons: the rocks didn't get very hot and they have only been there about 6000 years. If they got hot, then the % is lower or even zero. If they were there a billion years, then the % is lower or zero. If they got hot AND were there a billion years, then the % is really lower or zero. So these zircons didn't get very hot, AND they haven't been there very long. And Henke's garbage about vacuum testing and some He leaked into the zircons from the biotite is just that--garbage. I (and Humphreys) have already covered that. I have also addressed Dr. Christman's argument as best I can. I feel sure if this were brought to Dr. Humprey's attention, he would easily dispose of it.
Face it ... not only do Creationists have a whole arsenal of evidences of a young earth from NON-radiometric processes, and not only do they still have the negative evidence of bad assumptions of radiodating, but now they have powerful positive evidence of a young earth. And for those of you who want Humphreys to do more experiments, I'm sure he will. In fact, if you actually read the RATE Group's documents (instead of just the mudslinging papers ABOUT the RATE Group), you will see that more experiments are planned.
(BWE and Incorygible need to be practicing up on 'Amazing Grace'
Eric ...
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RATE looked at an extremely limited sample of zircons, and even the results they got were equivocal.
Why don't you tell Dr. Farley that his results are equivocal and get back to me with his answer.
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Against that we've got millions upon millions of samples that support radiometric dating. Finding a few samples here and there which give erroneous results does not, not not not justify tossing out an entire methodology. As the article points out, the RATE group should have wondered why their results were at odds with all the other results out there, and they should have tried to duplicate their results, which they failed to do. This is why the RATE group is not doing science, Dave. You don't just stop your research whenever you get a result or two that you like.
Here's the deal, Eric. Some long agers say that Creos tried for years to discredit radiometric dating, but failed, so now they have to try the He-zircon gig. The truth is that long agers make assumptions to fit the dates they had already decided they needed to make evolution work way back before radiometric dating was discovered. No Creationist denies that decay has occurred, we just deny the long ages that are inferred from this decay because of arbitrary assumptions. The problem though is the best that creationists were able to do until RATE was criticize assumptions, which by definition is a negative activity. With RATE and He and zircons, creationists have a positive physical process to show what the age of the earth really is. Of course there are also the 14 non-radiometric processes that Humphreys lists as well which pretty much dismantle the 4 billion year nonsense anyway.
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It might be obvious to you, Dave, but since you have absolutely no training in geology or radiometric dating, why should we give you more credibility than someone who does it for a living?
Well, I can read a report from a smart guy from Sandia, and I can read the lame rebuttal of a part time geologist also, just like you can.
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Is that your objection, Dave? That you didn't see the criticisms of the RATE data where you expected to see them? Perhaps you could contact Dr. Henke and ask him yourself? It can't be that hard to get his e-mail address, if you actually could be bothered to do any actual research.
Your guy, Christman said he conferred with Henke. This REALLY makes me wonder why Henke didn't include his material. The only reason I can think of is that it is garbage. Isn't Talk Origins like the hallowed site for Evolutionists to sell their wares?
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Where do you get the idea that General Relativity predicts that space and time are finite, Dave? That both are bounded in the past does not indicate that they are also bounded in the future.
How would you know that it is not bounded in the future? My hypothesis says that God will someday do away with time -- its the concept of eternity. But I don't claim to be an expert on relativity. I just think it is something interesting for further study. And I certainly don't claim this as a 'proof' for God or anything.
JonF...
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Why, I notice that his column was entitled "Scientific Speculation"
You have the whole article in soft copy? Could you post it with title? I don't think his statement is speculation though, just because it is titled this way.
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Ernest Rutherford in 1905 ... using helium! But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped; so they developed the much-more-robust methods in common use today. But helium dating is still used in a few circumstances.
OK. So the creos didn't discover it. Too bad! They are just RE-discovering it along with the Yale lab quoted above.
Eric ...
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I count 82 scientists on the ICR list, Dave. Would you care to speculate as to why only a "very small sampling" of creationist scientists would be unwilling to add their name to the ICR list? Is it because they lack the courage of their convictions?
Currently the "Steves List" has something like 700 scientists on it. All of them are named "Steve" or some variation thereon. People named "Steve" (or some variation thereon) are about 1% of the population.
Does that give you any hint as to the relative numbers of creationists and evolutionists, Dave?
Not that popularity has anything to do with science.
Of course there are far more evolutionists. Do you think I don't know this or something? I am fully aware of the fact that the situation we have now is very similar to Galileo's day, when a majority of scientists believed one thing because it was popular (and in his case sanctioned by the church) and a small handful of scientists dissented because they were honest about the evidence. Your last statement is wrong. Popularity has much to do with science - namely, evolutionists are extremely concerned about their 'hallowed peers' and being accepted as rational scientists. You guys are deathly afraid of being labeled as a wacko. If anyone comes to ATBC with the slightest bit of 'non-orthodoxy' from the established 'Church of Evolution,' he is immediately attacked (i.e. skeptic on the 'Reinventing Evolution' thread). As for why only a small sampling of scientists give their names to places like ICR or DI, this should be obvious. Surely you have read the stories of rejected tenure and opportunities being removed because it was found out that 'Oh no! This guy is a closet creo! ... how embarrassing ... we can't have that.' This is why Behe did not write his book until after he ws tenured.
Nebogipfel ...
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He discovered to his astonishment that the observed positions did not match the predictions of his model. Then he did something truly revolutionary. He junked his model, and started again with a new one based on the planets having elliptical orbits. He didn't cling to his notion that a perfect God must have designed the orbits of the planets in perfect circles. He adapted his way of thinking in the light of empirical evidence.
Yes. And he was a creationist. And this is what modern creationists do as well. And it is apparently NOT what Evolutionists do. Kepler won the day over the lemmings of his time and I predict that today's creationists will also win the day over the lemmings of our time.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
GOOD MEDICINE FOR MINDS CLOUDED BY THE FOG OF DARWINISM
From Dembski's Blog on May 21, 2006 “If you want to learn how cerebral blood flow works, study engineering. Study design.” [From a colleague:] A few years ago, my brain research took some interesting turns. I was developing a theory of blood flow to the brain, specifically a theory of how the delicate blood vessels in the brain are protected from the strong pulsatility of the heartbeat. I realized that the system in the cranium that affords this protection seems to be designed. That is, it is a tuned mechanism quite analogous to vibration dampers widely used in engineering. I was haunted by the realization that the research that I was doing was essentially reverse engineering. Most of what I needed to know about pulsatile blood flow to the brain was in engineering textbooks! I was surprised as to how little some of the major paradigms in biology, especially Darwinism, contributed to my work. In fact, ignoring design obscured the most important aspects of my research. The assumption of design was heuristic.
Around that time, I came across Phillip Johnston’s Darwin on Trial in a bookstore, and went on to read Jonathan Well’s Icons of Evolution, Mike Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, and Bill Dembski’s Uncommon Dissent. For perspective, I read Dawkins, Dennett, and Gould as well. When I finished reading, I was astonished. And angry! Although my scientific talents are modest, I have developed a fairly acute sense for scientific nonsense. Darwinism is nonsense. It’s more a philosophical bias than coherent science. It may explain some patterns and changes in gene frequency in populations, but the evidence does not even remotely support the Darwinists’ claim that chance and necessity fully account for the appearance of complex design in living things. That claim is nonsense. I believe that the best scientific explanation for the appearance of design in living things is that they are designed. This assumption forms the basis for my own research, and it’s a very powerful tool. My advice to young researchers in my field is: if you want to learn how cerebral blood flow works, study engineering. Study design.
Filed under: Intelligent Design — William Dembski @ 9:07 pm
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDave seems to be running out of steam. He's reduced to quoting Dembski's snide whining and calling scientists 'lemmings'. And of course, the predictable sniveling about how 'persecuted' creationists are.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Current Research: (U-Th)/He chronometry The decay of uranium and thorium to helium provides a versatile and robust way of dating a variety of geologic events. This technique can be used to constrain thermal histories of rocks through a range of temperatures, and is commonly used to figure out the timing and rate of orogenic events and the development of topography. Using (U-Th)/He thermochronology in this way I work with a wide range of geomorphologists, structural geologists, and tectonicists to address problems related to uplift, erosion, faulting, and other orogenic issues. He dating is also used in a wide range of other applications, including dating young volcanic rocks, establishing thermal histories of faults, and constraining histories of sedimentary basins. In the (U-Th)/He Chronometry Lab here at Yale we work on applications such as these all over the world. Much of the most exciting work however, comes in figuring out new ways to use He dating, such as how to date other types of minerals (e.g., garnet, zircon, etc.), using crystal-size-age relationships to elucidate extremely low-T (40-70° C) thermal histories of rocks, and applying He dating to novel problems.
Hmmm... figuring out new uses for He dates, huh ... like zircons, maybe ... hmmm, what an idea! Evolutionists habitually miss 'elephants in the living room' and it seems that this is one of them. This is a really big deal and you shouldn't miss it.
If yuo read all the links, you'd see that it's not unusual to date appropriate zircons with helium dating. You're just a typical creationist seizing on a mainstream idea without understanding it. It's no big deal, just business as usual.
I didn't miss it, and real scientists didn't miss it. In cases where we know the thermal and environmental history, and the properties of the material under the appropriate circumstances, we can use helium dating and have been doing so for decades.
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The amazing thing about the Fenton Hill zircons is the incredibly high He retention. Does that not make little lights go off in your heads for the very reasons that you all have been mentioning? Namely, that if rocks get hot, they lose their He. Here's the deal, guys. I agree that if these rocks had gotten hot and there was only 1% retention or even 10%, you are right ... not a good candidate for dating. But 58%??!! Come on! These zircons should NOT have this much He! And look at the three levels they sampled. The lower you get, the more that is lost. Why? Because it's hotter. Now, I'm not an expert on dating either (again, for those of you who think I am taking on scientists myself, I assure you, I am not ... I am merely 'sic-ing' Creo scientists on Evo scientists and watching the fireworks) , but this sure smells true to me. ... But even with my limited knowledge, it appears pretty obvious that there is only one explanation for so much He in these zircons: the rocks didn't get very hot and they have only been there about 6000 years.
There are several other explanations; we may not know the thermal and environmental history well enough, the extrapolation of the diffusion data may be invalid, all sorts of things. I acknowledged a possible interesting anomaly at Fenton Hill already. When the RATE group comes up with more data, lots more data, and better justification for their assumptions in their analyses, then we'll pay some attention.
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Face it ... not only do Creationists have a whole arsenal of evidences of a young earth from NON-radiometric processes,
Sorry, neither you nor any creationist have come up with any evidence of a young Earth from any processes.
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and not only do they still have the negative evidence of bad assumptions of radiodating,
I note you have ignored my fisking of your ignorant (but standard) comments about those "assumptions". Sorry, the premises of radiometeric dating are not negative evidence. The only assumptions that need to be addressed are those of the RATE group.
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but now they have powerful positive evidence of a young earth. And for those of you who want Humphreys to do more experiments, I'm sure he will. In fact, if you actually read the RATE Group's documents (instead of just the mudslinging papers ABOUT the RATE Group), you will see that more experiments are planned.
Great. Get back to us when they have enough data to be interesting, and when they have provided better justification for their assumptions. Until then, all you've got is a mildly interesting possible anomaly.
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Against that we've got millions upon millions of samples that support radiometric dating. Finding a few samples here and there which give erroneous results does not, not not not justify tossing out an entire methodology. As the article points out, the RATE group should have wondered why their results were at odds with all the other results out there, and they should have tried to duplicate their results, which they failed to do. This is why the RATE group is not doing science, Dave. You don't just stop your research whenever you get a result or two that you like.
Here's the deal, Eric. Some long agers say that Creos tried for years to discredit radiometric dating, but failed, so now they have to try the He-zircon gig. The truth is that long agers make assumptions to fit the dates they had already decided they needed to make evolution work way back before radiometric dating was discovered.
I notice that you totally failed to address the point, which is the vast web hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of consistent radiometric and non-radiometric dates. A scientific theory has to explain all the evidence.
Why, I notice that his column was entitled "Scientific Speculation"
You have the whole article in soft copy? Could you post it with title? I don't think his statement is speculation though, just because it is titled this way.
No, I don't have it, but I have seen several of his other columns, and they are all entitled "Scientific Speculation". It was a regular series. He came up with several other wacko ideas, for which there was no evidence, and which loony creationists seized on. Such as neutrions affecting radioactive decay rates.
I notice that you skipped over the lack of evidence for his speculation, and the mountain of evidence against it.
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Ernest Rutherford in 1905 ... using helium! But scientists quickly realized that helium-based dates are not trustworthy, because helium escapes so easily and it's so difficult to calculate how much helium escaped; so they developed the much-more-robust methods in common use today. But helium dating is still used in a few circumstances.
OK. So the creos didn't discover it. Too bad! They are just RE-discovering it along with the Yale lab quoted above.
No re-discovery necessary. Helium dating and its limitations are well understood. All the RATE group needs is lots more data, and more justificatiion for their assumptions about environmental and thermal history, and their extrapolations of diffusion rates. Oh, and an in-depth explanation of the millions of results obtained over the last 250 or so years that agree with each other and indicate a great age for the Earth.
Instead of labelling things you can't understand as "garbage" (Even that is copied from Humphrey), and since you'll attend the RATE conference and ask questions, why not ask them this simple thing: Since these pioneers of science have reinvented the wheel- er, the helium dating (all-too-suprisingly, at a time when everyone else regards it as unreliable, except in special cases), why don't they do what every other scientist would do in their case? Why don't they test more zircons? Why don't they try to verify their (already unreliable) results with measurements from different places? Is it perhaps, oh I dunno, because they're just quacks who only care to fill a space on a creo page for the afdaves of the world to use? On children who don't know better? Just a thought.
Anyway, remember to ask, OK?
PS. Oh, and did you remember to ask that doctor friend of yours why he/she lied to you claiming that all chromosome fusions are harmful? What was that? Sorry, can't hear you...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
“If you want to learn how cerebral blood flow works, study engineering. Study design.”
Dembski often makes these posts. I work with several engineers and physicists who study biological systems, and use engineering principles to study them, and they all think creationism and ID are a load of nonsense.
AFDave seems to be running out of steam. He's reduced to quoting Dembski's snide whining and calling scientists 'lemmings'. And of course, the predictable sniveling about how 'persecuted' creationists are.
Dave, like Dembski, learned his biology from old Disney films.
There are several other explanations; we may not know the thermal and environmental history well enough, the extrapolation of the diffusion data may be invalid, all sorts of things. I acknowledged a possible interesting anomaly at Fenton Hill already. When the RATE group comes up with more data, lots more data, and better justification for their assumptions in their analyses, then we'll pay some attention.
A possible explanation occured to me. Now keep in mind this is from a non-expert and may be error prone, but let me pop it off to see what others think:
The zircons in question may indeed never have gotten very hot, as Dave suggested. It doesn't take a young earth, however, to imagine scenarios where clumps of material can remain cool even in a molten lava flow.
Think of dumping some ice cubes into a pot of boiling water. The ice cubes still take awhile to melt (how long? I don't know - but half a minute later you'll probably still have some ice cube left) - the larger the ice cube, the longer it lasts.
The same could be true of zircon crystals in rocks that have fallen into lava flows or gotten ground off of Earth's crustal material. Thus you would have a clumpy arrangement of zircons in the ancient lava flows, clumps of zircons having lost most helium, and few dots here and there where much helium remained.
Prediction: there will be many zircons with different helium contents in a single bed of lava because of clumpy temperature histories. The pattern will be mostly aged, little helium containing zircons that surround spots of higher helium content where a cool rock was melting.
Also, heating the surround area around the cool rock could compress the zircons in the cooler rock making it even harder for helium to escape.
Also, as I've pointed out at least once or twice before, the argument from "cosmic fine tuning" is simply unpersuasive. No one knows whether "cosmic fine tuning" is a result of random chance, or is the result of an underlying physical law that requires them to take the values they have.
I cannot possibly agree more. The whole "cosmic fine tuning" argument amounts to nothing more that saying "if things were different, they would be different." To draw a conclusion of a god-creator from that argument is not plausible. Oooo, I said it's "not plausible", so I win.
Until then, all you've got is a mildly interesting possible anomaly.
Hmmm ... that's the closest anyone here has ever gotten to saying a creo is right. I guess that means we're making good progess.
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No, I don't have it, but I have seen several of his other columns, and they are all entitled "Scientific Speculation". It was a regular series. He came up with several other wacko ideas, for which there was no evidence, and which loony creationists seized on.
So tell me about this guy. Is he an Evo gone mad? He's not a Creo himself? Why would that publication let a loony write a column?
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Why don't they test more zircons?
They're going to.
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Dembski often makes these posts. I work with several engineers and physicists who study biological systems, and use engineering principles to study them, and they all think creationism and ID are a load of nonsense.
Poor guys!
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Quote (stevestory @ June 03 2006,11:24) Hey Dave, I'm still waiting for you to explain relativity to me.
AF Dave's Definition of Relativity: Steve Story is a close relative of chimps. Or is it gorillas? Nah ... chimps. They're like 1/2% closer I think. Or is it the other way around? I forget. Let me get my handy dandy 'Evo tree' and I'll get back to you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I wonder if we can really blame AFDT2 for his f*cked up mental state. It seems he was taught as a child by his Missionary father that it is OK to lie in order to push your religious agenda.
Someone needs to do a study to see if fundamentalism causes brain damage.
I'm not joking. Has anyone ever investigated whether their logical abilities fail only in certain areas or if they are more broadly brain damaged?
It's blindingly obvious that afdave cannot process evidence and logic.
The zircons in question may indeed never have gotten very hot, as Dave suggested. It doesn't take a young earth, however, to imagine scenarios where clumps of material can remain cool even in a molten lava flow.
Think of dumping some ice cubes into a pot of boiling water. The ice cubes still take awhile to melt (how long? I don't know - but half a minute later you'll probably still have some ice cube left) - the larger the ice cube, the longer it lasts.
I don't like your scenario much. The zircons are eentsy-weentsy, ranging from about 25-75 micrometers long and around 15-20 micrometers wide. A human hair is about 75 micrometers diameter. Without doing any calculations it seems likely to me that the zircons were always at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, even if the creationist time-frame is correct.
Pretty much everyone agrees that the zircons never approached their melting point of 2200-2500 C. The current temperatures of the sample sites are all less than or equal to 313 C. You may or may not call that "very hot".
But I think there are some temperature issues, even if they're not enough to completely explain the results. Humphreys et al explicitly assumed that the temperatures were always today's temperatures, and "justified" that with a discussion claiming that the alternative was worse for "uniformitarians" and some discussion of temperature spikes. They never discussed poossible lower temperatures, even though Henke brought up some studies that indicate temperatures were lower in the past. Diffusion typically depends exponentially on temperature, and knowing the thermal history of the samples is key for accurate results. Henke writes:
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Harrison et al. (1986) and Sasada (1989) clearly refute another major assumption in Humphreys et al. (2003a, p. 8), which states that subsurface temperatures at Fenton Hill have been constant over time. Using 40Ar/39Ar dates from feldspars at depths of 1130, 2620, and 2900 meters in the Fenton Hill core samples, Harrison et al. (1986, p. 1899, 1901) concluded that the temperatures for these samples fell below approximately 200°C about 1030 million years ago and below about 130°C around 870 million years ago. Harrison et al. (1986, p. 1899) also identified a noticeable thermal event in the Fenton Hill core samples within the past few tens of thousands of years.
Figure 9 in Sasada (1989, p. 264) shows the variable thermal history of the GT-2 well core at a depth of 2624 meters (compare with my Figure 5). According to Sasada (1989, p. 262-265), a warm period occurred sometime ago. The warm period was followed by a cooler event, which included the emplacement of fluids (see my Figure 5). In particular, Sasada (1989) argues that fluids were trapped in secondary inclusions within the granodiorite at depths of 2624 meters when temperatures were at least 26°C cooler than present (about 152°C rather than the current value of 178°C).
RATE has yet to address the issue of temperatures lower than their assumed value.
Personally, I think the most likely explanation is invalid extrapolation of lab results under vacuum to calculate diffusion rates under known subsurface pressures. My second most likely scenario is a combination of relatively impervious surroundings combined with some retardation of diffusion, or even reversal of diffusion, by uncommonly high helium concentration in the surroundings. Of course, both these could be partially true.
I think it's worth pointing out that Humphreys et al can't come up with any mechanism for accelerated decay other than magic; they obviously know more of the evidence and relevant physics than Davie-poo does. In Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay they write:
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The charter for RATE was to make a focused investigation of the problem posed by two large bodies of geoscience evidence for (A) large amounts of nuclear decay having occurred, and (B) a young world. From the start, several members of the steering committee were convinced that episodes of greatly accelerated nuclear decay rates had occurred within thousands of years ago. For the preservation of life, such episodes seem possible only under special circumstances: (1) before God created living things, (2) after the Fall but well beneath the biosphere, and (3) during the year of the Genesis Flood, when the occupants of Noah's ark would be safe from most radiation (Humphreys, 2000, pp. 340-341). ...
Figure 9 illustrates the contrast between this helium age and the radioisotopic age. It shows two different "hourglasses," representing helium diffusion and uranium-to-lead nuclear decay. These hourglasses give drastically different dates. ...
One way to reconcile these two hourglass readings is to suggest that one of them has a "valve" at its bottleneck controlling the trickling rate, a valve that was adjusted drastically in the past, possibly by direct intervention from God. ...
Thus our new diffusion data support the main hypothesis of the RATE research initiative: that God drastically accelerated the decay rates of long half-life nuclei during the earth's recent past. For a feasibility study of this hypothesisincluding God's possible purposes for such acceleration, Biblical passages hinting at it, disposal of excess heat, preserving life on earth, and effects on stars, see Humphreys (2000, pp. 333-379). The last three problems are not yet fully solved, but we expect to see progress on them in future papers.
I just don't understand that last sentence. If God magicked alpha, beta, and electron capture decay processes so as to make the Earth appear billons of years old and correlate essentially perfectly each other and with stratigraphy and other indications, why couldn't He just magic away the radiation and heat too, and magic the spectra of stars while He's at it? Maybe He's just absent-minded ... apparently He forgot to magic diffusion so as to keep it consistent with radiometric results.
In fact, if you actually read the RATE Group's documents (instead of just the mudslinging papers ABOUT the RATE Group), you will see that more experiments are planned.
In which document is that, Dave? I just went over the news releases and "papers" available on the Web and none of them mention further experiments ... but several of them do mention a final report planned for 2005.
Dave, I see you've abandoned discussion of your sily claims. Wassamatter, getting tired of making stuff up?
Plese don't ignore my question about where the RATE group says further experiments are planned.
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No, I don't have it, but I have seen several of his other columns, and they are all entitled "Scientific Speculation". It was a regular series. He came up with several other wacko ideas, for which there was no evidence, and which loony creationists seized on.
So tell me about this guy. Is he an Evo gone mad? He's not a Creo himself? Why would that publication let a loony write a column?
He didn't appear to be a creationist or "evolutionist", just a guy who liked to speculate about wild physics for which he had no evidence. I don't know why the magazine gave him a column; maybe they thought he was entertaining, maybe some of his columns were worthwhile, maybe he had pictures of the publisher in bed with animals.
I am related to chimps. Now are you going to explain relativity to me, or not? You're starting to look like Ghost of Paley, making claims you can't support.
A theoretical creationist model, based on observed helium retention, of diffusion rates of helium over a period of 6,000 years was reported by Humphreys [8] and Humphreys et al. [9]. It compares well with laboratory measurements in Jemez zircons, as shown in Fig. 2. The solid dots show the diffusion coefficient as a function of inverse temperature for the measurements with the Jemez zircons and the solid lines through empty squares show the theoretical predictions from the theoretical model. There is a five-order-of-magnitude difference (100,000x) between the predictions of diffusion for the evolutionist and creationist models. The measured diffusion rates of He predict that helium would leak out of a zircon/biotite matrix in a period of time on the order of thousands of years, not hundreds of millions of years. This is consistent with the high concentrations of helium still found in the Jemez granodiorite. Additional laboratory measurements and modeling studies of helium diffusion in zircon are expected to lead to a further refinement of the creationist model. The data of Fig. 2 indicate an age between 4,000 and 14,000 years since the helium began to diffuse from the zircons. This is far short of the 1.5 billion year evolutionist age! We believe that the final results will resoundingly support our hypothesis concerning diffusion and radiogenic helium.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDaveTard2, why do you keep cowardly avoiding the questions about your claims?
Who peer reviewed the RATE results Dave? No one? Who do you think is qualified to peer review their results, and why?
Dembski says ID has nothing to do with religion, yet you keep quoting him as evidence for your literal Christian God. Both of you can't be telling the truth, but you both can sure be lying. Which is it Davey?
Did your father teach you to lie for your religion like you so often do Dave, or is that a skill you developed on your own? Is it genetic - do you come from a long line of liars?
Did you f*ck up in the air to get yourself demoted from flying supersonic jets to flying Vietnam era Huey choppers, or did your arrogant big mouth get you busted?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
A theoretical creationist model, based on observed helium retention, of diffusion rates of helium over a period of 6,000 years was reported by Humphreys [8] and Humphreys et al. [9]. It compares well with laboratory measurements in Jemez zircons, as shown in Fig. 2. The solid dots show the diffusion coefficient as a function of inverse temperature for the measurements with the Jemez zircons and the solid lines through empty squares show the theoretical predictions from the theoretical model. There is a five-order-of-magnitude difference (100,000x) between the predictions of diffusion for the evolutionist and creationist models. The measured diffusion rates of He predict that helium would leak out of a zircon/biotite matrix in a period of time on the order of thousands of years, not hundreds of millions of years. This is consistent with the high concentrations of helium still found in the Jemez granodiorite. Additional laboratory measurements and modeling studies of helium diffusion in zircon are expected to lead to a further refinement of the creationist model. The data of Fig. 2 indicate an age between 4,000 and 14,000 years since the helium began to diffuse from the zircons. This is far short of the 1.5 billion year evolutionist age! We believe that the final results will resoundingly support our hypothesis concerning diffusion and radiogenic helium.
That does not explicitly say they are going to carry out more experiments, although it's possible to interpret it as such. But the same paper includes:
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This article summarizes the purpose, history, and intermediate findings of the RATE project five years into an eight-year effort. ...
The second and final book is planned to be published in 2005 and is expected to be titled Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Report. It will report on the findings of the five-year research phase.
Two remaining years in the research phase will be needed to complete the analysis of samples yet being processed and theoretical studies still being made. By the end of the research phase the final report should be based on a larger data set than was available for this paper. A few research projects within RATE such as Fission Tracks and Biblical Word Studies which have not been discussed in this paper are also expected to contribute to the final report. It is apparent that significant progress has been made in explaining the presence of large quantities of nuclear decay products in a young-earth timeframe. The evidence should be stronger and more convincing by the time the research project is completed in 2005. We also hope that by then a more detailed young-earth creationist model of the history of radioactive decay will also have been developed.
That's pretty clear; research ends in 2005. It's 2006, Dave.
RATE II is a continuation of research on selected subprojects from RATE which need additional documentation. For example, RATE studied only rocks from the earth, and yet some important estimates of the age of the universe come from meteorite analyses. RATE II will include meteorites and also expand the data set collected by RATE on helium diffusion, isochron discordance, carbon-14 in diamonds, radiohalos, fission tracks, and potassium-40 in pre-Flood insects.
So maybe they actually will do some more research! I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a reasonable quantity of data and justification of their assumptions, though.
Get back to us when they come up with enough data to be interesting.
I don't like your scenario much. The zircons are eentsy-weentsy, ranging from about 25-75 micrometers long and around 15-20 micrometers wide. A human hair is about 75 micrometers diameter. Without doing any calculations it seems likely to me that the zircons were always at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, even if the creationist time-frame is correct.
The zircons may indeed be eentsy-weentsy, but the rocks they are in might not be.
Don't think of the zircons as the ice cubes, but as flakes of pepper or such inside the ice cubes. The zircons may always be at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, but their surrondings could be cool rocks gradually melting in lava flows.
Dave, I've got evidence for an earth hundreds of thousands to billions of years old from: radiometric data (real radiometric data), fossil evidence, dendrochronology, arctic ice cores, plate tectonics, paleomagnetic studies, theories of planetary development, tidal data, stratigraphic data, particle physics, astronomy, cosmology, and others too numerous to mention.
What do you have? Two anomalous results, based on helium data, which aside from the fact that they fail to match up consistently with any other data, are based on a dating technique that has been known to be inaccurate for a century.
But you, Dave, would rather rely on two results, out of millions upon millions of other results…why? Because they show what you want to believe anyway. You deliberately go with results that are known to be unreliable, because every other result leads you in a direction you don't want to go.
Quote (afdave @ June 03 2006,08:42)
Eric ...
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RATE looked at an extremely limited sample of zircons, and even the results they got were equivocal.
Why don't you tell Dr. Farley that his results are equivocal and get back to me with his answer.
I don't need to. Even if his results were not equivocal, they would be two anomalous results against millions of other results that all agree with each other. If you measured the mass of the electron 15 million times and came up with half a MeV every time, and then twice you got results that were 1.5 grams, would you take the two anomalous results?
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Against that we've got millions upon millions of samples that support radiometric dating. Finding a few samples here and there which give erroneous results does not, not not not justify tossing out an entire methodology. As the article points out, the RATE group should have wondered why their results were at odds with all the other results out there, and they should have tried to duplicate their results, which they failed to do. This is why the RATE group is not doing science, Dave. You don't just stop your research whenever you get a result or two that you like.
Here's the deal, Eric. Some long agers say that Creos tried for years to discredit radiometric dating, but failed, so now they have to try the He-zircon gig. The truth is that long agers make assumptions to fit the dates they had already decided they needed to make evolution work way back before radiometric dating was discovered. No Creationist denies that decay has occurred, we just deny the long ages that are inferred from this decay because of arbitrary assumptions. The problem though is the best that creationists were able to do until RATE was criticize assumptions, which by definition is a negative activity. With RATE and He and zircons, creationists have a positive physical process to show what the age of the earth really is. Of course there are also the 14 non-radiometric processes that Humphreys lists as well which pretty much dismantle the 4 billion year nonsense anyway.
No they don't, Dave. As I pointed out above, all the evidence I spoke of is interlocking and mutually reinforcing, and it all points in the same direction. Time after time creationists try to refute this tsunami of data with a few wrong results here and there, using methods that are known to give inaccurate results, but you prefer the wrong results, because they let you think your wrong ideas are supported by evidence.
But, as usual, you're wrong.
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It might be obvious to you, Dave, but since you have absolutely no training in geology or radiometric dating, why should we give you more credibility than someone who does it for a living?
Well, I can read a report from a smart guy from Sandia, and I can read the lame rebuttal of a part time geologist also, just like you can.
Except you don't understand at all how science works, Dave, so you don't have the intellectual toolkit to make credibility assessments. You take results you agree with anyway for ideological reasons, and simply ignore any results that contradict your view. That's why you keep thinking you're winning arguments here, and it's why we keep laughing at you.
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Is that your objection, Dave? That you didn't see the criticisms of the RATE data where you expected to see them? Perhaps you could contact Dr. Henke and ask him yourself? It can't be that hard to get his e-mail address, if you actually could be bothered to do any actual research.
Your guy, Christman said he conferred with Henke. This REALLY makes me wonder why Henke didn't include his material. The only reason I can think of is that it is garbage. Isn't Talk Origins like the hallowed site for Evolutionists to sell their wares?
No. TalkOrigins is a website intended for non-specialists. The "Hallowed" source of information for evolutionists is the peer-reviewed literature, written by scientists who are experts in their fields. TalkOrigins is intended as a convenient source of information for non-specialists. This doesn't mean it's not reliable; it means it doesn't have the detail and sophistication of the actual literature.
And the problem is, Dave, you don't read the information at the TalkOrigins site anyway. You skim enough of it to realize you don't agree with it, and then you go back to AnswersInGenesis and Creation Research, where you get lied to repeatedly by people with an agenda.
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Where do you get the idea that General Relativity predicts that space and time are finite, Dave? That both are bounded in the past does not indicate that they are also bounded in the future.
How would you know that it is not bounded in the future? My hypothesis says that God will someday do away with time -- its the concept of eternity. But I don't claim to be an expert on relativity. I just think it is something interesting for further study. And I certainly don't claim this as a 'proof' for God or anything.
I just told you why time and space are not bounded in the future. Didn't you understand my post? If the deceleration parameter is negative, then the universe will not only continue to expand in spacetime forever; the rate of expansion is accelerating.
You don't have a "hypothesis" that God will stop time eventually. You think He will because that's the only way you'll ever get to take part in the Rapture. You're not basing this belief on any evidence, because the available evidence contradicts you. You're basing it on wishful thinking.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Table 2 shows the estimated budget for the various research projects for FY2005/2006 and in total. The amounts shown were selected based on donations to the RATE project and a realistic estimate of the amount of time each researcher has available to work on the research. If more funds become available more time could be focused on a given project. The last column in table 2 shows the total cost for each project if it were conducted over the next five years. The schedule of time is heavily dependent upon the timing of donor investments. The dollar amounts for the full effort include costs of travel, per diem, and overhead.
Prospective donors are encouraged to write ICR and request a research prospectus for these projects.
The estimates for several different projects are over a hundred thousand dollars each. The total is over a million dollars. They apparently get donations for this "science."
Until then, all you've got is a mildly interesting possible anomaly.
Hmmm ... that's the closest anyone here has ever gotten to saying a creo is right. I guess that means we're making good progess.
Actually, dave that's the closest you've ever come to understand that it's you YECs who are mildly interesting anomalies. Which is, not at all.
Quote (afdave @ June 03 2006,14:56)
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Why don't they test more zircons?
They're going to.
Can't wait... But don't hold your breath.
Quote (afdave @ June 03 2006,14:56)
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Dembski often makes these posts. I work with several engineers and physicists who study biological systems, and use engineering principles to study them, and they all think creationism and ID are a load of nonsense.
Poor guys!
Yeah, it really sucks to be blinded to the Truth™ by science and rational thinking, eh dave?
Quote (afdave @ June 03 2006,14:56)
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Quote (stevestory @ June 03 2006,11:24) Hey Dave, I'm still waiting for you to explain relativity to me.
AF Dave's Definition of Relativity: Steve Story is a close relative of chimps. Or is it gorillas? Nah ... chimps. They're like 1/2% closer I think. Or is it the other way around? I forget. Let me get my handy dandy 'Evo tree' and I'll get back to you.
dave, on the other hand, seems like a closer relative of chickens. YEC? More like BEC-BEC..
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I don't like your scenario much. The zircons are eentsy-weentsy, ranging from about 25-75 micrometers long and around 15-20 micrometers wide. A human hair is about 75 micrometers diameter. Without doing any calculations it seems likely to me that the zircons were always at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, even if the creationist time-frame is correct.
The zircons may indeed be eentsy-weentsy, but the rocks they are in might not be.
Don't think of the zircons as the ice cubes, but as flakes of pepper or such inside the ice cubes. The zircons may always be at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, but their surrondings could be cool rocks gradually melting in lava flows.
Still doesn't ring my bell. The calculations were based on the measured temperature of the rocks immediately surrounding the zircons. Maybe it's hotter farther away, but that's irrelevant. As Henke pointed out, there's evidence for temperature variation, but it doesn't indicate a steady climb from a significantly low temperature.
Yeah, those are the oldest known terrestrial minerals. Several primary papers available at Zircons are Forever. Click links on the first page, a lot of the sub-page ones are broken.
The calculations were based on the measured temperature of the rocks immediately surrounding the zircons.
Who's calculations and from which link?
I'm talking about the unknown history of the zircons, not the current temperature of the rocks. How can you have their measured temperature from a thousand or more years ago except from theoretical history? How can that actually be measured?
I'm talking about the unknown history of the zircons, not the current temperature of the rocks. How can you have their measured temperature from a thousand or more years ago except from theoretical history? How can that actually be measured?
Of course, how well we really know the thermal history is a key element. It depends on how indirect a measurement you are willing to accept. Henke includes the following figure:
Figure 5. Thermal history of a granodiorite at 2624 meters depth (Fenton Hill cores) and hypothetical relationships with extraneous helium (based on Figure 9 in Sasada, 1989). Humphreys (2005) ignores the consequences of the thermal and fluid history in this diagram to his "models."
The reference is to Sasada, M., 1989, "Fluid Inclusion Evidence for Recent Temperature Increases at Fenton Hill Hot Dry Rock Test Site West of the Valles Caldera, New Mexico, U.S.A., J. Volc. and Geotherm. Res., v. 36, p. 257-266. I haven't looked it up. According to Henke, Sasada does not provide any estimate of the number of years over which this temperature change occurred.
Henke also writes "Using 40Ar/39Ar dates from feldspars at depths of 1130, 2620, and 2900 meters in the Fenton Hill core samples, Harrison et al. (1986, p. 1899, 1901) concluded that the temperatures for these samples fell below approximately 200°C about 1030 million years ago and below about 130°C around 870 million years ago. Harrison et al. (1986, p. 1899) also identified a noticeable thermal event in the Fenton Hill core samples within the past few tens of thousands of years." The refernce is to Harrison, T. M.; P. Morgan and D. D. Blackwell, 1986, "Constraints on the Age of Heating at the Fenton Hill Site, Valles Caldera, New Mexico," J. Geophys. Res. v. 91, n. B2, p. 1899-1908, which I also have not looked up.
Hey OA ... I asked for helicopters ... got tired of flying T-38's believe it or not. I've never washed out of anything ... I have always been near the top of my classes--in EE and in UPT... go do some FBI work and you'll find that out. I have also been successful in business--built two businesses from nothing and sold them both. Now I do charity work almost full time and I dabble in aircraft charter and alternative fuels. I know that hearing that a Creationist is intelligent and successful comes as a disappointment to you, but it's true. As for those who think I'm 'profiting off of lying to kids,' I have never made a dime of my Kids4Truth work and I never will. I am a donor to them. And whoever it was that thinks I'm 'padding my resume' for a gig with ICR, I'm not. I just LIKE arguing with you guys.
As for Dembski, he is not lying when he says ID has nothing to do with religion. Religion is all about robes and rituals and candles and homina-hominas. ID is about the possibility of an Intelligent Designer creating the universe. Do you see the difference? Dembski acknowledges that some might see this Designer as God or ET or The Force or whatever.
Now ... do you want to keep practicing your 4 letter words on me? There's only so many of them. Or do you want to show me that you know something about science? You are one of the few here that has said almost nothing scientific yet.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
(I'm sure you are very knowledgable about lemmings so I won't challenge you there ... but I did like the Disney flick ... gives a good mental image of Evolutionists mindlessly following the crowd.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
can i get that relativity explanation now, dave? Will I need to go to the shelves and pull off the six or so textbooks I have which discuss Special Relativity at various levels of sophistication, or will you be deriving everything from the Lorentz transformation?
(I'm sure you are very knowledgable about lemmings so I won't challenge you there ... but I did like the Disney flick ... gives a good mental image of Evolutionists mindlessly following the crowd.)
This coming from a guy who practices a religion whose adherents refer to themselves as sheep.
(I'm sure you are very knowledgable about lemmings so I won't challenge you there ... but I did like the Disney flick ... gives a good mental image of Evolutionists mindlessly following the crowd.)
This coming from a guy who practices a religion whose adherents refer to themselves as sheep.
And who went willingly to the gladitorial circus to feed Roman lions.
Hey OA ... I asked for helicopters ... got tired of flying T-38's believe it or not. I've never washed out of anything ... I have always been near the top of my classes--in EE and in UPT... go do some FBI work and you'll find that out.
Sure thing Washout – whatever you say. Of course, you’ve lied about just about everything else you’ve posted here, so why should anyone believe you now?
Do you get it yet? You whine like a schoolgirl when someone questions your credentials and qualifications in an area you spent years training in. However, you feel that it is perfectly acceptable for you to say that thousands of professional scientists with PhDs and decades of experience who are recognized as leaders in their scientific fields are incompetent, and that their work is shoddy and all wrong. The only reason I give you so much grief about your professional skills is to make you aware of your hypocrisy. Tell me about the Golden Rule Dave – have you ever heard of it? What does it say?
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As for those who think I'm 'profiting off of lying to kids,' I have never made a dime of my Kids4Truth work and I never will. I am a donor to them.
No one said you are profiting from your lies. Many here, including me, think you are practicing a form of child abuse by willingly teaching children the same anti-science lies you were taught when you know they are lies. The U.S. is already losing its technological and scientific edge to countries that emphasize science education, namely China and India. Why do you want to hurt the U.S. by giving our students the extra burden of having to overcome the unscientific horseshit you are feeding them?
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Now ... do you want to keep practicing your 4 letter words on me? There's only so many of them. Or do you want to show me that you know something about science? You are one of the few here that has said almost nothing scientific yet.
Idiot is a five letter word, Washout. AirFarceDaveTard has sixteen letters. Take off your shoes and socks if you need to count that high.
And BTW Washout Dave, I’ve been trying to get you to discuss your asinine anti-science claims ever since you came here. Problem is, you’ve been way too much of a chickenshit to answer. I have asked you these questions seven times already...
1. Should all scientific findings be required to undergo a critical peer-review process before being deemed acceptable for teaching in schools?
2. Who are the best qualified people to do rigorous critical scientific peer-reviews?
3. Why should the opinion of an ignorant layman about scientific findings carry more weight than the opinions of well trained professional scientists in the relevant fields of study?
...and am still waiting for your first answer.
I also asked you how do explain the human cultural artifacts that date back over 30,000 years, like the Lascaux cave paintings?
And since you champion a literal Bible, I asked if you believed in the Geocentric theory.
Then, I asked you who peer reviewed the RATE results? And who do you think is qualified to peer review the RATE results, and why?
He11, I even started a whole separate thread just for you to post your YEC scientific evidence on. I listed four separate "literal Bible" topics I wished for you to discuss, but you were too much of a dickless wonder to even post anything there.
You haven't answered a single one of these - not one dammed answer from Washout Dave.
Now tell me again who is unwilling to discuss scientific issues?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Hey OA ... I asked for helicopters ... got tired of flying T-38's believe it or not. I've never washed out of anything ... I have always been near the top of my classes--in EE and in UPT... go do some FBI work and you'll find that out. I have also been successful in business--built two businesses from nothing and sold them both.
Hmm, NEAR the top of your class in EE and UPT, the pipeline you were in leads to fighters/bombers. Bummer, all the F-15/F-16 slots were filled by the studs above you in UPT. You admit you thought bombers were boring (Heysoos, killing Soviet tanks in an A-10 would have been a BLAST compared to tooling around in a T-38 and would net you OPERATIONAL aircraft time). You don't always get what you want even if you are the TOP of your class in the military. It happens. You ended up a T-38 instructor and got bored.
So you ASKED for choppers and got assigned the Huey! Another trainer for the Air Force. Then you finish your AF career "flying" B-2 simulators. Do you see why your bragging about your Supersonic 30,000 Foot View of the World causes BS detectors to go off? It's similar to why people are hollering at you about all the other BS you keep quoting.
To give you the benefit of the doubt, all I can say is you were probably good at teaching others how to fly at the initial stages of advanced flight training. Nothing to be ashamed of there. But there was something going on that kept you from flying what you wanted and doing 30.
Dogmatism?
Anybody smell a weasel? Musky sort of smell, not like a lemming or a lamb at all.
As for Dembski, he is not lying when he says ID has nothing to do with religion. Religion is all about robes and rituals and candles and homina-hominas. ID is about the possibility of an Intelligent Designer creating the universe. Do you see the difference? Dembski acknowledges that some might see this Designer as God or ET or The Force or whatever.
Well, since he's acknowledged it, that's just how it is, I guess...
Dave, maybe you should check your new mentor's record a bit. Especially his "street theatre" techniques, his lame attempts at self-promotion in Amazon, and his repeated slanderous actions against people he doesn't know based on hearsay (if even that).
Maybe that will somehow shake you out of your usual state of denial.
Although I doubt it.
Oh, and, speaking of denial: Did you check why you got lied to about fusions- again? No? Din't think so...
Quote (Ichthyic @ June 03 2006,22:56)
two - like i said, Dave learned all his biology from disney films.
And his genetics from Marvel comics.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Low level military training such as AF pilot training is geared toward the unquestioning adherence to authority. The boss tells you that compressor stalls are bad, he tells you the situations that lead to this bad event, he tells you not to do it...don't ask me why...just don't do it! He tells you if you screw up, do this in the following order a), b), c), d),...,z) and maybe you can save the hardware that the taxpayers paid for.
Successful pilots follow training and authority, and innovation is punished. There is no need for newbee pilots to reinvent the wheel. The authorities have this all worked out already. Follow the instruction and training and you can be a valuable asset, question the orthodoxy and you are a liability that can easily be replaced by a more compliant recruit. Perfect occupation for a fundy.
The only reason I give you so much grief about your professional skills is to make you aware of your hypocrisy.
No. It's because you have absolutely nothing to say about science and all your vocabulary is dominated by 4 letter words. If you had anything to say against the RATE Group (if you even understood what they were doing), you would say it, but you don't. You claim to be some kind of great space scientist and yet you don't even understand the RATE experiments.
Norm ...
Quote
And who went willingly to the gladitorial circus to feed Roman lions.
Yes. And who set the stage for the most prosperous and freedom loving civilization in the history of the world, which you directly benefit from and yet you have the gall to laugh at. If those martyrs had not given their lives, if those Christian missionaries had not endured all that hardship to carry the gospel to far away lands, you and all your surly friends would be living as a slave of some tyrant. No king in the history of the world has ever changed the official religion of the empire because of the shining example of martyrs, but this is what Constantine did. Why? Because he saw reality in those Christians lives.
OA ...
Quote
No one said you are profiting from your lies. Many here, including me, think you are practicing a form of child abuse by willingly teaching children the same anti-science lies you were taught when you know they are lies. The U.S. is already losing its technological and scientific edge to countries that emphasize science education, namely China and India. Why do you want to hurt the U.S. by giving our students the extra burden of having to overcome the unscientific horseshit you are feeding them?
Yes, they did say that actually. You just weren't paying attention. As for your child abuse nonsense, I'm glad you alerted me to just how wacko and way out there you really are to think that teaching Biblical truth to children is child abuse! Maybe you could co-host a PBS special with Rilke on this topic and make a big name for yourself. Tell them you're with the NCSE while you are at it and see what Wesley has to say about that.
Everyone knows that the U.S. is losing its technological and scientific edge because of the failure of public schools, not because of Christian schools or anything they are teaching. And the solution to the public school problem, like many others, is coming from involved Christians like Mike Farris and HSLDA and Patrick Henry College.
OA ...
Quote
Now tell me again who is unwilling to discuss scientific issues?
You are because all you want to do is start rabbit trails. I will get to all the issues you covered in the proper order. Now ... do you have anything substantive to say about the RATE Group?
Crabby ...
Quote
So you ASKED for choppers and got assigned the Huey! Another trainer for the Air Force. Then you finish your AF career "flying" B-2 simulators. Do you see why your bragging about your Supersonic 30,000 Foot View of the World causes BS detectors to go off? It's similar to why people are hollering at you about all the other BS you keep quoting.
I asked for Hueys to Whiteman and got Hueys to Whiteman. I wanted to come to the Kansas City area and I wanted to fly Hueys. They're not trainers in the AF. They are missile support and it is a cake job. Weird request? Of course if you're a career man, but I was not. I wanted a fun job, then a "getting out" job which is why I asked for the B-2 sims. It's not a brag, Crabby. If I were wanting to lie and brag to evolutionary biologists, don't you think I might come up with something different like "I have a PhD in genetics" or something? I simply want people to have the plain truth about where I am coming from. I also like to know what people at this forum do. Many have told me. What do you do?
Quote
Bummer, all the F-15/F-16 slots were filled by the studs above you in UPT.
Actually, the #1 and #2 guys got fighters AND all the guys below me and the other FAIP (we were #3 and #4) got fighters. This was how ENJJPT worked in the 80s. But God knew best. He worked it out so that I could have a "fighter with no nukes" and deployments to worry with. And I met the world's most wonderful woman by staying at Sheppard. My life is beautiful now because I let God run it instead of getting mad and trying to run it myself.
Quote
But there was something going on that kept you from flying what you wanted and doing 30.
Dogmatism. What a hoot. You guys crack me up trying to analyze my career. You want to research this? Go call up somebody at ENJJPT and ask about FAIPs. The way it worked in the 80s was they would almost always take two guys from near the top of each class and keep them as instructors for 3 years. Supposedly, there was a fighter guarantee at the end of the 3 years and it worked that way for a long time. But a new general came along and changed things, and the fighters went away. So a bunch of us FAIPs decided we had had our fun in T-38s and really didn't want to put up with the career nonsense, so we opted for pure fun and picked helicopters. It was, by the way. I have a King Air now, but I will probably get a helicopter also if my wife will let me. I've never had a desire to do 30 in any branch of service. You stop doing fun things at about the 10 year point as a pilot, which was when I got out.
Steve Story...
Quote
Now are you going to explain relativity to me, or not?
No, I'm not. I only have a limited understanding of it, but I find it interesting that it involves length contraction and time dilation. I think it would be an interesting study to see how this relates to the Bible's claims of God dwelling outside of time and space. I don't claim to have the answer on this. I just think some physicist should study it. Maybe you?
Bruce Beckman ...
Quote
Perfect occupation for a fundy.
Translation? -- "I'm not going to get MY hands dirty defending freedom .. no, no ... I'm not that stupid and unthinking ... let the 'crazies' do that." Well ... you're welcome anyway. Even OA who has nothing but 4 letter words now said he respected me for my military service (that was a long time ago before he knew what a hard core Creo I was).
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Translation? -- "I'm not going to get MY hands dirty defending freedom .. no, no ... I'm not that stupid and unthinking ... let the 'crazies' do that." Well ... you're welcome anyway.
Screw it half a Dave, why don't you sign up and go fly for Haliblitzkreig? They NEED YOU NOW. Gott mit uns; Just tell them you are an unrepentant liar (if they don't believe you just get them to check your website)...just like Cheney, Rove, Bush, Rumsfeld, Blair, Hitchenens (oops he's a Trotsky-ist...but hey whatever), Saddam, The Iraqi Information Minister (now ex)....they will take you back with open arms, all you have to do is fly in Oil Rigs and Baksheesh and take out the bodies. Cap that with a little Allah Akbar every time you take off and Inshallah the holy warriers of Islam won't blow your xtian ass to kingdom come. Just think you could take revenge on the moors who rubbed excrement on the cross at Lisbon in 1147. Come on D/2 show us what your are made of ..weasel or half a weasel.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You are because all you want to do is start rabbit trails. I will get to all the issues you covered in the proper order. Now ... do you have anything substantive to say about the RATE Group?
Well Dave the Cowardly Lyin', I see you kept true to your chickenshit form and avoided all attempts at scientific discussion again. Not that anyone is surprised.
I'm starting rabbit trails? I asked each of those questions in response to statements and topics you raised, bonehead. I ask tough questions to stimulate discussion and to judge your understanding of the subject. In each case Washout, you failed miserably. The threads are still here for anyone to see - why do you think lying about it will help your cause?
You want something substantive about the RATE group? I'll ask you again, for the third time:
Who peer reviewed the RATE results? Who do you think is qualified to peer review the RATE results, and why?
Your turn to answer Washout - but I bet you'll just cowardly run and avoid the questions again.
Quote
Everyone knows that the U.S. is losing its technological and scientific edge because of the failure of public schools, not because of Christian schools or anything they are teaching.
Who would you rather have working on an Avian Flu virus: A PhD in Immunology who understands and can track the evolutionary history of the disease, and can use that knowledge to make predictions and help isolate a cure,
or
A graduate of Bob Jones University who thinks all diseases are God's will and were brought on by mankind's "fall from grace"?
I keep telling you Washout, idiot is a five letter word.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Can you get enough helium from other rocks leaking it?
Yes, you can. There's helium throughout the Earth, in widely varying concentrations. The real question is, of course did you.
Diffusion consists of a species moving from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. If the helium concentration outside the zircon is higher than inside, helium flows in. And, of course, the rate at which helium flows in or out depends on the concentrations in the two areas; if there was unaccounted-for helium outside the zircons the diffusion rate calculations are wrong, no matter which direction helium was moving.
We're dealing with very small amounts of helium ... it wouldn't take much "reverse diffusion" to totally bollix the results. Helium is found in boreholes a few kilometers away. Helium is a tiny molecule and moves through very small spaces very easily.
Today the helium concentration is higher in the zircons than in the surroundings, so Humphreys et al assume that has not changed. (Notice how they assume uniformitarianism when it suits them, although their assumptions are not totally without basis). There are tests that could indicate the helium source; Henke has suggested such tests; Humphreys et al have not performed them.
Humphreys has dismissed Henke's suggestions based almost exclusively on today's conditions, and Henke has pointed out how conditions in the past could have differed (and how there is some evidence that they did differ). IMHO Henke wins that round. "Excess helium" in these zircons is merely a hypothesis for which there is no direct evidence. Nonetheless, it's a hypothesis that should be ruled out within the capabilities of today's technology before jumping to a wild conclusion that is dirctly contradicted by so much other evidence.
Hi, Dave. I see you've abandoned all discussion of RATE and the age of the Earth. Having trouble finding sites to copy from, or making up stuff?
Quote (afdave @ June 03 2006,22:07)
As for those who think I'm 'profiting off of lying to kids,' I have never made a dime of my Kids4Truth work and I never will.
It's good to know that you are not making money out of your lies. But they're still lies.
Quote
As for Dembski, he is not lying when he says ID has nothing to do with religion.
W.A. Dembski:
Quote
Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.
W.A. Dembski:
Quote
The fine-tuning of the universe, about which cosmologists make such a to-do, is both complex and specified and readily yields design. So too, Michael Behe's irreducibly complex biochemical systems readily yield design. The complexity-specification criterion demonstrates that design pervades cosmology and biology. Moreover, it is a transcendent design, not reducible to the physical world. Indeed, no intelligent agent who is strictly physical could have presided over the origin of the universe or the origin of life.
Gee, wonder what agent fits that job description?
W.A. Dembski:
Quote
Intelligent design, as a scientific research program, attempts to determine whether certain features of the natural world exhibit signs of having been designed by an intelligence. Whether this intelligence is ET or a telic principle immanent in nature or a transcendent personal agent are all, at least initially, live options. The problem with ET, of course, is that it implies a regress -- where did ET come from? The same question doesn't apply, at least not in the same way, to telic principles or transcendent personal agents because the terms of the explanation are different. ET is an embodied intelligence, and that embodiment itself needs explanation
Intelligent design, as a scientific research program, attempts to determine whether certain features of the natural world exhibit signs of having been designed by an intelligence. Whether this intelligence is ET or a telic principle immanent in nature or a transcendent personal agent are all, at least initially, live options. The problem with ET, of course, is that it implies a regress -- where did ET come from? The same question doesn't apply, at least not in the same way, to telic principles or transcendent personal agents because the terms of the explanation are different. ET is an embodied intelligence, and that embodiment itself needs explanation
Sure doesn't sound like it could be ET.
Wait wait- did Dembski actually say that?
And he still has the NERVE to say that the "who designed the designer" argument is lame -and he bans from his blog anyone who mentions it?
The man is truly a jerk.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Don't worry Faid. (have faith.... hehehehe) WAD has made EVERY stupid creationist mistake going. He's just smart enough never to say it on a witness stand....and never will. H3LL will freeze over before he is called to account.
Sorry god but even you have your limitations....oh by the way why DID you abandon the Jews at Auschwitz? Don't bother sending a 3rd coming no-one believes that sh#t anymore. Not even AFDAVE ..(he's crazy ...but you knew that already)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Intelligent design, as a scientific research program, attempts to determine whether certain features of the natural world exhibit signs of having been designed by an intelligence. Whether this intelligence is ET or a telic principle immanent in nature or a transcendent personal agent are all, at least initially, live options. The problem with ET, of course, is that it implies a regress -- where did ET come from? The same question doesn't apply, at least not in the same way, to telic principles or transcendent personal agents because the terms of the explanation are different. ET is an embodied intelligence, and that embodiment itself needs explanation
And who went willingly to the gladitorial circus to feed Roman lions.
Yes. And who set the stage for the most prosperous and freedom loving civilization in the history of the world, which you directly benefit from and yet you have the gall to laugh at.
Ah yes, the freedom and prosperity we know today was given to us by Christians, like Emporor Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to become a Christian, who in the fourth century had over 3000 Christians executed because their interpretation of the Bible did not agree with his. That's more than the number of Christians who got fed to the lions during the 1st century. There is freedom for you.
From there they went on to the prosperity of the dark ages.
Then finally the stage was set for the French and American revolutions which I suspect you actually know little about except for the lies your preachers tell you.
Hi, Dave. I see you've abandoned all discussion of RATE and the age of the Earth.
Oh no ... I've been reading yours and Norm's posts avidly. They are very good posts. You seem to be well read on the topic. I will respond on Monday.
I see that Aftershave finally asked an 'on topic' question and he has graduated from 4 letter words to 5 letter words, so I will be answering his questions this week.
No, we've got a little ways to go yet on RATE, then we are going to walk through Humphrey's 14 points on why the earth is young and see if they hold up.
See you in the morning!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No, we've got a little ways to go yet on RATE, then we are going to walk through Humphrey's 14 points on why the earth is young and see if they hold up.
They don't. They're really pathetically wrong, almost as bad as your arguments. Look at the links I already posted, and check talkorigins.org, before wasting bandwidth.
Now are you going to explain relativity to me, or not?
No, I'm not. I only have a limited understanding of it, but I find it interesting that it involves length contraction and time dilation. I think it would be an interesting study to see how this relates to the Bible's claims of God dwelling outside of time and space. I don't claim to have the answer on this. I just think some physicist should study it. Maybe you?
Actually, here's what you said:
Quote
afdave
Posts: 289 Joined: April 2006
Let's review what we have done so far ...
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR ... (A) ... (4) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims ...
We did not spend much time on A4, but it is powerful evidence that the Bible is correct when it speaks of God dwelling outside of space and time.
and much earlier than that, you said
Quote
I can show how the Laws of Relativity make it conceivable that someone could "live outside of space and time" (even though I don't understand how this works).
So first you say the laws of relativity show how a being could live outside of time and space, and you can show it, and later, after being pushed a few dozen times, you say it would be an interesting thing to study, but you don't have the answer. You're kinda like Ghost of Paley, shooting your mouth off about evidence you have, and then failing to deliver. Except you halfway admitted, in the end, that you couldn't do it. So in my opinion, you just moved slightly ahead of Paley on the intellectual respectability scale. Still around the level of pond scum, but slightly better than Paley.
Diffusion consists of a species moving from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. If the helium concentration outside the zircon is higher than inside, helium flows in. And, of course, the rate at which helium flows in or out depends on the concentrations in the two areas; if there was unaccounted-for helium outside the zircons the diffusion rate calculations are wrong, no matter which direction helium was moving.
I decided to check you out and find out where our helium supplies come from. They get helium from oil fields and natural gas fields -- tons of it.
So, the idea isn't as far fetched as it first sounds.
Then I got side tracked when I discovered another Halliburton conspiracy I knew nothing about:
Quote
We need to look no further than the Bush Dome Reservoir near Amarillo, Texas. Beneath its 20 square miles, the government has stockpiled about 30 billion cubic feet of helium, which it has been selling to private enterprise.
"The conspiracy isn't even hidden," said Marshbaum. "After the government sells helium to private industry, it then buys blimps from private companies with White House ties. Then since blimps need helium, the government buys it from private sources." "The only thing to be determined," said Marshbaum, "is how much profit Halliburton will receive."
"It's business as usual in the Bush White House," I said. "It'd be a real stretch for them to claim that there was an imminent threat to national security from blimps. It's not as if Fugi possessed weapons of mass destruction."
Yeah... Going from "powerful evidence" to "not prove, but support" and finally "I'm sure they'll find some connection eventually, but it's not my job"...
Dave, do you understand now why I was polite and patient at first, and now I'm just fed up with your "baloney"?
My only reason to be angry is I wasn't on to you from the start.
Oh well.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
So in my opinion, you just moved slightly ahead of Paley on the intellectual respectability scale. Still around the level of pond scum, but slightly better than Paley.
No doubt the best complement I will ever receive from Steve Story. I feel honored!
BTW ... Thanks for reminding me of my statements. I stand by all of them. Where did I ever claim to understand how relativity works? Or whatever you are claiming I said?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, do you understand now why I was polite and patient at first, and now I'm just fed up with your "baloney"?
You were happy when you won the chimp chromosome argument and now you are mad because I wouldn't buy your explanations about the ape GULO thing.
I don't have to understand how relativity works to say that it is powerful evidence for a 'God' which dwells outside space and time. The simple fact that there is such a concept and it has been observed is highly suggestive of what the Bible describes.
Quit your quibbling ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And [Kepler] was a creationist. And this [adapting his thinking in the light of empirical evidence] is what modern creationists do as well.
Well, of *course* Kepler was a creationist. His whole motivation for studying the movements of the planets in the first place was to reveal the hidden hand of God the Cosmic Geometer. But had he followed your advice, Dave, after he found strong empirical evidence that the planets moved in elliptical orbits he would just have said, Oh come on, that can't be right! A perfect God must have put the planets in perfect circular orbits. And then, most likely, the name of Kepler would have been as obscure today as are the names of the cardinals who locked Galileo up.
Quote
And it is apparently NOT what Evolutionists do.
How many moons does the planet on which you live have again? Do you really think that evolutionary theory has not changed since Origin of Species ? As for creationists changing their views; that's interesting, actually. Can you cite an instance in which the model of creation science has been changed as a result of empirical data? (Of course, that would require creation science to actually have a model... which would come as news to most people And think about Behe's testimony at Dover, that there was no evolutionary explanation for the immune system...
Quote
Kepler won the day over the lemmings of his time
Yup, he certainly did win the day over those Biblical literalist lemmings who thought that the Earth was the centre of the Cosmos because the Bible told them so...
Quote
I predict that today's creationists will also win the day over the lemmings of our time.
I predict that this time next year I'll be the Queen of Sheba.
But something else occurs to me, Dave. You believe that scientists should consider information outside the realm of that which can be measured and verified. That actually makes you a mystic. Now the problem with mysticism is that it that there is no idea or concept so wacky that someone, somewhere doesn't find it sufficiently "truthy" to take it as some kind of revealed truth. In the world of the mystic, anything can be true; astrology, palm reading, tarot, reincarnation, spiritualism, crystal channeling, UFO abductions - they're all "truthy" to someone. And at the end of the day, in worlds run by mystics, the truthyness that gets adopted is the usually the one with the biggest guns..
Is that really the world you want your kids to grow up in...? Because that really is the world you'll get if you throw the scientific method overboard. Your kids will grow up in 13th Century Europe recreated in North America. But, hey, at least Theology will be the Queen of Sciences again...
Gee Dave, quote mining is considered dishonest. Even worse is putting words in other peoples mouths (your *translation* bit). How do you sleep at night?
You were happy when you won the chimp chromosome argument and now you are mad because I wouldn't buy your explanations about the ape GULO thing.
If by "wouldn't buy" you mean "systematically ignore, distort and mangle", then you've pretty much hit the target, dave. <If it was just "I don't buy it", I'd still lose my respect for you, but I wouldn't get angry... After all, that's basically your only answer to everything.>
As for relativity, spare me the drama. Either you have "powerful evidence" and can explain it, or you don't. You're not talking to children here.
And speaking of the fusion thing, any luck finding out why you've been lied to again (about all fusions being harmful)?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
AFarceDave: You can't honestly answer stevestory for the same reason you can't answer my questions that I've reposted multiple times. You are a liar. Very simple. If you say you're not, DaveTard, try and answer what I asked long ago:
1) Why do we find humans on every continent except Antarctica at 10,000 years ago if that is when you believe the earth was created? (Don't say that the archaeology is only dated by radiometric methods, Dave. It's not. Don't say that all other methods are flawed when they are not. You have to show that all the dozens of dating methods we use are flawed in the peculiar way that they give agreeing answers, Dave. And you cannot do that. )
2) What is your evidence that Amerinds (other than the Maya and Aztec) had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed.
3) Why is the dendrochronological record of the U.S. wrong, DaveTard? Be precise and specific. Cite your data and evidence. This was related to your claim about written languages, Dave. You never answered either, plus over 100 questions from myself and others that I have counted in this thread.
My prediction is you will avoid addressing these questions fully and honestly. You will avoid, though.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
saying "X is evidence for my claim" is not an argument. You have to explain why X is evidence for your claim.
I have done that several times. The problem is that explaining things over and over again to people who have their minds made up a certain way is pointless. I have encountered this same thing with the Cosmic Fine Tuning and Biological Machines.
You're not going to agree with me on the relativity thing and that's quite alright. I have never been under any illusions that people here would agree with what I say.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And who went willingly to the gladitorial circus to feed Roman lions.
Yes. And who set the stage for the most prosperous and freedom loving civilization in the history of the world
The Holy Roman Empire???
Quote
which you directly benefit from and yet you have the gall to laugh at.
The United States is directly descended from the Holy Roman Empire???
Quote
If those martyrs had not given their lives, if those Christian missionaries had not endured all that hardship to carry the gospel to far away lands, you and all your surly friends would be living as a slave of some tyrant.
I like that phrase, One Nation Under Surveillance.
Quote
No king in the history of the world has ever changed the official religion of the empire because of the shining example of martyrs, but this is what Constantine did. Why? Because he saw reality in those Christians lives.
Now I'm being a dilletante, but wasn't the U.S. Constitution based on the philosophy of the French Revolution? And if the authors of the Constitution were so impressed by the shining example of martyrs, why did they go to such lengths to make danged sure that the government of the new nation they were creating explicitly had nothing to do with any religion whatsoever.
Here's a name for you, Dave. Hypatia. If you're in to people who died for there beliefs, find out about Hypatia some time.
So on this thread, creationist AFDave tells us relativity is proof of god, and on Paley's thread, creationist Paley tells us relativity is mistaken.
Quote
I have done that several times. The problem is that explaining things over and over again to people who have their minds made up a certain way is pointless. I have encountered this same thing with the Cosmic Fine Tuning and Biological Machines.
Where'd you explain how relativity is evidence of a god outside of time and space? Nowhere, that's where.
The problem is that explaining things over and over again to people who have their minds made up a certain way is pointless.
I see... You're quite willing to explain to us how almost every known field of science is fundamentally wrong, and Earth is 6000 years old- but don't bother to explain the mystical way in which relativity is evidence for God... Because we have our minds "made up".
Be sincere for once, dave. Spare us the "baloney".
Oh yeah, and do tell me what a saint Constantine was. Just remember I'm Greek, OK?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I looked at all 40 pages in this thread. Relativity is mentioned on over a dozen of them. And I do not see one single time where AFDave explained how relativity is strong evidence of the bible. There are a lot of comments, if someone can find where he did, I'll take it back.
I don't have to understand how relativity works to say that it is powerful evidence for a 'God' which dwells outside space and time. The simple fact that there is such a concept and it has been observed is highly suggestive of what the Bible describes.
Dave, think about how ridiculous this sounds: "I don't know anything about the Theory of Relativity, but I'm convinced that it supports my believe that God could exist outside of space and time."
And you don't feel the need to explain that comment? But you nevertheless expect us to take you seriously?
Well, since you brought up the subject, I think you do need to explain how a theory that points out the time runs at different rates under different conditions leads to (and is "powerful evidence for") the conclusion that God can exist outside of time. Relativity theory says nothing about anything existing "outside of time," so I don't know how you're going to get there from here.
As Faid points out, you're not talking to children here.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
saying "X is evidence for my claim" is not an argument. You have to explain why X is evidence for your claim.
I have done that several times. The problem is that explaining things over and over again to people who have their minds made up a certain way is pointless. I have encountered this same thing with the Cosmic Fine Tuning and Biological Machines.
You're not going to agree with me on the relativity thing and that's quite alright. I have never been under any illusions that people here would agree with what I say.
Only cowards, lie, Dave. Is that why you avoided actual combat to fly 'simulators'? Pretty cowardly way to "be" in the Air Force.
You have presented nothing, as yet. You are unable to support your relativity argument because it wasn't an argument - just a random stupid statement like that nonsense about PORTUGUESE.
You have offered no arguments; no logic; no evidence.
You have made lots of scientifically inaccurate, logic-challenged, rather stupid assertions.
Tell me, child, do you actually enjoy looking like a loon? Do you mind the fact that everyone here is laughing at how simple-minded, vain, cowardly, and generally stuipid your arguments are?
The mere fact that it has been discovered that a dimension of space can be 'contracted' -- Length Contraction, and that time can be dilated -- Time Dilation is powerfully suggestive to me that the claims of the Bible regarding God dwelling outside of space and time just might be true. It may not be suggestive of this to you at all. That's ok. It won't be the first time we disagree.
I don't understand how relativity works. I don't need to.
That's all I've ever claimed. That's all I know about it. And that's all I care about it. Are you happy now?
You've been pretty silent on RATE ... you are a physics major ... don't you have anything to say about it?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I have now read every comment on all 40 pages which deal with Relativity. Here's what AFDave has done with respect to relativity.
1 In the first few pages of the thread, he posts, two or three times, a Meyer/ARN piece which claims that the big bang is kind of like what the bible says. It also says that a beginning of time and space is a consequence of General Relativity.
2 Several times after that, he says (paraphrasing) "the data of atomic physics, relativity, etc" went into formulating "AFDave's Creator God Hypothesis".
3 Failing to understand what General Relativity is, he says things like
"All I have ever pointed out is that the Laws of Relativity speak of this weird phenomenon called Length Contraction and Time Dilation. The very fact that these concepts truly exist is evidence which supports (not proves) the claims of the Bible when it says that God dwells outside space and time."
which is again a claim with no explanation. Furthermore, Length Contraction and Time Dilation have nothing to do with the reasons GR implies a beginning to time and space
4 He seems to think having a beginning to time and space--one boundary condition--means time and space can't be infinite, which is obviously wrong to anyone who remembers Differential Equations 101.
5 and finally, at 6:17, he says, explaining to me slowly, "The mere fact that it has been discovered that a dimension of space can be 'contracted' -- Length Contraction, and that time can be dilated -- Time Dilation is powerfully suggestive to me that the claims of the Bible regarding God dwelling outside of space and time just might be true."
which is once again, "X is evidence for my claim" with absolutely no explanation about how it is.
Let me try to explain to you why "Relativity is evidence of god" is a claim, not an explanation of anything. And I'll reduce the sophistication down to the level of an A&E murder mystery, and maybe AFDave & co will understand.
Say AFColumbo walks around investigating the crime for a while, and he figures out what happened. "Officer, arrest Mister Brown! he is the murderer." The police chief says, "How do you know that, Columbo?" "Well, the fact of the rental truck being yellow convinces me he's the murderer." "How does that convince you?" "It's evidence. It convinced me." "How? What does the truck being yellow have to do with the murder?" "Look...chief...if you're not convinced, that's fine, but it's yellow, and that's my evidence." "Columbo, you're not explaining how it's evidence. You're just saying it is." "Okay, chief, I know what the problem is. Here we go. Listen carefully. The. Truck. Is. Yellow. And. So. He's. The. Murderer."
Do you see where AFColumbo is going wrong? He's claiming that x is evidence, but he's not saying how it's evidence. He's not explaining the connection between the yellow truck and Mr. Brown committing the murder. Similarly, "Length contraction is evidence of the bible." is a claim with no explanation of the connection between the two things.
AFarceDave: You can't honestly answer stevestory for the same reason you can't answer my questions that I've reposted multiple times. You are a liar. Very simple. If you say you're not, DaveTard, try and answer what I asked long ago:
1) Why do we find humans on every continent except Antarctica at 10,000 years ago if that is when you believe the earth was created? (Don't say that the archaeology is only dated by radiometric methods, Dave. It's not. Don't say that all other methods are flawed when they are not. You have to show that all the dozens of dating methods we use are flawed in the peculiar way that they give agreeing answers, Dave. And you cannot do that. )
2) What is your evidence that Amerinds (other than the Maya and Aztec) had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed.
3) Why is the dendrochronological record of the U.S. wrong, DaveTard? Be precise and specific. Cite your data and evidence. This was related to your claim about written languages, Dave. You never answered either, plus over 100 questions from myself and others that I have counted in this thread.
My prediction is you will avoid addressing these questions fully and honestly. You will avoid, though. You already have four times now. This will be five.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The mere fact that it has been discovered that a dimension of space can be 'contracted' -- Length Contraction, and that time can be dilated -- Time Dilation is powerfully suggestive to me that the claims of the Bible regarding God dwelling outside of space and time just might be true. It may not be suggestive of this to you at all. That's ok. It won't be the first time we disagree.
How does length contraction and time dilation indicate something existing outside of space and time if both effects occur within space and time? There is no "outside" to speak of.
You've been pretty silent on RATE ... you are a physics major ... don't you have anything to say about it?
I'm a physics graduate, not a major. But yes, I do know a little bit about radioisotope dating. I have a friend who was on the team which did the first precise date of Meteor Crater. About 40,000 years old, IIRC. And creationist attempts to refute the radiometric evidence for an old earth are among the dumbest things I've ever seen. They're so bad that occasionally scientists who are embarrassed christians write essays trying to get their peers to stop saying such stupid things.
Dave, I'm going to make the same suggestion about relativity that I made earlier about "cosmic fine tuning," albeit for different reasons.
WRT "cosmic fine tuning," I suggested that you abandon the argument for the simple reason that we'd heard it a million times before, and didn't find it persuasive. Simply put, not enough is known about why the various physical parameters take the values they do to support an argument one way or another whether there is a "Creator God." Since you barely even understood which parameters had "finely tuned" values, and couldn't even explain why those parameters had to have the values they do in order for life to survive, it was a waste of bandwidth for you to try to advance the argument.
Now, you're trying to persuade us that special relativity (which, I can't fail to point out, has nothing whatsoever to do with the beginning of or bounds of spacetime or the evolution of the universe) somehow provides evidence that God could exist outside of space or time.
This time, I'm not suggesting that you abandon the argument because we've seen it a million times before and know it's a weak argument. I'm suggesting you abandon it because you cannot even frame a coherent argument from special relativity. You don't even understand the distinction between the Special Theory and the General Theory. As has been pointed out to you several times, including at least twice by me, the notion that time can run at different rates in different reference frames, and that space itself can vary under different reference frames, says nothing whatsoever about anything being able to exist "outside" of spacetime, nor does it say anything about space or time being bounded. And, as has also been pointed out to you at least twice, the notion that spacetime is bounded in the past says nothing about spacetime being finite. You don't even need to have taken Differential Equations 101 to know that. All you need is a little common sense.
So give it up, Dave. Your understanding of ratiometric dating techniques is lamentable enough. Please don't waste four or five days wandering around in relativity theory, bumping into things with your head jammed into a wooden bucket.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The mere fact that it has been discovered that a dimension of space can be 'contracted' -- Length Contraction, and that time can be dilated -- Time Dilation is powerfully suggestive to me that the claims of the Bible regarding God dwelling outside of space and time just might be true. It may not be suggestive of this to you at all. That's ok. It won't be the first time we disagree.
I don't understand how relativity works. I don't need to.
That's all I've ever claimed. That's all I know about it. And that's all I care about it. Are you happy now?
Well, I know I'm happy.
Dave just demonstrated how twisted and detached from reality his "powerful evidence" really is.
And at the same time, he had the nerve to finally admit what we all know already: That, in his mind, he doesn't really need to know anything about all the things he argues for (or against); all he needs is to believe they're right (or wrong), and that's enough.
That's AFDave in a nutshell for you.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
My prediction is you will avoid addressing these questions fully and honestly. You will avoid, though. You already have four times now. This will be five.
Ha! Five times is for losers! AirFarceDaveTard2 has ignored my questions on scientific peer review eight times now. That makes me the "winner"....I think
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
DaveTard: 1) Why do we find humans on every continent except Antarctica at 10,000 years ago if that is when you believe the earth was created? 2) What is your evidence that Amerinds-- other than the Maya and Aztec-- had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed 3) Why is the dendrochronological record of the U.S. wrong, DaveTard? Be precise and specific. Cite your data and evidence.
NB to Occam: I'm going for the GOLD, BABY!!! Bwahahahaha
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I see that Aftershave finally asked an 'on topic' question and he has graduated from 4 letter words to 5 letter words, so I will be answering his questions this week.
I see that Washout Dave still can’t bring himself to type without lying. The ‘on topic’ questions I ‘finally asked’ were the exact same ones on RATE peer-review I previously asked three times, and very similar to the general peer-review questions I have asked eight times.
I will now demonstrate a feat of magic. I will channel the Great Karnak, and he will predict here and now what Washout Dave’s weasel word answers will be (if WD gets the balls to answer at all that is).
OA asked: “Who peer reviewed the RATE results?”
Great Karnak predicts: Washout Dave will reply “The RATE committee presented several key peer-reviewed papers at the recent ICC (International Conference on Creationism)”
What he won’t mention is that the ICC’s “peer reviewers” are a hand picked cadre of other YEC ‘scientists’, and that the papers only got published in anti-scientific comic books like Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ) and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) website. No non-YECs were allowed as reviewers, and nothing was submitted to any relevant leading journals such as the Geological Society of America. Of course this Creto “peer review” is nowhere near a true scientific peer review, since the whole purpose of peer review is to have external reviewers with no conflicting interests take a hard, critical look at the results. Having them review their own work is like having a cheating student grade his own final exam.
OA asked: “Who do you think is qualified to peer review the RATE results, and why?”
Great Karnak predicts: Washout Dave will reply “The RATE committee itself is qualified to review its own results since they have many unbiased scientists on their panel”.
Which will also be total bull****(edited to not hurt AFDaveTard's girish feelings) for the same reasons given above. Washout Dave will then launch into a big tirade about the evil atheist science conspiracy against Creationists, and how Creationists like the third-RATErs can’t get published in peer-reviewed journals because of the scientific community is trying to keep the ‘Darwin status quo’ and that conflicting Creationist ideas are automatically blackballed…yadda yadda yadda. It will be the same old pitiful whining we hear from Creationists every day. Washout Dave won’t even consider that the Cretos like the RATE goobers won’t submit their work for serious peer review because the work is worthless crap. What’s more, the RATE Cretos know it is worthless crap and they know it will get torn a new one if it had to undergo a real critical review. The only reason the RATE group exists at all is to fleece money from other gullible Creationist pigeons like Washout Dave.
Sorry to steal your thunder Dave, but everyone here has heard the same Creationist lies so many times we can repeat them in our sleep. Please don’t let that stop you from coming up with some new lies – it would be entertaining, and shows off your skill at what you do best.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
It's just a pity, the bad light he shines on other Christians with his continued dishonest and craven behavior.
well, yes and no.
Does a schizophrenic claims of scientific knowledge have any bearing on how we view other scientists?
Ever see "A Beautiful Mind"?
no, I don't think Davey sheds a poor light on xians, but rather a poor light on the rest of us for letting the kind of cognitive dissonance that leads to this behavior go untreated for so long.
Davey has about as much to do with xianity as schizophenia has to do with advanced mathematics.
I do hope that someday the kind of malady suffered by thousands of folks like AFDave will be recognized as such, and treated accordingly.
I have my doubts tho; it does seem that funding for mental health care has taken a severe nose dive over the last 10 years or so. Many hospitals in CA, for example, have even closed their mental health care depts. completely. I assume it's a simple matter of economics, combined with the apparent "stigma" associated with mental disease as opposed to others, but it's still troubling.
Isn't it nice how the velvet glove of compassion conceals the iron fist of totalitarianism? Now, a blunt, honest liberal evolutionist would say he finds Bible-believing Christians so abhorrent they should be thrown in prison camps. Of course, fish-boy can't say that because it would upset his image of himself and other liberals as caring, compassionate, believers in liberty, equality and fraternity for all mankind! As everybody known, the totalitarian temptation is the exculsive purview of pale-faced right-wing Christians.
This is where psychoanalysis becomes such a useful political weapon. It enables men to dehumanize their political opponents while at the same time feeling compassion toward them. What more could a good liberal want?
On a broader note, the late liberal evolutionist phiosopher Michael Foucault* noticed how an increasing acceptence of reason leads to opression. In out enlightened "Age of Reason" those whose opinions are deemed "unreasonable" by the medical and scientific establishments are caged in mental hospitals. (It seems to always turn out that the primary sign of "mental illness" that gets men imprisoned in these places is their claim to hear the voice of God. I wonder what makes that so scary for the liberal evolutionists who have the power in our modern world?) In medieval times when Christians had power such thinkers had the "freedom of expression" that liberals so jealously guard for themselves yet are unwilling to extend to others. At least an inquisitor had to clearly state what heresy a suspect uttered before being arrested. All the inquisitors in the evolutionist religion must do is accuse a suspect of being "mentally ill"--a charge against which it is impossible to defend oneself--and its off to the Cuckoo's nest.
* This man was not only a liberal evolutionist, he lived a Darwinian lifetyle [edit: as evidenced by his reckless spreading of a deadly disease, his embrace of suicide and sadism, and his utter amorality in general!] and experienced God's justice as a result [of his sociopathy]. Nevertheless, he was one of the most thoughtful liberals I ever read and made me question my own liberalism.
Now, a blunt, honest liberal evolutionist would say he finds Bible-believing Christians so abhorrent they should be thrown in prison camps. Of course, fish-boy can't say that because it would upset his image of himself and other liberals as caring, compassionate, believers in liberty, equality and fraternity for all mankind! As everybody known, the totalitarian temptation is the exculsive purview of pale-faced right-wing Christians.
LOL. that's some pretty good BS there, paley. Who's analyzing who here?
It's the actions, not the beliefs that characterize the malady, so when you characterize someone in the way you just did, how do you think that defines yourself?
But, what's really motivating your objection here?
jealous that Davey is attracting more attention with his dementia than you are?
gees, first you dig up an old thread to try to get more attention, then use the same shovel to spread some shit around to get even more attention.
pretty pathetic, on just about any level I can think of.
However, if you think you're really on to something here, feel free to pursue it. Go ahead and show us how your characterization of myself and "liberals" is more accurate than mine is of AFDave.
take as many posts as you like. He11, create a new pseudo-mathematical model to try and showcase your idiocy, if you like.
I only need about half of one of AFDave's threads to show how consistent he is with his projections and denials, and I don't even have a psych degree.
I don't have to bring political bents, religion, or anything else for that matter, into it to demonstrate my point. Hence the exact reason i said that Davey doesn't reflect poorly on christians.
otherwise, unless you consider yourself as demented as Davey, I feel you owe me an apology.
or at least a more amusing model than you have presented to showcase any of your "theories" so far.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
the liberal evolutionists who have the power in our modern world
What liberal evolutionists are those? Bush? The Republican Congress? Or are you referring to another part of the world... ?
Quote
All the inquisitors in the evolutionist religion must do is accuse a suspect of being "mentally ill"--a charge against which it is impossible to defend oneself--and its off to the Cuckoo's nest.
Is there a wood panel station wagon circling your block or something? All right guys. Who ordered Paley to be locked up? I know we burned the Constitution and the Bill of Rights a long time ago, but give the guy a break, he's not so bad... Wisp and let wisp?
This is where psychoanalysis becomes such a useful political weapon. It enables men to dehumanize their political opponents while at the same time feeling compassion toward them. What more could a good liberal want?
It's not a very useful weapon though because all it does is reveal their emptiness and inability to say anything substantive about ToE.
OA ... good. You knew the answer already. Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in. Evos are currently in the majority and they are hopping mad that there is a threat to their dominance. Why do you waste time asking if you already know this?
Possibly because you don't know anything about the RATE group or He or zircons?
I asked Steve Story ...
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You've been pretty silent on RATE ... you are a physics major ... don't you have anything to say about it?
And he said ...
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I'm a physics graduate, not a major. But yes, I do know a little bit about radioisotope dating. I have a friend who was on the team which did the first precise date of Meteor Crater. About 40,000 years old, IIRC. And creationist attempts to refute the radiometric evidence for an old earth are among the dumbest things I've ever seen. They're so bad that occasionally scientists who are embarrassed christians write essays trying to get their peers to stop saying such stupid things.
Translation: I don't much about Helium and zircons, but I have a famous buddy who knows a lot about radiometric dating and he assures me that the earth is 4+ billion years old. So I trust him. Me, I like biting ankles and throwing mud at Creos.
Deadman...
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1) Why do we find humans on every continent except Antarctica at 10,000 years ago if that is when you believe the earth was created?
Who said we do? How do you know this timeframe?
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2) What is your evidence that Amerinds (other than the Maya and Aztec) had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed.
The Mayas and Aztecs were some I had in mind. My understanding is that there are many 'indian' tribes all over Mexico some of which descended from these civilizations who have lost their written language. I believe Wycliffe Bible translators has encountered many such tribes. But again, this is a rabbit trail. Remember the whole point of the argument ... civilization appeared suddenly and simultaneously and recently in several locations at once WITH written language. My explanation from Genesis fits this scenario much better than your 200,000 year gradualist story.
Not sure what you are driving at about dendrochronology ... We will be walking through many other evidences for a young earth, though, if that's what you are talking about.
You guys are getting way too complex about the relativity thing. All I am saying is that there are many passages in the Bible that collectively give us the idea that God "lives outside of space and time." Now honestly I cannot conceive of this but I am not so arrogant as to say it cannot be so. With the phenomenon of time dilation, it is now possible to conceive of God 'running on a different time scale' from humans, or even running on no time scale at all, which is what 'eternity past' and 'eternity future' sounds like. With the phenomenon of length contraction, it is also possible to conceive of God being able to reach all points in the universe instantaneously if all three dimensions approach zero. Now this is sci-fi sounding stuff to be sure. But can you see now what I am saying? I am not saying that I can explain relativity. I am saying that just the existence of these phenomena gives powerful (OK, drop the powerful if you like) support to the concept of an eternal, omnipresent God. And again, if you don't like this, fine. What's new? You don't like anything else I say anyway. Why should you like this? Do you think I am here expecting your approval or something?
Eric, you can save your effort telling me to give it up. I'm enjoying myself and I am here for the long haul. Now I may be selective with my rabbit trails. You guys want me to chase rabbits down about 10 different trails at once. I don't have enough tme for that, but there is one I will chase briefly before getting back on the main trail of "Age of the Earth" because I like this one a lot. I would like to do a complete thread on this sometime. (Don't worry Steve, not now)
And that is ...
WHY YOU SHOULD BE THANKING THE CHRISTIANS THAT WENT TO THE LIONS
Somebody here was poking fun at the 'stupid Christians' who let themselves be thrown to the lions. I responded by saying that those 'stupid Christians' set the stage for the most prosperous and freedom-loving civilization the world has ever known--Western Civilization--you should quit poking fun and thank them!
Here's the deal. The Roman empire had a cruel culture. Christians in the first century were looked upon as cult fanatic wackos, much like Evos look at Creos today. They were called every name in the book, they were persecuted, they were ostracized, they were thrown to lions (I know ... some of you want to do that to Creos today), etc. You know the story. But they kept growing in numbers and influence because people saw firsthand that they had the only true explanation for the situation of mankind. Christianity did not grow at that time by forced 'conversions' at the point of a sword of a dictator. It grew because of the high moral character of the Christians and their evangelistic fervor and their care for one another. Finally, Constantine legalized Christianity and ordered the printing of Bibles for distribution. Was he a good guy? Sorta. Sorta not. But that's not the point. It also misses the point to say that the Holy Roman Empire was a bad thing. Yes it was in many ways. But it was good in that it spread the Bible all over Europe. And it was the Bible and the Protestant Reformation upon which the British Empire and the United States were built. Now we can talk all we want to about the faults of British and American imperialism, but the point remains, in spite of all the dirt, that Western Civilization is a great place to live, and it owes a great debt to those 'stupid Christians' who went to the lions.
Now I'm sure you will all hack me to shreds on that one, so go right ahead.
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I predict that this time next year I'll be the Queen of Sheba.
Well, your ancestor is pond scum and your relative is a chimp, so Queen of Sheba? Why not?
Now do any of you lily-livers have anything to say to defend your buddy, Kevin Henke on his criticism of the Humphreys zircon thing? JonF and Norm have weighed in. Our physics graduate dodged. How about you?
And a closing comment for you to dream about tonight from your other favorite buddy, Dembski ...
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Respected Cornell geneticist rejects Darwinism in his recent book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome by John Sanford (October 2005)
In retrospect, I realize that I have wasted so much of my life arguing about things that don’t really matter. It is my sincere hope that this book can actually address something that really does matter. The issue of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going seem to me to be of enormous importance. This is the real subject of this book…
Modern Darwinism is built on what I will be calling “The Primary Axiom”. The Primary Axiom is that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection. Within our society’s academia, the Primary Axiom is universally taught, and almost universally accepted. It is the constantly mouthed mantra, repeated endlessly on every college campus. It is very difficult to find any professor on any college campus who would even consider (or should I say – dare) to question the Primary Axiom….
Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most “sacred cow” of modern academia. Among other things, it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.
Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this – but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the primary axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory – in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment – which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people’s religion!
To question the Primary Axiom required me to re-examine virtually everything I thought I knew about genetics. This was probably the most difficult intellectual endeavor of my life. Deeply entrenched thought pattern only change very slowly (and I must add — painfully). What I eventually experienced was a complete overthrow of my previous understandings. Several years of personal struggle resulted in a new understanding, and a very strong conviction that the Primary Axiom was most definitely wrong. More importantly, I became convinced that the Axiom could be shown to be wrong to any reasonable and open-minded individual. This realization was exhilarating, but again – frightening. I realized that I had a moral obligation to openly challenge this most sacred of cows. In doing this, I realized I would earn for myself the most intense disdain of most of my colleagues in academia – not to mention very intense opposition and anger from other high places.
What should I do? It has become my conviction that the Primary Axiom is insidious on the highest level – having catastrophic impact on countless human lives. Furthermore, every form of objective analysis I have performed has convinced me that the Axiom is clearly false. So now, regardless of the consequences, I have to say it out loud: the Emperor has no clothes!
…To the extent that the Primary Axiom can be shown to be false, it should have a major impact on your own life – and on the world at large. For this reason, I have dared to write this humble little book – which some will receive as blasphemous treason, and others – revelation.
If the Primary Axiom is wrong, then there is a surprising and very practical consequence. When subjected only to natural forces, the human genome must irrevocably degenerate over time. Such a sober realization should have more than just intellectual or historical significance. It should rightfully cause us to personally reconsider where we should rationally be placing our hope for the future.
John Sanford
Sanford drew heavily from the work of Motoo Kimura, James Crow, and Walter ReMine. He featured a lot of data I had never seen, and he applied the concept of signal-to-noise ratios (from information theory) to show that the selection pressures are too weak for natural selection to transmit useful information into the genome. He made devastating critiques of naturalistic evolution using standard population genetics. It was a superb book, something one would expect from such a capable scientist. I’m surprised this book is relatively obscure, it ought to be required reading for serious IDers!
Sanford’s Bio: Cornell Professor of 25 years (being semi-retired since 1998). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in the area of plant breeding and genetics. He founded 2 successful biotech firms, Biolistics and Sanford Scientific. Most of the transgenic crops grown in the world today were genetically engineered using the gene gun technology developed by Sanford. He still holds a position of Courtesy Associate Professor at Cornell.
Wow. Cornell is really falling fast! First an ID course this summer. Now this! Evos had better get busy!
%$&*#(*&%^$& (smoke coming out of your ears)
See you tomorrow :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
(1) Note that it was YOU that made the claims about Amerind groups, Dave. Don't call it a "rabbit trail" when you are asked questions at the time you make statements ....then you fail to answer them for a week. You said this, Dave:
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There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined. Most of the ancient civilizations had writing ...so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing
I asked you to PRESENT EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THAT AND YOU AVOID IT
NOW you say :
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The Mayas and Aztecs were some I had in mind. My understanding is that there are many 'indian' tribes all over Mexico some of which descended from these civilizations who have lost their written language. I believe Wycliffe Bible translators has encountered many such tribes
Note the disparity in your claims, DaveLiar. **Mexico is not South America, DaveTard.** You know that you cannot support your claim that Amerinds such as the Apache ( note that you mention my ancestors) HAD writing and lost it. Yours was an over-arching claim about "amerinds" in general, liar.
So you run from your original claim and my question on it that I had to ask 6 times to get this ... utter lie out of you. Strike One, DaveTard2
(2) When I ask you about humans existing on every continent except Antarctica at 10,000 years ago, you say :
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Who said we do? How do you know this timeframe?
I say we know this and I have said WHY we know this, DaveTard: I gave you a list of non-radiometric methods used to date sites across the world, DaveTard, and you know that, but you avoid answering at all.
Strike TWO, DaveCoward
(3) When I ask you about the dendrochronology used to date such sites in North America, DaveTard, you avoid that too. I asked you specifically why you say dendro is wrong, DaveTard, and you fail to answer at all. Remember, DaveTard, I asked you about this due to your claims concerning the dates of civilizations and writing, and YOU FAILED TO RESPOND THEN...AND NOW.
That's strike three, DaveTard.
I predicted that you would do precisely this, DaveTard, and it is clearly stated in my posts.
What you will do next is to claim that none of this is relevant, even though these questions I asked were directed at you when you were making claims about human history. You ignored them then and you ignore them now. Because you can't back your own claims, DaveTard. It is not a "rabbit trail" if the questions are asked in a timely fashion, DaveTard, such as right after you make your lying claims.
What you will do NOW is to pretend that you HAVE answered me, when the fact is that anyone reading this thread knows you have not. Nor can you.
Yeah, you sicken me.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You wish to be hacked to shreds, Dave? You have been pureed, minced, liquified, atomized, and pulverized so many times in your numerous threads that I have lost count. I applaud those who have taken the time to do so, however the reason that I continue to read these threads is simply that every moronic assertion you make is actually answered, with evidence, and thus I have a chance to learn more about this wonderful universe in which we live. Every single one of your "evidences" has been shown to be ludicrously wrong, but (and for this I thank you again) those who show this to be true have provided me with the means to continue my self-education.
Your original intent here was, obviously, to dismantle mainstream science, from biology to cosmology to geology to you name it. However, your perception of these fields is so extraordinarily perverse, "so wrong that the light from wrong won't reach it for a million years," that any attempt to pull you into the realm of the rational will obviously be more than a fool's errand, it will be more of a fool's circumnavigation of Jupiter in a dinghy. You *can't* be reasoned with, because you are incapable of reasoning. I mean you no insult with these words, I am simply pointing out a fact.
However, you do provide this long-time lurker with a lot of amusement, and some opportunity (through the efforts of others) to learn, and so again I thank you.
I've been watching threads here on ATBC for about 2 years now, and I think AFDave may in fact take the cake as the epitomy of the word "creobot".
can anybody else think of anybody who has ever posted here that has been as illogical, intractable, and incapable as Dave?
I really think Dave sets a unique standard that should be documented.
I think BWE spent some time simply listing all the irrational and contradictory arguments presented by AFDave in one of these threads, and that alone took up 4 pages. there has to be some way to synthesize all of Dave into a series of relativeley few posts, and then use that as a measure of "creationicity" to see how other creobots measure up.
It really is quite remarkable.
I've gone way beyond Dave making me sick, to Dave making me fascinated to see just how many topics he will attempt to filter through his irrational mindset before he finally gets bored.
will he get bored, even?
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Wow. Cornell is really falling fast! First an ID course this summer. Now this! Evos had better get busy!
ROFLMAO. what's really funny, Dave, is that you think this course is in support of ID.
go ask Alan MacNeill (the instructor), if he thinks his course is trying to promote ID.
like i said, you just are mentally incapable of processing information from outside of the mindsets you've created for yourself.
You're not well. I'm sorry your parents or peers did this to you, but I'd recommend at least visiting a mental health care professional before you really decide you're "god's gift" to all the kiddies out there.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Eric, you can save your effort telling me to give it up. I'm enjoying myself and I am here for the long haul. Now I may be selective with my rabbit trails. You guys want me to chase rabbits down about 10 different trails at once. I don't have enough tme for that, but there is one I will chase briefly before getting back on the main trail of "Age of the Earth" because I like this one a lot.
Dave, you're not going to be going down ten rabbit trails. You're going to be going down ten thousand rabbit trails, and you're going to get lost on every single one of them. You're going to be defeated on every single one of those ten thousand, just as you've been defeated on every one of the—oh, about three or four—that you've raised so far.
You seem to think you get to choose which rabbit trails you get to go down. You don't. You have to go down all of them, or I promise you, no one will be singing "Amazing Grace." When you've caught the rabbits at the end of every single one of those rabbit trails, then maybe you'll hear some hymns being sung.
Way back at the beginning of this thread, Dave, I told you that for your "earth is 6,000 years old" argument to survive, you'll have to defeat ninety to ninety-five percent or more of the contrary evidence out there, because the remaining five or ten percent is more than sufficient to kill your hypothesis. So far, every one of your arguments has been obliterated before you even made it, and you've got at least five lifetimes' worth of evidence left to try to refute.
If you want to continue to be beaten to a bloody pulp, feel free. I have to say I'm enjoying watching you staggering around with your head in a wooden bucket, lurching into corners, struggling furiously. But give up with the relativity rant. You can't even begin to make a coherent argument out of it. Your argument is the equivalent of saying because a car can go at different speeds, it must be able to teleport. It's just as non-sensical.
You might be able to wow your church-going brethren by saying, "Well, relativity teaches us that time and space can be stretched and contracted, which powerfully suggests that God can exist outside of time," but here it gets you exactly nowhere.
So keep floundering around, Dave. It's royally entertaining, but it's also clear you're running out of steam. You've got thousands of different lines of evidence to deal with, and I guarantee you they'll wear you down long before you can even get to them.
So, while I'm on the subject: how far have you gotten in figuring out how much water it took God to drown the planet? No need to answer right away; in the meantime we'll just blow away whatever "evidence" you give us for target practice.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Gawp, in your plump vacuum-packed self-regard, you blew right past the salient point of Madness and Civilization. (Or did you glean your anti-understanding from Discipline and Punish? No doubt the title appealed to you. I'm assuming you never came anywhere near The History of Sexuality.) By itself, that's an understandable failing, and also pretty much meaningless outside a lit-crit seminar ca. 1989. But then you take your cock-eyed crackpot distortions out into the world and use them to completely rewrite the last century of mental health care in the U.S. Nope. That's not allowed, under the jackbooted authority of documented history.
Has anyone been institutionalized in this country, ever, simply for saying he or she heard the voice of God? (I hope you'll agree we shouldn't count the cases when the hearer was directed to, say, hack off the arms of her infant daughter.) Yes, there have been many, many people institutionalized for holding "unreasonable" opinions, even when those opinions didn't direct, compel, advocate, or encourage violence. (My caveat. Do you concur?) But, frankly, I doubt you're speaking out on behalf of homosexuals (suspected or "practicing") and unhappy housewives, much less the deaf and mentally retarded whose opinions meant nothing in determining where they'd spend their lives. Oh, but that's history. Google "willowbrook state school" Google "deinstitutionalization cmhc funding" That should get you somewhere close to the 21st century.*
Gawp, you may get off on some malign fantasy of a past and future Gulag Archidemocratcigo, with Eleanor Roosevelt and Hitlery as bookended Nurse Ratcheds -- which is fine. (Though you might consider one of the many fine pharmaceuticals now available to treat ED.) Just keep in mind that it is your fantasy, with at best a tangential relationship to reality.
Getting back to your pal Foucault: Why do you repeatedly refer to him as an "evolutionist"? You do realize he wasn't a biologist, right? Or do you consider any theorist in any discipline, or anyone who writes a book, an "evolutionist" absent an explicit condemnation?
As for your assessment of Foucault's death from AIDS: I hope you yourself receive all you deserve of God's justice and mercy. If your understanding of God's wishes is as accurate as your understanding of astrophysics, you may be in for a surprise.
*I was about to offer links in support of anything in question -- they'd be embedded if I were at my own computer -- but then I realized I was addressing someone who believes in a geocentric universe held together by a kind of celesto-meringue. Against such goofiness, what good are links? But there are indeed links to be had, upon request to my email.
This is where psychoanalysis becomes such a useful political weapon. It enables men to dehumanize their political opponents while at the same time feeling compassion toward them. What more could a good liberal want?
It's not a very useful weapon though because all it does is reveal their emptiness and inability to say anything substantive about ToE.
As opposed to the volumes of substantive discourse regarding anything at all provided by AFDave, the psychoanalytical virgin.
Hmmmm... We know about AFDave's desires to fly and the thwarting of those wishes. (Plenty of symbolic fodder there.) We know about his daddy the missionary. (Such low-hanging fruit -- I meant the jokes! What about his mother? AFDave just screams Oedipal issues. I mean, look at this one-sentence quote, with the reference to "emptiness" -- we all know what that means -- and "inability."
Does AFDave drive a Hummer? Does he own a dachschund?
Ichthyic: The next time will be 7. ####, I could ask again now, since the little liar never answered me.
As you can see from his claim, DaveTard didn't qualify his claim in the least about Amerinds. He mentioned North AND South America, then retreats to "I meant Mexico." But the thing that really set my teeth on edge and should make DaveTard glad he's not within my arm's reach, is this one:
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The hunter gatherers you speak of are the result of 'devolution,' not evolution, if you want to be consistent with the evidence.
This is the scarcely-concealed tacit racism that led to missionaries like DaveTard's daddy to spend their time among "degenerate heathens" that didn't *need* anything from DaveTard's kind except to be left alone.
Millions of people across the globe were enslaved,tortured and killed off by people waving crosses and bibles while carrying "guns, germs, and steel" and I take it personally when my ancestors are called "devolved."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Awww Dave, you disappoint me. I was all set for your next batch of creative lies, and all you can do is vomit back the same old stale ones. I expect better from you.
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Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
Of course you can provide evidence to back up this conspiracy claim, like a list of credible articles that were submitted by Creationists to mainstream scientific journals, but were rejected solely due to the author’s YEC beliefs.
What’s that? You can’t provide any evidence? I see - you were just lying again. What does the Bible say about bearing false witness Dave?
Or is it that in Washout Dave Fantasyland, all peer reviews are created equal, just like the validity of scientific theories can be decided by majority vote. That means your AF wings are equal in meaning and value to my ones that I found in a Crackerjack box this morning. Got it.
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Evos are currently in the majority and they are hopping mad that there is a threat to their dominance. Why do you waste time asking if you already know this?
It’s amusing to see you wriggle and squirm as you slip from one lie to the next, making it up as you go. But you really need a new writer – the quality of your lies has slipped lately.
But hey, since you’re here and want to talk about scientific peer review, maybe you’ll finally answer these questions:
1. Should all scientific findings be required to undergo a critical peer-review process before being deemed acceptable for teaching in schools?
2. Who are the best qualified people to do rigorous critical scientific peer-reviews?
3. Why should the opinion of an ignorant layman about scientific findings carry more weight than the opinions of well trained professional scientists in the relevant fields of study?
That’s the ninth time you’ve been asked. Go on Dave - make Jesus proud by lying in his name some more!
OT: sorry deadman_932, you were getting too close in the “who can make AirFarceDaveTard2 look like the biggest coward” contest.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Regarding the current influx of idiotic Creationist RATE claims, we will now open the floor for bidding on who gets to bitchslap AirFarceDaveTard2 with the Lake Suigetsu varves and C14 calibration data.
I'll start by offering to donate $10 U.S. to the NCSE for the privilege. Who'll raise me?
- OA
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Regarding the current influx of idiotic Creationist RATE claims, we will now open the floor for bidding on who gets to bitchslap AirFarceDaveTard2 with the Lake Suigetsu varves and C14 calibration data.
You know, it would be fun to see Dave floundering around a bit longer on the Radiometric Dating Show (hosted by Richard Dawson, or was it Dawkins?), but frankly it's getting wearisome. The poor guy's getting punch-drunk, and it ain't from love. And despite what the ads might say, zircons are not a creationist's best friend.
I want to hear Dave's evidence for his global flood. I want to hear how deep it was, how the swimming was, and what happened to all that agua. Was my apartment building (altitude 190 feet) once beachfront property, or was it stashed in Davey Jones' (or was it Hawkins?) locker? Could I have taken a canoe to work, or would I have needed a diving bell?
And Dave, you've never really answered the question: are you in bed with Bill the Geocentrist (not that there would be anything wrong with that), or do you believe the Bible is only inerrant some of the time?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I don't have to understand how relativity works to say that it is powerful evidence for a 'God' which dwells outside space and time.
Anyone who can understand Maxwell should be able to understand relativity. After all it was an analysis of Maxwell that led Poincare, Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Einstein and others to relativity. Since the EE's I know have mastered Maxwell by the end of their freshman or at most sophmore year, I find it puzzling that Dave seems to find relativity so far beyond his grasp.
The outside of time argument also puzzles me. After all, thinking, planning, creating, anticipating and hoping only make sense with regard to the unfolding of time. Doesn't Dave's god think, plan, create, anticipate and hope for the betterment of mankind...all things that only make sense if god is also subject to the unfolding of time?
And Dave, you've never really answered the question: are you in bed with Bill the Geocentrist (not that there would be anything wrong with that), or do you believe the Bible is only inerrant some of the time?
I'd have to give Ghost (Bill) the edge here. Ghost has the guts to engage and present his position and at least try to respond to his critics. Ghost has a daunting task ahead of him no doubt, but his behavior, as far as I can see, makes me tend to listen to what he has to say and think about it.
Awww... You cute lil' thing. You never did grow up, now did you?
I wonder what it's like to live willingly imprisoned inside your little fantasy world, built for you by the lies of others and your own illusions...
Anyway, take some time to check what an UNBELIEVABLE LIAR AND SLANDERER your new mentor is. And if you have the time, maybe you should also wonder why our resident Young-Earth Geocentricist and Self-Proclaimed Denier of the Objectiveness of Reality rushes to your rescue (with his usual irrelevant blabber).
And finally: Did you find out why you got lied to about chromosome fusions again? Don't think I'll get tired and stop asking... (Ima gonna jump at the race too, guys!
PS. Paley: Cut the crap and work on your model, and stop shooting diversion flares. We're not gonna start another debate with you, no matter how provoking and offensive you try to be, no matter how desperately you want us to. Just FYI.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
can anybody else think of anybody who has ever posted here that has been as illogical, intractable, and incapable as Dave?
I really think Dave sets a unique standard that should be documented.
Take a look at 'Skeptic'. At the rate he's going, he'll give Washout 2nd. Lt. "I'm a coward 'cause I only flew simulators 'cause bullets make scared" Dave a run for his money.
Dave just says stupid things, is soundly refuted on every single one, and ignores the refutations.
Skeptic doesn't even get around to saying anything except "I don't understand, I don't believe it". Plus he lies about being a creobot. Dave at least doesn't lie about being a creobot.
Both of them are hilarious. Poor ghost isn't even in the running any more.
I propose that what AFDave *wants* is for people to waste their time talking to him.
Given that you've minced, pureed, sliced, diced, shredded, torn, and gooified AFDave over and over again, and then proceed to do so *again* over and over again, I'd say that he's won the metadebate: you may have refuted his points, but he's tricked you into remaining in the debate long after his points were refuted.
This man was not only a liberal evolutionist, he lived a Darwinian lifetyle and experienced God's justice as a result. Nevertheless, he was one of the most thoughtful liberals I ever read and made me question my own liberalism.
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither. On the other hand, the AIDS-is-God's-justice brigade does make me want to vomit.
Aren't you supposed to be overturning the last 100 years of physics by later today, Mr. Einstein-was-wrong? How come you have time to post cobblers like this?
Honestly, where do people get the idea that creationsists are bigotted lunatics?
Christianity did not grow at that time by forced 'conversions' at the point of a sword of a dictator.
no, they saved that for later
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But it was good in that it spread the Bible all over Europe.
The end justifies the means, does it?
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I predict that this time next year I'll be the Queen of Sheba.
Well, your ancestor is pond scum and your relative is a chimp, so Queen of Sheba? Why not?
That's the only response you can think of to our little discussion about Kepler? Well, I guess if you get tired of not answering questions on dendrology and the Atlantic sea floor, you could always try citing that one occaision where a creation scientist has changed his views in the light of empirical data.
Why could I not be Queen of Sheba, when my ancestor was pond scum? Well, because there is a well-understood theory about why our ancestors (yours and mine) were pond scum, and why our relatives (yours and mine) are chimps, and that theory is supported by mountains of evidence. It's not magic or mysticism. It's science. That's why not.
I propose that what AFDave *wants* is for people to waste their time talking to him.
Given that you've minced, pureed, sliced, diced, shredded, torn, and gooified AFDave over and over again, and then proceed to do so *again* over and over again, I'd say that he's won the metadebate: you may have refuted his points, but he's tricked you into remaining in the debate long after his points were refuted.
The important thing to realize is that's not a 'waste' on our part, necessarily.
AfDave is useful for three basic reasons:
1) As a representative sample of the "too stupid to tie his own shoelaces" brand of fundie, he presents the kind of non-arguments that they use; and consequently allows us the opportunity to hone our counter-arguments. In that sense, he has been invaluable.
2) As a McGuffin (since we don't actually care about his illogical ramblings) he stimulates some interesting research (into Portuguese, or relativity, or ERVs, etc.)
3) He's funny. Bottom line, he's remarkably easy to laugh at, and that's a great stress reliever. And I don't even have to feel guilty at laughing at a fellow human being because he's too dumb to realize what an ass he's making of himself.
Fundies like Dave and Ghost and Skeptic are MacGuffins, nothing more.
Regarding the current influx of idiotic Creationist RATE claims, we will now open the floor for bidding on who gets to bitchslap AirFarceDaveTard2 with the Lake Suigetsu varves and C14 calibration data.
Ericmurphy says
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You know, it would be fun to see Dave floundering around a bit longer on the Radiometric Dating Show (hosted by Richard Dawson, or was it Dawkins?), but frankly it's getting wearisome. The poor guy's getting punch-drunk, and it ain't from love. And despite what the ads might say, zircons are not a creationist's best friend.
OK, I'll hold off. (Puts big stick away for now) You guys never let me have any fun
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Yeah, it's interesting how some "Christian" creationists claim that AIDS is "God's Justice."
Just something comforting --for the 300,000 children under the age of FIVE who die each year of AIDS--eh, GoP?
If you read the bible, you'll see that the christian god doesn't have any qualms murdering kids, or whole tribes for that matter. He simply doesn't have the ethics you or I have.
As for your assessment of Foucault's death from AIDS: I hope you yourself receive all you deserve of God's justice and mercy. If your understanding of God's wishes is as accurate as your understanding of astrophysics, you may be in for a surprise.
Number Nine:
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Just something comforting --for the 300,000 children under the age of FIVE who die each year of AIDS--eh, GoP?
For such a well-read bunch, you seem to be remarkably ignorant about Comrade Foucault's lifestyle. I think that gay sex is a sin, but so is sex outside marriage, no-fault divorce, and cohabitation. I do not think that God sentences people to death for the ordinary run of lasciviousness. But Foucault's beliefs embraced far more than this. For example:
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Eribon notes that at school, where Foucault decorated his walls with Goya’s horrific etchings of the victims of war, the future philosopher was “almost universally detested.” Schoolmates remember him as brilliant, but also aloof, sarcastic, and cruel. He several times attempted—and more often threatened—suicide. Self-destruction, in fact, was another of Foucault’s obsessions, and Mr. Miller is right to underscore Foucault’s fascination with death. In this, as in so much else, he followed the lead of the Marquis de Sade, who had long been one of his prime intellectual and moral heroes. (Though, as Miller notes, Foucault felt that Sade “had not gone far enough,” since, unaccountably, he continued to see the body as “strongly organic.”) Foucault came to enjoy imagining “suicide festivals” or “orgies” in which sex and death would mingle in the ultimate anonymous encounter. Those planning suicide, he mused, could look “for partners without names, for occasions to die liberated from every identity.”
As someone who's had to mourn a suicide, I can testify to the destructive impact of Foucault's philosophy. I have no sympathy for those who unrepentantly traffic in death.
2) What is your evidence that Amerinds (other than the Maya and Aztec) had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed.
The Mayas and Aztecs were some I had in mind. My understanding is that there are many 'indian' tribes all over Mexico some of which descended from these civilizations who have lost their written language.
Um, that doesn't prove anything. The Indian tribes in Meso-America that used to have writing are the descendants of the same Uto-Aztecan, Mayan, and Zapotecan groups that once had it. The Mayan and Zapotecan civilizations had basically collapsed by the first Spanish contact, and their writing systems were no longer used, but the actual Zapotecan and Mayan Indians survived and continue to live to this day, of course. I leave it to AFD to state whether they're still 'devolved'.
Of course, this is all beside the point, since no one with an IQ safely in the 2 digits is going to accept that recent writing trumps ALL THE GEOLOGICAL AND ASTRONOMICAL EVIDENCE and proves a Young Earth.
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I believe Wycliffe Bible translators has encountered many such tribes. But again, this is a rabbit trail.
(AFD quickly changes the subject as he realizes he's talking out his ass and is about to have another 'Portuguese moment'.)
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Remember the whole point of the argument ... civilization appeared suddenly and simultaneously and recently in several locations at once WITH written language. My explanation from Genesis fits this scenario much better than your 200,000 year gradualist story.
AFDave logic: "Civilization appeared suddenly and simultaneously and recently in several locations at once WITH written language -- therefore the earth couldn't have existed before that".
Wow. What more can anyone say?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
On the other hand, the AIDS-is-God's-justice brigade does make me want to vomit.
Aren't you supposed to be overturning the last 100 years of physics by later today, Mr. Einstein-was-wrong? How come you have time to post cobblers like this?
Honestly, where do people get the idea that creationsists are bigotted lunatics?
I know that some deluded Christians argue that AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality, but real ones don't agree. There is a difference between a sinful lifestyle and psychopathology, however, and I think that the punishment fit the crime in Foucault's case.
Ghost of Paley: I could not care less about Foucault's sex life or his fantasies--which you find so fascinating. I don't care about Foucault's "philosophy," either. I am not a post-modern "deconstructional" structuralist.
What I do care about is you saying that AIDS is "God's Justice" -- considering that the children I mentioned die of it.
Foucault's views on many things are stupid and destructive, but I don't believe he tried to proclaim them as those of a god.
Yours are evil and you ascribe them to a god. Which is worse?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hey now you just waitaminute, Mr. deadman: Not all christians were unsympathetic to Native Americans, you know. Some were reeeeal compassionate and humane towards them- like this guy:
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THE REMOTE CAUSE
In 1517, Fray Bartolome de las Casas, feeling great pity for the Indians who grew worn and lean in the drudging infernos of the Antillean gold mines, proposed to Emperor Charles V that Negroes be brought to the isles of the Caribbean, so that they might grow worn and lean in the drudging infernos of the Antillean gold mines. To that odd variant on the species philanthropist we owe an infinitude of things: W. C. Handy's blues; the success achieved in Paris by the Uruguayan attorney-painter Pedro Figari; the fine runaway-slave prose of the likewise Uruguayan Vicente Rossi; the mythological stature of Abraham Lincoln; the half-million dead of the War of Secession; the $3.3 billion spent on military pensions; the statue of the imaginary semblance of Antonio (Falucho) Ruiz; the inclusion of the verb "lynch" in respectable dictionaries; the impetuous King Vidor film Hallelujah; the stout bayonet charge of the regiment of "Blacks and Tans" (the color of their skins, not their uniforms) against that famous hill near Montevideo; the gracefulness of certain elegant young ladies; the black man who killed Martin Fierro; that deplorable rumba The Peanut-Seller; the arrested and imprisoned Napoleonism of Toussaint L'Ouverture; the cross and the serpent in Haiti; the blood of goats whose throats are slashed by the papalois machete; the habanera that is the mother of the tango; the candombe.
...Although something tells me Paley wouldn't like this guy that much.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Foucault came to enjoy imagining “suicide festivals”
Quote (paley @ ,)
I have no sympathy for those who unrepentantly traffic in death.
Hmm so did Foucault actually go beyond imagining these events and actually organize them? Huh???
I enjoy imagining all surviving Apollo astronauts that have walked on the moon lining up to slap Paley in the face.
Hey Dave, did you know that Paley doesn't recognize the fact that we've been to the moon, or that we've sent probes to other planets? How do you feel about that?
Just something comforting --for the 300,000 children under the age of FIVE who die each year of AIDS--eh, GoP?
For such a well-read bunch, you seem to be remarkably ignorant about Comrade Foucault's lifestyle. I think that gay sex is a sin, but so is sex outside marriage, no-fault divorce, and cohabitation. I do not think that God sentences people to death for the ordinary run of lasciviousness. But Foucault's beliefs embraced far more than this. For example:
Am I mistaken, or did GoP completely ignore Deadman's point here?
No, I'm not mistaken.
Okay, here's the theory. Let me see if I have it right:
"God hates homos. So therefore he sends down plagues to kill homos, especially French ones with leftist leanings. However, in His Infinite Wisdom, our All Powerful God is very sloppy and inaccurate (getting on in years, I guess), so his plagues miss lots of homos (lesbians as well as monogamous male homosexuals), and, well, uh, is my face red, kill lots of nonhomos. Now, granted, most of the nonhomos in question have lifestyles I don't approve of, and it helps that so many of them are nonwhite, so it's okay that they died, but all those children who get it? Well, uh, can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, right?"
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Hey Dave, did you know that Paley doesn't recognize the fact that we've been to the moon, or that we've sent probes to other planets?
Has he specifically denied the moon landings and space probes?
Wow, just gets funnier and funnier.
"God hates homos and the sun goes around the earth. So there."
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Am I mistaken, or did GoP completely ignore Deadman's point here?
If so, it's par for the course, since you completely ignore mine.
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"God hates homos. So therefore he sends down plagues to kill homos, especially French ones with leftist leanings. However, in His Infinite Wisdom, our All Powerful God is very sloppy and inaccurate (getting on in years, I guess), so his plagues miss lots of homos (lesbians as well as monogamous male homosexuals), and, well, uh, is my face red, kill lots of nonhomos. Now, granted, most of the nonhomos in question have lifestyles I don't approve of, and it helps that so many of them are nonwhite, so it's okay that they died, but all those children who get it? Well, uh, can't make an omlette without breaking a few eggs, right?"
No, Mr. Potatohead, your hero was a sociopath. So-ci-o-path. He encouraged vulnerable people to kill themselves. His classmates - you know, the ones who actually had to deal with him - portrayed him as a sadist. After meeting Foucault, Chomsky claimed, "I'd never met anyone so totally amoral." Now, you might find his philosophy amusing, and I would agree that even his most reprehensible views deserve First Amendment protection, but I won't ignore the damage his nihilism caused. I'll just try to search for the rose in the dungheap.
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"God hates homos and the sun goes around the earth. So there."
God doesn't hate homosexuals, nor anyone else. I try my best not to hate the man, and I realise that I'm failing, but don't project my weakness on God. And by the way, I've always supported AIDS research, and recognise the horror it's caused to all of its victims. This doesn't change the fact that it gave the psycho what he so desparately craved, so why are you mourning his death? But I'll give the man one thing: he took liberal, atheistic philosophy to its logical limit. You might say his work was a turning point for me. "It's all tissue, and it's all temporary." Jonathan Kellerman has Foucault's philosophy in a nutshell.
Number Nine:
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Foucault's views on many things are stupid and destructive, but I don't believe he tried to proclaim them as those of a god.
Yours are evil and you ascribe them to a god. Which is worse?
Evil? Perhaps it was coldhearted to mock someone's death. But if anyone deserved mocking, it was Foucault. And you've stopped reading my posts, I see. I believe that AIDS is like cancer-- a plague deserving our attention. Not divine punishment, at least for lifestyle choices.
Remember the whole point of the argument ... civilization appeared suddenly and simultaneously and recently in several locations at once WITH written language. My explanation from Genesis fits this scenario much better than your 200,000 year gradualist story.
And I shot down that claim, Dave -- several times. You just keep ignoring my data. I've pointed out how we have evidence of the slow growth of tool use among pre-human primates. Then, before cities and civilization as we know it, agriculture comes on line for early humans requiring stay-put human groups that have to defend their territory.
Your version of history assumes the Mediterranean area with Egyptian and Babylonian civilizations are first. Because your bible ignores the many signs of earlier civilizations in India and China.
Even in Middle Eastern archeology we get agriculture evidence around 6500 BC, older than you think Earth is, with people living in tribes, not on the move continually searching for food or herding their animals, and doing primitive farming. Once people could control the production of food and be assured of a reliable annual supply of it, their lives changed completely, but it took time for civilization to rise from it.
This cave had been used for burials by the Zawi Chemi people (as this small area is called) around 8870 BC (plus or minus 300 years, according to carbon-dating) -- over 10,000 years ago -- and 4,000 years before the beginnings of the various Mesopotamia cultures referred to here.
And yes, unlike the letter-writer I quoted, I believe that Foucault acted in deliberate disregard for his sexual partners's safety. This is reprehensible.
No, Mr. Potatohead, your hero was a sociopath. So-ci-o-path.
So who said Foucault was my 'hero'? I've never read his work, and I don't know much of anything about his ideas. You need to be careful about assuming that 'libbies' all have your boogiemen as their 'heroes'.
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God doesn't hate homosexuals, or anyone else. I try my best not to hate the man, and I realise that I'm failing, but don't project my weakness on God.
I personally think 'hate the sin not the man' is disingenuous bullshit, but I suspect you disagree.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Argy: Yeah, that was taken from UNICEF at this site which has links for documentation on stats and methodology.
GoP: I took the time to read through your posts on "thordaddy's " thread so I will say only this: Your claim that AIDS is "God's Justice" was ill-constructed at best and massively fallacious at worst.
Claiming that a god would visit AIDS on Foucault, regardless of his "thought crimes"-- while simultaneously waving away the deaths of children from the same disease --is offensive. You don't speak for any god, Paley, nor are you privy to the thoughts of any god on this specific matter. Don't pretend to be.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Well, that 610,000 is for children under 15 years, not under 5, but I'll not belabor the point.
Well, so this gives an estimated 100-200,000 under 5, and this was 4 years ago, this is in the same order of magnitude, if it were only 20,000, I'd agree with you.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Small correction to my post about pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing: apparently speakers of Aztecan, Mayan, Zapotec, and Mixtecan languages all had writing. It's probably safe to assume that Mesoamerican writing was created de novo once, and that all the later groups simply borrowed the idea. I think the consensus is that the Zapotecs created writing first, tho this isn't my specialization, so I'm not positive of that.
Like I said a week ago, it's thought that writing was probably only ever invented three times (Mesoamerica, China, Mesopotamia), and that every other writing system is an example of borrowing either someone else's system, or just the idea itself.
Naturally, none of this has the slightest effect on the validity of AFD's main idea. I.e., none of this somehow 'proves' a Young Earth.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Argy: no yielding needed, bud . Unlike Paley and AFarceDave, I expect and welcome people wanting me to support any claims I make. I don't view this as an exercise in ego as those two seem to, I see this as a chance to learn and to hone whatever debate skills I have, as Rilke's mentioned earlier.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
And yes, unlike the letter-writer I quoted, I believe that Foucault acted in deliberate disregard for his sexual partners's safety. This is reprehensible.
Bill, are you under the misapprehension that any liberal must necessarily agree with Foucault? I think the guy's an idiot, and always have.
You've got some really weird ideas about what "liberals" think, Mr. Paley.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
*** THE MAIN TRAIL OF DISCUSSION--AGE OF THE EARTH: He and ZIRCONS ***
JonF...
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But I think there are some temperature issues, even if they're not enough to completely explain the results. Humphreys et al explicitly assumed that the temperatures were always today's temperatures, and "justified" that with a discussion claiming that the alternative was worse for "uniformitarians" and some discussion of temperature spikes. They never discussed poossible lower temperatures, even though Henke brought up some studies that indicate temperatures were lower in the past. Diffusion typically depends exponentially on temperature, and knowing the thermal history of the samples is key for accurate results.
I think he felt it was not important to investigate the lower temperatures. You are correct that diffusion depends exponetially on temperature, but is this not true only for higher temps? At the lower temps, it appears that there is not much effect. How much would the lower temps affect the results? And why could you not assume an average temp? Remember, for the long ager scenario to work, you guys need 5 orders of magnitude slower diffusion than what was measured by Farley. How does Harrison and Sasada know that temps were lower in the past? This is opposite what we would expect from igneous rocks.
And the bottom line is that even significantly lower temps for the entire history with NO spikes, doesn't help your billion + year scenario. At best you can push Humphreys dates from 6000 back to 14,000, which he already allows for.
So what was your point again?
JonF...
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Personally, I think the most likely explanation is invalid extrapolation of lab results under vacuum to calculate diffusion rates under known subsurface pressures.
Oh, come now. We've been through this. Have you asked any specialist in the field of zircon testing about this? If you did, they would tell you that vacuum testing is done all the time with zircons because it doesn't matter. Remember Humphreys easy rebuttal of Henke on this? Henke was comparing soft mica, with water, and Argon which is entirely different than hard zircon, dry, and Helium. Come on, JonF, you can do better than this.
JonF...
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My second most likely scenario is a combination of relatively impervious surroundings combined with some retardation of diffusion, or even reversal of diffusion, by uncommonly high helium concentration in the surroundings.
Come on again. Didn't you read that the measured He concentration in the surrounding biotite was something like 1/200th of the concentration in the zircons. Now how is that helium going to diffuse INTO the zircons?
Sorry, you're wrong.
JonF...
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I just don't understand that last sentence. If God magicked alpha, beta, and electron capture decay processes so as to make the Earth appear billons of years old and correlate essentially perfectly each other and with stratigraphy and other indications, why couldn't He just magic away the radiation and heat too, and magic the spectra of stars while He's at it? Maybe He's just absent-minded ... apparently He forgot to magic diffusion so as to keep it consistent with radiometric results.
Oh brother. Here we go again, accusing Creationists of invoking God's magic tricks at every turn. You forget that you guys have to invoke magic tricks to explain ...
1) Abiogenesis 2) The Origin of the Solar System with proper earth-sun distance 3) The creation of new, more complex features in organisms 4) The evolution of language from animal grunts
etc. etc. etc.
The fact is NO scientist has an explanation for ALL phenomena. And so you make educated guesses. Evos guesses have nothing to do with God and Creos do. That's the only difference. (Oh, there's one other difference ... the Creo's guesses make more sense than the Evos because there are real world analogies that we can relate our guesses to ... oops ... forgot that one)
Creos ALWAYS entertain the possibility of a miracle because they are open-minded enough to realize that IF there is such a thing as a Super-Intelligent Designer out there somewhere, He just might know some things about natural law that we don't know about. He also just might be able to override the natural laws in his universe when he deems it necessary, just as a gardener 'overrides natural law' when he sprays his garden with insecticide, or tills the weeds under.
That's the problem with you guys. You are so myopic, that you have to appeal only to natural laws which you understand and can test with your limited scientific instruments. You won't admit evidence from any other discipline. And as long as you don't, you will continue to be blind.
JonF ...
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Dave, Dave, Dave. You are so slow. That does not explicitly say they are going to carry out more experiments, although it's possible to interpret it as such.
and finally ...
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But I find that they are planning RATE II. From What Comes after RATE?: RATE II is a continuation of research on selected subprojects from RATE which need additional documentation. For example, RATE studied only rocks from the earth, and yet some important estimates of the age of the universe come from meteorite analyses. RATE II will include meteorites and also expand the data set collected by RATE on helium diffusion, isochron discordance, carbon-14 in diamonds, radiohalos, fission tracks, and potassium-40 in pre-Flood insects.
No. You are slow. It took you a while. But you finally found what I was talking about. Good. Maybe you will catch on soon that the Helium-Zircon Project is a stunning blow to long agers. Maybe long agers will actually take the cue from the RATE Group and get cracking on accelerated decay research.
Norm ...
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Don't think of the zircons as the ice cubes, but as flakes of pepper or such inside the ice cubes. The zircons may always be at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, but their surrondings could be cool rocks gradually melting in lava flows.
Yes. The rebuttal is sounding 'FLAKIER AND FLAKIER' so let's change the subject and talk about space flight. Maybe Aftershave could contribute to this one. He's a rocket scientist.
Eric ...
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Dave, I've got evidence for an earth hundreds of thousands to billions of years old from: radiometric data (real radiometric data), fossil evidence, dendrochronology, arctic ice cores, plate tectonics, paleomagnetic studies, theories of planetary development, tidal data, stratigraphic data, particle physics, astronomy, cosmology, and others too numerous to mention.
And I am systematically dismantling all of them. What are you going to do when I blow all your 'millions of evidences' apart and show you why you should have believed Creationists and their 'millions of evidences' for a young earth.
In the mean time you are at a loss to know what to do with Humphreys stunning RATE Results and Henke's lame rebuttal.
Eric ...
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I don't need to. Even if his results were not equivocal, they would be two anomalous results against millions of other results that all agree with each other. If you measured the mass of the electron 15 million times and came up with half a MeV every time, and then twice you got results that were 1.5 grams, would you take the two anomalous results?
Yeah and if your meter is off by 5 orders of magnitude because you close your eyes to the possibility of a Creation event and a Flood event that might have caused accelerated decay, then you can take a BILLION measurements and you'll be wrong a BILLION times.
That's what you guys don't get. You make unwarranted assumptions and build your whole life upon them. This happened with stratigraphy. Lyell (a lawyer, not even a geologist) sold a bill of goods to the geologists with his "Principles of Geology" and they adopted the idea of uniformitarianism. Creationists had been saying all along that uniformitarianism was wrong because they believed Noah's Flood explained everything much better. Well, guess what happened. Uniformitarians finally discarded their theory under the weight of field evidence, but they couldn't admit that creationists were right after all. So they came up with terms like 'punctuated equilibrium' and 'episodicity' and the like.
Same thing is going to happen in radiometric dating.
The creationists are saying it's a young world and point to hundreds of evidences for this. Now they are getting more organized and well funded and it won't be long before the long agers are going to have egg on their face just like the stratigraphers did. What new, creative terms will they come up with to cover up the egg-on-face?
Eric ...
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And the problem is, Dave, you don't read the information at the TalkOrigins site anyway.
I've probably read the Talk Origins stuff more thoroughly than anyone here. Most of it is quite lame.
************* VARIOUS RABBIT TRAILS AND OTHER SUNDRIES ********************
DEADMAN IS TRULY A "DEAD MAN" ON THE LOSS OF WRITING ISSUE
From Wikipedia ...
The earliest known civilizations (as defined in the traditional sense) arose in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq, the Nile valley of Egypt, the Indus Valley region of modern-day Pakistan and North India, and the parallel development of Chinese civilizations in the Huang He (Yellow River) and Yangtze River valleys of China, while smaller civilizations arose in Elam in modern-day Iran, and on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, as well as the Olmec civilization in present-day Mexico. The inhabitants of these areas built cities, created writing systems, learned to make pottery and use metals, domesticated animals, and created complex social structures with class systems.
Deadman ... you don't understand the history of civilization because you are reading the wrong books. If you read the Bible and if you read good books like "The Genesis Flood" by Morris and Whitcomb and material from ICR, you would know that ALL civilizations originated in the areas listed above and the people spread out from there shortly after the Tower of Babel incident. There were many land bridges at that time as the polar ice caps were much more extensive and the seas shallower. It is also likely that there was one large super-continent prior to the Flood and that this separated. In any case, my claim is established easily because all civilizations began in the areas listed above and people spread out from there--this includes your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's native tribe. Some kept the ability to write, some did not. And my claim is further supported by the more specific and easily demonstrated case of the Aztecs and Maya. We will be looking more closely at the Flood, the Dispersion of people groups after Babel, and the possibility of a breakup of a 'Pangea' type super-continent. Suffice to say for now that my best guess is that your ancestors, the N. Am 'Indians' are descended from people groups from Asia which migrated to N. Am by land bridges which were probably in existence for several hundred years following the Flood. This is not easily provable stuff, but there is evidence of it and we will get into it. If my theory is correct, then my statement is supported that your ancestors are descended from a civilization which once had a written language, but then lost it.
The decline of civilizations is interesting, but the really big news is that civilization appeared abruptly, recently and simultaneously in several locations. This is much more easily explained within the Biblical framework than in your 200,000 year gradualist framework. If you really want me to buy into ToE, the burden of proof is on you to try to explain plausibly how humans went along for 195,000 years, PRESTO, all of a sudden they all developed great civilizations with writing, science, astronomy, agriculture, etc.
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I say we know this and I have said WHY we know this, DaveTard: I gave you a list of non-radiometric methods used to date sites across the world, DaveTard, and you know that, but you avoid answering at all.
Yes. And they are based upon flawed assumptions. We will get to that shortly, but first we are looking at the RATE Project and related issues.
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When I ask you about the dendrochronology used to date such sites in North America, DaveTard, you avoid that too.
Oh no. Not avoiding. Just not one of my selected rabbit trails. We will get to it though. Patience, Deadman!
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Yeah, you sicken me.
You're not sick. Your dead! :-)
Ichtyic...
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go ask Alan MacNeill (the instructor), if he thinks his course is trying to promote ID.
Oh no. I didn't say he is trying to promote ID. But nevertheless he IS promoting ID. Ain't it great!
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will he get bored, even?
Not until I get through my points. I am enjoying the fact that no of the evolutionists have very good arguments. They have a lot of rhetoric and mud to sling, but not much science. I have noticed that you don't have much sciency stuff to say. What is your occupation?
Clamboy ...
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However, you do provide this long-time lurker with a lot of amusement, and some opportunity (through the efforts of others) to learn, and so again I thank you.
You're welcome! On your deathbed, you will really thank me because then you will be only minutes away from meeting your Creator!
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Your original intent here was, obviously, to dismantle mainstream science, from biology to cosmology to geology to you name it.
No. It is to dismantle the ToE and Millions of Years and establish the Biblical framework of Creation and the Flood. I like most of mainstream science. Most of it is quite beneficial to the world.
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Does AFDave drive a Hummer? Does he own a dachschund?
No, but my skin is green and I just have one eye in the middle of my forehead!
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This is the scarcely-concealed tacit racism that led to missionaries like DaveTard's daddy to spend their time among "degenerate heathens" that didn't *need* anything from DaveTard's kind except to be left alone.
Oh, yeah. That would be nice. So they could die. They came to my dad all the time asking him what he was going to do when they all died. No kidding. They really said this.
My dad saved them from dying out, and I am an eyewitness of this.
Your a dead man, Deadman, at least about your anthropology.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Small correction to my post about pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing: apparently speakers of Aztecan, Mayan, Zapotec, and Mixtecan languages all had writing. It's probably safe to assume that Mesoamerican writing was created de novo once, and that all the later groups simply borrowed the idea. I think the consensus is that the Zapotecs created writing first, tho this isn't my specialization, so I'm not positive of that.
Like I said a week ago, it's thought that writing was probably only ever invented three times (Mesoamerica, China, Mesopotamia), and that every other writing system is an example of borrowing either someone else's system, or just the idea itself.
Naturally, none of this has the slightest effect on the validity of AFD's main idea. I.e., none of this somehow 'proves' a Young Earth.
More likely the Olmecs; they preceeded early Mayan development.
Your a dead man, Deadman, at least about your anthropology.
Sad, too.
The amazing thing about Dave is that if he weren't so incapable of using critical thinking skills, I'd feel guilty for making fun of him and demolishing his various idiotic non-arguments.
Bill, are you under the misapprehension that any liberal must necessarily agree with Foucault? I think the guy's an idiot, and always have.
You've got some really weird ideas about what "liberals" think, Mr. Paley.
No, that is not what I'm saying--but in your defense (along with everyone else on this thread), I can see why you're misinterpreting me. What I am saying is:
1) The guy was a sociopath, and doesn't get much of my sympathy (I save that for the poor saps he infected)
2) He did take liberal atheism to its logical conclusion
3) While some liberals can't abide his philosophy, they rarely air Foucault's dirty laundry for the public's benefit. Furthermore, many professors substitute hero worship for a balanced critique of his philosophy. They defraud their students when they do this. Sokal, of course, is one exception.
Faid ... I think you may be all wet about chromosome fusion. Down's syndrome is a bad thing, right? Caused by chromosome fusion, right?
I understand that there are many other diseases caused by chromosome fusion, are there not? I think you denied this, but you gave no links or proof.
Can you supply those, please?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Aftershave ... I'm still waiting on you to show your knowledge about the RATE group and He and zircons ...
I asked Steve Story ...
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You've been pretty silent on RATE ... you are a physics major ... don't you have anything to say about it?
And he said ...
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I'm a physics graduate, not a major. But yes, I do know a little bit about radioisotope dating. I have a friend who was on the team which did the first precise date of Meteor Crater. About 40,000 years old, IIRC. And creationist attempts to refute the radiometric evidence for an old earth are among the dumbest things I've ever seen. They're so bad that occasionally scientists who are embarrassed christians write essays trying to get their peers to stop saying such stupid things.
Translation: I don't much about Helium and zircons, but I have a famous buddy who knows a lot about radiometric dating and he assures me that the earth is 4+ billion years old. So I trust him. Me, I like biting ankles and throwing mud at Creos.
Hello, Steve ... are you there?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
2) He did take liberal atheism to its logical conclusion
I'm a liberal atheist and you have no idea what you're talking about.
Now--why don't you post a geocentric model so we can take it to its logical conclusions, which we believe will be very funny.
Yes, Dave, I am here. Your fantastic misreprentation of me didn't need any response from me, for people to see how crazy it is. No need to gild the lilly, so to speak.
Was the Tower of Babel incident before or after the Flood?
AFTER
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, I'll tell you why I'm not biting on your RATE business. You let me down on the relativity bit. I wasted time trying to provoke you into coming up with an actual justification for your claim, because I wanted to see what kind of unpredictible nonsense you'd come up with in a field I know something about, and in the end, I got nothing. "Special Relativity lets me concieve of a god like in the bible." That was a big disappointment, Dave. We're wasting our time with you, just like we're wasting time with Paley. He's never going to deliver, either.
Dave, I've got evidence for an earth hundreds of thousands to billions of years old from: radiometric data (real radiometric data), fossil evidence, dendrochronology, arctic ice cores, plate tectonics, paleomagnetic studies, theories of planetary development, tidal data, stratigraphic data, particle physics, astronomy, cosmology, and others too numerous to mention.
And I am systematically dismantling all of them. What are you going to do when I blow all your 'millions of evidences' apart and show you why you should have believed Creationists and their 'millions of evidences' for a young earth.
BlackKnight Dave, you're hallucinating. As I've said many times before, the only person you're persuading is yourself. "Dismantling" them? That's comically wrong. Every single piece of "evidence" (well, all three of them) you've used to prop up your delusional young-earth myth has been annihilated, but you're too igorant of the underlying science to realize that. And every time you've tried to "disprove" the evidence for an old earth, you've been comprehensively wrong. The fact that you ignore (and fail to understand) the devastating criticisms of your arguments is the only reason you think you're "winning" anything here.
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In the mean time you are at a loss to know what to do with Humphreys stunning RATE Results and Henke's lame rebuttal.
No, the links I and others have provided to you have utterly demolished RATE's "research." Everyone else here is well aware of how intellectually bankrupt RATE really is. The only reason you aren't is because you simply refuse to see anything that contradicts your worldview. As I stated before, you positively enjoy being lied to.
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Eric ...
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I don't need to. Even if his results were not equivocal, they would be two anomalous results against millions of other results that all agree with each other. If you measured the mass of the electron 15 million times and came up with half a MeV every time, and then twice you got results that were 1.5 grams, would you take the two anomalous results?
Yeah and if your meter is off by 5 orders of magnitude because you close your eyes to the possibility of a Creation event and a Flood event that might have caused accelerated decay, then you can take a BILLION measurements and you'll be wrong a BILLION times.
And your evidence that the entire scientific community is wrong is…what, exactly? You keep getting a mass of 1.5 grams for the electron, and when we explain to you that a liter of water containing electrons that weighed 1.5 grams each would weigh more than the North American continent, you ignore us.
And would you like to explain to us how a "flood event" would speed up radioactive decay, Dave? Even the CRI people know that enough radioactive decay to give them the results they want would melt the planet.
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That's what you guys don't get. You make unwarranted assumptions and build your whole life upon them. This happened with stratigraphy.
No, Black Knight, that's what you don't get. The premises radiometric dating uses are well-founded, based on decades of observation and experiment, and have withstood the peer review process over and over again. Your assumptions fly in the face of reality and common sense. You somehow persist in your belief in a 6,000 year old universe in the face of evidence of human artifacts that are more than twice that age!
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Lyell (a lawyer, not even a geologist) sold a bill of goods to the geologists with his "Principles of Geology" and they adopted the idea of uniformitarianism. Creationists had been saying all along that uniformitarianism was wrong because they believed Noah's Flood explained everything much better. Well, guess what happened. Uniformitarians finally discarded their theory under the weight of field evidence, but they couldn't admit that creationists were right after all. So they came up with terms like 'punctuated equilibrium' and 'episodicity' and the like.
Creationists were right? In what way were they "right," Dave? Have you worked out your proposal for how much water was requried for your global flood?
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Same thing is going to happen in radiometric dating.
Have you ever noticed, Dave, that everything in creation "science" is "going to happen"? Creationism has been around for at least 6,000 years, Dave, and so far it's been losing ground every year for at least the last 150 years. Real science has made more progress in explaining experience in the last century and a half than creationism has in the last six millennia. And the really entertaining thing is, as more is known about the world, creationism explains less and less of it!
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The creationists are saying it's a young world and point to hundreds of evidences for this.
Gee, Dave, if that were actually true, I would have thought you'd be able to find some of it. We're still waiting for you to present one piece of credible evidence, let alone hundreds.
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Now they are getting more organized and well funded and it won't be long before the long agers are going to have egg on their face just like the stratigraphers did.
They're just getting organized now, after 6,000 years? What's been holding them up? Creationists already have egg on their faces; they're swimming in egg. They keep getting caught in lie after lie after lie after lie. And you continue to believe their lies, even after we show you they're lies.
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Eric ...
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And the problem is, Dave, you don't read the information at the TalkOrigins site anyway.
I've probably read the Talk Origins stuff more thoroughly than anyone here. Most of it is quite lame.
Dave, when I send someone a link to a 50,000-word paper, and their criticism of it is that it's "lame," I can draw one of two conclusions: either they skimmed the thing, or they read it but can think of no valid criticism. If you want me to believe you read the Theobald article, understood it, and have criticisms of it, you're going to have to do better than to say it's "lame." What about it, specifically, is "lame," Dave? Or do you just think it's "lame" because it contradicts your worldview?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well, I said I was done, but since you've been answering questions today, I think I'll try again (6th time I believe):
1. Does your Creator God Hypothesis predict that humans had an immune system before the fall, or not? 2. If so, what was it for, and if not, where did it come from?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
You claimed that amerinds in both North and South america had written language and lost it, Dave.
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There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined. Most of the ancient civilizations had writing ...so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing
I asked you to support that , Dave. -- 2) What is your evidence that Amerinds-- other than the Maya and Aztec-- had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed.
You want to use the Aztec and Maya as examples, though? Please show me that the Maya groups lost their writing ability, Dave. What they did was adopt European syllabaries as a substitute. Same with the Nahua Aztecs, Dave. Same with the Zapotecs, Dave. Same with the descendants of the Mixtec, Dave...forcible replacement of one written language with another is not quite what you claimed , Dave.
To try to back your stupid claims, DaveTard2, you list the Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Iran, and Mexico. You say that these groups appeared abruptly, recently and simultaneously.
No they didn't. They were thousands of years apart in the case of the Olmecs and Crete versus China and Egypt.
Nor were they "abrupt" since each of those has known antecedent archaeology that lead up to state-level systems.
Nor does the emergence of those state-level systems match your flood dates, Dave...or your Creation of the Earth dates, Dave.
Then, DaveTard, most amusingly of all, you stupidly say this:
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ALL civilizations **originated in the areas listed above** and the people spread out from there shortly after the Tower of Babel incident.
(my emphases)
Dave...stupid....The tower of BABEL was where? Where is Mexico? Where is China? How could civilization start in all the areas you mention and still be informed of a "Babel" incident when they are not near the middle east?
Think about what you posted DaveCretin...
As to your claim that your daddy "saved" anyone...What was the name of the group/tribe? I have the entire HRAF files at my disposal, Dave. I don't believe you in the least, but I DO believe it's quite possible that you're lying, as you have so many other times.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Bill, are you under the misapprehension that any liberal must necessarily agree with Foucault? I think the guy's an idiot, and always have.
You've got some really weird ideas about what "liberals" think, Mr. Paley.
No, that is not what I'm saying--but in your defense (along with everyone else on this thread), I can see why you're misinterpreting me. What I am saying is:
1) The guy was a sociopath, and doesn't get much of my sympathy (I save that for the poor saps he infected)
2) He did take liberal atheism to its logical conclusion
3) While some liberals can't abide his philosophy, they rarely air Foucault's dirty laundry for the public's benefit. Furthermore, many professors substitute hero worship for a balanced critique of his philosophy. They defraud their students when they do this. Sokal, of course, is one exception.
Short GoP:
"Okay, maybe 'libbies' don't all worship Foucault. But he 'took liberal atheism to its logical (as defined by me) conclusion' and liberals don't mention Foucault's misbehavior often enough to make me happy, so therefore my tarring of all liberals by appealing to Foucalt's personal habits is still valid."
This sort of reminds me of how fundies react when you call them on their "atheists can't be moral" rhetoric. When you point out counterevidence, their response is generally "well, maybe individual atheists can adhere to some kind of ethical standards, but their ideology (as defined by me) doesn't demand such morals (in my opinion), therefore they basically aren't moral. Despite whatever they might actually do in their day-to-day lives".
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Oh no. I didn't say he is trying to promote ID. But nevertheless he IS promoting ID. Ain't it great!
would it be redundant at this point to say:
Only in your mind, Dave.
I could pick any of a million topics to show the logical fallacy in your statement, but since it's been raised;
Your statement is equivalent to someone saying that a professor who asks his students to research the history of research on AIDS is "promoting" AIDS.
IOW, you apparently are of the belief that "there is no such thing as bad publicity". Since in the end, anyone taking MacNeill's course would come away with a VERY clear picture of exactly how bad ID has really performed from a real world standpoint.
However, it doesn't surprise me you think bad PR is "good" PR.
one more reason you shouldn't teach kids.
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I have noticed that you don't have much sciency stuff to say. What is your occupation?
we're dozens of pages and hundreds of posts into your dementia.
at what point did you think ANYBODY here was really thinking they could educate you, or that you even came here to understand anything?
but I am curious, what effect would you knowing that I'm the emporer of outer Mongolia have on your ability to reason?
I suspect it would have something to do with an irrational belief in authority, rather than substance, as you exhibit continually.
It goes right along with the malady you are suffering from, as it allows you to present a "non-defense". In other words, it allows you to deflect contradictory evidence onto someone else's arguments than your own.
don't agree with evidence OA presents on radiometric dating? No reason to have a position based on evidence yourself, you can just deflect his arguments onto the RATE guys.
Works great, eh?
It's not an argument that will stand in reality, tho.
again, one more reason you shouldn't teach kids. All they will have to rely on is the argument from authority that you give them.
what happens when they find out that the "authority" you refer them to really isn't?
How will YOU be able to help them then?
you won't. which means that they will have to try and resolve the issues all on their own, which in your case didn't end up too well.
Could you even answer their basic questions wrt to physics relating to your proffered specialty of electrical engineering?
you seem to be lacking even basic knowledge of your own field.
did you reject it entirely?
did you reject everything you learned after your parents taught you about god?
did you go through a period of rejecting your parent's teachings, only to be "born again"?
now if you could only figure out why...
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined.
Okay, Dave. It's showtime. Put up or shut up. WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS? Real proof. No more of your "C'mon guys, it's just OBVIOUS!" nonsense. Proof.
Do you even HAVE a concept of proof as separate from "I really want it to be true, so therefore it's true"?
See Dave, this is why we think you're an idiot: you make sweeping statements based on absolutely no evidence. Back in normal society, they call that being delusional at best, or insane at worst.
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Most of the ancient civilizations had writing
Wrong. Most did not. The great majority did not.
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...so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing
'Your dad's jungle natives'? So, as the man who introduced Fundamentalist Protestantism to them, they 'belonged' to your dad? ?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Let me make clear your errors, Davecretin. I have read Morris. I have read the ICR crap. You mangle both of them when you say that civilizations begin in the areas you listed (Mexico, China, etc. ) **THEN** disperse FOLLOWING a Tower of Babel incident.
I thought you knew the Bible DaveTard? What does chapter 11 of Genesis say?
Oh, and DaveStupid? Note that the ICR says here that
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Biblical chronologies place the Babel incident at 4200 or so years ago. Many of the expelled groups took with them technological knowledge which they put to use in their new homelands. History documents the fact that several major cultures sprang into existence seemingly from nowhere at about the same time—the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Phoenicians, the Indians, as well as the Chinese
You can't even argue what you CLAIM to know in the Bible or from ICR or Morris correctly.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Don't think of the zircons as the ice cubes, but as flakes of pepper or such inside the ice cubes. The zircons may always be at or very near to thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, but their surrondings could be cool rocks gradually melting in lava flows.
Yes. The rebuttal is sounding 'FLAKIER AND FLAKIER' so let's change the subject and talk about space flight. Maybe Aftershave could contribute to this one. He's a rocket scientist.
You never even bothered to read the link you lazy ass.
Just because I link an article from Spaceflight Now doesn't mean the article is about space flight. The article in question is about zircons and dating the age of the Earth.
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By probing a tiny grain of zircon, a mineral commonly used to determine the geological age of rocks, scientists from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, Colgate University, Curtin University in Australia and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland have found evidence that 4.4 billion years ago, temperatures had cooled to the 100-degree Centigrade range, a discovery that suggests an early Earth far different from the one previously imagined.
....
The new picture of the earliest Earth is based on a single, tiny grain of zircon from western Australia found and dated by Simon Wilde, of the School of Applied Geology at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia. Valley worked with William Peck, a geologist at Colgate University, to analyze oxygen isotope ratios, measure rare earth elements, and determine element composition in a grain of zircon that measured little more than the diameter of two human hairs. Colin Graham's laboratory analyzed the zircon to obtain the oxygen isotope ratios.
So, your data based on helium is contradicted by data based on oxygen isotope ratios.
It looks like just two different anomalies with little supporting evidence to back them up.
You can't depend on the law of averages when you samples are so small.
Aftershave ... I'm still waiting on you to show your knowledge about the RATE group and He and zircons ...
Half a dozen people have already pointed out the fatal flaws in the RATE Helium/zircon assumptions, and you ignored every last bit of evidence. Nothing I can say would add to the information you're already received but decided to ignore. Frankly Washout, you're not worth the effort.
You, however, have provided no evidence at all for any of your goofy YEC claims
I'm still waiting for you to explain the thousands of human artifacts that have been radiocarbon dated back to over 40,000 years. Your RATE buddies can't bail you out this time - their C14 gripe was that "coal and diamonds have high levels of C14 so can't be over 58,000 years old". Even if that were true (which it isn't BTW), that doesn't explain the objects that date less than 58,000 but older than 6000 years old. Kinda torpedoes your “Earth is only 6000 years old” nonsense, eh? And if you REALLY want to look like a complete moron, start arguing that all C14 dating is wrong – I dare ya. (OA readies his big stick again).
Also, I’d like to see your evidence for this latest claim you made
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Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
Please provide a list of credible articles that were submitted by Creationists to mainstream scientific journals, but were rejected solely due to the author’s YEC beliefs.
You won’t do it because we all know you’re a lying coward who can’t do it. You continue to be the Creationist idiot flunky who can repeatedly put his head through his assh*le quicker than a bug hit by the windshield of an F1 racecar.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
"Okay, maybe 'libbies' don't all worship Foucault. But he 'took liberal atheism to its logical (as defined by me) conclusion' and liberals don't mention Foucault's misbehavior often enough to make me happy, so therefore my tarring of all liberals by appealing to Foucalt's personal habits is still valid."
Part of the problem, I now see, is that many educated liberals don't know about Foucault's true beliefs. This (along with my vague writing) helps explain your reaction to my first post on the topic. I admit I should have specified what I detested about the man, but geez, guys, I woulda thought that you were more familiar with his scribblings. But now you know, so there's no excuse. The next time someone praises his writings, do pass along the tidbits you learned, willya? One man can only do so much.....
Faid ... I think you may be all wet about chromosome fusion. Down's syndrome is a bad thing, right? Caused by chromosome fusion, right?
I understand that there are many other diseases caused by chromosome fusion, are there not? I think you denied this, but you gave no links or proof.
Can you supply those, please?
Oh reeeeaaaaly?
From your "prove evolution" thread, a couple posts after you first mentioned this:
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Well, since we're now discussing loss of functions again, can you answer my question, dave? This is the fifth time I'm asking...
Oh, about the Down Syndrome thing: I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that a fusion is responsible for its occurence? That's simply not true. For the vast majority of cases, failed disjunction (sp?) is the reason: and that's affected by things like the mother's age etc. Now, a quick glance at my old textbooks told me that there are in fact a few cases of DS attributed to chromosome fusions (Robertsonian translocations); but those are like, 3% of the total number. Or is it that you are claiming that all fusions have such disastrous effects? That is also extremely incorrect. In all the people in the world today, more than 1 in 1000 has a kind of Robertsonian translocation. Most of those are "balanced" fusions, and their carriers have no phaenotypic problem. It has been suggested that these people might have an increased risk in giving birth to children with genetic defects (like Down), but recent studies propose that the risk is much smaller than previously thought. As for other mammals: Robertsonian translocations of various kinds are quite common, especially in horses and cows, with only a minor drop in fertility as a result -which may pose problems for selective breeding, but none for the animal's survival. IIRC, there's also a kind of antelope where a RobT is so common and without problems, the population of the species has three distinct caryotypes, with 24, 25 and 26 chromosomes.But I'll cave to check that out.
You must have missed that, eh?
Oh, and links: check page 37, post 5 in this thread. Oops, that kinda slipped past you too... and to think that you were online at the time...
Shows how much you really pay attention to what we tell you. Meh, nothing new there.
The earliest known civilizations (as defined in the traditional sense) arose in Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Iraq, the Nile valley of Egypt, the Indus Valley region of modern-day Pakistan and North India, and the parallel development of Chinese civilizations in the Huang He (Yellow River) and Yangtze River valleys of China, while smaller civilizations arose in Elam in modern-day Iran, and on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, as well as the Olmec civilization in present-day Mexico. The inhabitants of these areas built cities, created writing systems, learned to make pottery and use metals, domesticated animals, and created complex social structures with class systems.
(boldfacing AFD's, I assume.)
Let's take a couple steps back here.
What on earth does Dave think this proves?
That some ancient civilizations had writing systems? I think we knew that already.
Somehow this magically means that thousands of other peoples had writing systems in the past (such as North America and South America), but they lost it. No evidence is offered for this idea. It's just true by being asserted.
Somehow this is supposed to mean that 'everyone' had writing thousands of years ago (no more than 5,000-6,000 tho! :-)).
In turn, THIS is supposed to imply that people can't go any length of time without writing. Again, no evidence is offered for this.
And, therefore, 'it's impossible' that people could have existed for hundreds of thousands of years before that, since, after all, they wouldn't have had writing! No evidence is offered for this, either.
Therefore, since people couldn't have gone more than a couple years without writing, the Earth is only 5,000-6,000 years old. Voila!
(Oh yes, and this trumps geological and astromical evidence.)
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
'Your dad's jungle natives'? So, as the man who introduced Fundamentalist Protestantism to them, they 'belonged' to your dad? ?
that statement speaks volumes, eh?
We're all children to Dave. He's trying to practice the indoctrination methods he plans to use for the kids he wants to "teach".
Just be glad he doesn't live in your neighborhood.
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I thought you knew the Bible DaveTard? What does chapter 11 of Genesis say?
I totally forgot that Dave had clearly shown his ignorance of the very "source material" he says he relies on.
However, it really doesn't surprise me. He's been consistently ignorant about EVERY topic he's ever raised here.
again, quite remarkable, really; not only does he filter "controversial" topics like ToE through his dementia, but ANY subject apparently goes down that black hole.
I predict that no matter how long he stays here, he NEVER will be able to make any argument without falling back to relying on false authority, and then jumping to another subject.
He is a transitional creature, ever deflecting any attempts to crack those defenses he's so carefully built up around himself. When you get close to pinnning him on one issue, he'll just squirt like a watermelon seed onto the next.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Part of the problem, I now see, is that many educated liberals don't know about Foucault's true beliefs. This (along with my vague writing) helps explain your reaction to my first post on the topic. I admit I should have specified what I detested about the man, but geez, guys, I woulda thought that you were more familiar with his scribblings. But now you know, so there's no excuse. The next time someone praises his writings, do pass along the tidbits you learned, willya? One man can only do so much.....
Oh Jesus F. Christ.
Okay, first GoP complains that Foucault is typical of all liberals, all liberals worship him, and that Foucault is the basis for liberal thought.
Then when it's pointed out that none of the liberals here worship Foucault, that in fact many of them either haven't read him or reject him, what does GoP do? Does this indicate that his initial statement about Foucault's influence on liberals is WRONG? No, he complains about how terrible it is that we haven't read him.
A man that GoP apparently disapproves of terribly, and who is evidently such a massive influence on liberals, and he's irked that the libbies aren't basing their lives on him. We're failing to live up to his stereotypes, and this annoys him greatly. And, he sees no contradiction here.
And even tho no one here worships him, somehow Foucault is still germane to this discussion.
Shit, if we HAD all read him, GoP would scorn us for that, too! Make up your frigging mind!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Part of the problem, I now see, is that many educated liberals don't know about Foucault's true beliefs. This (along with my vague writing) helps explain your reaction to my first post on the topic. I admit I should have specified what I detested about the man, but geez, guys, I woulda thought that you were more familiar with his scribblings. But now you know, so there's no excuse. The next time someone praises his writings, do pass along the tidbits you learned, willya? One man can only do so much.....
Among all my liberal atheist buddes, I can't think of a single time anyone ever mentioned Foucault. I think maybe my english grad student friend abbie might have mentioned him one time, but I can't remember clearly. President of Libatheistan, he was not. Among the liberal atheists I know, I'd say the most influential people have been Einstein, Feynman, Dan Dennet, Kurt Vonnegut, Voltaire. They're the only ones who aren't uncommon in conversation w/r/t values and other philisophical things.
Y'know, I'm pretty damned impressed with the thrashing AFarceDave is getting at every turn. His posts are getting more selective, more hysterical, more filled with his robot-like repetition.
Oh, Arden? I was going to post some links for you if you didn't already have them. There used to be two other really great online resources for Mesoamerican stuff, but I checked and they're now defunct. But these are still around:
here and here , with a language "overview " site here
I did my grad work on the Aztec Pochteca (trader-merchants) and the Chichimec "northern barbarians" of the Sonora. Any group that the Aztecs called "barbarians" had to be mean mofo's. Personally, I think they're the ones that ate the Anasazi at times. The Aztec traders got turquoise from Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado *through* those bad boys.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Part of the problem, I now see, is that many educated liberals don't know about Foucault's true beliefs. This (along with my vague writing) helps explain your reaction to my first post on the topic. I admit I should have specified what I detested about the man, but geez, guys, I woulda thought that you were more familiar with his scribblings. But now you know, so there's no excuse. The next time someone praises his writings, do pass along the tidbits you learned, willya? One man can only do so much.....
I'm not sure how that's relevant, Bill, nor do I see how Foucault's personal beliefs can be extendend to criticism of Liberal beliefs.
How would you interpret it if I took the writings of, e.g., Hitler and Mussolini, both of whom are clearly to the right of the political spectrum, and used them to tar the beliefs of all conservatives? I don't know of any liberals (and, living in San Francisco, I know a lot of liberals) who give a crap about Foucault, or think his beliefs are a natural consequence of liberal thought. Are Hitler's beliefs a natural consequence of conservative thought?
Perhaps you think liberals should loudly and frequently disavow Foucault. Why should they? Who outside of academia even knows who Foucault is? Should I be upset with conservatives because they do not loudly and frequently disavow the beliefs of Benito Mussolini? Do I have to advertise all the extreme left-wingers I disagree with? I'm not ashamed of or embarrassed by Foucault, or Derrida, or any of those guys. Why should I be? Their beliefs have nothing to do with mine. Are you ashamed of Mr. Hitler, Bill?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Part of the problem, I now see, is that many educated liberals don't know about Foucault's true beliefs. This (along with my vague writing) helps explain your reaction to my first post on the topic. I admit I should have specified what I detested about the man, but geez, guys, I woulda thought that you were more familiar with his scribblings. But now you know, so there's no excuse. The next time someone praises his writings, do pass along the tidbits you learned, willya? One man can only do so much.....
Oh Jesus F. Christ.
Okay, first GoP complains that Foucault is typical of all liberals, all liberals worship him, and that Foucault is the basis for liberal thought.
Then when it's pointed out that none of the liberals here worship Foucault, that in fact many of them either haven't read him or reject him, what does GoP do? Does this indicate that his initial statement about Foucault's influence on liberals is WRONG? No, he complains about how terrible it is that we haven't read him.
A man that GoP apparently disapproves of terribly, and who is evidently such a massive influence on liberals, and he's irked that the libbies aren't basing their lives on him. We're failing to live up to his stereotypes, and this annoys him greatly. And, he sees no contradiction here.
And even tho no one here worships him, somehow Foucault is still germane to this discussion.
Shit, if we HAD all read him, GoP would scorn us for that, too! Make up your frigging mind!
And let's not forget that it's Paley who brought Foucault up, in a completely irrelevant subject...
...Can you say "troll"?
Cut the BS and work on your model, Ghost.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Among the liberal atheists I know, I'd say the most influential people have been Einstein, Feynman, Dan Dennet, Kurt Vonnegut, Voltaire.
hmm, I've actually considered that I have been more influenced by the likes of Robertson, Fallwell, and IDiots like Behe and Dembski.
...as a very heavy negative influence wrt to religion.
and Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, and the rest of the "neocon" blackguards as great negative influences of the "conservative" bent. Though I doubt they even remember what a true conservative really is.
Yeah, let's not forget the value these folks have had as "influential" thinkers as well.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
You know, you have a point there. Paley has not loudly and frequently denounced Hitler...
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hmm, I've actually considered that I have been more influenced by the likes of Robertson, Fallwell, and IDiots like Behe and Dembski.
...as a very heavy negative influence wrt to religion.
Yeah, you're definitely right, there. I suspect many atheists, like myself, weren't convinced of atheism by rhetoric, so much as we heard the arguments for religion, and found them foolish and credulous.
It is also likely that there was one large super-continent prior to the Flood and that this separated. In any case, my claim is established easily because all civilizations began in the areas listed above and people spread out from there--this includes your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's native tribe. Some kept the ability to write, some did not. And my claim is further supported by the more specific and easily demonstrated case of the Aztecs and Maya. We will be looking more closely at the Flood, the Dispersion of people groups after Babel, and the possibility of a breakup of a 'Pangea' type super-continent. Suffice to say for now that my best guess is that your ancestors, the N. Am 'Indians' are descended from people groups from Asia which migrated to N. Am by land bridges which were probably in existence for several hundred years following the Flood. This is not easily provable stuff, but there is evidence of it and we will get into it. If my theory is correct, then my statement is supported that your ancestors are descended from a civilization which once had a written language, but then lost it.
You know, I think I've figured out AFD's basic debating style. It's basically piling up non sequiturs and hoping people will assume there must be a connection between them, since, after all, you mentioned them all at the same time!
Specifically: string together several unconnected facts that people agree on. Sprinkle in several creationist ideas in with the real facts, without identifying them. Discuss them as tho they're the same thing. Make an implication that all these facts derive from each other, and that they 'prove' your argument. Then call your opponents blind for not seeing the connections. When really backed into a corner, mention Jesus.
For example, in the above, what on earth does the Bering Sea land bridge have to do with anything? Nothing, but I guess mentioning it, AFD thinks he'll ressure us how much he's read up on the literature.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Wow. You managed to use Hitler in the only way that he can be used as an appeal to emotion and still not invoke Godwin: Adopting the opponent's stance to disprove it.
You guys are good.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Oh, Arden? I was going to post some links for you if you didn't already have them. There used to be two other really great online resources for Mesoamerican stuff, but I checked and they're now defunct. But these are still around:
here and here , with a language "overview " site here
I did my grad work on the Aztec Pochteca (trader-merchants) and the Chichimec "northern barbarians" of the Sonora. Any group that the Aztecs called "barbarians" had to be mean mofo's. Personally, I think they're the ones that ate the Anasazi at times. The Aztec traders got turquoise from Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado *through* those bad boys.
Those first two links are quite nice, but the third link doesn't work!
I'm rather wobbly on the Mesoamerican prehistory. I'm far more knowledgeable on that of North America.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Oh, and to throw my two cents in on the "Foucault as an Icon of Liberals" nonsense--I'm a liberal and I view Foucault as a prime example of post-modernist tripe couched in deliberately obscurantist, contradictory language. See Gross and Levitt's (1994) "Higher Superstition," Johns Hopkins U. Press.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Another thing I've noticed about Dave's "debating" style is that if he can find one piece of evidence that appears to support his position, he thinks he's made his case.
For example, he thinks that because he can point to some precontact American civilizations that had writing, all such civilizations had writing. Because some (two! ) zircons have anomalously high levels of He, then all zircons prove a young age for the earth. Because at least one chromosomal fusion has negative consequences, therefore all chromosomal fusions must be bad things.
But I can't wait to see what he comes up with for evidence for a global flood. Because some floods have happened, that proves that his flood must have happened!
So, where'd all the water go, Dave?
Dave?
Anyone there?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Maybe this one, then for a general language overview.
Thanks!
I think the problem is that there's so little overlap between prehistoric Mesoamerica and prehistoric North America, and both of them are immensely complex, so therefore if you master one, it essentially entails a DOUBLING of your effort to master the other. And you can take ten years or more to be able to call yourself an expert in either with a straight face, so you can see why rather few scholars 'do' both.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Oh, and to throw my two cents in on the "Foucault as an Icon of Liberals" nonsense--I'm a liberal and I view Foucault as a prime example of post-modernist tripe couched in deliberately obscurantist, contradictory language. See Gross and Levitt's (1994) "Higher Superstition," Johns Hopkins U. Press.
And why did Gross/Levitt write the book, Number Nine? Because they were ashamed of their liberal colleagues. The authors said so themselves in the introduction. Obviously, they felt that Foucault, Derrida, et al had some influence on liberal humanists (in both senses of the term).
hmm, i know the reference, but what about looking at the supposed entire phrase that seems to run in gawp's mind:
Number nine was supposedly: "You turn me on dead man" when played in reverse.
hmm.
Do dead folks really turn you on, gawp? You do seem preoccupied with the philosophy and sociology of dead men; and one of your favorite threads to post on here is the one dealing with homosexuality...
does make me wonder...
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
And why did Gross/Levitt write the book, Number Nine? Because they were ashamed of their liberal colleagues. The authors said so themselves in the introduction. Obviously, they felt that Foucault, Derrida, et al had some influence on liberal humanists (in both senses of the term).
Again: are you ashamed of Mr. Hitler, Bill? Do you believe that Hitler's political views invalidate all right-of-center views?
Is your point that there are extremists on the left end of the political spectrum? Are you further of the belief that there are no extremists on the right end of that spectrum?
Somehow, I fail to be embarrassed by the political views of someone I disagree with completely. Do you find that at all surprising?
Are you ashamed of the rantings of, e.g., Ann Coulter? If you believe Gross and Levitt should be ashamed of Foucault, I definitely think you should be ashamed of Coulter. And Limbaugh. And Mike Savage. And Bill O'reilly. And Sean Hannity. Need I go on?
And, of the five names I just gave you, whom do you think is about on par in terms of name recognition with Mr. Foucault?
Oh—and how are we doing with our parallax, Bill? Monday has come and is in danger of going.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I haven't read Derrida, either. Will this be a problem?
Little did I realize how massively influenced I am by people I know next to nothing about. Who knew?
And since my political philosophy is pretty similar to that of my parents, I'm quite amazed to find out people can be influenced so heavily by books that haven't even been written yet. That's how strong these ideas are -- they can actually reach back into the past.
That's it, I'm writing a paper about how Ann Coulter was a big influence on Barry Goldwater.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Obviously, they felt that Foucault, Derrida, et al had some influence on liberal humanists (in both senses of the term).
Your point? I mean, other than the one under your hat? If I say I am liberal and I only know of two liberals --out of the thousands of people I've ever met-- who take *Foucault* seriously, then what?
Derrida is even more obscurantist and unappealing to me. Post-modernism in general irks me, although they have had a few interesting things to say, in my view. Intellectual fads sweep through every socio-political division. Big deal. In my field of archaeology, it was termed "post-processualism" and derived from structuralism and the half-baked ideas of literary critics, as Gross and Levitt nicely note. It made some very minor "contributions" and is not really imporant except to a few people scattered through academia.
Now, don't you have a geocentric model to concoct, GoP? I realize you have some deep need for attention/approval but this is not a thread about you, GoP. And no, given your rantings on epistemology, logic, language, and the mutilation of known science I saw here and in your thread...you don't impress me. I know you're fairly bright, but I've met really bright people. Murray Gell-Mann comes to mind..and you're not that level. But, ####, you do feel this deep-seated need for trying to pretend to be.
Now, shoo. Go figure out how to deal with stellar abberational displacement.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Again: are you ashamed of Mr. Hitler, Bill? Do you believe that Hitler's political views invalidate all right-of-center views?
If Hitler (or Heidegger, for that matter) profoundly shaped the conservative academics teaching our nation's universities, then yes, I would be ashamed. But we both know that didn't happen. So why did so many English majors fall under Foucault's spell?
Number Nine:
Quote
Now, don't you have a geocentric model to concoct, GoP? I realize you have some deep need for attention/approval but this is not a thread about you, GoP. And no, given your rantings on epistemology, logic, language, and the mutilation of known science I saw here and in your thread...you don't impress me. I know you're fairly bright, but I've met really bright people. Murray Gell-Mann comes to mind..and you're not that level. But, ####, you do feel this deep-seated need for trying to pretend to be.
And let's not forget Freud while we're at it. But don't worry, I saved a proper rebuttal for the geocentric thread.
I know that some deluded Christians argue that AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality, but real ones don't agree. There is a difference between a sinful lifestyle and psychopathology, however, and I think that the punishment fit the crime in Foucault's case.
Oh, OK so your God doesn't punish all gay people with awful illnesses, just one or two.. I will admit, I jumped to a conclusion. But your God still has a poor aim, considering all the collateral damage He causes. And such arguments still make me feel queasy.
But, you were saying something about proving Einstein wrong...?
Again: are you ashamed of Mr. Hitler, Bill? Do you believe that Hitler's political views invalidate all right-of-center views?
If Hitler (or Heidegger, for that matter) profoundly shaped the conservative academics teaching our nation's universities, then yes, I would be ashamed. But we both know that didn't happen. So why did so many English majors fall under Foucault's spell?
Well, what about Coulter? Or Savage? Or Hannity? All three hold shameful views. Do you think Foucault is even in their league when it comes to influence among those of similar (or even remotely similar) ideological views? I'm a lot less worried about an obscure academic who influences the political views of other obscure academics than I am of shrieking harpies whose psychotic rantings are beamed into the households of millions of average American households every month.
And frankly, why should I care that a number of liberal English majors have been influenced by Foucault? Should I feel ashamed of that? Perhaps those English majors should be ashamed. On the other hand, I think conservative fundamentalists who have been influenced by Answers In Genesis and the Creation Research Institute should be ashamed of themselves, too.
Again, Bill: I just don't get what your beef is. Sure, Foucault was a horse's ass. Sure, lots of people were influenced by him. Lots of horses' asses have influenced lots of people. If I'd been influenced by Foucault, I'd have something to be ashamed of. But I wasn't, so I'm not.
And as I recall, you were starting to sound a little Foucault-y to me when you were talking about meta-justification of knowledge back there…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
But don't worry, I saved a proper rebuttal for the geocentric thread.
A rebuttal of what? Einstein? That could be interesting.
I'm assuming you're not planning on rebutting your own theory, but since no one else has posted a model for you to rebut, I think we have to assume you're planning to overturn the General Theory.
And if that doesn't mark you as a crank, I don't know what would…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since the Tower of Babel has come up again, can I ask my question once more?
If God smote the ancient Mesopotamians for trying to reach "the sky", why didn't He smite Yuri Gagarin, who not only tried to get there, but actually made it. If He smote them for trying to be like gods, why didn't he smite Oppenheimer and Einstein, who brought some pretty God-like powers to the human race?
And has there ever been a case where Creation scientists have changed their theories in the light of empirical evidence? Just interested.
If Hitler (or Heidegger, for that matter) profoundly shaped the conservative academics teaching our nation's universities, then yes, I would be ashamed. But we both know that didn't happen. So why did so many English majors fall under Foucault's spell?
GoP logic:
"Many English majors like Foucault. Therefore liberalism is completely based on Foucault's ideas, regardless of how few liberals approve of him or have read him".
Or are you trying to imply that all those liberal academics at the universities are the product of Foucault? Given your failure to predict how the liberals here feel about him, I'd like some proof for that allegation. After all, didn't you say that CHOMSKY can't stand him?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
As a relative newbie, I was initially amused by your trolling, GoP. But you contine on like a weird retarded toy poodle, jumping up and down for attention. And no, I don't give a crap about Freud either.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Well, what about Coulter? Or Savage? Or Hannity? All three hold shameful views.
OK, I'm going to avoid trashing AFDave's thread, so this will be my last post on this topic....Dave, thanks for being patient.
Am I ashamed of some of the behavior/views of some of my political allies? You bet. Being a horse's a$$ is part of what makes us human, after all. But one of the appealing things about religious conservatism is the pressure it puts on its adherents to refine their ethical behavior and thought. Now it's true we may misuse our God-given reason to justify cruel behavior, and history bears witness to our error. Hovering above, however, is the desire to do better. To improve ourselves, heal society, and seek truth: these goals shape our thoughts and deeds. Proof? Just look at the societies and communities we create. Measured against the ideal, they may fall woefully short; measured against the pagan past, they more than clear the bar.
Number Nine:
Quote
As a relative newbie, I was initially amused by your trolling, GoP. But you contine on like a weird retarded toy poodle, jumping up and down for attention. And no, I don't give a crap about Freud either.
Either somebody missed his appointment with Mr. Sandman.....or I've struck a nerve. You don't think I can anticipate every stratagem your libbie mind concocts? But Dave can have ya. I've got work to do.....
But one of the appealing things about religious conservatism is the pressure it puts on its adherents to refine their ethical behavior and thought.
You mean like George W. Bush endorsing torture and rendition and using signing statements to get past the McCain amendment? Or do you mean like Pat Robertson lying about lifting 2000 pounds with a leg press because he drinks an energy shake he wants to sell you? Or do you mean like how the Roman Catholics tried to hide the sexual abuse of children going on among their priests?
If you look back on all the Foucault posts on the last 2 or so pages, you'll see what's going on here. As usual, the christian conservative want to conclude that atheists are evil and immoral. The general evidence shows he's wrong, but his faith demands it, so he switches to the particular. He finds one guy who was an evil atheist, and then tries to paint all liberal atheist as having been so influenced. And by claiming the evil one was the logical conclusion, he says that you ethical atheist Scotsmen just must not be True atheist Scotsmen.
The fact that atheists are as ethical or moreso than christians drives them bonkers.
But one of the appealing things about religious conservatism is the pressure it puts on its adherents to refine their ethical behavior and thought.
Bill, you seem to be under the misapprehension that religious conservatives have some sort of monopoly on morality and ethical behavior.
In my own experience, I don't see any obvious correlation between ethical behavior and religious conviction. I know a lot of liberals who hold themselves to very high standards of ethics, and I know a fair number of very religious people who are, shall we say, not the sort of person I would trust with my life. The antics of a lot of high-profile religious figures in this country (Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and Pat Robertson spring immediately to mind, for some reason) only drive home the lesson.
Contrary to what religious conservatives may think, Bill, most moral questions are not that complicated. Would I want to be treated that way? That's what most of moral living comes down to. And when it comes to more complex moral dilemmas, I don't get the impression that reference to the Bible or other religious texts is very helpful.
I don't know about you, Bill, but the desire to look at my reflection in the mirror in the morning without wincing provides a great deal of pressure to refine my ethical behavior. Maybe it takes the threat of eternal damnation to keep your antisocial tendencies in line, but I'd like to think I'm a bit more tractable than that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
If you look back on all the Foucault posts on the last 2 or so pages, you'll see what's going on here. As usual, the christian conservative want to conclude that atheists are evil and immoral. The general evidence shows he's wrong, but his faith demands it, so he switches to the particular. He finds one guy who was an evil atheist, and then tries to paint all liberal atheists as having been so influenced. And by claiming the evil one was the logical conclusion, he says that you ethical atheist Scotsmen just must not be True atheist Scotsmen.
The fact that atheists are as ethical or moreso than christians drives them bonkers.
I think the thing is, in their worldview, there's no principled reason it should be that way, so that makes them feel justified in claiming that for all intents and purposes, it isn't that way.
It's not too different from when Josh Bozeman claims Hitler wasn't a Christian because of course no Christian would do the things Hitler did.
(Whoops, I hope that doesn't qualify as a violation of Godwin...)
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I think the thing is, in their worldview, there's no principled reason it should be that way, so that makes them feel justified in claiming that for all intents and purposes, it isn't that way.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H. P. Lovecraft
But one of the appealing things about religious conservatism is the pressure it puts on its adherents to refine their ethical behavior and thought.
You mean like George W. Bush endorsing torture and rendition and using signing statements to get past the McCain amendment? Or do you mean like Pat Robertson lying about lifting 2000 pounds with a leg press because he drinks an energy shake he wants to sell you? Or do you mean like how the Roman Catholics tried to hide the sexual abuse of children going on among their priests?
Yes, but they all felt tremendous pressure while doing those things.
Dear DumbassDaveTard2: Just to remind you that you never actually answered what I asked, I am going to repost my statements here (slightly condensed) because I want to catch up to Occam and others who have asked you the same things far more times . Maybe you can clarify now...but I doubt it.
Quote
AFarceDave: you didn't answer what I asked.
You claimed that amerinds in both North and South america had written language and lost it, Dave.
Quote
There is much evidence that the so called "Indians" of North and South America descended from advanced civilizations after those civilizations declined. Most of the ancient civilizations had writing ...so the most likely scenario is that your ancestors and the ancestors of my dad's jungle natives did have writing
I asked you to support that , Dave. -- 2) What is your evidence that Amerinds-- other than the Maya and Aztec-- had written languages precontact? Show me one example of a native culture that HAD written language and lost it as you claimed. You want to use the Aztec and Maya as examples, though? Please show me that the Maya groups lost their writing ability, Dave. What they did was adopt European syllabaries as a substitute. Same with the Nahua Aztecs, Dave. Same with the Zapotecs, Dave. Same with the descendants of the Mixtec, Dave...forcible replacement of one written language with another is not quite what you claimed , Dave.
To try to back your stupid claims, DaveTard2, you list the Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Iran, and Mexico. You say that these groups appeared abruptly, recently and simultaneously. No they didn't. They were thousands of years apart in the case of the Olmecs and Crete versus China and Egypt. Nor were they "abrupt" since each of those has known antecedent archaeology that lead up to state-level systems. Nor does the emergence of those state-level systems match your flood dates, Dave...or your Creation of the Earth dates, Dave.
Then, DaveTard, most amusingly of all, you stupidly say this:
Quote
ALL civilizations **originated in the areas listed above** and the people spread out from there shortly after the Tower of Babel incident.
(my emphases)
Dave...stupid....The tower of BABEL was where? Where is Mexico? Where is China? How could civilization start in all the areas you mention and still be informed of a "Babel" incident when they are not near the middle east? Think about what you posted DaveCretin...As to your claim that your daddy "saved" anyone...What was the name of the group/tribe? I have the entire HRAF files at my disposal, Dave. I don't believe you in the least, but I DO believe it's quite possible that you're lying, as you have so many other times. Let me make clear your errors, Davecretin. I have read Morris. I have read the ICR crap. You mangle both of them when you say that civilizations begin in the areas you listed (Mexico, China, etc. ) **THEN** disperse FOLLOWING a Tower of Babel incident. ...I thought you knew the Bible DaveTard? What does chapter 11 of Genesis say? Oh, and DaveStupid? Note that the ICR says : here that
Quote
Biblical chronologies place the Babel incident at 4200 or so years ago. Many of the expelled groups took with them technological knowledge which they put to use in their new homelands. History documents the fact that several major cultures sprang into existence seemingly from nowhere at about the same time—the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Phoenicians, the Indians, as well as the Chinese
You can't even argue what you CLAIM to know in the Bible or from ICR or Morris correctly.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
[GoP:]To improve ourselves, heal society, and seek truth: these goals shape our [religious conservatives'] thoughts and deeds. Proof? Just look at the societies and communities we create. Measured against the ideal, they may fall woefully short; measured against the pagan past, they more than clear the bar.
[guffaw] I know I promised not to post to this ridiculous thread any further, but a couple of glasses of wine, and the fact that I just passed this quotation in a storefront window make me want to share:
Quote
"I like your christ. I do not like your christians. Your christians are so unlike your christ" - Gandhi
GhostGuy - and Dave - I believe he was speaking of you.
[GoP:]To improve ourselves, heal society, and seek truth: these goals shape our [religious conservatives'] thoughts and deeds. Proof? Just look at the societies and communities we create. Measured against the ideal, they may fall woefully short; measured against the pagan past, they more than clear the bar.
Go call up somebody at ENJJPT and ask about FAIPs.
Don't you think I might come up with something different like "I have a PhD in genetics" or something?
He worked it out so that I could have a "fighter with no nukes"
What do you do?
I don't need to call anyone at ENJJPT and ask about FAIP's, but at last you acknowledge what pipeline you were in (and whined about how a General came along and dashed your dream of flying a REAL fighter).
You couldn't pull off a claim of a PhD in genetics. But I did get a good belly laugh from that one.
What fighter with no nukes? The T-38? Last I looked a T-38 doesn't have ANY weapons systems. The missile support Huey? That's a freaking Taxi drivers job Dave. Maybe you were driving a Portuguese Fighter?
I was a GMG2 on a PBR before getting a degree in Computer Science (minored in Biology). I worked 3 years at the NMNH in the Vertebrate Palaeontolgy Lab and Applied Morphmetrics Lab. Presently I'm employed as Technical Operations Supervisor at a science museum.
I went in harm's way Dave, you on the other hand were nothing but a dilettante pilot, much like our current CIC.
I would say we're beating a dead horse here, but at this point, the remaining pink mist we're wailing on can hardly be called a horse.
Now that got a me really laughing Steve, thanks. Is it a really big horse with single digits or a 'lil bitty horse with 3 we're beating here cause either way they're the same "kind"?
While AFDavetard might be exaggerating what a shithot pilot he was, I can't beat him up about it. Most of my Air Force service officially doesn't exist because of a boneheaded mistake I made when I was 20.
I'll beat up AFDavetard about what an idiot he is now, rather than what an idiot he was back in the day. ;-)
I also have to say, like deadman, I'm pissed at the at the condescending and racist comments about my Native ancestors. Pissed but not surprised since my Paternal Grandmother and her brother were taken from their mother and tribal village for their own "benefit" by Salvation Army missionaries.
I can't believe you guys left out the Right Reverend Fred Phelps as a fine example the Creo/Fundie/Right Wingnut apologists NEED to apologise for. He's practically a neighbor of Dave's too.
I am taking the time to go back and look over all DaveTard2's claims and make a synopsis -- his comments and unanswered questions directed at him, etc., and I noticed this:
DaveTard says on page one of this thread that he:
Quote
was first an Electrical Engineer, then an Air Force pilot .., then a businessman. Having sold my second business, I am now what you might say "between businesses" and am spending a lot of time on non-profit endeavors. I do have an aircraft charter business (a single King Air to fuel my flying "habit") and I am into alternative motor vehicle fuels with the possibility of a future business venture, but I'm not currently doing anything big in business.
Call me cynical, but here's my biased translation of that:
DaveTard2 needs some quick dough and is looking at compiling what he selectively edits out of this and using it to scam some cash out of families by appealing to groups like ICR and AIG and their "built-in" audiences. Yes, I would bet on this.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'll beat up AFDavetard about what an idiot he is now, rather than what an idiot he was back in the day. ;-)
The thing is Steve he still IS bragging about his career, it just helps illuminate the mindset he has, this is an excerpt from his blog.
Can you tell I was trying to look cool in this picture? I don't know if I succeeded or not ... maybe some of you ladies could tell me ... I was sure trying hard ... stomach in, chest out, frowning expression ...
I don't want to increase hits on his blog but the picture is hilarious, if Dave had his stomach sucked in and his chest out, he obviously wasn't eating his Wheaties.
But the comment, maybe some of you ladies could tell me ... says volumes about this man.
His info on Constantine is off the mark too. Constantine tolerated Christianity after he had a vision and won the subsequent battle, not because of any martyrs. Constantine didn't even bother to get baptised till he was on his deathbed but because he did, he's surely beaming DOWN on us now and that's ALL that counts.
I worked 3 years at the NMNH in the Vertebrate Palaeontolgy Lab and Applied Morphmetrics Lab.
hey now, that sounds pretty interesting.
any good stories?
I'd much rather hear about morphometrics arguments from the NMNH lab than watch information continue to be sucked into the black hole that is AFDave.
what was the current ongoing controversy in the dept. when you were there?
don't tell me "none". I've never seen a paleo lab that lacked some juicy arguments behind the scenes.
GW as dilettante...
yes, for some reason, that works quite well in my mind.
maybe it's because before he was "born again", he was in fact, very much a dilettante. I don't see much of a change in attitude, regardless of the verbiage Karl Rove put in his mouth.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
DaveTard2: I don't know that anyone hammered you on HERV's. You should look those up. It does just as much damage to your claims as fused chromosomes or vitamin C. (okay, actually, I think it does more damage, but I'm biased). I'm doing this because it helps me to understand people like you. People that say
Quote
What I really am is an ordinary guy with a pretty good brain for learning most anything who is sick and tired of what appears to me to be absolute nonsense being fed to us from the Evolution Dogmatists.
and claimed to have read up extensively on the subject matter, but didn't know about the issues raised here at all--in each of the areas you have brought up so far. You didn't know about the fallacies inherent in misapplying abduction, you didn't know about the fallacies in the "fine tuning" arguments (god of the gaps, tautology, post hoc ergo propter hoc), you didn't know about Behe's IC claims being dashed, you have no clue about the observed speciation work (there's more than those at TalkOrigins, baboo, much more), you didn't know about WHY the zircon crap was wrong/non-compelling/unreplicated, your claims on language were a real hoot, your venture into anthro/archaeo was dismal...you didn't know much about much at all--Including your own bible, as recently demonstrated. What you did do is read a few popular authors (Gould, Dawkins) and regurgitated a whole bunch of Henry Morris, ICR and AIG crap (*snort*).
But I bet you'll try to peddle it, punkin'.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
don't tell me "none". I've never seen a paleo lab that lacked some juicy arguments behind the scenes.
Heehee, trying to head me off at the past as it were?
Really, I don't have any juicy gossip along those lines. I was a trust fund temp fossil preparer (who kept his head down in matters politic) and because of my computer training I was often asked to work on the 3-D digitizer in the Morphometrics Lab. There were very few systems like it at that time. I remember Ralph Chapman was a really nice guy to work with though.
The bulk of my work was preparing a bizarre large Late Cretaceous turtle from Maryland that Gene Gaffney was supposed to describe, but I couldn't say what came of it. The matrix the turtle was in was siderite that was a bitch to remove.
I did a little work on the Ghost Ranch Coelophysis block with Alex Downs too.
I was often asked to work on the 3-D digitizer in the Morphometrics Lab.
*sigh* i'll bet it was lightyears ahead of the digitizer we had in the lab at Berkeley. I bet it was a fun thing to play with?
no stories? no problem, it was worth a shot. I spent a couple of weeks as a visitor to the museum some years back (was working with an forum on oceanic ecology and funding intitiatives). I could have spent months there.
If there is anybody here who has never been to the Smithsonian before, it's worth the trip. Plan on spending at least a week exploring it.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
*sigh* i'll bet it was lightyears ahead of the digitizer we had in the lab at Berkeley. I bet it was a fun thing to play with?
no stories?
I couldn't say how it compared to any system at Berkely. While state of the art at the time it all seems so primitive now, but yes it was fun.
Ralph and I used to have some animated discussions about which platform to use. I advocated using a Mac II with A/UX and he wanted a PC running DOS. He was the boss so he prevailed, easily. The cost of the Mac II was the big issue.
My position was that A/UX was a more robust OS and worth the extra expense for the hardware.
Dave - just ignore the bullying. If the Darwinists don't insult ya, then ya ain't doing yer job right. I for one want to see the rest of your outline. The RATE project clearly has them rattled - creationists doing research, and predicting anomalous results to boot?
<Darwinbots>This can't be happening! EEEEEEEEEEEE!!!</Darwinbots>
Dave - just ignore the bullying. If the Darwinists don't insult ya, then ya ain't doing yer job right. I for one want to see the rest of your outline. The RATE project clearly has them rattled - creationists doing research, and predicting anomalous results to boot?
Nope, RATE doesn't have us rattled. Their results (their two results) are clearly erroneous, and we've been around the mulberry bush enough times with Sir Black Knight to have demonstrated that conclusively. It's not by accident that creationists have chosen to use a dating method that is known to be inaccurate.
What has people annoyed is Dave's complete inability to understand, not even why he's wrong, but that he's wrong. He keeps thinking he's winning arguments when in fact his arguments have been drawn, quartered, eviscerated, boiled in lard, rendered, flash-burned, and their ashes blown out of a cannon.
Dave's "arguments," to the extent they even are arguments, are comically wrong. He's got people pissed off, but not for the reasons he thinks he does. Sheer, obdurate cement-headedness is something a lot of people find to be intensely irritating.
Oh, and Bill: one more thing. Radiometric dating is not a branch of biology. It's covered by nuclear physics, chemistry, and geology. There are no "Darwinist" nuclear physicists, chemists, or geologists. Only life scientists can be "Darwinists," to the extent the term even has any meaning anymore.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither.
The believers in the Darwinian religion regularly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themselves intact.
Now, all of those who pointed out this has not happened have missed the point. I do not claim evolutionists have taken over America and are throwing Christians in mental hospitals. I am pointing toward the logical implications of what this attitude might lead to in practice.
You B@stards. You've chased AtardFtardDavetard off. Now I know how my cat feels after I take away the roach he patiently modified by removing the legs on one side, forcing the roach to run in circles (See! cats make their own fun! ) It was fun to see AFD flail about, and Iv'e learned more about Portugese from this thread than anywhere else, but you've run him off. You couldn't even take one punch. (Wow Dave, Hydrogen loss in Zircons! I think ya got us now...) Now who are we going to wind up? Thordaddy? B@stards.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither.
The believers in the Darwinian religion regualarly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themsleves intact.
Why is someone who professes to think Michel Foucault is evil echoing exactly what Foucault wrote in "Madness and Civilization"? Another name for "PSYCHIATRIC FASCISM."
Foucault claimed that the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane were no less controlling than previous methods.
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I do not claim evolutionists have taken over America and are throwing Christians in mental hospitals. I am pointing toward the logical implications of what this attitude might lead to in practice.
It might be a good idea after all. Maybe we should? It would keep them from engaging the kind of mass killing they're doing as leaders of various countries and terrorist groups.
Little Virginia O'Hanlon just wrote me this plaintive, touching letter:
Dear Deadman— I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no AirForceDave. Papa says, “If you see it in The Panda, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there an AirForce Dave? ....Virginia O’Hanlon
To which I replied:
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little --and some are more microscopic than others. And that is where we find AirForceDave. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is an AirForceDave. He exists as certainly as fallacies and and avoidance and delusion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest amusement and reason to abhor ignorance. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no AirForceDaves! No AirForceDave? Thanks to unreason he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, AirForceDaves will continue to try to twist your childhood....Sincerely, Deadman.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Boy, Dave, you really don't have a clue about aanyting, do you? Geology, physics, chemistry, math ... all closed books to our Dave. But you're ballsy enough to make it up as you go along. Too bad you're so bad at making stuff up.
Quote (afdave @ June 05 2006,12:53)
JonF...
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But I think there are some temperature issues, even if they're not enough to completely explain the results. Humphreys et al explicitly assumed that the temperatures were always today's temperatures, and "justified" that with a discussion claiming that the alternative was worse for "uniformitarians" and some discussion of temperature spikes. They never discussed poossible lower temperatures, even though Henke brought up some studies that indicate temperatures were lower in the past. Diffusion typically depends exponentially on temperature, and knowing the thermal history of the samples is key for accurate results.
I think he felt it was not important to investigate the lower temperatures. You are correct that diffusion depends exponetially on temperature, but is this not true only for higher temps?
No, Daveie-poo you moron, it's true from absolute zero up to the point where all that's left is quark-gluon soup.
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At the lower temps, it appears that there is not much effect. How much would the lower temps affect the results?
Exponentially, Davie-poo. That is, a lot. The whole point is that lower temperatures would slow the diffusion rate terrifically.
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And why could you not assume an average temp?
Because, you math-deficient moron, assuming an average temperature only works in processes that depend linearly on temperature. Even if you could assume an average temperature, which you can't, there's no justification for assuming today's temperature is average.
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Remember, for the long ager scenario to work, you guys need 5 orders of magnitude slower diffusion than what was measured by Farley.
Measured by Farley in vacuum and extrapolated by Humphreys et al.
There's good reason to believe that in the real world the diffusion rate is orders of magnitude lower, as Henke discussed. We know that lower temperatures could also slow the diffusion rate noticably. And high helium concentrations can also slow or even reverse the diffusion rate.
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How does Harrison and Sasada know that temps were lower in the past?
Look it up.
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This is opposite what we would expect from igneous rocks.
What we would expect based on your extensive geologic knowledge and experience? Hint 1: the rocks are almost certainly not igneous, they are almost certainly metamorphic. Humphreys insists they are, but Henke conclusively showed he's wrong. Hint 2: no matter whether they are igneous or metamorphic, they've been subjected to significant temperature cycling. What we expect depends on the history of the rocks, not their major type.
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And the bottom line is that even significantly lower temps for the entire history with NO spikes, doesn't help your billion + year scenario. At best you can push Humphreys dates from 6000 back to 14,000, which he already allows for.
Nope, he didn't allow for significantly lower temperatures. Nor did he justify his extrapolation of diffusion rates, nor did he justify his assumption that the environmental helium has not changed.
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So what was your point again?
Basically, that Humphreys et al conducted a slipshod investigation based on insufficient data and unjustified assumptions in an attempt to shore up their preconceived notions. Get back to us when they have a few thousand data points and rigorous studies that justify their asumptions.
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Personally, I think the most likely explanation is invalid extrapolation of lab results under vacuum to calculate diffusion rates under known subsurface pressures.
Oh, come now. We've been through this. Have you asked any specialist in the field of zircon testing about this? If you did, they would tell you that vacuum testing is done all the time with zircons because it doesn't matter. Remember Humphreys easy rebuttal of Henke on this? Henke was comparing soft mica, with water, and Argon which is entirely different than hard zircon, dry, and Helium. Come on, JonF, you can do better than this.
No, I don't remember, nor can I find, any rebuttal from Humphreys.
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My second most likely scenario is a combination of relatively impervious surroundings combined with some retardation of diffusion, or even reversal of diffusion, by uncommonly high helium concentration in the surroundings.
Come on again. Didn't you read that the measured He concentration in the surrounding biotite was something like 1/200th of the concentration in the zircons. Now how is that helium going to diffuse INTO the zircons?
I explained why and how it's possible and why there's reason to suspect it may have happened, doofus. I acknowledged that it's an unsupported hypothesis, but it's also not a refuted hypothesis, and it's far more likely than Humphreys' fantasies. It needs to be tested.
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I just don't understand that last sentence. If God magicked alpha, beta, and electron capture decay processes so as to make the Earth appear billons of years old and correlate essentially perfectly each other and with stratigraphy and other indications, why couldn't He just magic away the radiation and heat too, and magic the spectra of stars while He's at it? Maybe He's just absent-minded ... apparently He forgot to magic diffusion so as to keep it consistent with radiometric results.
Oh brother. Here we go again, accusing Creationists of invoking God's magic tricks at every turn.
No, I just accuse creationists of invoking magic tricks when they explicitely invoke magic tricks, and I quoted and referenced the exact passages in which Humphreys invoked magic tricks. The RATE group's explanation for their conclusion is "it's magic", explicitly, and that ain't science. Even if it's true, it ain't science. But I'm betting it ain't true.
Boy, Dave, you really don't have a clue about aanyting, do you? Geology, physics, chemistry, math ... all closed books to our Dave. But you're ballsy enough to make it up as you go along. Too bad you're so bad at making stuff up.
Actually, I think that's the problem.
Ninety-nine percent of the stuff that 2nd Lt. "I washed out" Dave posts is straight cribbing from AIG or some other science-challenged website. This is the stuff that he defends by talking about it being 'on-topic'.
Occasionally he slips in an original comment of his own, and look what we get!
Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French
Relativity proves God
etc.
Every one of these really stupid statements is an actual original thought by Dave. And every one of these really stupid statements is indefensible.
That's what these gaps are about: Dave looking for web-site material to crib and copy.
I don't know which is more pathetic: his stupidity or his lack of original thinking.
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither.
The believers in the Darwinian religion regularly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themselves intact.
Now, all of those who pointed out this has not happened have missed the point. I do not claim evolutionists have taken over America and are throwing Christians in mental hospitals. I am pointing toward the logical implications of what this attitude might lead to in practice.
Again, Paley can't point to any ACTUAL misdeeds of us wicked liberals, so he has to go off on one of his "but this is the logical outcome of your godless ideology, so you might as well have done these evil things, so that proves you're all evil" tirades. Like we haven't heard this before. Seems to be his stock in trade.
No Paley, we don't worship Foucalt, we aren't advocating locking up people with your beliefs, many of us have families, and we're not busy killing babies for satanic rituals. We're not burning churches. We don't rob banks. In fact, I'd bet we get divorced and commit crimes at a much lower rate than conservative Christians. I know this must come as a disappointment for you, that we don't fulfill your cartoonish vision of 'liberal atheists'.
Really, Paley, you come onto a board full of highly educated people, mostly better educated than you, you insult everyone, you blither idiocy about the universe revolving around the earth, then you get all pissed off because you can't 'persuade' anyone of your scientific or political nonsense. Why do you keep coming back? Seriously, if we piss you off so bad, then just go away.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
This is opposite what we would expect from igneous rocks.
What we would expect based on your extensive geologic knowledge and experience? Hint 1: the rocks are almost certainly not igneous, they are almost certainly metamorphic.
I think Dave is picking up that mistake from me. I thought they were igneous too. It was implied in my ice cube melting analogy. I forget why I aassumed that.
Another point, Bill. Or, maybe it's a homework assignment. What are the statistics on the number of prisoners incarcerated for violent crimes who are a) Christians, vs. b) agnostics or atheists? You can do weighted by percentage of population vs. absolute numbers, if you'd like.
Another stat: how many prisoners go in agnostics/atheists and come out Christians, vs. the other way around? Given the recidivism statistics, the numbers should be significant.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have some stats on that from the Dept. of Justice (U.S.) and Canada, England, Wales. Atheists are statistically underrepresented in both arrests and convictions as a percentage of the population.
This is opposite what we would expect from igneous rocks.
What we would expect based on your extensive geologic knowledge and experience? Hint 1: the rocks are almost certainly not igneous, they are almost certainly metamorphic.
I think Dave is picking up that mistake from me. I thought they were igneous too. It was implied in my ice cube melting analogy. I forget why I aassumed that.
More likely he's getting it from Humphreys. The igneous/metamorphic question is a bone of contention between Humphreys and Henke.
No Paley, we don't worship Foucalt, we aren't advocating locking up people with your beliefs, many of us have families, and we're not busy killing babies for satanic rituals. We're not burning churches. We don't rob banks.
We don't? We aren't? We do? We're not? We're not? We don't?
Surprising to whom? Anything is surprising if we haven't seen it before or can't explain it yet. It's the God of the Gaps argument. Again. (yawn).
-------------- "[A] book said there were 5 trillion witnesses. Who am I supposed to believe, 5 trillion witnesses or you? That shit's, like, ironclad. " -- stevestory
"Wow, you must be retarded. I said that CO2 does not trap heat. If it did then it would not cool down at night." Joe G
We switched to things which do subtle, long-term damage to society, like Paley said.
Ah, yes, things like eroding the bill of rights, piling up the national debt and selling treasury bonds to China to pay for the interest, thereby undermining our trade position and allowing the neo-commies to sell underpriced goods and put American workers out of business, selling off national parklands, going on "fishing expeditions" of the public by using communications companies and the NSA, allowing the CIA to create clandestine prisons overseas where we can torture people, spreading propaganda about the environment's condition while we pocket the cash gained thereby, ignoring the increase in poverty and children born in poverty, profiteering from sweetheart defense deals, increasing the size of government even if excluding the armed services and "national security" concerns. Oh, yeah, and we started a war on false pretenses. Oh, wait...nevermind. Wrong group.
I forgot...I just worship pseudo-philosophers and am generally liberal and amoral.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No Paley, we don't worship Foucalt, we aren't advocating locking up people with your beliefs, many of us have families, and we're not busy killing babies for satanic rituals. We're not burning churches. We don't rob banks.
We don't? We aren't? We do? We're not? We're not? We don't?
Oops.
Well, most of us probably don't. But hey, we're a big tent, if you do, it's cool.
We are spreading Ebola, tho. DaveScot nailed us on that one.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Oh, yeah, I forgot, I directed the fake moon landing in out geocentric solar system and planted fossils while simultaneously hiding all the Apatosaur saddles which would otherwise show that ancient man rode dinos to work at the Tower of Babel. Paley shrewdly spied me out , though.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
we need to have another secret meeting to get all this straight.
I thought we stopped playing johnny ebola seed when we stopped burning churches last month?
Didn't you get the memo?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
JonF ... You are correct about the exponential scale ... I wasn't looking at the graph and forgot momentarily that it was not a linear scale ...But here's the important thing to know about temps ... COLD TEMPS DON'T MATTER (unless you are talking about sub-zero or something ... Surely you are not foolish enough to say that) ... Go on and pick some reasonably cool temperature ... It will help you very little ... You need 5 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, and there is no way to get it ... Also, your sources report that there was volcanic activity and a large temp spike ... This negates any benefit your argument might have gained from low temps before this.
You need to read all the relevant documents of this debate ... You didn't even read Humphreys' rebuttal about the vacuum testing ... If you did, you should know that it is DOA.
As for reverse contamination of the zircons, I guess 'Davey-poo' the lowly engineer will have to point out AGAIN that helium doesn't diffuse from LOW pressure to HIGH pressure ... especially when you are talking about 1/200th of the pressure.
You are reaching and you should know it. Henke's rebuttals didn't have a prayer against Humphreys. I'd be willing to bet that very few here at ATBC even understand the issues here, much less have the ability to refute the results. This explains why some people resort to mudslinging because they have very little of substance to say.
Let me rehash the RATE Helium results.
1) Creationists have observed that the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other. They are generally VERY discordant. They should agree if they are reliable. 2) Many other non-radiometric indicators support a very young earth ... On the order of thousands, not billions of years 3) The RATE Group claims that there is direct observable evidence of accelerated nuclear decay during some period in the past--we will be looking at this 4) Science needs more reliable dating methods since radioisotope dating is unreliable. 5) Helium diffusion from zircons is a good candidate if the rocks are relatively cool, because a high percentage of helium is retained. 6) No one had measured He diffusion in zircons before (why? Afraid of the answrer maybe?) 7) Humphreys' group published predictions for the rates at various temps and were DEAD ON when the measured rates came back from the lab 3 years later, a TRULY REMARKABLE FEAT. 8) Dr. Kevin Henke tries to rebut the results, but fails.
(JonF tries to defend Henke, but fails.)
Sorry guys, but this is clearly a creationist victory. The RATE Group isn't stopping with this experiment, by the way ... They'll be giving you many more fits with He-zircon data in RATE II.
Next, we will be moving on to Uranium and Polonium radiohalos, which, according to ICR, provide direct, observable evidence of accelerated nuclear decay during some period of time in the past ... we shall see!
1. Does your Creator God Hypothesis predict that humans had an immune system before the fall, or not? 2. If so, what was it for, and if not, where did it come from?
I don't know. I'm spending all my time studying the RATE Group now, so I'll file this away and let you know as soon as I find out. I have not done a search to see if ICR has a position on this.
Deadman...
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As to your claim that your daddy "saved" anyone...What was the name of the group/tribe? I have the entire HRAF files at my disposal, Dave. I don't believe you in the least, but I DO believe it's quite possible that you're lying, as you have so many other times.
Really? Very cool. They call themselves the "Wai-wai" people. They live in the southern tip of Guyana and northern Brazil on the Mapuera river. I don't lie, by the way. I may be mistaken about some things. But you can ask my customers from any business I have ever been in and they will tell you that I am the most honest and straight-shooting guy they have ever met.
The reason Aftershave thinks I am a liar is because he thinks I came to ATBC asking to be taught about Evolution in the sense that I somehow wanted to believe it, but just needed somebody to explain it better to me. He didn't listen very well, though. What I said was that I am happy to become an evolutionist if someone can show me excellent evidence why I should become one. I also said that up until now, no one has.
As for proving the language loss thing, I'm not interested in going into detail on that right now. The RATE information is much more important to me and I'm spending all my time researching that. Not blowing you off though. I would like to walk through that as soon as I can.
My point on that whole discussion, though, did not depend on language loss. My point was that civilization appeared abruptly, simultaneously, and recently. This to me is powerful evidence for recent creation of mankind according to the Biblical model.
Oh ... and my dad does not consider that he "owns" the Indians in any sense. He doesn't even live there anymore. When I say 'my dad's Indians' I simply mean 'the Indians he worked with.'
Norm ... you got a legitimate 'foul' on me with the spaceflight thing ... I see it was about zircons ... oops! It was a pretty tempting piece of bait, you gotta admit.
Ichthyic ...
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IOW, you apparently are of the belief that "there is no such thing as bad publicity". Since in the end, anyone taking MacNeill's course would come away with a VERY clear picture of exactly how bad ID has really performed from a real world standpoint.
No. It's just a simple fact that whenever Denton and Behe's works are given exposure, no matter in what light they are presented, it is a GOOD thing for ID and Creationism.
Arden ...
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Okay, Dave. It's showtime. Put up or shut up. WHAT IS YOUR EVIDENCE FOR THIS? Real proof. No more of your "C'mon guys, it's just OBVIOUS!" nonsense. Proof.
See comments to Deadman. Not avoiding you. I just have other priorities right now.
OA ...
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Half a dozen people have already pointed out the fatal flaws in the RATE Helium/zircon assumptions, and you ignored every last bit of evidence. Nothing I can say would add to the information you're already received but decided to ignore. Frankly Washout, you're not worth the effort.
I just think you have not taken the time to even understand what the experiment is about. I think you just ride on the coattails of others here.
Eric...
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Dave, do you ever even consider the implications of your positions on scientific topics? You say you accept plate tectonics. Oh, really? The Atlantic ocean is something like 5,000 miles wide. The whole thing opened up in 6,000 years? So is the Atlantic 40 miles wider now than it was when I was born? Or did it open all at once in some sort of violent cataclysm that practically tore the planet apart, but then left no evidence of such an event?
You accept virtually no scientific facts. You do not accept the fact that the universe is ~14 billion years old. You do not accept the fact that the earth is almost 5 billion years old. You don't accept evolution. Those are all "basic scientific facts."
What "basic scientific facts" do you accept, Dave? Despite your belief in biblical inerrancy, at least you seem to accept that the earth orbits the sun rather than the other way around. Do you accept quantum complementarity? If so, why do you accept it?
Of course I consider the implications. I realize the ocean is 5000 miles wide. But the Flood was big, violent and earthshaking. You have not taken the time to consider the implications of a worldwide, tectonic, volcanic, hydraulic cataclysm. I will be walking you through it though. point by point, as soon as we get through the Age of the Earth topic.
Icthy...
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AFDave is a Young Earth Creationist who believes the earth is no more than 5,000-6,000 years old, and who believes in the literal truth of Noah's Flood and the Tower of Babel ...but can't remember which supposedly happened when.
No. I remember quite well. The Tower of Babel is after the Flood.
OA...
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I'll give you a real world example. In Japan, many companies have installed exercise rooms for their employees to work out during breaks. One of the more popular pieces of gear are punching dummies. The dummies are all made up with likenesses of the middle-level managers, so that employees who feel abused make take out their hostilities. The kicker is, every few months the CEO swings by to inspect the dummies. If any of them show undue wear, then that manager is called on the carpet and asked to explain why his people are so unhappy with him.
So I'm a mid level manager now and you are all my employees? Great. Can I start giving orders now?
I guess you all think that GoP assumes that atheists are all immoral. Well, if he does, I do not agree with him. I know many atheists and skeptics and agnostics and most of them have just as high of ethical standards as I do. While some say that Christians should have higher moral standards than non-Christians, it is obvious that this is not always the case. But you should not throw out the baby with the bath water. Just because a particular Christian doesn't live up to his own moral code perfectly doesn't mean you should assume his moral code is bogus or something. God will hold YOU responsible for YOUR actions, not someone else's. What will YOU do with the truth that He has revealed to you?
Another common misconception is that my starting point is the Bible, then I conform, bend, twist, distort science to fit it. This is not true. My starting point is phenomena in nature. The Bible is a source for hypotheses. I have investigated the Bible and it appears to be inerrant as far as I can tell, but this is not the starting point for me.
I see Rilke is trying to get my attention again ... OK, Rilke ... I'll give you some attention ...
Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ... Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ... Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ...
Say it to yourself several times and you'll get it ...
Your own team member agreed with me PUBLICLY ... The resident linguist agreed as well (though he later tried to get out of it) ...
Also, when's that PBS Special coming about how “Bible Training of Children is Child Molestation ... er... Child Abuse” ??
BTW ... You're one to talk about original arguments ... have you said ANYTHING scientific yet ?
Oh ... And what did I wash out of? Is calling me a 2nd LT supposed to be an insult? 2nd Lt's are good folks ... But I got out as a Captain ... And afterburners are things on the back of jets to make them go fast ... Not part of the male anatomy ...
Did I miss anything?
Oh yeah ... Relativity ... Here's that again ...
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You guys are getting way too complex about the relativity thing. All I am saying is that there are many passages in the Bible that collectively give us the idea that God "lives outside of space and time." Now honestly I cannot conceive of this but I am not so arrogant as to say it cannot be so. With the phenomenon of time dilation, it is now possible to conceive of God 'running on a different time scale' from humans, or even running on no time scale at all, which is what 'eternity past' and 'eternity future' sounds like. With the phenomenon of length contraction, it is also possible to conceive of God being able to reach all points in the universe instantaneously if all three dimensions approach zero. Now this is sci-fi sounding stuff to be sure. But can you see now what I am saying? I am not saying that I can explain relativity. I am saying that just the existence of these phenomena gives powerful (OK, drop the powerful if you like) support to the concept of an eternal, omnipresent God. And again, if you don't like this, fine. What's new?
See ya' ;-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
*whew* we thought maybe Dave Scott Springerbot had eaten ya, Daaavvvveeeyyy.
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IOW, you apparently are of the belief that "there is no such thing as bad publicity". Since in the end, anyone taking MacNeill's course would come away with a VERY clear picture of exactly how bad ID has really performed from a real world standpoint.
No. It's just a simple fact that whenever Denton and Behe's works are given exposure, no matter in what light they are presented, it is a GOOD thing for ID and Creationism.
LOL. exactly.
god... i just have to keep reading that over and over...
welcome back, and yes, you are deserving of your title as "dumbest".
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
What, if anything, does the inerrant bible tell you about snakes?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1. Does your Creator God Hypothesis predict that humans had an immune system before the fall, or not? 2. If so, what was it for, and if not, where did it come from?
I don't know. I'm spending all my time studying the RATE Group now, so I'll file this away and let you know as soon as I find out. I have not done a search to see if ICR has a position on this.
They don't. Neither does AiG. I'm not asking about them. It's your hypothesis (see the thread title?). What do you predict, disregarding outside sources. It's OK to be wrong... science sometimes is. I'm just looking for a two sentence explanation. No need for research; just pick which makes more sense to you. H311, just go with how you feel, since according to Doug Moran, that counts as evidence too!
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ... Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ... Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ...
Say it to yourself several times and you'll get it ...
Okay, Dave, I have to ask -- do you still really believe this, or are you just messing with us, a lŕ Ghost of Paley?
Incidentally, here's a reference for the poor bastards that Dave's father turned into Southern Baptists:
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dear DumbassDave: Contrary to your claim about " people here not understanding the issues," I think you are projecting, DaveTard2. I have read the same papers that you have, and more. Fenton Hill is geothermically active http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988JGR....93.6041G. I know that helium is found nearby and that it is very likely to move through fractures in such areas. Humphreys says insufficient amounts of helium are found NOW, and that no current partial pressures are significant enough to cause infiltration of helium through openings caused by uranium decay, but DaveTard...Hydrothermal fluid circulation, complex groundwater flow, and reblocking of fractures by mineral precipitation is part of the Fenton Hill geology.This is also seen in Hawaii, Yellowstone and New Zealand.
Here's some questions and a clue for you, DaveTARD... helium doesn't move from low to high pressure . Okay, good. How about high to low?. How deep can helium be found in the Fenton Hill area? In what amounts? Were 3He/4He ratios measured? If not, why not? Remember that Robert Gentry ( a creationist, DaveTard), who gathered a lot of this data in 1982 even admitted
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We are not certain whether the minute amounts of Helium recorded from the deepest zircons ... are actually residual Helium in the zircons or derived from some other source.
I am not going to feed you information until you start dealing with questions asked you directly, DaveTard. Such as the ones I asked in the last 5 pages.
Even if I leave the zircon subject alone and you never answer my questions, the bottom line will be that no replication of this work was ever done, it can be shown that the data was MANIPULATED and the alternative explanations of Henke and others (helium infiltration, excess uranium, etc.) were never eliminated as possible sources
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The reason Aftershave thinks I am a liar is because he thinks I came to ATBC asking to be taught about Evolution in the sense that I somehow wanted to believe it, but just needed somebody to explain it better to me. He didn't listen very well, though. What I said was that I am happy to become an evolutionist if someone can show me excellent evidence why I should become one. I also said that up until now, no one has.
No Dave, I think you’re a liar because you have been caught lying by at least half a dozen people here. You lied about your motives for coming here. You lied about your desire for honest scientific discussion. Many folks have invested quite a bit of time in debunking your AIG PRATT claims, only to have you totally ignore their inputs and say “Well, no one could answer me”. The few times you do decide to not ignore the critiques that smoke your arguments, more often than not you misrepresent what was said, and often twist peoples’ words into things they didn’t say. Those aren’t just “winning debate techniques” when you do that Dave; those are lies. When you tell them, that makes you a liar.
People are upset with you not for your YEC views, but for the dishonest and patronizing way you have gone about trying to proselytize. I have to believe you understand that, but like a good little Fundybot missionary you don’t care what the “savages who need saving” think of your actions.
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My point on that whole discussion, though, did not depend on language loss. My point was that civilization appeared abruptly, simultaneously, and recently. This to me is powerful evidence for recent creation of mankind according to the Biblical model.
There you go lying again. You were given example after example of human artifacts dating back over 40,000 years, and you ignored every last one. The RATE findings on radiocarbon dating don’t help you, so how does your model accommodate all that >6000 year old data? Humans and their culture did not appear “abruptly, simultaneously, and recently” only 6000 years ago as you claim. Your latest whine is accusing other posters of “not discussing science” when in fact you are the coward who has run from discussing all the contrary scientific evidence.
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So I'm a mid level manager now and you are all my employees? Great. Can I start giving orders now?
No, you’re an arrogant yet ignorant YEC drone who recently got voted dumbest board user by a wide margin, and who has lost the respect of virtually everyone here. Why is that Dave? Is everyone else to blame, or did your actions bring it about yourself? I guess cowards like you aren’t big on accepting personal responsibility, either.
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Did I miss anything?
Yes, when you read the Bible you missed the parts about honesty (not bearing false witness), integrity, and the Golden Rule. Would you like someone here to explain those concepts to you?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Of course it is, that why they drilled there in the first place but Dave's Taxi won't go there. Dave's "on call" light goes out whenever he's asked to go where there's data that conflicts with his 30,000'/Stuporsonic worldview.
(Psst! Guys! I have an idea. Let's pretend that the Black Knight is persuading us to his side! Let's try agreeing with everything he says for like a day or two, let him bask in his glory for a while, and then blow all his arguments away the way we've been doing for a solid month now.)
Oh, wait. Dave thinks he's winning already. Never mind.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
*sigh* Yeah dave, you missed me. As usual. But that's OK, I've got used to you ignoring me by now...
Just one sidenote, about the Portuguese thing: I said I wouldn't touch that again (not my field, anyway), but even I am beginning to feel sorry for you, the way you keep embarrassing yourself. So, here it is:
Portuguese is PORTUGUESE. Portuguese is PORTUGUESE. Portuguese is PORTUGUESE.
It emerged as a distinct and separate Iberian language from Vulgar Latin early on.
It evolved (hah! during the Middle Ages, accepting some influence from Spanish (Castillian, actually), but without losing its distinct character at any time.
It became the official language of the newfound kingdom of Portugal, after Latin. Not French, not Spanish. Portuguese.
It was influenced by French much later, during the 18th century, and not substantially (Unless you consider Portuguese and Brazilian entirely different languages).
And that's the truth. It was NEVER a "mixture of French and Spanish", whether "among other things" or not.
You were wrong. Admit it for once, deal with it, and live with it. Who knows? Maybe that will be a good start.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The RATE findings on radiocarbon dating don’t help you, so how does your model accommodate all that >6000 year old data?
They don't? This was one of the points I was going to discuss regarding the RATE project. Apparently, the RATE team thinks they support 6000 years. But again, we shall see when we get there. I won't make any firm statements until I examine the evidence myself.
Argy ... my guess with absolutely no reading on the topic would probably be that God created the immune system at the time of the Fall.
Aftershave ...
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The few times you do decide to not ignore the critiques that smoke your arguments, more often than not you misrepresent what was said, and often twist peoples’ words into things they didn’t say.
Hey now ... surely people here can take a few jokes, no? Like I twisted Steve Story's statement about his friend and the meteor analysis a little while ago, but it was an obvious distortion meant to simply poke fun. You can dish it out, but you can't take it?
Now why don't you back up your claim of me lying and give me an example. Don't give me jokey stuff ... I mean real lies. Notice also that if I really commit an honest foul, I apologize. I've done that several times. Do you ever do that?
OA ...
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People are upset with you not for your YEC views, but for the dishonest and patronizing way you have gone about trying to proselytize.
This probably ranks up there as the supreme example of the 'pot calling the kettle black.' As for proselytizing, I'm not. This applies to religion and I'm not religious. We've been over that. Religious people are about rituals and candles and robes and homina-hominas. I'm about the truth about Origins. I'm simply here to show you why the ToE and billions of years is incorrect and unsupported by the evidence, and why the Biblical model of Creation and the Flood is much better supported.
Arden ...
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Okay, Dave, I have to ask -- do you still really believe this, or are you just messing with us, a lŕ Ghost of Paley?
Yes. I really still believe it. I don't mess with you except sometimes in the way I mentioned above just for fun. Everything I have stated here about Origins is what I really believe.
Deadman_932 ...
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Shows that you have not read the available work at all.
Measurements of helium diffusion in zircons predate the data-massaged RATE results by decades.
Can you give me a paper that shows non-ambiguous data on He diffusion in zircons prior to Humphreys et al?
Can you back up your claim that RATE 'massaged' the data? Have you not read the papers? Humphreys has answered and disposed of the 'massaged' claim. Why do you not accept it?
Crabby ...
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Fenton Hill is geothermically active ... Of course it is, that why they drilled there in the first place but Dave's Taxi won't go there.
The fact that it is geothermically active helps long agers, not YECs. Picking a hot, dry site should give the maximum diffused helium, and thus is generous to long agers. Picking a cooler site (which RATE will no doubt also do in the future) will only help YECs more.
Deadman...
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Quoting Gentry ... We are not certain whether the minute amounts of Helium recorded from the deepest zircons ... are actually residual Helium in the zircons or derived from some other source.
Two things here ... 1) He's talking about the deepest ones where most of the He is gone already. Did he mention the more shallow zircons where retention was >50%? 2) Humphreys et. al. measured the He in the biotite flakes surrounding the zircon and found it to be roughy equal to the amount of He lost fromt he zircons. Notice that the biotite flakes are very small and relatively isolated. This is pretty powerful evidence that the source of the He was the zircons and not some fluid circulation, is it not?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And that's the truth. It was NEVER a "mixture of French and Spanish", whether "among other things" or not.
Your own members of "Team Evo" agreed with me. The linguist here said it might be true if you could show a large influence which I promptly did. Many here wouldn't touch the subject because they feared I was right. I showed you word comparisons. Rilke's article from Wikipedia agreed with me just a short distance down from the part she quoted at me.
In short, I gave you abundant evidence to support my claim. Rilke made a foolish challenge in calling me an idiot, and she lost ... BIG.
What you will do by continuing to whine about the Portuguese thing is confirm for me even more your lack of character ... your inability to eat a loss and keep smiling.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And that's the truth. It was NEVER a "mixture of French and Spanish", whether "among other things" or not.
Your own members of "Team Evo" agreed with me. The linguist here said it might be true if you could show a large influence which I promptly did. Many here wouldn't touch the subject because they feared I was right. I showed you word comparisons. Rilke's article from Wikipedia agreed with me just a short distance down from the part she quoted at me.
In short, I gave you abundant evidence to support my claim. Rilke made a foolish challenge in calling me an idiot, and she lost ... BIG.
What you will do by continuing to whine about the Portuguese thing is confirm for me even more your lack of character ... your inability to eat a loss and keep smiling.
Ooookay...
So Davesy boy, Do you Deny that Portuguese was a separate dintinct language that came from vulgar latin early on? Yes or no? Quit beating around the bush with "I said, he said". Remember, you originally claimed that it did not exist before all those knight came to Portugal, and the people spoke Spanish. Also, can you substantiate your claims in any oter way than saying that French (and other) knights gained land in Portugal, which is as vague as thin air linguistically? Can you address all those official sites that specifically say (and prove) that PORTUGUESE EXISTED ALREADY?
Quit your projection. Someone else is a sore loser here, and we both know who.
<edit: and I have yet to "lose" to you, dave my man. Unless you have some exiting new argument, I think I've pretty much every reason to keep smiling... >
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ... Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ... Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other things ...
I can't believe Dave is still talking about Portuguese!! I can't believe he took my suggestion and ran with it so literally. Dave, you ass.
I can't find my exact quote now because this thread is 47 stupid pages long, but I was offering Dave a rough suggestion when I said this:
"If you said something like Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish among other thingsit would go a long way towards helping you out."
I did not say tacking my exact phrase onto your original stupid hypothesis would win you the argument.
This was intended to point out that Portuguese is defined by much more than French and Spanish influences. (which is a much better way to say it)
My tentative position on chromosome fusion is that they are harmful. I prefer that you explain in your own words why they are not, rather than sending me off to links.
The last time you sent me to your links they were misleading, remember? Your link implied that the ape and human GULO had the same deletion and that this was the end of the story. Jeannot later explained that this was not the case.
So I'm not to excited about chasing down your links.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eh Dave, let's clear up the Gulo thing. The initial deletion was the same, but due to further mutations (time, lots of time) the genes are no longer the same. Remember they even tried to draw you some pictures on WHY a friggin comparison can be made and that the initial error was the same. We also had a look at the guinea pig to see that the poor critter's GULO mutation was totally different from the mutation that we and chimps share.
So please, start being honest or do you really still not get it? You are a disgrace for your religion.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
...and as for the Portuguese thing, get a spine and admit you and/or your source was wrong. It's ok to be wrong sometimes Davey, and you don't have to loose all credibility if you admit it. However, sticking to a lie will not do your reputation good, and this is the reason people are still poking you with the stick that you picked.
Gee, Dave, as has just been pointed out, you lied.
Plain, pure, simple, outright lie.
But you claim you don't lie.
So that's TWO lies.
Hear that sound, Dave? Laughter. At you. For being a liar and getting caught. For being stupid and getting caught. For being a liar and getting caught.
No wonder they washed you out of the AF - you probably lied about being ready to fly all those really dangerous simulators. And you probably lost that last business of yours because you lied to your customers.
This is nonsense, Renier. How do you know the initial deletion was the same? You cannot know this.
You can keep bringing up the Portuguese thing as often as you want to and I will just as often continue to repeat the conclusion of the matter for all to see--I won that one and it is a breeze to demonstrate that I did.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The last time you sent me to your links they were misleading, remember? Your link implied that the ape and human GULO had the same deletion and that this was the end of the story.
WHAT
Oh dave, you're a blast.
Why don't you just admit that you were pulverized on both cases?
And about fusions, guess what: I did explain, in my own words, before providing links (links that YOU asked for, only a few pages ago, remember?) Check the post I made then (quoted again for your convenience on page 43 of this thread), Dave. And quit spinning round like a rat in a maze.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
No, Renier. He's not even trying to see it. I don't think he ever tried. He's either incapable to understand what we try to explain, or he has got it, but his subconscious is blocking it off, projecting all these distorted perceptions for his mind to argue against. Either way, he's hopeless.
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I won that one and it is a breeze to demonstrate that I did.
Please demonstrate it by answering my questions, dave.
They're just a few posts above; you can't miss them.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
People are upset with you not for your YEC views, but for the dishonest and patronizing way you have gone about trying to proselytize.
This probably ranks up there as the supreme example of the 'pot calling the kettle black.' As for proselytizing, I'm not. This applies to religion and I'm not religious. We've been over that. Religious people are about rituals and candles and robes and homina-hominas. I'm about the truth about Origins.
Religion is about adherence to ritual AND dogma. And while you may not be into robes and candles and such, your emotional investment in an inerrant Bible is rather dogmatic.
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I'm simply here to show you why the ToE and billions of years is incorrect and unsupported by the evidence, and why the Biblical model of Creation and the Flood is much better supported.
Heck, even the Catholic Church, as hidebound as it is, doesn't cling anymore to the inerrancy of the Bible. I have heard it said that the Catholic Church invites parody. That you are more dogmatic than the RCC on this issue may explain why you are not taken very seriously hereabouts. Just a thought, but as always, YMMV.
One other thought, though. Why do you suppose that God has only given a paltry few data points of a young earth the RATE folks and thousands, if not millions, of data points of a very old earth to the rest of the scientific community. If he wants us to believe, why so stingy?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Could we all just agree that Portuguese shares is roots with and is very similar to Spanish, but does reflect a certain amount of French influence. Calling it a mixture of the two is a gross oversimplification (probably based on superficial observations), yet it would also be wrong to deny French influence on the language.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
And that's the truth. It was NEVER a "mixture of French and Spanish", whether "among other things" or not.
Your own members of "Team Evo" agreed with me. The linguist here said it might be true if you could show a large influence which I promptly did.
You're a liar, Dave. You did no such thing. You showed that a few Frenchmen moved to Portugal. You did not demonstrate ANY French influence on Portuguese. Know why? It ain't there.
And also, no one else here agreed with you. I promise.
If that's really how your mind remembers that whole discussion last month, I'm more alarmed by your mental state than before.
But this is Dave's approach to knowledge: If I say it's true REALLY EMPHATICALLY, that makes it true!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
My tentative position on chromosome fusion is that they are harmful. I prefer that you explain in your own words why they are not, rather than sending me off to links.
Chromosome rearrangements are mostly harmful I think in humans, although you really have to look at it on a case by case basis.
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Your link implied that the ape and human GULO had the same deletion and that this was the end of the story. Jeannot later explained that this was not the case.
They have many of the same deletions including the same missing exons as far as I am aware.
I'm not sure if anyone denied some French influence on the language: Certainly not me.
This is how it went: Having no prior knowledge on the issue, I looked around the web for the origins of Portuguese language. I found out it was a well-accepted fact that it came separately from Vulgar Latin, evolved parallel to Spanish, and got its first major influence by French in the 18th century. All this made dave's claims (about portuguese not existing before some French knights mixed their language with Spanish) totally bogus.
But dave seemed quite sure of himself: So, I thought that he might refer us to some new evidence- maybe a book by some author who denied the early origins of portuguese (claiming that the earlier samples were apocryphal, I dunno) and gave some more evidence to prove an early role of french to actually create Portuguese. So, in my first posts, I simply posted the links I'd found and waited.
And then dave comes with glory and trumpets, Posts some data from a medieval encyclopedia that had NOTHING to do with language, points us to some simillarities (acceptable, of course) between french and portuguese, gloats for awhile and declares victory.
Now that I think of it, it was then I lost all respect for him. You see, I could understand twisting and distorting and ignoring facts to support your religion: It is your worldview, after all. It's about your God.
But then, seeing how he acted in a completely irrelevant subject, I realised dave was just protecting his ego.
That's why I can't help coming back to it: It was the time I really figured dave out.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Could we all just agree that Portuguese shares is roots with and is very similar to Spanish, but does reflect a certain amount of French influence. Calling it a mixture of the two is a gross oversimplification (probably based on superficial observations), yet it would also be wrong to deny French influence on the language.
But, um, that's not really accurate. It has a handful of late French loanwords, that's it. 'Influence' would be along the lines of grammatical or phonetic 'influence', which Dave did not demonstrate, since it didn't happen.
Morever, what Dumbass Dave here claimed was that Portuguese was a 'mix of Spanish and French'. A handful of later loans from French comes NOWHERE NEAR qualifying as being a 'mix'.
Another point about the French loanwords in Portuguese: you may recall that they did not enter the language until Brazilian Portuguese split off from European Portuguese. So the loanwords are in the latter but not the former. And yet both are still unquestionably the same language. So we're supposed to say that European Portuguese is 'a mix of French and Spanish', but not Brazilian Portuguese?
I can't believe I'm having to explain all this AGAIN. And I can't believe that AFD learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from this discussion.
I think when AFD tells us to 'get a life' on this it really means "please quit discussing this, since it makes me look stupid and I have no intention of ever admitting I was wrong".
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
They don't? This was one of the points I was going to discuss regarding the RATE project. Apparently, the RATE team thinks they support 6000 years. But again, we shall see when we get there. I won't make any firm statements until I examine the evidence myself.
No, they don’t. The RATE findings on C14 only say that coal and diamond can’t be more than 58,000 years old. They say nothing about the span from 58,000 YBP to 6000 YBP. And you have made many firm statements that there is no evidence for humans older than 6000 YBP, even though evidence was held up right in front of your face. Another day, another batch of lies from AFDave.
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Hey now ... surely people here can take a few jokes, no? Like I twisted Steve Story's statement about his friend and the meteor analysis a little while ago, but it was an obvious distortion meant to simply poke fun. You can dish it out, but you can't take it?
Oh, like Dembski’s street theater bit. You can lie and twist people’s words, but when you get caught it was all just a silly joke.
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Now why don't you back up your claim of me lying and give me an example.
OK Washout. On June 04 2006,23:24 AFDave wrote
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Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
That’s a lie Dave, pure and simple. It’s not you joking around, it’s not an honest misunderstanding, it’s a lie. It’s a lie on your part to avoid responsibility for admitting the fact that the RATE results you champion were not properly peer reviewed by qualified, unbiased geologists. Want to prove it’s not a willful lie on your part? Then provide a list of credible articles that were submitted by Creationists to mainstream scientific journals, but were rejected solely due to the author’s YEC beliefs.
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This probably ranks up there as the supreme example of the 'pot calling the kettle black.' As for proselytizing, I'm not. This applies to religion and I'm not religious. We've been over that. Religious people are about rituals and candles and robes and homina-hominas. I'm about the truth about Origins. I'm simply here to show you why the ToE and billions of years is incorrect and unsupported by the evidence, and why the Biblical model of Creation and the Flood is much better supported.
“I’m not religious, but….
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Posted by AFDave: April 18 2006,08:32 I put this (and some other factors ... admittedly, this is abbreviated) all together and in my mind and it all adds up to me to make a pretty good case that the Bible is literally true--complete with a real God, the Creation, the Flood, Moses, Jesus ... the whole deal.
Posted by AFDave: May 01 2006,12:06 This is exactly what I see in this one critical area of science today, i.e. the area of Origins and the Nature of Mankind and the issue of God.
…I just want you to believe as I do in a literal Bible, especially the Biblical model of Creation and the Flood”
(OA shakes head and chuckles) THAT piece of AFDave “logic” needs no comment. You’re really gonna make Baby Jesus cry now.
Time to be a man and ‘fess up Dave – You got caught lying, and you keep trying to wriggle out by telling more lies about the data that’s been presented, and your motives, and your desire to learn.
Did you look up “thou shalt not bear false witness” and the Golden Rule in you Bible yet?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I think when AFD tells us to 'get a life' on this it really means "please quit discussing this, since it makes me look stupid and I have no intention of ever admitting I was wrong".
I think this is precisely what is going on here. Just like the whole 'relativity' thing.
Dave is comfortable arguing over stuff he got from other people's websites; but when he makes some asinine remark on his own initiative, it invariably turns out to be a complete howler.
But Dave, the 'Cowardly Liar' as it were, is incapable of permitting himself to look bad. So his ego and vanity compels him to this unChristian, lying, disingenuous behavior... which simply confirms our opinion of his completely lack of ethics and intellectual integrity.
That's why he gets off these topics so soon (like relativity, Dave? You lied about that, too.)
Here ya go, Dave, memorize this and you'll be in good shape: Dave is a liar. Dave is a liar. Dave is a liar. Dave is a liar. Dave is a liar. Dave is a liar. Dave is a liar.
That’s a lie Dave, pure and simple. It’s not you joking around, it’s not an honest misunderstanding, it’s a lie. It’s a lie on your part to avoid responsibility for admitting the fact that the RATE results you champion were not properly peer reviewed by qualified, unbiased geologists. Want to prove it’s not a willful lie on your part? Then provide a list of credible articles that were submitted by Creationists to mainstream scientific journals, but were rejected solely due to the author’s YEC beliefs.
Yes, Dave. Here is your golden opportunity. You can actually show us that you didn't lie.
You are correct about the exponential scale ... I wasn't looking at the graph and forgot momentarily that it was not a linear scale ...But here's the important thing to know about temps ... COLD TEMPS DON'T MATTER (unless you are talking about sub-zero or something ... Surely you are not foolish enough to say that) ... Go on and pick some reasonably cool temperature ... It will help you very little ...
Dave, all temperatures matter, and time matters too. Let's see your integration of temperature effects over time that shows "It will help you very little". Of course, you are just making it up; you (and Humphreys) have no relevant calculations.
You seem stuck on the idea that we're looking for one and only one error in Humphreys' results, and that one error must explain all the anomaly. Not so. There are many possibilities for error, maybe some nobody's though of yet, and the goal should be to arrive at the truth rather than push anybody's ideological agenda (as Humphreys' explicitly admitted is the goial of the RATE project, in the quotes I posted already). Maybe some of the anomaly is from incorrect temperature assumptions, some from incorrect diffusion rate assumptions, some from incorrect calcualtionso of Q/Q0, some from ... you should, but probably don't, get the idea.
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You need 5 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE, and there is no way to get it
This betrays your ideological point of view. What we need to do is figure out what's going on with those zircons, if it's at all possible given today's technology and abilities. That means formulating hypotheses and testing them. The hypothesis that the zircons and the Earth are circa 6,000 years old is incredibly far down on the list of possibilities and ... guess what ... as long as you're invoking magic in that hypothesis, it's not testable and doesn't even belong on the list. I note you ignored my proof that Humphreys' explanation is "magic".
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... Also, your sources report that there was volcanic activity and a large temp spike ... This negates any benefit your argument might have gained from low temps before this.
Show your calculations. You need to integrate temperatures over times. A long time at a relatively low temperature can more than offset a short time at a relatively high temperature. I don't know the temperature history of the zircons to be able to do a meaningful calculation; but you claim to. Let's see the numbers.
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You need to read all the relevant documents of this debate ... You didn't even read Humphreys' rebuttal about the vacuum testing ... If you did, you should know that it is DOA.
I read it. No data. Just hand-waving.
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As for reverse contamination of the zircons, I guess 'Davey-poo' the lowly engineer will have to point out AGAIN that helium doesn't diffuse from LOW pressure to HIGH pressure ... especially when you are talking about 1/200th of the pressure.
It's not pressure, Davey-poo, it's concentration. And Davey-poo is still assuming today's conditions without justification. And Davey-poo the illiterate engineer has failed yet again to read what I explitly wrote:
"Diffusion consists of a species moving from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. If the helium concentration outside the zircon is higher than inside, helium flows in. And, of course, the rate at which helium flows in or out depends on the concentrations in the two areas; if there was unaccounted-for helium outside the zircons the diffusion rate calculations are wrong, no matter which direction helium was moving.
We're dealing with very small amounts of helium ... it wouldn't take much "reverse diffusion" to totally bollix the results. Helium is found in boreholes a few kilometers away. Helium is a tiny molecule and moves through very small spaces very easily."
I explicitly stated that it would take higher concentration of helium outside than inside for "reverse diffusion" to take place ... but any change in the amount of helium outside is going to change the diffusion. Where's your data relevant to the concentraion of helium over time outside those zircons?
Gosharootie, Humphreys may be right on some of these items; but he needs to establish that he's right with data, not arm-waving. Until and unless he does, errors in diffusion rates is a viable hypothesis for some if not all of the anomaly.
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You are reaching and you should know it. Henke's rebuttals didn't have a prayer against Humphreys. I'd be willing to bet that very few here at ATBC even understand the issues here, much less have the ability to refute the results. This explains why some people resort to mudslinging because they have very little of substance to say.
True. You obviously don't understand, and you haven't posted anything of substance.
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Let me rehash the RATE Helium results.
1) Creationists have observed that the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other. They are generally VERY discordant. They should agree if they are reliable.
Not a RATE result .. in fact, not a result at all, but another blatant lie. Different radiometric methods almost always yield concordant dates, so often so that there's no interest in mainstream science in quantifying the amount of agreeement; it would be like proposing a study to see how often Google Maps and Mapquest show the same street in the same place. Discordant dates arouse interest, but there's mighty few of them. Some creationists have come up with a very few individual instances in which one dating method gave supposedly wrong results; subtract the miscomprehensions (e.g. Austin's Grand Canyon isochron) and outright frauds (e.g. Snelling's Mt. Ngauruhoe study) and you've not even got a handful of results, none of which are about concordancy with other methods. The closest creationists have come is Woodmorappe's list of 400 discordant dates, some of which are discordant with stratigraphy and not other radiometric methods, and which is discussed at Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look and Reply to Woodmorappe's Critique of My Web Page. But, even if one takes all 400 dates as relevant to Davie's claim, 400 is a minuscule number; far, far les than 1% of all radiometric dates. So, Davie-poo, let's see the statistcs to back up this claim that "the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other".
For those few readers who might actually be interested in this subject, some discussion of concordant dates is at Radiometeric Dating Does Work! (the He11 Creek results are especially interesting, because that's where the Tyrannosaurous was found in which Schweitzer found interestly preserved structures inside the bone ... but I digress), and Consistent Radiometric dates. Of course, there's lots more.
It is not unusual for radiometric dates to be very slightly discordant, because different methods are actually measuring slightly different things; the point at which the rock cooled enough to "freeze" the relevant atoms, and this point is different for different atoms. This fact is commonly used in cooling of structures such as plutons that cooled slowl.
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2) Many other non-radiometric indicators support a very young earth ... On the order of thousands, not billions of years
None of these alleged indicators have stood up to cursory investigation.
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4) Science needs more reliable dating methods since radioisotope dating is unreliable.
Basically the same claim as #1, and wrong for the same reasons.
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5) Helium diffusion from zircons is a good candidate if the rocks are relatively cool, because a high percentage of helium is retained.
Pretty much true. Now all you need to do is provide justification fer the assumptions in this particular case.
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6) No one had measured He diffusion in zircons before (why? Afraid of the answer maybe?)
Another blatant lie, and one that's already been refuted in this thread. Dave, do you think we so stupid we can't remember what's been written already? The evidence suggests that you're that stupid ... I've already pointed out in this thread that mainstream scientists have been and are using helium dating in zircons. From the very Yale page you supposedly read, 'cause you quoted it:
"Much of the most exciting work however, comes in figuring out new ways to use He dating, such as how to date other types of minerals (e.g., garnet, zircon, etc.), using crystal-size-age relationships to elucidate extremely low-T (40-70° C) thermal histories of rocks, and applying He dating to novel problems."
Note that at Zircon (U-Th)/He Chronometry there's links to presentations as early as 2001 (which 2001 presentation addresses the issue of diffusion in zircons directly). So, nobody's afraid of the answer except creationists like Dave, who have nothing but lies.
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7) Humphreys' group published predictions for the rates at various temps and were DEAD ON when the measured rates came back from the lab 3 years later, a TRULY REMARKABLE FEAT.
Yet, when someone else does the calculations, the results are WAY OFF. Obviously, somebody's assumptions are wrong. And it't the RATE group that defends their assumptions only with arm-waving. There's not enough information available to charge anyone with dishonesty, but I note that RATE has not released the raw data as requested; it's standard practice to make raw data available after you've done your analysis and publication. At Young-Earth Creationist Helium Diffusion "Dates": Fallacies Based on Bad Assumptions and Questionable Data in the "UNRELIABLE DATA IN HUMPHREYS ET AL. (2003a, 2004)" section:
"Dr. Humphreys has yet to reveal how these "typographic errors" in Gentry et al. (1982a) were discovered, whether any of the original laboratory notes were consulted to properly correct the errors, and why the errors went publicly unnoticed for about 20 years. As discussed above, there are numerous incidences where Dr. Humphreys has unjustly manipulated (e.g., a graph in Magomedov, 1970) or sloppily handled data (e.g., the units of measure in Appendix C of Humphreys et al., 2003a). Therefore, documenting the validity of the changes to the helium values from Gentry et al. (1982a) is even more urgent. Dr. Humphreys needs to fully explain this issue and dispel any possible thoughts that the data from Gentry et al. (1982a) were altered (like the data in Magomedov, 1970) to comply with his results. Finally, such poor documentation to justify changes in published data would never be tolerated in authentic scientific journals. Any editor or peer-reviewer of a legitimate scientific journal would demand a thorough and complete explanation of why these changes are justified before any revisions would be allowed to appear in their journals. Competent editors and reviewers would also insist that the original laboratory notes be consulted or that the results be discarded and the analyses redone. ...
Gentry et al. (1982a) does not contain adequate information on the lengths and widths of their zircons. Humphreys et al. (2003a, 2004) also failed to provide suitable measurements of the lengths and widths of the zircons and biotites in their samples. This information is needed to estimate the effective radii of zircons (a) and biotites (b), which are required for the "dating" equations in Humphreys et al. (2003a). ...
I need to remind Dr. Humphreys that his papers only contain one average b value (p. 8, Humphreys et al., 2003a). Contrary to the claims in Humphreys (2005), the necessary raw data to calculate a standard deviation for b are not present in any of his documents. How can anyone obtain a standard deviation from only one number?! Where are these raw data, Dr. Humphreys?"
Can you back up your claim that RATE 'massaged' the data? Have you not read the papers? Humphreys has answered and disposed of the 'massaged' claim. Why do you not accept it?
Henke has raised some questions that require the raw data to answer and lab notebooks to answer. Humphreys has not provided the raw data or lab notebooks.
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2) Humphreys et. al. measured the He in the biotite flakes surrounding the zircon and found it to be roughy equal to the amount of He lost fromt he zircons. Notice that the biotite flakes are very small and relatively isolated. This is pretty powerful evidence that the source of the He was the zircons and not some fluid circulation, is it not?
They don't? This was one of the points I was going to discuss regarding the RATE project. Apparently, the RATE team thinks they support 6000 years. But again, we shall see when we get there. I won't make any firm statements until I examine the evidence myself.
No, they don't. The RATE findings on C14 only say that coal and diamond can't be more than 58,000 years old.
Actually, they don't show that. The RATE findings show that if the carbon is derived solely from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when the coal/diamond formed then they are circa 58K years old. The unstated and unjustified assumption is the part in italics above. We don't know exactly why those items show measurable C14/C12 ratios. Real scientists are working on it. "It's magic" is awfully low on the list of hypotheses that are being tested.
Like most of you, I'm baffled by AFDave's titanium-clad self-regard, his sunny delusion of competence in linguistiscs, biochemistry, plate tectonics -- and more! -- despite his inability to recognize, follow, or produce a logical argument on any topic. How can anyone with such a shallow brainpan manage to feed himself, much less sustain that grotesquely over-inflated ego? The nutritional issue remains but I may have an answer to the latter question.
I'm sure this article was discussed on ATBC or PT when it was first published but that was long before the arrival of our feckless friend, and current readers may have missed it. It's a small study and further research is required, but its findings describe AFDave with remarkable accuracy. If only he could be convinced to donate his brain to Cornell's Department of Psychology...
Like most of you, I'm baffled by AFDave's titanium-clad self-regard, his sunny delusion of competence in linguistiscs, biochemistry, plate tectonics -- and more! -- despite his inability to recognize, follow, or produce a logical argument on any topic. How can anyone with such a shallow brainpan manage to feed himself, much less sustain that grotesquely over-inflated ego? The nutritional issue remains but I may have an answer to the latter question.
I'm sure this article was discussed on ATBC or PT when it was first published but that was long before the arrival of our feckless friend, and current readers may have missed it. It's a small study and further research is required, but its findings describe AFDave with remarkable accuracy. If only he could be convinced to donate his brain to Cornell's Department of Psychology...
I think part of AFD's sublime confidence that he is right about everything must derive from his religion. He's convinced he's chosen the perfect religion, the only one *GOD* recognizes. I think he figures that he's so incredibly right about that, and that we're just a bunch of secular humanist liberals, he must be right about everything. After all, he's on God's TEAM!
There is a certain type of Christian (almost always conservative Protestant) who thinks that once they've Accepted Jesus As Their Personal Savior, they essentially can stop trying -- that anything they do from that point on is more valid than anything done by anyone who hasn't 'found Jesus'.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
You can keep bringing up the Portuguese thing as often as you want to and I will just as often continue to repeat the conclusion of the matter for all to see--I won that one and it is a breeze to demonstrate that I did.
Do you believe this? God, I don't think I've ever seen a bigger horse's ass in my life. This guy actually thinks he "won" that argument.
Good grief. Pretty amazing for a sustained delusion, if you ask me.
Dave, in case you've forgotten everyone here did see you lose that argument. What, do you think we can't go back and read the thread?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither.
The believers in the Darwinian religion regualarly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themsleves intact.
Why is someone who professes to think Michel Foucault is evil echoing exactly what Foucault wrote in "Madness and Civilization"? Another name for "PSYCHIATRIC FASCISM."
Foucault claimed that the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane were no less controlling than previous methods.
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I do not claim evolutionists have taken over America and are throwing Christians in mental hospitals. I am pointing toward the logical implications of what this attitude might lead to in practice.
It might be a good idea after all. Maybe we should? It would keep them from engaging the kind of mass killing they're doing as leaders of various countries and terrorist groups.
First, I will explain my love-hate relationship with Comrade Foucault. While I disagree with his philosophy, he brought evolutionistic liberalism to its logical conclusions. He embraced the nihilism at the core of the evolutionary worldview, while other liberals scurry around in attempts to evade it. For example, in a debate with Noam Chomsky, Chomsky desperately squirms to hold on to the Christian ideal of justice but without the Christianity. Foucault cuts to the chase and explains justice is a mere appendage of power. In an atheistic worldview, it must be so. Comrade Foucault kicks Comrade Chomsky's butt in this verbal sparring. Upon seeing part of this on television, and then hunting down the transcript of the rest, I realized what being a liberal was all about, and I opened up to the Gospel of Christ.
Foucault's thoughts on psychiatric oppression must be viewed in the context of his full philosophy. In his nihilistic worldview, there is no right or wrong, and hence no need to sugar-coat repression with theraputic "caring." (I'm sure he would have had no problem with throwing the "bourgeois" elements of society in explicit concentration camps.) However, his revelations about what is really going on made an impression on me. Since coming to Christ, I am always on the lookout for scientific-sounding, compassionate schemes to deprive men of their liberty.
As far as your last paragraph goes, you have bared Darwinain ethics as plain as day, plainer than Foucault, even. I will link to your post whenever I hear Christians being accused of "intolerance" and "bigotry."
Anyone know any evolutionary biologist who thinks Christians ought to be sent to prison camps? Nope, me neither.
The believers in the Darwinian religion regualarly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themsleves intact.
Why is someone who professes to think Michel Foucault is evil echoing exactly what Foucault wrote in "Madness and Civilization"? Another name for "PSYCHIATRIC FASCISM."
Foucault claimed that the rise of scientific and "humanitarian" treatments of the insane were no less controlling than previous methods.
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I do not claim evolutionists have taken over America and are throwing Christians in mental hospitals. I am pointing toward the logical implications of what this attitude might lead to in practice.
It might be a good idea after all. Maybe we should? It would keep them from engaging the kind of mass killing they're doing as leaders of various countries and terrorist groups.
First, I will explain my love-hate relationship with Comrade Foucault. While I disagree with his phiosophy, he brought evolutionistic liberalism to its logical conclusions. He embraced the nihilism at the core of the evolutionary worldview, while other liberals scurry around in attempts to evade it. For example, in a debate with Noam Chomsky, Chomsky desperately squirms to hold on to the Christian ideal of justice but without the Christianity. Foucault cuts to the chase and explains jutice is a mere appendage of power. In an atheistic worldview, it must be so. Comrade Foucault kicks Comrade Chomsky's butt in this verbal sparring. Upon seeing part of this on television, and then hunting down the transcript of the rest, I realized what being a liberal was all about, and I opened up to the Gospel of Christ.
Foucault's thoughts on psychiatric oppression must be viewed in the context of his full philosophy. In his nihilistic worldview, there is no right or wrong, and hence no need to sugar-coat repression with theraputic "caring." (I'm sure he would have had no problem with throwing the "bourgeois" elements of society in explicit concentration camps.) However, his revelations about what is really going on made an impression on me. Since coming to Christ, I am always on the lookout for scientific-sounding, compassionate schemes to deprive men of their liberty.
As far as your last paragraph goes, you have bared Darwinain ethics as plain as day, plainer than Foucault, even. I will link to your post whenever I hear Christians being accused of "intolerance" and "bigotry."
Got jealous of all that attention Dave got in the polls and you didn't? 'cause your last rant has no relevance to this thread, no relevance to what 'liberals' believe, and no relevance to any topic of intellectual interest.
Sorry, Mr. Ectowisp, but you'll need to get your jollies elsewhere. This thread is reserved for us making fun of a scientifically illiterate, dishonest, cowardly fundie fruitcake. You volunteering for that role?
Hey GoP-- Got anything to say about RATE? As you can tell, I'm a little outnumbered by hordes of 'Evobot warriors.' Maybe you could take up the Foucault piece on a different thread, no?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Can you give me a paper that shows non-ambiguous data on He diffusion in zircons prior to Humphreys et al?
If you'd read even Humphrey's 2004 "paper" carefully, you'd note that they cite work done in 1967 on He/zircon diffusion rate problems that they had to take into account---the fact that they DID take them into account indicates that-- even to Humphreys-- those diffusion data were valid. Further work goes back to the 1950's. If you mean He diffusion CHRONOMETRY you are still wrong (read those papers, stupid).
Second, on Humphreys biotite/zircon He "ratios" Look up the data on biotite diffusion/infusion. Humphreys ( and your) claim that the lower amounts of He in surrounding biotite---mean NOTHING in regard to the possibility of He transport/infusion in solute or otherwise, AFarceDave.
Farley's ( the guy from Caltech that I live nearby, Dave?) work and even my own "unread" mind can show multiple (that means not just one, Dave) scenarios that Humphreys et al did not even try to eliminate. This is precisely why I say Humphreys' data-massaging claims mean nothing, Dave. No, I won't give you that information either, AFDave. You don't like answering my questions, thus I feel no need to feed you data. But here's a clue, AFarceDaveTard2: read his work on biotite/titanite He diffusion. Look at my previous posts that you blithely excise bits of to make claims about.
Prediction: The Fenton Hill's continued geotherm activity and its influences on the anomalous RATE results will NEVER, EVER be directly restudied by Humphreys or Gentry to eliminate potential sources.
As to you not being a liar, AFarceDave...er, yes you are. Your insane and unsupported claims on Amerind written languages was more than enough to establish that, along with your continued refusal to deal directly with the subject.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hiya Dave. Are you going to explain relativity and God, now? Or perhaps you'd like us to discuss your mistakes and lies regarding Portuguese?
You said something stupid; got caught; and lied about it. But you said you never lie.
So that's two lies right there.
And there's a lie you made above that you need to address:
Dave lied
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Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
Dave was caught in his lie
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That’s a lie Dave, pure and simple. It’s not you joking around, it’s not an honest misunderstanding, it’s a lie. It’s a lie on your part to avoid responsibility for admitting the fact that the RATE results you champion were not properly peer reviewed by qualified, unbiased geologists. Want to prove it’s not a willful lie on your part? Then provide a list of credible articles that were submitted by Creationists to mainstream scientific journals, but were rejected solely due to the author’s YEC beliefs.
Would you like to try to lie your way out of that?
Got jealous of all that attention Dave got in the polls and you didn't?
Well babe, that hardly makes sense in light of the fact Nurse Ratched the fish-boy set up a poll just for ME ME ME!
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yeah, this thread is devoted to the guy voted dumbest creobot, Paley, not for you to entertain fantasies about liberalism.
Well Stevie, tell me if Norm-Dung's suggestions Christians be thrown in some unspecified institutions where they would be watched closely some hallucination on my part, or did I really quote that?
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Hey GoP-- Got anything to say about RATE? As you can tell, I'm a little outnumbered by hordes of 'Evobot warriors.' Maybe you could take up the Foucault piece on a different thread, no?
Dave, you are doing a great job kicking their butts all by yourself. I am fighting the same orcs on the cosmological front. I am sorry, brother in Christ, I have nothing to add to the RATE discussion, but as I mentioned, you have cleaned their clocks. I will no longer post on this thread.
Finally, if anybody else is interested in continuing this discussion, I would invite them to start another thread. If I can find the time, I might start one myself.
Heck, even the Catholic Church, as hidebound as it is, doesn't cling anymore to the inerrancy of the Bible. I have heard it said that the Catholic Church invites parody. That you are more dogmatic than the RCC on this issue may explain why you are not taken very seriously hereabouts. Just a thought, but as always, YMMV.
My view is that the Catholic Church has always been a people control institution, not a Christian Church in the Pauline (the apostle) sense of the word. As such, what do they care about Biblical inerrancy? After all, they view ultimate authority for faith and practice as coming from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church itself, not the Bible. In fact, they scorn Protestants like me as 'Bible Christians.'
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One other thought, though. Why do you suppose that God has only given a paltry few data points of a young earth the RATE folks and thousands, if not millions, of data points of a very old earth to the rest of the scientific community. If he wants us to believe, why so stingy?
There are millions of data points supporting a young earth. The reason you don't see them is because the majority of scientists today have bought into the Old Earth Myth and they publish thousands of articles in line with this thinking. This is comparable to the situation when the majority of scientists used to believe the geocentric solar system model. The evidence was there for the heliocentric model, but a scientist was considered an outcast if he believed it. We have a similar situation today. The majority of scientists are long agers and the young agers are considered to be outcasts and idiots. This has nothing to do with the data and everything to do with human nature, peer pressure and intellectual courage.
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Could we all just agree that Portuguese shares is roots with and is very similar to Spanish, but does reflect a certain amount of French influence. Calling it a mixture of the two is a gross oversimplification (probably based on superficial observations), yet it would also be wrong to deny French influence on the language.
Hey ... an attempt at reconciliation by an ATBC person. Personally, I don't really care about the nature of Portuguese. But if Rilke or Arden or Faid keep bringing up this issue to try and show I'm an idiot, I will keep slamming them with the facts.
Arden...
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You're a liar, Dave. You did no such thing. You showed that a few Frenchmen moved to Portugal. You did not demonstrate ANY French influence on Portuguese. Know why? It ain't there.
Actually I did in at least two different ways. You should be ashamed of yourself. You're a linguist and you can't even admit the French influence when it is plain as the nose on your face. I showed you the influx of French knights, I showed you the word comparisons, I showed you the Wikipedia article that admits my statement, and I showed you the encyclopedia statement that admits that Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same until the time period when the French knights came over.
You have been shown over and over again, and if you side with Rilke, you are basically siding with someone known here for here complete lack of ability to carry on a scientific discourse as well as someone who makes outrageous statements like 'teaching the Bible to kids is child molestation ... er child abuse,' doesn't know what an afterburner is and has nothing better to do than compose poetry and call me a 2nd LT to try to discredit me.
If you want me to lump you in with Rilke, fine, but I do have a little respect for you at the moment. Do you want me to lose all respect for you?
How does the Portuguese issue relate to Origns? In this way. It illustrates how ordinarily bright human beings can get so focused on insulting someone regardless of the facts (Rilke), that they say ridiculous things, then stick to them no matter what evidence smacks them in the face. It also illustrates how ideological allies will sometimes stick with one another in spite of the evidence and in spite of the damage it may do to their reputation. This is exactly what is going on with Origins issues.
Chris Hyland ...
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AFD said ... My tentative position on chromosome fusion is that they are harmful. I prefer that you explain in your own words why they are not, rather than sending me off to links.
Chris responded ... Chromosome rearrangements are mostly harmful I think in humans, although you really have to look at it on a case by case basis.
Faid-- Have a look what Chris has to say. Jeannot? Any opinion on this? Incorygible? Any other biology types or genetics people want to weigh in?
Chris...
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They have many of the same deletions including the same missing exons as far as I am aware.
Yes. This is the more accurate picture that I understand now, no thanks to Faid, but thanks to many others. This is unconvincing to me regarding favoring common ancestry over common design.
OA...
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No, they don’t. The RATE findings on C14 only say that coal and diamond can’t be more than 58,000 years old. They say nothing about the span from 58,000 YBP to 6000 YBP. And you have made many firm statements that there is no evidence for humans older than 6000 YBP, even though evidence was held up right in front of your face. Another day, another batch of lies from AFDave.
Now you're getting more sciency ... good. You still have a strange idea of what a lie is. It's not a lie to say that I don't see any evidence for humans that is older than 6000 years, or that I disagree with your supposed evidence for a 200,000 year history. It might be ignorant (don't think so, but maybe), but it's not a lie. You are correct that the RATE findings only say coal and diamond can’t be more than 58,000 years old with conventional asumptions on C-14 dating, which of course, the RATE Group does not accept. We will get into this in further detail, but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. This would significantly affect conventional interpretations of c-14 amounts found in coal, diamonds, fossils and what have you.
OA...
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Oh, like Dembski’s street theater bit. You can lie and twist people’s words, but when you get caught it was all just a silly joke.
Street theater? What?
OA...
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Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
That’s a lie Dave, pure and simple. It’s not you joking around, it’s not an honest misunderstanding, it’s a lie.
Again, you don't understand the definition of a lie. A lie is an outright, willful untruth. I believe my statement above to be true. I may be wrong. It is probably an oversimplification. But I think it is true as a generalization. In any case, it's not a lie.
OA...
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…I just want you to believe as I do in a literal Bible, especially the Biblical model of Creation and the Flood”
Totally lost ya', man. Do what?
Eric...
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Dave, in case you've forgotten everyone here did see you lose that argument. What, do you think we can't go back and read the thread?
Yes. And if you go back and read you will see that you are making a ridiculous fool of youself by climbing onto Rilke's 'Portuguese branch.' Just keep going and I'll cut the branch off again for you.
JonF-poo ... Wow! You're making me work now! I was having such an easy time until you came along and starting sounding knowledgeable.
No ... seriously, this is actually what I want -- people who understand the issues on the Evo side.
I will read through your stuff and get back to you. I ordered both RATE Books so I can have ALL their side of the story. Do you have these?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well Stevie, tell me if Norm-Dung's suggestions Christians be thrown in some unspecified institutions where they would be watched closely some hallucination on my part, or did I really quote that?
I don't know what you're talking about, but this is the thread for the regnant champion, AFDave, not your fantasies about liberal nihilism. Why don't you start a thread called "Terrible Things I Imagine About Liberals"
Got jealous of all that attention Dave got in the polls and you didn't?
Well babe, that hardly makes sense in light of the fact Nurse Ratched the fish-boy set up a poll just for ME ME ME!
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yeah, this thread is devoted to the guy voted dumbest creobot, Paley, not for you to entertain fantasies about liberalism.
Well Stevie, tell me if Norm-Dung's suggestions Christians be thrown in some unspecified institutions where they would be watched closely some hallucination on my part, or did I really quote that?
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Hey GoP-- Got anything to say about RATE? As you can tell, I'm a little outnumbered by hordes of 'Evobot warriors.' Maybe you could take up the Foucault piece on a different thread, no?
Dave, you are doing a great job kicking their butts all by yourself. I am fighting the same orcs on the cosmological front. I am sorry, brother in Christ, I have nothing to add to the RATE discussion, but as I mentioned, you have cleaned their clocks. I will no longer post on this thread.
Finally, if anybody else is interested in continuing this discussion, I would invite them to start another thread. If I can find the time, I might start one myself.
Well Stevie, tell me if Norm-Dung's suggestions Christians be thrown in some unspecified institutions where they would be watched closely some hallucination on my part, or did I really quote that?
I don't know what you're talking about, but this is the thread for the regnant champion, AFDave, not your fantasies about liberal nihilism. Why don't you start a thread called "Terrible Things I Imagine About Liberals"
Gosh - you don't think that Mr. Ectowhisp and Ann Coulter are an item, do you? That would explain... oh, so many things.
2nd Lt. "I Washed out 'cause I lied to my drill instructor about doing all those sit-ups" Dave said,
Quote
Yes. And if you go back and read you will see that you are making a ridiculous fool of youself by climbing onto Rilke's 'Portuguese branch.' Just keep going and I'll cut the branch off again for you.
Geez, Dave - are you still smarting from having lost that PORTUGUESE MOMENT? You do seem awfully sensitive about making a fool of yourself on that one. Are you really sure you want to make yourself look like a complete and total idiot...again?
I know you're a glutton for punishment (look how well you've done in this thread alone by slogging on after ever thing you've said has been demolished as misinformation and lies), but really - another PORTUGUESE MOMENT?
I hated watching you look so flustered, nervous, and scared the first time. The second time will be much harder.
But I'll love watching you fall flat on your face.
Dave, in case you've forgotten everyone here did see you lose that argument. What, do you think we can't go back and read the thread?
Yes. And if you go back and read you will see that you are making a ridiculous fool of youself by climbing onto Rilke's 'Portuguese branch.' Just keep going and I'll cut the branch off again for you.
Not a chance, Dave. I've asked this before, and I'll ask it again: who here (other than you) thinks you've "won" the French + Spanish = Portuguese argument, Sir Black Knight?
Your argument was annihilated (you didn't even really have an argument, since your entire chain of "logic" is based on history, not linguistics), and you didn't even notice. You presented not one shred of linguistic evidence that Portuguese is the product of a union of French and Spanish, and even worse, you didn't even seem to know that all three are romance languages descended from Latin.
Your insistence that you've actually "won" anything here (JonF is crucifying you on this whole He canard) is proof of nothing so much as your own delusions. And before you cite Bill as someone who's persuaded by you, remember that he's not just a YEC, he's a geocentrist.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Rilke-- Do you know ANYTHING about ANY topic on science?
I'll even let you get by without saying anything about the RATE Group.
Chromosome fusion? Cosmology? Geology? Anything?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Rilke-- Do you know ANYTHING about ANY topic on science?
I'll even let you get by without saying anything about the RATE Group.
Chromosome fusion? Cosmology? Geology? Anything?
2nd Lt. "I went into the AF 'cause I couldn't get a date" Dave, it is not possible to discuss science with someone who is, like yourself, utterly ignorant of science.
You crib all your 'science' from creationist web-sites or wikipedia. You are constantly and consistenly shown to be wrong, mistaken, factually incorrect, illogical, or utterly lacking in any kind of argument on every point you have raised.
It's not fair to play mind-games with you; you would need a mind....
I showed you the encyclopedia statement that admits that Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same until the time period when the French knights came over.
Care to provide that quote for me dave? I can't seem to find it at Wiki... Instead, I find this:
Quote
Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. It began to diverge from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, and started to be used in written documents around the 9th century. By the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with fairly minor influences from other languages.
...which says the same thing as all the other sites we quoted to you. Oh, and, just in case you mean the encyclopedia about medieval history you had quoted: That quote said NOTHING about language, and you know it. It just said that French knights came to Portugal. Period.
What up, dave? Thought we'd forget what you had said by now? Pathetic.
About fusions:
Quote
Faid-- Have a look what Chris has to say.
I did, and I agree with him. And my quote still stands. Did you perchance read it, dave? And the links YOU asked for, to show that I'm not pulling "facts" out of my hat like you so often do? If not, I suggest that you do, and stop pointing me to other people's answers to create confusion. Is that the best you can do? Pathetic.
About GULO:
Quote
Yes. This is the more accurate picture that I understand now, no thanks to Faid, but thanks to many others.
You GOTTA be kidding me. Should I go and find every single time I had told you just that, before I finally gave up? And if you did understand it, it is unconvincing to you because....? Does common design somehow predict that the errors in a broken gene in two species should be the same if the two species look alike, and continue to accumulate in an almost identical pattern on the broken part? Do you think we forgot how many times we tried to explain that to you, and your responce practically was " oh pppphhhhht!"?
In short: Pathetic.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
AFDave the cowardly lyin' says: Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
Quote
OA says: That’s a lie Dave, pure and simple. It’s not you joking around, it’s not an honest misunderstanding, it’s a lie.
Quote
AFDave the cowardly lyin' says: Again, you don't understand the definition of a lie. A lie is an outright, willful untruth. I believe my statement above to be true. I may be wrong. It is probably an oversimplification. But I think it is true as a generalization. In any case, it's not a lie.
Bullshit Dave. Show us the evidence that caused you to believe this. Show us your list of credible articles that were submitted by Creationists to mainstream scientific journals, but were rejected solely due to the author’s YEC beliefs.
Your claim is wrong, and you know it is wrong, but you repeat it anyway. That makes you a liar.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
You're a liar, Dave. You did no such thing. You showed that a few Frenchmen moved to Portugal. You did not demonstrate ANY French influence on Portuguese. Know why? It ain't there.
Actually I did in at least two different ways. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Nope. I ain't. Nice try, tho.
Quote
You're a linguist and you can't even admit the French influence when it is plain as the nose on your face. I showed you the influx of French knights,
That does not equal a French influence on the language. There are thousands of Vietnamese people in California. Does that mean that there's of course a Vietnamese influence on English? Have all the Hindi speakers in England 'influenced' the English language there?
Quote
I showed you the word comparisons,
Yes, and the word comparisons meant nothing. French and Portuguese are Romance languages. They're both descended from Latin. Of course they have words in common. They share INHERITED VOCABULARY, moron. So do Romanian and Portuguese. Does that mean there's a Romanian influence on Portuguese? I could show you a vocabulary of old Gothic with words that look a lot like English. Does that mean there's a Gothic influence on English?
Quote
I showed you the Wikipedia article that admits my statement,
It did no such thing.
Quote
and I showed you the encyclopedia statement that admits that Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same until the time period when the French knights came over.
The 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' fallacy. The sites you showed me acknowledged no more influence than a late layer of French loanwords that postdates the splitoff of Brazilian Portuguese.
Quote
You have been shown over and over again, and if you side with Rilke, you are basically siding with someone known here for here complete lack of ability to carry on a scientific discourse as well as someone who makes outrageous statements like 'teaching the Bible to kids is child molestation ... er child abuse,' doesn't know what an afterburner is and has nothing better to do than compose poetry and call me a 2nd LT to try to discredit me.
Frankly, Dave, I don't really care what arguments you have with RGD. It's none of my business. And you will notice that I haven't gone after you with any of RGD's arguments. Your arguments with her are not what we're talking about. What *I* am talking about is that you are saying asinine, groundless things about linguistics, and that when you have been proven wrong repeatedly, you've consistently been either too stubborn to admit it, or too stupid to see it. You obviously lack any knowledge of linguistics, which would neatly explain why your ideas here are in complete disagreement with the consensus of all linguists on this subject.
Quote
If you want me to lump you in with Rilke, fine, but I do have a little respect for you at the moment. Do you want me to lose all respect for you?
I frankly don't care whether you 'respect' me, AFD. What is at issue here is that you do not know what you are talking about when it comes to language, that you lack any ability to do basic scientific reasoning, and that in your rush to save face you're being wildly dishonest.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Well Stevie, tell me if Norm-Dung's suggestions Christians be thrown in some unspecified institutions where they would be watched closely some hallucination on my part, or did I really quote that?
I don't know what you're talking about, but this is the thread for the regnant champion, AFDave, not your fantasies about liberal nihilism. Why don't you start a thread called "Terrible Things I Imagine About Liberals"
Oh he will, steve, he will. Anything to cut the traffic in The Thread That Must Not Be Named...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Heck, even the Catholic Church, as hidebound as it is, doesn't cling anymore to the inerrancy of the Bible. I have heard it said that the Catholic Church invites parody. That you are more dogmatic than the RCC on this issue may explain why you are not taken very seriously hereabouts. Just a thought, but as always, YMMV.
My view is that the Catholic Church has always been a people control institution, not a Christian Church in the Pauline (the apostle) sense of the word. As such, what do they care about Biblical inerrancy? After all, they view ultimate authority for faith and practice as coming from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church itself, not the Bible. In fact, they scorn Protestants like me as 'Bible Christians.'
I am amazed. You know more about biology than professional biologists. You know more about genetics than a geneticist. You know more about physics than physicists. You know more about languages than someone with a PhD in linguistics. And now, apparently, you know more about theology than the theologians serving the oldest Christian church. By God, you are:
One other thought, though. Why do you suppose that God has only given a paltry few data points of a young earth the RATE folks and thousands, if not millions, of data points of a very old earth to the rest of the scientific community. If he wants us to believe, why so stingy?
There are millions of data points supporting a young earth. The reason you don't see them is because the majority of scientists today have bought into the Old Earth Myth and they publish thousands of articles in line with this thinking.
Yes. Thousands of articles that have shown their data and calculations and been critically peer reviewed before publications. But, you know, actually having to show your work to other people who understand the topic is just an onerous hurdle to perpetuate the conspiracy, huh?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Seriously, this is a thread for AFD's pre-enlightenment maunderings. I suggest you start a new thread entitled "My Feverish Fantasies About Liberals, or Why Noam Chomsky is a Commie", and transfer all these rants there. That way none of the rest of us have to see them if we don't want to.
Do it as a favor to your buddy Dave!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Oh, and lest we forget that 2nd Lt. "PORTUGUESE MOMENT" Dave also said
Quote
You guys are getting way too complex about the relativity thing. All I am saying is that there are many passages in the Bible that collectively give us the idea that God "lives outside of space and time."
No, Dave. This would be a lie. That is NOT what you said. Should we remind you of what you actually said? Just for fun? Sure we should.
Dave "I never lie except about anything I've ever said - including that" said
Quote
I can show how the Laws of Relativity make it conceivable that someone could "live outside of space and time" (even though I don't understand how this works).
Note the difference there, Dave? You claimed you could show this.
You lied.
Simple as that: you lied.
Quote
Now honestly I cannot conceive of this but I am not so arrogant as to say it cannot be so.
Well, yes: imagination seems to be one of the things you lack. That's why you crib your stuff from elsewhere.
Quote
With the phenomenon of time dilation, it is now possible to conceive of God 'running on a different time scale' from humans, or even running on no time scale at all, which is what 'eternity past' and 'eternity future' sounds like.
How? Be precise. After all, you said you could show this. Were you lying?
Quote
With the phenomenon of length contraction, it is also possible to conceive of God being able to reach all points in the universe instantaneously if all three dimensions approach zero.
How? Be precise. After all, you said you could show this. Were you lying?
Quote
Now this is sci-fi sounding stuff to be sure. But can you see now what I am saying?
No, because you haven't actually said anything.
Quote
I am not saying that I can explain relativity. I am saying that just the existence of these phenomena gives powerful (OK, drop the powerful if you like) support to the concept of an eternal, omnipresent God.
How? Be precise. After all, you said you could show this. Were you lying?
Quote
And again, if you don't like this, fine. What's new?
Again, you don't understand the definition of a lie. A lie is an outright, willful untruth. I believe my statement above to be true. I may be wrong. It is probably an oversimplification. But I think it is true as a generalization. In any case, it's not a lie.
Here is an interesting point, for which we can use the 'relativity' issue as a case example.
Dave said,
Quote
I can show how the Laws of Relativity make it conceivable that someone could "live outside of space and time" (even though I don't understand how this works).
Now, Dave has since denied that he can show this.
So - when Dave made that statement was he lying?
If Dave said, "I can leg press 2,000 pounds," would he be lying?
In his "Prove evolution" thread, a bajillion posts ago, dave says that Down Syndrome is caused by a fusion, and that all fusions are harmful (as a doctor friend told him), implying that it can't be used as material for evolution.
Shortly after that, I reply thus:
Quote
Oh, about the Down Syndrome thing: I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that a fusion is responsible for its occurence? That's simply not true. For the vast majority of cases, failed disjunction (sp?) is the reason: and that's affected by things like the mother's age etc. Now, a quick glance at my old textbooks told me that there are in fact a few cases of DS attributed to chromosome fusions (Robertsonian translocations); but those are like, 3% of the total number. Or is it that you are claiming that all fusions have such disastrous effects? That is also extremely incorrect. In all the people in the world today, more than 1 in 1000 has a kind of Robertsonian translocation. Most of those are "balanced" fusions, and their carriers have no phaenotypic problem. It has been suggested that these people might have an increased risk in giving birth to children with genetic defects (like Down), but recent studies propose that the risk is much smaller than previously thought. As for other mammals: Robertsonian translocations of various kinds are quite common, especially in horses and cows, with only a minor drop in fertility as a result -which may pose problems for selective breeding, but none for the animal's survival. IIRC, there's also a kind of antelope where a RobT is so common and without problems, the population of the species has three distinct caryotypes, with 24, 25 and 26 chromosomes.But I'll cave to check that out.
Dave promptly ignores my reply.
I try to get his attention, to no avail. He touches the subject again, in this thread, saying the same things. I post a link that shows he's wrong. He ignores me again.
I press him on it a bit, untill he finally addresses my claims.... By completely ignoring my previous answer, saying essentially the same thing, claiming I never answered and demanding links.
I reply by quoting my post from the other thread, and providing some links that show how, indeed, there are many fusions (Robertsonian translocations) that pose no danger to their carriers... And about the pathology of Down Syndrome.
He replies by saying that he doesn't want links after all, because he can't underst- ...because they are "misleading", and he wants me to explain "in my own words", if he is to address my claims.
I point him again to the fact that I have explained, in my very first post on this subject, and direct him once again to it. I also remind him that he demanded the links, and press him to address them, and my statement.
He responds by pointing me to Chris's comment, and essentially saying "you guys work it out", as if I ever said that all chromosome transactions are without problems... and refuses to say anything else.
And this is where we are now.
What does a neutral observer make of all this?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave, this is exactly the kind of stupifyingly wrong thing you say all the time that makes you so fascinatingly entertaining:
Quote
With the phenomenon of length contraction, it is also possible to conceive of God being able to reach all points in the universe instantaneously if all three dimensions approach zero.
Dave, there is never a situation where Lorentz transformations will lead to lengths in all three dimensions approaching zero (or even changing, for that matter). Lorentz contraction only happens in the direction of travel, you bonehead.
And furthermore, travel would only appear instantaneously to God. To everything else, he'd still be moving at or below the speed of light. Unless you think God can violate natural law at will, but in that case why do you even bring up special relativity? It wouldn't constrain your theory about God's omnipresence anyway!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'm grateful for the quality of responses given to AirHeadDaveTard2's claims. I ...I think I love you guys. *cries into his beer sensitively, yet manfully*
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm grateful for the quality of responses given to AirHeadDaveTard2's claims. I ...I think I love you guys. *cries into his beer sensitively, yet manfully*
Ha! I knew all along you evolutionists were nothing more than a bunch of homos!-ds
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
My point on that whole discussion, though, did not depend on language loss. My point was that civilization appeared abruptly, simultaneously, and recently. This to me is powerful evidence for recent creation of mankind according to the Biblical model.
Taxi Driver Dave, it would be hard to believe how wrong you can be about so many things were it not for your Faith in an inerrant Bible.
Everyone else is crushing your onions on the other topics you've brought up, so I think I'll address this statement.
Civilization appeared Abruptly?
Wrong.
CIvilization appeared simultaneously?
Wrong.
CIvilization appeared recently?
Correct! Dang folks he finally got one correct!
First I'll link to the Wikipedia page that addresses the history of agriculture since Agriculture preceeds and is necessary for Civilization to occur. (And you seem to be willing to use Wikipedia it when it suits your purposes).
From the info on that page it doesn't appear that agriculture appeared abruptly and simultaneously. Note that they also state that evidence of agriculture is firm by 9500 BC and some evidence is there for +10,000 BC (and Wikipedia tends to be very conservative about dates).
Note also the mention of the Younger Dryas.
The only interesting question brought up is if modern humans evolved 100,000 BP (genectic eveidence show that humans passed through a severe bottleneck at that point that very nearly did us in), WHY did it take so long for them to develop agriculture? Well it turns out the answer is pretty simple Dave, weather.
It took a while to figure this out since it takes a multidiscipline approach to find all the relevant data.
The Ice Age was a pretty tough time globally, humans were basically scrabbling just to stay alive and any presumed attempts at agriculture were doomed by wild swings in temperatures.
The Younger Dryas was pretty much the end of the last Ice age. The weather got warmer and much more stabile.
Dave you don't have to take my word for it, one of the finest scientific libraries in the world is right there in Kansas CIty. You can access it on the web here http://www.lindahall.org/ or you can drive on down to 5109 Cherry Street and access the library yourself.
Or do a search on quaternary palaeoenvironments if you prefer to go that route.
But do us all a favor, stop blathering about Portuguese, you clearly don't have a clue about it (or physics, stratigraphy, geology, or any other sciency stuff).
I DO realize it's futile but I wanted to remind him what a wonderful science resource he has right there where he lives. The Linda Hall Library really is a world class facility. I can't wait to hear his excuse for not using it.
The believers in the Darwinian religion regualarly assert believers in the Christian religion are somehow in need of psychiatric "help." Now, exactly what does this mean? Good little liberal evolutionists do not want to condemn people, for that would be "judgmental"--and only pale-faced right-wng Christians are like that, right? Hence, by claiming those with whom they disagree are "sick" in need of "treatment" as opposed to moral abominations who need to be thrown in a prison camp, they can keep their "nonjudgmental" image of themsleves intact.
Mr. Ghost, you believe that the Sun goes round the Earth and that that the space programme was faked. You believe that a long, drawn out death by disease (presumably followed by burning in everlasting he11fire) is a sobering example of the divine justince of an all-loving God. If you are an example of a non-deluded Christian, I truly pity the deluded ones. All the evil atheist Darwinists in the world put together could not damage Christianity half as much as you and AFDave do.
Why Humphreys' Assumptions Were Generous to 'Long-Agers'
JonF ...
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Dave, all temperatures matter, and time matters too. Let's see your integration of temperature effects over time that shows "It will help you very little".
OK. You want to talk about temperature? Then let's talk temperature and see if it helps you any.
Henke quotes Harrison and Sasada ...
Quote
Figure 9 in Sasada (1989, p. 264) shows the variable thermal history of the GT-2 well core at a depth of 2624 meters (compare with my Figure 3). According to Sasada (1989, p. 262-265), a warm period occurred sometime ago. Even hotter earlier events could have removed much or even essentially all of the radiogenic helium from the zircons. The warm period was followed by a cooler event, which included the emplacement of fluids (see my Figure 3). In particular, Sasada (1989) argues that fluids were trapped in secondary inclusions within the Jemez Granodiorite at depths of 2624 meters when temperatures were at least 26°C cooler than present (about 152°C rather than the current value of 178°C).
And shows their historical temperature graph ...
You are making a big deal about cooler temps ... we're talking about a mere 26 degrees cooler!!!!!
26 degrees cooler won't begin to help you, especially when you consider the heat spike from the volcano that Harrison and Sasada also talk about.
Look at the following extrapolation. Of course it's a guess, but there is no way you can argue that it is very far off. And for it to come anywhere close to helping your case, you would have to make a huge "cliff" on the extrapolation.
I've extrapolated down to ZERO C. Surely you are not suggesting it was cooler than this?
As for the "Fluid Contamination Theory," here is what Humphreys says ...
Quote
9. “not properly considering the possible presence of extraneous (‘excess’) 3He and 4He in their zircons” Henke’s reason for raising this issue was his reasoning about the previous item. Because he thought that the retention fraction in sample 2002 was greater than 100%, he figured there had to be “excess” helium coming into the zircon from outside it. As the above item shows, his premise was wrong.
But let’s look at his scenario more closely. First, if the helium in the zircons were “excess” and came from outside them, it would have had to come through the biotite. As I pointed out on p. 9 of CRSQ 2004, the helium concentration in the biotite is two hundred times lower than the concentration in the zircon. That means, according to the laws of diffusion, that the helium is presently leaking out of the zircons into the biotite, not the other way around. Also, as I pointed out, the total amount of helium in the biotite is roughly the same as the helium lost from the zircon.
In Henke’s vague scenario, the source of the helium is “recent” (100,000 to 1.45 million years ago) volcanic magmas several kilometers away from our borehole. He is apparently assuming that conduits of such magma came relatively close to borehole GT-2. The conduits could not have broken through to the surface, because then they would have immediately vented their helium into the atmosphere. Henke wants “fluids” from the magma to carry helium through the mineral interfaces in the granodiorite, through the biotite, and into the zircons.
It is doubtful that such fluids could travel very far. First, the granodiorite is presently dry and well-consolidated, even at the surface. Second, the overlying rock puts the Jemez Granodiorite under in situ pressures hundreds to thousands of times greater than atmospheric pressure. Those factors would mean that the interface widths between minerals would be microscopic, perhaps only an Angstrom (the diameter of a hydrogen atom) or so. Henke needs to show—preferably with experimental data in a peer-reviewed scientific journal—just how far the helium could travel in this rock unit during the time he thinks is available. That would determine how close his conduits of magma would have to be. Then he would have to show geological evidence that conduits of basalt (solidified volcanic magma) presently exist within that distance of the borehole.
Next, Henke would have to show that the concentration (atoms or nanomoles per cc) of helium in the magmatic fluids could have been high enough to do the job. Our 15 ncc/µg value for Q0 in the zircons means there were at least 3140 nanomoles of helium per cubic centimeter in the zircons originally. (Henke’s value of “41” ncc/µg in item 6 above would require even more helium, 8590 nmol/cc.) The concentration in the assumed fluids would have to exceed that value in order to transfer helium from the fluid into the zircons. Yet the concentration of helium produced by uranium decay in typical basalt[12] (and hence in basaltic magmatic fluids) would be less than 80 nmol/cc, more than forty times too small. No transfer would take place. So Henke’s scenario requires extraordinary amounts of helium in his magmatic fluids.
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that the helium somehow gets into the zircons. Now it has to stay there. The magmatic fluids would raise the temperature of the zircons considerably higher than their present temperature, and temperatures would remain high for dozens of millennia. As I showed in ICC 2003, section 7, the zircons would then lose essentially all their helium—contrary to what we observe. Moreover, most of the helium outside the zircons has to disappear somehow, so that the biotite concentration would drop to its present low level, hundreds of times less than the concentrations in the zircons.
Henke’s scenario is pure conjecture. It depends on unknown factors to produce improbable coincidences. Even though this is his best shot (that’s why I’ve spent some time on it), it falls far short of credibility.
All the data point to a much more straightforward scenario: the source of the helium is the observed nuclear decay in the zircon, the helium is diffusing as observed out of the zircon into the biotite, and according to the observed total quantities not much of it has gone beyond the biotite into the surrounding minerals.
Let me translate Humphrey's 'Sledge Hammer Blows' for you ... BLOW #1: How is Helium going to squeeze through 1 angstrom spaces? (size of a hydrogen atom) BLOW #2: Show that basalt conduits exist BLOW #3: Helium concentration in basalts is 40 times too small BLOW #4: If the extraneous He somehow got there, how would it stay with the considerably higher temps?
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You seem stuck on the idea that we're looking for one and only one error in Humphreys' results, and that one error must explain all the anomaly.
No. I fully realize that several errors could combine to change the results. But Humphreys has systematically dismantled ALL of them. You don't even have ONE objection that is credible.
And you still do not appreciate the wonder of the accuracy of his previously published predictions. Do you have any idea how often this type of thing occurs? Not very often. Scientists continually make predictions and have to trash them because they are wrong.
Quote
This betrays your ideological point of view. What we need to do is figure out what's going on with those zircons, if it's at all possible given today's technology and abilities. That means formulating hypotheses and testing them. The hypothesis that the zircons and the Earth are circa 6,000 years old is incredibly far down on the list of possibilities and ... guess what ... as long as you're invoking magic in that hypothesis, it's not testable and doesn't even belong on the list. I note you ignored my proof that Humphreys' explanation is "magic".
Yes. Why don't you get busy and figure out what is going on with these zircons. And while you are busy chasing mirages in the 'Long Age Desert,' we creationists are going to keep plowing ahead on the cutting edge of science and get more data to strengthen our case, then move on to answer the really hard questions about WHY and HOW and WHEN accelerated nuclear decay occurred ... which is implied by this experiment.
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You need to read all the relevant documents of this debate ... You didn't even read Humphreys' rebuttal about the vacuum testing ... If you did, you should know that it is DOA.
I read it. No data. Just hand-waving.
Pure baloney, JonF. Here ... let me give it to you again ...
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Bait and Switch Let’s see how big Henke alleges the effect would be:
“Numerous researchers have shown that the diffusion of helium or argon in silicate minerals may vary by many orders of magnitude at a given temperature depending on whether the studies were conducted in a vacuum or under pressure. For example, argon diffusion in phlogopite mica may be at least 3 to 6 orders of magnitude higher in a vacuum than under pressurized conditions (McDougall and Harrison, 1999, p. 154.)”[7] Henke’s “at least 3 to 6 orders of magnitude” would be a factor ranging from 1,000 to 1,000,000. That is enormously larger than the few percent effect the measurements on hard minerals I reported above. What would make such a huge difference?
One factor is the mineral, “phlogopite mica”. Micas are soft minerals. Their true hardness is low (2-3), but they appear even softer than that. The reason is that they consist of atom-thick sheets of silicates held together by very weak chemical bonds between the sheets. The gap between a pair of sheets is relatively big, several atom diameters wide. Most the helium or argon diffuses along the gaps between the sheets. The weak bonding between the sheets allows pressure to compress the gaps easily. So diffusion in micas is much more susceptible to pressure than hard minerals. Instead of a steel ball bearing, here we have a sponge!
A second factor is water. Water molecules can work their way into the gaps between the sheets and (lightly) bond chemically to them, thus hindering the diffusion of helium or argon. The book that Henke quotes (p. 154, Figure 5-13) compares two experiments on phlogopite mica, one in a vacuum with no water present, the other under high pressure with water in the mica.
So pressure was not the only variable, but wetness also. Try blowing air through a dry sponge and then through a wet sponge! The large difference between the two experiments is probably more due to the presence or absence of water than it was to pressure. Our samples, by the way, came from hot dry rock. Any water that may have been in the rock unit previously has probably been mostly cooked out of it.
The adjacent figure in the same book (p. 154, Figure 5-14) reviews an experiment on a similar mica, biotite, without having water as a variable. In that experiment[8] the effect of a rather large change of pressure, 14 kilobars, was only two orders of magnitude. For a change of only 1 kilobar pressure, the change in diffusivity would probably be about one order of magnitude. This is far less than Henke's desired six orders of magnitude.
That one-order-of-magnitude number is useful to me because it suggests that in my analysis of the helium data, I was correct to use a diffusivity for the biotite surrounding the zircons about one order of magnitude less than the vacuum measurements. Our results are not very sensitive to the value of the biotite diffusivity, but it is comforting to know that my assumption was closer to reality than I thought.
The only other experiment on pressure that Henke reports is very similar:
“Argon diffusion in glauconite at 1,000 to 10,000 psi of water vapor is up to three orders of magnitude slower than under a vacuum (Dalrymple and Lanphere, 1969, p. 155).”[9] Glauconite is another soft mica, and again the experiments compare dry and low-pressure samples with wet and high-pressure samples.
Last, notice that the experiments were with argon, not helium. As I mentioned above, helium diffusion is less susceptible to pressure effects on the crystal than argon, because helium atoms are significantly smaller than argon atoms.
The upshot is that here Henke is playing the ancient merchant’s trick of “bait and switch”. Having lured the customer in with an implied promise about one item (helium, zircon, dry), he then tries to sell the customer an item (argon, mica, wet) which will cost him more and benefit him less. I hope you won't buy Henke's merchandise!
Now ... I challenge you to call Dr. Farley (Deadman says he's right down the street from him, maybe he could make the call) and ask him why they test for He diffusion in zircons in a vacuum. Go ahead ... make my day! You will find that the effect is negligible.
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We're dealing with very small amounts of helium ... it wouldn't take much "reverse diffusion" to totally bollix the results. Helium is found in boreholes a few kilometers away. Helium is a tiny molecule and moves through very small spaces very easily."
I explicitly stated that it would take higher concentration of helium outside than inside for "reverse diffusion" to take place ... but any change in the amount of helium outside is going to change the diffusion. Where's your data relevant to the concentraion of helium over time outside those zircons?
Again, Humphreys has dealt with this issue above. You are grasping at the wind.
JonF...
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True. You obviously don't understand, and you haven't posted anything of substance.
Translation: I'm out of things to say, so let's sling some mud about how Dave doesn't have any substance.
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1) Creationists have observed that the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other. They are generally VERY discordant. They should agree if they are reliable.
Not a RATE result .. in fact, not a result at all, but another blatant lie. Different radiometric methods almost always yield concordant dates, so often so that there's no interest in mainstream science in quantifying the amount of agreeement;
Oh really? Why then did the RATE Group get wildly differing results on several of their samples? They got everything from 500 my to 2.5 by in the same rock samples!! (This was not a Creo lab, by the way ... it was one of the world's leading conventional labs) The difference, I think, is that the RATE Group does not have a Long Age Agenda, so they don't mind reporting discordant results. I would bet you money that the reason most conventional dates agree is because the dates that don't agree are thrown out and are not reported. I would like to speak with one of these labs (instead of the geologists) to see what THEY say about discordant dating results. How many tests are thrown out?
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2) Many other non-radiometric indicators support a very young earth ... On the order of thousands, not billions of years
None of these alleged indicators have stood up to cursory investigation.
Standard company Evobot line. We shall see, JonF. We'll see if you are even around by the time we get to them. No doubt you'll say something like, "Well, I'm tired of trying to get a stupid Creobot to understand science ... see ya later." This is what usually happens when people get tired of defending indefensible theories such as ToE, Long Age of the Earth, etc.
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5) Helium diffusion from zircons is a good candidate if the rocks are relatively cool, because a high percentage of helium is retained.
Pretty much true. Now all you need to do is provide justification fer the assumptions in this particular case.
Thank you for acknowledging what many here have previously tried to attack. And Humphreys HAS provided justification for the assumptions.
JonF ...
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6) No one had measured He diffusion in zircons before (why? Afraid of the answer maybe?)
Another blatant lie, and one that's already been refuted in this thread. Dave, do you think we so stupid we can't remember what's been written already? The evidence suggests that you're that stupid ... I've already pointed out in this thread that mainstream scientists have been and are using helium dating in zircons. From the very Yale page you supposedly read, 'cause you quoted it:
"Much of the most exciting work however, comes in figuring out new ways to use He dating, such as how to date other types of minerals (e.g., garnet, zircon, etc.), using crystal-size-age relationships to elucidate extremely low-T (40-70° C) thermal histories of rocks, and applying He dating to novel problems."
Note that at Zircon (U-Th)/He Chronometry there's links to presentations as early as 2001 (which 2001 presentation addresses the issue of diffusion in zircons directly). So, nobody's afraid of the answer except creationists like Dave, who have nothing but lies.
Oh really, JonF? As early as 2001, huh? Do you know when Humphreys published his predictions? Did you foget that little detail? I thought so. Here ... I'll help you. It was 2000 in this publication ...
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[9] Humphreys, D.R., Accelerated nuclear decay: a viable hypothesis?, in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, edited by L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, Chapter 7, pp. 333-379, Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, San Diego, CA, 2000. http://www.trueorigin.org/helium01.asp
JonF ... The year 2000 comes BEFORE the year 2001. At the time Humphreys PUBLISHED, there was no reliable data.
It's interesting that all this interest in Helium dating of rocks comes AFTER the Creationist experiment ... hmmmm ... I wonder why that is?
And isn't it interesting that people here at ATBC tried to tell me "Bah humbug ... Helium dating is old news ... Rutherford did that decades ago ... no one does that anymore." But our own JonF says ...
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Pretty much true. Now all you need to do is provide justification fer the assumptions in this particular case.
in response to my statement ...
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5) Helium diffusion from zircons is a good candidate if the rocks are relatively cool, because a high percentage of helium is retained.
Hmmmmm ...
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Yet, when someone else does the calculations, the results are WAY OFF.
I am amazed. You know more about biology than professional biologists. You know more about genetics than a geneticist. You know more about physics than physicists. You know more about languages than someone with a PhD in linguistics. And now, apparently, you know more about theology than the theologians serving the oldest Christian church.
No, Carlson, it's just that error is easily arrived at, even for experts. Truth is much more difficult to arrive at. Do you have any idea how many ideas of 'experts' down through history have been refuted, often by non-experts? Go do a a study on that and get back to me. But of course, that's not to say that experts don't do good work generally. Many of them do fine work, and I appreciate what they do and benefit from it.
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But, you know, actually having to show your work to other people who understand the topic is just an onerous hurdle to perpetuate the conspiracy, huh?
The RATE Group presented at the American Geophysical Convention (correct name?) in San Francisco where there were 10,000 or so scientists present. They were very well received. The articles in the YEC journals ARE peer-reviewed ... it's just that we are in the minority right now. But the work is being submitted to conventional journals as well. Maybe if they are not too biased against creationists (like you guys are), the RATE results will be published.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And for all you Portuguese fans who joined Rilke on her branch again (Faid, Arden ... anyone else? I think there were not as many this time ... I've got this saved in a separate file now so that whenever Rilke wants to look foolish, she can just bring up Portuguese again and I will respond with this for the benefit of our readers) ...
PORTUGUESE = SPANISH + FRENCH + OTHER FACTORS (Illustrating how some 'Evobots' overlook evidence which is as plain as the nose on their face, then call Creos 'idiots' for recognizing the evidence.)
(Hint: the big news is that they do this exact same thing with Origins evidence!
This from Rilke's source of choice (Wikipedia) ... I guess she just didn't read far enough ...
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Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages.Portuguese and French
and...
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Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language."
And the local linguist, Arden Chatfield, said that this may be true if you can show significant French influence on Portugal (which I did ... it's right here ... it happened in the 12th century).
Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of contingents of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail]. Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone. (Dictionary of the Middle Ages, v. 10, 1988, American Council of Learned Societies) (From the public library, a famous, non-YEC source)
Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish + French = Portuguese.
FRENCH AND PORTUGUESE WORD COMPARISONS Also, someone asked about word comparisons. Here you go. I hope the table comes out OK.
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Now if you have all three of these languages in your own family (my mother speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish and my cousin speaks fluent French), you tend to have a little better overview of these languages than the average Joe (or Rilke). I can tell you that if you have heard all three languages like I have, the mix is quite obvious.
And if you think and are honest (I'm finding this to be a slightly scarce combo here), instead of just shoot your mouth off about how all YECs are stupid idiots, you can see how Wikipedia would make a statement like ...
phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. (by the way, Catalan the language of Andorra -- just below France on the map)
RRRRRRR ... CREEEEK ... (noise of branch breaking) ... (whistling sound as branch accelerates toward ground) ... (screams of terror) ... WUMP! (branch loaded with arrogant Evobots hits ground ... actually there were fewer of them this time around, so not as big a crash -- I think we just have Faid, Arden and Rilke on the branch)
OK. So now you have a choice. You can get up, brush yourself off, wipe the egg off your face and go back to trying to make reasonable arguments in favor of evolution, which is what I would recommend if you want to help the "Evolution Cause"
OR ...
You can somehow try to weasel out of the fact that you've been had. (AGAIN)
Arden said ...
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The 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' fallacy. The sites you showed me acknowledged no more influence than a late layer of French loanwords that postdates the splitoff of Brazilian Portuguese.
No. The influence begins during the 12th century, right when World Book says the languages start diverging. There's no way out, Arden. You and Faid walked out on another branch with Rilke, and I cut it off. I warned you!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Let me translate Humphrey's 'Sledge Hammer Blows' for you ... BLOW #1: How is Helium going to squeeze through 1 angstrom spaces? (size of a hydrogen atom)
Er, Dave, you might want to, you know, actually look up the atomic radius of the helium atom. You're in for a big surprise.
Not only dave posts the same crap all over again, this time he gives up all christian pretense and lies through his teeth!
LIE #1
dave says:
Quote (afdave @ June 08 2006,07:56)
This from Rilke's source of choice (Wikipedia) ... I guess she just didn't read far enough ...
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Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages.Portuguese and French
and...
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Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language."
Only the first quote (as we have already explained) proves nothing, and as for the second one... It doesn't exist! Nope! See for yourselves! What wikipedia does say is:
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Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. It began to diverge from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, and started to be used in written documents around the 9th century. By the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with fairly minor influences from other languages.
Which is exactly what all the other official sites say.
Care to enlighten us, Lyin'Dave?
LIE#2
dave says:
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Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone.
Life in Muslim Lisbon was completely different from contemporary Lisbon life. Arabic was the official language, spoken by the majority of the populace as their mother tongue. Islam was the official religion, and by the 10th century the majority of Lisbon's inhabitants were Muslim.
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In 1147, as part of the Reconquista, a group of combined French, English, German, and Portuguese knights, led by Afonso I of Portugal, sieged and reconquered Lisbon. It is believed that some of its inhabitants of all religions were slaughtered. Lisbon was now back in Christian hands.
The fall of Islam is one of the most significant events in Lisbon's history. Arabic lost its place in everyday life, and was replaced by Portuguese.
(all emphasis mine) "French" influence. Riiiiight. Selective blindness, dave? Or did you just hope we wouldn't check?
The language that replaced Latin (and arabic, in Lisbon) was PORTUGUESE. Portuguese already existed as a separate romance language, and all its relationship with French at the time was their common origin. Choke on it, Lyin'Dave.
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Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish + French = Portuguese.
No, it's not rocket science. It's you copy/pasting your illusions again. Where's the connection, Lyin'Dave? Can you explain WHY those "Knights from Burgundy" had a Linguistic influence any more than, say, the Bavarian Nobles who ruled Greece after 1821 had? How about quoting the exact passage in your encyclopedia that specifically mentions this influence in language? But you can't, because it's not there. You're just trying to pass off your daydreaming as historical truths by distorting and ommiting data. And that's LYING, Mr. holier-than-thou "christian".
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And if you think and are honest (I'm finding this to be a slightly scarce combo here), instead of just shoot your mouth off about how all YECs are stupid idiots, you can see how Wikipedia would make a statement like ...
phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. (by the way, Catalan the language of Andorra -- just below France on the map)
And, of course, we have explained it to you, Lyin'Dave. They are both Romance languages. Are you still pretending you weren't answered? Shame on you. Your Creator God is watching you, Lyin'Dave; you think he's happy with your deliberate insincerity, just because you think you are "doing his work"? Take a minute to think about that before you pray tonight.
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There's no way out, Arden. You and Faid walked out on another branch with Rilke, and I cut it off. I warned you!
Only, once again, and in perfect accordance with your cartoonish arguments and ideas, you were sitting on the wrong end of the branch, Lyin'Dave. And this time, there were some nasty cactuses below.
Choke on that, Yosemite Sam.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
No doubt you'll say something like, "Well, I'm tired of trying to get a stupid Creobot to understand science ... see ya later." This is what usually happens when people get tired of defending indefensible theories such as ToE, Long Age of the Earth, etc.
If he's smart, he will. I suppose the real reaon I don't bother any more is that AirHead has me totally stumped?
Nah. I don't need, or expect, Dave to acknowledge the thoroughness with which his silly arguments are destroyed before his very eyes. I'm OK, knowing that there is no textbook, no scientific organization, no respected professional journal, no respected institution of education, no credible authority on primary education that regards the flaky arguments of the likes of AirHead Dave as even worthy of notice.
(Also no linguist.)
I'm comrortable knowing that AirHead Dave is much more likely to repel, rather than attract, any potential converts to his religion, and in this unintended way, he might be construed as something more than a waste of carbon.
You ever gonna get around to addressing all that evidence you were shown that human culture and artifacts exist that date back over 40,000 years?
What's your explanation for anything that dates over 6000 YBP?
Today's Hints for AFDaveTard2: The RATE helium/zircon battle is over. YOU LOST. Get over it. The origin of Portugese battle is over. YOU LOST THAT ONE TOO. Get over it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages.Portuguese and French
I know you're not good with reading comprehension, Dave, and not very well educated, but 'phonetically somewhat closer' does not equal 'INFLUENCED by French'. It's consensus of linguists that the phonetic similarities of French and Portuguese are coincidental. 'Closer' here means just 'MORE SIMILAR', not 'influenced'.
Tell me, were you able to find ANY sources that said "French had an influence on Portuguese phonetics"? Or "French had an influence on the Portuguese language"? No, you didn't. Do you think there's any significance to that fact?
You will also note that the above quote says nothing about Portuguese and French being intelligible (which they aren't), which would have been the case if French had influenced it anything like the way you said it had.
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Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language."
So? I sure hope you don't think this proves your point.
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And the local linguist, Arden Chatfield, said that this may be true if you can show significant French influence on Portugal (which I did ... it's right here ... it happened in the 12th century).
OKAY MORON, as several of your intellectual superiors here said several times last month, and which you keep ignoring, a French influence on Portugal is a necessary but not sufficient condition. THE PRESENCE OF FRENCH PEOPLE IN PORTUGAL IS NOT ENOUGH TO PROVE THERE IS A FRENCH INFLUENCE ON PORTUGUESE, FAR LESS YOUR ORIGINAL STATEMENT, WHICH WAS PORTUGUESE IS A 'MIX' OF FRENCH AND SPANISH.
By your 'logic' here there should be a Vietnamese influence on English because of all those Vietnamese speakers in California, and English should be a 'mix' with Spanish because of all those Spanish speakers in the southwest.
You see dave, when actual educated people analyze languages, they look at the LANGUAGES THEMSELVES. They do not look at the histories of the speakers and claim that this enables them to make whatever statement they want about the language.
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Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged.
Interesting that you seem not to be able to distinguish history and linguistics, tho coming from you, I'm hardly surprised.
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Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal?
AFD's passion for non sequiturs continues. Throw out a blizzard of unconnected facts and hope that people think your argument is proven.
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FRENCH AND PORTUGUESE WORD COMPARISONS Also, someone asked about word comparisons. Here you go. I hope the table comes out OK.
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
[URL=http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t2275-0.htm
You already gave this. We already pointed out why it's irrelevant.
AS I SAID, SHIT FOR BRAINS, FRENCH, PORTUGUESE AND SPANISH ARE ALL ROMANCE LANGUAGES, DESCENDED FROM LATIN, AND SO OF COURSE THEY SHARE WORDS IN COMMON. Dare I ask why you didn't include Italian and Romanian in this completely irrelevant chart?
Do you even KNOW what a language family is?
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Now if you have all three of these languages in your own family (my mother speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish and my cousin speaks fluent French),
Um, is the fact that your relatives speak these languages supposed to somehow mean that YOU suddenly know what you're talking about?
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you tend to have a little better overview of these languages than the average Joe (or Rilke).
Or better than all them liberal TRAINED LINGUISTS WHO DISAGREE WITH YOU, right Dave?
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I can tell you that if you have heard all three languages like I have, the mix is quite obvious.
Ah, yes, the classic argument that AFD can never resist: "GUYS, I DONT NEED PROOF, IT'S JUST OBVIOUS! C'MON NOW!"
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No. The influence begins during the 12th century, right when World Book says the languages start diverging.
Find me a site that says that the French influence started in the 12th century, liar.
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There's no way out, Arden. You and Faid walked out on another branch with Rilke, and I cut it off. I warned you!
No, shit for brains, the sites you showed me stated that French loanwords did not enter the Portuguese language until the 18th century. LONG after your French invasion.
Okay, genius, do two things:
Find me a site that says THAT THERE WAS A FRENCH INFLUENCE ON PORTUGUESE when you say there was. So far all you have done is find sites that say there were French people in Portugal, and you seem to be too stupid to realize that's not the same thing.
Explain to me why NO LINGUIST OR WRITER ON PORTUGUESE ANYWHERE agrees with you. Because somewhere in your fog, you might have noticed that you haven't found any references that actually support your idea.
Here is Dave logic:
1) There were once some French people in Portugal
2) I've always thought that French sounds a whole lot like Portuguese
3) therefore Portuguese is a mix of Spanish and French!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Hey Dave, explain to me why, by your logic, Portuguese cant be called a 'mix of Arabic and Spanish'! Because there's WAY better historical 'support' for that idea than for yours.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'm still curious, by the way, if anyone has any good leads as to the nature of language in Burgundy in the early 12th century. Was it not more of a germanic language than a romance language?
For me, the best part is watching Dave try to argue similarity and ancestry re: French/Spanish/Portuguese using the same type of logic that he vehemently denies when it comes to chimps/humans/gorillas. Look at what he tried with the word comparisons, and compare it to the genetic data he was presented for GULO and other sequences. Nevermind that he is horribly, horribly wrong when it comes to the actual 'phylogenetic' data in both cases (i.e., the evidence supports more recent human-chimp co-ancestry than Dave can accept, and more distant French-Spanish-Portuguese co-ancestry than Dave can accept). The point is that the very nature of the logic he (poorly) refutes in one case he (poorly) applies in the other.
Dave, how can you not claim that humans are a mix of gorillas and chimps? After all, we've already showed you the 'word' comparisons. We can show you that there was plenty of opportunity for chimp influence on humans back on the savannah. And you've already been linked to a very recent Nature paper that shows exactly the kind of influence you're looking for, though the thought of it probably horrifies (or is it excites?) something deep in that fundie ganglion of yours.
Boy, Davie-poo, you're getting more incoherent by the day. Better up the lithium dose.
Quote (afdave @ June 08 2006,07:40)
JONF's SMART SOUNDING ARGUMENTS HAVE GAPING HOLES
Why Humphreys' Assumptions Were Generous to 'Long-Agers'
JonF ...
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Dave, all temperatures matter, and time matters too. Let's see your integration of temperature effects over time that shows "It will help you very little".
OK. You want to talk about temperature? Then let's talk temperature and see if it helps you any.
Henke quotes Harrison and Sasada ...
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Figure 9 in Sasada (1989, p. 264) shows the variable thermal history of the GT-2 well core at a depth of 2624 meters (compare with my Figure 3). According to Sasada (1989, p. 262-265), a warm period occurred sometime ago. Even hotter earlier events could have removed much or even essentially all of the radiogenic helium from the zircons. The warm period was followed by a cooler event, which included the emplacement of fluids (see my Figure 3). In particular, Sasada (1989) argues that fluids were trapped in secondary inclusions within the Jemez Granodiorite at depths of 2624 meters when temperatures were at least 26°C cooler than present (about 152°C rather than the current value of 178°C).
And shows their historical temperature graph ...
You are making a big deal about cooler temps ... we're talking about a mere 26 degrees cooler!!!!!
26 degrees cooler won't begin to help you, especially when you consider the heat spike from the volcano that Harrison and Sasada also talk about.
Look at the following extrapolation. Of course it's a guess, but there is no way you can argue that it is very far off. And for it to come anywhere close to helping your case, you would have to make a huge "cliff" on the extrapolation.
Irrelevant. Davie-poo, you need to integrate the diffusivity as a function of temperature over time. 26 degrees cooler over a long time could make a huge difference. Show us the calculations
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As for the "Fluid Contamination Theory," here is what Humphreys says ... <snip>
Let me translate Humphrey's 'Sledge Hammer Blows' for you ... BLOW #1: How is Helium going to squeeze through 1 angstrom spaces? (size of a hydrogen atom) BLOW #2: Show that basalt conduits exist BLOW #3: Helium concentration in basalts is 40 times too small BLOW #4: If the extraneous He somehow got there, how would it stay with the considerably higher temps?
Still just hand-waving. No data. Everyone acknowledges that changing helium concentrations is a hypothesis that has neither been confirmed nor refuted, But, unless and until it's refuted with data, it's a lot more likely than magic. You need to show that helium did not affect the results. Henke has raised several possible mechanisms; we don't have to prove that those mechanisms applied, you need to prove that they didn't apply. As of now, "excess helium" is a possible explanation no matter how much you and Humphrys wave your hands.
{ABE} I overlooked the size of the helium atom. Thanks, incorygible. Just another example of Dave firmly planting both feet in his mouth before speaking.
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You need to read all the relevant documents of this debate ... You didn't even read Humphreys' rebuttal about the vacuum testing ... If you did, you should know that it is DOA.
quote]I read it. No data. Just hand-waving.
Pure baloney, JonF. Here ... let me give it to you again ...
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Bait and Switch Let's see how big Henke alleges the effect would be:
“Numerous researchers have shown that the diffusion of helium or argon in silicate minerals may vary by many orders of magnitude at a given temperature depending on whether the studies were conducted in a vacuum or under pressure. For example, argon diffusion in phlogopite mica may be at least 3 to 6 orders of magnitude higher in a vacuum than under pressurized conditions (McDougall and Harrison, 1999, p. 154.)”[7] Henke’s “at least 3 to 6 orders of magnitude” would be a factor ranging from 1,000 to 1,000,000. That is enormously larger than the few percent effect the measurements on hard minerals I reported above. What would make such a huge difference?
One factor is the mineral, “phlogopite mica”. Micas are soft minerals. Their true hardness is low (2-3), but they appear even softer than that. The reason is that they consist of atom-thick sheets of silicates held together by very weak chemical bonds between the sheets. The gap between a pair of sheets is relatively big, several atom diameters wide. Most the helium or argon diffuses along the gaps between the sheets. The weak bonding between the sheets allows pressure to compress the gaps easily. So diffusion in micas is much more susceptible to pressure than hard minerals. Instead of a steel ball bearing, here we have a sponge!
A second factor is water. Water molecules can work their way into the gaps between the sheets and (lightly) bond chemically to them, thus hindering the diffusion of helium or argon. The book that Henke quotes (p. 154, Figure 5-13) compares two experiments on phlogopite mica, one in a vacuum with no water present, the other under high pressure with water in the mica.
So pressure was not the only variable, but wetness also. Try blowing air through a dry sponge and then through a wet sponge! The large difference between the two experiments is probably more due to the presence or absence of water than it was to pressure. Our samples, by the way, came from hot dry rock. Any water that may have been in the rock unit previously has probably been mostly cooked out of it.
The adjacent figure in the same book (p. 154, Figure 5-14) reviews an experiment on a similar mica, biotite, without having water as a variable. In that experiment[8] the effect of a rather large change of pressure, 14 kilobars, was only two orders of magnitude. For a change of only 1 kilobar pressure, the change in diffusivity would probably be about one order of magnitude. This is far less than Henke's desired six orders of magnitude.
That one-order-of-magnitude number is useful to me because it suggests that in my analysis of the helium data, I was correct to use a diffusivity for the biotite surrounding the zircons about one order of magnitude less than the vacuum measurements. Our results are not very sensitive to the value of the biotite diffusivity, but it is comforting to know that my assumption was closer to reality than I thought.
The only other experiment on pressure that Henke reports is very similar:
“Argon diffusion in glauconite at 1,000 to 10,000 psi of water vapor is up to three orders of magnitude slower than under a vacuum (Dalrymple and Lanphere, 1969, p. 155).”[9] Glauconite is another soft mica, and again the experiments compare dry and low-pressure samples with wet and high-pressure samples.
Last, notice that the experiments were with argon, not helium. As I mentioned above, helium diffusion is less susceptible to pressure effects on the crystal than argon, because helium atoms are significantly smaller than argon atoms.
The upshot is that here Henke is playing the ancient merchant’s trick of “bait and switch”. Having lured the customer in with an implied promise about one item (helium, zircon, dry), he then tries to sell the customer an item (argon, mica, wet) which will cost him more and benefit him less. I hope you won't buy Henke's merchandise!
Now ... I challenge you to call Dr. Farley (Deadman says he's right down the street from him, maybe he could make the call) and ask him why they test for He diffusion in zircons in a vacuum. Go ahead ... make my day! You will find that the effect is negligible.
No data on helium diffusion in zircons. Just hand-waving. You're the one making the claim, you provide the data. Call Dr. Farley yourself.
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1) Creationists have observed that the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other. They are generally VERY discordant. They should agree if they are reliable.
Not a RATE result .. in fact, not a result at all, but another blatant lie. Different radiometric methods almost always yield concordant dates, so often so that there's no interest in mainstream science in quantifying the amount of agreeement;
Oh really? Why then did the RATE Group get wildly differing results on several of their samples? They got everything from 500 my to 2.5 by in the same rock samples!! (This was not a Creo lab, by the way ... it was one of the world's leading conventional labs) The difference, I think, is that the RATE Group does not have a Long Age Agenda, so they don't mind reporting discordant results. I would bet you money that the reason most conventional dates agree is because the dates that don't agree are thrown out and are not reported. I would like to speak with one of these labs (instead of the geologists) to see what THEY say about discordant dating results. How many tests are thrown out?
I see you are admitting that your claim of "they are generally VERY discordant" is just something you made up (or unquestioningly copied from some other loon's web site), and you have no support.
Are you referring to Snelling's Mt. Ngauruhoe fraud? Isolated incidents are irrelevent to your claim that "the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other", but I'll just note that Snelling's results are obviously a result of contamination by xenoliths (literally "foreign rocks", un-melted pieces of older rocks intermixed with the fresh rocks). Xenoliths are well-known to cause exactly the kind of problems Snelling described, and no competent and honest geologist would do whole-rock dating on a sample with xenoliths in it. In ANDESITE FLOWS AT MT NGAURUHOE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR POTASSIUM-ARGON "DATING" Snelling writes:
"Steiner [90] stressed that xenoliths are a common constituent of the 1954 Ngauruhoe lava, but also noted that Battey [7] reported the 1949 Ngauruhoe lava was rich in xenoliths. All samples in this study contained xenoliths, including those from the 1975 avalanche material."
And, of course, creationists pretty much criticise only the old-reliable-but-possibly-susceptible-to-error K-Ar method and don't look at the much more widely used and robust Ar-Ar, isochron, and concordia-discordia methods.
But, as I said, that's all irrelevant to your claim.
You're trying the old bait-and-switch combined with snipping the relevant portion of my post; a few, a very very few, inconsistent results (several of which are outright frauds and all of which are suspect) are not "they are generally VERY discordant". You trot out the old and predictable "they must be discarding results 'cause the vast majority of the results that are published are concordant". News flash, Davie-poo: discordant results are where the real action (and promotion opportunities for young researchers) is. They love a good discordant result that's not easily explainable, because that's a great opportunity. The discordant results obtained by creationists are too easily explainable to be interesting. Of course, when real discordant results get published and scientists expend great effort in figuring out the cause of the discordance and the correct age, creationists accuse us of all sorts of frauds; sdee Claim CD031.
As for speaking to the labs about how many results get thrown out, go for it. One of the major labs (Menlo Park, CA) is government-run, and if they won't give you the data if you ask nicely you can probably get it through FOIA.
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5) Helium diffusion from zircons is a good candidate if the rocks are relatively cool, because a high percentage of helium is retained.
Pretty much true. Now all you need to do is provide justification fer the assumptions in this particular case.
Thank you for acknowledging what many here have previously tried to attack. And Humphreys HAS provided justification for the assumptions.
Hand-waving with no data is not justifiction.
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6) No one had measured He diffusion in zircons before (why? Afraid of the answer maybe?)
Another blatant lie, and one that's already been refuted in this thread. Dave, do you think we so stupid we can't remember what's been written already? The evidence suggests that you're that stupid ... I've already pointed out in this thread that mainstream scientists have been and are using helium dating in zircons. From the very Yale page you supposedly read, 'cause you quoted it:
"Much of the most exciting work however, comes in figuring out new ways to use He dating, such as how to date other types of minerals (e.g., garnet, zircon, etc.), using crystal-size-age relationships to elucidate extremely low-T (40-70° C) thermal histories of rocks, and applying He dating to novel problems."
Note that at Zircon (U-Th)/He Chronometry there's links to presentations as early as 2001 (which 2001 presentation addresses the issue of diffusion in zircons directly). So, nobody's afraid of the answer except creationists like Dave, who have nothing but lies.
Oh really, JonF? As early as 2001, huh? Do you know when Humphreys published his predictions? Did you foget that little detail? I thought so. Here ... I'll help you. It was 2000 in this publication ...
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[9] Humphreys, D.R., Accelerated nuclear decay: a viable hypothesis?, in Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: A Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, edited by L. Vardiman, A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, Chapter 7, pp. 333-379, Institute for Creation Research and the Creation Research Society, San Diego, CA, 2000. http
JonF ... The year 2000 comes BEFORE the year 2001. At the time Humphreys PUBLISHED, there was no reliable data.
It's interesting that all this interest in Helium dating of rocks comes AFTER the Creationist experiment ... hmmmm ... I wonder why that is?
Sorry, Davie-poo, wrong again. Your goalpost-shifting is obvious. You asked for "Can you give me a paper that shows non-ambiguous data on He diffusion in zircons prior to Humphreys et al?". Humphreys et al was published in 2003, Davie-poo. After 2001, Davie-poo.
But nobody claimed that 2001 was the first mainstream publication on helium diffusion in zircons, it's just an example of exactly what you asked for. Deadman has pointed out that Humphreys et al referred to a 1967 paper on the subject. And there's "Kohn, B.P., Farley, K.A. and Pillans, B., 1999. (U-Th)/He dating of zircon and apatite from the Pleistocene Rangitawa tephra, North Island, New Zealand, Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 80: 1169." Is 1999 before 2000, Davie-poo?
If there was no reliable data when Humphreys published his original claims (which I haven'tr seen; how 'bout you scan and post them?), why did he refer to "Lippolt, H. J., and Weigel, E., 4He diffusion in 40Ar-retentive minerals, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, 52:1449-1458, 1988." and "Magomedov, Sh. A., Migration of radiogenic products in zircon, Geokhimiya, 1970, No. 2, pp. 263-267 (in Russian). English abstract in Geochemistry International 7(1):203, 1970. English translation available from D. R. Humphreys." in Humphreys et al in 2003?
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Yet, when someone else does the calculations, the results are WAY OFF.
Garbage in=Garbage out.
Ya got that one right. Now we need more data to figure out whose results are garbage.
Arden you forgot to point out 1/2 a Dave does not seem to actually know any language except English which of course allows him to make expert comments....
If half a Dave had studied say Latin and French or Spanish or even Portuguese he would not have made such a stupid assertion in the first place. All those languages share approx. over 70% IIRC of their words from the root Latin words; note those younger words in each language are not identical. Just because he has heard a couple of people speaking the two languages he thinks...oh bugger it..
AFDave why ARE you so #### STUPID?
Any stupid answer will do.
Oh and why are you just so #### WRONG every time you post.
AFDave xtianity is making you stupid...why?..you cannot tell a lie from the truth.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I'm still curious, by the way, if anyone has any good leads as to the nature of language in Burgundy in the early 12th century. Was it not more of a germanic language than a romance language?
Yes, originally Burgundian was a Germanic language, though from what I can tell it appears to have died out 1,500 years ago. Anything called 'Burgundian' in the middle ages is probably actually the Romance/French dialect that developed there.
We have no data for Germanic Burgundian except some names. The following is an interesting site:
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I am amazed. You know more about biology than professional biologists. You know more about genetics than a geneticist. You know more about physics than physicists. You know more about languages than someone with a PhD in linguistics. And now, apparently, you know more about theology than the theologians serving the oldest Christian church.
No, Carlson, it's just that error is easily arrived at, even for experts.
Sure, they are. And that is what the peer-review is all about. Subjects like evolution and the age of the earth, for example, have been under review since the mid-nineteenth century. So, what you are saying is that hundreds of thousands of scientists for better than a century and a half have been making the same errors? Doesn't that strike you as, well, just a little improbable? How exactly do you explain that?
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Truth is much more difficult to arrive at. Do you have any idea how many ideas of 'experts' down through history have been refuted, often by non-experts? Go do a a study on that and get back to me.
And an electrical engineer shall lead them? Are you sure your horse's name is Shadow and not Rocinante?
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But of course, that's not to say that experts don't do good work generally. Many of them do fine work, and I appreciate what they do and benefit from it.
Ahh, I love the smell of irony in the morning.
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But, you know, actually having to show your work to other people who understand the topic is just an onerous hurdle to perpetuate the conspiracy, huh?
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The RATE Group presented at the American Geophysical Convention (correct name?) in San Francisco where there were 10,000 or so scientists present. They were very well received.
From the various comments about the RATE results right here, it would seem that they haven't quite past the peer-review muster yet, so don't confuse politeness with acceptance
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The articles in the YEC journals ARE peer-reviewed ... it's just that we are in the minority right now. But the work is being submitted to conventional journals as well. Maybe if they are not too biased against creationists (like you guys are), the RATE results will be published.
That is a possibility. And if it doesn't get published I suppose that it all part of the conspiracy? I mean it just isn't possible that the work lacks scientific merit. After all, God is a powerful God and he wouldn't let his servants fail, right?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
AFDaves old testament god is indifferent to evidence for his existence and requires extreme brainwashing before it's adherents stop asking the obvious question...why do we fail every time we try to convince sane people to believe in 'him'.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I take it you've given up on your Special Theory stupidity, Dave? Ready to admit that your wild-ass guess that the Special Theory somehow justifies believing God can exist "outside of space and time" is absurd? As Pauli would have said, your idea "isn't even wrong."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since you seem to think your 'comparison' of French, Spanish and Portuguese so conclusively proves your argument, I decided to do what you wouldn't, and add more Romance languages to the mix.
To help people out, the set AFD originally posted (I assume copied off the web) gave the words for 'have', 'man', 'body', 'night', 'son', 'made', 'good' and 'and'.
Here's the chart AFD gave:
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Here are three additional languages Dave neglected:
Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i
Anyway, Dave, do you see the similarities?
Several centuries ago, scholars figured out there was this thing called 'language families', which means languages that are descended from the same ancestor language. In this case, we happen to know what the language was. It was Latin, which is rather well documented. And you see, related languages tend to have SIMILARITIES, because they keep old words from when they were one language.
Now, Dave, back to the chart. See how Romanian, Italian, and Catalan fit right into your chart as well. Funny, that.
Now by your reasoning, AFD, shouldn't this data show just as well that Portuguese is a 'mix' of Spanish and, say, Italian? Or Spanish and Romanian?
And remember, your aunt speaking Portuguese doesn't constitute proof, Dave. Got it?
And as a last point, Dave, can you offer your opinion as to why no linguists agree with you? Do you have any kind of hunch as to what the explanation for that is? Are you smarter than all of them?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Well, faid did a lovely job of pointing out why Dave is, yet again, wrong. But since it's a PORTUGUESE MOMENT for Dave - one of those moments of such amazing ignorance, illogic, and bad manners on his part that it becomes famous, I thought I'd comment.
Let's begin, shall we?
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And for all you Portuguese fans who joined Rilke on her branch again (Faid, Arden ... anyone else? I think there were not as many this time ... I've got this saved in a separate file now so that whenever Rilke wants to look foolish, she can just bring up Portuguese again and I will respond with this for the benefit of our readers) ...
Dave at his best. He lied the first time; he lied the second time; and now he's enshrined his lies in a text document so that he can lie via (wait for it!
CUT AND PASTE
Yes, here is a key thing to remember about Dave "I'm just a coward who cut and ran from the air force when they threatened to put me in actual danger" Hawkins: all of his 'arguments' (such as they are) consist of cut-n-paste from elsewhere. He is incapable of creating and following a chain of logic on his own (no doubt the reason he lost his last company).
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PORTUGUESE = SPANISH + FRENCH + OTHER FACTORS (Illustrating how some 'Evobots' overlook evidence which is as plain as the nose on their face, then call Creos 'idiots' for recognizing the evidence.)
Now, see, here's another classic 2nd Lt. "I abuse children and lie about it" Dave.
He lies.
He lies continually.
He lies by omission, comission, and pretty much every other way there is to lie.
He lies in public, here on this board where people with actual degrees, intelligence, and real jobs (not unemployment, Dave) can see that he lies.
What did Dave say?
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Portuguese (which is a mixture of French and Spanish)
Excellent. But note! Dave has changed his story.
And of course, he's still wrong. French and Spanish are modern languages descended from the same parent tongue (Latin) as Portuguese. Like most languages, they influence each other in those geographic areas where their speakers intermingle.
But note that Dave didn't say "influenced by". Note that Dave didn't say "has elements of".
2nd Lt. "I lie for God so that makes it all right" Dave claimed that the language was a mixture of two modern languages.
Alex Trebeck would be embarrassed for you, 2nd Lt. "I washed out of the air force 'cause it takes honesty to stay in it" Dave.
What would it take to show that Portuguese was a "mixture of French and Spanish"?
It would take linguistic evidence. It would take a demonstration that Portuguese contains an admixture of French and Spanish vocabulary; French and Spanish pronunciation; French and Spanish grammar; AND NOTHING UNIQUE TO PORTUGUESE ITSELF.
Let's look at the stuff that Dave has posted and see if he has provided any of the relevant lingustic evidence, shall we?
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(Hint: the big news is that they do this exact same thing with Origins evidence!
This from Rilke's source of choice (Wikipedia) ... I guess she just didn't read far enough ...
Quote Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages.Portuguese and French
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
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and... Quote Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language."
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
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And the local linguist, Arden Chatfield, said that this may be true if you can show significant French influence on Portugal (which I did ... it's right here ... it happened in the 12th century).
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
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Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of contingents of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail].
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
And here Dave conveniently overlooks his initial lie: that it was Henry who engineered this influence.
Yet another 2nd Lt. "I claim to google, but I always get my facts wrong 'cause I'm pretty darn stupid; too stupid to fly real planes anyway" Dave moment.
A HENRY MOMENT.
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Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica.
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
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Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone. (Dictionary of the Middle Ages, v. 10, 1988, American Council of Learned Societies) (From the public library, a famous, non-YEC source)
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
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Hmmm ... let's think now ... a whole bunch of French knights come into western Spain to help out the king who has a French wife. Another French guy comes into Spain and marries a Spanish wife. They take over Lisbon and set up the Kingdom of Portugal. Do you see what's happening? This is not rocket science folks. This is kind of like 1+2=3. See? Spanish + French = Portuguese.
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
And we note that Dave has done another of his incredibly stupid mind-leaps and abandoned his claim that Portuguese = Spanish + French + other stuff.
Stupid, stupid, Dave. Can't even keep his own story consistent in the same post.
And he does this right in front of intelligent, well-educated people who are laughing themselves silly at him. That's what's so priceless.
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FRENCH AND PORTUGUESE WORD COMPARISONS Also, someone asked about word comparisons. Here you go. I hope the table comes out OK.
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Now if you have all three of these languages in your own family (my mother speaks fluent Portuguese and Spanish and my cousin speaks fluent French), you tend to have a little better overview of these languages than the average Joe (or Rilke). I can tell you that if you have heard all three languages like I have, the mix is quite obvious.
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
See the pattern Dave? You have to present actual linguistic evidence. But you can't, 'cause you can't find a web-site to cut and paste from.
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And if you think and are honest (I'm finding this to be a slightly scarce combo here), instead of just shoot your mouth off about how all YECs are stupid idiots, you can see how Wikipedia would make a statement like ...
We can see that you are a dishonest liar; an incompetent businessman; and a fool. Other than that, your YEC inclinations don't mean anything - we don't think you're a fool because you're a YEC; we just think you're a fool.
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phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. (by the way, Catalan the language of Andorra -- just below France on the map)
Hmmm..... Nothing in there about the linguistic admixture of French and Spanish.
Well, there ya go Dave. You lost again. Made a complete idiot of yourself in front of us.
I feel rather sorry for you, lying there in the mud, claiming that it's a gossamer bed.
I feel rather sorry for you, looking like a dolt, screaming loudly about how brilliant you are.
Is this why they washed you out of the air force? For lying? Figures.
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Arden said ... Quote The 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' fallacy. The sites you showed me acknowledged no more influence than a late layer of French loanwords that postdates the splitoff of Brazilian Portuguese. No. The influence begins during the 12th century, right when World Book says the languages start diverging.
Of what?
Let's do this again slowly for you:
In order to show that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish, you have to have linguistic evidence. That evidence can take the form of a demonstration that Portuguese contains an admixture of French and Spanish vocabulary; that Portuguese contains a mixture of French and Spanish pronunciation; that Portuguese contains a mixture of French and Spanish grammar; AND NOTHING UNIQUE TO PORTUGUESE ITSELF.
You haven't done that.
You've done nothing but lie.
Dave loses. Again. And we all do the happy dance.
Don't feel bad about being a loser, Dave - at least you won the poll for supidest creobot! That's something to cherish in the future when your children have turned against you for lying to them the way your father lied to you.
I mean, I'm sorry your Dad lied to you. I'm sorry he prevented you from developing anything resembling 'critical thinking apparatus'. But don't take it out on your children - that's abuse.
OK. Faid and Arden didn't quite catch all this ... so we will walk through this a little more slowly, ready?
PORTUGUESE = SPANISH + FRENCH + OTHER FACTORS (simplified version) 1) Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language." I'm not sure why Faid could not find my reference. It's right there in World Book (the hard copy, Faid, you know ... a real book like you tell me to buy all the time?). Faid is almost correct with his quote ...
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Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. It began to diverge from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, and started to be used in written documents around the 9th century. By the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with fairly minor influences from other languages.
... the problem with this article is that there was no such thing as Portugal prior to the 12th century. There was only Spain. So Faid's article would be correct if it said "common language of what would become Spain and Portugal" instead of just saying "Portuguese." It's an OK article, just not specific enough. OK. Everyone with me so far?
Now ... an astute person would ask "Why did the languages begin changing in 1143?" Hmmm ... enter the word chart which you would be familiar with if you spoke both languages like me and know something of the history and you might have some clues ...
2) Language comparison Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Wow ... there is some similarity here! Let's form a hypothesis: Maybe Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French among other factors ... also the local liguistic expert at ATBC says that this hypothesis might be true if you could show a significant French influence on the country at that time ...
Now let's test this ...
3) Is there a significant French influence? Why yes there is ... fancy that!! Right in that very timeframe of the 12th century too!! Glory be!! Here it is again ...
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Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of contingents of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail]. Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? Maybe because of the French influence and intermarriage in the ruling class? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone.
(Dictionary of the Middle Ages, v. 10, 1988, American Council of Learned Societies) (From the public library, a famous, non-YEC source) (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2002, Micropedia, "Portuguese Language" for the part about official Portuguese being based on the dialect of Lisbon)
4) And of course, the Wikipedia article which acknowledges the closeness ...
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Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages. Portuguese and French
Now anyone with an 8th grade eductaion can see this logic and it makes perfect sense. Why can't Arden find some scholars who say the same thing I do? Probably because no one has put a study of this in writing. Who cares about it anyway? The only reason I care is because Rilke challenged me on it. Why can't Arden and Faid see this simple connection?
Because they want to beat me REALLY BAD. They cannot stand the thought of me winning an argument.
Now I will not do what Faid does and call him a liar just because I disagree. He is simply mistaken and so is Arden.
Have nice day, guys!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, please explain why you are incapable of finding any citation from any linguist which confirms your theory, why all the linguists everywhere disagree with you.
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Now anyone with an 8th grade eductaion can see this logic and it makes perfect sense.
Well, at last we know what AFD's level of 'eductaion' is..
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, please explain why you are incapable of finding any citation from any linguist which confirms your theory, why all the linguists everywhere disagree with you.
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Now anyone with an 8th grade eductaion can see this logic and it makes perfect sense.
Well, at last we know what AFD's level of 'eductaion' is..
Actually, that would explain a lot. Went straight into the AF without completing high school?
Now anyone with an 8th grade eductaion can see this logic and it makes perfect sense. Why can't Arden find some scholars who say the same thing I do? Probably because no one has put a study of this in writing. Who cares about it anyway? The only reason I care is because Rilke challenged me on it. Why can't Arden and Faid see this simple connection?
Because they want to beat me REALLY BAD. They cannot stand the thought of me winning an argument.
Projection can be a really frightening thing...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, are you beginning to see why everyone who reads this thread knows you lost on your ridiculous "Portuguese = French + Spanish"? Even if you add the "+ other factors," which was never in your original claim?
I know you will never admit in public that you've lost this stupid debate. But I hope you're at least honest enough with yourself to recognize defeat when you see it.
And the truth is, you're doing even worse with your radiometric thing.You do realize, don't you, that even if you could win the argument on this one example (which you aren't), you'd still be a million miles from disproving radiometric dating results for the age of the earth?
Two anomalous results do not overthrow an entire methodology. It won't overthrow them now, it won't overthrow them a decade from now, and it won't overthrow them a century from now.
I know you'll never admit you've lost, but can we please move on? Watching you get pummeled over the same thing over and over again is only fun for so long. I'm dying to hear your "evidence" for your global flood…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, is there a reason you're ignoring everyone's counterarguments to you and simply repeating yourself?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
2) Language comparison Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Wow ... there is some similarity here! Let's form a hypothesis: Maybe Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French among other factors
Why didn't you form the hypothesis that French is a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish?
Here's a much more sensible hypothesis: French, Spanish and Portuguese are all descended from a common ancestral tongue, Latin. Here's your word comparison:
habere, homo (genitive: hominis), corpus (gen. corporis), nox (gen. noctis), filius, facere, bonus, et.
This hypothesis, unlike yours, is supported by all the historical evidence, and by comparison to other languages, for example Italian and Catalan, as has been pointed out elsewhere.
And if you still don't get it, well, futue de se et caballum suum, as they said in Pompeii.
Boy, Davie-poo, you're getting more incoherent by the day. Better up the lithium dose.
TRANSLATION: Boy, this AFD guy is tireless ... what am I gonna say now? ... how about an insult ... yes, that's it ... Insult #42 ... the old "up the lithium dose" insult. That'll work!
Oh and let's cut and paste BOTH CHARTS in their entirety so that I can fill up space and make people think I have a sensible rebuttal.
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Henke has raised several possible mechanisms; we don't have to prove that those mechanisms applied, you need to prove that they didn't apply.
He has, as far as anyone can 'prove' anything. Henke's mechanisms are such an long shot that only an ideologically driven skeptic like you would grab onto them and try to use them to rebut Humprheys' good results.
You are bankrupt, JonF. My money says that Humphreys' results will be IRREFUTABLE as time goes on, and that they will find their way into conventional peer-reviewed publications.
Helium atom size ... got me on that one. Fine. Now how are you going to get around the other three sledge hammer blows??
JonF...
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No data on helium diffusion in zircons. Just hand-waving. You're the one making the claim, you provide the data. Call Dr. Farley yourself.
Humphreys did talk to Dr. Farley numerous times and confirmed that vacuum testing of Helium is standard practice because it has negligible effect.
The Creos did their homework already, JonF. You're the one trying to do a rebuttal. You call him for yourself if you think you won't get laughed at. Get Deadman on the phone with you. Him and Farley are buds.
AFD said...
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Oh really? Why then did the RATE Group get wildly differing results on several of their samples? They got everything from 500 my to 2.5 by in the same rock samples!! (This was not a Creo lab, by the way ... it was one of the world's leading conventional labs) The difference, I think, is that the RATE Group does not have a Long Age Agenda, so they don't mind reporting discordant results. I would bet you money that the reason most conventional dates agree is because the dates that don't agree are thrown out and are not reported. I would like to speak with one of these labs (instead of the geologists) to see what THEY say about discordant dating results. How many tests are thrown out?
I am not referring to Snelling's Mt. Ngauruhoe 'fraud' as you call it. I am referring to the tests reported in the RATE books.
JonF ...
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As for speaking to the labs about how many results get thrown out, go for it. One of the major labs (Menlo Park, CA) is government-run, and if they won't give you the data if you ask nicely you can probably get it through FOIA.
I think I will. Thanks for the lead.
JonF...
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Your goalpost-shifting is obvious. You asked for "Can you give me a paper that shows non-ambiguous data on He diffusion in zircons prior to Humphreys et al?".
Anyone with any sense or any ethics at all would know that I meant before he PUBLISHED his predictions. It doesn't make any sense to get data published in 2001 to try to make some predictions in 2000, now does it? As for your other sources, the RATE Group looked at everything and nothing was relevant except for the ambiguous Soviet data mentioned.
You are just resorting to more Evobot techniques of whining and mud-slinging because you have nothing more to say.
As anyone can see, JonF has now degenerated to just mudslinging and saying 'Oh .. you're just hand waving.' He has no way to answer my responses because the fact is ... the RATE Group has done a thorough job on the Helium-Zircon experiment.
And with that, guys, I have satisfied myself that the Long Age crowd has NOTHING substantive with which to rebut the Helium-Zircon findings of the RATE Group.
We will now be moving on to ...
CARBON 14 IN COAL AND DIAMONDS
My guess is that Jon F will bow out and this will be an easy one. We shall see.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
DearDumbassDaveTard2: I posted a reference previously showing that
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The Valles caldera hydrothermal plume is structurally dominated by lateral flow through a belt of vertical conduits (Jemez fault zone) that strike away from the source reservoir. Stratigraphically confined flow is present but dispersed over a wide area in relatively impermeable rocks.
The Valles Caldera is what is left of a volcano that was active recently. The crater has a geothermic plume that tends to run along fault zones. Fenton Hill is geothermically active due to the flow of heated fluids "laterally" (see above...lateral means horizontally, DaveTard2, parallel to the surface) These fluids then emerge through the fractured rock. Even though Fenton Hill is CURRENTLY a "hot dry test site," the area has been hydrothermically active in the past.
Second, AFDaveTard2, you don't need fluids to transport He ---- it does it all on its own, or it can be carried by CO2. As Jon stated, the geology of the area reported by Sasada indicates that Humphreys, with his "naked eye" assesment of granidiorite...is wrong. It IS gneiss. Also, that gneiss is fractured and considerably worked over due to varying levels of heat over the millenia.
Humphreys is smart enough to know that He transport and infiltration in the zircons would kill his claim, so he has to avoid presenting the notes and labwork that would support it. In other words, DaveTard, he is deliberately hiding.
Prediction 1: Neither Humpherys or Gentry or any other member of RATE will ever, ever restudy the Fenton Hill zircons to eliminate external He sources
Prediction 2 (and remember this one, AFarceDave, you heard it here first): An enterprising graduate student from Caltech will be first to show that the excess He in the Fenton Hills zircons is due to transport of He from the Valles Caldera plume.
Prediction 3: Once this solution is offered, Humphreys, RATE and the ICR will move on to another in a long series of "God of the Gaps" argumentum ad ignoratium claims that will also be shown false.
And you can bank on all of those, AFarceDaveTard2
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Let me translate Humphrey's 'Sledge Hammer Blows' for you ... BLOW #1: How is Helium going to squeeze through 1 angstrom spaces? (size of a hydrogen atom)
Er, Dave, you might want to, you know, actually look up the atomic radius of the helium atom. You're in for a big surprise.
Dave, don't you feel like defending your "sledge hammer blow"?
After all, as usual, this killer "blow" glanced off ineffectually and bounced back to hit you in the face. I'll tell you why, in order of increasing importance:
1. It contains an erroneous definition. 1 Angstrom is strictly defined as 10E-10 m, or 100 pm. It is not the "size of a hydrogen atom," unless you play fast and loose with the manner in which you apply measurements of atomic radius (is this based on hydrogen's Bohr radius?). When talking about atomic radii, 1 Angstrom is most accurately the "size" of the hydrogen MOLECULE (that's two hydrogen atoms, based on covalent radii, Dave).
2. It is simplified to the point of irrelevance. What do you (and your source) mean by "size", Dave? Atoms aren't billiard balls. They're squashable. Are you measuring Bohr radius? Covalent radius? Van der Waals radius? Do you know which one? Do you know which applies when?
3. It is pure speculative handwaving. Your source, whom you summarize, states:
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Those factors would mean that the interface widths between minerals would be microscopic, perhaps only an Angstrom (the diameter of a hydrogen atom) or so.
So, basically, dry rock and lots of pressure amounts to small interface widths. How small? Maybe about an angstrom (or so!. Where are the calculations to show this? Nowhere to be found. We're supposed to take your word that the helium had to be squeezed through spaces 1 angstrom or less, and that this condition was constant through time? Better back that up. On second thought, don't bother, because see below.
4. Even if, despite 1-3, your argument is essentially correct, it doesn't help you. Go look at the size of a helium atom, Dave (hint: its effective covalent radius is 32 pm). Explore covalent radii, van der Waals radii, noble gases, pressure, valences -- aw he11, Dave, take a gander at the entire field of chemistry. Then come back and try to tell me that a helium atom cannot fit through a space that is perhaps "1 angstrom or so".
EDIT: I see that, as I was composing this in my off moments, Davey acknowledged Sledge Hammer Blow #1 whiffed completely. But we're supposed to worry about the other ones. They hurt -- really!
Now, Dave, despite your implication that scholars havent worked much on the connections among the Romance languages, it's actually one of the most extensively researched areas in the history of linguistics. And if your theory were right, someone would have written it up.
But I'm here to tell you, Dave, that your theory is not simply 'not mentioned' in the literature -- it's REFUTED.
None of them pointy-headed intellectual linguists with their book larnin and degrees agree with you.
In fact they all DISAGREE with you.
Now please explain why having no education and an aunt who speaks Portuguese makes you smarter than all of them. C'mon.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Spanish and French were not spoken in any of those countries around CE 1100 Various Dialects of Galician Occitan and Catalan were spoken, plus many others, around the area now called Portugal.
Just as you would not be able to understand Middle English from the Peterborough Chronicle Second continuation (1132–1154) "ćvric rice man his castles maked and agenes him heolden; and fylden the land ful of castles. Hi suencten suythe the uurecce men of the land mid castelweorces; tha the castles uuaren maked, tha fylden hi mid deovles and yvele men. Tha namen hi tha men the hi wendan that any god hefden, bathe be nihtes and be dćies, carlmen and wimmen, and diden heom in prison and pined heom efter gold and sylver untellendlice pining; for ne uuaerern naevre mas martyrs swa pined alse hi waeron."
A Portuguese would not be able to understand French which only became the national language of France AFTER World War One.
half a Dave you are an ASS.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
AirHeadDaveTard2: Presenting a list showing that Portuguese is a Latinate language means nothing except that it shares roots with other Romance languages.
The **ONLY** way that you can prove your claim that "Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French" is to present a word list that shows a large number of Portuguese terms that etymologically derive from French, Stupid. And you ---let me emphasize this, since you seem unusually dense---CANNOT show any such thing.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
And with that, guys, I have satisfied myself that the Long Age crowd has NOTHING substantive with which to rebut the Helium-Zircon findings of the RATE Group.
But you were satisfied with that to begin with, and you've failed to satisfy anyone else. So you run along and play, and we'll carry on with the competent science, 'kay? Your failure to address [He contamination, the known unreliability of He as a dating mechanism, the misidentification of the stratum as granodiorite, the lack of control for thermal history, the refusal to provide lab data, the failure to replicate the results at all] has been noted.
Actual scholars can win arguments without repeatedly declaring they've already won (if only the other side would admit it! and without boldfaced sound effects of tree branches being sawed.
That's not usually how it's done among people who've been exposed to higher 'eduaction'.
Try reading some nonreligious books for a few years. Might help.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
But, you know, actually having to show your work to other people who understand the topic is just an onerous hurdle to perpetuate the conspiracy, huh?
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The RATE Group presented at the American Geophysical Convention (correct name?) in San Francisco where there were 10,000 or so scientists present. They were very well received.
From the various comments about the RATE results right here, it would seem that they haven't quite past the peer-review muster yet, so don't confuse politeness with acceptance
The "very well received" bit is from a RATE publication. What they "presented" was three posters at a gigantic poster session. There's no review of those posters, and pretty much anything you want to throw up there is allowed. Comments from the geologists attending the meeting indicate that the reception was polite bemusement at the fact that people were actually willing to stand in front of and defend such obvious garbage.
Dave, you've got some interesting ideas as to where the burden of proof actually lies. You contend the RATE result is enough to overturn centuries of established science and millions upon millions of other data points. We contend that the RATE result, assuming it is accurate, is an outlier -- a single disconcordant aberration based on conditions we haven't nailed down (but have plenty of potential explanations), lost in the sea of millions upon millions of concordant findings.
To add another Top Gun reference, you've got to fly better and cleaner than the other guy.
Now, you've already blown your chances at benefit of the doubt by being so obviously and laughably wrong so many times before (most recently in "sledgehammer blow #1", for which your trusted source was misleading enough in his handwaving to send you, an obviously intelligent guy, down the wrong path).
Therefore, in response to your other blows, the following is perfectly valid:
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BLOW #2: Show that basalt conduits exist BLOW #3: Helium concentration in basalts is 40 times too small BLOW #4: If the extraneous He somehow got there, how would it stay with the considerably higher temps?
(2) Show that they don't. (3) Perhaps too small at present. Show that it was always so. (4) That would depend on how it got there and what (and when) those temperatures actually were. Give me those and I'll tell you.
As it stands, you're just retreating into the few gaps that you don't get immediately squashed in, demanding data for a sensible hypothesis to explain a single unexpected result, while simultaneously refusing to provide any evidence for your own esoteric contention that the outlier is right and the millions of other data points are wrong. Put up or shut up, Dave. You better have tens of thousands of data points we (or the experts) can't immediately explain, and which can best be explained by your contention that the Earth is a few thousand years old. You're off to a very poor start.
The funny part is that I'd have a far easier time showing that Portuguese is " a mix of Spanish and Arabic" than AirHead is having with French and Spanish.
With his latinate word list, I like the suggestion that an equally credible hypothesis is that French is a mix of Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish mingled with the French a lot over the centuries.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Forget the C14 in coal and diamonds for now. You said
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You are correct that the RATE findings only say coal and diamond can’t be more than 58,000 years old with conventional asumptions on C-14 dating, which of course, the RATE Group does not accept. We will get into this in further detail, but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. This would significantly affect conventional interpretations of c-14 amounts found in coal, diamonds, fossils and what have you.
Tell us how the RATE group explains C14 dating results that fall in the range 58,000 YBP to the present.
Show us the data that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. Or were you lying once again?
Deal with your failure to address all that evidence you were given that human culture and artifacts exist that date back over 40,000 years.
Dave, what's your explanation for anything that dates over 6000 YBP?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The funny part is that I'd have a far easier time showing that Portuguese is " a mix of Spanish and Arabic" than AirHead is having with French and Spanish.
Indeed. Residents of Lisbon were bilingual in Portuguese and Arabic for 200 years, and there's a large layer of Arabic loanwords in Portuguese (and Spanish). The French/Portuguese argument lacks either of those two advantages.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'm not sure why Faid could not find my reference. It's right there in World Book (the hard copy, Faid, you know ... a real book like you tell me to buy all the time?).
Wait, what? That was not a quote from Wiki? Then why on Earth did you put the reference inside the quote? You clearly made it look like you were posting two parts from the Wiki page... Hmm, I wonder... Was it just a stupid mistake, or did you want to show like you were posting something more contemporary and specialised than a snip from an old 'Pedia? But it don't matter, dave. You are still wrong. All you have shown is that, while we have contemporary and official links from libraries, institutes and universities to support our position, all you have is a dated quote from a school encyclopedia that could have been edited or addended a dozen times by now. And a lot of hand-waving, of course.
Quote (afdave @ June 08 2006,11:31)
3) Is there a significant French influence? Why yes there is ... fancy that!! Right in that very timeframe of the 12th century too!! Glory be!! Here it is again ...
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Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of contingents of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail]. Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? Maybe because of the French influence and intermarriage in the ruling class? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone.
(Dictionary of the Middle Ages, v. 10, 1988, American Council of Learned Societies) (From the public library, a famous, non-YEC source) (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2002, Micropedia, "Portuguese Language" for the part about official Portuguese being based on the dialect of Lisbon)
Ooookay, I knew you were just gonna ignore my answer to this, after I pulverized it and showed that you LIE... But you managed to surprise me this time. Quoting yourself as evidence? As what, authority? You're a blast, davey boy. How 'bout quoting the actual paragraph from EB instead, though, so we can see if it says anything to your defense? You're pretty eager to send us to libraries and bookstores to see if you're right, how about typing some words yourself? Maybe then you'll have to address what I wrote about the "French-influenced Lisbon dialect" on my previous post. Come on, champ! It's as plain as plain: If you look at my post reeealy hard, without blinking, I'm sure you'll see it eventually.
Anyway, as a parting gift for now: Here's a few perty pixxx from this lovely (and official) site:
Boy, Davie-poo, you're getting more incoherent by the day. Better up the lithium dose.
TRANSLATION: Boy, this AFD guy is tireless ... what am I gonna say now? ... how about an insult ... yes, that's it ... Insult #42 ... the old "up the lithium dose" insult. That'll work!
Oh and let's cut and paste BOTH CHARTS in their entirety so that I can fill up space and make people think I have a sensible rebuttal.
Sorry, Davey-wavey. I didn't cut and past anything. You're the one with the huge cut-and-paste.
I see you've given up on trying to claim that you know the temperature history of those zircons well enough to assess the temperature-dependent diffusion effects.
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Henke has raised several possible mechanisms; we don't have to prove that those mechanisms applied, you need to prove that they didn't apply.
He has, as far as anyone can 'prove' anything.
He has, as far as anyone can "prove" anyting without actually having any data.
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Henke's mechanisms are such an long shot that only an ideologically driven skeptic like you would grab onto them and try to use them to rebut Humprheys' good results.
Please show your probability calculations, Davey-wavey.
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You are bankrupt, JonF. My money says that Humphreys' results will be IRREFUTABLE as time goes on, and that they will find their way into conventional peer-reviewed publications.
My money says otherwise. We'll see what happens. Until then, all you've goit is the possibility of one anomaly. Far from enough to question the age of the Earth.
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Helium atom size ... got me on that one. Fine. Now how are you going to get around the other three sledge hammer blows??
We don't need to. It's Humphreys' calaim, it's up to him to support it.
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No data on helium diffusion in zircons. Just hand-waving. You're the one making the claim, you provide the data. Call Dr. Farley yourself.
Humphreys did talk to Dr. Farley numerous times and confirmed that vacuum testing of Helium is standard practice because it has negligible effect.
Let's see it in print. I don't trust Humphreys or you as far as I could throw the both of you, and with good reason.
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Oh really? Why then did the RATE Group get wildly differing results on several of their samples? They got everything from 500 my to 2.5 by in the same rock samples!! (This was not a Creo lab, by the way ... it was one of the world's leading conventional labs) The difference, I think, is that the RATE Group does not have a Long Age Agenda, so they don't mind reporting discordant results. I would bet you money that the reason most conventional dates agree is because the dates that don't agree are thrown out and are not reported. I would like to speak with one of these labs (instead of the geologists) to see what THEY say about discordant dating results. How many tests are thrown out?
I am not referring to Snelling's Mt. Ngauruhoe 'fraud' as you call it. I am referring to the tests reported in the RATE books.
Then let's see the specifics of those tests, in detail; irrelevant though they are they are, it might be amusing to figure out how they cheated. Location, strata, sample selection and gathering procedure, minerology, sample treatment, raw lab results, and so on.
But the plain fact is that you have absolutely no support for your claim that "the 4 leading methods of long age radioisotope dating almost never agree with each other. They are generally VERY discordant." I see you have abandoned your feeble attempts to support that, and are trying to brush it under the rug. Davey-wavey, a few, a very very few, inconsistent results (several of which are outright frauds and all of which are suspect) are not "they are generally VERY discordant"..
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Your goalpost-shifting is obvious. You asked for "Can you give me a paper that shows non-ambiguous data on He diffusion in zircons prior to Humphreys et al?".
Anyone with any sense or any ethics at all would know that I meant before he PUBLISHED his predictions. It doesn't make any sense to get data published in 2001 to try to make some predictions in 2000, now does it? As for your other sources, the RATE Group looked at everything and nothing was relevant except for the ambiguous Soviet data mentioned.
Davey-wavey, you explicitly asked for "before Humphreys et al", which is 2003. Let's see the RATE group's asessment of what was available before 2001, and details on why they decided most of it was not relevant. Let's also see why Humphrey's et all didn't use the results available in 2001 and 2002 when they published in 2003.
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CARBON 14 IN COAL AND DIAMONDS
My guess is that Jon F will bow out and this will be an easy one. We shall see.
You're a pretty poor predictor, Davey-wavey. I already pointed out the refutation of that RATE silliness yesterday.
The RATE findings show that if the carbon is derived solely or essentially solely from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when the coal/diamond formed then they are circa 58K years old. The unstated and unjustified assumption is the part in italics above. We don't know exactly why those items show measurable C14/C12 ratios. We do know that C14 can be produced in coal by particles given off by uranium decay, and the level of C14 in coal correlates well with the amount of uranium in the area. Real scientists are working on it. "It's magic" is awfully low on the list of hypotheses that are being tested.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Faid: I was having lunch and glanced at your post and nearly lost my life due to a combination of tuna fish sammitch and laughter at that little emoticon thing.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
2nd Lt. "I'm so dumb I repeat myself 'cause I forget things..." Dave said
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1) Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language." I'm not sure why Faid could not find my reference. It's right there in World Book (the hard copy, Faid, you know ... a real book like you tell me to buy all the time?). Faid is almost correct with his quote ..
The reason Faid make his comment is that you lied about the source of the quote Dave.
Doesn't do much for your credibility when pretty much every other statement out of your mouth is a lie.
But you claim you don't/ lie? How can we reconcile this? By pointing out that you were lying.
'tis simple.
Boy you really took a drubbing this time, Dave. Almost like a "wash-out"!
1) is that city whose people spoke a Spanish dialect at the time. You can clearly see why.
2) is, er, that language that, um, wasn't supposed to exist at that time. Forget that.
3) is France.
1) is the wildfire spread of this new, French-influenced Spanish dialect, seven years after all those French nobles started getting it on with Spanish ladies. As Thordaddy would put it, "Isn't traditional marriage amazing?"
2) is still France.
1) shows the distinct blend between Spanish and French that led to Portuguese... Come on, it's obvious!
2) ...Yep, France.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Actual scholars can win arguments without repeatedly declaring they've already won (if only the other side would admit it! and without boldfaced sound effects of tree branches being sawed. That's not usually how it's done among people who've been exposed to higher 'eduaction'. Try reading some nonreligious books for a few years. Might help.
Actual scholars ... er ... like you for example? No ... no ... actual scholars such as yourself would NEVER stoop to such inane depths. Actual scholars say things like this ...
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OKAY MORON
and this ...
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AS I SAID, SHIT FOR BRAINS
and finally ...
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No, shit for brains
Yes, yes. I understand. I have a ways to go before I attain to the utopia of professional scholarship. :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Not exactly answering any of the responses to your arguments, are you Dave?
I can understand. There's not many places for you to go. You've already tried the "repeat everything I said before but more hysterically" strategy.
Let me ask you the bottom line question.
Every scholar specializing in linguistics and Romance languages DISAGREES with you.
Why is that? Why is it that you know so much more about this than people who've spent their lives studying it? Why does having expert knowledge of this subject apparently DISQUALIFY them from seeing things as clearly as you?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Since you have time to whine about the negative image you cultivated, you surely must have time to discuss the scientific topics you raised. You said:
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You are correct that the RATE findings only say coal and diamond can’t be more than 58,000 years old with conventional asumptions on C-14 dating, which of course, the RATE Group does not accept. We will get into this in further detail, but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. This would significantly affect conventional interpretations of c-14 amounts found in coal, diamonds, fossils and what have you.
Tell us how the RATE group explains C14 dating results that fall in the range 58,000 YBP to the present.
Show us the data that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
Deal with your failure to address all that evidence you were given that human culture and artifacts exist that date back over 40,000 years.
Dave, what's your explanation for anything that dates over 6000 YBP?
C'mon Dave, are you incapable of discussing the scientific details???
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, professional scholars make professional arguments. You have not done so. F'r example, if you make a claim about linguistics, you need to support it with linguistc arguments.
You have presented irrelevant historical claims.
That's why you lost this argument, and lost it in a fashion that made you look both ignorant AND stupid.
You've lost embarrassingly - don't make yourself look stupider by repeating defeated and irrelevant arguments.
That's not usually how it's done among people who've been exposed to higher 'eduaction'.
Yes. And peeple with higer eduaction proably now how to spel it two.
Faid ... I do salute you new emoticon!
SALUTE!!
(but your arguments are nonsense)
(but your probably a nice guy anyway)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What do you have to say now that you know that all fusions are not harmful, dave? Not by a longshot? Are you gonna discuss this with my colleague friend of yours?
<edit>
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(but your arguments are nonsense)
Hmm... Do I sense a slight tad of resignation, dave? Is that the best you can do? How about explaining why it's nonsense? (and I mean actually explaining, not simply repeating your previous arguments)
Unless, of course, you mean the numbers and arrows I posted above... In that case, you're right: They're supposed to be nonsense. They're explaining the pics according to your model.
Oh, and I had a spoonfeeding emoticon that was better for the case in hand, but I can't find it...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
F'r example, if you make a claim about linguistics, you need to support it with linguistc arguments.
...and preferably spelled correctly too, right?
Gotcha, Rilke ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, yes. I understand. I have a ways to go before I attain to the utopia of professional scholarship. :-)
A first step might be actually backing your claims. Another would be not lying. Another would be not avoiding counterarguments that appear as a result of your claims. Another would be not using quote-mining. Another would be avoiding other known fallacies. Another would be acknowledging when you are caught lying and using fallacies.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step, LiarDave. We're just here to help you learn to walk.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Let me add something to what I just posted, DaveTard. You had been given multiple examples of your lies. You selected out the Portuguese one because you thought you could bluff your way through it and because it was YOURS, as Rilke pointed out. Ego, Dave. The kind of ego that leads you to crow about your ability to fly a plane, the ego that led to you actually comparing yourself to Newton and Maxwell, the same ego that leads you to believe that you cannot be wrong.
You're not dealing with gullible kids that you can B-S...or your local yokel Churchgoers that you can try to hoodwink with crappy creationist claims. Nor does anyone show any amazment or awe at your accomplishments in your life. Maybe you know that and that's what drives you...I don't care, anyway.
What I care about is the quality of the data, the ability of evidence to support claims and the willingness of the individual to engage in honest debate. You lack what I care about, DaveTard, so you get spanked for pretending that you do possess these things.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What do you have to say now that you know that all fusions are not harmful, dave?
Fusions? You haven't begun to convince me that they are not harmful.
Chris Hyland says they are. You say they are not. Chris seems more honest.
Hmmm ... we'll see. I need more data.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What do you have to say now that you know that all fusions are not harmful, dave?
Fusions? You haven't begun to convince me that they are not harmful.
Chris Hyland says they are. You say they are not. Chris seems more honest.
Hmmm ... we'll see. I need more data.
And once again, Dave simply the ignores the fact that he once again embarrassed himself with his ignorance, illogic, and general cluelessness.
Dave, in order to present yourself as something other than a laughing-stock, as something other that the winner in the 'dumbest creobot' contest, you'd have to address things posted to you.
But you're having a PORTUGUESE MOMENT. Or a HENRY MOMENT. Or a RELATIVITY MOMENT.
We know you can't actually address any of these lies and misstatements, because you've tried and failed. We know that you're ashamed of your inability to hold discussions with people who actually know what they're talking about.
But cheer up! Maybe we'll hold another poll about most Homer Simpson moments and you might win that.
TRANSLATION: Boy, this AFD guy is tireless ... what am I gonna say now? ... how about an insult ... yes, that's it ... Insult #42 ... the old "up the lithium dose" insult. That'll work!
First time I can recall anybody saying that here. do you hear that "insult" a lot Dave?
Methinks thou dost protest too much...
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Waaaaay back in April, when AFDave first began posting his "Proof of God / ToE is wrong" stuff here, I said this to him:
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OA to AFDave: No one that I know will attempt to change your belief in God, or claim that your belief is wrong. Many here see no conflict whatsoever in believing in God and accepting the ToE (a topic for another thread at another time). However, we will take you to task if you screw up the technical stuff.
AirFarceDaveTard2 sure can't complain that he wasn't warned.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What do you have to say now that you know that all fusions are not harmful, dave?
Fusions? You haven't begun to convince me that they are not harmful.
Chris Hyland says they are. You say they are not. Chris seems more honest.
Hmmm ... we'll see. I need more data.
Exactly what do you mean by harmful, Dave?
Chromosomal misallignment (of which fusion is only one possibility) occurs all the time during meiosis (gamete (sperm/egg) production). Consider it a cost of doing business. Is it harmful? Why, yes, almost all the time -- IF YOU'RE A SPERM CELL (and it really doesn't matter if you're a human, mouse, fish, ant or wheat sperm cell). So if by "harmful" you mean dead sperm, then you are correct, but rather irrelevant. We may as well talk about bicycle seats, smoking, birth control and a number of sometimes pleasurable activities that result in a whole lotta dead sperm cells.
But this is normally fixed well before you blow your wad, Dave. If we're talking about humans carried to term, then no, most of the remaining chromosome fusions are relatively harmless (i.e., the really harmful ones are normally weeded out well before the zygote formed). Faid has given you the links on Robertsonian translocations, which you obviously haven't read. These are fusions occurring in chromosomes 13-15 and 21-22. They are, by far, the most common human chromosome fusion we see beyond the gametic level, occurring in about one in a thousand individuals. And they are usually harmless. Sometimes (but not always) they reduce male fertility, but that's about it. You or someone you know probably has this type of fusion without knowing it (unless they've been to a fertility specialist).
Why? Because the centromeres (where chromosomes tend to fuse) of chromosomes 13-15 and 21-22 are located at the very tips. You can lose those tips without losing much. Lose an entire 'arm' of a chromosome with a centromere closer to the middle and you lose a lot of genetic material, meaning you're probably one very dead sperm.
But you should have known all this already. You've been told many times. Chris says MOST chromosome fusions are harmful. At the gametic level, they are, and there are also some particularly nasty ones that can have ugly consequences for an actual human being (but these are relatively rare). At the organismal level (which requires there to be an organism in the first place), the remaining fusions are generally harmless.
Here's another paper you won't read:
Morel F, Douet-Guilbert N, Le Bris MJ, Herry A, Amice V, Amice J, De Braekeleer M. 2004. Meiotic segregation of translocations during male gametogenesis. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANDROLOGY 27 (4): 200-212.
Abstract
Balanced reciprocal and Robertsonian translocations are the most common structural chromosomal abnormalities in humans. Generally, they are without consequence for the carrier, but for various degrees of oligoasthenoteratozoospermia in men. As these carriers can produce a significant percentage of gametes with an unbalanced combination of the parental rearrangement, there is a more or less significant risk, according to cases, of chromosomal imbalances for their offspring. Therefore, techniques were developed to study the meiotic segregation of these translocations in males. Direct investigation of human sperm chromosomes became possible by karyotyping spermatozoa after penetration of zona-free hamster oocytes and, more recently, using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). This paper reviews the results obtained using these techniques in Robertsonian and reciprocal translocations. The studies on spermatozoa from translocation carriers help the comprehension of the mechanisms of the meiotic segregation. They should be integrated in the genetic exploration of the infertile men, in order to give them a personalized risk assessment of unbalanced spermatozoa, specially as a correlation was found recently between the percentage of abnormal spermatozoa and that of abnormal embryos.
Waaaaay back in April, when AFDave first began posting his "Proof of God / ToE is wrong" stuff here, I said this to him:
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OA to AFDave: No one that I know will attempt to change your belief in God, or claim that your belief is wrong. Many here see no conflict whatsoever in believing in God and accepting the ToE (a topic for another thread at another time). However, we will take you to task if you screw up the technical stuff.
I think we should print that up on a little flyer and pass it out to every new creationist who wanders in here...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
And with that, guys, I have satisfied myself that the Long Age crowd has NOTHING substantive with which to rebut the Helium-Zircon findings of the RATE Group.
Imagine our surprise, Dave. You've also managed to convince yourself that you've proved:
• That "cosmic fine tuning proves god exists"; • That "biological machines prove god exists"; • That French + Spanish = Portuguese (or if you want to get technical French + Spanish + other things = Portuguese); • That since written language only dates back 5,500 years, the earth itself is only 6,000 years old; • That two anomalous zircon results proves a young earth; and • That Lorentz transformations prove God can be everywhere at once.
I imagine you also believe that because floods happen, a global flood must have happened, and anyone who can't see that is clearly delusional and must be a God-hating atheist.
Once more, Dave gets his head jammed in a milk bucket, staggers around for a week or two bumping into things, finally trips over his own feet and falls into the water trough, then gets up, shakes himself like a dog, dusts his hands off, and declares victory.
And next week, we get to watch Dave have his ass handed to him as he completely misconstrues and misunderstands the evidence of C14 dating.
What a yutz.
P.S. don't think I haven't noticed your failure to respond to my post that you completely misunderstand what Lorentz transformations do.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The okapi chromosome number is 44, 45, or 46 in different animals (Ulbrich & Schmitt, 1969; Hösli & Lang, 1970; Koulisher, 1978). The fact that so many animals with 2n=45 have been identified, suggested that this karyotype may also exist in the wild (Benirschke et al., 1983). This has been established with certainty from the study of a wild-caught male (Petit & de Meurichy, 1986). Fusion of the acrocentric elements #8 and #21 from such a progenitor stock with 2n=46 is likely to have taken place in Zaire. It has now been verified in a specimen from Zaire by special banding techniques (Petit & de Meurichy, 1986). Moreover, Vermeesch et al. (1996) identified a specimen with a further reduction of chromosome number to 2n=44.
It seems that the fusion karyotype is more common than the normal one, too.
Has anyone noticed how cry baby half a Dave goes when he gets his brain spanked.
And how the denial knob is turned up to 11 when the best he can come back with after a comprehensive head flush is "but your arguments are nonsense”
Translated for those without the dreaded crippling D/3 brain wasting projection disease as
"but (I am unable to process)your arguments (which are beyond me; due to my childhood Fundy brainwashing and seem to me no more than) nonsense”
And then corrects spelling !!!!!
Oh..... they must be ALL wrong about everything because they make an error in a WORD.
WORDS are holy !!!!!!!!!
For D/2 El Wordo (thats Portuguese for THE WORD) IS the LORD he CANNOT tell the difference. You can't frick with words otherwise the world will end.
BWhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
sand pit stuff.....cry baby.
D/2's denial makes Hitler's last days look like a walk in the park.
This guy is beyond Parody...
I'll bet if a good writer gets hold of this material D/2 will be immortalized as the smartest stupidest person ever to grace the silver screen.
Forrest Gump with a degree AND in the Air Force as a Pilot or Homer teaching Newculeer Physics AND in the Air Force as a Pilot or......GWB as President AND in the Air Force as a Pilot....hey...hang on? Like I said beyond Parody.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Yesterday we saw that JonF had no answer to my question about the temperature history of the Fenton Hill zircons. He is trying to use Harrison and Sasada's temperature chart as a weapon against Humphreys, but it is actually a weapon against him!! Before I looked at their temp history graph, I assumed they were talking about significant temp differences. It turns out, they are talking about a mere 26 degrees!! Humphreys' error ranges easily cover this already. This is not anywhere close to what long agers need to support their model.
Henke's "vacuum testing" objection is DOA because Farley and other experts in zircon testing use vacuum all the time. Why? Because they know it does not matter with zircons. It does matter with soft stuff like mica, and testing wet vs. dry also matters and the gas being diffused also matters--i.e. Argon vs. Helium. Notice how Henke dishonestly makes a comparison of "hot, dry, zircon with helium" vs. "dry vs. wet, mica and argon." A very dishonest comparison.
So the only hope for long agers is that maybe somehow some helium was transported to the zircons through some mechanism. This was explored very thoroughly by Humphreys and it is extremely doubtful that this could have occurred. Here is Humphreys' rebuttal again ...
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In Henke’s vague scenario, the source of the helium is “recent” (100,000 to 1.45 million years ago) volcanic magmas several kilometers away from our borehole. He is apparently assuming that conduits of such magma came relatively close to borehole GT-2. The conduits could not have broken through to the surface, because then they would have immediately vented their helium into the atmosphere. Henke wants “fluids” from the magma to carry helium through the mineral interfaces in the granodiorite, through the biotite, and into the zircons.
It is doubtful that such fluids could travel very far. First, the granodiorite is presently dry and well-consolidated, even at the surface. Second, the overlying rock puts the Jemez Granodiorite under in situ pressures hundreds to thousands of times greater than atmospheric pressure. Those factors would mean that the interface widths between minerals would be microscopic, perhaps only an Angstrom (the diameter of a hydrogen atom) or so. Henke needs to show—preferably with experimental data in a peer-reviewed scientific journal—just how far the helium could travel in this rock unit during the time he thinks is available. That would determine how close his conduits of magma would have to be. Then he would have to show geological evidence that conduits of basalt (solidified volcanic magma) presently exist within that distance of the borehole.
Next, Henke would have to show that the concentration (atoms or nanomoles per cc) of helium in the magmatic fluids could have been high enough to do the job. Our 15 ncc/µg value for Q0 in the zircons means there were at least 3140 nanomoles of helium per cubic centimeter in the zircons originally. (Henke’s value of “41” ncc/µg in item 6 above would require even more helium, 8590 nmol/cc.) The concentration in the assumed fluids would have to exceed that value in order to transfer helium from the fluid into the zircons. Yet the concentration of helium produced by uranium decay in typical basalt[12] (and hence in basaltic magmatic fluids) would be less than 80 nmol/cc, more than forty times too small. No transfer would take place. So Henke’s scenario requires extraordinary amounts of helium in his magmatic fluids.
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that the helium somehow gets into the zircons. Now it has to stay there. The magmatic fluids would raise the temperature of the zircons considerably higher than their present temperature, and temperatures would remain high for dozens of millennia. As I showed in ICC 2003, section 7, the zircons would then lose essentially all their helium—contrary to what we observe. Moreover, most of the helium outside the zircons has to disappear somehow, so that the biotite concentration would drop to its present low level, hundreds of times less than the concentrations in the zircons.
Henke’s scenario is pure conjecture. It depends on unknown factors to produce improbable coincidences. Even though this is his best shot (that’s why I’ve spent some time on it), it falls far short of credibility.
I should mention that the mistake about Helium being larger than Hydrogen was my mistake, not Humphreys. I was thinking about the nuclear diamter, which of course is N/A for what we are talking about.
As far as I can tell, conventional geologists have overlooked a huge piece of evidence with Helium in Zircons which directly contradicts their long age scenarios. This is a perfect example of being so blinded by belief, that you overlook the elephant in the living room.
Humphreys is not handwaving, JonF ... he's worked this stuff out if you would actually take the time to read what he has written.
OA...
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Tell us how the RATE group explains C14 dating results that fall in the range 58,000 YBP to the present.
Simple. By conventional interpretations of C-14 content, which ICR believes is based upon incorrect assumptions, namely the ratio of atmospheric C-14 to C-12 prior to the Flood.
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Show us the data that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. Or were you lying once again?
Short answer- the fossil record has massive quantitites of fossilized organic material: coal, oil and chalk beds to name just 3. This is evidence that there was far more organic matter prior to the Flood of Noah--ICR estimates 100X the present amount of organic matter. If this was the case, the C-14/C-12 ratio would be much lower, resulting in much younger actual dates when using the C-14 dating method today.
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Deal with your failure to address all that evidence you were given that human culture and artifacts exist that date back over 40,000 years.
No failure. See above. We will go over this in greater detail shortly.
Faid...
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all you have is a dated quote from a school encyclopedia that could have been edited or addended a dozen times by now.
You are taking a shot at World Book. Who do you think writes articles like that? Some office guy at Berkshire Hathaway? (World Book's parent) No. They find experts in the particular field. The 'Evolution' article I quoted from World Book a while back was written by an Oxford professor. Oh .. by the way ... the article says the same thing in the 2006 version. No change.
Faid...
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Quoting yourself as evidence? As what, authority? You're a blast, davey boy. How 'bout quoting the actual paragraph from EB instead, though, so we can see if it says anything to your defense?
I DID quote an actual line from EB. Wanna see it again? "standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon." And I gave you the reference.
JonF...
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I see you've given up on trying to claim that you know the temperature history of those zircons well enough to assess the temperature-dependent diffusion effects.
No. I haven't given up anything. Harrison and Sasada gave us their idea of the history--better than my guesses, and I can see that it gives you ZERO help--it's a mere 26 degrees!!. I see you totally dodged my extrapolation of the Diffusion/Temp chart. Why? Because you know there is no possible way that the temps could have been cold enough to help the "Long Age Scenario."
JonF...
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My money says otherwise. We'll see what happens. Until then, all you've goit is the possibility of one anomaly. Far from enough to question the age of the Earth.
Yeah. Pretty interesting 'anomaly.' Newton and Einstein had their respective 'anomalies' too, remember? So did Galileo and Copernicus. Hmmm ... It's also interesting that suddenly Yale and other universities are interested in 'the exciting new possibilities of Helium dating.'
JonF...
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Let's see it in print. I don't trust Humphreys or you as far as I could throw the both of you, and with good reason.
Then let's see the specifics of those tests, in detail; irrelevant though they are they are, it might be amusing to figure out how they cheated.
Go get the RATE books and you will see all the details. Then if you still have a problem, let me know. I will be making this a project of mine ... studying the age discordance question. All I have is the Woodmorappe data as well, but it may be interesting what I find when I take the time to look elsewhere.
JonF...
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Let's see the RATE group's asessment of what was available before 2001, and details on why they decided most of it was not relevant.
You keep asking for all this stuff. Spend the $130 and get the books. Then you too can be on the cutting edge of science!
JonF...
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The RATE findings show that if the carbon is derived solely or essentially solely from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when the coal/diamond formed then they are circa 58K years old. The unstated and unjustified assumption is the part in italics above. We don't know exactly why those items show measurable C14/C12 ratios. We do know that C14 can be produced in coal by particles given off by uranium decay, and the level of C14 in coal correlates well with the amount of uranium in the area. Real scientists are working on it. "It's magic" is awfully low on the list of hypotheses that are being tested.
Again, YECs don't say 'it's magic.' They just recognize that there is an Intelligent Designer that may have the ability to interact with His designs, just as a gardener would interact at times with his garden, but for the most part, lets nature take it's course. You are too myopic to allow for this possibility, which in turn limits and sometimes stifles your scientific inquiry.
Rilke...
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The reason Faid make his comment is that you lied about the source of the quote Dave.
Yes. I'm such a liar. I know Rilke ... you've mentioned that. And your ancestor is pond scum. You really think it is, don't you!
Incorygible...
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oligoasthenoteratozoospermia
Now there's a cool word!
Incorygible...
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Chromosomal misallignment (of which fusion is only one possibility) occurs all the time during meiosis (gamete (sperm/egg) production). Consider it a cost of doing business. Is it harmful? etc. etc. ...........
Faid ... notice how Incorygible goes to the trouble of actually explaining things in his own words, rather than sending me off to 5 different links. Take notes from him ... he is good. (not just being a smart aleck here)
So, (now that I have a very detailed answer on the subject from someone who appears to be knowledgable) I guess we could say that chromosome fusion events could be considered to be a sort of mistake? Sort of like the deletions and substitutions of nucleotides we explored a while back? And like those, these are usually not harmful (at least that we know of), but sometimes they are? Like Downs Syndrome?
Is this an accurate summary?
OA...
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However, we will take you to task if you screw up the technical stuff.
Actually, a few of your more sciency buddies here at ATBC have attempted to take me to task while you have assumed the role of TROLL with absolutely nothing to contribute scientifically. That seems to be changing though for whatever reason. I have noted your good science questions about C-14 and will answer them in short order.
Eric...
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Are you incapable of understanding the distinction between "most chromosomal fusions are harmful" and "all chromosomal fusions are harmful"?
Oh no. I understand the difference, but think, Eric. This distinction does not matter. If "most" or "all" is the actual situation, then I have a case for questioning the "ape chromosome fused to become human chromosome" theory. If not, I still do, but not on this basis. Incorygible gave some good info on this which I am exploring. You, on the other hand, used to sound intelligent, but now your posts are getting emptier and emptier (like this one). What's wrong?
NEWS ITEMS
Arden gets honored over at Uncommon Descent ...
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Wesley Elsberry is such a dreamer… Over at antievolution.org Wesley Elsberry tries to write an obituary for ID. Arden Chatfield faithfully rewords and repeats his master’s hallucination in the next comment. The kicker is a cat named GCT who asks if anyone has heard from Behe or Gonzalez lately?
No, I haven’t really heard from Behe or Gonzalez lately but maybe I missed Behe and Gonzalez because I was preoccupied in hearing ID recently supported by the President of the United States, the Governor of Texas, and the Governor of Florida as well as some U.S. Senators and other state governors.
What Wesley and his motley crew just don’t get is that the science argument in ID vs. NDE is over. ID may or may not be mathematically provable but it is intuitively obvious to any objective student of intracellular molecular machinery. Furthermore, to the same objective student, the initial assembly of said molecular machinery being assigned to random interaction of primitive chemical precursors doesn’t even pass the giggle test. ID is a given to anyone without a subjective commitment to a ludicrous contrary narrative.
As I’ve said many times before, there is only one prop still holding up the NDE narrative and that is the establishment clause of the 1st amendment. It’s all political at this point and unfortunately for Wesley and his ilk he must convince a majority of voters that it’s his way or the highway. He’s failed utterly at that task and now we simply wait for the purposely slow moving wheels of the federal judiciary to move with the will of the people. Federal jurists have tenure so it’s a long process replacing those that have become unpalatable but a determined public will eventually have its way.
ID is alive and well and coming soon to a high school near you! You can take that to the bank.
and this applies to Creationists as well as ID people ...
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LESSON TO ALL ID RESEARCHERS: To get an ID paper published, explicitly deny that it is an ID paper. In fact, you might want to go one further and suggest that it actually disproves ID (the latter maneuver should hasten acceptance of the paper). Always keep in mind the example of Al Capone. Feds: “Are you the head of organized crime in Chicago?” Capone: “Who, me? All I’m trying to do is help people have a good time.” And don’t forget Bill and Monica — “There IS no relationship.” (Oh, how fraught with ambiguity is the verb to be.)
Argy, the question you asked about the immune system is a hard one. Here's the best I could come up with so far ...
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Immune systems basically distinguish ‘self’ from ‘non-self,’ which would be important for maintaining bodily integrity even in the pre-Fall world. Of course such systems became even more important in the post-Fall world, to protect against such disease-causing organisms. http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/bad_things.asp
****************************************
And tomorrow (or later today) ... C-14 IN COAL AND DIAMONDS ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Are you incapable of understanding the distinction between "most chromosomal fusions are harmful" and "all chromosomal fusions are harmful"?
Oh no. I understand the difference, but think, Eric. This distinction does not matter. If "most" or "all" is the actual situation, then I have a case for questioning the "ape chromosome fused to become human chromosome" theory. If not, I still do, but not on this basis. Incorygible gave some good info on this which I am exploring. You, on the other hand, used to sound intelligent, but now your posts are getting emptier and emptier (like this one). What's wrong?
Dave, your argument fails completely if not all fusion events are harmful. If you understand the distinction, but don't see its effect on your argument, then you don't understand your own argument.
And this statement:
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If "most" or "all" is the actual situation, then I have a case for questioning the "ape chromosome fused to become human chromosome" theory. If not, I still do, but not on this basis.
leads me to believe you still don't understand the distinction. "Most" and "all" are the two things to be distinguished. Semantically you are clearly making a distinction between "most" (or "all") and "not most" (or "not all"), and that's not the distinction that's important.
It's a central tenet of evolutionary theory that all but a tiny fraction of all mutations are harmful (you do understand that fusions are mutations, don't you?). The expected number of beneficial mutations matches the observed rate of evolution (you have noticed that evolution is an extremely slow process, haven't you?).
So if "most" fusion events are harmful, but any fraction at all are not, your case for questioning the "ape chromosome fused to become human chromosome" theory absolutely falls apart! The only reason you've ever given for doubting the chromosomal fusion theory, aside from your evident belief (before I explained otherwise) that all chromosomal fusions are harmful, is personal incredulity.
You can explore all you want, Dave, but the evidence is airtight.
My posts are the same as they've always been, Dave, while yours get emptier and emptier. I already know what's wrong with your posts—you're getting backed over the edge of the cliff.
So are you going to address my criticisms of your "Special Theory provides evidence that God can exist outside of time and space" argument; admit you were wrong; or quietly abandon the argument and hope no one notices? It has to be one of the three.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Immune systems basically distinguish ‘self’ from ‘non-self,’ which would be important for maintaining bodily integrity even in the pre-Fall world. Of course such systems became even more important in the post-Fall world, to protect against such disease-causing organisms.
Maintaining bodily integrity? In a perfect world? What does that even mean? I'll tell you. It means that Don Batten (editor), Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland are delightfully stupid.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
So are you going to address my criticisms of your "Special Theory provides evidence that God can exist outside of time and space" argument; admit you were wrong; or quietly abandon the argument and hope no one notices? It has to be one of the three.
I gave up asking him. He has no understanding of relativity, and no argument for how it's evidence for god. I'm through with people who claim to have models and arguments, but don't.
Why are you arguing on subjects way out of your range when you are the worlds foremost expert on the Portuguese language?
Surely to be so authoritative and scholarly in fields other than Portuguese would require a whole lifetime of study.
And since your lifetimes work HAS made you the worlds greatest Portuguese-ist don't you think that claiming to be something other than the worlds greatest Portuguese-ist is a case of severe HUBRIS not to mention MALPRACTICE and incompetence?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
...only hope for long agers is that maybe somehow some helium was transported to the zircons through some mechanism. This was explored very thoroughly by Humphreys and it is extremely doubtful that this could have occurred.
The Nation Helium Reserve stores over a billion cubic feet of helium in a natural geologic gas storage formation. Now, keep in mind that on Earth, helium is primarily a product of radioactive decay and is found in significant amounts only in natural gas.
That showed up when I googled "Fenton Hill, natural gas."
Now, Dave, keep in mind how much helium we've already stored. Given 6,000 to 10,000 years, Dave, how much radioactive decay of how many tons of radioactive heavy elements would have been needed to produce just that much helium, a billion cubic feet of it, in the time YEC allows? Now, keep in mind that Uranium-238, one of the more common elements we can dig up, decays through a chain of transformations, ultimately producing lead-206 and eight helium atoms.
The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years, a gram of U-238 would produce so few decays per year that it would take how many tons of it to produce a billion cubic feet of helium?
I leave the calculations to you, Dave. How much radioactive stuff has to be in our Earth to get that helium in a YEC time frame?
I'm through with people who claim to have models and arguments, but don't.
I have a good model, plenty of arguments and I have given plenty of good evidence. Maybe you don't understand the significance of the RATE Project ... and thus have no comment?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The interesting part to me is that AFDave selectively, deliberately culls out the smallest bit of a response to then twist and claim victory. Fenton Hill is geothermically active. Sasada notes evidence of HYDROthermic activity in the Fenton Hill area. The heat source for Fenton Hill is the Valle Caldera. The heat from the Valle Caldera comes from far below the Fenton Hill sample depths, travels up along fractures and faults to...Fenton Hill
Humphreys throws up a red herring, claiming that any researcher would have to find basalt conduits. Wrong. Helium transport doesn't even need fluids. Outgassing of helium is common near volcanic plumes. Excess helium is present in Valles Caldera (Goff and Gardner 1994) due to this. Outgassing can be massively episodic.
At a depth of 1,479 meters, pressures and heat are minor in comparison to the outgassing depths that helium emerges from. Thus,Pressure is not a problem.
Humphreys stupid claim that helium wouldn't be able to move through the rock layers is also negated, if nothing else by the large amount of fracturing and faulting in the area as well as Sesada's discovery of hydrothermic vents. Further, his claims on the permeability of the material are false. His partner Baumgardner admitted that the "granidiorite" sample core was interlaced with ...VEINS OF GNEISS. http://www.icr.org/pdf/rate/humphreys_to_hanke.pdf
Granodiorite is not encountered in the cores until depths of 2591 meters (Laney et al., 1981 ; Laughlin et al., 1983 ; Burruss and Hollister, 1979 ; Sasada, 1989) Laughlin specifically notes that the cores of that 1500 meter depth are GNEISS . Of course, Humphreys never tested IF it was granidiorite. Why? because ***they NEEDED to claim that it was more impermeable** than it would be as the GNEISS that it IS.
The evidence for large amounts of helium from volcanic areas is very old. Humpheys knew this, Humpheys selected zircon/Helium because it is clear that in any given volcanic area of sufficient complexity, you are going to find areas in that geology that have experienced differential heating/pressures/exposure to gasses and fluids
Humphreys knew from his creationist buddy Gentry that large amounts of Helium were found in the zircons. Humphreys tested the zircons, but deliberately avoided looking at He3/He4 ratios that would have eliminated NON-radiogenic Helium as a source. WHY, AFDave? It has long been known that by looking at helium isotopes, you can determine this. Humphreys knew this.....SO WHY DIDN'T HE TEST FOR IT? It's a simple procedure, you know. It wouldn't even take 2 days to find out.
But how can the specific samples that Humphreys cites...be tested if Humphreys won't release them?
Furthermore, as Henke notes...He won't even submit his work to genuine peer review, which would require that he turn over said labwork, materials and notes.
The "mission" was accomplished here, AFarceDave...He hooked you like a stupid catfish on a mouthful of chicken guts.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Think about this, AFarceDave...use what little brain you possess....Imagine that you're Humphreys and you want to PROVE that your samples are not from external Helium sources.
All you would have to do ....is have some zircons from the samples you have....tested for He3/He4 ratios. It wouldn't even cost much at all. Any good isotopic lab could do it. This stuff has been known about since 1934, DaveTard....BUT HUMPHREYS WON'T DO THIS?!?!?!?!?! You're a freakin' idiot, DaveTard
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm through with people who claim to have models and arguments, but don't.
I have a good model, plenty of arguments and I have given plenty of good evidence. Maybe you don't understand the significance of the RATE Project ... and thus have no comment?
OK. Maybe you are onto something here. How would testing for He3/He4 ratios prove that the He is not from external sources? How do you know they did not test for this? Do you have the RATE Reports?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Faid ... notice how Incorygible goes to the trouble of actually explaining things in his own words, rather than sending me off to 5 different links. Take notes from him ... he is good. (not just being a smart aleck here)
Er...I do know this stuff, and I didn't ask any questions about it, but I read Faid's links as a courtesy to following Faid's discussion with you. Why didn't you read them, as opposed to repeatedly asking an answered question? Everything I said (and much more) could be read at those earlier links in a matter of minutes, and doing so is the least you can do in courteous, honest, civil discourse, Dave.
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So, (now that I have a very detailed answer on the subject from someone who appears to be knowledgable) I guess we could say that chromosome fusion events could be considered to be a sort of mistake? Sort of like the deletions and substitutions of nucleotides we explored a while back? And like those, these are usually not harmful (at least that we know of), but sometimes they are? Like Downs Syndrome?
Is this an accurate summary?
To anyone else, I would likely reply, yes, that is a mostly accurate summary. However, with you, Dave, I anticipate tiresome semantic games with the word "mistake". I hope I'm wrong, but just so we're on the same page:
Yes, they are sort of "mistakes", if by mistake you mean a difference between the 'original' and the 'copy'. However, if you want to heap on the negative connotations inherent in the word "mistake", you will have to be very specific about the context. To be sure, large differences between original and copy (e.g., large deletions, most fusions, frameshifts, etc.) are usually mistakes in almost any sense of the word (less perhaps the awareness and control the word implies). These tend to result in a highly incomplete or erroneous genetic complement, which not surprisingly has high potential to be completely unviable (i.e., the cell receiving that complement 'dies' quick). However, some fusions (e.g., those involving the acrocentric chromosomes invovled in RobTs), most substitutions (especially if we're talking single-base), small deletions (if not frameshifting), and plenty of other mismatches between the original and the copy, while 'mistakes' by the first definition, do not match the second (i.e., they're more like 'typos'. This isn't black-and-white; it's a continuum. At one end we have, say, a single base-pair substitution that changes absoultely nothing in the gene-product; the only way to identify this 'mistake' is to sequence the genome and check the As, Ts, Cs and Gs. Otherwise, it's completely innocuous. At the other end of the spectrum we have, say, large deletions, unballanced translocations, monosymy (where an individual only receives one copy of a chromosome), etc., which leave a cell unable to perfrom one or more vital functions (making and maintaing a cell membrane, converting food to energy, etc.). Such cells become goo almost as soon as they are made, and the 'mistake' disappears. Everything else is somewhere in between. And while a great deal of newly-minted cells get to experience that ugly right side of the spectrum (maybe even the majority of would-be cells?), if you're still around to ask about it, the thousands and thousands of 'mistakes' in your DNA are closer to the left end of this gradient. Thus, 'mistakes' like the fusion of chromosome 2, deletion in GULO, and RobTs are normally quite viable, which is why we can observe them. Things like Down Syndrome (which can result from a translocation, but is much more commonly caused by trisomy 21, where an individual receives three fully functioning copies of chromosome 21 and this causes problems) are in that uncomfortable middle ground, where the result is viable at the cellular level, but causes a lot of grief at the organismal level.
There is a lot of gray area for differences between the original and the copy. Where do you put slightly more abnormal sperm? It would depend upon how much trouble you're having conceiving, I guess, and the myriad other genetic and environmental factors affecting your fertility. A requirement for Vitamin C in your diet? It would depend on whether you have a glass of OJ every morning or are stuck at sea before the cause of scurvy was disovered. Fused chromosome 2? No bloody idea (perhaps this was an early homonid RobT that was preserved).
And never forget, once in a while (not often, but sometimes), the 'mistake' in the copy is even better than the original. Welcome to biology -- it's compicated, messy, and very fun. When it comes to 'mistakes', we've all got 'em, and some are worse (and once in a while better) than others.
EDIT: In light of Dave's discussion with ericmurphy, I will point out that he is at least thinking logically when it comes to chromosome 2. If chromosome fusion was similar to a current RobT, and it did reduce fertility (as is sometimes the case), we might expect it to be less likely to persist in the human lineage than the unfused pair. But Dave, less likely is not unlikely, and there are plenty of things that could easily account for this. First, it could have been a completely benign fusion (not uncommon in RobTs). Second, the individual who received it might have inbred, and individuals with RobTs have HIGHER fertility when mating with others having the same RobTs. Third, it could be a result of drift, founder effects, and other small population effects (i.e., the effect was negative, but the original unfused version disappeared while the fused version remained due to environmental chance). Fourth, it could have been caused by some other change in the DNA that made it more likely to happen (look at Down Syndrome for factors that make trisomy 21 more likely, for example). Fifth, while unlikely, it could have actually been beneficial in some other way. That's off the top of my head.
DaveTard...you won't find anything in Humphreys crap...so let me quote what Henke wrote :
"Instead of proposing superfluous field work, Dr. Humphreys should have listened to the advice in my original essay and simply analyzed his zircons for 3He and surrounding low-uranium quartz grains for 4He. These analyses could quickly determine whether his samples contain extraneous helium." http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Because I did. In my discussion above, I used the terms 'original' and 'copy', but I forgot that even a normal intuitive reading, to say nothing of your...er...perspective, would naturally lead you to believe that the original was superior to the copy, even when discussing mistakes that are nothing more than small typos. Please keep in mind that the 'originals' in this case have plenty of typos themselves -- enough to overwhelm the significance of new typos. What's more, a typo on top of a typo can restore meaning to the word. Keep that in mind.
I'm already stepping on someone's grad work, DaveTard,so I'm not going to spoon-feed you any details on data you could have gathered through an actual reading of Henke without your special creationist cognitive filters on.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm through with people who claim to have models and arguments, but don't.
I have a good model, plenty of arguments and I have given plenty of good evidence. Maybe you don't understand the significance of the RATE Project ... and thus have no comment?
Dave, you have no coherent model, lots and lots of arguments, and you have given no evidence whatsoever.
No matter how many times you continue this logical fallacy of argument ad nauseum you will still be wrong.
You were completely wrong about the Portuguese thing.
You were completely wrong about the relativity thing.
You are completely wrong about the RATE thing.
And you're so embarrassingly wrong that you win top spot in a poll of dumbest creobot.
We don't help you, Dave. We just laugh at you. We laugh at your lies; your cowardness; your inability to reason; your mindless, unimaginative almost anti-Christian attitudes.
The only thing we don't laugh at is your child abuse.
I think a key part of the problem with holding any attempt at a dicussion with Dave here is that he does not understand what 'evidence' is. Certainly he doesn't understand even the concept of scientific evidence.
Hence his inability to provide evidence for the Portuguese claim; his inability to provide evidence for the relativity claim; his inability to provide evidence for the RATE claim, the GULO claim; the fusion events; etc.
Because he doesn't even know what evidence looks like, of course he can't produce a coherent argument.
Do you suppose he can be educated on this point? I've seen no sign that he is capable of learning or understanding pretty much anything, but I put it out to the various lurkers as a question:
Should we take pity on poor Dave's foundering around cluelessness and educate him on what evidence actually is and how one uses it to construct a coherent argument?
Or should we just wait for more Portuguese Moments?
Rilke's : I don't know if AirHead can be educated. What I do know is that on this subject, I've been nice in comparison to my old mentor on geology/paleo. HE would have read Dave's "reports and claims" and
1. Pointed out the errors and fraudulent behavior. 2. Laughed in AirHead's face and beaten him about the head and shoulders with said reports 3. Kicked Airhead in the ass as he launched him out the door on another flight to points unknown
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 09 2006,13:13)
I think a key part of the problem with holding any attempt at a dicussion with Dave here is that he does not understand what 'evidence' is. Certainly he doesn't understand even the concept of scientific evidence.
That's because afdave isn't from our universe, he's from Bizarro World:
As you can see, people there are obviously made of zircon crystals infused with lots of helium and they speak a Portuguese that sounds like Spanish and French combined.
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I've seen no sign that he is capable of learning or understanding pretty much anything,...
You'd have a better chance teaching your dog about quantum mechanics.
How would testing for He3/He4 ratios prove that the He is not from external sources? How do you know they did not test for this? Do you have the RATE Reports?
Soooo...?
Do you have an answer?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Humphreys (2005) thinks that he can just read through my abstract, throw out some insults, try to trivialize his serious mistakes, invoke a few more groundless fantasies, make a couple of corrections here and there, ignore the details, promise great things in the future, repeatedly rely on his deceptive Figure 2, and then hope that his readers will just go away on faith.
promise great things in the future? Ghost of Paley, is your last name Humphreys?
You know, reading through Henke's conclusions, Humphreys is right. His readers will just go on believing him, despite his arguments having been shot in the face. They're fundies. Believing things scientists tell you are wrong is their core competency.
: Dear AFarceDaveTard2: Go do your own research on He3/He4 ratios and what they mean, AirHead. I am not spoonfeeding you or answering your questions until you deal with the ones I asked weeks ago.
I also note that both Jon and eric mentioned He isotope ratios a week ago, Dumbass.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Yesterday we saw that JonF had no answer to my question about the temperature history of the Fenton Hill zircons.
The only question you asked was "Surely you are not suggesting it was cooler than this?" Correct, I did not answer that question, I assumed it was rhetorical. Pretty small nit to pick, Dave -- obviously you're running out of steam.
It may have been cooler than that, but probably not much cooler. Here's a question for you , Dave; how long was it that cool? How long matters, Dave, it matters.
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He is trying to use Harrison and Sasada's temperature chart as a weapon against Humphreys, but it is actually a weapon against him!! Before I looked at their temp history graph, I assumed they were talking about significant temp differences. It turns out, they are talking about a mere 26 degrees!! Humphreys' error ranges easily cover this already. This is not anywhere close to what long agers need to support their model.
Let's see the calculations, Dave. Since you still haven't caught on, the point is that we don't know the duration of the temperature variations, and nobody can assess the importance of those temperature variations without that data.
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Henke's "vacuum testing" objection is DOA because Farley and other experts in zircon testing use vacuum all the time. Why? Because they know it does not matter with zircons.
Says you and Humphreys. Both proven liars. I notice that you haven't been able to supply a reference for your claim. See below.
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So the only hope for long agers is that maybe somehow some helium was transported to the zircons through some mechanism. This was explored very thoroughly by Humphreys and it is extremely doubtful that this could have occurred.
Even if it is extremely doubtful (which is far from being established by Humphreys' hand-waving), it's still far more likely than your explanation -- magic.
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Here is Humphreys' rebuttal again ...
We'se seen it, and read it, and assessed it, and dismissed it. No matter how many times you post it, it's still just hand-waving.
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Show us the data that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. Or were you lying once again?
Short answer- the fossil record has massive quantities of fossilized organic material: coal, oil and chalk beds to name just 3. This is evidence that there was far more organic matter prior to the Flood of Noah--ICR estimates 100X the present amount of organic matter. If this was the case, the C-14/C-12 ratio would be much lower, resulting in much younger actual dates when using the C-14 dating method today.
Wrong answer, Davey-pie. The amount of organic matter on Earth does not affect the C14/C12 ratio.
Of course, if there was 100x more organic matter on the Earth at any time than there is now, it would have been be piled several feet high. And, of course, the vast amount of fossilizzed organic material is not evidence for your "thesis" until you manage to figure out some way of dating that organic matter that agrees with your fantasies.
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I see you've given up on trying to claim that you know the temperature history of those zircons well enough to assess the temperature-dependent diffusion effects.
No. I haven't given up anything. Harrison and Sasada gave us their idea of the history--better than my guesses, and I can see that it gives you ZERO help--it's a mere 26 degrees!!. I see you totally dodged my extrapolation of the Diffusion/Temp chart. Why?
I didn't dodge anything, your guess was irrelevant, and I stated so and why. You need to integrate diffusivity as a function of temperature over time, and since you don't know the variation of temperature with time you can't do the integration.
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My money says otherwise. We'll see what happens. Until then, all you've got is the possibility of one anomaly. Far from enough to question the age of the Earth.
Yeah. Pretty interesting 'anomaly.' Newton and Einstein had their respective 'anomalies' too, remember? So did Galileo and Copernicus. Hmmm ... It's also interesting that suddenly Yale and other universities are interested in 'the exciting new possibilities of Helium dating.
Get back to us when and if you actually have enough results and data and justification to be interesting. Blondlot had a pretty interesting anomaly, too; the fact that some sciences grew out of interesting anomalies does not meant that all interesting anomalies are the foundation of new science. Most interesting anomalies are errors.
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Let's see it in print. I don't trust Humphreys or you as far as I could throw the both of you, and with good reason.
No relevant book at that URL. I presume you mean "Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth". It should be obvious that I'm not interested in what Humphreys claims about helium diffusion in zircons under pressure, I'm interested in publicataions by those who have done such measurements. If Humphreys refers to such measurements in his book, you post the references. Until then we will assume they do not exist.
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Then let's see the specifics of those tests, in detail; irrelevant though they are they are, it might be amusing to figure out how they cheated.
Go get the RATE books and you will see all the details. Then if you still have a problem, let me know. I will be making this a project of mine ... studying the age discordance question. All I have is the Woodmorappe data as well, but it may be interesting what I find when I take the time to look elsewhere.
It's not necessary to keep repeating that you have no basis for your claim that "they are generally VERY discordant". We knew when you first posted it that it was a lie.
Get back to us when and if you actually have enough results and data and justification to be interesting.
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The RATE findings show that if the carbon is derived solely or essentially solely from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when the coal/diamond formed then they are circa 58K years old. The unstated and unjustified assumption is the part in italics above. We don't know exactly why those items show measurable C14/C12 ratios. We do know that C14 can be produced in coal by particles given off by uranium decay, and the level of C14 in coal correlates well with the amount of uranium in the area. Real scientists are working on it. "It's magic" is awfully low on the list of hypotheses that are being tested.
Again, YECs don't say 'it's magic.' They just recognize that there is an Intelligent Designer that may have the ability to interact with His designs, just as a gardener would interact at times with his garden, but for the most part, lets nature take it's course. You are too myopic to allow for this possibility, which in turn limits and sometimes stifles your scientific inquiry.
I see you ignored the substance of my comment. But yours just boils down to "We don't say it's magic, we just say it's magic". Most scientific of you.
So basically Deadman has no idea how the 3He/4He ratio would rule out extraneous Helium, he was just parroting what Henke said.
That's what I thought.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh, and as to the question about whether I have the "RATE" reports..which ones? I have everything that is available from ICR except their books, which I am not going to give them money for. They have no published data on He ratios
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So basically Deadman has no idea how the 3He/4He ratio would rule out extraneous Helium, he was just parroting what Henke said.
That's what I thought.
Okay, Dave, I didn't want to have to spoon-feed your lazy ass. You have a computer. You have a world-class library near you. You just don't have the brains or balls to figure out how to use either?
I'll tell you what, AirHead...you said I was merely parroting Henke and didn't know about this. Yet I DO know about this and you don't. Now ...answer MY questions and I will answer yours
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Again, YECs don't say 'it's magic.' They just recognize that there is an Intelligent Designer that may have the ability to interact with His designs, ...
By what non-magical method does your designer create his designs? By what non-miraculous method did your designer construct a universe with light already on its way from galaxies a billion light years away? (Are there really galaxies there, or just the light coming from them?) By what non-magic method did your designer construct a planet Earth with tectonic plates and artic ice that seems to be billions of years old but isn't? By what non-miraculous method did your designer construct all this?
When we say Humphreys talks about magic, he's literally quoted doing so here:
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Humphreys (1990) makes up some stories about God interacting with water molecules and invokes some cursory and inaccurate claims about the inadequacy of modern models of magnetic dynamos. Dr. Humphreys then expects his readers to accept his claims that modern scientific models should be replaced with his magical fantasies. Unlike Dr. Humphreys' aquatic alchemy, Van Allen and Bagenal (1999) present far more coherent and realistic views of what is known and unknown about planetary magnetic fields. Chapter 2 in Faure (1998) and Delsemme (1998) further demonstrate that the distribution of elements in the Universe (including the Oddo-Harkins rule and H/He ratios) is consistent with the Big Bang and nuclear fusion reactions in stars. That is, nuclear fusion reactions in stars, and not Dr. Humphreys' aquatic myths, explain why oxygen-16 is more abundant in nature than oxygen-17 or oxygen-18.
Besides failing to properly distinguish between a scientific hypothesis and a theory, Humphreys (1990) frequently props his "science" on top of groundless and unproven miracles. For example, he states:
"By the same laws, the currents and fields would preserve themselves with only minor losses, as God rapidly transformed the water into other materials."
In the same sentence, Humphreys (1990) talks about two contradictory concepts: natural laws and supernatural intervention. Dr. Humphreys is stuck in the old Gosse Hypothesis trap. How can Dr. Humphreys' "science" ever distinguish between what is a product of nature and what is supposedly supernatural?
Physicist Tim Thompson concisely demonstrates that Dr. Humphreys' aquatic alchemy and its "predictions" amount to nothing. He shows that Dr. Humphreys' equations and variables are so plastic that they could be used to support any planetary magnetic field hypothesis.
So basically Deadman has no idea how the 3He/4He ratio would rule out extraneous Helium, he was just parroting what Henke said.
That's what I thought.
Nope, Deadman and I understand exactly what Henke meant, and what both his proposed tests would reveal. He's just looking for you to respond to his questions before responding to yours. I won't step on his toes, but here's another hint for you, Davetard: "primordial helium".
So basically Deadman has no idea how the 3He/4He ratio would rule out extraneous Helium, he was just parroting what Henke said.
That's what I thought.
You have five kids. Do you do their homework for them? Or do you make them do it themselves because they learn better that way?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Or do you make them do it themselves because they learn better that way?
I'm happy to go search it out. But it was Deadman who brought up the issue, not me. Silly me ... I thought he was going to present some new great insight that he had. All he did was spout stuff from Henke I had already read.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Or do you make them do it themselves because they learn better that way?
I'm happy to go search it out. But it was Deadman who brought up the issue, not me. Silly me ... I thought he was going to present some new great insight that he had. All he did was spout stuff from Henke I had already read.
Ah, it's 2nd Lt. "Portuguese Washout" Dave being lazy yet again. We've also read the stuff from Henke.
And you are, again, wrong.
Like you were about the Portuguese thing.
Like you were about the relativity thing.
Like you were about the fusion thing.
Like you were about the "Dave doesn't lie" thing.
Doesn't it bother you to be wrong all the time? Is THAT why they washed you out of the air force? Sheer incompetence?
So basically Deadman has no idea how the 3He/4He ratio would rule out extraneous Helium, he was just parroting what Henke said.
That's what I thought.
Nope, Deadman and I understand exactly what Henke meant, and what both his proposed tests would reveal. He's just looking for you to respond to his questions before responding to yours. I won't step on his toes, but here's another hint for you, Davetard: "primordial helium".
Primordial helium?
Hmmm, how primodial? From the big bang? Fused from the first stars?
Why is primordial helium relevant? Isn't almost all the helium we're going to encounter on Earth going to be a product of radioactive decay?
Helium on/in Earth is mostly helium-4 and there's only a tiny amount of helium-3, while extraterrestrial helium - the primodrial helium - is mostly helium-3, a product of fussion not fission.
How does primordial helium get into a zircon?
When Earth was forming the primordial helium wouldn't have settled anywhere where it wouldn't get blown away by the stellar wind. It would have laid on the top of the atmosphere and gotten pushed off into the solar wind as other gases filled the limit of a gas shell our planet can keep. Why would there be any primordial helium at all on Earth?
Did I just give afdave a bigger clue than you wanted to give him?
Or do you make them do it themselves because they learn better that way?
I'm happy to go search it out. But it was Deadman who brought up the issue, not me. Silly me ... I thought he was going to present some new great insight that he had. All he did was spout stuff from Henke I had already read.
The point, Dave, is that you don't get to lecture us about the meaning of He results until you actually understand the results.
You've shown quite clearly that you don't grasp the significance of isotope ratios, which shows you don't understand what you're talking about.
Nobody needs to provide a "great new insight" here. There's a MASSIVELY OBVIOUS problem which you don't grasp, but anyone competent does.
Nobody needs to provide a "great new insight" here. There's a MASSIVELY OBVIOUS problem which you don't grasp, but anyone competent does.
Great. Don't provide any great new insights and "NDE + Long Ages" will die all the sooner. As I have said several times, that makes my job easier. You guys often forget why I am here. Silly me ... I thought the NCSE and it's supporters here at ATBC had an interest in "stopping bad science."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The tragic part is that he likely..more than likely.. uses those same childish "I'm an authority" tactics on his kids. The good thing is that if he has five of them, the odds are one or more of them are going to see through this bluff pretty ####in' quick and realize he's just full of crap.
If you had been a consistently honest participant, DaveTard2, I would have cited the relevant work immediately. It's available all over the place, including in places within the very works you were supposed to have already "read." But you're lazy , so you want me to tell you and to get me to do that, you resort to this fake-ass little tactic of " well you don't really know"...hoping to psych me into giving you what you want, like a little kid. Norm basically gave you the answer, and I bet money you're STILL lost, you simpleton.
I told you long ago, I am not going to spoon-feed you information so that you can barf it up like a puking child. You start answering direct questions put to you by people and you get treated with civility. You refuse and ...well, you can go sit in the corner with your finger up your ass, same as you always have. Let me quote what I posted to your fat-headed little ego yesterday, AIR FORCE ("Don't I look good on my Blog pic, ladies?") DAVE
Quote
DaveTard. You had been given multiple examples of your lies. You selected out the Portuguese one because you thought you could bluff your way through it and because it was YOURS, as Rilke pointed out. Ego, Dave. The kind of ego that leads you to crow about your ability to fly a plane, the ego that led to you actually comparing yourself to Newton and Maxwell, the same ego that leads you to believe that you cannot be wrong.
You're not dealing with gullible kids that you can B-S...or your local yokel Churchgoers that you can try to hoodwink with crappy creationist claims. Nor does anyone show any amazment or awe at your accomplishments in your life. Maybe you know that and that's what drives you...I don't care, anyway.
What I care about is the quality of the data, the ability of evidence to support claims and the willingness of the individual to engage in honest debate. You lack what I care about, DaveTard, so you get spanked for pretending that you do possess these things.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
all you have is a dated quote from a school encyclopedia that could have been edited or addended a dozen times by now.
You are taking a shot at World Book. Who do you think writes articles like that? Some office guy at Berkshire Hathaway? (World Book's parent) No. They find experts in the particular field. The 'Evolution' article I quoted from World Book a while back was written by an Oxford professor. Oh .. by the way ... the article says the same thing in the 2006 version. No change.
Ok, dave, I'll take your word for it. I'll accept that is what your expert in the subject (expert of what, btw?) says. Now, how about looking at what all those other experts, in all the official sites we showed you (approved and endorsed by institutes like Instituto des Camoes, that are dedicated to the study of the Portuguese language) say? You do realise that you are taking a shot at all of them- and, unlike us, they are not evil deceiving evolutionists. Someone must be wrong, dave. Who do you think this is? And can you actually show why? Oh, and since there is a 2006 version and you found it, can you provide a link please? It's the least you can do, after all the links we gave you...
Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,07:13)
Faid...
Quote
Quoting yourself as evidence? As what, authority? You're a blast, davey boy. How 'bout quoting the actual paragraph from EB instead, though, so we can see if it says anything to your defense?
I DID quote an actual line from EB. Wanna see it again? "standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon." And I gave you the reference.
dave, dave... That is not the paragraph. That is a snip of a phrase. What does EB actually say about this dialect of Lisbon? Does it say it's Spanish? French? The sentence must have a context. Come on, can't you show how that reference shows a french influence on this dialect? THAT is what you are supposed to do... otherwise posting that reference as proof of your views was deceitful to say the least. Well? But you know, I'm sure you've already figured it out, dave. You know we are right. You know the dialect spoken in Lisbon (by the minority- most spoke Arabic) was PORTUGUESE (Galician-Portuguese, actually). You have checked yourself, and now you know that it's Galician-Portuguese that was the next official Language of Portugal, that it existed as a separate language and that your supposed linguistic ifluence of noble intermarriages (an idea so absurd it would make all language experts choke from laughter) was just another one of your daydreams. But, of course, you'll naver admit it. Not to us evilutionists that do the devil's work on Earth. So you resort to more and more pathetic attempts to "support' your argument- like quoting half-phrases, and sending us to bookstores to check your claims.
Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,07:13)
Incorygible...
Quote
Chromosomal misallignment (of which fusion is only one possibility) occurs all the time during meiosis (gamete (sperm/egg) production). Consider it a cost of doing business. Is it harmful? etc. etc. ...........
Faid ... notice how Incorygible goes to the trouble of actually explaining things in his own words, rather than sending me off to 5 different links. Take notes from him ... he is good. (not just being a smart aleck here)
Let's translate that:
"Oh shi... Baloney. I'm running out of evasive tactics, and I still can't find anything on AiG to copy/paste that could bail me out... What to do? ...I know! I'll (sort of) admit it, and claim that Faid never explained it to me and just pointed me to links (links I asked faid for, but who will remember?). Yup, that's the way to save some face!"
Sorry dave my man, but no dice. You see, all I have to do to show how dishonest you are being again it to quote, once again, my very first post, the one you systematically ignored (and keep ignoring):
Quote
Oh, about the Down Syndrome thing: I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that a fusion is responsible for its occurence? That's simply not true. For the vast majority of cases, failed disjunction (sp?) is the reason: and that's affected by things like the mother's age etc. Now, a quick glance at my old textbooks told me that there are in fact a few cases of DS attributed to chromosome fusions (Robertsonian translocations); but those are like, 3% of the total number. Or is it that you are claiming that all fusions have such disastrous effects? That is also extremely incorrect. In all the people in the world today, more than 1 in 1000 has a kind of Robertsonian translocation. Most of those are "balanced" fusions, and their carriers have no phaenotypic problem. It has been suggested that these people might have an increased risk in giving birth to children with genetic defects (like Down), but recent studies propose that the risk is much smaller than previously thought. As for other mammals: Robertsonian translocations of various kinds are quite common, especially in horses and cows, with only a minor drop in fertility as a result -which may pose problems for selective breeding, but none for the animal's survival. IIRC, there's also a kind of antelope where a RobT is so common and without problems, the population of the species has three distinct caryotypes, with 24, 25 and 26 chromosomes.But I'll cave to check that out.
Any famous last words, for your newborn "argument", dave?
Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,07:13)
So, (now that I have a very detailed answer on the subject from someone who appears to be knowledgable) I guess we could say that chromosome fusion events could be considered to be a sort of mistake? Sort of like the deletions and substitutions of nucleotides we explored a while back? And like those, these are usually not harmful (at least that we know of), but sometimes they are? Like Downs Syndrome?
Is this an accurate summary?
Well well... Yes, dave, I guess it is, more or less. Only we know they are quite often harmless (and feel free to prove they're not), and this harmless "mistake" provides material for evolution -like mutations, or duplications. Oh, and: Typical Down's syndrome is not caused by fusions.Familial Down's Syndrome is caused by fusions, and it's 2-3% of all DS incidents.
So, instead of trying to move the goalposts in another hemisphere, and making lame attacks at my level of knowledge (you of all people), why don't you ask your doctor friend (who should know better) why he said otherwise?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Although there are six known isotopes of helium, only two are stable: helium-3 (symbolized 3He) and helium-4 (symbolized 4He). The four other isotopes are all radioactive, decaying very rapidly into other substances. The helium that is present on Earth is not a primordial component of the Earth but has been generated by radioactive decay. Alpha particles, ejected from the nuclei of heavier radioactive substances, are nuclei of the isotope helium-4. Helium does not accumulate in large quantities in the atmosphere because Earth's gravity is not sufficient to prevent its gradual escape into space. The trace of the isotope helium-3 on Earth is attributable to the negative beta decay of the rare hydrogen-3 isotope (tritium). Helium-4 is by far the most plentiful of the stable isotopes: helium-4 atoms outnumber those of helium-3 about 700,000:1 in atmospheric helium and about 7,000,000:1 in certain helium-bearing minerals.
Helium does not accumulate in large quantities in the atmosphere because Earth's gravity is not sufficient to prevent its gradual escape into space.
Man, that takes me back. Back in the day, as a young physics student, we had to calculate the rate at which the Helium concentration would diminish in the atmosphere, assuming the usual things, perfect mixing, isothermal, spherical horses, etc ;-)
hmmm, IIRC when i was taking physics in college, we were spending time trying to calculate the rate N2O diffuses from rubber balloons...
And Dave can't figure out why performing tests on zircon diffusion rates in vacuum is different from pressurized diffusion rates.
Get a can of 20-year old tennis balls,AirHead. Take them out of the *pressurized* can. See how bouncy-bouncy they are? Now leave them out a few years. Not so bouncy-bouncy, eh? Why? You get bonus points if you can figure out why a vacuum would make a difference.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Deadman is comparing zircons to tennis balls now ... mmm ... yes, quite similar in their ability to hold their Helium no doubt ... :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Short answer- the fossil record has massive quantitites of fossilized organic material: coal, oil and chalk beds to name just 3. This is evidence that there was far more organic matter prior to the Flood of Noah--ICR estimates 100X the present amount of organic matter. If this was the case, the C-14/C-12 ratio would be much lower, resulting in much younger actual dates when using the C-14 dating method today.
But Dave, you didn't say that there was 100X more organic matter present. You claimed there was 100X more C12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere
Here are your exact words
Quote
You are correct that the RATE findings only say coal and diamond can’t be more than 58,000 years old with conventional asumptions on C-14 dating, which of course, the RATE Group does not accept. We will get into this in further detail, but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere. This would significantly affect conventional interpretations of c-14 amounts found in coal, diamonds, fossils and what have you.
Please provide the evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 (but not a corresponding higher level of C14) in the atmosphere.
I have to thank you in advance Washout - by attacking radiocarbon dating you are going to make yourself look like the biggest chump going, even worse than your helium/zircon debacle. Want to know why?
Radiocarbon dating is an extremely well known and well researched branch of science. It is one of the backbones of archaeology, especially paleoarchaeology. The scientist who pioneered it, Willard Frank Libby, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960 for his work. Today there are over 130 labs worldwide providing radiocarbon dating services, doing millions of dollars in business. The science even has its own peer-reviewed journal, Radiocarbon, to keep up on the latest developments.
C14 dating does have limitations, but these are understood and accounted for. It is well known that the level of C14 in the atmosphere can vary due to external factors – cosmic ray level due to solar activity, climate change that disrupts the carbon flow between the ocean / organic matter into the atmosphere. It is also know that the C14 level in individual samples can vary due to external factor such as sample contamination. That is why radiocarbon dating has been subjected to rigorous multiple independent calibration methods. These methods include denrochronology (tree-ring dating), ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, and speleothems (cave deposits). All these methods combined have provided calibration curves accurate to +/- a few percent for dates up to 60,000 years old. Go do your homework now Davie Girl, because we will be addressing all of these methods in detail.
See, you’re got a really tough job ahead Washout
You can make up some unsupported fantasy about C14/C12 ratios being 100x different You can make up some unsupported fantasy about C14/C12 decay rate being not constant You can lie about trees growing 10-20 rings a year instead of 1 You can lie about all the ice core samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. You can lie about all the ocean core samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. You can lie about all the lake varve samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. You can lie about all the cave deposits being off by greater than a factor of 10.
But what is really going to tax your lying circuits is explaining how all the above methods are wrong due to completely different causes but still all give dating results that agree precisely with each other.
It’s gonna be great fun watching you fall on your lying face again Washout.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Heysoos, I have a job and grandkids to dandle (and I'm building a hot rod to boot) so I come to this party late everyday. By the time I get here you guys have flogged Dilettante Dave the Taxi Driver (You talking to me, you talking to me?) like a penitent in a Monty Python movie.
There's not much left for me to wale on (red mist indeed). I'll give it a try though.
DDTTD, why is this guy
trying to lead you and the other sheep down a primrose path with this statement?
Henke wants “fluids” from the magma to carry helium through the mineral interfaces in the granodiorite, through the biotite, and into the zircons.
It is doubtful that such fluids could travel very far. First, the granodiorite is presently dry and well-consolidated, even at the surface.
'splain it to us in sciency terms stud.
Linda Hall Library DDTTD.
O3 after ten years, pfft, if you hadn't resigned, they'd have shown you the door and given you a FIRM shove.
Um, sorry guys... I know this dead Portuguese horse has been reduced to a morphless pulp already, but I just had to bring it up... You see, thanks to Britannica Concise, I found the passage from EB dave snips this little bit from-
Quote
Standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon
So here it is, for your viewing pleasure:
Quote
Portuguese language
Romance language spoken by about 170 million people in Portugal, Brazil, and other former Portuguese colonies.
The first literary works in Portuguese date from the 13th–14th century. Standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon. Dialectal variation in Portugal is limited, but the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are more extensive, including changes in phonology, verb conjugation, and syntax. The four major dialect groups are Northern (Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain), Central, Southern (including the Lisbon dialect), and Insular (including Brazilian and Madeiran) Portuguese.
Soooo... As it's plain for all to see, the "dialect of Lisbon" mentioned here is a dialect of Portuguese. The whole paragraph has nothing to do with any supposed medieval local dialects of Spanish, with an imaginary French influence, that led to Portuguese: It has practically nothing to do with the history of the language itself. It's about Portuguese dialects.
Under the light of this data, one can't help but find dave's selective quoting of that snippet... interesting.
Got anything to say for yourself, HonestDave?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The major Romance languages—French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian—are national languages. French is probably the most internationally significant, but Spanish, the official language of 19 American countries and Spain and Equatorial Guinea, has the most speakers. Languages spoken in smaller areas include Catalan, Occitan, Sardinian, and Rhaeto-Romance. The Romance languages began as dialects of Vulgar Latin, which spread during the Roman occupation of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and the Balkans and developed into separate languages in the 5th–9th centuries.
<all emphasis mine>
Hey dave, here's a new emoticon for you:
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
That is why radiocarbon dating has been subjected to rigorous multiple independent calibration methods. These methods include denrochronology (tree-ring dating), ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, and speleothems (cave deposits).
And U-Th dating of corals, that's a significant portion.
Here's a calibration curve:
(from CALPAL 2004 January). The axes are unreadable but are each 60,000 years long. See Calibration Data Sets for plots of the individual data sets. Here's the lake Suigetsu varves:
Well, let's see ... where are we? We've shown excellent evidence for a Super-Intelligent Designer by observing Cosmic Fine Tuning and Biological Machines. We've had some fun speculating about Relativity and how it might relate to some of the Bible's claims about God's different time scale and supposed omnipresence. We've shown a very powerful argument by C.S. Lewis about Universal Morality and how it shows that an Originator of Morality must exist. Hmmm ... I wonder if this Originator of Morality could be one and the same with the Super-Intelligent Designer? Nah, probably not. I mean look at all the thousands of scientists that say 'No!' How could all those guys be wrong!! Oh, and there's a religious book that's been around for thousands of years, probably copied from tablet records from the very first civilization that mentions a Creator God. Hmmm...I wonder if this could be the same Person we are discovering in our observation of nature? Nah, probably not again. I mean look at all the thousands of scientists that say 'No!' How could all those guys be wrong!!
Let's see ... what else have we done. Oh ... we've looked at Whale evolution, I suppose the current best 'evolutionary' progression available. Wasn't very convincing to me. But to each his own I guess. Who am I to mess with a person's beliefs no matter how weird they are? Then we looked at all the problems of trying to say that Apes and Humans have a common ancestor. After much effort and conflicting information, I found out that Gorillas, Chimps and Humans have about 98% genetic similarity, they share a common defect, and that evolutionists get very excited about Humans being a hair closer to gorillas than Gorillas are to chimps. 1/2% closer. Pretty exciting stuff, to be sure! Never mind all those HUGE differences ... we're 98% similar! Let's give 'em minority status and voting rights! Yippeee! There was some intriguing info about chromosomes, but again, nothing which requires common ancestry.
I had a lot of fun with the supposed 'Bacteria Evolution' when I found out not only that this is not supporting evidence for 'upward evolution' as I have been told because the antibiotic resistance is caused by LOSS of info, not a gain, but also that many evolutionists don't even know that Oxford professors and Talk Origins are using this argument to support macroevolution!
We had some fun with Portuguese ... I see that Arden has given up trying to help Rilke, but Faid is still at it. Keep trying, Faid. Maybe when you figure out how abiogenesis happened, you'll also run across a good argument that people will buy about your Portuguese theory--pretty maps, by the way. Great emoticon, too! While you are helping Rilke, maybe you could help her come up with some more fanciful stuff about my career ... maybe like I flunked my senior year three times, and oh ... I don't know ... maybe I could never get any dates in high school and never really got married ... that picture is of someone else's wife and someone else's kids. How about this one? I faked my engineering degree and my business I built and sold really was a slave trading business overseas and I was involved with the Mafia and in reality I'm bankrupt now and trying to get recognition with ICR so I can write books and sell them and get back on my feet. Just some ideas.
Now we are well into 'Age of the Earth' and we have been through the RATE Group's Helium-Zircon experiment. No 'long age' scientists can figure out how Humphreys and Co. managed to pull off such a remarkable prediction and publish one year before there were any reliable published data for Helium diffusion! JonF has been trying his best to refute Humphreys mainly with the 'Unknown Temperature' argument (a whopping 26 degrees!, but he also thinks the 'Vacuum Testing' and the 'Extraneous Helium' arguments have merit. Deadman has joined the fray and says that if Humphreys would have tested for the 3He/4He ratio, he could have eliminated the possibility of extraneous Helium once and for all and been shooting off fireworks now. I take this to mean that Deadman doesn't really go for JonF's temperature objections. I'm not certain if he goes in for the 'Vacuum Testing' objection, but maybe this will help him ...
Quote
Age determinations were also performed on Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte zircons, the latter from a range of pre-exhumation paleodepths, from 4-16 km. Euhedral zircon crystals (~60-120 µm width and ~150-300 µm length) were picked from aliquots prepared by standard mineral separation techniques (crushing, sieving, magnetic and density separations). He diffusion experiments were performed at Caltech and used approximately 10-15 crystals that were rinsed in cold 10% HNO3 to remove potential adhering phosphates. One aliquot of Fish Canyon Tuff zircons was crushed and sieved to a size range of 44-74 µm to examine the effect of grain size on diffusivity. The second aliquot consisted of grains with typical radii and lengths of 60 µm and 150 µm, respectively. The experimental apparatus and procedures followed those described by Farley et al. (1999), involving cycled step-heating of the crystals in an ultra-high vacuum chamber by a lamp projected through a sapphire window. Reiners, Farley & Hickes: Helium-Zircon Vacuum Testing
OK. So there you have it. JonF says Humphreys and I are liars and he wouldn't trust what we say about vacuum testing. OK. So don't trust me or Humphreys. Trust Farley.
Now, if we can get Deadman happy about 3He/4He ratios, we are home free and you should all be singing 'Amazing Grace,' right? (OK. I know it will take a little more than that ... I'll keep at it.)
That's all for now ... gotta take kids to baseball, then church tomorrow (you know ... that evil Creo indocrination)
Norm, Deadman and Incorygible ... I have copied off your posts about Helium Reserve, Outgassing and Chromosome Fusion. No more time now, but I'll probably get to them Monday.
Then ... off to C14/C12 ... OA, I did copy off your question and will answer it with this discussion.
And I leave you with this nugget from Deadman ...
Quote
You start answering direct questions put to you by people and you get treated with civility.
A YEC treated with civility? Ever? At ATBC? You DO think I'm gullible, don't you!
Have a great day!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But to each his own I guess. Who am I to mess with a person's beliefs no matter how weird they are?
That's rich, Dave. If you're going to charaterize our "beliefs" at least get them right!
Quote
evolutionists get very excited about Humans being a hair closer to gorillas than Gorillas are to chimps. 1/2% closer. Pretty exciting stuff, to be sure! Never mind all those HUGE differences ... we're 98% similar! Let's give 'em minority status and voting rights! Yippeee!
First, it's "humans are closer to chimps than chimps are to gorillas", you dolt!
Second, where do you get the "let's give them voting rights" bit from? Who believes that?
Third, your "excellent evidence" wasn't convincing to me either, about anything.
First, it's "humans are closer to chimps than chimps are to gorillas", you dolt!
Oh, of course! I got it backwards! How could I be so stupid! This is soooo obvious!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Fourthly, I didn't learn anything interesting in the slightest from Dave either, except from a psychological case study of a modern IDist. Contrast this with the volumes of interesting things I've gleaned from pretty much everyone else. Thanks everyone. This place has gotten a lot cooler in the last few months.
(it is obvious, Dave. How could you get it wrong? Bad memory. Too much spouting off about zircons and Helium diffusion and special pleading, and all the other hoops you're jumping through. Too much typing to remember what was said.)
AIG Weekly News Q: Is evolution religious in nature?
A: Philosopher of science Dr. Michael Ruse has said, “evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically.” In fact, evolution underpins the religion of humanism. The people who composed the Humanist Manifesto, which claims that humanism is “a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view,” built their entire way of thinking on the basis of evolution.
Julian Huxley and his humanist friends were very clear in claiming that the evolutionary story was the foundation for their new humanist theology. They knew that the long evolutionary past of millions of years, if accepted by society, would remove the Judeo-Christian God from the culture. In place of God would be the “time and chance” of evolution!
Sadly, though, when taken to a logical conclusion, if there is no God, people are free of divinely sanctioned laws and codes. In other words, they can do what is right in their own eyes … and justify the selfish desires of their hearts, just as the Bible describes in Proverbs 30 and Romans 1.
These humanists understood that evolution was really an anti-God religion, and they said so in their Manifesto.
Evolutionary scientists don’t want to admit that they are also very religious people, who put a blind faith in time and chance, instead of a real faith in a loving and infinite God.
“A religion is essentially an attitude to the world as a whole. Thus evolution, for example, may prove as powerful a principle to coordinate men’s beliefs and hopes as God was in the past. Such ideas underlie the various forms of Rationalism, the Ethical movement and scientific Humanism.
“Humanism: An outlook that places man and his concerns at the centre of interest. Modern Humanism, which does away with traditional Christianity, is characterised by its faith in the power of human beings to create their own future, collectively and personally.”
– Ed. Sir Julian Huxley, Growth of Ideas. The evolution of thought and knowledge. 1965, pp. 99, 336.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well thanks half a Dave. Not only do I get to learn new interesting stuff about things you find impossible to understand due to your stupidity, I get them explained over and over in ever finer detail ...due to your stupidity..
But that's not all folks. Not only does half a Dave's denial provide a perfect case study of Christian Fundamentalist parallels with other diabolical mind control experiments carried out through the ages, he provides quotes for a Huxley. Thank you D/2 I appreciate a little intellectual excursion once in a while, it makes a nice change from your verbal diluvial wanking.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 09 2006,22:28)
Quote (afdave @ June 09 2006,21:57)
Deadman is comparing zircons to tennis balls now ... mmm ... yes, quite similar in their ability to hold their Helium no doubt ... :-)
I note with considerable amusement that Dave is no longer even able to pretend to be able to adress the various arguments now pending.
What a lovely joke you are Dave; what an exquisite laughing stock you have become.
Washed out of the af.
Failed in business.
Too stupid to even attempt to engage in scientific discussion.
You like Lewis, don't you Dave?
Gentlemen, I give you 2nd Lt. "Child abuser" Dave:
Loser. Liar. Lunatic.
My Bolding
Sorry, but for me that goes beyond the pale. If you are going to accuse somebody of that, then be #### specific about what you are claiming.
Child abuse is not a matter to joke about, nor is it something to just toss about without direct and specific information.
EDIT: I am not taking AFDaves side on anything here, but accusations of child abuse should either be made to the legal authorities as facts or shut up. No way should that be a debating technique. As bad/obnoxious a tactic as anything Dave Springer ever did.
Dave, for the second time, what does you theory say about plate tectonics? Thanks.
PS: I haven't done the calculation, but the distance between us and chimps is more like 50% lower than the distance between chimps and gorillas. I know your not familiar with maths, but when comparing 0.02 and 0.03 (for instance), the relevant difference is +50%, not +0.1%. Think hard Dave, you can understand.
Using AFDave's logic : "G. W. Bush is only 2% closer to me than to a chimp (1-0.98)? Man, 2 ridiculous percent? Are you kidding?"
Stephen Elliott, it was easy to miss in the 100 pages of dave threads, but I believe Rilke is referring to the brief discussion of the possibility of considering what he teaches children to be a form of abuse.
While I could agree that it is a form of abuse, I don't think it's in the same realm as what is usually implied when calling someone a child abuser.
Therefore, I wish she'd quit doing it (too). There's plenty of other fodder for comebacks to dave.
Interesting that AFDave has chosen to cite the " Julian Huxley Lie." Dave...look at the alleged Title of the "Julian Huxley" book cited. Now find that "book" listed anywhere online or otherwise. You won't find it.
As to the canard (this also means "lie," AirHead) about Julian Huxley and any claims of a "new humanist theology"...please show me those quotes. The ones you cited are faked....lies, in a word, AirHead. http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/julian_huxley_lie.html has a good description of trying to seek out the sources of these Creationist lies, and having Christians like you, AirHeadDave...pile lies upon lies in an effort to avoid responsibility.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You start answering direct questions put to you by people and you get treated with civility.
A YEC treated with civility? Ever? At ATBC? You DO think I'm gullible, don't you!
I've looked over this thread from beginning to end, AirHead, and I've read your other crap. YOU CAME INTO THIS FORUM INSULTING. Now you want to play martyr? The same passive-aggressive mind games that you tried to apply throughout your posts? I was not initially insulting to you, AirHead, but you saw fit to insult everyone who disagreed with your ridiculous claims...now you want to pretend that it could not have been avoided. You're a real piece of work. You're supposed to be a grown man, AirHead.
The attempt to imply that I disagree with Jon on the temperature/data claims of Humphrey is another one. What possible good do these childish manipulation games do you, AirHead?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
He's an arrogant idiot, but there's no reason to call him a business failure or a child abuser. Stick to the fact that he understands science as well as a brain-damaged monkey.
Interesting that AFDave has chosen to cite the " Julian Huxley Lie." Dave...look at the alleged Title of the "Julian Huxley" book cited. Now find that "book" listed anywhere online or otherwise. You won't find it.
As to the canard (this also means "lie," AirHead) about Julian Huxley and any claims of a "new humanist theology"...please show me those quotes. The ones you cited are faked....lies, in a word, AirHead. http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/julian_huxley_lie.html has a good description of trying to seek out the sources of these Creationist lies, and having Christians like you, AirHeadDave...pile lies upon lies in an effort to avoid responsibility.
The wikipedia entry on Julian Huxley lists his books, note that the one afdave mentions, "Growth of Ideas. The evolution of thought and knowledge" is not on the list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Huxley
The quote does indeed seem to be a bald-faced lie that distorts Julian Huxley's views in ways that delusional people like afdave could not detect if they did read Huxely.
Huxley, did consider humanism a replacement for religion which was destined to die out as scientific discoveries invalidated it. The lie is that Humanism "does away with traditional Christianity." No, his view was that it was dying and didn't need to be "done away with."
Perhaps it is a quote out of context from a little known work not listed on Wikipedia?
Thanks Norm! I sure couldn't find that one, but since one of my hobbies is tracing quote-mining/ fake quote sources, I'll trace this. The habit of creationists in not supplying publishing companies is annoying.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
On the Helium 3/ Helium 4 issue, I think this is where their rat-like minds were scurrying:
Quote
Helium-3 was trapped in the planet when it was created. Some 3He is being added by meteoric dust, primarily collecting on the bottom of oceans (although due to subduction, all oceanic tectonic plates are younger than continental plates). However, 3He will be degassed from oceanic sediment during subduction, so cosmogenic 3He is not affecting the concentration or noble gas ratios of the mantle.
Helium-3 is created by cosmic ray bombardment, and by lithium spallation reactions which generally occur in the crust. Lithium spallation is the process by which a high-energy neutron bombards a lithium atom, creating a 3He and a 4He ion. This requires significant lithium to adversely affect the 3He/4He ratio.
All degassed helium is lost to space eventually, due to the escape velocity of helium exceeding that of Earth. Thus, it is assumed the helium content and ratios of Earth's atmosphere have remained essentially stable.
It has been observed that 3He is present in volcano emissions and oceanic ridge samples. How 3He is stored in the planet is under investigation, but it is associated with the mantle and is used as a marker of material of deep origin.
Due to similarities in helium and carbon in magma chemistry, outgassing of helium requires the loss of volatile components (water, carbon dioxide) from the mantle, which happens at depths of less than 60 km. However, 3He is transported to the surface primarily trapped in the crystal lattice of minerals within fluid inclusions.
Helium-4 is created by radiogenic production (by decay of uranium/thorium-series elements). The continental crust has become enriched with those elements relative to the mantle and thus more He4 is produced in the crust than in the mantle.
The ratio ® of 3He to 4He is often used to represent 3He content. R usually is given as a multiple of the present atmospheric ratio (Ra).
Common values for R/Ra:
Old continental crust: less than 1 mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB): 7 to 9 Spreading ridge rocks: 9.1 plus or minus 3.6 Hotspot rocks: 5 to 42 Ocean and terrestrial water: 1 Sedimentary formation water: less than 1 Thermal spring water: 3 to 11 3He/4He isotope chemistry is being used to date groundwaters, estimate groundwater flow rates, track water pollution, and provide insights into hydrothermal processes, igneous geology and ore genesis. [my emphases]
Of course, if the ratio shows no contamination, the evos will just spin another fairy tale or just screech, "But look at this bit of evidence!!" Falsification only applies to our side.....
I'm still stunned by how completely he won that poll.
Who's dumber? Skeptic 1 Ghost of Paley 1 AFDave 35 Salvador 12
It also beautifully enforces the notion of Dave as a 'creobot'. It's eerie, the way that no actual mind or thinking is displayed in this posts. When he loses something big time; when he makes a complete and utter ass of himself such that he is unable to recover, he simply reboots his brain and starts repeating the same, refuted, irrelevant, non-arguments over again.
It's fascinating. And it's actually quite sad in a way, since he'll die and have his God bitch-slap him for being such a complete moron (if his God exists, which seems to be pretty much impossible based on the non-evidence that he's given).
But I think it's clear that here we have a real winner: more fun that Larry; less monomaniacal than Thordaddy; more useful as a MacGuffin than Skeptic; and far, far stupider than Ectowhisp.
Gentlemen, I give you Dave "Lying for Christ" 2nd. Lt. Washout Hawkins:
Well, let's see ... where are we? We've shown excellent evidence for a Super-Intelligent Designer by observing Cosmic Fine Tuning and Biological Machines... blah blah blah....
He's an arrogant idiot, but there's no reason to call him a business failure or a child abuser. Stick to the fact that he understands science as well as a brain-damaged monkey.
But I think an excellent case can be made for both claims.
First, the child abuse:
Dave is advocating deliberately lying to children. He is planning to feed them misinformation, lies, distortions, and stupidity. He is advocating making them unable to think for themselves, engage in creative thought, or even be able to understand the universe.
He is, in fact, deliberately attempting to produce brain-dead sheep.
Quote
Helping a child
Many people are afraid of reporting child abuse. They think, "I don't want the person I reported to know," or, "I'm afraid it will come back to haunt me," or, "it's not my business." Ironically, if you asked people if they should help if seeing a nearby car accident, most will say yes. But in a case of suspected child abuse, that thinking may be different. Why? Because of prevalent attitudes that someone else's children are either "their responsibility" or "their property." Without aware adults, some children might never receive help. Be an advocate for children by knowing the signs of abuse and reporting child abuse. Remember, you are reporting suspicion of child abuse. Even if you aren't sure, it's better to let authorities check it out. You might save a child's life! You should know about these signs...
When you have concerns for a child's well-being, the indicators listed below may help guide you in your thought process. Many of these "symptoms" or "signs" could be caused by things other than abuse or neglect. Generally, these indicators do indicate that a child's safety may be at risk and, at the very least, the situation should be assessed by a professional who is able to determine the causes of these symptoms and offer the help and assistance necessary to reduce the risk to a child.
* Behavioral extremes (withdrawal, aggression, regression, depression). * Inappropriate or excessive fear of parent or caretaker. * Antisocial behavior such as substance abuse, truancy, running away, fear of going home. * Unbelievable or inconsistent explanation for injuries. * Lies unusually still while surveying surroundings (for infants). * Unusual shyness, wariness of physical contact.
and
Quote
Behavioral Indicators:
* Habit disorders (biting, rocking, head-banging). * Cruel behavior, seeming to get pleasure from hurting children, adults or animals; seeming to get pleasure from being mistreated. * Age-inappropriate behaviors (bedwetting, wetting, soiling). * Behavioral extremes, such as overly compliant-demanding; withdrawn-aggressive; listless-excitable.
Isn't it clear that Dave exhibits these tendencies? Isn't it also clear that his program of mental and intellectual abuse is a repetition of the same abuse pattern he admits have suffered at the hands of his father?
Dave needs more than our help - he needs professional help. And he should ideally be removed from any contact with children (his own especially).
As for the business thing... well, if he weren't unemployed, why would he have so much time to post nonsense here?
That was the best you could do, dave? another pitiful summary of "the world according to me", and um, "ok so I say I won again, but let's move on now, 'kay?"
And the most amazing thing... After I showed clearly, for all to see, how you delibelately snipped and distorted the meaning of the Encyclopedia Britannica paragraph, to make it look like it supports your views,, all you can say is "yeah why don't you call me names like Rilke"? Utterly pathetic. Like I've told you before: A man is judged by his actions. And your actions here (ignoring and evading arguments, twisting words, moving goalposts, chickening out -even whe we know you are online- to wait for more replies to pile up and answer what you like, creating smokescreens, and now your intentional and deceitful snipping and source-tampering) have proved you to be, in fact, a dishonest intellectual washout.
Good luck bailing out of your crashing plane, HonestDave. Just don't let the canopy kick your butt on your way out (like it did to Goose, in that realistic movie you love so much).
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Also: Did you guys notice that HonestDave brought the relativity theory subject back up? After it was demolished, and he was forced to agree he could not support it, and dropped it? And now he acts as if he posts from some parallel universe where he managed to argue for it successfully? Here's my take on this: The little summaries dave posts after every "step" of his "hypothesis", are pre-cut and pasted. They're probably the same ones he'll use to "teach" those poor kids: He just modifies them a little, and posts them, and will do so untill his last "step". Nothing can make him change them, no matter what we (or himself) says. In his poor deluded mind, he's already won: he's just rehearshing his little gloating rants on us. that's how honest he is.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave is advocating deliberately lying to children. He is planning to feed them misinformation, lies, distortions, and stupidity. He is advocating making them unable to think for themselves, engage in creative thought, or even be able to understand the universe.
I really think he might be so stupid he can't tell his 'arguments' have been strangled to death, autopsied, and put in the ground. I think he might honestly still think that somehow he's correct, and all the evidence and all the scientists are completely wrong. If this is true, he's not deliberately lying.
Steve: It's possible that he thinks he's not *deliberately* lying, but then the evidence weighs against that. For instance, his claims here that he avoids supporting, but still claims are valid after he's been refuted. This avoidance is due knowing at some level that he's using false claims about relativity proving god, etc.
On a far neater note, the latest issue of Nature included a CD of the complete set of published papers on human chromosomes. The downside is they want me to install some kind of newsreader. Maybe I can extract the papers from the CD without this.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Steve: It's possible that he thinks he's not *deliberately* lying, but then the evidence weighs against that.
Guys, we're talking seriously delusional. As "granddaughter" said: "he simply reboots his brain and starts repeating the same, refuted, irrelevant, non-arguments over again."
Dave and Paley cannot follow a logical reasoned argument and they wouldn't know one if they saw one.
Dave is advocating deliberately lying to children. He is planning to feed them misinformation, lies, distortions, and stupidity. He is advocating making them unable to think for themselves, engage in creative thought, or even be able to understand the universe.
I really think he might be so stupid he can't tell his 'arguments' have been strangled to death, autopsied, and put in the ground. I think he might honestly still think that somehow he's correct, and all the evidence and all the scientists are completely wrong. If this is true, he's not deliberately lying.
I'm not sure that's relevant: does it actually matter whether Dave is consciously or unconsciously abusing children? The fact is that he's doing it.
I'm always a little conflicted on the whole 'lying' thing because there are only really three possibilities.
Let's look at the situation:
1. Dave makes an incorrect claim.
2. We demonstrate that Dave is incorrect by supplying actual evidence and logic chains.
3. Dave usually changes his story; we demonstrate that he's incorrect there, too.
4. After some time has passed, Dave claims his original claim was correct.
Now, as I say, we've got three possibilities
A) Dave is lying. He has been shown the information; he is aware that he is wrong; but he's just too egotistical to admit it in public (given the nervous, tentative, blustery nature of his most recent spew, I'd say that's what's going on).
or
B) Dave is literally too stupid to understand that he's wrong. I feel bad about this one because it's not nice to kick morons; it's not nice to abuse morons; and this would certainly imply that Dave is a moron.
or
C) Dave is insane (like Larry Fafarman). He's blathering without any clue that we're responding.
So what's it to be?
He's lying - in which case he's behaving in an unChristian fashion.
He's stupid - not flattering.
He's insane - we should call for the guys with the little white truck and the butterfly nets.
I think it's pretty clear that he's just lying - too vain, too egotistical, too unChristian to actually act like a Christian to act.
I think it's also pretty clear that he's stupid - he has too much trouble even understanding what 'evidence' consists of or how it works.
I think we can also make a good case for insanity; the whole mindless, robotic repeating of points that he's already lost on is just eerie.
So, gentlemen, I give you 2nd. Lt. "I washed out 'cause I'm a lying, stupid, bonkie" Dave:
Steve: I used to think that, too. Now I'm unconvinced. Seeing dave's recent accomplisments, one has to assume he's honest only if he's actually of border intelligence: He'd have to be unable to make sense of a paragraph in simple English, or be unable to hold anything in his memory for more than five minutes, or even suffer from actual Wernicke's aphasia.
Now, I don't think any of this is true: I just think he's lying. And he thinks that's fine, because he lies for his God. Like I said: If his deity can break the universal moral law (the one it made) whenever it likes, then why can't dave break it too, if he believes he's doing his deity's will?
As for the Portuguese thing, which wasn't about God in any way... I dunno. I think that dave probably thinks he's got a "get out of jail free" card from his God, which allows him to lie about anything, as long as he's a faithful christian soldier, fighting for the Cause. (Which of course means he's using his religion to justify his actions and satisfy his ego, but he'll never deal with that).
And that person has the nerve to claim that it's Atheism (or Agnosticism) that's immoral...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
As for the Portuguese thing, which wasn't about God in any way... I dunno. I think that dave probably thinks he's got a "get out of jail free" card from his God, which allows him to lie about anything, as long as he's a faithful christian soldier, fighting for the Cause.
No, I think the Portuguese thing is all about Dave's inability to admit error. It's about his vanity and his ego. He can't admit to a mistake, because his internal vision of himself is that of a champion of right and reason.
That's why he has stopped even trying to address it, and just dismisses the fact that he uttered inane stupidity and was caught flat-out lying about it.
Vanity of vanities, saith the Prophet, all is vanity.
2nd Lt. Dave "I was wrong about the Portuguese thing, but too vain to admit it" Hawkins
A) Dave is lying. He has been shown the information; he is aware that he is wrong; but he's just too egotistical to admit it in public (given the nervous, tentative, blustery nature of his most recent spew, I'd say that's what's going on).
or
B) Dave is literally too stupid to understand that he's wrong. I feel bad about this one because it's not nice to kick morons; it's not nice to abuse morons; and this would certainly imply that Dave is a moron.
or
C) Dave is insane (like Larry Fafarman). He's blathering without any clue that we're responding.
actually, I believe Steve and I already investigated those claims a couple of weeks ago. (You'll have to pan back a few hundred posts *sigh*). I think considerably more evidence existed then that AFD is suffering a mental handicap as a result of severe cognitive dissonance.
since then, the evidence simply is mounting in favor of that hypothesis.
but, as i said then...
how do you argue with a schizophrenic?
if you try to tell a schizophrenic that the blue bugs he sees crawling up the walls behind you aren't real, they'll tell you that YOU'RE the one who is nuts.
sound familiar?
There is no way in an online forum anybody here will actually be able to convince AFD he is wrong, or that he needs treatment.
You can either laugh or cry, or maybe throw your boot through the screen , but them's about your only options.
His peers and family are just as unlikely to be of assistance in alleviating Dave of his burdens.
I see little hope for him, really.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Um, sorry guys... I know this dead Portuguese horse has been reduced to a morphless pulp already, but I just had to bring it up... You see, thanks to Britannica Concise, I found the passage from EB dave snips this little bit from-
Quote
Standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon
So here it is, for your viewing pleasure:
Quote
Portuguese language
Romance language spoken by about 170 million people in Portugal, Brazil, and other former Portuguese colonies.
The first literary works in Portuguese date from the 13th–14th century. Standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon. Dialectal variation in Portugal is limited, but the differences between Brazilian and European Portuguese are more extensive, including changes in phonology, verb conjugation, and syntax. The four major dialect groups are Northern (Galician, spoken in northwestern Spain), Central, Southern (including the Lisbon dialect), and Insular (including Brazilian and Madeiran) Portuguese.
Soooo... As it's plain for all to see, the "dialect of Lisbon" mentioned here is a dialect of Portuguese. The whole paragraph has nothing to do with any supposed medieval local dialects of Spanish, with an imaginary French influence, that led to Portuguese: It has practically nothing to do with the history of the language itself. It's about Portuguese dialects.
Under the light of this data, one can't help but find dave's selective quoting of that snippet... interesting.
Got anything to say for yourself, HonestDave?
Good catch Faid.
Who'da ever thunk it - a fine Christian Creationist role model like AFDave guilty of dishonest quote mining.
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
Well AFDave, what have you got to say for yourself about this latest time you were caught lying?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Thanks for the radiocarbon calibration curves, although I was going to wait and let AirFarceDave stick both feet in his mouth before presenting similar data. I was really looking forward to hammering his sorry ass with the Lake Suigetsu studies.
Oh well, guess I'll have to use the Green River varves instead to dope-slap him and his '6000 year old Earth' nonsense.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Stephen Elliott, it was easy to miss in the 100 pages of dave threads, but I believe Rilke is referring to the brief discussion of the possibility of considering what he teaches children to be a form of abuse.
While I could agree that it is a form of abuse, I don't think it's in the same realm as what is usually implied when calling someone a child abuser.
Therefore, I wish she'd quit doing it (too). There's plenty of other fodder for comebacks to dave.
OK. Imagine Dave Springer used those words. What would you have to say then?
Child Abuse is an acusation that requires proof. TBH it makes my blood boil. I am anoyed that it has gone on so long without somebody calling it.
Stephen Elliot: people did call it a while back in this thread, and a new thread was made to discuss it. I stayed out of the use of it because I view it as analogous to telling kids stories about Santa Claus writ large (In AFDave's case). The "is it abuse?" thread is here
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I am anoyed that it has gone on so long without somebody calling it.
an explanation was given as to why that was.
still, there is a difference between calling somebody a child abuser, and claiming their indoctrination methods might imply a form of child abuse.
If you want to get involved in deciding which is which in AFD's case, you might want to go way back to his discussion about the places he's proud to enroll his kids for indoctrination, and the way he plans to utilize his "arguments" to teach kids himself.
If you want to jump into more detailed discussion, you might want to check out the thread i started a few weeks back on the subject. it's gone a bit dim lately, as I think a lot of participants are trying to check out some of the literature referenced, and think it through a bit more.
bottom line, don't protest too much; she has a point.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Who'da ever thunk it - a fine Christian Creationist role model like AFDave guilty of dishonest quote mining.
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
Well AFDave, what have you got to say for yourself about this latest time you were caught lying?
Thanks, Occam, but I'm afraid dave beat us up reel goood in his response...
You see, he demonstrated beyond doubt that, to show how he deliberately LIED about his source, and how Encyclopedia Britannica actually supports our case, well... ...You have to prove abiogenesis first.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
We had some fun with Portuguese ... I see that Arden has given up trying to help Rilke,
I've said before and I'll say it again, Dave. You are not bright.
I wasn't doing anything at all with the intent of 'helping Rilke'. You were saying shit-for-brains stupid things about Portuguese and language in general, and I tried to correct you, only to discover you're completely unteachable. If you think this was somehow motivated by any desire on my part to help your imagined foes, you're even more clueless about people than I thought.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Have you been to Larry's blog lately. He's nucking futs
Hah, he is. But oddly, I have a soft spot for the old coot ( and don't you start calling in Dumbski or his boy to ban me AGAIN, steve). Larry's old, he lives in kind of a bad part of town, he needed a hobby before he kicks off. He's just nuts. John Davison, on the other hand, should just get a lobotomy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
C) Dave is insane (like Larry Fafarman). He's blathering without any clue that we're responding.
Have you been to Larry's blog lately. He's nucking futs.
Well, we knew that. And since last month we now know he's not just wacky, he is actually mentally ill. But what part of his blog would you especially recommend today?
That fact that almost all the responders he gets are people imitating or ridiculing him is especially surreal.
Deadman, what bad part of LA does he live in?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
But what part of his blog would you especially recommend today?
Oh, pick any of his posts at random. They're all the same. Judge Jones is wrong, Ed Brayton is wrong, everybody at Panda's Thumb at AtBC is wrong, all scientists are wrong wrong wrong, everybody's wrong but me, and not only wrong but possessing the following character flaws....
It just makes your mouth hang open. But like cleavage, don't stare, just get a sense and look away :-)
Arden, I take it back, he's not in a very bad area at all, he's near Culver City, south of the 10 frwy. I thought he was closer to Inglewood, but he's here
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What was most stunning to me is that his energy isn't flagging. He's there every day, attacking Judge Jones, Ed, everybody else, over and over and over. He really does have some mental problems.
Poor old nutty Larry . But it could be worse. I could easily see John Davison or DaveTard1 strapping a bomb to a dachshund and sending it after an "enemy."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Arden, I take it back, he's not in a very bad area at all, he's near Culver City, south of the 10 frwy. I thought he was closer to Inglewood, but he's here
no, you don't need to take it back.
relatively "upscale" has little to do with "good". the headquarters for our internet entertainment business was in Culver City.
yyyyeeeeuuuccckkkk.
I was SO glad our production office was in Santa Cruz. If I had to live in Culver City for long, I would have gone just as fubar as AFD.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
After Larry, go check out dimbulb JAD's blog. All several hundred comments are in that one thread, because he can't seem to figure out how to create more posts. He has figured out how to ban Davetard, though.
After Larry, go check out dimbulb JAD's blog. All several hundred comments are in that one thread, because he can't seem to figure out how to create more posts. He has figured out how to ban Davetard, though.
Wow...
Aren't blogs supposed to have comments from people other than the person running the blog?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
this from JAD's blog from around the time of the Pianka affair, talking about his "student" Dave Scott Springerbot:
Quote
I am sure Dembski and the rest of the "groupthink" would just love to know what you have to say about me. He hasn't got the guts or the common decency to even mention my name because he is scared fecesless of me and my sources. He should be. He is no better than Esley Welsberry and you are no better than Sir Toejam.
glad to see i left a lasting impression on him...
er, I think. OTOH, maybe I should remove my address from the phone book.
*psst*, John....
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I've looked over this thread from beginning to end, AirHead, and I've read your other crap. YOU CAME INTO THIS FORUM INSULTING. Now you want to play martyr? The same passive-aggressive mind games that you tried to apply throughout your posts? I was not initially insulting to you, AirHead, but you saw fit to insult everyone who disagreed with your ridiculous claims...now you want to pretend that it could not have been avoided. You're a real piece of work. You're supposed to be a grown man, AirHead.
The attempt to imply that I disagree with Jon on the temperature/data claims of Humphrey is another one. What possible good do these childish manipulation games do you, AirHead?
You're kidding! How did I come into this forum insulting? I thought I came here asking someone to prove Evolution to me in 5 statements. Seriously ... tell me how I'm insulting you (other than my interpretation of data is different) and I'll stop doing it. I'll even answer your questions.
Now I'll admit I'm a little tough on people who come at me with all kinds of name calling and stuff, and I do try to make my points forcefully and creatively, and of course I take opportunities for some fun (like with Norm on my 'flakier and flakier' comment about his spaceflight link).
But surely you guys are able to take a little ribbing and sarcasm without getting all sour, no?
I honestly am having a good time (and yes, Steve, I am sincere about the things I am saying), and I assumed others here are as well. I'm learning a lot and I think you all are very bright folks, in spite of my smart remarks. I don't want to TRULY insult anyone (just kind of 'mess with you' insult you), but I do want it to be quite clear to you that I consider Evolution to be the 'Fairy Tale of Modern Times' and as such is harmful to you personally and to our society. I truly believe that you are literally missing out on life by not getting to know your Creator.
So, if you're interested in civility, I'm happy to oblige ... but I would like to know what it is that specifically insults you. You gotta remember, I have an Air Force fighter pilot barroom background and brother, let me tell you, those buggers can dish it out! But nobody gets mad ... it's just all in good fun. So you'll have to pardon me if I assume wrongly that you guys are the same way.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So you'll have to pardon me if I assume wrongly that you guys are the same way.
wrong assumptions are de rigeur for you. It wouldn't help to go all the way back to the beginning and show you why you came off as an arrogant idiot right out of the gate, and I doubt anybody here has the stomach to even bother.
Face it, the only reason you get attention here at all is because you're so consistently delusional, nobody can really grasp it.
I myself have never seen a poster exactly like yourself before; you're #### near as whacky as John Davison.
And brother, that's saying a LOT.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
What was John Davison's story in 25 words or less?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I have an Air Force fighter pilot barroom background
But Dave, you never made it to being a fighter pilot.
You weren't good enough to be a fighter pilot.
You were only deemed competent enough to fly in an unarmed trainer.
Trying to pass yourself off as a fighter pilot just to stroke your own ego is an insult to the real men who were good enough to earn a seat in a fighter aircraft.
As we have all seen, you live in your own little fantasy world anyway - what's one more lie among the thousands, eh?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What was John Davison's story in 25 words or less?
Was a published biology professor at the University of Vermont.
Had a psychological break in the mid 80's.
Was relieved of teaching duties and given "emeritus" status.
released his "prescribed evolution" hypothesis shortly thereafter.
Was quickly voted crankiest evolutionary thinker on the net.
Has been a raving lunatic ever since.
consider it a cautionary tale for what happens when you try to impose your religious belief structures on to real science. (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)
BTW, here is an example of how you are so insulting, apparently without having a clue, which i guess is no surprise, really:
Quote
Trying to pass yourself off as a fighter pilot just to stroke your own ego is an insult to the real men who were good enough to earn a seat in a fighter aircraft.
see?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Sorry to quote Dembski again, but this really sums it up for me well ...
Quote
Writing Computer Programs by Random Mutation and Natural Selection The first computer program every student writes is called a “Hello World” program. It is a simple program that prints “Hello World!” on the screen when executed. In the course of writing this bit of code one learns about using the text editor, and compiling, linking and executing a program in a given programming environment.
Here’s a Hello World program in the C programming language:
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) { printf(”Hello World!\n”); return(0); }
This program includes 66 non-white-space text characters. The C language uses almost every character on the keyboard, but to be generous in my calculations I’ll only assume that we need the 26 lower-case alpha characters. How many 66-character combinations are there? The answer is 26 raised to the 66th power, or 26^66. That’s roughly 2.4 x 10^93 (10^93 is 1 followed by 93 zeros).
To get a feel for this number, it is estimated that there are about 10^80 subatomic particles in the known universe, so there are as many 66-character combinations in our example as there are subatomic particles in 10 trillion universes. There are about 4 x 10^17 seconds in the history of the universe, assuming that the universe is 13 billion years old.
What is the probability of arriving at our Hello World program by random mutation and natural selection? How many simpler precursors are functional, what gaps must be crossed to arrive at those islands of function, and how many simultaneous random changes must be made to cross those gaps? How many random variants of these 66 characters will compile? How many will link and execute at all, or execute without fatal errors? Assuming that our program has already been written, what is the chance of evolving it into another, more complex program that will compile, link, execute and produce meaningful output?
I can’t answer these questions, but this example should give you a feel for the unfathomable probabilistic hurdles that must be overcome to produce the simplest of all computer programs by Darwinian mechanisms.
Now one might ask, What is the chance of producing, by random mutation and natural selection, the digital computer program that is the DNA molecule, not to mention the protein synthesis machinery and information-processing mechanism, all of which is mutually interdependent for function and survival?
The only thing that baffles me is the fact that Darwinists are baffled by the fact that most people don’t buy their blind-watchmaker storytelling.
Truly baffling to me, guys. I guess one reason I keep coming back here is that I just can't believe that there are real live human beings that believe the 'blind-watchmaker' story-telling. You are probably right that I am delusional ... but my delusion is that I imagine that no one could possibly reject Intelligent Design if they really understood it.
So I keep trying to explain it.
(OA ... I'm not a fighter pilot -- wanted to be -- but oh, well ... didn't we go over that already? ... I just spent 4 years WITH (do you see that word? WITH) fighter pilots going to the bar. What is it with you and Rilke's obsession with my career? Is it supposed to somehow affect what I am doing here? Just curious.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
give us a break, just like everything else, you haven't a clue what Dembski is saying here, or whether it's correct or accurate (neither does Gil, btw).
did you want to throw Dembski's misadventures into information theory on top of the pile you've made already?
don't you have enough on your plate already?
btw:
Quote
but my delusion is that I imagine that no one could possibly reject Intelligent Design if they really understood it.
the word you are reaching for to describe this is "projection".
You're so full of it (and denial), it would be good for you to at least attempt to use the correct wording.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
What is the probability of arriving at our Hello World program by random mutation and natural selection? How many simpler precursors are functional, what gaps must be crossed to arrive at those islands of function, and how many simultaneous random changes must be made to cross those gaps? How many random variants of these 66 characters will compile? How many will link and execute at all, or execute without fatal errors? Assuming that our program has already been written, what is the chance of evolving it into another, more complex program that will compile, link, execute and produce meaningful output?
Okay, how many?
Quote
I can’t answer these questions,
exactly.
Let us know when you get a decent argument, Gil Dumbass.
No. I cleared my plate this morning. I'm waiting on JonF and Deadman to respond to my quote from Farley that confirms vacuum testing is standard practice for testing Helium diffusion in zircons. This was Henke's primary criticism in his second essay, and it appears to me to be dead.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Take a look at today's post on Good Math/Bad Math. It's about geocentrism. If Paley ever finishes his model someone ought to send it to Mark.
Funny that you mention that, I coincidentally saw that mere seconds ago. I went over there to submit GilDodgen's idiotic 'hello world' math to Markcc. I changed my mind, because while it's idiotic enough for Mark to attack, it's really not creative or interesting in any way.
(OA ... I'm not a fighter pilot -- wanted to be -- but oh, well ... didn't we go over that already? ... I just spent 4 years WITH (do you see that word? WITH) fighter pilots going to the bar. What is it with you and Rilke's obsession with my career? Is it supposed to somehow affect what I am doing here? Just curious.)
YOU are the one who continually brings it up Numbnuts, about every third post it seems, not us. Is it suppose to somehow affect the scientific evidence you have promised but failed to deliver here? Does your ego think we'll be impressed like the rest of your sheepish congregation and go "Oooohh! Dave flew JETS!!!, He must be really SMART and IMPORTANT!!"?
I don't know any mature person in any of my daily dealings who creates a web page that stresses what they did some 20 years ago. All your blog needs is a soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen singing "Glory Days".
You want to get back in everyone's good graces? Then stop being a lying chickenshit.
Stop misrepresenting what people say to you Stop ignoring all the tons of verified scientific evidence that contradicts your bullshit AIG and ICR claims. Acknowledge that it exists even if it you have no clue how to deal with it. Actually read the information and web links people provide you to try and decrease your profound ignorance. Explain why you dishonestly quote-mined the World Book Portuguese article Explain why you think it is OK to call professional scientists incompetent, but your career is off limits. Explain why you think an ignorant layman like you is a better judge of technical evidence than profession scientists in the relevant fields.
Did I mention – stop lying. Folks around here can deal with ignorance. As Will Rogers said: “we’re all ignorant, just on different subjects”. What we cannot tolerate is lying.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Occam, it seems like you think he's capable of stopping the idiotic behavior. In his 334 posts, do you see any indication that he's capable of that?
Cue music tape from South Pacific
"Call me a cockeyed optimist...."
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Truly baffling to me, guys. I guess one reason I keep coming back here is that I just can't believe that there are real live human beings that believe the 'blind-watchmaker' story-telling. You are probably right that I am delusional ... but my delusion is that I imagine that no one could possibly reject Intelligent Design if they really understood it.
So I keep trying to explain it.
Dave, if you want to get anywhere at all you are going to have to stop preaching and start trying to listen.
This math thing you bring up -- I already brought up the answer to it in a post where I wrote about Danny Hillis. Do you remember that post at all? It was about how Hillis was evolving computer programs, search algorithms, through random mutation and natural selection.
The question for you to ask is, how can someone build a computer that evolves computer code when you've just quoted a Dembski site post that just declared that impossible?
I could explain it in more detail -- but you've got to be able to sit still for it and start grasping a few concepts inch by inch in a journey that might be several miles for you.
The first thing we have to determine is where are you mathematically.
Are you familiar with the concept of "permutations"?
Are you familiar with a book called "One Two Three . . . Infinity : Facts and Speculations of Science" by George Gamow?
Can you estimate how many amino acids could fit into a one inch square area at normal Earth pressures?
Mathematically, expect him to have had probably something like college algebra, trig, geometry, and basic differential and integral calculus. DiffyQ 1 maybe.
Permutations, no, aside from the simple n over k permutations and combinations formulas from algebra.
OT, but I actually hiked to the top of the mountain featured in the film version.
It's on the island of Moorea.
great place if you ever get a chance to visit; interesting dichotomy between the islanders, about half and half original pagan vs. introduced christianity (French).
funny, they NEVER fight about it. Quite refreshing to see. You can spend a day with a family living just like they did 200 years ago, then walk (or swim) a couple hundred yards and visit a family that has embraced christianity and sings in the local choir at church.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
OT, but I actually hiked to the top of the mountain featured in the film version.
It's on the island of Moorea.
Cool! I'm jealous But I assume you mean the 2001 made-for-TV version with Glenn Close and Harry Connick Jr. The original 1958 classic film was shot on the northern coast of Kauai, near Princeville. I was lucky enough to spend a week there once - indescribably beautiful place.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The original 1958 classic film was shot on the northern coast of Kauai, near Princeville.
hmm. I was told while I was there (by reputable sources, mind you), that "Bali High" the mountain featured in the film was actually the mountain I mentioned on Moorea.
further research to check sources...
and i am correct:
from the Moorea information page on the gotahiti.com site:
Quote
The south rim of the ancient volcano makes up the mountain range on Moorea. At 3,959 ft., Tohiea is the highest pike. Others include Moua Puta (the mountain with a hole) at 2,722 ft., Rotui at 2,624 ft., and Moua Roa (Bali Hai from the film South Pacific) at 2,499 ft. Mt. Mouaroa is the mountain that is commonly referred to as the "shark’s tooth." It is frequently depicted on post cards and is the image on one side of the 100 CFP coin.
yes, part of the film was filmed in the hawaian islands, but not all of it, apparently.
EDIT:
more anomalies: the IMDB does not list Moorea as a film location.
*shrug*
funny enough, I've been to quite a few places in the tropics both in the atlantic and pacific (comes with the territory), but I never have actually visited the hawaian islands.
I've never heard of anybody who visted that had a disagreeable experience. in fact, several acquaintances have moved to kaui or hawaii over the years.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pacific_(musical)
1958 musical film The musical was made into a successful film of 1958, starring Rossano Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor in the leading roles, with Juanita Hall in the part of Bloody Mary that she had played in the original stage production. Metropolitan Opera star Giorgio Tozzi provided the voice for the role of Emile de Becque. Kauai, one of the Hawaiian Islands, served as the filming location for the movie. The film is notorious for the use of colored filters during many of the song sequences, which has been a source of criticism for the film. Director Joshua Logan wanted it to be a subtle change, but 20th Century Fox, the company that would distribute the 35mm version, made it an extreme change, and since tickets to the film were pre-sold (it was a roadshow attraction), they had no time to correct it. Criticism of the filtering did not prevent the film from topping the box office that year, and the 65mm Todd-AO cinematography (by Leon Shamroy) was nominated for an Academy Award, as was the music adaptation and the sound, winning the latter. All the songs have been retained, and a song entitled "My Girl Back Home," sung by Lt. Cable and Nellie, which was cut from the Broadway show, was added.
The soundtrack album has spent more weeks at Number 1 in the UK album chart than any other album, clocking up an astonishing 115 weeks at the top in the late 50s and early 60s. It spent 70 consecutive weeks at the top of the chart and was Number 1 for the whole of 1959.
Originally shown in a nearly 3-hour roadshow version and later cut to two-and-a-half hours for general release, the film is currently under restoration by rights holders MGM and Fox. Fox (which currently holds both the video rights and the film's copyright) is scheduled to release a "special edition" DVD in 2006. This would include the restored roadshow version with scenes not shown since its original Todd-AO theatrical release.
Television production
South Pacific DVDAn elaborate television production, Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, was directed by Richard Pearce in 2001. A production with Glenn Close, Harry Connick Jr., Rade Serbedzija, Robert Pastorelli, Lori Tan Chinn, Natalie Mendoza, and Jack Thompson, it was filmed primarily in Australia, with some scenes shot in Moorea, an island close to Tahiti). Sixteen songs are featured in the movie. This version omitted the well-known song "Happy Talk", although not for "politically correct" reasons as has been rumored, and cut the even more popular song "Bali Hai" in half. Several new scenes, such as Nellie and Emile's very first meeting at the officer's club, were added, and a new character was created to serve as Nellie's best friend and confidante. The sex scenes between Liat and Lt. Cable were also dealt with more frankly than in the original. The film was harshly criticized by some because the order of the songs was somewhat changed, and because Rade Serbedsija, who played Emile, does not have an operatic singing voice, as have all other "Emile"s before him. Unlike the movie version of "The Sound of Music", the structure of this "South Pacific" was said by some to be damaged because of the change in the order of the songs. In the stage original and in the 1958 film, for instance, the song "Twin Soliloquies" expresses musically what Emile and Nellie do not actually say to each other and leads to Emile's "Some Enchanted Evening", sung only a minute later. In the television version, however, the two songs are sung in two entirely different scenes. A soundtrack from the movie was also released.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
... and yet i was there in 1989, and was told that the shots for the mountain in the 1958 film came from the mountain in Moorea, so it couldn't have been the 2001 version.
also note the bolded section from the gotahiti site says film, not TV production.
any other ideas?
btw, relying on wiki isn't always the best thing for movie data. I've found IMDB to be more complete usually, but even here there are discrepancies.
IMDB also lists two other locations that were used for the film:
I have to admit though, seeing that IMDB only lists the three locations for the 1958 film, and none of them are moorea, I tend to now agree with you that it was more likely to be a range in Kauii, rather than in Moorea that was featured in the film.
as an best guess, the tahitian tourism board probably is the source of the claim of Moorea being the source of the mountain for the film, and nobody bothered to question whether it was really correct or not.
All the locals seemed pretty sure of it when I was there. I know I didn't make it up
I'd have to see the movie again and see if i can verify by memory as to whether there actually is footage in the film from Moorea or not.
The island has very distinctive features, so it shouldn't be too difficult; I think Turner Classic Movies shows it every couple of months or so.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
... and yet i was there in 1989, and was told that the shots for the mountain in the 1958 film came from the mountain in Moorea, so it couldn't have been the 2001 version.
Wasn't trying to claim Wiki is correct, just tossing it out for thought.
You were there, I wasn't, so I will take you at your word.
Really doesn't matter, it's an awesomely beautiful place where ever it is.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I would complain about the off-topicness, but you know, arguing over South Pacific is more constructive and informative than talking to AFDave.
Actually we're not arguing, we're discussing like two adults - politely exchanging ideas and checking each other's sources.
Maybe if we're incredibly lucky AirFarceDavceTard2 will learn by watching.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Though I'm a little baffled that you guys have some small amount of hope that AFDave can learn.
It sounds trite, but I really am doing it for the lurkers. I want them all to say "look at that, they gave that arrogant Fundy dumbass every possible chance to back up his empty talk but he couldn't. I may have to rethink who really has the correct scientific point of view".
Sunday, November 21, 2004 seacoastonline.com Where’s Bali Hai? In your mind
By Toni Stroud Chicago Tribune
One of the most haunting love songs of American musical theater is not about a man or a woman. It’s about an island, your special island, Bali Hai, calling you to come, come away. Author James A. Michener described Bali Hai in "Tales of the South Pacific" (1946-47), a World War II epic that would later be immortalized on stage (opening in 1949) and screen (in 1958) in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musica* South Pacific."
Every island wishes it were Bali Hai. Visit Kauai, Moorea or Bora Bora, and tour guides will tell you that each is Bali Hai. True, Kauai and Moorea were film locations for the movie. And Bora Bora has a restaurant named after one of the script’s more colorful characters, Bloody Mary, who sings that oh-so-alluring song "Bali Hai." But Kauai is a Hawaiian island in the North Pacific. And both Moorea and Bora Bora, though in the South Pacific, are in the Tahitian archipelago of French Polynesia. The native population of Bali Hai was Tonkinese.
So where in the world is the real Bali Hai?
Michener set the record straight by placing the inspiration for Bali Hai much closer to New Guinea than Tahiti. In an article he wrote for the Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin in 1970, provided by the James A. Michener Library at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Bali Hai was the combination of a "miserable" village on Mono Island, about 400 miles northwest of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, and a "steaming, savage island called Aoba," in what is now Vanuatu.
Michener confessed that those islands were so off-putting that no sane person would willingly visit them. But as a writer, Michener took "the privilege of dressing them up a little ... creating an island of loveliness and imagination named Bali Hai."
It wasn’t until after he’d submitted "Tales of the South Pacific" to the publisher that he visited Moorea. When he entered Moorea’s Cook’s Bay, surrounded as it is by dramatic peaks, Michener said the scene was exactly what he had in mind when he "invented" Bali Hai - until he saw Bora Bora, which he named the "Bali Hai of the spirit."
By his own admission, Michener refused to argue with those who claimed Moorea was the real Bali Hai, and placated those who chose Bora Bora by saying that in creating Bali Hai he was describing a perfect island and that "there can be no other more perfect than this."
Perhaps the lure of Bali Hai is that it can be any island you want. That’s the power of fiction. Michener concluded this much about it: "I no longer know what the relationship between fact and fiction is, or ought to be. All I know is that I created an idea long before I saw its reality, and I believe that often happens in art."
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
well, the best way to settle it would be for both of us to sit down and watch it!
then you could tell me which parts came from Kauii, and I could figure out if any came from Moorea. I could even break out my photos and see if they match up.
I haven't seen the film since before 1980, so needless to say my memory is a bit fuzzy.
A "South Pacific" film party! break out the mai tais!
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
A "South Pacific" film party! break out the mai tais!
Deal!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
We will get into this in further detail, but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
Now, I have to admit I haven't been following Dave's C12/C14 stupidity too closely (his hilarious pratfalls discussing He are a lot funnier), but is he really claiming that there was 100 times more C12 in the pre-flood atmosphere than there is today?
In other words, he's claiming the pre-flood atmosphere was 6% C02? And that Adam's descendents could breathe an atmosphere of 6% C02 (to say nothing of the climatological effects)?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
After much effort and conflicting information, I found out that Gorillas, Chimps and Humans have about 98% genetic similarity, they share a common defect, and that evolutionists get very excited about Humans being a hair closer to gorillas than Gorillas are to chimps. 1/2% closer.
I guess when you assume a priori that no evidence contradicting the Bible can possibly be correct, there's no sense in being able to remember what the evidence actually is.
But the real evidence of brain-death is Dave's continuing delusion that he's won a single argument here. It's amazing how he can be told over and over again, with detailed reference to and explanation of the evidence, and yet he keeps repeating the same stupidities over and over again.
I gotta say, he's giving Thordaddy a run for his money in the cranial density sweepstakes.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Also: Did you guys notice that HonestDave brought the relativity theory subject back up? After it was demolished, and he was forced to agree he could not support it, and dropped it? And now he acts as if he posts from some parallel universe where he managed to argue for it successfully?
Yes. I notice Dave has never retracted, nor even acknowledged, his howler about Lorentz transformations contracting space in all three dimensions simultaneously. Nor has he acknowledged that he's never been able to present a scintilla of evidence that any form of relativity—general, special, or ultra-exclusive—supports his notion that God can exist outside of time and space.
Instead, he just breezily claims that he won that argument. Along with all his other arguments.
Given how little Dave knows about even really simple bits of science like Lorentz contractions (which can be characterized in a couple of equations of a couple of terms each), why would he think he could expound knowledgeably on topics like radiometric dating, chromosomal fusions, or comparative linguistics?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I thought I came here asking someone to prove Evolution to me in 5 statements. Seriously ... tell me how I'm insulting you (other than my interpretation of data is different) and I'll stop doing it.
I swear to Bob this has to rate as the dumbest statement he's made yet!
DDTTD says "Summarize 140+ years of work in many different disciplines, with five statements so I, a mere Creationist, can be enlightened."
I almost peed my pants I laughed so hard.
Ain't nobody gonne crucify you here Dave, but they will b!tch slap you till you get tired of it and leave.
AFDave: Given that you've indicated that you *can* be civil, let's see how it works out. Regarding your comment on Farley's use of vacuum to gather gas measurements. This is standard procedure, for Farley and Reiners, yes. However, it doesn't comprise the main argument of Henke. Farley is using the equipment he has. He doesn't have a high-pressure press. Their calibrations are based on methods and data largely derived from previous dating/diffusion work including apatite, titanite and other minerals. See Farley's work in Geochim Cosmochim Acta.
Also, since you mentioned Reiner's paper on the Fish Canyon and Gold Butte Tuff, you should know that was from 2002.
Look at what Reiners says in 2005:
Other important **unresolved** questions include ....the possible role of pressure in He diffusion and He solubility in zircon (my emphases, of course)
This is precisely why baseline studies on diffusivity in zircon at pressure **should** be done...the questions of diffusivity are UNRESOLVED.
M. Kunz (Laboratory of Crystallography, ETH Zurich, Switzerland) presented studies on titanite and zircon under high P-T ( pressure and temperature) conditions and reported ... The PV-relation of U-bearing partially metamict zircon measured during increasing pressure was anomalous (meaning it didn't match Farley's calibration work)** This was in 2000 at the Crystallography at High Pressure and High Temperature using X-rays and Neutrons meeting in Hyogo, Japan.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The Reiners quote is from: Reiners, P.W., 2005, Zircon (U-Th)/He Thermochronometry, in Reiners, P.W. and Ehlers, T.A. (Eds.), Thermochronology, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, v. 58, p. 151-176.
If you'll do a search on virtually any engine, you'll find almost no references to work done on zircon under pressure, especially He diffusion work.
Farley warned in his 2002, "(U-Th)/He Dating: Techniques, Calibrations, and Applications," Rev. Min. Geochem., v. 47, p. 819-844. paper that zircon diffusion rates from " laboratory measurements may not apply under natural conditions." for a good reason--neither he nor anyone else I can find have done work under the many mega-pascals (if I recall right, one atmosphere = 100k pascals or so) needed to simulate the depths that the Fenton Hill zircons were taken from. Henke said that the depths cited would range from 200 to 1,200 bars of pressure. That's a lot. Do your own conversions. It's late and I'm tired after a hard night of ..er, doing things
This is why Reiners says ..**last year**...that the effects of pressure on diffusion are unresolved.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quoting Dumbski will only make you look more ridiculous. His understanding about natural selection can be compared to yours (i.e. zilch). His comparison to a computer program is completely irrelevant, as all his drivel about information theory. YECs and IDers can't realise that evolution don't have any purpose. How could that be, since they are the center of the universe?
Oh, and what about plate tectonics? What does your reference book say about it?
BTW, here is an example of how you are so insulting, apparently without having a clue, which i guess is no surprise, really: Quote Trying to pass yourself off as a fighter pilot just to stroke your own ego is an insult to the real men who were good enough to earn a seat in a fighter aircraft. see?
I don't try to pass myself off as a fighter pilot. You would know that if you you actually take the time to read what I say. I have said several times that it is important to me for people to know my background. If you will notice on my blog, I have told a summary of my complete history right up to the present. I try do for others what they would want, and I always like to know people's backgrounds. Now, if you go look at the latest 'fighter pilot barroom' quote, you will see that my point was that I am used to tough talk where insults are hurled a mile a minute, but nobody gets mad. It's not some twisted idea of trying to get respect from you all by pretending to be a fighter pilot. I have no fantasies about getting respect here at ATBC for the simple reason that I have not seen much respect at all given to Creos. I accepted that a long time ago. It has no effect on what I am doing here, contrary to what some people think.
OA...
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I don't know any mature person in any of my daily dealings who creates a web page that stresses what they did some 20 years ago. All your blog needs is a soundtrack of Bruce Springsteen singing "Glory Days".
See above.
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You want to get back in everyone's good graces? Then stop being a lying chickenshit.
My goal is not to get in everyone's good graces in case you haven't noticed. My goal is truth. But Deadman appears that he wants to be civil. So I'm happy to oblige. You, however, are nothing but a troll. (Well, I take that back ... you actually said something sciency recently and I intend to give you a good answer)
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Stop misrepresenting what people say to you
I don't misrepresent. Or at least when I do, I apologize. Like with Norm.
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Stop ignoring all the tons of verified scientific evidence that contradicts your bullshit AIG and ICR claims. Acknowledge that it exists even if it you have no clue how to deal with it.
I've seen all the 'scientific' evidence so far presented and most of it is unconvincing. Sorry if that chaps you.
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Actually read the information and web links people provide you to try and decrease your profound ignorance.
I try to read them all. I got soured on reading Faid's links because he sent me on a goosechase.
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Explain why you dishonestly quote-mined the World Book Portuguese article
I didn't. If you can't understand my Portuguese explanation by now, then you are as blind as Rilke.
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Explain why you think it is OK to call professional scientists incompetent, but your career is off limits. Explain why you think an ignorant layman like you is a better judge of technical evidence than profession scientists in the relevant fields.
Have I called them incompetent? Show me where I have. My intent is to simply challenge their interpretations of data as it relates to origins. I have said many times how much I appreciate the good work that scientists do.
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Did I mention – stop lying. Folks around here can deal with ignorance. As Will Rogers said: “we’re all ignorant, just on different subjects”. What we cannot tolerate is lying.
Show me where I have lied.
Norm...
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Dave, if you want to get anywhere at all you are going to have to stop preaching and start trying to listen.
I AM getting somewhere already. I am accomplishing what I set out to do and I do listen carefully to what people say. There are 20 or so of you and only one of me, so you'll have to forgive me if I miss a thing or two.
OA...
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It sounds trite, but I really am doing it for the lurkers. I want them all to say "look at that, they gave that arrogant Fundy dumbass every possible chance to back up his empty talk but he couldn't. I may have to rethink who really has the correct scientific point of view".
What you are doing for the lurkers is the same thing that Rilke has done: show them how emotional you are, show them how empty your posts are of any actual sciency sounding statements, show them how you are willing to make up stupid stuff to try to discredit someone, show them how much profanity you know, etc. When people read Incorygible or Chris Hyland or Norm or JonF or others, they say 'Hmmm ... the Evos may have something here ... I think I'll listen further.' When people read your posts, they say 'Wow, what's HIS problem?! What a troll!'
So, you can go on being a 'Stage 4 Troll' or you can get back on the sciency track you were starting to get on. Rilke has already fallen off the 'lunatic troll cliff' and she's been spanked twice (not by me). What will you do?
(Oh ... Crabby ... I take it you are a military man? For your info, O-4 below the zone only begins at 8 years. I got out at 10 years which is right 'in the zone.' I had made my intentions of getting out known at the 8 year point, so of course I would not make O-4. If you'll notice my talk of my past is not to somehow paint some stellar picture--although I have done very well, it's simply to let people know where I am coming from)
Deadman-- I have noted your response and will deal with it on Monday.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Why would we take your opinions of yourself concerning your military performance any more seriously than your 'scientific' performance D/2?
You have discredited any past achievement you claim, by your incredibly untruthful use of knowledge.
Why don't you see what sort of a reception you get over at your one of your hero's sites ...say UD.
See if they buy your RATE piglet.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
[..] I have no fantasies about getting respect here at ATBC for the simple reason that I have not seen much respect at all given to Creos. I accepted that a long time ago. It has no effect on what I am doing here, contrary to what some people think.[..]
Well, has it ever occurred to you that this is because respect has to be earned?
Well, has it ever occurred to you that this is because respect has to be earned?
I've earned respect in every endeavor I have undertaken. I earned the respect of the EE faculty at my university and was given a great graduation job working on SDI, even though they knew I was going into the AF and would only have me a short time. I earned the right to be a fighter pilot by graduating 4th in my class of 40 at ENJJPT (google it if you like). I had many friends who were fighter pilots and earned their respect as a PIT Instructor while training them to be IPs. I had two fighter pilots in my wedding--one F-15 guy and an A-10 guy. All my fighter pilot friends understood why many of us 'FAIPs' didn't get our fighters that we earned--a rule change in the AF--some would say an unlucky break--but from my perspective, the hand of God who knew best for me. I earned the respect of my wife for whom I tabled my fighter pilot dreams--I could have continued to chase it even after the rule change, but decided my family was more important. I earned respect in the business world by putting my customers needs first and building a unique company which was acquired by a global transaction processing company. I am now retired because I earned my retirement, not because someone gave it to me.
So there is no need to lecture me on 'earning respect.' I understand it at least as well as you do. But I can only do my part. I cannot make anyone here respect me if they refuse to do so even when I give respectable arguments.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Geez, take a day or so off and the place goes crazy.
Quote (afdave @ June 10 2006,09:53)
Now we are well into 'Age of the Earth' and we have been through the RATE Group's Helium-Zircon experiment. No 'long age' scientists can figure out how Humphreys and Co. managed to pull off such a remarkable prediction and publish one year before there were any reliable published data for Helium diffusion! JonF has been trying his best to refute Humphreys mainly with the 'Unknown Temperature' argument (a whopping 26 degrees!,
For which nothing but arm-waving explanations have been offered.
AFAIK there are no reliable under-pressure helium diffusion data.
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but he also thinks the 'Vacuum Testing' and the 'Extraneous Helium' arguments have merit. Deadman has joined the fray and says that if Humphreys would have tested for the 3He/4He ratio, he could have eliminated the possibility of extraneous Helium once and for all and been shooting off fireworks now.
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Age determinations were also performed on Fish Canyon Tuff and Gold Butte zircons, the latter from a range of pre-exhumation paleodepths, from 4-16 km. Euhedral zircon crystals (~60-120 µm width and ~150-300 µm length) were picked from aliquots prepared by standard mineral separation techniques (crushing, sieving, magnetic and density separations). He diffusion experiments were performed at Caltech and used approximately 10-15 crystals that were rinsed in cold 10% HNO3 to remove potential adhering phosphates. One aliquot of Fish Canyon Tuff zircons was crushed and sieved to a size range of 44-74 µm to examine the effect of grain size on diffusivity. The second aliquot consisted of grains with typical radii and lengths of 60 µm and 150 µm, respectively. The experimental apparatus and procedures followed those described by Farley et al. (1999), involving cycled step-heating of the crystals in an ultra-high vacuum chamber by a lamp projected through a sapphire window. Reiners, Farley & Hickes: Helium-Zircon Vacuum Testing
OK. So there you have it. JonF says Humphreys and I are liars and he wouldn't trust what we say about vacuum testing. OK. So don't trust me or Humphreys. Trust Farley.
Now, that's interesting. They don't say that helium diffusion under vacuum accurately models helium diffusion under pressure, but you have established that mainstream scientists are using helium diffusion data gathered under vacuum for application to real-world situations. I note two things:
Reiners et al got a lot of spread in their diffusion data, and don't really know the explanation.
Deadman has posted references at around 3 AM EST which indicate that Reiners and Farley acknowledge that the validity of vacuum studies to model helium diffusioin under pressure: "Other important unresolved questions include ....the possible role of pressure in He diffusion and He solubility in zircon". "[zircon diffusion rates from] aboratory measurements may not apply under natural conditions."
So, I'm not sure what's going on here. I'm going to get that 1999 Farley paper on the apparatus and see what's going on there. It'll take a few days; what with parking and whatnot, for one paper it's cheaper and certainly more convenient to pay the $12 to get a PDF from MIT than it is to drive into Cambridge to look it up.
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Now, if we can get Deadman happy about 3He/4He ratios, we are home free and you should all be singing 'Amazing Grace,' right?
Not quite. You still need to establish the amount of temperature effects, and the justification for vacuum diffusion measurements applying to Fenton Hill zircons under pressure. Of course, there's always the "we don't know yet" explanation, which is far ahead of "it's magic" in the list of scientific explanations.
One interesting thing has not been mentioned; none of the mainstream scientists who are doing helium dating on zircons are getting dates anywhere in the vicinity of 6,000 years. Why is this, Davie-poo? We haven't gotten a good dose of YEC "all the scientists in the world are in a vast conspiracy" ranting from you recently ... maybe Humphreys et al are making some error or, horrors!, fakin' it?
Oh, and, Dave: you're still a liar. Humphreys is still a liar. You may be batting .001 after this information you dug up, but your batting average is pretty pathetic.
I try to read them all. I got soured on reading Faid's links because he sent me on a goosechase.
That's BS and we both know it. You were simply unable to get a clue as to what the lesson was about, and decided it was "misleading". And, of course, you completely ignored us when we tried to explain- as usual. So quit your whining.
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I didn't. If you can't understand my Portuguese explanation by now, then you are as blind as Rilke.
Yes you did. You deliberately quote-mined the Encyclopedia Britannica article. You LIED about that, dave. And even if Occam confused the two articles, that doesn't help your case. You still lied to us, HonestDave.
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Show me where I have lied.
Ooookay, dave... off the top of my head:
You LIED about TalkOrigins only refering to multiple universes in their rebuttal of the "fine-tuned universe" argument. I pointed you to the part three paragraphs down from your own quote, and you systematically ignored me. After about 20 times of showing you the quote, you blabbered something like "I dont have to address every wild theory you guys come up with" and kept arguing as if we only discussed multiple Universes. Strike one.
You said that all fusions are harmful. I explained that it's not so. You ignored me once again, until, after a hundred posts and two threads, you claim I never answered you (LIE 1) and ask for explanations -and links. I quote my explanation, and provide links. Then you say you never asked for links (LIE 2), just an explanation. I quote my explanation again. Finally, when you're cornered, as more people weigh in, you say "OK, but Faid never explained anything to me" even when I was the first one to do so. And that's LIE 3. Strike two.
And the winner: You quote a snippet of a phrase from Encyclopedia Britannica, that supposedly says something about Portuguese originating from some medieval dialect of Lisbon. Quoting half a phrase out of context looks suspicious, so I do some search... And find that the actual passage talks about existing Portuguese dialects, and how "standard" Portuguese is defined by the dialect of Lisbon, and has nothing to do with the language's roots or history. And I find out that EB actually supports our claims about the origin of Portuguese. Deliberate quote-mining and tampering with a source = LIE, dave. Aaand that's strike three.
And that's just some of the times I was involved in the debate, dave. So tell me, in all honesty (hah!!): If someone did this to you, what would you say about him? And how long would you be able to keep your temper?
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There are 20 or so of you and only one of me, so you'll have to forgive me if I miss a thing or two.
Only, for some reason, you always seem to miss those things it would be... inconvenient for you to answer. And that's no surprise, since you avoid answering until a lot of comments have piled up, and answer to those that you like.
dave, dave... You missed your path in life. You'd make a great used car salesman.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
(Snip another steaming pile of AFDaveTard's off topic self-aggrandizing)
...So there is no need to lecture me on 'earning respect.' I understand it at least as well as you do. But I can only do my part. I cannot make anyone here respect me if they refuse to do so even when I give respectable arguments.
Sorry DreamerDave, all you have earned here is derisive laughter with your "respectable" regurgitation of crap by AIG and ICR. You continue to ignore contradicting data and to lie about virtually everything involved. You most certainly did dishonestly quote mine that EB (not WB, my bad) article. It was presented right here in black and white for all to see, yet you still choose to lie about it.
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Now, if you go look at the latest 'fighter pilot barroom' quote, you will see that my point was that I am used to tough talk where insults are hurled a mile a minute, but nobody gets mad.
Boo hoo hoo Davie-poo! And yet you still cry like a little girl about how it hurts your delicate ears when some people use harsh language Mr. "I'm a macho fighter stud". You can't have it both ways, you lying hypocrite.
You were given a quota of respect based on the benefit of the doubt when you first showed up but you pissed that all away with your arrogant condescending attitude and dishonesty. Don't think for a minute that whining about how you hold some nebulous "moral high ground" will erase your past behavior.
Now if you want to talk science, let's talk science.
Please present your evidence that there was up to 100x the concentration of C12 in the atmosphere as little as 6000 years ago.
Please give your explanation for all the data you were presented that shows the Earth and human culture to be way older than 6000 years.
Please give your explanation for why so many independent lines of evidence all agree with each other on dates that show you are wrong. You can start with the C14 calibration curves presented by JonF.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
AFDave: There are 20 or so of you and only one of me, so you'll have to forgive me if I miss a thing or two.
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Faid: Only, for some reason, you always seem to miss those things it would be... inconvenient for you to answer. And that's no surprise, since you avoid answering until a lot of comments have piled up, and answer to those that you like.
Hey AFDave - there's a term commonly used in the military for the lazy goldbrick soldiers who routinely use dishonest excuses to avoid the difficult assignments and try to slide by with just doing the minimal amount of easy work.
I bet your "fighter pilot barroom buddies" know what it is, and who it applies to.
Do you know what it is? I can tell you if you like, but it might hurt your sensitive girlish ears...
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Wow not one but TWO REAL fighter pilots at your wedding ........who the F$%^ are you GOD?
So what does that entitle you to ...a free Big Mac?
At least you can blame them if the AF blows up more Canadians by accident in Afghanistan.
Who me? I'm not a fighter pilot.
Your ego knows no bounds does it D/2, just change the subject to something irrelevant and hope for some reflected glory and nobody calls on your lying ways
Well D/2 lets start with the biggest lie first shall we?
A 6000 year old earth is an outright lie AFDAVE and you know it. No amount of squirming is going to get you out of it. Your repeating of those lies denies such things as Nuclear explosions, the formation of crude Oil, cosmic microwave background radiation, plus quite literally mountains of evidence prior to your lie.
What are you scared of? The fact that your parents lied to you? The Fact that you are carrying on that lie to your children? Isn't there a place promised for people like you.
Coffee break over D/2... head back in the sewer.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, if you want to get anywhere at all you are going to have to stop preaching and start trying to listen.
I AM getting somewhere already. I am accomplishing what I set out to do and I do listen carefully to what people say. There are 20 or so of you and only one of me, so you'll have to forgive me if I miss a thing or two.
No, Dave, if you were really listening you would not have brought up the GilDodgen quote about the "hello world" program from Uncommon Descent because I gave you that link to the Chapter from Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" about Danny Hillis many days ago. If you had understood what I wrote about Hillis you would have realized that GilDodgen simply didn't know anything about genetic algolrithims and evolutionary programming.
Now, you may be overwhelmed by the amount and diversity of information people are throwing at you (at least what they use to) but you're not picking up anything.
You didn't even pick up the questions I asked about where were you mathematically. Why not?
Dave, I told you at the beginning of this thread that you were never going to be able to defeat all of the evidence for an old earth. I said you'd have to defeat 90 to 95% of that evidence, because the remaining 5 or 10% would be more than enough to convince anyone open-minded about it.
As it stands, you have defeated none of the evidence supporting an old earth (not that anyone expected someone with an undergraduate degree in engineering to be able to defeat the work of tens of thousands of Ph.Ds over the last century).
And, I should say at least one more time, you've wasted the better part of two weeks discussing two anomalous results of radiometric dating, trying to defeat hundreds of thousands of other results. Why do you suppose the entire scientific community supports the accuracy of radiometric dating, Dave? Are they all delusional? Do you suppose people who have done their doctoral dissertations on radiometric dating are all wrong, and you, a complete dilettante in the field, who knows basically nothing about the methodologies involved, are right?
For some reason, you actually think you're making progress in your attempts to overturn a century and a half or more of scientific research. Whom do you suppose you're making that progress with, Dave? Do you think you're persuading anyone here?
The only thing you're persuading anyone of is the incredible power of religious belief to cloud men's eyes to what otherwise would be plainly visible to them.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1. AFD will respond by asking you to point out where he ever lied.
2. anybody expecting anything different will lose a few more brain cells.
Today, AFD said this:
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Did I mention – stop lying. Folks around here can deal with ignorance. As Will Rogers said: “we’re all ignorant, just on different subjects”. What we cannot tolerate is lying.
Show me where I have lied.
conclusion:
Dave is so oblivious and predictable, we should be trying to sell him various bridgeworks for cash.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
For some reason, you actually think you're making progress in your attempts to overturn a century and a half or more of scientific research. Whom do you suppose you're making that progress with, Dave? Do you think you're persuading anyone here?
He persuaded a bunch of poll-respondents that he's an idiot.
Explain why you dishonestly quote-mined the World Book Portuguese article
I didn't. If you can't understand my Portuguese explanation by now, then you are as blind as Rilke.
"Me heap big manly Christian. Me used to be Air Force Man. Me always right, liberals always wrong. Jesus say so".
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
After much effort and conflicting information, I found out that Gorillas, Chimps and Humans have about 98% genetic similarity, they share a common defect, and that evolutionists get very excited about Humans being a hair closer to gorillas than Gorillas are to chimps. 1/2% closer. Pretty exciting stuff, to be sure! Never mind all those HUGE differences ... we're 98% similar! Let's give 'em minority status and voting rights! Yippeee! There was some intriguing info about chromosomes, but again, nothing which requires common ancestry.
Dave, I love how you keep returning to the "1/2% closer" (even if you can't keep track of what is closer to what). Gives me a chuckle every time. I would have assumed they taught engineers how to appropriately apply maths to the real world, but you know what they say about assuming anything. Speaking of which...
AFDave is standing in a barn on a hot summer day. Also inside the barn are a donkey and a fresh pile of road apples. Dave's task is to empirically determine the difference (if any) between himself and these two other items. Our trusty engineer pulls out his WWJM-brand (What Would Jesus Measure) tape and gets to work.
The first thing he does is measure the dimensions of the barn and calculate its volume. He then measures himself, the donkey and the pile, and calculates their respective volumes relative to that of the barn:
Vdonkey/Vbarn = 2% Vdave/Vbarn = 1% Vpile/Vbarn = 0.5% (it's a big pile)
Based on these results, and given the overwhelming volume of empty hot air, Dave is now satisfied that there is no convincing evidence of any difference between himself, an ass, and a steaming pile of horsesh1t. Unfortunately, his satisfaction is shortlived, and turns to palpable fear when a small side door opens and Thordaddy creeps into the stables...
I wouldn't worry. Thordaddy probably just wants to propose to the donkey...
But if even AFDave the Engineer can't spot the 1% difference between himself and the donkey, and if Thor feels entitled by the evil homosexual agenda to claim more than one bride...
AFDave: Given that you've indicated that you *can* be civil, let's see how it works out. Regarding your comment on Farley's use of vacuum to gather gas measurements. This is standard procedure, for Farley and Reiners, yes. However, it doesn't comprise the main argument of Henke. Farley is using the equipment he has. He doesn't have a high-pressure press. Their calibrations are based on methods and data largely derived from previous dating/diffusion work including apatite, titanite and other minerals. See Farley's work in Geochim Cosmochim Acta.
Also, since you mentioned Reiner's paper on the Fish Canyon and Gold Butte Tuff, you should know that was from 2002.
Look at what Reiners says in 2005:
Other important **unresolved** questions include ....the possible role of pressure in He diffusion and He solubility in zircon (my emphases, of course)
This is precisely why baseline studies on diffusivity in zircon at pressure **should** be done...the questions of diffusivity are UNRESOLVED.
M. Kunz (Laboratory of Crystallography, ETH Zurich, Switzerland) presented studies on titanite and zircon under high P-T ( pressure and temperature) conditions and reported ... The PV-relation of U-bearing partially metamict zircon measured during increasing pressure was anomalous (meaning it didn't match Farley's calibration work)** This was in 2000 at the Crystallography at High Pressure and High Temperature using X-rays and Neutrons meeting in Hyogo, Japan.
The Reiners quote is from: Reiners, P.W., 2005, Zircon (U-Th)/He Thermochronometry, in Reiners, P.W. and Ehlers, T.A. (Eds.), Thermochronology, Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry, v. 58, p. 151-176.
If you'll do a search on virtually any engine, you'll find almost no references to work done on zircon under pressure, especially He diffusion work.
Farley warned in his 2002, "(U-Th)/He Dating: Techniques, Calibrations, and Applications," Rev. Min. Geochem., v. 47, p. 819-844. paper that zircon diffusion rates from " laboratory measurements may not apply under natural conditions." for a good reason--neither he nor anyone else I can find have done work under the many mega-pascals (if I recall right, one atmosphere = 100k pascals or so) needed to simulate the depths that the Fenton Hill zircons were taken from. Henke said that the depths cited would range from 200 to 1,200 bars of pressure. That's a lot. Do your own conversions. It's late and I'm tired after a hard night of ..er, doing things
This is why Reiners says ..**last year**...that the effects of pressure on diffusion are unresolved.
Deadman- The pressure issue is a fair concern and should be addressed. However, in my opinion, it has been thoroughly addressed already by Humphreys as follows...
Back in 1996, when I first began to think about the helium-in-zircon data we had then, I considered Henke’s scenario: the possibility that the pressures deep underground might account for the extraordinary amounts of helium retained in the zircons. However, I gave up on that idea when I found that for hard materials, pressure has very little effect on diffusion rates. Hardness relates to incompressibility, which hinders pressure from diminishing the space between atoms and thereby slowing diffusion.
The pressure at 3 kilometers, the mid-range depth of our samples, is about 1 kilobar (about 1000 times atmospheric pressure). I found a paper[4] showing that even in a relatively soft material like lead, one kilobar of pressure would reduce self-diffusion (lead atoms moving through lead) by less than 20%. On the geologists' Mohs scale, lead has a hardness of only 1.5. If you put it in a vise, it is not difficult to compress.
Zircon, on the other hand, is among the hardest of minerals, 7.5 on the Mohs scale. That is harder than the best steel (6.5), and even harder than quartz (7.0). That's why crushing granite to extract zircons is not a worry to researchers. If you put a ball bearing of the finest steel into a large vise and squeeze it as tightly as you can (producing kilobar pressures), the ball bearing will suffer little damage and little compression.
Zircon, being harder than steel, would be much less compressible than lead.[5] So pressure should affect diffusion rates much less than in lead, which for kilobar pressures had a reduction of only 20% in the rates, according to the paper above. In 1996, those considerations made me think that the pressure effect on hard minerals is negligible. Below are even more reasons to think so.
As far as I know, nobody has measured the effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon. However I have at hand a paper[6] that gives, among other data, the pressure effect on argon diffusion in glasses, such as rhyolite obsidian. At the highest temperature to which our helium-in-zircon experiment went, 500 degrees C, the pressure effect on the glasses was almost imperceptible, a few percent per kilobar. A few hundred degrees higher than our experiment, 600 to 700°C, the pressure effect was up to only a few dozen percent per kilobar.
Several factors combine to say that the pressure effect on helium diffusion in our zircon experiments was much less than the above few percent per kilobar:
The cooler the mineral, the less the effect, and the critical part of our data was much cooler than the above, only 100 to 300 °C. Glasses should be more compressible than crystals of the same composition; glasses are generally not as hard because of weaker chemical bonds between parts. So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz. In a given mineral, helium diffusion is less affected by pressure than argon, because a helium atom is smaller than an argon atom. The smaller the atom, the less the effect on its diffusion for a given amount of pressure-induced reduction of the space between atoms. All these factors strongly suggest that the diffusion rates in our zircons were influenced far less than one percent by removing them from underground pressures to a vacuum chamber.
Also, Humphreys goes on to object to Henke's unfair tactics: i.e. his attempt to compare Helium diffusion in hot, dry zircons to Argon diffusion in soft mica, and comparing wet conditions vs. dry conditions. He misleads his readers to think that this is a fair comparison by pointing out the 3-6 orders of magnitude difference in the results.
As for the 3He/4He ratio test, I have googled enough to know what the deal is (Paley also gave a nice summary ... thanks Paley) on that. I e-mailed ICR over the weekend and received a response from a Humphreys' grad assistant that 3He/4He ratio testing WAS accomplished and that analysis is in the RATE Report Books. I ordered those last week, so I will let you know what I find when I get them.
Deadman ...
Quote
Fenton Hill is geothermically active. Sasada notes evidence of HYDROthermic activity in the Fenton Hill area. The heat source for Fenton Hill is the Valle Caldera. The heat from the Valle Caldera comes from far below the Fenton Hill sample depths, travels up along fractures and faults to...Fenton Hill
Humphreys throws up a red herring, claiming that any researcher would have to find basalt conduits. Wrong. Helium transport doesn't even need fluids. Outgassing of helium is common near volcanic plumes. Excess helium is present in Valles Caldera (Goff and Gardner 1994) due to this. Outgassing can be massively episodic.
At a depth of 1,479 meters, pressures and heat are minor in comparison to the outgassing depths that helium emerges from. Thus,Pressure is not a problem.
Humphreys stupid claim that helium wouldn't be able to move through the rock layers is also negated, if nothing else by the large amount of fracturing and faulting in the area as well as Sesada's discovery of hydrothermic vents. Further, his claims on the permeability of the material are false. His partner Baumgardner admitted that the "granidiorite" sample core was interlaced with ...VEINS OF GNEISS. http://www.icr.org/pdf/rate/humphreys_to_hanke.pdf
Granodiorite is not encountered in the cores until depths of 2591 meters (Laney et al., 1981 ; Laughlin et al., 1983 ; Burruss and Hollister, 1979 ; Sasada, 1989) Laughlin specifically notes that the cores of that 1500 meter depth are GNEISS . Of course, Humphreys never tested IF it was granidiorite. Why? because ***they NEEDED to claim that it was more impermeable** than it would be as the GNEISS that it IS.
The evidence for large amounts of helium from volcanic areas is very old. Humpheys knew this, Humpheys selected zircon/Helium because it is clear that in any given volcanic area of sufficient complexity, you are going to find areas in that geology that have experienced differential heating/pressures/exposure to gasses and fluids
Humphreys knew from his creationist buddy Gentry that large amounts of Helium were found in the zircons. Humphreys tested the zircons, but deliberately avoided looking at He3/He4 ratios that would have eliminated NON-radiogenic Helium as a source. WHY, AFDave? It has long been known that by looking at helium isotopes, you can determine this. Humphreys knew this.....SO WHY DIDN'T HE TEST FOR IT? It's a simple procedure, you know. It wouldn't even take 2 days to find out.
But how can the specific samples that Humphreys cites...be tested if Humphreys won't release them?
Furthermore, as Henke notes...He won't even submit his work to genuine peer review, which would require that he turn over said labwork, materials and notes.
I am told that Humphreys DID test for 3He/4He ratios. If he did, and the results confirm no infiltration, then your discussion above is N/A. If the results are not there or inconclusive, then we need to consider what you are saying. I will let you know what I find when I receive the books (hopefully this week).
I am also told that the draft of the second RATE book was sent to leading conventional scientists for review and comment and that very little was received. As for submission for 'genuine peer review,' I have not fully investigated this, but it is certainly a fair question to ask.
TROLL CONTROL SECTION I have a couple of observations to make regarding our resident trolls, Rilke and Aftershave.
First, believe it or not, I do sincerely want evolution minded scientists and long age geologists to have a fair shake at presenting information. And I was serious when I said that I would become an evolutionist if presented with enough credible evidence.
To prove this good intent to you, I will give the trolls a free piece of advice. I have observed that Aftershave apparently thinks he has an important role as 'Guardian of the Lurkers.' He apparently thinks that some of the lurkers might find my arguments convincing and thus be misled into the 'horrible abyss of YEC thinking.' I note that Steve Story agrees with him. I do take this as complement ... thank you, guys! (you know, you have to take your complements however you can get them when you are a 'YEC among wolves'
It may surprise you to know that my viewpoint is actually helped by trolls (at least the 'Team Evo' variety of trolls like Rilke and Aftershave). What happens is that lurkers read posts by Rilke and Aftershave with their nonsensical venom coupled with the complete absence of any scientific content and they say 'Whoa ... what's their problem?' On the other hand, when they read Deadman and JonF and Incorygible and Norm and others like them, they say 'Hmmm...that's some pretty good stuff. I think I will keep reading what they have to say.' I will throw this in too ... Deadman is sharp, guys. I salute you, Deadman, as a worthy opponent. I have been employing certain techniques of psychological warfare on various people at different times here, and Deadman is the first one that I am aware of that detected one of my techniques. I'll let you other folks figure out what he did specifically if you care to. And he has shown further astuteness by very quickly resorting to what I consider to be the only sensible approach for Evolutionists and Long Agers to combat the YEC postion: presenting credible, scientific information.
So my advice to our trolls is: Try to at least sound sciency. It will help you achieve your goal of 'protecting the lurkers' far better than your current approach. When trolls (Rilke) get so ridiculous and incoherent that even people who think I am a first class moron--Stephen Elliot, Steve Story and Argystokes--jump in and correct her, you know that my advice is sound. These guys are smart enough to know that their 'team' is not helped by the likes of Rilke.
So Aftershave, you are not yet as looney a troll as Rilke, but keep going and you might become that looney. But I will not spend much more time calling you down. Didn't have to with Rilke. Your own teammates did it for me.
MY CAREER AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
I think it is interesting to draw parallels between the Search for Truth ... 1) About my career, and 2) About Origins
My career is a very unusual one ... how many people do you know of that grew up in a grass hut, then flew jets, then flew helicopters, then B-2 simulators, then started 2 different businesses, then retired at 42? Most people grew up in the suburbs or on the farm, went to college, got a job, had 1.8 kids and pretty much did 'normal' things all their life.
Mine has been a very unusual life with many surprising twists and turns. And so it parallels the 'Story of Nature' very well. What an odd adventure the Study of Nature has been! Would a space alien who had never visited earth have ever guessed there are such things as elephants and giraffes? Or helicopter seeds? Or bats with 'radar'? Or that the genetic code is like computer software?
Now what I find interesting is that some people here are motivated to make statements about my career. Why do they do this? Well, it's pretty obvious ... they don't like me. They find my viewpoint to be obnoxious and reprehensible for whatever reason and so they they think it is to their advantage to say negative things about my career, hoping that this will then discredit me and cause the lurkers to not believe anything I say. Notice that they look at my career under a microscope and try to find negative things: 'Well ... he didn't say what he flew, so he probably washed out of UPT .. we'll start calling him 'Washout' ... oh, and since he probably washed out, that means he never made it past 2nd LT, so we'll call him '2nd LT washout.' Oh, oops ... he apparently graduated from a fighter pilot UPT, but he didn't fly fighters ... hmmm ... I guess he was too obnoxious with his proselytizing or something, or maybe he wasn't a very good pilot. Oh look ... he got scuttled to helicopters ... Hueys no less ... what a loser! He must have really done something wrong to deserve that! And he only made 0-3 after 10 years?! What a loser! Then he applied to the B-2 program and all they gave him was simulators. Now he's unemployed because how else would he have all this time to make such long posts! What a loser!'
What is interesting is how various people have made up all kinds of ridiculous stuff about my career ... why? Because they are not interested in TRUTH. They are interested in LIES in order to prop up their preferred 'Theory of AF Dave'. So what we have illustrated in living color is a blatant refusal to consider the actual evidence and to concoct wild fairy tales to support a preferred theory. If they took the time to examine the actual evidence, they would see that I graduated 4th in my UPT class so I did 'earn my fighter.' They would see that I spent 4 years with fighter pilots and training some of them to be IPs and that I made many good friends of them. If they talked with some of these guys they would know what a 'good stick' I was and they would know that I had their respect as a pilot. They would also know that I got married and tabled the urge to fly fighters because of my family. If they went and examined the relevant personnel documents, they would see that my career decisions were then motivated primarily by my young family, which overpowered my testosterone, thus the weird choice of helicopters and the choice of B-2 sims as good 'getting out' jobs. If they were honest about the AF Dave Career truth search, they would then have found that when someone has a lot of spare time, there are more possibilities than 'he's unemployed.' I will not go into more detail, but only a foolish person would latch onto one possibility and run with it with absolutely no evidence.
Now how does this relate to science and the Study of Origins? Very simple. Many scientists today find YECism reprehensible and they recoil at any statements which even have a whiff of YEC ideas. So what they have done is to intentionally avoid any evidence which might lend support to the YEC system. They don't even want to look at it, and when anyone brings it up, they automatically write them off as a lunatic. In fact, the more sensible they sound, the louder and more creative they become in trying to show the perceived lunacy. And to prop up their preferred 'Theory of Evolution' they concoct 'evidence' to support what they WANT to believe ... Look at these fossil 'sequences' ... look at 'Evolution in Action' with bacteria ... look at ape and human DNA ... look at rock dating ... blah blah blah.
It's an interesting parallel, to be sure.
******************************************
QUESTION AND ANSWER SECTION
Faid- you're becoming a troll ... I wasn't anywhere close to a lie on the 'multiple universe' thing. My point with quoting that article was not what you thought it was. My point was to show that even Talk Origins did not attempt to refute 'Cosmic Fine Tuning.' I pointed out that surely they would have attempted to refute it if they could have. They essentially agreed that the appearance of 'Cosmic Fine Tuning' has in fact been demonstrated, and the only objection they could muster was essentially 'Well, that may be true for THIS universe, but what about other ones?' and other simlar musings. You took what I said and tried to twist it beyond recognition-- very trollish!
I did not say all fusions are harmful and you know it. I said that I was talking to a doctor friend of mine and SHE claimed that. I passed this claim on to you for analysis which you did (sort of). Incorygible did a much better job of it and where that issue stands in my mind now is that it appears to be simply a subset of all mutations. Of course, ToE advocates base their whole theory on the idea that a few 'beneficial' mutations (which I have learned are a loss of information in all cases, not a gain) will somehow be preserved and accumulate, eventually resulting in increased complexity of organisms. I obviously disagree and I consider it to be pointless to argue the chromosome thing further. I will say to Incorygible that I am still waiting to hear why you think it is valid to say that gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya. I know you read it in a textbook, but my questions was, 'Why did the textbook think this is valid? What is the basis for saying this?'
It appears that you tried to mislead me with your 'Deletion Lesson' ... The article was not misleading for what it was teaching, but it appeared to me that you were attempting to mislead me by using that article to make me believe that Humans and Chimps had an 'identical mistake.' I later learned that some substitutions and deletions are the same, but there are many that are not. I cannot prove that you did this intentionally, but it appeared that you did. If you want me to spend more time answering you, try to convice me that you are not simply being a troll.
There are several good, smart people like Deadman, Incorygible and JonF who are doing well at giving ToE and Long Agers an honorable reputation because of their depth of knowledge and coherent arguments. Why should I listen to your confusing stuff? I've wasted enough time on confirmed trolls like Rilke and Aftershave already.
Qetzal ...
Quote
A while back, you said you believe God exists and that the Bible is literally correct because you were convinced by the evidence. Right? So my question: what evidence would convince you the Bible is not literally correct, or that God does not exist?
Qetzal- Short answer now...more later...I would be convinced that the Bible is not true had there not been so much archaeological confirmation of the historicity of the Bible during the 19th and 20th centuries ... Of course there is much we cannot verify, but when we can, the Bible is proved correct. The prophecies of the Bible are uncanny ... Particularly the Messianic prophecy ... Go to www.messiahrevealed.org. If there were no fulfilled prophecy, I might not think that the Bible is a supernatural book. If the Bible was not so accurate in describing the human condition, I might think it is merely a product of men. If Evolution were a plausible theory (the macro part), I might not believe the Bible. A good start for this would be with fruit flies ... If accelerated evolution could produce something better than dead or mangled fruit flies, I might take an interest in the theory and not believe the Bible. These are a few ... There are more.
Jeannot ...
Quote
Dave, for the second time, what does you theory say about plate tectonics? Thanks. PS: I haven't done the calculation, but the distance between us and chimps is more like 50% lower than the distance between chimps and gorillas. I know your not familiar with maths, but when comparing 0.02 and 0.03 (for instance), the relevant difference is +50%, not +0.1%. Think hard Dave, you can understand. Using AFDave's logic : "G. W. Bush is only 2% closer to me than to a chimp (1-0.98)? Man, 2 ridiculous percent? Are you kidding?"
Jeannot ... Tectonics ... Read “The Genesis Flood” by Morris and Whitcomb which has convinced many a formerly skeptic PhD to become a Creationist in the last 50 years ... Don't hold me to all of this because I am working from memory, but basically YECs think there was a super-continent with gentle hills and a shallow ocean prior to the Flood. There was also a vapor canopy and a completely different climate and hydrologic cycle, higher atmospheric pressure, much more biomass, etc. Then there was a massive tectonic, hydraulic and volcanic cataclysm (the Flood of Noah), which led to splitting of the continents, precipitated the vapor canopy, uplifted the mountain ranges, deepened the oceans, and deposited massive quantities of sediment, massive coal, oil, and chalk beds and millions of fossils. The postulated sources of the water are the vapor canopy which precipitated and the underground reservoirs, which apparently were extensive. I know this leaves many questions, and we will get to them. Of course, YECs do not have all the answers on HOW this all worked, but it is interesting that the old Lyellian uniformitarianism has succumbed to 'neo-catastrophism' and 'episodicity' ... Hmmm ... Maybe someday geologists will realize that the old catastrophists were right after all ... :-)
Jeannot...I'll take you on in 'maths' as you call it any day ... Here's the relevant 'maths' - Similarity %: HC- 98.89, HG-98.52, CG-98.36 (courtesy of Incorygible) You are using the difference HC-CG as the denominator in your formula and HC-HG as your numerator, giving something like .2/.5=40%, which is completely irrelevant and highly misleading. For an organism to be '40% closer' to humans than some other organism, an honest comparison would be something like this: HX=80% and HY=40%. Now you can say 'X' is 40% closer to 'H' than 'Y' because the proper denominator is used, that is ... 100%. You are essentially 'magnifying the differences with an electron microscope' by using the small denominator. Common sense should have told you that a chimp is not 40% closer to a human that a gorilla. What is fair to say is that chimps are slightly (1/2% or so) closer to humans than gorillas. But this statement does nothing for our attempt to favor Common Descent over Common Design because it sis so small. As for my logic about Bush, you are correct: Bush is only 2% closer to you than to a chimp, which is no problem for Creationists (and Democrats :-) ). Their gross morphologies are similar in many ways, so why should we not expect that their genes are similar?
Norm…
Quote
If you had understood what I wrote about Hillis you would have realized that GilDodgen simply didn't know anything about genetic algolrithims and evolutionary programming.
Norm- I understood your genetic algorithm piece, and I understood it and I consider it to be irrelevant to macroevolution. Remember the AIG article I gave you?
Faid…
Quote
You deliberately quote-mined the Encyclopedia Britannica article.
Faid- The quote I used from EB has the same meaning whether you include the context or not. This is not a dishonest quote mine. Let me say this about the Portuguese thing and many similar items ... You scientists are so detail oriented (a good thing in many contexts) that you sometimes get hung up on my generalizations. Saying that 'Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish' is a GENERALIZATION, like 'The sky is blue' or 'the grass is green.' You could legitimately argue that those two statements are not accurate, but who would be so obnoxious as to do so? Well ... there are a few here that are that obnoxious as I have found, but they are few, and you will notice that most of the regulars are either silent or conciliatory on the issue, which is highly indicative given the extreme bias against my views that exists here.
Norm ...
Quote
The Nation Helium Reserve stores over a billion cubic feet of helium in a natural geologic gas storage formation. Now, keep in mind that on Earth, helium is primarily a product of radioactive decay and is found in significant amounts only in natural gas.
That showed up when I googled "Fenton Hill, natural gas."
Now, Dave, keep in mind how much helium we've already stored. Given 6,000 to 10,000 years, Dave, how much radioactive decay of how many tons of radioactive heavy elements would have been needed to produce just that much helium, a billion cubic feet of it, in the time YEC allows? Now, keep in mind that Uranium-238, one of the more common elements we can dig up, decays through a chain of transformations, ultimately producing lead-206 and eight helium atoms.
The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years, a gram of U-238 would produce so few decays per year that it would take how many tons of it to produce a billion cubic feet of helium?
I leave the calculations to you, Dave. How much radioactive stuff has to be in our Earth to get that helium in a YEC time frame?
Norm ... I have not studied this yet and it would be interesting to study. You are correct that there would not be anywhere close to enough time available to generate enough Heium assuming today's decay rates, but as the RATE Group has pointed out many times, this is an assumption, and there are beginning to be many indicators supporting the idea that this assumption may be grossly wrong. We will be discussing this in more detail as we walk through the RATE Group findings.
Crabby...
Quote
Ain't nobody gonne crucify you here Dave, but they will b!tch slap you till you get tired of it and leave.
Crabby ... you are not very bright if you think I'm going to get tired of being 'b!tch slapped' and leave. There are two reasons I will leave: Wesley bans me or I finish what I set out to do.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
There are two reasons I will leave: Wesley bans me or I finish what I set out to do.
Well, it could be a long time, as you apparently set out prove that reality does not exist, and even the Catholic Church had to give that up after a few hundered years.
So I guess Wesley is our only hope
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
Jeannot...I'll take you on in 'maths' as you call it any day ... Here's the relevant 'maths' - Similarity %: HC- 98.89, HG-98.52, CG-98.36 (courtesy of Incorygible) You are using the difference HC-CG as the denominator in your formula and HC-HG as your numerator, giving something like .2/.5=40%, which is completely irrelevant and highly misleading. For an organism to be '40% closer' to humans than some other organism, an honest comparison would be something like this: HX=80% and HY=40%. Now you can say 'X' is 40% closer to 'H' than 'Y' because the proper denominator is used, that is ... 100%. You are essentially 'magnifying the differences with an electron microscope' by using the small denominator. Common sense should have told you that a chimp is not 40% closer to a human that a gorilla. What is fair to say is that chimps are slightly (1/2% or so) closer to humans than gorillas. But this statement does nothing for our attempt to favor Common Descent over Common Design because it sis so small. As for my logic about Bush, you are correct: Bush is only 2% closer to you than to a chimp, which is no problem for Creationists (and Democrats :-) ). Their gross morphologies are similar in many ways, so why should we not expect that their genes are similar?
Dave, you are DEAD WRONG in your mathematical reasoning here, as my parable illustrated in advance of your attempt at explaining yourself. The degree of genetic distance between humans-chimps and chimps-gorillas IS calculated exactly as Jeannot suggested. Note that to provide the table you keep citing as you wanted it, I actually had to convert the published % difference to % similarity. We have argued that gorillas have almost twice as many differences (when comparing their DNA to ours) as chimps, and the same could be said from the perspective of the chimp DNA. Whether or not this is 'magnifying the differences with an electron microscope' is NOT a question of percentages and how they are used, but a question of statistics (number of samples, variance, etc.), for which you have already been provided the p-value.
Yawn ....somebody wake me up when AFDave starts explaining why he is lying in less than 5 sentences.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You are using the difference HC-CG as the denominator in your formula and HC-HG as your numerator, giving something like .2/.5=40%, which is completely irrelevant and highly misleading. For an organism to be '40% closer' to humans than some other organism, an honest comparison would be something like this: HX=80% and HY=40%. Now you can say 'X' is 40% closer to 'H' than 'Y' because the proper denominator is used, that is ... 100%. You are essentially 'magnifying the differences with an electron microscope' by using the small denominator. Common sense should have told you that a chimp is not 40% closer to a human that a gorilla. What is fair to say is that chimps are slightly (1/2% or so) closer to humans than gorillas.
You have this exactly backwards. Since we're comparing the differences, 40% is the more accurate figure. You are just being mentally blocked by what you call your own "common sense" - which is really just another way of saying "willful ignorance". I suspect you are just trying to brush off the "1/2%" amounts as margins of error, when that is simply not the case.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Note to self: Add Incorygible to the list of trolls with Rilke and Aftershave. He can't even insult me in a mathematically convincing way.
Fine, Incory, take the differences if you want to instead of the similarities. That takes the incredible mathematical feat of subtracting the values from 1.
I can hold your hand and walk you through it if you like ...
Similarity %: HC- 98.89, HG-98.52, CG-98.36
translates to ...
Difference %: HC-1.11, HG-1.48, CG-1.64 OK? Are you with me?
Now, everything I told Jeannot applies to this as well.
It is NOT meaningful to divide (CG-HG)/(CG-HC) or (HG-HC)/(CG-HC).
If we are trying to compare similarities or difference, the meaningful quotient is (HG-HC)/1 (or 100 if using %). This comes out to my 1/2% (less actually) which I keep trying to hammer into your increasingly closed mind.
Only a lunatic or a blind man would say that chimps are 40% (or whatever your number is) closer to humans than gorillas are.
Thank you for illustrating to all of Aftershave's Lurkers just how blind you really are (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not a lunatic), and for demonstrating that you don't even know how to insult me convincingly.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I will say to Incorygible that I am still waiting to hear why you think it is valid to say that gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya. I know you read it in a textbook, but my questions was, 'Why did the textbook think this is valid? What is the basis for saying this?'
That would be as easy as reading my answers and checking the references, wouldn't it? Lewin (1989; Chapter 3: Historical Views) gives a detailed history of scientific thought on human-ape relationships between the 1890s and the present. He covers fossil hominid discoveries, early protein comparisons, etc., and the dates they suggested for branching in the ape lineage. This includes the earlier and longer-held notion that chimps were closer to gorillas, and why this was overturned. If you want even more details on some of this evidence, I provided you with a good reference (Stein and Rowe 1989) and relevant chapters.
Now, rather than implying that I don't answer your questions because I'm not spoonfeeding you dozens of pages of text, how about answering the one big question I posed to you many times regarding why your "Creator God Hypothesis" doesn't match the data? This has nothing to do with what evoltuionary theory says and why. Whether you view the "1%" as important or not, it is clear that the differences between us and chimps are smaller than your proposed "microevolutionary" variation within the "ape kind" (chimps and gorillas, plus we haven't even touched orangutans, which you would group in the ape kind, but have been known to be a significantly different outgroup since the 1920s). Why do your Creator's code and the fossils of His Flood so strongly suggest to us that humans are just another ape, contrary to His book?
LOL!! So I'm a 'troll' now, eh? I guess so, if we accept your new definition of 'troll' as 'anyone who asks tough scientific questions that AFDave is too ignorant or cowardly to address.' Last time I looked, my actions didn't convince 35 complete strangers that I was the dumbest poster on ATBC. You must be pretty proud of that one, right Dave?
Davie-poo, I noticed that you're back to talking about your favorite topic - yourself. If you spent a tenth as much time on learning some actual biological and geological science as you do patting yourself on the back, you wouldn't be such an ignorant dumbass, ya know?
Now, when are you going to present the data that refutes all radiocarbon dating you promised us?
Please present your evidence that there was up to 100x the concentration of C12 in the atmosphere as little as 6000 years ago.
Please give your explanation for all the data you were presented that shows the Earth and human culture to be way older than 6000 years.
Please give your explanation for why so many independent lines of evidence all agree with each other on dates that show you are wrong. You can start with the C14 calibration curves presented by JonF.
You keep singing and tap-dancing, but still no data to back up your claims. Why is that Dave? Do scientific details frighten you, is that it? Did you ask your fighter pilot buddies yet about that term for what a dishonest shirker is called? It starts with Shi…
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Yes. So bug off, troll ... if you want your questions answered, go ask some other Creo or else start being polite. I've got questions from real scientists to answer.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You have this exactly backwards. Since we're comparing the differences, 40% is the more accurate figure. You are just being mentally blocked by what you call your own "common sense" - which is really just another way of saying "willful ignorance". I suspect you are just trying to brush off the "1/2%" amounts as margins of error, when that is simply not the case.
But you see, Dave knows 8 year olds won't know the difference, and that's all that matters for Honest Dave.
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Did you ask your fighter pilot buddies yet about that term for what a dishonest shirker is called? It starts with Shi…
I remember that guy... I guess now we know where his name comes from!
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Only a lunatic or a blind man would say that chimps are 40% (or whatever your number is) closer to humans than gorillas are.
This is simply fascinating. I'd love to know how Dave comes up with this assessment.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Note to self: Add Incorygible to the list of trolls with Rilke and Aftershave. He can't even insult me in a mathematically convincing way.
Fine, Incory, take the differences if you want to instead of the similarities. That takes the incredible mathematical feat of subtracting the values from 1.
I can hold your hand and walk you through it if you like ...
Similarity %: HC- 98.89, HG-98.52, CG-98.36
translates to ...
Difference %: HC-1.11, HG-1.48, CG-1.64 OK? Are you with me?
Now, everything I told Jeannot applies to this as well.
It is NOT meaningful to divide (CG-HG)/(CG-HC) or (HG-HC)/(CG-HC).
If we are trying to compare similarities or difference, the meaningful quotient is (HG-HC)/1 (or 100 if using %). This comes out to my 1/2% (less actually) which I keep trying to hammer into your increasingly closed mind.
Only a lunatic or a blind man would say that chimps are 40% (or whatever your number is) closer to humans than gorillas are.
Thank you for illustrating to all of Aftershave's Lurkers just how blind you really are (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not a lunatic), and for demonstrating that you don't even know how to insult me convincingly.
Dave, your innumeracy is striking, and to use it as an excuse to label me a troll is laughable. Mathematically, logically, whatever, it is just as valid to quantify the relative degree of difference between chimps-humans and chimps-gorillas as 40% (and in fact clarifies and emphasizes the point) as it is to quantify the degree of similarity 98-99%. Or we could talk about absolute numbers, and the millions of points of difference vs. the hundreds of millions of points of similarity. Same thing, presented a different way. All valid.
When talking about the the choice of numerator and denominator when discussing percentages, one has to examine the context (e.g., % difference, % similarity, absolute or relative comparison, etc.). Yes, any of these can be used to rhetorical advantage (watch a few commercials citing percentage improvements, for example). However, while we evil evolutionists have simply used the relative % difference to try to get it through your thick skull that the difference is meaningful, you have disingenuously tried to demonstrate that "1%" is meaningless on rhetoric alone. Hmm...I wonder if there is a way to determine whether a particular value is meaningful or not, independent of rhetoric and "common sense"? Oooh...looky here...we have an entire branch of mathematics devoted to exactly that! I wonder what it says?
AFDave would have you believe that the 1% is meaningless. Why? For his "Creator God Hypothesis" to be valid, it HAS TO be meaningless. He has to convince you that we lack the resolving power to measure this difference accurately. To do that, he has to make you buy into the "oooh...1%...I'm so impressed" crap. He has to make you ignore the statistics that support our estimated relative differences as meaningful (i.e., not due to chance alone) 9,999 out of 10,000 times. He has to label anyone who points out the error in his rhetoric as a troll. Does it work?
While you're at it, Dave, why not demonstrate:
There is no meaningful difference in measured average temperatures between your location in California and mine in Canada. After all, the proper denominator would be the distance from absolute zero, right?
There is no meaningful difference in the DNA of individual humans. Forensic applications are meaningless.
There is no meaningful difference in flight distance (or vector) between Los Angeles and London and Los Angeles and Paris.
There is no way for us to perceive differences in the height of various city skyscrapers.
Should I go on?
Your ego's writing cheques your a$$ can't cash, Davy-boy.
I want this 'Human-Chimp-Gorilla Sequence Difference' thing to be crystal clear ...
Some of the 'geneticists' here have taken my 'measley 1/2% difference' argument and said basically 'Davey, davey ... doesn't your small, 'maths' challenged mind understand that 1/2% of 50 gazillion nucleotides equates to a very big number?'
To which I reply ...
'Of course. But 1/2% of ANYTHING is still 1/2%'
and 1/2% is the relevant number here for what we are trying to say. Of course if we are talking about NUMBERS OF SUBSTITUTIONS, then sure, chimps may have 40% more or whatever the number is. But all this calculation does is COMPARE SUBSTITUTIONS, not give an honest picture of how much more similar to humans chimps are vs. gorillas.
It's amazing to me that I'm having to debate this concept with guys who call themselves scientists. This is utterly ridiculous. And if that weren't ludicrous enough, Jeannot has the gall to attack my math skills??!! And Incory comes with an asinine joke about a donkey in a barn??!!
Wow! Just wow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes. So bug off, troll ... if you want your questions answered, go ask some other Creo or else start being polite. I've got questions from real scientists to answer.
Sorry Davie-poo, I'm gonna stay right here in your face, asking those tough scientific questions you refuse to answer. I don't expect or need an answer from you actually. The whole point is to show the lurkers what an ignorant chickenshit you really are, and how empty your anti-science nonsense claims can be. Every non-answer by you is a victory for me, capisce?
BTW, I've decided a good nik for you is ‘QFDave’. For the lurkers, 'QF' is the Air Force designation for a target drone. It's an unmanned aircraft used as a training target so real pilots can practice firing live weapons at it. It flies slow and straight, and has a bright red tail so it’s easily identified.
That's you to a T Davie. You're nothing but a target drone to the scientifically knowledgeable folks here. You fly your stupidity-based YEC arguments slow and straight, and everyone else gets to practice blowing the sh*t out of them in front of the lurkers. When you get mad, you’ve even got the bright red tail thing going just like a big assed baboon.
We couldn’t ask for a better training aid.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
...not give an honest picture of how much more similar to humans chimps are vs. gorillas
I thought we were all discussing genetic similarity. What, praytell, are you referring to, Dave?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
[quote=afdave,June 12 2006,09:21][/quote] Trollish, eh? OK, dave, let's take this from the top...
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Faid- you're becoming a troll ... I wasn't anywhere close to a lie on the 'multiple universe' thing. My point with quoting that article was not what you thought it was. My point was to show that even Talk Origins did not attempt to refute 'Cosmic Fine Tuning.' I pointed out that surely they would have attempted to refute it if they could have. They essentially agreed that the appearance of 'Cosmic Fine Tuning' has in fact been demonstrated, and the only objection they could muster was essentially 'Well, that may be true for THIS universe, but what about other ones?' and other simlar musings. You took what I said and tried to twist it beyond recognition-- very trollish!
You are failing to make sense, dave -Please explain what you just said. Do you claim that TO's rebuttal of CFT depends on the existence of multiple universes, yes or no? The TO article specifically says that mupltiple universes need not exist for a universe much like our own to be probable. Do you agree with that? If not, then why did you refuse to address my posts where I showed it to you? And what do you have to say about it now? If you do agree, do you also admit you were fighting a strawman, just arguing against multiple universes all this time? Own up to your words, dave. Like I said, you're not arguing with children here.
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I did not say all fusions are harmful and you know it. I said that I was talking to a doctor friend of mine and SHE claimed that. I passed this claim on to you for analysis which you did (sort of). Incorygible did a much better job of it and where that issue stands in my mind now is that it appears to be simply a subset of all mutations.
Let's take a trip down memory lane, dave, and feel free to prove me wrong if you can -it's me who's the troll, after all. You did say a doctor friend told you that -and that is why, in all my first posts, I specifically asked you to talk to your "friend" about it. After lots of ignoring on your part, do you finally say "well that's what he told me", or "I'll see what he has to say"? NO. You say: "Faid, I think you might be all wet on the chromosome fusion thing". And you repeat the same things, without a mention of your "friend" (whose existence I seriously doubt) this time. And NOW, after you were forced to admit the "all fusions are harmful" argument is rubbish, you say "boo hoo it wasn't me, it's my stupid friend that said it"? Dave, how much more LAME can you get?
As for Incorygible doing a better job than me to explain it -I have no problem admitting that: Far from it. But that is not what you claimed, HonestDave, remember? You claimed that I never explained it, and just pointed you to links- and that was a lie. I was the first to address your claim and explain it, as I repeatedly showed by quoting my old response. And you also claimed you did not ask for links, after I provided them, which also was a lie. Feel free to prove me wrong- But you can't, of course, because, unlike you, I do not lie. Own up to your words, dave. Like I said, you're not arguing with children here.
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It appears that you tried to mislead me with your 'Deletion Lesson' ... The article was not misleading for what it was teaching, but it appeared to me that you were attempting to mislead me by using that article to make me believe that Humans and Chimps had an 'identical mistake.' I later learned that some substitutions and deletions are the same, but there are many that are not. I cannot prove that you did this intentionally, but it appeared that you did. If you want me to spend more time answering you, try to convice me that you are not simply being a troll.
You can't be serious... What that lesson shows (I wonder if you ever tried to read it) is exactly what me (and everybody else) had been trying to make you understand from the start. I can't even remember how many times I've said it myself: That the pattern of the breaking in the gene is almost identical in primates and humans, and the (already small) differences are more minimal, the closer each primate is to humans. Because mutations had less time to accumulate. Claiming we never explained that to you is another lie, dave. Thank you for doing all the work for me.
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Faid…
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You deliberately quote-mined the Encyclopedia Britannica article.
Faid- The quote I used from EB has the same meaning whether you include the context or not.
WHat????
And what meaning may that be, if I may ask?
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Let me say this about the Portuguese thing and many similar items ... You scientists are so detail oriented (a good thing in many contexts) that you sometimes get hung up on my generalizations. Saying that 'Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish' is a GENERALIZATION, like 'The sky is blue' or 'the grass is green.' You could legitimately argue that those two statements are not accurate, but who would be so obnoxious as to do so? Well ... there are a few here that are that obnoxious as I have found, but they are few, and you will notice that most of the regulars are either silent or conciliatory on the issue, which is highly indicative given the extreme bias against my views that exists here.
Well, guys, I guess that's the closest dave's ego can allow him to get to "OK, I was totally wrong, I admit it." Ok, dave, don't sob that loud... I won't pick on you any more. Let's all agree that, when you said "Portuguese did not exist untill some french knights had an influence on Spanish", you actually meant "Portuguese existed all right, but it was somewhat influenced from Spanish in the middle Ages, and also from French sometime- maybe the 18th Century". Then we can all be happy. Tell you what- let's call it a draw.
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Crabby ... you are not very bright if you think I'm going to get tired of being 'b!tch slapped' and leave. There are two reasons I will leave: Wesley bans me or I finish what I set out to do.
Oh well... Since we all know that, in your mind, you'll finish what you've set out to do without any problems eventually (I'm sure you've already got the ending speech saved and ready), and since nothing outside the world that's inside your mind ever counts... Goodbye, dave. Thanks for helping us see the light.
Now get back to indoctrinating children, where you can get a result other than inducing laughter and amusement. Unfortunately.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
AFDave would have you believe that the 1% is meaningless. Why? For his "Creator God Hypothesis" to be valid, it HAS TO be meaningless. He has to convince you that we lack the resolving power to measure this difference accurately. To do that, he has to make you buy into the "oooh...1%...I'm so impressed" crap. He has to make you ignore the statistics that support our estimated relative differences as meaningful (i.e., not due to chance alone) 9,999 out of 10,000 times. He has to label anyone who points out the error in his rhetoric as a troll. Does it work?
It IS meaningless used in this context and you would know it if you were being honest.
As for trolls, I don't easily label people as trolls. There are only two confirmed ones here: Rilke and Aftershave. Faid has troll tendencies, but you, until today with your goofy donkey joke, had none.
Get off this branch you are on quickly and I will leave you alone. Stay on it and I will saw it off and use your ignorant claims as just one more proof to Aftershave's precious lurkers that Evos have lost their marbles.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I want this 'Human-Chimp-Gorilla Sequence Difference' thing to be crystal clear ...
Some of the 'geneticists' here have taken my 'measley 1/2% difference' argument and said basically 'Davey, davey ... doesn't your small, 'maths' challenged mind understand that 1/2% of 50 gazillion nucleotides equates to a very big number?'
To which I reply ...
'Of course. But 1/2% of ANYTHING is still 1/2%'
and 1/2% is the relevant number here for what we are trying to say. Of course if we are talking about NUMBERS OF SUBSTITUTIONS, then sure, chimps may have 40% more or whatever the number is. But all this calculation does is COMPARE SUBSTITUTIONS, not give an honest picture of how much more similar to humans chimps are vs. gorillas.
It's amazing to me that I'm having to debate this concept with guys who call themselves scientists. This is utterly ridiculous. And if that weren't ludicrous enough, Jeannot has the gall to attack my math skills??!! And Incory comes with an asinine joke about a donkey in a barn??!!
Wow! Just wow!
Keep digging, Dave. If you really think "1/2 a percent" is the relevant number (though it is a perfectly valid number and you're having fun with its rhetorical value), that it somehow reduces the "gazillion" data points to triviality, and that the genetic data are therefore "meaningless" (p<0.001 says otherwise), then many of your kids WILL be able to apply math much better than you do, despite your best efforts. You might be able to hoodwink the rest with your silly song and dance (unfortunately, it's even easier to grow up innumerate than it is to grow up illiterate). But Davy, your "math skills" are VERY easily attacked, and you should be embarassed instead of pompous. Thanks for the laughs, though. You're right -- all of us silly scientists can't do math and have no practice in identifying a legitimate phenomenon from numerical noise.
Some of the 'geneticists' here have taken my 'measley 1/2% difference' argument and said basically 'Davey, davey ... doesn't your small, 'maths' challenged mind understand that 1/2% of 50 gazillion nucleotides equates to a very big number?'
To which I reply ...
'Of course. But 1/2% of ANYTHING is still 1/2%'
and 1/2% is the relevant number here for what we are trying to say. Of course if we are talking about NUMBERS OF SUBSTITUTIONS, then sure, chimps may have 40% more or whatever the number is. But all this calculation does is COMPARE SUBSTITUTIONS, not give an honest picture of how much more similar to humans chimps are vs. gorillas.
It's amazing to me that I'm having to debate this concept with guys who call themselves scientists. This is utterly ridiculous. And if that weren't ludicrous enough, Jeannot has the gall to attack my math skills??!! And Incory comes with an asinine joke about a donkey in a barn??!!
Dave, as a fellow engineer....Your math skills are not lacking...they have misrepresented you.... Obviously 1/2=1/2.....but....you seem to lack to creative abilitiy to understand these numbers. .5% of something is normally trivial....but if .5% of the world population dies due to a disease, in one week, then we would have a seriously deadly disease on our hands. Even though statistically .5% is meaningless.
I also think your seriously misunderstanding the differences between chimps and humans. Have you ever looked at a chimp? Now, imagine that the chimp and human could be represented with "code". Dont you imagine that you could use most of the same code?? Internal Organs, basic bone structure, etc.
AFDave...I really think you have your heart in the right place. Your trying to educate everyone to the "Truth". The only problem I have is that I can find absolutely no mention in the bible that people who believe in Evolution cannot get into heaven. Many theistic evolutionists have a greater respect for God....they believe his creation was more grandiose than you believe. You are trying to destroy theistic evolutionists belief in grand, powerful, timeless God and replace it with a cheap magician? You should be ashamed. You also seem be rather boastful about your efforts in this forum...which is VERY unchristian.
I hope that God can eventually lead you to the light Dave....The light which says that God is not a deceiver, not a cheap magician....
Let's all agree that, when you said "Portuguese did not exist untill some french knights had an influence on Spanish", you actually meant "Portuguese existed all right, but it was somewhat influenced from Spanish in the middle Ages, and also from French sometime- maybe the 18th Century". Then we can all be happy. Tell you what- let's call it a draw.
No. No way. We don't agree and that's not what I meant and I won't call it a draw.
I meant exactly what I said ... It is an accurate GENERALIZATION to say that 'Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French'
End of story.
And yes, you are being trollish. How do you say 'troll' in Greek?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Note to self: Add Incorygible to the list of trolls with Rilke and Aftershave.
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As for trolls, I don't easily label people as trolls.
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Get off this branch you are on quickly and I will leave you alone. Stay on it and I will saw it off and use your ignorant claims as just one more proof to Aftershave's precious lurkers that Evos have lost their marbles.
I'm shaking in my boots, Dave. Put up or shut up. Saw off those stats. I dare ya. Leave the rhetoric behind, and demonstrate MATHEMATICALLY that 1/2% is meaningless in this case.
First, believe it or not, I do sincerely want evolution minded scientists and long age geologists to have a fair shake at presenting information. And I was serious when I said that I would become an evolutionist if presented with enough credible evidence.
No, Dave. You don't. You have consistently ignored the overwhelming bulk of evidence in support of evolution and an old earth, dismissing it with a wave of your hand. You have deliberately misconstrued that evidence, even after multiple individuals have expending enormous time and effort trying to explain it to you. At this point, everyone has reached the conclusion that you are fundamentally uneducable when it comes to evidence in support of positions you don't like.
At the same time, you have embraced uncritically any evidence, no matter how shaky, that you think supports your belief in biblical inerrancy. The fact that you are still defending Humphry's He evidence from Fenton Hill, after it has been explained to you over and over again that two probably incorrect data points would not even begin to overturn the entire body of radiometric evidence in support of an earth billions of years old even if they were accurate.
You have consistently demonstrated an unwillingness to lend any credence whatsoever to the life's work of tens of thousands of professional scientists, listening instead to the dubious conclusions based on questionable data presented by pseudoscientists with an obvious ideological axe to grind. When you dismiss a 30,000 word essay on the evidence supporting common descent with a comment that it was "lame," it's pretty clear you weren't even interested in reading anything supporting an opposing view.
You have consistently refused to admit error on anything but the most minor points, long past the point where it has become screamingly obvious how wrong you really are. As a result, everyone has come to the conclusion that arguing with you with the intention of convincing you of anything at all is a complete waste of time.
That's why it's hilarious to hear you, of all people, refer to anyone else posting here as a "troll."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Let's all agree that, when you said "Portuguese did not exist untill some french knights had an influence on Spanish", you actually meant "Portuguese existed all right, but it was somewhat influenced from Spanish in the middle Ages, and also from French sometime- maybe the 18th Century". Then we can all be happy. Tell you what- let's call it a draw.
No. No way. We don't agree and that's not what I meant and I won't call it a draw.
I meant exactly what I said ... It is an accurate GENERALIZATION to say that 'Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French'
End of story.
And yes, you are being trollish. How do you say 'troll' in Greek?
Could you address ericmurphy's questions please, particularly the ones in his post at the top of this page? As a long-time lurker here, it is eric's patient questions directed at you that I'd most like to see you answer.
Eric's questions at the top of the page ...
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Why do you suppose the entire scientific community supports the accuracy of radiometric dating, Dave?
Because they want to believe in long ages to support the Theory of Evolution and they make assumptions which allow them to believe they are being scientific.
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Are they all delusional?
No. But the power of 'wanting to believe something' is immense. Peer pressure in academia is immense. Very hard to overcome.
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Do you suppose people who have done their doctoral dissertations on radiometric dating are all wrong, and you, a complete dilettante in the field, who knows basically nothing about the methodologies involved, are right?
Bad comparison. Don't compare 'Engineer AFD' to the Phd's. I don't and you shouldn't. Compare the conventional scientists to the YEC scientists who also have earned their Phd's and have arrived at different conclusions. There are hundreds of them. See www.icr.org and do a little searching. Many, many of them were not even raised as Christians as kids. They were evolutionists and/or skeptics for a large part of their lives, then converted to the YEC position because of the overwhelming evidence which Evos like to say does not exist. This includes the Father of the Modern Creationist movement, Dr. Henry Morris himself, who did not become a YEC until later in life.
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For some reason, you actually think you're making progress in your attempts to overturn a century and a half or more of scientific research. Whom do you suppose you're making that progress with, Dave? Do you think you're persuading anyone here?
Dunno. My job is to give out the truth, then leave the results to God.
PuckSR...
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Dave, as a fellow engineer....Your math skills are not lacking...they have misrepresented you....
Thank you! Someone with some math skills!
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Obviously 1/2=1/2.....but....you seem to lack to creative abilitiy to understand these numbers. .5% of something is normally trivial....but if .5% of the world population dies due to a disease, in one week, then we would have a seriously deadly disease on our hands. Even though statistically .5% is meaningless.
Of course, we would have a seriously deadly disease on our hands in this case, you are correct. But we are not talking about deadly diseases. These guys are simply trying to magnify a trivial difference way out of proportion to prop up their preferred theory.
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I also think your seriously misunderstanding the differences between chimps and humans. Have you ever looked at a chimp?
Come on, Puck. Have I ever looked at a chimp? Now think about how dumb that question sounds. No. I've never taken my kids to the zoo. Come on. Let's get some real questions.
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Now, imagine that the chimp and human could be represented with "code". Dont you imagine that you could use most of the same code?? Internal Organs, basic bone structure, etc.
Sure. I think that's what God probably did do, which is why they are so similar genetically.
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AFDave...I really think you have your heart in the right place. Your trying to educate everyone to the "Truth". The only problem I have is that I can find absolutely no mention in the bible that people who believe in Evolution cannot get into heaven.
You are correct. There is nothing in the Bible that says that.
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Many theistic evolutionists have a greater respect for God....they believe his creation was more grandiose than you believe. You are trying to destroy theistic evolutionists belief in grand, powerful, timeless God and replace it with a cheap magician? You should be ashamed.
I'm not trying to destroy anything but error where I see it.
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You also seem be rather boastful about your efforts in this forum...which is VERY unchristian.
I admit that I am not the perfect example of a Christian and I should be more humble and kind. I come from a group of friends and associates who were typically very cocky, self-assured, and fiercely independent, so you are correct in observing that I have those natural tendencies as well--God is working on me!. I do have no problem, though, with dealing harshly with blatant trollism. Jesus did this too.
You misunderstand the YEC position if you think I am saying that God is some sort of 'cheap magician.'
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If you had understood what I wrote about Hillis you would have realized that GilDodgen simply didn't know anything about genetic algolrithims and evolutionary programming.
Norm- I understood your genetic algorithm piece, and I understood it and I consider it to be irrelevant to macroevolution. Remember the AIG article I gave you?
If you're bringing up macroevolution in relation my post and to the GilDodgen "Writing Computer Programs by Random Mutation and Natural Selection" post on Uncommon Descent -- then you are mentally impaired.
I don't remember any specific AIG article you linked or copied here. Go ahead and link it again. I am familiar with most creo arguments and I consider them weak. What prevents microevolution from becoming macroevolution over much larger time frames? Bringing up macro/micro evolution seems irrelevant. Why would the fact that computers can evolve code have anything to do with that?
Are you saying that you disagree with GilDodgen and you are willing to consider genetic algorithims at least proof of microevolution?
I want this 'Human-Chimp-Gorilla Sequence Difference' thing to be crystal clear ...
Some of the 'geneticists' here have taken my 'measley 1/2% difference' argument and said basically 'Davey, davey ... doesn't your small, 'maths' challenged mind understand that 1/2% of 50 gazillion nucleotides equates to a very big number?'
To which I reply ...
'Of course. But 1/2% of ANYTHING is still 1/2%'
Dave, 1% of the population contracted a particular disease last year. This year, 2% of the population contracted the same disease.
Now, did the number of people contracting this disease increase by 1% over last year, or 100%?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dunno. My job is to give out the truth, then leave the results to God.
A polite question for AFDave:
Please explain and justify your qualifications for determining what the 'truth' actually is when dealing with scientific data.
Thanks in advance.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Whoops, it looks like you missed my question. AFD, are chimpanzees statistically significantly more similar genetically to humans or gorillas? I'd like to hear you answer this question directly.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Let's all agree that, when you said "Portuguese did not exist untill some french knights had an influence on Spanish", you actually meant "Portuguese existed all right, but it was somewhat influenced from Spanish in the middle Ages, and also from French sometime- maybe the 18th Century". Then we can all be happy. Tell you what- let's call it a draw.
No. No way. We don't agree and that's not what I meant and I won't call it a draw.
I meant exactly what I said ... It is an accurate GENERALIZATION to say that 'Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French'
End of story.
And yes, you are being trollish. How do you say 'troll' in Greek?
Davey. That is not what you said at all. You made a bet that you could prove it. I accepted. you quickly retreated and started saying you won-without the debate. I guess that since you wouldn't even debate, I actually won.
If the bet is still on then we need to have the debate. And you didn't say generalization but I am willing to go with that. So, if you have finally decided to have that debate, I'll start a t5hread on my blog, you can do it on your blog, we can do it here or wherever you want. But you can't declare victory without having the duel. Bad form. Especially for a missionary's son.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Now, Dave, keep in mind how much helium we've already stored. Given 6,000 to 10,000 years, Dave, how much radioactive decay of how many tons of radioactive heavy elements would have been needed to produce just that much helium, a billion cubic feet of it, in the time YEC allows? Now, keep in mind that Uranium-238, one of the more common elements we can dig up, decays through a chain of transformations, ultimately producing lead-206 and eight helium atoms.
The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years, a gram of U-238 would produce so few decays per year that it would take how many tons of it to produce a billion cubic feet of helium?
I leave the calculations to you, Dave. How much radioactive stuff has to be in our Earth to get that helium in a YEC time frame?
Norm ... I have not studied this yet and it would be interesting to study. You are correct that there would not be anywhere close to enough time available to generate enough Heium assuming today's decay rates, but as the RATE Group has pointed out many times, this is an assumption, and there are beginning to be many indicators supporting the idea that this assumption may be grossly wrong. We will be discussing this in more detail as we walk through the RATE Group findings.
So you think that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden the decay rates for radioactive elements were faster ... and Adam and Eve lived in a couple thousand degrees of heat and high radiation?
Leave the rhetoric behind, and demonstrate MATHEMATICALLY that 1/2% is meaningless in this case.
Already did, but you missed it.
But PuckSR caught it ... did you notice that?
Here's what he said ...
Dave, as a fellow engineer....Your math skills are not lacking...they have misrepresented you....
Go take a lesson from a couple of engineers!
Eric...
Quote
Dave, 1% of the population contracted a particular disease last year. This year, 2% of the population contracted the same disease. Now, did the number of people contracting this disease increase by 1% over last year, or 100%?
Obviously, 100%. And you can bring me examples like this til the cows come home and it won't change the fact that ...
IT DOESN'T APPLY TO THIS SITUATION
We are trying to determine 'How much more similar to humans are chimps than gorillas?' And the answer is emphatically, absolutely, earth-shakingly NOT 40% (or 50 or whatever).
It is less than 1/2%.
Get over it.
Norm...
Quote
Are you saying that you disagree with GilDodgen and you are willing to consider genetic algorithims at least proof of microevolution?
Microevolution needs no proof for me. I already have accepted it for a long time. In fact, it is a YEC prediction although I like to call it 'Designed Adaptation.'
The genetic algorithm can prove microevolution all day long as far as I am concerned and quite possibly does. But this provides no help for Macroevolution, which is what I disagree with.
OA...
Quote
A polite question for AFDave: Please explain and justify your qualifications for determining what the 'truth' actually is when dealing with scientific data. Thanks in advance.
There now. That's better. I knew we could be friends. I remember way back early on thinking I would actually be interested in hearing about the space stuff that you do.
Now, to answer your question ...
I am an engineer just like you are. And I can read and interpret books and scientific papers by YEC PhD's, just as you can read them from non-YEC PhD's.
I have done so and arrived at the YEC Worldview. And in doing so, I have realized that this information is too good to hold back to one's self. God has blessed me with time and the ability to research and write. So that's what I do. I have pondered the idea of getting some advanced degree in some relevant field, but I don't know if I ever will. There are so many fields and how would I select which one? Many of them sound interesting. For now, I like leaving the expert stuff to the experts in the relevant fields and just reading their papers.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Why do you suppose the entire scientific community supports the accuracy of radiometric dating, Dave?
Because they want to believe in long ages to support the Theory of Evolution and they make assumptions which allow them to believe they are being scientific.
Quote
Are they all delusional?
No. But the power of 'wanting to believe something' is immense. Peer pressure in academia is immense. Very hard to overcome.
Quote
Do you suppose people who have done their doctoral dissertations on radiometric dating are all wrong, and you, a complete dilettante in the field, who knows basically nothing about the methodologies involved, are right?
Bad comparison. Don't compare 'Engineer AFD' to the Phd's. I don't and you shouldn't. Compare the conventional scientists to the YEC scientists who also have earned their Phd's and have arrived at different conclusions. There are hundreds of them. See www.icr.org and do a little searching. Many, many of them were not even raised as Christians as kids. They were evolutionists and/or skeptics for a large part of their lives, then converted to the YEC position because of the overwhelming evidence which Evos like to say does not exist. This includes the Father of the Modern Creationist movement, Dr. Henry Morris himself, who did not become a YEC until later in life.
Quote
For some reason, you actually think you're making progress in your attempts to overturn a century and a half or more of scientific research. Whom do you suppose you're making that progress with, Dave? Do you think you're persuading anyone here?
Dunno. My job is to give out the truth, then leave the results to God.
Wow. This must be the understatement of the century:
Quote
But the power of 'wanting to believe something' is immense.
But come on, Dave. Do you think the "power of wanting to believe" is enough to force hundreds of thousands of data points, from multiple independent lines of inquiry, all to not only point in the direction of an earth billions of years old, but also to converge on a single value? After all, any value larger than a couple of billion years would work. Why don't we see values scattered all over the place, with some values in the tens of billions of years?
Do you think that the "power of wanting to believe" is enough to force all living organisms to organize into nested hierarchies without a single exception, over the millions of species of organisms ever cataloged and described?
But in your case, Dave, I would certainly agree that the "power of wanting to believe" shouldn't be underestimated.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Leave the rhetoric behind, and demonstrate MATHEMATICALLY that 1/2% is meaningless in this case.
Already did, but you missed it.
But PuckSR caught it ... did you notice that?
Here's what he said ...
Dave, as a fellow engineer....Your math skills are not lacking...they have misrepresented you....
Go take a lesson from a couple of engineers!
Eric...
Quote
Dave, 1% of the population contracted a particular disease last year. This year, 2% of the population contracted the same disease. Now, did the number of people contracting this disease increase by 1% over last year, or 100%?
Obviously, 100%. And you can bring me examples like this til the cows come home and it won't change the fact that ...
IT DOESN'T APPLY TO THIS SITUATION
We are trying to determine 'How much more similar to humans are chimps than gorillas?' And the answer is emphatically, absolutely, earth-shakingly NOT 40% (or 50 or whatever).
It is less than 1/2%.
Get over it.
*sigh* Dave, do you believe you have accurately represented PuckSR's comments with that selected quotation? You are a liar, Dave.
I missed it [your mathematical demonstration that 1/2% is meaningless], eh? Please show me the stats, Dave. You have presented nothing more than your visceral reaction to the magnitude of a number. Apparently, 1/2% is meaningful in disease rates, but not in mutations. How do you decide this, Dave? I'm sure you have an objective method?
Now answer the question about statistical significance and what it means in this case. Hint: It has little to do with whether we frame the question (and respecitve percentages) as "How similar are humans, chimps and gorillas?" vs. "How different are humans, chimps and gorillas?".
Maybe another fellow engineer can explain it to you? One who doesn't mislead you with, "statistically .5% is meaningless". (Sorry, PuckSR, but that is unequivocally wrong in this case.)
Your ignorance and dishonesty are on display (yet again), Dave.
After much effort and conflicting information, I found out that Gorillas, Chimps and Humans have about 98% genetic similarity, they share a common defect, and that evolutionists get very excited about Humans being a hair closer to gorillas than Gorillas are to chimps. 1/2% closer. Pretty exciting stuff, to be sure! Never mind all those HUGE differences ... we're 98% similar! Let's give 'em minority status and voting rights! Yippeee! There was some intriguing info about chromosomes, but again, nothing which requires common ancestry.
Dave, I love how you keep returning to the "1/2% closer" (even if you can't keep track of what is closer to what).
But is the "1/2% closer" an example of microevolution or macroevolution?
If you don't think that is significant you don't know much about genetics.
Quote
Because they want to believe in long ages to support the Theory of Evolution and they make assumptions which allow them to believe they are being scientific.
So no one thought the earth was old before the theory of evolution did they?
Quote
They were evolutionists and/or skeptics for a large part of their lives, then converted to the YEC position because of the overwhelming evidence which Evos like to say does not exist. This includes the Father of the Modern Creationist movement, Dr. Henry Morris himself, who did not become a YEC until later in life.
It's worth noting that a lot of Morris' ideas was based on George Macready Price, who based his ideas on the assumption that geologists had misinterpreted their data because otherwise it contradicted his religious views.
Dave I have a question for you. If like you and other creationists say, there was an original monkey/ape kind etc. Presumably then the small number of animals that came of the ark evolved (or whatever word you want to use) into all the species that are alive today. Is that what creationists believe?
We are trying to determine 'How much more similar to humans are chimps than gorillas?' And the answer is emphatically, absolutely, earth-shakingly NOT 40% (or 50 or whatever).
And just because you oddly seem to believe this is a completely different "situation", I guess I'll introduce the following as a brand new topic for you:
How much more different from chimps are gorillas than humans?
If you answer 1%, tell me what you'd say if your state government increased a given tax rate on the profits of one of your many successful business from 1% to 2%. If it represented publically that it had only increased this tax rate by 1%, would you dispute its claims that the difference is therefore meaningless? How?
Whoops, it looks like you missed my question. AFD, are chimpanzees statistically significantly more similar genetically to humans or gorillas? I'd like to hear you answer this question directly.
Sure, if by 'statistical significance' you mean a difference that we can measure. Obviously, we can measure 1/2%.
But it is nothing to write home about if you are using the data to try to show how much closer chimps are to humans than gorillas are.
Eric...
Quote
But come on, Dave. Do you think the "power of wanting to believe" is enough to force hundreds of thousands of data points, from multiple independent lines of inquiry, all to not only point in the direction of an earth billions of years old, but also to converge on a single value? After all, any value larger than a couple of billion years would work. Why don't we see values scattered all over the place, with some values in the tens of billions of years?
Do you think that the "power of wanting to believe" is enough to force all living organisms to organize into nested hierarchies without a single exception, over the millions of species of organisms ever cataloged and described?
Yes. And Yes. Just look throughout history and you will see countless errors that the 'experts' believed were true, but they later turned out to be wrong. Here's some great examples (again, from Dembski's blog ... sorry!...
Quote
There is a great thread here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1300661/posts) FreeRepublic concerning a 2003 speech by Michael Crichton.
It includes:
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let’s review a few cases.
In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent “skeptics” around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.
Comment by tribune7 — June 10, 2006 @ 8:18 pm
Quote
But in your case, Dave, I would certainly agree that the "power of wanting to believe" shouldn't be underestimated.
A fair statement. All humans have something they want to believe and they must do some soul searching to see which is controlling them ... the facts? Or the desire to believe? Have you searched your soul? I have mine.
Norm...
Quote
So you think that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden the decay rates for radioactive elements were faster ... and Adam and Eve lived in a couple thousand degrees of heat and high radiation?
No, no, no. The best theory YECs have for this is that it may have happened before there was any life on earth (before Creation Day 3) or during the Flood where the water would have formed a shield, or both. This is unclear without further RATE research, but no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation. (Well, maybe some fringe, lunatic YECS, but not ICR)
(I can hear the trolls coming at me on this one ...'What? AFD referring to OTHER YECs as fringe-lunatics??!!
Quote
If you can have microevolution, then how do you prevent macroevolution over longer time frames?
I don't know HOW it is prevented. I just observe that it does, in fact, appear to be limited to very minor changes in organisms relatively speaking. Fruit fly mangling with 'accelerated microevolution' is an excellent example of this.
(Gotta quit! **Pant** That was a marathon! See you manana!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Whoops, it looks like you missed my question. AFD, are chimpanzees statistically significantly more similar genetically to humans or gorillas? I'd like to hear you answer this question directly.
Sure, if by 'statistical significance' you mean a difference that we can measure. Obviously, we can measure 1/2%.
But it is nothing to write home about if you are using the data to try to show how much closer chimps are to humans than gorillas are.
Does that "not writing home" mean we've got an example of microevolution here?
Whoops, it looks like you missed my question. AFD, are chimpanzees statistically significantly more similar genetically to humans or gorillas? I'd like to hear you answer this question directly.
Sure, if by 'statistical significance' you mean a difference that we can measure. Obviously, we can measure 1/2%.
But it is nothing to write home about if you are using the data to try to show how much closer chimps are to humans than gorillas are.
Way to go, Dave. You just proved your lack of math skills when it comes to the entire field of statistics. So while PuckSR's claim of "misrepresenting" your math skills is (only) correct if one (erroneously) thinks we are questioning your abilities to divide one number by another (hint: we haven't; not once), you have demonstrated that you are completely innumerate when it comes to evaluating the validity of practically any scientific claim. Oh, and no, Dave, "statistical significance" (anyhigh-schooler, or at worst undergrad, who knows what it is wouldn't have included the scare quotes) most certainly, earth-shakingly does not mean "a difference that we can measure".
Whoops, it looks like you missed my question. AFD, are chimpanzees statistically significantly more similar genetically to humans or gorillas? I'd like to hear you answer this question directly.
Sure, if by 'statistical significance' you mean a difference that we can measure. Obviously, we can measure 1/2%.
But it is nothing to write home about if you are using the data to try to show how much closer chimps are to humans than gorillas are.
No, that's NOT what statistical significance means, and I'm not making up new definitions for it, so you haven't answered my question.
From StatSoft, Inc.
Quote
The statistical significance of a result is the probability that the observed relationship (e.g., between variables) or a difference (e.g., between means) in a sample occurred by pure chance ("luck of the draw"), and that in the population from which the sample was drawn, no such relationship or differences exist. Using less technical terms, one could say that the statistical significance of a result tells us something about the degree to which the result is "true" (in the sense of being "representative of the population"). [technical definition follows]
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Hmm... Speaking as a doctor who remembers little math, I fail to see the problem here...
We have two statements:
Humans are 0.5% more simillar overall to chimps than to gorillas
and
Humans share 40% less differences with chimps compared to gorillas
Both these statements are true, right? So, the issue is... Which is significant, and which is not?
Or are they both?
Dave, in your worldview, are differences between chimps and gorillas significant, or not? Are differences between chimps and humans significant, or not?
And what does this data say about that to you?
Clearing up your case would help you make your point -if you have any.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
So you think that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden the decay rates for radioactive elements were faster ... and Adam and Eve lived in a couple thousand degrees of heat and high radiation?
No, no, no. The best theory YECs have for this is that it may have happened before there was any life on earth (before Creation Day 3) or during the Flood where the water would have formed a shield, or both. This is unclear without further RATE research, but no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation.
So, no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation, you just postulate a magic trick where the half-life of uranium drops from 4.5 billion years to one day before Adam and Eve were created.
Just so we get this straight, are you proposing that some kind of meeting took place where it was decided that scioence would say the earth was a particular age just to prove evolution. Presumably you think that science is holding up evolution to disprove God?
Dave, in your worldview, are differences between chimps and gorillas significant, or not? Are differences between chimps and humans significant, or not?
And what does this data say about that to you?
Clearing up your case would help you make your point -if you have any.
And Dave, please add a reply to normoering in your answer:
If the differences between chimps and humans ARE significant, how does this affect your definition (and required number) of kinds? After all, larger differences (say between chimps and gorillas, chimps and orangutans, different species of mice, millions of different species of beetles, etc., etc., etc.) would also be significant enough to imply separate "kinds", right?
If the differences between chimps and humans ARE NOT significant (i.e., "nothing to write home about"), how can you be sure this isn't microevolution within a "kind"? After all, if chimps, gorillas and orangutans are in the ape kind, why aren't we, since we fit in there nicely at a meaningless 1/2%?
Davey, why do you ignore the point that I accepted your bet and you never paid up?
Or do you still think that you could win?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
So, no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation, you just postulate a magic trick where the half-life of uranium drops from 4.5 billion years to one day before Adam and Eve were created.
Or that a huge, magically-suspended canopy of water orbited Earth in the stratosphere, somehow protecting us from earth-made radiation.
Oh, and that made us live 800 years.
<edit: Unless dave meant after all the water fell, in which case... Ark stew, anyone?>
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
OA: A polite question for AFDave: Please explain and justify your qualifications for determining what the 'truth' actually is when dealing with scientific data. Thanks in advance.
Quote
AFDave: I am an engineer just like you are. And I can read and interpret books and scientific papers by YEC PhD's, just as you can read them from non-YEC PhD's.
I have done so and arrived at the YEC Worldview. And in doing so, I have realized that this information is too good to hold back to one's self. God has blessed me with time and the ability to research and write. So that's what I do. I have pondered the idea of getting some advanced degree in some relevant field, but I don't know if I ever will. There are so many fields and how would I select which one? Many of them sound interesting. For now, I like leaving the expert stuff to the experts in the relevant fields and just reading their papers.
Thanks for replying, but I'm afraid you did not answer the question. I will clarify:
PhDs with YEC beliefs constitute an extremely small minority of the biological and geological scientific communities, approximately 0.15% (Robinson, B. A. 1995. Public beliefs about evolution and creation.). Data interpretations presented by YEC PhDs in support of their young earth hypothesis have been critically examined and rejected by the other 99.85% of all non YEC PhD scientists working in the relevant fields.
Please provide your qualifications and justifications that let you determine that the extreme minority YEC PhD interpretations are the 'truth', while the opinion of the other 99.85 % of the professional scientific community is wrong.
Please try again to answer the question, thanks.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
It's hard for me to know where to begin with your claims, AFDave. First, on a side note. I gave you citations showing that antibacterial resistance did not do what you claimed. Your response was to say that you were not qualified to deal with the studies. But you continue to claim that you are right. If you are not qualified to assess the studies, and the studies argue against your claim ( in fact, shooting it down completely) then you cannot honestly claim to be right. This is disingenous at best, lying at worst.
Second, I note that you are in fact in contact with ICR, and I'm curious, Dave...is that where you're getting your guidance from in your arguments? Because Henke has said he won't continue to engage Humphreys -- you're using this forum as a proxy?
I'll leave your other multiple unsupported claims aside, since they are being handled at the moment. But I will say this, Dave: I am not going to offer you any more detail than is neccessary in my view. I believe that you will use your experience here as a means of gaining the attention and approval of ICR/AIG so you can sell your kiddy-brainwash materials.
As to the Fenton Hill Zircons:
(1.) You say that 3He/4He ratios have been done. Great, I hope they include those done on surrounding materials as well. But since the ICR has not trumpeted it, I doubt it.
(2) In your comparison of Zircon to steel in terms of He diffusion, you say :
Quote
Humphreys goes on to object to Henke's unfair tactics: i.e. his attempt to compare Helium diffusion in hot, dry zircons to Argon diffusion in soft mica, and comparing wet conditions vs. dry conditions. He misleads his readers to think that this is a fair comparison by pointing out the 3-6 orders of magnitude difference in the results.
And I say Humphreys misleads his supporters in this comparison between zircon and steel. On the mohs Biotite is 2.5 to3 Apatite is 5 Titanite is 5.5 Pyrex Glass is 5.5 Zircon is 6.5 to 7.5 A steel file is 6.5. Did you know that Helium diffuses in pyrex rather easily at pressure and concentration and temp levels comparable to the Fenton Hill samples? In fact, Helium diffuses through Pyrex at a higher rate than any other gas. Helium diffusion also tends to be highest in defect areas, Dave. These studies have been known since the 30's ( Taylor and Rast: The Journal of Chemical Physics -- October 1938 -- Volume 6, Issue 10, pp. 612-619). Helium diffusion also causes embrittlement in stainless steel itself ( a problem of some concern in places with radiation like oh, nuclear facilities) again, concentrations are highest in areas of "defects." Now...what would this mean for Zircons, Dave?
Zircons are metamict...They have major defects and damage due to internal radiation sources, which increases the likelihood of He diffusion as shown in various crystalline structures. Alpha radiation degrades the hardness of minerals like zircon, Dave...did you know that? The crystal lattices get all banged up, and in fact, it can punch holes right through the surface of the zircon (or Titanite). External radiation can of course also cause damage. Heat cycles cause damage. Fluid flows cause damage. Acids can cause damage.
Couple these factors with the thermo-history problems of the Fenton Hill samples that you seem to dismiss as negligible, as well as things like the High concentrations of He nearby, the fact that Salsada shows Hydrothermic activity, and the fact that even the samples that were used show "gneiss" veins ...it would mean that He diffusion events would be highly likely to occur as well as multiple annealing events. There's also the problem of Zircon zoning that Humphreys doesn't even begin to address. Read Farley's work on Titanite and He diffusivity rates, then talk to me about how He diffusion is not likely to occur.
Jon is quite correct when he says that Humphreys uses hand-waving in response to Henke's objections. I am not going to do your homework for you, although others here have given you answers on 3He/4He ratio questions as well as other topics.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I feel somehow that I have achieved: a known liar, scientific illiterate, cowardly non-Christian has labeled me a troll.
Glory.
The amusing point, of course, is that it's not important what QFDave says (since QFDave has no respect on this thread or board, what matters is what the lurkers understand from our use of Dave as a target drone.
And as a target drone, he is magnificent.
Lurkers, take note! The following summary of QFDave's errors will be repeated as often as necessary to remind any newbies about the mistakes, errors, and stupdities of the Dave-Drone
Dave was wrong about the fine-tuning of the universe: he doesn't understand that if you can't demonstrate that the variables are, in fact, variable, then the argument falls apart.
Dave was wrong about the significance of chromosomal fusing, and he lied about his understand of the sources.
Dave was utterly wrong about the Portuguese thing - he claimed that Portuguese was a mixture of Spanish and French. It has been shown to him that he was completely mistaken, but his ego and vanity won't let him conceded that he made an idiotic remark. When it is pointed out to him that he needs to present linguistic evidence, he merely presents historical data which has no actual bearing on the case. He is also guilty of mis-quoting, quote-mining, and lying about his sources. The interesting thing about this particular issue is not in his original error, nor the various factual errors that he made in an attempt to explain himself, but his complete and total inability to withdraw a stupid remark.
Dave was not only wrong about the use of relativity to show the existence of God, but he lied about his ability to do so. Again, as with the Portuguese thing, he was unable, owing to vanity and ego, to accept that he had made a stupid remark.
Dave consistently shows that he is unable to understand and deal with basic scientific data and mathematics.
Dave is only able to discuss topics which has cribbed or copied off of various creationist web-sites. This demonstrates his inability to come up with a single, original thought on any topic (not uncommon with creationists who are indoctrinated and brainwashed at an early age).
Dave is, unfortunately, merely a product of brainwashing as a youngster and a fundamental inability to engage in critical thinking. He's also an arrogant moron, but that's beside the case.
Gentlemen (and Ladies, if there are any), I give you TARGET-DRONE DAVE.
Invaluable as a training excercise, since he can't learn and doesn't understand.
Invaluable as a target of laughter, mockery, and derision (we don't even have to feel guilty about it, since it feeds his fundie martyr complex).
Invaluable as a demonstration of how mental child-abuse can warp someone.
Invaluable as an object lesson in how not to be a Christian.
Dave "Target-Drone-Bot-Washout-Liar-Idiot" Hawkins
Loser.
Liar.
Lunatic.
P.S.Please note that any and all of the points I make above can be substantiated from this very thread. I caution you, you're going to need a strong stomach - some of the things Dave says are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's hard not to retch.
Dave, 1% of the population contracted a particular disease last year. This year, 2% of the population contracted the same disease. Now, did the number of people contracting this disease increase by 1% over last year, or 100%?
Obviously, 100%. And you can bring me examples like this til the cows come home and it won't change the fact that ...
IT DOESN'T APPLY TO THIS SITUATION
We are trying to determine 'How much more similar to humans are chimps than gorillas?' And the answer is emphatically, absolutely, earth-shakingly NOT 40% (or 50 or whatever).
Okay, Dave, let's make it apply directly to this situation, using nice round numbers that will make my point blindingly obvious.
Let's say that humans and chimps are 99% identical genetically, and humans and gorillas are 98% identical genetically. Also, let's say that chimps and gorillas are also 98% identical genetically.
Now, are humans and chimps twice as close to each other as either is to gorillas? Or are they only 1% closer to each other than either is to gorillas?
The thing is, Dave, I know you're not so stupid as to be unable to understand this very simple point. The fact is, you simply refuse to understand. It's what we like to call "deliberate opacity of mind," Dave.
It's not stupidity. It's willful blindness.
And, to quote: "What are you going to do, bleed on me?"
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
First, believe it or not, I do sincerely want evolution minded scientists and long age geologists to have a fair shake at presenting information. And I was serious when I said that I would become an evolutionist if presented with enough credible evidence.
rrrriiiigggghhhhttt...
and Hovind was serious about his 250,000 offer.
If you plug your ears, scream "lalallalallala", and close your eyes as tight as you can whenever credible evidence is presented to you, then yeah, i guess you could call yourself just as serious as Hovind alrighty.
You're a sick man, Dave. Is this method of being "open" to credible evidence the same one you plan to teach your kids?
NEW PREDICTION:
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TROLL CONTROL SECTION I have a couple of observations to make regarding our resident trolls, Rilke and Aftershave.
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Faid- you're becoming a troll ... I wasn't anywhere close to a lie on the 'multiple universe' thing.
EDIT: oh my, seems this is proceeding faster than I had anticipated, as i catch up with dave's ever faster spinning mind:
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Note to self: Add Incorygible to the list of trolls with Rilke and Aftershave. He can't even insult me in a mathematically convincing way.
Eventually, Dave will put everybody who points out how wrong he is all the time into the "troll control section", whereupon there will only be himself left.
Then he will claim that he is the only legitimate poster at ATBC, and everybody else here is just a troll (including Wes).
Then, his projection will be complete.
(cue evil laughter)
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Oh, to expand on the Pyrex glass/zircon thing, AFDave: Helium's diffusivity through Pyrex is 20 times greater than any other gas --hydrogen is the closest competitor. This has led to the suggestion that pyrex be used to filter out helium from natural gas. Pyrex is all of one point lower on the Mohs as Zircon's lower undamaged bound. High metamict Zircon has a much lower hardness value. Now go look at Titanite.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
But the power of 'wanting to believe something' is immense.
Yeah he is on the point of Discombobulation
Translating dat long port-u-goose wid fr u D
'Mr Fawltey 'e go crazee, mucho loco' (points finger to head and makes circular motion)
My prediction is his post's will get longer and longer as he SCREAMS out 'grip don't let me down.'
Oh and more power to you AFDave if you are planning on stealing children's lives for the American Taliban .....go for it you can use this Blog as a Character reference. America needs more cannon fodder.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Now, are humans and chimps twice as close to each other as either is to gorillas? Or are they only 1% closer to each other than either is to gorillas?
Actually, to avoid Davey weasling out of the point of our shared message on semantics, the answer to your question (framed as it is) is actually, "a little more than 1% closer to each other than either is to gorillas" (=99/98).
However, if the question is: "Are humans and chimps twice as different from gorillas as they are from each other? Or are they 1% more different from gorillas than from each other?" Then the answer is, "twice as different" (=2/1).
Dave, pay careful attention to the fact that I (and others) have used the "40%" (or 100% or whatever) figure only when talking about the degree of difference, which is perfectly valid and on-point in this discussion.
Of course, since we're talking about the EXACT same thing, we're merely illustrating Dave's rhetorical gamesmanship. Whether 1% or 100%, what matters is millions of data points examined and p<0.001. This is what Davey doesn't get.
Note that this discussion of genetic similarities began back on May 24 when I pointed out (via Dave's abandoned Fiesta/Aerostar analogy) that a Toyota (human) was more similar to the Fiesta (chimp) than other Ford models (gorillas and orangutans). Since then, we've been dealing with 1% semantics, and no matter how many times (many! Dave has been asked, he's stubbornly refused to address how even that 1% could exist under his "CGH". Since he admits that he doesn't doubt that we can measure 1/2%, his "1%" argument is meaningless. Under the CGH, it shouldn't even be close. Note my long post (May 25) considering the implications of this for the CGH:
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You then counter with Creationist Theory.
Initial conditions: the human kind and the ape kind were separately created, and never shared a common ancestor. Already we’re in trouble, because we have no information on the genome of those two ancestral kinds. We have reason to suspect they were similar (common design, like Escorts and Tauri in 1985), but we don’t know how similar. We can’t do the same kind of relative calculations that I did by assuming one common ancestor (which do not require knowledge of its actual genome, just that it was shared). However, we do know that any differences between these two ancestral kinds should inflate the frequency of (H(CG)) phylogenies predicted. So right from the initial conditions, you predict that, when we look at a lot of genes to get overall frequencies, the predicted frequency of the relationship (H(CG)) will be greater than 33%.
Creationist Prediction: We don’t have any information on when (relative to initial Creation – actual years don’t matter for this) chimpanzees and gorillas diverged via “microevolution” (changes within a Created kind). However, we know it was some time since the Fall. Without relative time-spans like I had, we can’t do similar estimates like I did, but we can predict that the shared ancestry of chimps and gorillas prior to divergence will increase the frequencies of (H(CG)) even further (as it did for the (G(HC)) phylogenies in my example).
So you end up predicting that more than (far more than?) 33% of sequences we look at will group chimps and gorillas as closer to each other than to humans, less than 33% of sequences will group humans and gorillas as closer to each other than to chimps, and less than 33% of sequences will group humans and chimps as closer to each other than to gorillas.
So, armed with our predictions, we meet back up in a bar 20 years later to discuss the results. I bring along some papers from the prolific new genetics literature. Specifically, I show you the following:
Satta, Y., J. Klein, and N. Takahata. 2000. DNA archives and our nearest relative: the trichotomy problem revisited. Mol. Phyl. Evol. 14:259–275.
Chen, F.-C., and W.-H. Li. 2001. Genomic divergence between humans and other hominoids and the effective population size of the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 68:444–456.
O’hUigin, C., Y. Satta, N. Takahata, and J. Klein. 2002. Contribution of homoplasy and of ancestral polymorphism to the evolution of genes in anthropoid primates. Mol. Biol. Evol. 19:1501–1513.
Kitano et al. 2004. Human-Specific Amino Acid Changes Found in 103 Protein-Coding Genes. Mol. Biol. Evol.:936-944.
Combined, these studies examined hundreds of sequences for their predicted phylogenies. Each one found that, on average, approximately 60% of these sequences predicted the (G(HC)) tree (i.e., humans and chimps closer to each other than to gorillas), and the remaining 40% predicted the remaining two trees in roughly equal frequencies (i.e., humans and gorillas closer to each other than to chimps, and chimps and gorillas closer to each other than to humans). (You can look this up if you don’t believe me Dave – I’m more than halfway here.)
Note that, other than saying he's "analyzed" this and will get back to me, Dave has never responded to the question (which I and others have asked again today): why is Dave's CGH qualitatively wrong? (Edit: I just realized that CGH, used here as an initialism for "Creator God Hypothesis," might serendipitously -- or at least mistakenly -- imply "Chimps, Gorillas, Humans" in this context.) Oh, he's asked repeatedly (and been answered repeatedly) for how I derived my own (more accurate) "evolutionary" predictions. And Dave, you can claim all you want that I haven't answered this to your satisfaction, if only because I haven't reproduced entire books at your lazy demand, but summarized and cited them instead. Of course, this is (once again) completely irrelevant to the question at hand: evolutionary theory could fall tomorrow and your CGH wouldn't be any closer to reflecting observed reality. You have completely failed to address the failure of your "hypothesis" to account for the above data (and note that "1%" doesn't appear in there anywhere).
For some reason, you actually think you're making progress in your attempts to overturn a century and a half or more of scientific research. Whom do you suppose you're making that progress with, Dave? Do you think you're persuading anyone here?
Dunno. My job is to give out the truth, then leave the results to God.
IOW...
"Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out!"
right Dave?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
The funniest part of this is that Dave's argument boils down to something like, "humans, chimps, and gorillas are all essentially the same thing." Which actually is true, if we were comparing them to all other organisms. But since we are focusing ONLY on humans, chimps, and gorillas, the 40% figure is obviously much more significant.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
The funniest part of this is that Dave's argument boils down to something like, "humans, chimps, and gorillas are all essentially the same thing." Which actually is true, if we were comparing them to all other organisms. But since we are focusing ONLY on humans, chimps, and gorillas, the 40% figure is obviously much more significant.
Yup. One way or the other (probably both), he's making our points for us.
Best case scenario for Dave is to argue that genetics simply cannot be used to trace the history of organisms (which leaves us pretty much with the Bible's description of "humans and other stuff" for created "kinds", and nowhere to go from there).
Meanwhile, cosmology cannot be used to trace the history of the universe. Geology cannot be used to trace the history of the earth (unless we're talking about two questionable RATE results in millions, in which case 0.0001% is meaningful). Statistics cannot be used to discuss the validity of differences among data sets. Linguistics cannot be used to trace the history of languages. Am I missing any other field of study that needs to be discarded in the name of Dave's "hypothesis"?
Meanwhile, cosmology cannot be used to trace the history of the universe. Geology cannot be used to trace the history of the earth (unless we're talking about two questionable RATE results in millions, in which case 0.0001% is meaningful). Statistics cannot be used to discuss the validity of differences among data sets. Linguistics cannot be used to trace the history of languages. Am I missing any other field of study that needs to be discarded in the name of Dave's "hypothesis"?
A few more: logic cannot be used in reasoning; epistemology cannot be used to explore the origin of knowledge; and ontology cannot be used to explore the nature of existence.
But one thing can be used. The Bible can be used to know the mind of God. Which, when you think about it, is by far the most preposterous belief Dave has.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite #### of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 - You actually know a lot less than many nonchristianss do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Analogy and other figurative language cannot be used to represent something you don't want to believe. Empirical data is not "evidence". Citations and references cannot be used to support arguments. Lies cannot be used to establish dishonesty. And of course, nothing that takes more than five sentences to explain can be true.
(and yes, Steve, I am sincere about the things I am saying)
thought so. the people who think you know better, and are lying, are giving you too much credit.
That is truly sad. You really think so? I mean, occasionally he says something that sounds intelligent. Not often, but occasionally. And I am trying hard to be polite and presume he's smarter than he appears.
In looking over the creationist claims, it's amusing to me how often the idea of "accelerated decay " is invoked, then rapidly discarded when they look at other aspects of their own claims.
They don't even try to fake "calculations" of how this might occur/rates, etc., they just offer it up as an excuse, then discard it when its inconvenient to their other claims.
It's an interesting case of " God made radiation decay faster all over the world, but I won't mention it here because it interferes with my current claims"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Do you like Dogs AFTarget Drone ?? (on and on and on)
A Truly incredible dog
This fundamentalist Christian couple felt it important to own an equally fundamentally Christian pet. So, they went shopping. At a kennel specializing in this particular breed, they found a dog they liked quite a lot. When they asked the dog to fetch the Bible, he did it in a flash. When they instructed him to look up Psalm 23, he complied equally fast, using his paws with dexterity.
They were impressed, purchased the animal, and went home (piously, of course). That night they had friends over. They were so proud of their new fundamentalist dog and his major skills, they called the dog and showed off a little. The friends were impressed, and asked whether the dog was able to do any of the usual dog tricks, as well. This stopped the couple cold, as they hadn't thought about 'normal' tricks.
"Well," they said, "let's try this out."
Once more they called out to the dog, and then clearly pronounced the command, "Heel!"
Quick as a wink, the dog jumped up, put his paw on the man's forehead, closed his eyes in concentration, and bowed his head.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Whether 1% or 100%, what matters is millions of data points examined and p<0.001. This is what Davey doesn't get.
What's also matters is the relative time of divergence between humans and chimps (homininae and gorillinae to be accurate) compared to chimps and gorillas. And it's not based on homology, but on difference. The last common ancestor of chimps and gorillas is 40% older than the LCA of chimps and humans, not 0.5% (assuming a molecular clock).
Typical. Another ad homonym argument from those vicious evilutionists
Yeah the dog took him literally ---snigger
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Hi Davey, I see you logged in. Does that last comment mean you are taking up your bet?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
What's also matters is the relative time of divergence between humans and chimps (homininae and gorillinae to be accurate) compared to chimps and gorillas. And it's not based on homology, but on difference. The last common ancestor of chimps and gorillas is 40% older than the LCA of chimps and humans, not 0.5% (assuming a molecular clock).
Yup. But that's what evilutionary theory says, and the very idea that extant genomes will reflect ancestral genomes via a molecular clock is one that Davey doesn't seem to buy. Nevermind the supportive external evidence from fossil hominids (when talking about the ape thing) and other fossil species (when talking about other molecular clock applications).
Actually, that's something else Davey should address. The fossil record for early apes (e.g., the LCA of chimps, humans and gorillas) is quite weak (i.e., nothing very close to the LCA has been found, as far as I know). But before Dave starts trumpeting that fact as a nail in the coffin of evolution, perhaps he can fill us in on why this would help his 'hypothesis'? After all, paleontology in the framework of evolution might not expect to easily find fossils of such transient (and presumably low-abundance) species, especially given the habitat. But as I understand Dave's hypothesis, when the Flood hit, the entire ape kind would have existed as the LCA of chimps, gorillas and orangutans (thereby allowing it to be preserved by two individuals on the Ark). Since fossils were created by the Flood, where are the remains of this hypothetical ape (minus humans) LCA? We have fossils that fill in the story after the Flood (how does that work?!, when the species had already diverged, but no original ape-kind remains to speak of, which forces us to apply these indirect molecular-clock methods to get our best estimate of time since divergence. And of course, that estimate, based on extant genomes, soundly refutes Dave's predicted human-ape phylogeny. Again, why don't we observe what the CGH neccessarily predicts?
AFDave has shamed me into seeing the error of my ways. No more trolling for OA, no siree! From now on, I will listen and learn from someone better than me. I mean after all, he flew jets! JETS! He even had two other AF pilots at his wedding! How much more convincing of his sincerity do you lunkheads need?!?!
I’m learning a lot of good sciency stuff from AFDave. One big lesson he taught me is that all peer reviews are equal in value. I discovered this when I asked AFDave who peer reviewed the RATE results. Turns out the RATE papers were only peer reviewed by other YECs from the same place (ICR, Institute for Creation Research) that sponsored the study. When I pointed out the possible conflict-of-interest issues, he said the peer review was still valid because:
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AFDave: Evos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Creos in. Creos have their peers and techy journals and they don't let Evos in
There you have it! It was peer reviewed, so it must be correct!
I guess it wouldn’t bother me so much except I recently read a paper published by ISR (Institute for Satanic Research) that claimed 99% of all Christian missionaries are motivated by the desire to steal from the impoverished native peoples and sexually abuse their farm animals. I didn’t believe it, until I found out the paper was peer reviewed by other Satanists from ISR!
Since AFDave has demonstrated conclusively that if a study passes peer review by the very group that sponsored it, it must be accurate and I have to accept it. Darn shame about those Christian missionaries though, I'm really disillusioned...
Now quit picking on AFDave just because he can’t match your pathetic level of detail with his YEC views. Look at the BIG picture, like saving your own soul!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
(and yes, Steve, I am sincere about the things I am saying)
thought so. the people who think you know better, and are lying, are giving you too much credit.
That is truly sad. You really think so? I mean, occasionally he says something that sounds intelligent. Not often, but occasionally. And I am trying hard to be polite and presume he's smarter than he appears.
Nope. He's really that crazy/dumb. I have relatives in Kentucky who are, as we speak, YECs, believers in segregation, stoning gays, AIDS cures fags, a satanic cult controls the US government, women who wear red are whores, &c, &c. As a result I think I take retards at face value.
Some of them, believe it or not, are to AFDave as he is to Ghost of Paley, way dumber. Ghost, on the other hand, is too smart to believe what he says, and most people think that, according to the poll.
Just so we get this straight, are you proposing that some kind of meeting took place where it was decided that science would say the earth was a particular age just to prove evolution. Presumably you think that science is holding up evolution to disprove God?
Also, dave, did you look at this link someone posted a while back? Thank you whoever posted it:
It's by an Evangelical Christan geologist, and it is a very interesting read. It clearly shows in great detail the gradual historic change in (especially, Christian) mainstream geology.
So you think that when Adam was in the Garden of Eden the decay rates for radioactive elements were faster ... and Adam and Eve lived in a couple thousand degrees of heat and high radiation?
No, no, no. The best theory YECs have for this is that it may have happened before there was any life on earth (before Creation Day 3) or during the Flood where the water would have formed a shield, or both. This is unclear without further RATE research, but no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation.
So, no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation, you just postulate a magic trick where the half-life of uranium drops from 4.5 billion years to one day before Adam and Eve were created.
And one wonders how does Noah get sheilded from the water boiling because of all the heat and high-energy particles dumped into it (creating more heat ...)
Oh, to expand on the Pyrex glass/zircon thing, AFDave: Helium's diffusivity through Pyrex is 20 times greater than any other gas --hydrogen is the closest competitor. This has led to the suggestion that pyrex be used to filter out helium from natural gas. Pyrex is all of one point lower on the Mohs as Zircon's lower undamaged bound. High metamict Zircon has a much lower hardness value. Now go look at Titanite.
And makes even more of a mockery of Humphreys' claim "So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz."
In looking over the creationist claims, it's amusing to me how often the idea of "accelerated decay " is invoked, then rapidly discarded when they look at other aspects of their own claims.
They don't even try to fake "calculations" of how this might occur/rates, etc., they just offer it up as an excuse, then discard it when its inconvenient to their other claims.
The postulated sources of the water are the vapor canopy which precipitated and the underground reservoirs, which apparently were extensive.
Nobody except the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe still believes in any form of vapor canopy. Keeping enough vapor in the air, or getting any form of water from a significant elevation to the earth, releases enough energy to kill 'em all except for some thermophilic bacteria. Oh, and getting enough water from underneath the Earth's surface does the same thing again. (I'm quite familiar with Walt Brown's stuff, and he leaves the most significant effects out of his calculations. There's no excuse for an MIT ME to forget the steam tables.)
You are correct that there would not be anywhere close to enough time available to generate enough Heium assuming today's decay rates, but as the RATE Group has pointed out many times, this is an assumption, and there are beginning to be many indicators supporting the idea that this assumption may be grossly wrong.
Tain't an assumption, Davie-poo. It's a conclusion based on mountains of evidence. One or two claimed anomalies for which there are several other reasonable explanations is not "many indicators". And you have yet to propose a non-magical mechanism for this alleged increase in decay rates.
Why do you suppose the entire scientific community supports the accuracy of radiometric dating, Dave?
Because they want to believe in long ages to support the Theory of Evolution and they make assumptions which allow them to believe they are being scientific.
Ah, there's the ol' world-wide-conspiracy-of-scientists-claim without which no creationist loon would be complete. Sorry, Davie-poo, it was obvious in the late 1700s and early 1800s that the Earth is far older than a few thousand years. Reference provided previously, several times. Your failure to acquaint yourself with the facts doesn't make them go away.
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You misunderstand the YEC position if you think I am saying that God is some sort of 'cheap magician.'
I think the Hershey Collective said it best:
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... all you are saying is that you are positing that some undetectable, invisible something acting by an undetectable mechanism at some unspecified time and unspecified place somehow managed to poof into existence whatever you want poofed into existence. *That* is the essence of positing that something exists by "magic".
Well, there are a lot of people who support those positions. Not a lot in relative numbers, but a lot in absolute numbers. Maybe a few million. I have some relatives of that type. Phelps isn't the only media personality like that, there are others. for instance Bob Enyart.
It occurred to me that maybe you are unaware of the level at which you are not being respected. Let me help,
You have not yet produced 1 single argument. Not 1. You offered to bet anyone some fantastical thing if they could prove you wrong. I took the bet and you declared victory before a single sentence had been written. So I conclude that, since ytou were unable to even respond to the fact that I accepted your bet, that I won.
But I will up the ante.
I will bet you (the same terms, winner gets to make a post on the others' blog) that I can prove you wrong in a one on one debate on any topic at all relating to a young earth hypothesis.
Either you can, or you can't, back up what you say. You have been able to dilute your message through a variety of posters but we both know that you are really just afraid of your homo-erotic satanic fantasies.
So, Davey dickhead, if you refuse this challenge, you will be admitting your ignorance. Take it or leave.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
So, Davey dickhead, if you refuse this challenge, you will be admitting your ignorance. Take it or leave.
Hey you potty mouth! Don't pick on my friend AFDave, he's a hero. While all those other cowards in the military took the easy way out by drawing fire in hostile countries and active war zones like Desert Storm, AFDave volunteered for an important job; providing a taxi service for rear echelon VIPs in his helicopter and defending the center of the country from a sneak attack. You should be grateful.
So what if AFDave doesn't have any evidence to back up his arguments? All you scientific types with your fancy facts and peer review and high falutin' empirical evidence – BIG DEAL. AFDave is a teammate of Jesus, the Big J himself! As long as TeamJC can oppose those ignorant atheist scientists, then AFDave doesn’t need no stinkin’ evidence. After all, how could a Bible written, altered, and translated countless times in the last 2000 years by fallible men possibly not be literally true ?? ?? ?? That highly modified Bible says it, AFDave believes it, that settles it.
Why don’t you just accept what he has to say is the TRUTH, so he will stop being so hard on you?
(Don’t worry Dave, I’ve got your back against these atheist trolls)
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I admit I used to be, always stumping AFDave with those tough scientific questions, but AFDave made me see the error of my ways. I'm a born again supporter of my fellow EE AFDave. I'll now do everything I can to support his cause, just watch. I wouldn't want to burn in he11 for all eternity just because all those professional scientists can't accept the TRUTH of a literal Bible, now would I?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
That highly modified Bible says it, AFDave believes it, that settles it.
Yeah bro'!
For heaven's sake, he's got... the zombie troof Backed up by his sky daddy... the zombie woof So what if there's none/nada/zip in the way of any evidoof After all, we're talking AFDave here; the stupor zombie goof And if that don't make your dinah-mo-hum on the roof Then ya'll really need some a that old-time sky pixie magic... *poof*
AFDave...I really think you have your heart in the right place. Your trying to educate everyone to the "Truth". The only problem I have is that I can find absolutely no mention in the bible that people who believe in Evolution cannot get into heaven.
You are correct. There is nothing in the Bible that says that.
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Many theistic evolutionists have a greater respect for God....they believe his creation was more grandiose than you believe. You are trying to destroy theistic evolutionists belief in grand, powerful, timeless God and replace it with a cheap magician? You should be ashamed.
I'm not trying to destroy anything but error where I see it.
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You also seem be rather boastful about your efforts in this forum...which is VERY unchristian.
I admit that I am not the perfect example of a Christian and I should be more humble and kind. I come from a group of friends and associates who were typically very cocky, self-assured, and fiercely independent, so you are correct in observing that I have those natural tendencies as well--God is working on me!. I do have no problem, though, with dealing harshly with blatant trollism. Jesus did this too.
You misunderstand the YEC position if you think I am saying that God is some sort of 'cheap magician.'
AFDave, I would greatly appreciate it if you would act in a more humble way. Jesus did deal with "trolls", but he dealt with them by responding to them. When they asked Jesus why he didnt wash his hands, he made a quip, but he also answered the question.
You have ignored many objections to your "hypothesis". I could attribute many of them to differences of opinions, but one specific example stands in my mind as an overwhelmingly ignored suggestion. Your entire discussion of "Universal Morality" is almost completely rejected by all evidence, and seems to be founded more on the wishful thinking of C.S. Lewis than on anything else.
It is because of topics such as this that I have come to believe that you are more interested in rejecting Evolution. Your interest in "correcting error" seems to only be applicable to situations that fulfill your need to reject scientific ideas that oppose your faith
It also seems, and again I am referencing your "Universal Morality" post, that you are more than willing to completely reject evidence without any actual flaw being found in the accumulation of the evidence. You have rejected the evidence first, and then discovered a reason for the rejection later. This is intellectually dishonest, but quite common.
If I told you that the center of the moon was made out of cheese you would most likely reject the notion first, and justify your rejection later. This, however, is not an appropriate way to approach a discussion. You must at least admit the validity of your opponents position until you can find evidence to the contrary.
I will, however, summarize the reason for your actions. IF you find a flaw with these please message me. You cannot accept the superiority of scientific knowledge to biblical knowledge. You know that the bible is the work of God, and therefore without flaw. IF the bible and science are in opposition the flaw must lie with science. You are simply trying to find that flaw.
You deny Evolution because of its apparent contradiction to the literal interpretation of the bible. You must either reconcile the two, or deny one. The bible is perfect, and therefore Evolution is false?
Once again, I believe that this thread is already approaching the maximum length. If you would wish to discuss this further you can message me.
Ain't nobody gonne crucify you here Dave, but they will b!tch slap you till you get tired of it and leave.
Crabby ... you are not very bright if you think I'm going to get tired of being 'b!tch slapped' and leave. There are two reasons I will leave: Wesley bans me or I finish what I set out to do.
No DDTTD, the only reason Wes will ban you is if you display the "kind" of lunacy that Larry did. You've already demonstrated you're willing to lie, distort, misquote and just plain ignore evidence when it doesn't suit your goals. Guys like you love to invoke "common sense" to bolster your arguments. The problem is, guys like you PROVE sense isn't very common.
Getting banned is your sole purpose here. You WANT to be crucified. Banned=Crucified for DDTTD.
I answered your question about what I did in the military. I guess you overlooked it (or you chose to ignore it) or didn't understand the acronyms I used. Too bad. You won't read or hear me bragging about it on a blog or in a bar narcissist Dave. You won't read or hear me whining about some General/Admiral changing the rules and dashing my hopes and dreams (or changing horses in mid stream and saying my new family changed my career goals). That crap has nothing to do with science anymore than your 30,000"/Mach Speed, jungle boy hunting pigs in a hollow log UNIQUE perspective on life.
Here, you have to present scientific evidence that PROVES your hypothesis. NOT spout SCIENCY statements that can't be refuted because they are based on preconcieved notions, psuedo science, common sense, incredulity or outright fiction.
Then you have the nerve to tell us you might pursue an advanced degree. Chaaa, ya know what? Ungh ungh. I said it before in another thread. Hey Bozo, stop trying to blow smoke up my butt. You're a dilettante. Get over it.
Now turn out the on call light cause nobody here wants to ride in YOUR Taxi.
Because helicopters are flying around (probably to rescue someone off the nearby mountain) I woke up and decided to post this rough guide to Dave's nonsense so far, just in case :
Dave's outline and thread page numbers:
1.) Abductive reasoning (pp1-2)
2.) Fine Tuning and "bio machines" (pp.3-13) Brings up SETI (p.8)
3.) C.S Lewis (pp.14-16) Discusses evil (pp.14-16) First Portuguese mention (p.14) Henry was dead already (p.16)
4.) Dave returns to fine tuning arguments using Denton (p.18) Argues GULO is due to similarity of chimps and man (p.20) Ladlergo predicts that Dave will claim any genetic differences between man and chimp is meaningless-- Which dave does on page 22, while ericmurphy points out this "half a lousy percent" is something like twenty million base pairs, then on page 24, Dave says "the actual number of nucleotides don't matter. "
Dave says "Remember, to establish Common Descent for Apes and Humans still requires an explanation for what I call The Big Three: Absence of Hominid Civilizations living today, enormous non-biological differences, and the unconvincing fossil record." (p.22)
5.) Dave brings in antibiotic resistance claims (p.22) Dave is refuted on the next two pages (pp.2 2-24). Dave says he's not qualified to judge the papers cited, but continues to claim antibiotic resistance as being in his favor.
6.) Dave claims history of civilizations and written languages both appear at 5,500 years ago. (p.29-31) Dave says scribes followed Adam around (p.31) Dave claims that Amerinds had writing, but "devolved"
7.) (p.35)Dave Brings up RATE and zircons for the first time. It continues still.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So after reading the the last couple of pages in this thread, I think I can summarise the following:
After both demonstrating and admitting ignorance in the fields of biology, genetics, nuclear physics, relativity, geology and linguistics, afdave, you repeatedly assert that:
Those who do have expertise in these fields, and whose conclusions contradict your religious beliefs, are just plain wrong.
and
Many of those who have expertise in these fields are knowingly propogating supposed falsehoods for ideological reasons.
Now you've reached the stage where you are labelling those who have expertise in these fields and have pointed out the errors in your arguments as "trolls".
I agree with Puck's charitable interpretation that you are an intelligent man who believes he is serving the ends of The Truth with these gymnastics. But, I'm sorry, the only thing of which I am (still) convinced is that subscribing to your faith means turning off my (supposedly God-given) brain.
So after reading the the last couple of pages in this thread, I think I can summarise the following:
After both demonstrating and admitting ignorance in the fields of biology, genetics, nuclear physics, relativity, geology and linguistics, afdave, you repeatedly assert that:
Those who do have expertise in these fields, and whose conclusions contradict your religious beliefs, are just plain wrong.
and
Many of those who have expertise in these fields are knowingly propogating supposed falsehoods for ideological reasons.
It's funny, it was extremely predictable that Dave would dismiss anyone contradicting his Young Earth/Creationist silliness on religious grounds -- they're obviously not TrueChristians, therefore they can't be trusted on anything. But he has a harder time dismissing the entire field of linguistics, since he can't construct an argument that anyone who disproves his ideas in the history of language is by definition a wicked heathen. So he had no recourse there but to respond to being refuted by repeating himself, ignoring everyone's counterarguments, and repeatedly declaring he'd already won. So it's an interesting case study of how AFD argues when he can't drag Jesus into it.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
So after reading the the last couple of pages in this thread, I think I can summarise the following:
After both demonstrating and admitting ignorance in the fields of biology, genetics, nuclear physics, relativity, geology and linguistics, afdave, you repeatedly assert that:
Those who do have expertise in these fields, and whose conclusions contradict your religious beliefs, are just plain wrong.
and
Many of those who have expertise in these fields are knowingly propogating supposed falsehoods for ideological reasons.
It's funny, it was extremely predictable that Dave would dismiss anyone contradicting his Young Earth/Creationist silliness on religious grounds -- they're obviously not TrueChristians, therefore they can't be trusted on anything. But he has a harder time dismissing the entire field of linguistics, since he can't construct an argument that anyone who disproves his ideas in the history of language is by definition a wicked heathen. So he had no recourse there but to respond to being refuted by repeating himself, ignoring everyone's counterarguments, and repeatedly declaring he'd already won. So it's an interesting case study of how AFD argues when he can't drag Jesus into it.
It's also one of those cases where he has no 'pre-canned' argument that can be taken from AIG or any of the other fundie websites he uses as his material.
That's another key thing to realize about QFDave: nothing that he posts is original - except the occasional oddball idiocy that he later sputters, fumbles, and grossly embarrasses himself trying to defend (e.g. Portuguese; e.g. Relativity).
Everything else - and I mean everything, even the counter-arguments to our demonstration that he's wrong - come directly from creationist sources.
This total lack of originality in his thinking; this inability to construct an argument on his own volition; this rote and mechanical regurgitiation of other's people's work; this plagarism, in short, is what keys me into the fact that QFDave is incapable of critical thinking.
It's also his most disappointing aspect. These are old arguments; oft made; always refuted. There's nothing new here, no startling revelation, no 'gee whiz! Maybe the ignorant fundie has a point'.
I see we are doing summaries again, so I guess I will do mine ...
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR
[Covered already] (A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos (a) Hoyle, Penrose, etc., summarized by Meyer at http://www.arn.org/docs/meyer/sm_returnofgod.pdf (b) Acknowledged by TalkOrigins for this universe See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cosmo.html (2) Biological machines (a) Dawkins admits 'designed appearance' ('Blind Watchmaker' etc) (b) Bruce Alberts, Pres. of Nat. Academy of Sciences Uses terms like "assembly lines and machines to describe cells (c ) Denton: "Evolution-A Theory in Crisis" and "Nature's Destiny" Wonderful cell descriptions, clear statement of anthropic principle (d) Behe: "Darwin's Black Box" - flagella, blood clotting, immune system (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (a) There is a curious, universal moral code among humans (b) In spite of cultural differences, major portions are the same (c ) Everyone acknowledges the code, but no one lives up to it perfectly (d) There must be a source of the code outside of humans (e) It is possible that this 'Source' could be the God of the Bible (4) The Problem of Evil in the World (a) Skeptics say 'If there was a God, why is there evil in the world?' (b) Evil is a natural result of Choice (c ) God could have made robots instead of humans (d) Human parents prefer to have babies over robots (e) Babies have the potential to experience great evil (f) Parents go on have babies anyway, in spite of possible evil (e) Why should God be any different with his 'babies'? (5) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims (a) Makes it possible to conceptualize God on a different time scale (b) Gives some hints that God's claimed omnipresence may be plausible (B) YEC predicts a Young Earth (<10,000 years old) (1) Why world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier (a) Evolutionists claim H. Sapiens has been on earth for 200,000 years (b) Historians note that written history begins about 6000 ya (c ) It is implausible that humans waited 194,000 years to invent writing
[Debating currently] (2) RATE project: High He Retention in Zircons (3) Why Kevin Henke fails in his 'Helium-Zircon Debunking'
[Not covered yet] (4) RATE project: C14 in Coal and Diamonds (5) RATE project: Polonium radiohalos (6) RATE Project: Radiometric dating discordance (7) Multitude of young earth physical evidences explored (C ) The Antediluvian World (1) Cain's wife (2) The origin of civilization (3) Misunderstandings about cavemen (4) Kinds and speciation ... and more (D) The Global Flood (1) Huge water-laid sediments all over the earth (2) Volcanism and tectonics (3) The Grand Canyon and Mt. Saint Helens ... and more
[Covered Already] (E) Anti-Evolution Topics (1) Chimp Chromosomes--Did they fuse to form human chromosome 2? (2) Shared 'Broken GULO' gene between Apes and Humans? (a) 'Mistakes' are similar, but not identical --Dr. Max's Talk Origins article is thus N/A (b) GULO could have broken independently (ref. guinea pigs) (c ) GULO gene not determinative between Common Descent and Common Design (3) Bacterial Resistance (a) Commonly used to support macroevolution--see Talk Origins (b) Loss of information, not gain (c ) No help to 'macroevolution' (F) Miscellaneous Topics (1) Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French (among other factors) (a) Generalization, like 'the sky is blue' or 'the grass is green' (b) World Book: P and S were essentially the same language until 1143 (c ) 12th Century: A large French influence began in what is now Portugal (d) Comparison of F, S and P words shows the mixture (e) Wikipedia acknowledges closeness of S and P and of P to F. (f) EB: Standard P is based on Dialect of Lisbon (where F influence is greatest)
Norm...
Quote
I don't remember any specific AIG article you linked or copied here. Go ahead and link it again.
Does that "not writing home" mean we've got an example of microevolution here?
Possibly. It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor.
OA...
Quote
PhDs with YEC beliefs constitute an extremely small minority of the biological and geological scientific communities, approximately 0.15% (Robinson, B. A. 1995. Public beliefs about evolution and creation.). Data interpretations presented by YEC PhDs in support of their young earth hypothesis have been critically examined and rejected by the other 99.85% of all non YEC PhD scientists working in the relevant fields.
Please provide your qualifications and justifications that let you determine that the extreme minority YEC PhD interpretations are the 'truth', while the opinion of the other 99.85 % of the professional scientific community is wrong.
I suspect that the percentage was much higher than your article admits even in 1995. I suspect that it is even higher now, 10 years later. My qualifications: nothing special--engineering background, real world smarts demonstrated by success in the AF and in business. My justifications: I don't really need any--the country I live in allows great freedoms. I do note that many of the founders of modern science were Christians and YECs. I also note that the so called 'Enlightenment' brought many new 'isms' which have now turned out to be massive mistakes and/or frauds: Communism, Naziism (National Socialism), Freudianism, and 'JEDPism' (the Documentary Hypothesis) to name a few. There are many indicators to me that Darwinism and 'Long Age-ism' fall into this category as well, so I have joined the fray to find out for sure and help to kill it if in fact, it needs to be killed. I have already given you many examples in the article I quoted from UD about how the Consensus has been wrong and they should have listened to the minority viewpoint. I might add to those examples the example of Jesus Christ--probably the best example in history of a minority viewpoint which was subsequently vindicated.
Chris Hyland...
Quote
So no one thought the earth was old before the theory of evolution did they?
Oh no. I'm sure many people throughout history have thought the earth was old. But my focus is on modern times. Prior to Darwin, the majority of scientists were YECs and Catastrophists. My focus is on this time period up until the present day. I am not sure who came up with the number 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth. I would like to find out. I would also like to know how it is known that gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya. Incorygible keeps referencing his book, but my question is "How does the book know this?" "Where did the idea originate?"
Argystokes...
Quote
The statistical significance of a result is the probability that the observed relationship (e.g., between variables) or a difference (e.g., between means) in a sample occurred by pure chance ("luck of the draw"), and that in the population from which the sample was drawn, no such relationship or differences exist. Using less technical terms, one could say that the statistical significance of a result tells us something about the degree to which the result is "true" (in the sense of being "representative of the population"). [technical definition follows]
I am fine with this definition. How does this refute anything I have said on this topic?
Faid...
Quote
Hmm... Speaking as a doctor who remembers little math, I fail to see the problem here...We have two statements:
Humans are 0.5% more simillar overall to chimps than to gorillas
and
Humans share 40% less differences with chimps compared to gorillas
Both these statements are true, right? So, the issue is... Which is significant, and which is not?
Or are they both?
Dave, in your worldview, are differences between chimps and gorillas significant, or not? Are differences between chimps and humans significant, or not?
And what does this data say about that to you?
Clearing up your case would help you make your point -if you have any.
I agree. Both statements are correct. No. The differences are not significant from the standpoint that they are not determinative regarding Common Design vs. Common Descent. The differences b/t chimps and gorillas are most likely due to normal, designed adaptation (microevolution if you will) from the original created kind. The differences b/t chimps and humans are small if comparing only DNA, but large if comparing other items.
Norm...
Quote
So, no YEC postulates some sort of magic trick to shield Adam and Eve from the radiation, you just postulate a magic trick where the half-life of uranium drops from 4.5 billion years to one day before Adam and Eve were created.
YECs do not claim that God does 'nonsensical magic tricks', i.e. He does not intervene just for the fun of it. He always has a purpose. It would be nonsensical for God to wake up one day and say 'I think I'll speed up nuclear decay just for the fun of it!' ... oh, wait a minute ... 'I'd better shield Adam and Eve from the radiation!' But we CAN conceive of God creating the planet on Day 1 and 2 of creation, just as a sculptor would fashion a head of some famous person out of clay. We can imagine that this 'planet formation event' necessarily involved some pretty intense processes which we should not pretend to understand yet. Why is it irrational to propose that some sort of accelerated nuclear decay might have been a by-product of these intense processes?
In the same way, the Flood was a massively intense event. And it had purposes: destroy most of mankind, change the topography and the climate, shorten human lifespans, etc. etc. If the Flood is recognized as a massive, hydraulic, tectonic and volcanic cataclysm, why is it unreasonable to again postulate an accelerated nuclear decay event during this intense period?
Chris Hyland...
Quote
Just so we get this straight, are you proposing that some kind of meeting took place where it was decided that scioence would say the earth was a particular age just to prove evolution. Presumably you think that science is holding up evolution to disprove God?
I am not aware of any formal meetings to determine this specifically. My guess is that someone with some established credibility published (erroneously, in my opinion) the 4.5 billion year old date first, then it may have been argued some, then generally adopted by the scientific community. This is exactly what happened in the case of the now discredited JEDP Hypothesis (Graf/Wellhausen Theory of the Pentateuch). Jean Astruc was the first in modern times to challenge Mosaic authorship and other scholars followed his lead. When a critical mass of scholars accepted it, the Theory became as good as fact to many liberal theologians. Never mind that it was wrong and has now been thoroughly discredited.
Incorygible...
Quote
And Dave, please add a reply to normoering in your answer:
If the differences between chimps and humans ARE significant, how does this affect your definition (and required number) of kinds? After all, larger differences (say between chimps and gorillas, chimps and orangutans, different species of mice, millions of different species of beetles, etc., etc., etc.) would also be significant enough to imply separate "kinds", right?
If the differences between chimps and humans ARE NOT significant (i.e., "nothing to write home about"), how can you be sure this isn't microevolution within a "kind"? After all, if chimps, gorillas and orangutans are in the ape kind, why aren't we, since we fit in there nicely at a meaningless 1/2%?
I have not studied extensively into the YEC position on 'baraminology.' I hope to soon.
Deadman...
Quote
It's hard for me to know where to begin with your claims, AFDave. First, on a side note. I gave you citations showing that antibacterial resistance did not do what you claimed. Your response was to say that you were not qualified to deal with the studies. But you continue to claim that you are right. If you are not qualified to assess the studies, and the studies argue against your claim ( in fact, shooting it down completely) then you cannot honestly claim to be right. This is disingenous at best, lying at worst.
I would be willing to revisit bacterial resistance and look at your links, but at this point, it appears to me that 'my expert' is more accurate than other 'experts' I have heard. Maybe when we get into the more biological points on my outline would be a good time to get into it again. Right now, I don't really have the bandwidth to even research it further.
Deadman...
Quote
Second, I note that you are in fact in contact with ICR, and I'm curious, Dave...is that where you're getting your guidance from in your arguments? Because Henke has said he won't continue to engage Humphreys -- you're using this forum as a proxy? I believe that you will use your experience here as a means of gaining the attention and approval of ICR/AIG so you can sell your kiddy-brainwash materials.
Yes. ICR and AIG and CRS associated scientists are my primary sources of information for YEC Theory. I have no plans to make any money from anything I write about Origins. I am a donor to various ministries, but none of them pay me or have plans to.
Deadman...
Quote
And I say Humphreys misleads his supporters in this comparison between zircon and steel. On the mohs Biotite is 2.5 to3 Apatite is 5 Titanite is 5.5 Pyrex Glass is 5.5 Zircon is 6.5 to 7.5 A steel file is 6.5.
You say 6.5 to 7.5. Humphreys says 7.5. Are you saying this is misleading? It seems rather minor to me.
Quote
Did you know that Helium diffuses in pyrex rather easily at pressure and concentration and temp levels comparable to the Fenton Hill samples? In fact, Helium diffuses through Pyrex at a higher rate than any other gas. Helium diffusion also tends to be highest in defect areas, Dave. These studies have been known since the 30's (Taylor and Rast: The Journal of Chemical Physics -- October 1938 -- Volume 6, Issue 10, pp. 612-619). Helium diffusion also causes embrittlement in stainless steel itself ( a problem of some concern in places with radiation like oh, nuclear facilities) again, concentrations are highest in areas of "defects." Now...what would this mean for Zircons, Dave?
Zircons are metamict...They have major defects and damage due to internal radiation sources, which increases the likelihood of He diffusion as shown in various crystalline structures. Alpha radiation degrades the hardness of minerals like zircon, Dave...did you know that? The crystal lattices get all banged up, and in fact, it can punch holes right through the surface of the zircon (or Titanite). External radiation can of course also cause damage. Heat cycles cause damage. Fluid flows cause damage. Acids can cause damage.
Oh, to expand on the Pyrex glass/zircon thing, AFDave: Helium's diffusivity through Pyrex is 20 times greater than any other gas --hydrogen is the closest competitor. This has led to the suggestion that pyrex be used to filter out helium from natural gas. Pyrex is all of one point lower on the Mohs as Zircon's lower undamaged bound. High metamict Zircon has a much lower hardness value. Now go look at Titanite.
I do not see how any of this addresses the issue that I raised. Are you saying that zircon damage makes them more susceptible to pressure differences? I don't think this would be correct. My understanding is that damaged or not damaged, zircons are extremely hard, making Helium diffusion rates quite independent of pressure. This is what I glean from Humpreys rebuttal of Henke's 'Vacuum Testing' objection.
Deadman...
Quote
Couple these factors with the thermo-history problems of the Fenton Hill samples that you seem to dismiss as negligible, as well as things like the High concentrations of He nearby, the fact that Salsada shows Hydrothermic activity, and the fact that even the samples that were used show "gneiss" veins ...it would mean that He diffusion events would be highly likely to occur as well as multiple annealing events. There's also the problem of Zircon zoning that Humphreys doesn't even begin to address. Read Farley's work on Titanite and He diffusivity rates, then talk to me about how He diffusion is not likely to occur.
I see no way that Harrison and Sasada's thermo histories can possibly change Humphreys' data because ... 1) the cold period they are suggesting was only 26 degrees colder, and 2) there was a hot event which Humphreys did not even include in his model, which if he did, his ages would come out even younger. He was generous to long agers by not including this event. JonF has asked that the H and S data be integrated over time and modeled. I have heard that it in fact was and is reported in the RATE Book II. I will see when I receive my copy.
PuckSR...
Quote
AFDave, I would greatly appreciate it if you would act in a more humble way. Jesus did deal with "trolls", but he dealt with them by responding to them. When they asked Jesus why he didnt wash his hands, he made a quip, but he also answered the question.
It never hurts anyone to try to be more humble. Advice taken. Jesus told some of his 'trolls' that they were 'of their father, the Devil' and that 'you are white washed tombs, full of dead men's bones' and 'you are blind guides' and 'serpents, brood of vipers.' He also went into the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers. All this demonstrates that being like Jesus Christ is not always 'Casper Milktoast.'[/quote]
Quote
Once again, I believe that this thread is already approaching the maximum length.
I never knew there was such a thing as 'maximum length.'
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Chris Hyland wrote "So no one thought the earth was old before the theory of evolution did they?"
Oh no. I'm sure many people throughout history have thought the earth was old. But my focus is on modern times. Prior to Darwin, the majority of scientists were YECs and Catastrophists. My focus is on this time period up until the present day. I am not sure who came up with the number 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth. I would like to find out.
Dave, did you happen to read the link I re-posted on the last page? It is a very long article, but the first part of it deals with Christians following the evidence away from Noah's Flood Geology, before Darwin, as well as after.
I did scan the article. I am familiar with much of this information and am aware that there has been much ink expended on both sides of the issue even before Darwin.
I am focusing on the period just before Darwin up to the present time because I feel it is most relevant to my goals.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor.
So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
(F) Miscellaneous Topics (1) Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French (among other factors) (d) Comparison of F, S and P words shows the mixture
Prior to Darwin, the majority of scientists were YECs and Catastrophists. My focus is on this time period up until the present day. I am not sure who came up with the number 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth. I would like to find out.
But we CAN conceive of God creating the planet on Day 1 and 2 of creation, just as a sculptor would fashion a head of some famous person out of clay. We can imagine that this 'planet formation event' necessarily involved some pretty intense processes which we should not pretend to understand yet.
Chris Hyland...
Quote
Just so we get this straight, are you proposing that some kind of meeting took place where it was decided that scioence would say the earth was a particular age just to prove evolution. Presumably you think that science is holding up evolution to disprove God?
I am not aware of any formal meetings to determine this specifically. My guess is that someone with some established credibility published (erroneously, in my opinion) the 4.5 billion year old date first, then it may have been argued some, then generally adopted by the scientific community.
I see Dave is still claiming that word similarity means Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish. He clearly didn't bother reading my list of the same words from Latin- the COMMON ANCESTOR of Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian...
Maybe that's why Dave can't grasp linguistics- if he acknowledged common descent among languages, he might have to acknowledge it in biology, too.
And I love how he A) admits he knows nothing about the history of dating the Earth; but B) is already convinced that it's a conspiracy. It's a telling insight into how sciencce would get done if people like Dave were in charge of it- doctrines would be laid down, heretics would be punished, orthodoxy would be enforced.
In reality, of course, we have a fantastic story of hundreds of years of scientific detective work- Hutton and the insight of deep time- Darwin and the formation of coral reefs (side bet: Dave doesn't know about Darwin's geological background) - Agassiz and the Ice Ages - the fierce resistance of Lord Kelvin, who insisted that an old Earth was thermodynamically impossible - the discovery of radioactivity, obviating that objection - the development of atomic crystallography - radioactive dating - plate tectonics...
He even doesn't know that, until radioactive dating, people were thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of years, and the idea of a billions-of-years-old earth was a surprise to most everyone, geologist and biologist alike.
But Dave doesn't care about any of that. In his little mind, Prof X said "The earth is 4.5 billion years old. There will be no argument." and everyone just fell into line.
I'm glad that science is being done by people like us, and not people like him. He thinks that because he can imagine Santa poofing the Earth into existence, then it must have happened!
(B) YEC predicts a Young Earth (<10,000 years old) (1) Why world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier (a) Evolutionists claim H. Sapiens has been on earth for 200,000 years (b) Historians note that written history begins about 6000 ya (c ) It is implausible that humans waited 194,000 years to invent writing
Hey Dave, you inadvertently skipped a step. Please go over the reasons why you think all human history or all world history must be tied to the start of written human history.
Explain why the large amount of evidence showing non-written human culture (cave art, archaeological sites that show group habitation and planned agriculture, musical instruments, etc) that predates written history by tens of thousands of years doesn't count as human history.
I'm trying hard to put on my 'literal Bible' hat, but it just won't fit over all that contradictory data. Just because you, personally, think something is implausible is not valid evidence in anyone's book. Give us evidence why we should think it is implausible too.
Thanks in advance
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Quote (afdave) "It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor."
So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
And why the heck would he argue this? Chimps are 40% closer to Humans than they are to Gorillas. (is that the right phrasing?) And yet in his mind it's impossible that Chimps and Humans shared an ancestor!
He even doesn't know that, until radioactive dating, people were thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of years, and the idea of a billions-of-years-old earth was a surprise to most everyone, geologist and biologist alike.
Plus, how does a 4.5 billion year old earth really impact biology? Not much unless you're studying the very beginnings of life, and that only happens in the area before 550 million years ago. If evolution only needs 600 million years, why would biologists need to argue for 4.5 billion??? dave... ?
He even doesn't know that, until radioactive dating, people were thinking in terms of hundreds of millions of years, and the idea of a billions-of-years-old earth was a surprise to most everyone, geologist and biologist alike.
Plus, how does a 4.5 billion year old earth really impact biology? Not much unless you're studying the very beginnings of life, and that only happens in the area before 550 million years ago.
Huh, no. See the latest nature: scientists have discovered 3.5 billion year old stromatolites whose origin is probably biological.
But I agree that nothing in the current theory in evolution says that 3.5 Gy are required to produce the current life forms. And it certainly doesn't require the universe to be 13.7 Gy old.
Okay, I'll walk you through this since you seem confused, AFDave. 1.) I argued that pressure is an unresolved problem in regard to helium diffusion rates in zircon. Both Farley and Reiners acknowledge this (yes, both). This combined with the other objections raised in Henke and by Jon...give unreliable methods and results for the Fenton Hill Zircon.
2) You posted Humphreys' objections to the idea of pressure being a major factor in regard to He diffusion. Humphreys states (in the very section you posted) that:
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However, I gave up on that idea when I found that for hard materials, pressure has very little effect on diffusion rates. Hardness relates to incompressibility, which hinders pressure from diminishing the space between atoms and thereby slowing diffusion
He goes on to say that :
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Glasses should be more compressible than crystals of the same composition; glasses are generally not as hard because of weaker chemical bonds between parts. So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz.
I posted information on relative hardness because that is what Humphreys claims is important. (Never mind that he doesn't deal with other factors that are important as well). He compares zircon diffusion characteristics to a steel ball bearing and obsidian (obsidian is "volcanic glass"). Obsidian is 5 on the Mohs. Steel is 6.5, Quartz is 7 and Zircon ranges from 6.5-7.5, and metamict-damaged zircon falls below 6.5, depending on the severity of damage.
Humphreys is essentially claiming two things, AFDave: that "pressure doesn't matter, because zircon is hard and pressure wouldn't affect it" ( I am paraphrasing), and that studies on obsidian (softer than zircon) show that helium under pressure and temperature...doesn't diffuse through glasses softer than zircon...at a rate that would explain his results. Both of these claims are essentially false.
I noted that metamict zircon (all zircons are metamict to some degree) gets damaged, thus decreasing hardness. I mentioned other factors which reduce hardness and increase permeability. I mentioned in a previous post that Farley and Reiners (yes, both) note that pressure issues are unresolved in regard to how it might affect diffusion in zircon. I post how Humphreys is wrong about glasses softer than quartz by pointing to Pyrite and how easily helium passes through it.
I say that the comparison between steel ball bearings and zircons is an inapt (read "wrong") comparison in regard to pressure. Humphreys was wrong in claiming pressure doesn't count. Humphreys is wrong in saying hardness of zircon offsets pressure. Humphreys is wrong in saying that the thermal histories don't count.
Let me explain the last point slowly. Humphreys says a couple of things in ways that make it hard for you to see how he is weaseling, I think. Zircon, when heated...is "open" to helium moving OUT...but also IN. Humphreys downplays this, saying "there's not enough partial pressures OR helium to make this important." (my paraphrase, but accurate).
First, Humphreys is wrong about there not being enough helium nearby...there is. Outgassing of massive amounts of helium is common in volcanic plumes. There are cracks, fissures and faults that lead directly to Fenton Hill (look at the survey maps). Fenton Hill is HOT due to these transport "routes." Salsada finds evidence of hydrothermic activity and "conduits" that could transport hot water that bears He, but this is irrelevant, as I noted. Helium can move all on its own or be carried by other gasses like CO2, also common in plumes. Volcanic areas like Fenton Hill are subject to various kinds of events that release heat and helium. If you don't KNOW THE THERMAL HISTORY of the zircon-bearing GNEISS, then you cannot accurately extrapolate dates from them. Hot gasses can cause this. Hot fluids can cause this. Heat exchange through strata can cause this, ####, large amounts of radioactivity from uranium can heat an area. Lots of things cause heat.
As to pressure not being a factor, Humphreys is wrong, as I showed with my example of pyrite ( very close to the lower bound of zircon in hardness and within the bounds of high-metamict damaged zircon). I should also mention that quartz, WHICH IS HARDER THAN STEEL on the mohs , shows a diffusivity for He that is higher than zircon. See http://www.bgc.org/shuster/ShusterFarley(2005).pdf and http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0022-3727/36/10A/304/d310A04.pdf
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I see you are ignoring me still. You know you can't claim victory in the portuguese thing until you debate it with me. I took your bet and you never ponied up.
Also,
Want to have a one on one debate over the age of the earth?
I will present an argument and list my evidence. You can present your evidence after or first. Makes no difference to me. Then we will address each post one at a time and establish a clear position. I really would change my mind if you presented any evidence that could challenge the evidence I am aware of.
Just to give you a heads up, my argument would hinge on techtonics, speed of light, and the fossil record.
I know you have touched on two of these but I think in a one on one you won't do so well.
Are you chicken?
Like I said, if you can demontrate that the earth is likely less than 4 billion years old, I will go to a service at the church of your choice. And do my best to convert.
What an opportunity Davey. A chance to convert me.
How bout it?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
If you compare humans and chimps, on the other hand, the differences are very great. Do you want me to go through those with you?
Jeannot...
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But at least, your posts are quite entertaining.
Glad I can add some entertainment to your life!
Wells...
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Maybe that's why Dave can't grasp linguistics- if he acknowledged common descent among languages, he might have to acknowledge it in biology, too.
In P=F+S, we can observe historical events that would have caused this. With biology, we cannot. It is pure speculation.
Wells...
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B) is already convinced that it's a conspiracy.
Didn't say that and you know it. Quit being trollish.
Wells...
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But Dave doesn't care about any of that. In his little mind, Prof X said "The earth is 4.5 billion years old. There will be no argument." and everyone just fell into line.
Why don't you give me a quick summary of the history since you are an expert on it. That way you can show you are not just mouthing off.
OA...
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Hey Dave, you inadvertently skipped a step. Please go over the reasons why you think all human history or all world history must be tied to the start of written human history.
I cannot prove conclusively that it was. But I can be fairly certain that it is quite unbelievable to say "Poof !! Humans began writing 194,000 years after they evolved to modern form." There are many other lines of evidence that support an earth less than 10,000 years old. Combine all this and you have a strong case for 6000 years.
OA...
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...Explain why the large amount of evidence showing non-written human culture (cave art, archaeological sites that show group habitation and planned agriculture, musical instruments, etc) that predates written history by tens of thousands of years doesn't count as human history.
Bad assumptions on carbon dating. Details coming very soon.
Ved...
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Plus, how does a 4.5 billion year old earth really impact biology? Not much unless you're studying the very beginnings of life, and that only happens in the area before 550 million years ago. If evolution only needs 600 million years, why would biologists need to argue for 4.5 billion???
Good question. I honestly cannot recall from memory how that came about although I read an account once. I think Stephen Wells claims to be the expert. Maybe he could enlighten us. As for me, it doesn't matter whether biologists need 1 billion+ or only 500 million years. It's all baloney to me because I think the evidence points to thousands, not millions or billions. What your talking about is 'Baloney, BaloneyX5, or BaloneyX10.' It's still Baloney. There's some more 'maths' for you Jeannot.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So no one thought the earth was old before the theory of evolution did they?
Oh no. I'm sure many people throughout history have thought the earth was old. But my focus is on modern times. Prior to Darwin, the majority of scientists were YECs and Catastrophists.
Have you considered that they may just have changed their minds due to evidence? That maybe organised religion contains much more dogma than science?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
Is this a joke? Only asking because it is possible you are serious.
I am not sure who came up with the number 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth. I would like to find out. I would also like to know how it is known that gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya.
It's hard to take you seriously when you make statements like that.
If you really wanted to know it's very easy to find out. The very fact that you don't know tells us you are not qualified to debate these scientific opinions.
Today's accepted age of the Earth, 4.55 billion years, was determined by C.C. Patterson using Uranium-Lead dating on fragments of the Canyon Diablo meteorite and published in 1956. I just looked it up on Wikipedia, Dave. Why didn't you?
YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God. Evidence
Intelligence is a vague concept, Dave, can you define it?
Does your super-intelligence have to be conscious? Does it have to have desires? What exactly are the properties of intelligent things?
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Finely tuned cosmos
A "Finely tuned cosmos" is also a vague idea, it's not a quantifiable, scientific concept.
What would a not tuned cosmos look like? Would galaxies be crashing into each other? Would life be possible but rare, existing only as scum of life on a tiny spec of dust in a vast and hostile universe.
Scientists deal in numbers and precision as much as possible. You deal in vague, half-baked ideas.
There is so much wrong with you view I can only scratch the surface in the time I have here.
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
Is this a joke? Only asking because it is possible you are serious.
I'm afraid he is. Where's that jaw-dropping emoticon? Followed by the one that's rolling around laughing.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I cannot prove conclusively that it was. But I can be fairly certain
You and only you. No one else has your problem accepting this concept.
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that it is quite unbelievable to say "Poof !!
Suddenly you don't like 'Poof!'? I thought 'Poof' was an essential cornerstone to any Creationist argument!
Besides, it's only at the 'poof' level of sudden if you're biased and ignorant. (Oh yeah, I forgot...)
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Humans began writing 194,000 years after they evolved to modern form."
Ah yes, AFD's favorite standby when he has no evidence, his arguments have been trashed, and he can't understand the science: the Argument from Incredulity. "C'mon, guys! What, are you kidding? It's just OBVIOUS!"
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Okay, Dave, so if I understand your position re: humans/chimps/gorillas correctly, you really are claiming comparative genetics tells us nothing about the relationships among organisms.
I say this because you haven't bothered to address my question, asked over and over again, about why your 'hypothesis' neccessarily predicts genetic relationships contrary to observed reality. You merely assert (again) that chimps and gorillas shared a common ancestor, but humans didn't. You state, absent anything that could even remotely be called support, that the genetic distance we measure between gorillas and chimps is the result of natural microevolution, but that the smaller distance we measure between chimps and humans (and shared homologies not present in gorillas) simply isn't. Your support for overturning the entire field of genetics (be it evolution, microbiology, forensics, etc.) is, "Just look at them. They're both hairy and in the zoo, but we're not."
So when asked to defend your "Creator God Hypothesis" against a direct challenge that, among many other failings, it neccessarily predicts biological observations contrary to easily measured reality, your answer is that reality is wrong and DNA means nothing (unless you want to trot it out as some mystical code of the Big Kahuna).
"Just look at them."
Got it. Maybe that counts as evidence in the circles you travel in, but not at the grown-up table, Davey.
Just look at them, Ved. They [Chimps and Gorillas] are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
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If you compare humans and chimps, on the other hand, the differences are very great. Do you want me to go through those with you?
Not really, unless you want to define what a soul is or what consciousness is, and why we have them and other animals don't. (As well as tool usage, emotions, senses of empathy or humor, etc...)
I'm not arguing that Chimps and Gorillas aren't related. I'm wondering why you do think that they could be, and yet not have Humans related to both- considering that we just showed you genetically that Humans are more closely related to Chimps than Chimps are to Gorillas.
AFDave: not only do you suffer from a crappy attitude that is a cover for your massive ignorance, but you also have deep misconceptions about academic freedom. You assume, falsely, that there is some kind of conspiracy to deny the validity of YEC claims. This is just wrong. The YEC claims are shown false, as was just done with Humphreys..by simply looking at the quality of the data and the lact of proper methodology.
In academia, you are free to discuss nutty ideas. We discuss them here , we discussed them IN universities. People in academia are free to discuss nutty ideas,even if they bend Feynman's dictum that whatever we imagine IN science should be compatible with or subsumible BY what we already KNOW is part of science. To quote my old grad committee head "I'd have to practically rape the head cheerleader during the halftime of a Bruins game to lose tenure."
Now, given that academia DOES allow discussions of nutty ideas, that science allows discussions of outlandish claims, and that academic freedom is not exclusively determined by job safety..what does that mean for your claims that people are afraid to buck the systems, that peer pressure keeps them silent, that we all move like Disney-style lemmings? Well, it means you're wrong. The reason that more tenured profs don't accept your kind of crap is that it IS crap.
YEC-ers propagate conspiracy-style myths to the public, you buy it, dave, largely because you have never been anything other than an undergrad student. Look at the parallels between the "conspiracy" theories of YECs and the conspiracy theories of "UFOlogists " or the nuts that claim the Mossad brought down the twin towers...the patterns are the same. They select out bits of dubious data, make outlandish claims, then try to wave away the mountains of data showing they are wrong, then they attack the messenger.
Hah, I just got the latest issue of Science (yes, I actually get Nature and Science delivered and read them weekly, Dave)and guess what Dave? It has a little article on the 10,000-year old history of civilization in the Syrian northern mesopotamian region. More propaganda from those atheist scientists that are out to get you Dave. Your ignorance is your shield, Dave. You use it as the invincible defense that allows you to play games with the data. You use every fallacy and rhetorical ploy, you will even lie for your faith, which is really what I find reprehensible in folks like you.
Let me quote Feynman again:
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" it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something. And they were so serious in this matter that they insisted that the rest of the world agree with them. And then they would do things that were directly inconsistent with their own beliefs in order to maintain that what they said was true."
And lest you say that I have not considered the data, Dave: remember who you CAME TO in order to GET a skeptical view of it.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I see we are doing summaries again, so I guess I will do mine ...
SUMMARY OF AF DAVE'S YEC EVIDENCE PRESENTED SO FAR
[Covered already]
What, you think because we've discussed these that means you've proven your point? Are you hallucinating?
Once again, Dave, you haven't presented any evidence of the sort you claim to have presented under the "[covered already]" part of your summary. You haven't presented, e.g., evidence of a "finely-tuned cosmos." You think you have, but you haven't. You've taken "fine tuning" as a given, and then argued that is evidence for your CGH.
You also haven't presented any evidence of "biological machines." You've argued (unpersuasively) that biological structures "look" like machines (an entirely subjective conjecture) and therefore must have been designed.
You haven't presented any evidence of a "univeral moral code," and ignored conclusive evidence that there is no such thing. Does everyone agree that homosexuality is immoral? That polygamy is immoral? That abortion is immoral? No. Therefore, there is no "universal moral code." That's a QED, dude.
Not only have you not provided any "evidence" that Special Relativity supports the notion of a god existing outside of space and time, but have demonstrated an abject lack of knowledge of what Special Relativity even is, and made laughably wrong statements about Lorentz transformations which you have still, almost a week later, refused to acknowledge.
Again, where's the "evidence" in your argument that since written records go back ~6,000 years, the earth (and the universe) must also go back ~6,000 years? That's not "evidence" of anything, Dave. It's argument. And it's a hilariously inept argument. It's nothing but argument from personal incredulity, based on personal ignorance. It doesn't get much more dismissable than that.
The truth is, Dave, you still aren't clear on the difference between "evidence" and "argument." Since you haven't gotten it by now, I'm confident in predicting you'll never get it.
But even if all you had to defend was your arguments, you'd still be losing. You've lost on every single argument you've made so far, but the really funny part about it is, in classic Black Knight™ fasion, you refust to admit you've lost.
That's what keeps me coming back.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Just look at them, Ved. They [Chimps and Gorillas] are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
By the way, Dave, exactly how much "looking at them" have you actually done? Ever actually watched a gorilla climb a tree? When they do (much, much less often than chimps; generally only to play or harvest fruit), they do so very carefully. Why? Because their "hand-like feet" are not well designed (yuk yuk) for grasping tree branches. Ever seen a gorilla brachiate? Very, very rare. They climb quadrupedally, like, oh, I dunno, a man going up for coconuts. Ever seen a silverback off the ground? Doubt it (happens about as often as you catch me in a tree). All in all, gorillas are probably closer to us in terms of tree-climbing skills than they are to the aerial chimps.
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc.
The AFDave level of biology: they live in zoos!
Anyone remember the outtakes from Spinal Tap? "Yeah, they're basically sandwich-eating life-forms."
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Wells...
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Maybe that's why Dave can't grasp linguistics- if he acknowledged common descent among languages, he might have to acknowledge it in biology, too.
In P=F+S, we can observe historical events that would have caused this. With biology, we cannot. It is pure speculation.
You still haven't grasped the point: we have a perfect historical record of P,F,S,I,R(omanian)... all descending from Latin. Yet you persistently claim otherwise. And biology, geology and paleontology are not "pure speculation". "God said, let there be light" is pure speculation.
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Wells...
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B) is already convinced that it's a conspiracy.
Didn't say that and you know it. Quit being trollish.
Yay! AFDave called me a troll! I join the pantheon! And you did claim that the dating of the earth was just a number scientists had agreed on without evidence- which is not the case.
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Wells...
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But Dave doesn't care about any of that. In his little mind, Prof X said "The earth is 4.5 billion years old. There will be no argument." and everyone just fell into line.
Why don't you give me a quick summary of the history since you are an expert on it. That way you can show you are not just mouthing off.
What don't you check a copy of Bill Bryson's "Brief history of nearly everything" out of your local library? It's concise, well-written, and full of references.
Oh no- I referred AFDave to another source! Another book for him not to read.
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OA...
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Hey Dave, you inadvertently skipped a step. Please go over the reasons why you think all human history or all world history must be tied to the start of written human history.
I cannot prove conclusively that it was. But I can be fairly certain that it is quite unbelievable to say "Poof !! Humans began writing 194,000 years after they evolved to modern form."
Ever looked at the development of cuneiform? Thought not.
Dave finds the historical development of writing quite unbelievable. Dave finds a literal Flood believable. There is something badly wrong with Dave's judgement.
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Ved...
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Plus, how does a 4.5 billion year old earth really impact biology? Not much unless you're studying the very beginnings of life, and that only happens in the area before 550 million years ago. If evolution only needs 600 million years, why would biologists need to argue for 4.5 billion???
Good question. I honestly cannot recall from memory how that came about although I read an account once. I think Stephen Wells claims to be the expert. Maybe he could enlighten us.
Don't you just love that snarkily defensive tone Dave takes with anyone who actually knows anything? And again he wants to be spoon-fed knowledge.
Once more for the hard-of-thinking: arguments for deep time originate in geology, not biology. Darwin's background was in geology; his understanding of deep time helped him understand that gradual changes over long eons could account for huge cumulative changes. In the late nineteenth century, there was a major controversy between biologists and geologists, arguing for an old earth of some hundreds of millions of years, and physicists (particularly Kelvin) arguing that the earth could be no more than some tens of millions of years old, as otherwise it would have cooled completely. The geological side of the argument was based on stratigraphy and deposition rates, and was not particularly influenced by the biology; Agassiz was an old-earth creationist. The discovery of radioactivity, which produces heat within the earth, resolved this dispute. Dating based on the uranium decay series in the '50s showed that meteoritic material is ~4.5 billion years old and the oldest surface rocks we've found are ~3.5 billion years old.
Note: science doesn't proceed by enforced uniformity. Science proceeds by constant arguments which are eventually resolved by comparison to observed reality.
[QUOTE] As for me, it doesn't matter whether biologists need 1 billion+ or only 500 million years. It's all baloney to me because I think the evidence points to thousands, not millions or billions. [\QUOTE]
And there you have it: AFDave THINKS the evidence points to X. Therefore X. The fact that the evidence doesn't point to X doesn't affect him.
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
If you compare humans and chimps, on the other hand, the differences are very great. Do you want me to go through those with you?
Dave, arguing with you is kind of like arguing with a four-year-old. You base your argument as to the relative relatedness of humans, chimps, and gorillas on external appearance? Well, let's see…an Airbus A320 looks a lot more like a Boeing 737 than either looks like a Boeing CH-47. Therefore, the A320 and the 737 must be made by the same manufacturer, and the CH-47 must be made by someone else, right?
Ved's question isn't stupid; it goes to the heart of the issues with you, Dave. Your answer is stupid.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
stephen wells said something that runs totally contrary to AFDave's caricature cartoon version of science:
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Science proceeds by constant arguments which are eventually resolved by comparison to observed reality.
Right now, I'm deep off into a "controversial" debate about the nature of the Homo floresiensis "hobbit" fossils, Dave. One side says they're microcephalic H. sapiens. Another side says they're not. I agree with the latter, based on osteal morphology and what I could deduce from dentition. Dean Falk (pronounced "Dee-ann") points to endocast imaging showing the brains are not compatible with microcephalics. I say the morphology is not, either. DEBATE..debate over the quality of the data, the interpretation, the value of evidence and criteria by which the evidence is judged. ONGOING DEBATE that will get mean and nasty and tempers will flare and more work will be done until a consensus is reached. and THEN there will still be people saying "bullshite, that's not what the data show."
Ask yourself why Denton has reversed himself on on evolution, AFDave. Creationists always cite his "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," but they avoid his claims in 1998's "Nature's Destiny " where he says that his views are :
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Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies." (page xvii-xviii).
Ask yourself why Debsky and Behe and so many others REFUSE to put forward the kind of quality work that would GET published in peer-reviewed journals...Dembsky has said explicitly that he gets money out of it, a big audience and he doesn't have to be subject to the same scrutiny that academia would impose. These guys have a nice little scam going that is compatible with their deeply held beliefs or other motives. Some of them appear to be sincere in their views, others are common con artists, like Dembsky.
Your job is not to act like a con artist. While you think that you're slick in using "psychological warfare" as you called it here, Dave...The fact is that it's failed miserably. You will continue to do so as long as you view it as a valid tactic. Let me repeat what I said long ago, Dave: I don't care if you're an academic...I've gotten good ideas off (literally) bums on the street.I don't care about your sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, "race" nationality, political views, hair style or if you dress up in cute little frilly frocks on weekends.
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What I care about is the quality of the data, the ability of evidence to support claims and the willingness of the individual to engage in honest debate. You lack what I care about, DaveTard, so you get spanked for pretending that you do possess these things.
How about trying for honesty and genuinely rational skepticism all around, Dave?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, that you imply (then amusingly deny) a conspiracy amongst scientists (not to mention ATBC forum-goers) reveals that you have given very little thought to where people stand on things and why they stand there.
You view this as a war, wherein you are the sword and shield of God, and we are the assembled host of the devil (or at the least the guerilla fighters of a fallen world). Have you not noticed that you are tilting at windmills?
One has only to look at your laughable summaries to see your ridiculous ideas are, in fact, being attacked on all sides, but that does not a war make, Dave. Instead, if you could step back for a second, you would see that you have launched your assault, not on a collective enemy, but on myriad separate fields of knowledge. The reason you don't hit any real target, but claim to have landed every shot, is that you have made everything a target. You don't see that you are in a forum where you don't get to make up the rules of logic and evidence. You don't see that you are arguing against a very diverse group, each member of which has an individual field of expertise that can easily and singlehandedly dispatch your young-earth, anti-evolution 'arguments' in any rational, open mind.
The war is in your head, Dave. There is no conspiracy. Nothing resembling lock-step. You scream at the top of your lungs (or at least in excessive boldface and caps-lock), "The truth is X, and the Bible tells us so!" Your shouts are subsequently met by a thousand puzzled or annoyed or indifferent or mirthful glances, and a resounding reply of, "Eh? Not from where I'm standing!"
Have you considered where each of us is actually standing, Dave? I myself am standing perhaps right at the heart of your windmill, doing research in evolutionary biology (i.e., I can "stick to biology"; it's far more than enough). You've identified others standing elsewhere, with expertise in geology, physics, cosmology, radiometric dating, paleontology, genetics, medicine, linguistics, psychology, anthropology... And let's not forget, most recently, PuckSR, standing in close to the same place you are (i.e., the revealed truth of the Bible), also replied in kind: not from where we're standing, Dave. Yes, we're practically everywhere. In your delusional mind, that probably sounds insidious. It's not.
Meanwhile, you and the sources you cite are invariably standing in the exact same unenviable place, making the exact same arguments with the exact same motives. We've heard 'em before, and even when we answer in unison, it's from a million different voices in a million different places. No conspiracy neccessary.
Obviously, someone is standing in the wrong place, and it's pretty easy to see who -- they're all piled on top of each other in a singularity of ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty, vainly trying to deny the validity (or very existence) of any position but their own.
Right now, I'm deep off into a "controversial" debate about the nature of the Homo floresiensis "hobbit" fossils, Dave. One side says they're microcephalic H. sapiens. Another side says they're not. I agree with the latter, based on osteal morphology and what I could deduce from dentition.
I saw some interesting stuff on stone tools from the Flores site last week. IIRC it was arguing for a continuity of tool-making techniques from H. erectus to h floresiensis. I had the impression that a lot of the microcephaly arguments are rooted in multiregionalist theories of human origins. Are you working directly on the Flores samples? Must be an exciting field.
Dave, that you imply (then amusingly deny) a conspiracy amongst scientists (not to mention ATBC forum-goers) reveals that you have given very little thought to where people stand on things and why they stand there.
You view this as a war, wherein you are the sword and shield of God, and we are either the assembled host of the devil (or at the least the guerilla fighters of a fallen world). Have you not noticed that you are tilting at windmills?
One has only to look at your laughable summaries to see your ridiculous ideas are, in fact, being attacked on all sides, but that does not a war make, Dave. Instead, if you could step back for a second, you would see that you have launched your assault, not on a collective enemy, but on myriad separate fields of knowledge. The reason you don't hit any real target, but claim to have landed every shot, is that you have made everything a target. You don't see that you are in a forum where you don't get to make up the rules of logic and evidence. You don't see that you are arguing against a very diverse group, each member of which has an individual field of expertise that can easily and singlehandedly dispatch your young-earth, anti-evolution 'arguments' in any rational, open mind.
The war is in your head, Dave. There is no conspiracy. Nothing resembling lock-step. You scream at the top of your lungs (or at least in excessive boldface and caps-lock), "The truth is X, and the Bible tells us so!" Your shouts are subsequently met by a thousand puzzled or annoyed or indifferent or mirthful glances, and a resounding reply of, "Eh? Not from where I'm standing!"
Have you considered where each of us is actually standing, Dave? I myself am standing perhaps right at the heart of your windmill, doing research in evolutionary biology (i.e., I can "stick to biology"; it's far more than enough). You've identified others standing elsewhere, with expertise in geology, physics, cosmology, radiometric dating, paleontology, genetics, medicine, linguistics, psychology, anthropology... And let's not forget, most recently, PuckSR, standing in close to the same place you are (i.e., the revealed truth of the Bible), also replied in kind: not from where we're standing, Dave. Yes, we're practically everywhere. In your delusional mind, that probably sounds insidious. It's not.
Meanwhile, you and the sources you cite are invariably standing in the exact same unenviable place, making the exact same arguments with the exact same motives. We've heard 'em before, and even when we answer in unison, it's from a million different voices in a million different places. No conspiracy neccessary.
Obviously, someone is standing in the wrong place, and it's pretty easy to see who -- they're all piled on top of each other in a singularity of ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty, vainly trying to deny the validity (or very existence) of any position but their own.
Beautiful. Well said indeed. It's funny, I am willing to step well outside of my expertise to debate davey because they are simpler arguments and thus easier to understand. I would like to draw a phylogenic tree and explain it but I think it is just too much for poor Davey. Being an engineer *snigger* I figured we could stick to basically physical concepts.
But you are right of course. Any individual discipline crushes and then sweeps up every single thing he believes about god.
It must be terrifying to realize that you have based your very existence on a fabulous lie.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
The interesting thing about essentially all of Dave's skepticism is it's based on nothing but personal incredulity. He generally can't point to anything actually wrong with the evidence we've provided him, because he doesn't understand the evidence well enough to even find flaws in it (which is to be expected, because if a complete dilettante like Dave could find flaws in the evidence, actual experts in the relevant fields would have found it long ago). Examples would be his floundering around in Fenton Hill, and his hilarious missteps in Special Relativity. Dave has essentially no chance of finding any flaws in any of the evidence provided to him because he doesn't have the necessary training.
He could conceivably find flaws in the arguments which are supported by that evidence, but he's never been able to do that, either. The reason is, of course, that those arguments have been gone over and over in the kind of debate deadman is describing, and they're iron-clad. You don't get arguments for an old earth based on evidence that's been picked over with a fine-toothed comb by tens of thousands of experts in the relevant fields for a hundred and fifty years, and then find holes in them based on your junior-high-school-level understanding of the evidence, Dave.
Meanwhile, we've all been able to find all kinds of holes in Dave's argument, because they haven't gone through the sort of withering criticism any idea goes through in the academic community. I mean seriously, Dave, your French + Spanish = Portuguese lunacy…how long do you think that would last with a room full of linguistics Ph.Ds? (Oh, and just so you know, a room full of history Ph.Ds would tell you they're not qualified to discuss the matter with you, and would direct you to a room full of linguistics Ph.Ds.)
Dave's got a totally wrong idea of how science works. The reason scientific orthodoxies become scientific orthodoxies is because they've been subjected to years, decades, or centuries of debate. Plate tectonics went nowhere for years, but by 1968, the debates had essentially ended, in plate tectonics' favor.
In the meantime, creationists' arguments have undergone essentially no debate, despite having been around for at least a couple of thousands of years, which basically explains why they suck so hard. And Dave, having no idea how science works, doesn't have a clue as to how hard they really do suck.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And what about dendrochronology, varves, stalactite sections etc? All wrong? Will you argue that before the flood, tree sections accumulated more than one ring per year?
Oh, I'm still awaiting your opinion on plate tectonics.
We can imagine that this 'planet formation event' necessarily involved some pretty intense processes which we should not pretend to understand yet. Why is it irrational to propose that some sort of accelerated nuclear decay might have been a by-product of these intense processes?
Both theory and experiment tell us that the most intense processes that exist or have existed in the Universe do not change relevant radioactive decay rates to any noticable degree.
You can't change radioactive decay rates "in a vacuum"; other things must change too.
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In the same way, the Flood was a massively intense event. And it had purposes: destroy most of mankind, change the topography and the climate, shorten human lifespans, etc. etc. If the Flood is recognized as a massive, hydraulic, tectonic and volcanic cataclysm, why is it unreasonable to again postulate an accelerated nuclear decay event during this intense period?
Because theory, experiment, and observation tell us that even if such a catastrophe happened, it would not cause any change in decay rates.
StephenWells: No, I'm not working with the actual material, I'm operating off of photos (having casts would be er...bad at this time..unauthorized), like most everyone. There's that big fight over who gets to handle the LB1 type fossil and related material, etc., so that's going to take a while to sort out. I'm basically on the erectus side, since I got intro'd to a bunch of grad students and profs through Gail Kennedy, who specializes in erectus. And yes, it really is just a sort of "cover" for the multiregional v. out-of-africa debate for some folks, and I'm an OoA kinda guy. I'd love to look at the dentition directly "shovel-shaped" incisors, triple-rooted molars , larger M1 than other molars, thick cingulum, and crenulation are markers to look for in erectus-type material. Some fair links are : http://www.johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/flores/ http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/homo_floresiensis/ http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html http://loom.corante.com/archive....cks.php
The last one is kinda cute, as I told Ladergo
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"It is quite likely to me that gorillas and chimps did have a common ancestor." So what, exactly, is your basis for that statement?
Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
If you compare humans and chimps, on the other hand, the differences are very great. Do you want me to go through those with you?
Yes, Dave, go through the differences between man and chimp, versus the differences between chimps and other non-human primates.
In the same way, the Flood was a massively intense event. And it had purposes: destroy most of mankind, change the topography and the climate, shorten human lifespans, etc. etc. If the Flood is recognized as a massive, hydraulic, tectonic and volcanic cataclysm, why is it unreasonable to again postulate an accelerated nuclear decay event during this intense period?
What flood, Dave? You keep talking about this "global flood" as if it's something that's actually happened. So far, you haven't provided a scrap of evidence that anything of the sort ever happened, and yet you're using this "flood" as a mechanism for something else you haven't provided any evidence for: massively accelerated radioactive decay. And you haven't even provided the barest outline as to how adding another (what? 20, 200, 2,000, 20,000?) feet of water to the world's oceans could possibly have an effect on something that is governed entirely by quantum-mechanical effects.
I think your argument basically comes down to this: "If God could suspend natural law to the point where he could miraculously "poof" an extra hundred million cubic kilometers of water into existence for a year or so, and then magically "poof" it back out of existence, then surely it's reasonable to suppose he could magically "poof" radioactive decay rates several orders of magnitude faster than they are today without melting the planet."
Yeah, Dave. That "hypothesis" sure has "sciency-ness" to it.
Oh, and how did a flood five thousand years ago reduce human lifetimes today? More "poofs"?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
But Dave doesn't care about any of that. In his little mind, Prof X said "The earth is 4.5 billion years old. There will be no argument." and everyone just fell into line.
Why don't you give me a quick summary of the history since you are an expert on it. That way you can show you are not just mouthing off.
What don't you check a copy of Bill Bryson's "Brief history of nearly everything" out of your local library? It's concise, well-written, and full of references.
Oh no- I referred AFDave to another source! Another book for him not to read.
Not to be peevish, but I recommended he read that book on May 27th on the "AFDave Wants you to Prove Evolution to Him" discussion. He didn't take my suggestion then, but I suppose YMMV.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
But Dave doesn't care about any of that. In his little mind, Prof X said "The earth is 4.5 billion years old. There will be no argument." and everyone just fell into line.
Why don't you give me a quick summary of the history since you are an expert on it. That way you can show you are not just mouthing off.
What don't you check a copy of Bill Bryson's "Brief history of nearly everything" out of your local library? It's concise, well-written, and full of references.
Oh no- I referred AFDave to another source! Another book for him not to read.
Not to be peevish, but I recommended he read that book on May 27th on the "AFDave Wants you to Prove Evolution to Him" discussion. He didn't take my suggestion then, but I suppose YMMV.
That Bryson book is great, by the way. Well written, funny, and I learned a huge amount from it. He has a gift for zeroing in on the most interesting facts he presents in a way that keeps your attention. Considering that Bryson is not a specialist in any of the stuff he discusses, I'm impressed that he managed to marshall together all the necessary facts from so many disciplines.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Ichthyic: Jeez, yeah, people have suggested australopiths, habilines, erectus, pathological humans, everything but goblins and trolls. I know the microcephalic arguments real well, but I'm a starry-eyed optimist hoping for erectus material that has DNA frags to study
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I got the impression that the pathological hypos have been pretty much shot down, except with certain Indonesians (who shall remain nameless, lest I start calling them names ), but that the linneage issue was still open to debate.
Who has distribution evidence to support which linneage at this point? Are the other linneages simply based on morphological similarities? what?
oh, and before someone else beats me to it, since you mentioned nobody had done so yet:
I hereby claim both the goblin and troll hypotheses.
I'm currently researching definitive paleontological resources like "The Silmarillion" in order to determine likely distribution patterns to distinguish trolls from goblins as the likely ancestor.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
That Bryson book is great, by the way. Well written, funny, and I learned a huge amount from it. He has a gift for zeroing in on the most interesting facts he presents in a way that keeps your attention. Considering that Bryson is not a specialist in any of the stuff he discusses, I'm impressed that he managed to marshall together all the necessary facts from so many disciplines.
I was really impressed by his attitude: starting from almost no real knowledge of science, he spent a few years going around talking to lots of specialists and experts, learned what they agree on and disagree on and how everything fits together, and came out with a wonderful book that really captures the wonders of the natural world and our enquiries into it.
Because it's useful for QFDave to realize that he's wrong (and has been wrong on every single issue he has raised - a very impressive record of consistent stupidity); I thought I'd annotate his "list".
[quote](A) YEC proposes a Super-Intelligent Creator God.[/quote]
Yup. He did propose it.
[quote]Evidence: (1) Finely tuned cosmos (a) Hoyle, Penrose, etc., summarized by Meyer at [/quote]
It has been pointed out to him that the 'fine-tuned' argument is bogus without evidential support that the universe can be tuned; or that the universe was tuned on purpose.
Dave: 0 Posters: 1
[quote](2) Biological machines (a) Dawkins admits 'designed appearance' ('Blind Watchmaker' etc) (b) Bruce Alberts, Pres. of Nat. Academy of Sciences Uses terms like "assembly lines and machines to describe cells (c ) Denton: "Evolution-A Theory in Crisis" and "Nature's Destiny" Wonderful cell descriptions, clear statement of anthropic principle (d) Behe: "Darwin's Black Box" - flagella, blood clotting, immune system[/quote]
It has been pointed out that no one has yet to establish that the analogy between certain features of biological organisms and machines constructed by humans is (a) valid, (b) would, if valid, demonstrate anything other than the fact that humans built all biological systems.
Dave: 0 Posters: 2 [quote] (3) Universal Moral Code--C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity (a) There is a curious, universal moral code among humans (b) In spite of cultural differences, major portions are the same (c ) Everyone acknowledges the code, but no one lives up to it perfectly (d) There must be a source of the code outside of humans (e) It is possible that this 'Source' could be the God of the Bible[/quote] Even funnier. Note that d does not logically follow from a, b, and c and that e just throws the entire thing out as an argument of ignorance.
Dave: 0 Posters: 3
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(4) The Problem of Evil in the World (a) Skeptics say 'If there was a God, why is there evil in the world?' (b) Evil is a natural result of Choice (c ) God could have made robots instead of humans (d) Human parents prefer to have babies over robots (e) Babies have the potential to experience great evil (f) Parents go on have babies anyway, in spite of possible evil (e) Why should God be any different with his 'babies'?
The old chestnut.
Natural evil is not a consequence of human action; therefore God is evil.
The Bible makes it plain that God lies; therefore we can't trust the Bible on the issue of God's morality.
It is entirely possible for an all-powerful, all-loving being to create humans as creatures who of their own volition freely choose the right.
The argument from Evil, therefore, stands unrefuted (certainly by Dave's incredibly primitive and childish counter-argument).
Dave: 0 Posters: 4
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(5) Laws of Relativity--Show plausibility of Biblical Theism claims (a) Makes it possible to conceptualize God on a different time scale (b) Gives some hints that God's claimed omnipresence may be plausible
This, unfortunately is a total lie on Dave's part, since he has NOT done any of this. When it was pointed out that he was unable to even support his contention (despite his initial claim that he could show that relativity did this), he simply abandoned the topic.
Dave: 0 Posters: 5
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(B) YEC predicts a Young Earth (<10,000 years old)
Sure. And Hinduism predicts an infinitely old earth.
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(1) Why world history begins 5500 years ago, not earlier
It doesn't. Tools and cave art predate all that.
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(a) Evolutionists claim H. Sapiens has been on earth for 200,000 years (b) Historians note that written history begins about 6000 ya (c ) It is implausible that humans waited 194,000 years to invent writing
Regrettably, this isn't even an argument.
Dave: 0 Posters: 6
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(2) RATE project: High He Retention in Zircons
It has been shown that Dave is wrong, and unable to respond to the arguments via anything more than paraphrasing Humphries.
Dave: 0 Posters: 7
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(3) Why Kevin Henke fails in his 'Helium-Zircon Debunking'
He doesn't. But QFDave has indicated and indeed admitted that he's not qualified to even have the discussion.
Dave: 0 Posters: 8
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(4) RATE project: C14 in Coal and Diamonds (5) RATE project: Polonium radiohalos (6) RATE Project: Radiometric dating discordance
Already covered a dozen times elsewhere.
Dave: 0 Posters: 11
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(7) Multitude of young earth physical evidences explored
There is not such physical evidence.
Dave: 0 Posters: 12
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(C ) The Antediluvian World (1) Cain's wife (2) The origin of civilization (3) Misunderstandings about cavemen (4) Kinds and speciation ... and more
Already debunked elsewhere.
Dave: 0 Posters: 16+
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(D) The Global Flood (1) Huge water-laid sediments all over the earth (2) Volcanism and tectonics (3) The Grand Canyon and Mt. Saint Helens ... and more
Already debunked elsewhere.
Dave: 0 Posters: 19+
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(E) Anti-Evolution Topics (1) Chimp Chromosomes--Did they fuse to form human chromosome 2?
Dave lost.
Dave: 0 Posters: 20+
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(2) Shared 'Broken GULO' gene between Apes and Humans? (a) 'Mistakes' are similar, but not identical --Dr. Max's Talk Origins article is thus N/A (b) GULO could have broken independently (ref. guinea pigs) (c ) GULO gene not determinative between Common Descent and Common Design
Dave lost.
Dave: 0 Posters: 21+
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(3) Bacterial Resistance (a) Commonly used to support macroevolution--see Talk Origins (b) Loss of information, not gain (c ) No help to 'macroevolution'
Dave lost.
Dave: 0 Posters: 22+
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(F) Miscellaneous Topics (1) Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French (among other factors) (a) Generalization, like 'the sky is blue' or 'the grass is green'
Not what Dave claimed, and is, in fact, linguistically incorrect. Dave lost.
Dave: 0 Posters: 23+
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(b) World Book: P and S were essentially the same language until 1143
Irrelevant datum.
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(c ) 12th Century: A large French influence began in what is now Portugal
Irrelevant datum. Dave has not shown that this actually produced any 'admixture'. Dave lost.
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(d) Comparison of F, S and P words shows the mixture
Factually incorrect: Dave doesn't understand linguistics, I'm afraid.
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(e) Wikipedia acknowledges closeness of S and P and of P to F.
Nope. Dave can't read.
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(f) EB: Standard P is based on Dialect of Lisbon (where F influence is greatest)
Which does not establish his initial stupid statement.
Net result?
Dave has raised or mentioned some 23+ issues.
He has lost every single one of them.
Gentlemen, I give you QFDave - the atheist's and scientist's best friend (since he shows how stupid the YEC arguments are)
And what about dendrochronology, varves, stalactite sections etc? All wrong? Will you argue that before the flood, tree sections accumulated more than one ring per year?
Oh, I'm still awaiting your opinion on plate tectonics.
He is incapable of giving it to you.
The thing to remember about QFDave is something that Aquinas nailed long ago in contra gentiles:
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4. What is natural cannot be changed while nature remains.* But contrary opinions cannot be in the same mind at the same time: therefore no opinion or belief is sent to man from God contrary to natural knowledge. And therefore the Apostle says: The word is near in thy heart and in thy mouth, that is, the word of faith which we preach (Rom. x, 8). But because it surpasses reason it is counted by some as contrary to reason, which cannot be. To the same effect is the authority of Augustine (Gen. ad litt. ii, 18) : " What truth reveals can nowise be contrary to the holy books either of the Old or of the New Testament." Hence the conclusion is evident, that any arguments alleged against the teachings of faith do not proceed logically from first principles of nature, principles of themselves known, and so do not amount to a demonstration; but are either probable reasons or sophistical; hence room is left for refuting them.*
Dave has admitted that he is ignorant of all the fields he's discussing. He has admitted that he doesn't even understand the remarks that we've made. He has shown that he can't google or find facts on his own.
But Dave knows because of his faith - brainwashed or just defective in mental capacity - that something MUST be wrong with our arguments.
He'll fumble around it forever (since he's admitted that he is unversed in the fields we're discussing), but he can't admit that we're right - because his faith tells him otherwise.
That's why this is so futile and so sad: nothing whatever that we could say is acceptable as an argument. Nothing. Because it contradicts the Bible. Not because it's scientifically wrong; not because it's logically wrong - Dave can't demonstrate either of those. But only because the Bible says otherwise.
What's sad is that he probably never got a chance to develop enough of a brain to counteract all the years of brainwashing and mental abuse that his father inflicted on him (and, like all cases of abuse, he is now busy inflicting on his children).
Why do I keep think of the Washington Generals vs. the Harlem Globetrotters?
I've no idea. I don't know what your context is. I've heard of the Globetrotters - are they still playing? Who are the "Washington Generals"?
Oh, and I forgot to highlight the truly relevant passage in that Aquinas quote:
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Hence the conclusion is evident, that any arguments alleged against the teachings of faith do not proceed logically from first principles of nature, principles of themselves known, and so do not amount to a demonstration; but are either probable reasons or sophistical; hence room is left for refuting them.* (emphasis added)
He's like a handicapped child that can never learn, can never grow as a person to any understanding of the universe.
I am reminded of the old saw, "Never try to teach a pig to sing. It won't work and it annoys the pig."
I was really impressed by his attitude: starting from almost no real knowledge of science, he spent a few years going around talking to lots of specialists and experts, learned what they agree on and disagree on and how everything fits together, and came out with a wonderful book that really captures the wonders of the natural world and our enquiries into it.
He is the anti-Dave.
I know what you mean -- if you spend enough time wallowing around in the Antiscience and Antiknowledge that is Creationism/ID, you start getting this terrible impression of what the human intellect is capable of. That's the point at which it's very well advised to read some book by a real scholar who actually explains things in a truly intelligent, rational, informed way. It's an invaluable breath of fresh air.
This is actually what prompted me to start reading Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale a couple weeks ago. (It's the first book by him I've read -- I figured that given that WD & DT think he's the Antichrist, he had to have something to say.) While his prose style in that book could be a lot more interesting and while I can't always follow his 5-page discourses on genetic minutiae, it is very pleasurable to see the facts laid out by someone who really knows what's going on, and who isn't gibbering about 'irreducible complexity', Noah's flood, or saying things like "Why do we still have apes?" In other words, an actual specialist in the subject and not an idiot.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The Washington Generals were the mainstay opponent of the well-known Harlem Globetrotters for years, but were best known for their spectacular losing streak in fixed exhibition games. Founded in 1953 by former NBA point guard Louis "Red" Klotz, the Generals' only win came in a 1971 game against the Globetrotters, with Klotz scoring the winning basket. During the 1971-72 season, the Generals' name was changed to the Boston Shamrocks. Klotz disbanded the Generals in 1995, forming a new team, the New York Nationals, which also boasts an impressive losing streak.
You are implying that we only have to wait 19 years for QFDave to be right about something?
I've no idea. I don't know what your context is. I've heard of the Globetrotters - are they still playing? Who are the "Washington Generals"?
oh... well i guess it wouldn't make sense unless you grew up watching the trotters. *shrug*
the generals was the name of the team that always played the trotters, and always lost of course, by design, and by large margins.
when you listed your "scores" it kept reminding me of those games; it was all the trotters showcasing their skills, and the generals just being poor schmucks who were there to help showcase the trotter's skills.
Kind of like AFD has done a great job of stimulating the production of interesting information by being a complete idiot.
think of it as an entirely americanized view of the MacGuffin hypothesis.
EDIT:
ahh, i see you found the reference
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
thanks for the nature PDF; been trying to grab that for a while now.
keep us posted, eh?
when something significant turns up, I would highly suggest floating a head's up to Wes, you might get to be a guest contributor over on PT, or at least get the info out there for somebody else to post up.
I'll be posting my results on "Dungeons and Dragons Monthly", as soon as I manage to tease out whether the goblin or troll linneage is more likely.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
OA: Hey Dave, you inadvertently skipped a step. Please go over the reasons why you think all human history or all world history must be tied to the start of written human history.
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AFDave: I cannot prove conclusively that it was. But I can be fairly certain that it is quite unbelievable to say "Poof !! Humans began writing 194,000 years after they evolved to modern form." There are many other lines of evidence that support an earth less than 10,000 years old. Combine all this and you have a strong case for 6000 years.
Dave, please make an attempt to read what was written. I didn’t ask you to prove anything. I merely ask you to list the scientific reasons (i.e. please omit any personal incredulity) that make you think your dates are accurate.
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OA: .Explain why the large amount of evidence showing non-written human culture (cave art, archaeological sites that show group habitation and planned agriculture, musical instruments, etc) that predates written history by tens of thousands of years doesn't count as human history.
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AFDave: Bad assumptions on carbon dating. Details coming very soon.
But Dave, Radiocarbon is only one of a dozen different, independent methods used for archaeological dating. I already pointed out many such methods just a few days ago, but you seemed to have forgotten them already. Let’s look at just one – dendrochronology. This is the science of dating by matching individual yearly tree-ring growth. It is a science that developed slowly in the last 100 years but is now widely used in archaeology. For example, Cornell University has had a 10+ year research project going using dendrochronology to accurately map dates in the Aegean and Near East areas.
Using just dendrochronology from wooden house beams, a prehistoric farming village in Catal Hoyuk, Turkey has been dated back to almost 7000 B.C, or 9000 years ago. That’s considerably older than the 5500 years ago you claim. (The dates were also cross verified by radiocarbon dating, BTW)
Now I’m sure you have a good scientific explanation for this large discrepancy between your claims and the dendro data too – I’ll be interested to hear it. When you present that info, please be sure to explain why the independent dating methods using C14 and dendro agree with each other.
One more small request. You say you will present the bad assumptions on carbon dating that give bad dates. Fine, I’ll wait for that data. But could you please list the assumption you use when calculation your <10,000 year old Earth and 5500 year old date for human history? I’m sure they’re probably fine, but I’d like to check your assumptions for myself. Fair is fair, right?
Thanks again
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Guys I'm at my rounds now, but if I get the time tomorrow... Maybe it would be a good idea to make and save an actual catalogue of dave's bogus arguments and evidence, and their dismantlement -like Rilke did, just more concise and/or specific when needed- to copy/paste ourselves, every time dave copy/pastes his own again like nothing happened?
Because honestly, this is getting really boring.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave's only made 25 or so bogus arguments. He still has 400-500 known, refuted creationist arguments. So if you want to keep track of which ones he's made, and c&p your previous responses, he could just switch to 25 new ones. He could do that 15-19 times on you. Will you continue to argue with him to that point?
well, occasionally i keep dropping hints that someone should take ANY of the interesting issues that have been raised, and start a new thread to discuss any one of them.
Rather than categorize AFD's drivel (which, as has been pointed out, already exist in the TO archives - no, AFD has said NOTHING that every creobot and his ma haven't said before), perhaps it would be a better idea to categorize the several INTERESTING topics that have spawned from the blasting of AFD's drivel?
then pick a topic and run with it.
ATBC only is as boring as any here wish it to be.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
He DIFFUSION DATING IS DIFFERENT THAN (U-Th/He) CHRONOMETRY
and ...
STILL NO SUCCESSFUL REFUTATION OF HUMPHREYS
Since receiving my copies of the RATE Books, I have realized that there is a large misunderstanding that exists. Several posters here have referred to (U-Th/He) Chronometry which is apparently experiencing a revival, judging by the papers referred to by JonF. (Yale Univ, Reiners/Farley, etc.)
In the RATE Books, Humphreys points out that ...
"Our diffusion dating method in Section 9 differs entirely from the "He dating" of (U-Th/He) Chronometry [Reiners, 2002]. Very crudely, the difference is this: (U-Th/He) Chronometry divides the number of He atoms in a crystal by nuclear decay rate. Diffusion dating divides the number of He atoms lost from the crystal by the diffusion rate. SOme practitioners of (U-Th/He) Chronometry, in their unpublished comments about our work, have not yet understood this distinction." (RATE Book II, p. 94)
Deadman addresses some objection to the Humphreys study which can be categorized as follows:
1) Vacuum testing objection 2) Objection to temperature history assumptions 3) Helium infiltration possibility
I believe the first two are disposed of quite easily as I discuss below. The third, in my opinion, has the best chance of having some merit, but to be viable has some serious challenges as I outline below.
Deadman...
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1.) I argued that pressure is an unresolved problem in regard to helium diffusion rates in zircon. Both Farley and Reiners acknowledge this (yes, both). This combined with the other objections raised in Henke and by Jon...give unreliable methods and results for the Fenton Hill Zircon.
Yes they do. But two things... 1) They say nothing of the magnitude of the effect. It likely is very small. 2) Why would they use vacuum testing on zircons themselves if it was a problem? I understand that Farley does not have a pressure testing apparatus, but surely he could come up with one if it was important, no?
Deadman...
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I posted information on relative hardness because that is what Humphreys claims is important. (Never mind that he doesn't deal with other factors that are important as well). He compares zircon diffusion characteristics to a steel ball bearing and obsidian (obsidian is "volcanic glass"). Obsidian is 5 on the Mohs. Steel is 6.5, Quartz is 7 and Zircon ranges from 6.5-7.5, and metamict-damaged zircon falls below 6.5, depending on the severity of damage.
Humphreys is essentially claiming two things, AFDave: that "pressure doesn't matter, because zircon is hard and pressure wouldn't affect it" ( I am paraphrasing), [STOP RIGHT THERE!! ... THIS IS CORRECT, BUT WHAT FOLLOWS IS NOT] and that studies on obsidian (softer than zircon) show that helium under pressure and temperature...doesn't diffuse through glasses softer than zircon...at a rate that would explain his results. Both of these claims are essentially false.
Humphreys DOES claim the first part, but not the second. You said that Humphreys is claiming that Helium doesn't diffuse through glasses softer than zircon...at a rate that would explain his results? He doesn't say that. You are misreading him. He acknowledges that gases (Argon in the study he cites) diffuses through obsidian, but that the diffusion rate is not substantially affected by increased pressure. His logic then is that if something softer than zircon is not substantially affected by pressure, then zircon likely should be affected even less. He also points out that the study on obsidian was done with argon which, of course, is a larger atom than Helium. This should result in an even lower change in diffusivity.
Deadman...
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I noted that metamict zircon (all zircons are metamict to some degree) gets damaged, thus decreasing hardness. I mentioned other factors which reduce hardness and increase permeability.
Fine. I acknowledge this. On what basis do you claim that Humphreys' zircons were not 7.5? I do have the RATE Books now and the comparison on p. 40 among Fish Canyon, Ural Mountain, and Jemez data indicates that Humphreys' zircons were NOT subject to much radiation damage (The Ural Mountain data have a more horizontal slope to the right of the "knee", consistent with Magomedov's report of high radiation damage).
Deadman...
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I post how Humphreys is wrong about glasses softer than quartz by pointing to Pyrite and how easily helium passes through it.
Again, you are misreading him. He does not say that Helium does not pass through glasses. He simply points to a study of Argon diffusion in obsidian and notes that pressure did not change diffusivity significantly.
Deadman...
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As to pressure not being a factor, Humphreys is wrong, as I showed with my example of pyrite ( very close to the lower bound of zircon in hardness and within the bounds of high-metamict damaged zircon). I should also mention that quartz, WHICH IS HARDER THAN STEEL on the mohs , shows a diffusivity for He that is higher than zircon. See http://www.bgc.org/shuster/ShusterFarley(2005).pdf and http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0022-3727/36/10A/304/d310A04.pdf
Again, we are not talking about comparative diffusivities. We are talking about the effect (or lack thereof) of pressure on diffusivity.
Deadman...
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Let me explain the last point slowly. Humphreys says a couple of things in ways that make it hard for you to see how he is weaseling, I think. Zircon, when heated...is "open" to helium moving OUT...but also IN. Humphreys downplays this, saying "there's not enough partial pressures OR helium to make this important." (my paraphrase, but accurate).
This is a different issue. I admit that the extraneous Helium infiltration question is not answered as completely as I would like. In fact, I just received an email from Humphreys assistant (I was wrong about him being a grad assistant ... he was just an admin guy at ICR). Here's what Humphreys says in response to the 3He/4He ratio testing ...
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From: Russ Humphreys Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 3:14 PM To: Dave Hawkins Subject: Re: 3He/4He in Zircons?
Hi Mr. Hawkins:
No we didn't think to ask the lab to look for 3He in the zircons because it wasn't the usual practice among helium/zircon researchers then (or at least I'd never heard of the practice then).
In retrospect, it would have been a good thing to do, just to have additional evidence ("belt AND suspenders") for no infiltration. If we ever do a follow-up project, I'll try to arrange for that.
Best regards,
Russ
In spite of this, you still have a tall mountain to climb to say that Helium diffused INTO the zircons. (See below)
Deadman...
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First, Humphreys is wrong about there not being enough helium nearby...there is. Outgassing of massive amounts of helium is common in volcanic plumes. There are cracks, fissures and faults that lead directly to Fenton Hill (look at the survey maps). Fenton Hill is HOT due to these transport "routes." Salsada finds evidence of hydrothermic activity and "conduits" that could transport hot water that bears He, but this is irrelevant, as I noted. Helium can move all on its own or be carried by other gasses like CO2, also common in plumes. Volcanic areas like Fenton Hill are subject to various kinds of events that release heat and helium. If you don't KNOW THE THERMAL HISTORY of the zircon-bearing GNEISS, then you cannot accurately extrapolate dates from them. Hot gasses can cause this. Hot fluids can cause this. Heat exchange through strata can cause this, ####, large amounts of radioactivity from uranium can heat an area. Lots of things cause heat.
Again, I believe this issue is the only one with any real possibilities of having merit that Henke brings up in his 30,000 or so words of rebuttals. But it still seems like a very long shot because ...
1) Helium concentration in basaltic magmatic fluids is much too small by a factor of 40 or so. 2) Helium traveling through a conduit on its own or with CO2 could easily escape into the atmosphere 3) You have to account for the fact that the surrounding biotite contains very close to the amount of Helium produced by the calculated U-decay Helium. Just a coincidence? 4) How do you keep the Helium in the zircons when the temperature is elevated for so long? 5) Let's say you can keep the Helium in. The zircon is 'open' at high temperature, right? Why wouldn't the concentrations of Helium in the zircon and the surrounding biotite equalize?
So to summarize, the pressure testing and temperature history objections seem to be DOA (Dead on Arrival), and the infiltration objection seems like an extreme long shot.
Here's a suggestion: let's look at all the new zircons being tested using the Reiners/Farley method and let's test them using the Humphreys method. Would they concur with the RATE results? I bet they would!
Have you considered that they may just have changed their minds due to evidence? That maybe organised religion contains much more dogma than science?
Yes. I have considered that, but it is very easy to be snookered by 'evidence' which later turns out not to be good evidence after all. I also agree that organized religion contains much dogma. This is why I am not a part of organized religion. People commonly mistake me for a religious person, but I do not consider myself to be religious in the institutional sense. I do regard the Bible as an amazingly accurate document, however. But this high regard does not come from the Pope or some other high 'spiritual leader.' It comes from my own extensive study of the text itself.
Wells..
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Just look at them, Ved. They are hairy all over, have hand-like feet, are good at climbing, have funky lips and beetle-brows, make animal sounds, both live in zoos, etc. etc. Think about how silly it sounds to ask a question like you just asked.
Is this a joke? Only asking because it is possible you are serious.
I am dead serious. I'm saying some things that sound silly and obvious, but I do so with good reason. When you really think about Ved's (or whoever it was) question, you realize that it is truly the question that is silly, not my answer.
Let me put it to you this way ... where would a new freshman guy on campus go looking to get a date? The sorority house? Or the zoo? You biologists get your micrometers out and get all worked up ... "My goodness!! Chimps and humans share 98.5% genetic similarity and gorillas and chimps only share 98.0%!! Heavens to Betsy!! We're related!! And boy are we close!!"
Well ... I say if we are so close, why don't the freshmen go to the zoo to get dates instead of the sorority house?
The fact is guys, we're NOT close. Our DNA is very similar, yes. But when comparing everything else, gorillas are MUCH closer to chimps than humans are to chimps. This is so obvious that it's pathetic that I have to explain it to you.
You are the silly ones. Not me.
Arden...
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Suddenly you don't like 'Poof!'? I thought 'Poof' was an essential cornerstone to any Creationist argument!
'Poof' is sometimes invoked, yes, but much less than evolutionists imagine. My point is that you say that you never invoke 'Poof.' But the truth is that you do. You have to invoke it with the appearance of civilization, and you have to invoke it to explain abiogenesis, and many other phenomena. You just don't admit that you invoke it.
So this means that not only are you also a 'Poof-Meister' but you are a Scheister. So are you a 'Poof-Meister-Scheister' ??
Incorygible ... Common Design Theory predicts that there will be much genetic similarity among apes and humans. Remember the Ford analogies? What you keep overlooking is non-biological differences. You are focusing all your attention on the stuff you can measure and the things you can count, i.e. nucleotides, and you are disregarding everything else. So I have answered your question.
Now how about my question? How does your 1985 texbook justify the assertion that gorillas diverged 8mya and chimps and humans diverged 5mya? I need a better answer than "well they got it from some other textbook." Who came up with all thes millions of years conjectures in the first place? Is it all based on genetic differences and known genetic drift rates or something?
Ved...
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I'm not arguing that Chimps and Gorillas aren't related. I'm wondering why you do think that they could be, and yet not have Humans related to both- considering that we just showed you genetically that Humans are more closely related to Chimps than Chimps are to Gorillas.
In short, it's because of non-biological differences.
Deadman...
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[discussion about my crappy attitude, conspicary theories, etc.]And lest you say that I have not considered the data, Dave: remember who you CAME TO in order to GET a skeptical view of it.
I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories. I understand that some YECs do and I understand the tendency to lump me in with them, but I do not. I don't have a crappy attitude toward scientists. I think I have a realistic view of them. I think that scientists latched onto the 4.5 billion year thing pretty readily because they all wanted to believe in billions of years. There is a pretty good consensus among scientists that Genesis is a fairy tale and this gives them good reason to latch onto a dating theory which in their minds, removes scientific credibility from the book of Genesis. Again, the consensus that Genesis is a fairy tale is not a conspiracy. It's just a consensus.
And you are correct. I did come here to get a skeptical view of YECism and you are doing an excellent job of providing it.
Wells..
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You still haven't grasped the point: we have a perfect historical record of P,F,S,I,R(omanian)... all descending from Latin.
I have never denied this. I agree with it. But it is not specific enough. My explanation fills in the missing details.
Wells...
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What don't you check a copy of Bill Bryson's "Brief history of nearly everything" out of your local library? It's concise, well-written, and full of references.
OK, I'll do that. And why don't you go pick up a copy of "The Genesis Flood" by Morris and Whitcomb.
Wells...
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Ever looked at the development of cuneiform? Thought not.
Yes, I have. It developed rather quickly compared to evolutionary timescales. We will be looking at this in detail. I have some pretty amazing information to share on this topic.
Wells...
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Once more for the hard-of-thinking: arguments for deep time originate in geology, not biology. Darwin's background was in geology; his understanding of deep time helped him understand that gradual changes over long eons could account for huge cumulative changes. In the late nineteenth century, there was a major controversy between biologists and geologists, arguing for an old earth of some hundreds of millions of years, and physicists (particularly Kelvin) arguing that the earth could be no more than some tens of millions of years old, as otherwise it would have cooled completely. The geological side of the argument was based on stratigraphy and deposition rates, and was not particularly influenced by the biology; Agassiz was an old-earth creationist. The discovery of radioactivity, which produces heat within the earth, resolved this dispute. Dating based on the uranium decay series in the '50s showed that meteoritic material is ~4.5 billion years old and the oldest surface rocks we've found are ~3.5 billion years old.
Yes. I think the biologists needed hundreds of millions of years to make evolution work, so the geologists delivered based on uniformitarian ideas of sedimentation rates, etc. And as you mentioned, the uranium dating then gave the 4.5 billion year date. Since that time, uniformitarianism has given way to 'episodicity' and 'neo-catastrophism' (no one would dare admit 'Oops, the Global Flood guys were right after all'. And now, everyone blindly accepts 4.5 billion years in spite of the growing body of evidence that the assumption may be grossly wrong (I have not covered this yet). I should also point out that a major contributing factor to the easy acceptance of deep time was a concurrent accpetance of what has now turned out to be one of the most embarrassing speculation disasters ever in the field of literary studies--the Documentary Hypothesis (Graf-Wellhausen JEPD Theory) of the Book of Genesis. I will cover this briefly and share more later. Basically, this theory was based on the idea that writing was not invented until after the time of Moses, that civilization progressed slowly from 6000ya onward. Supposedly, Genesis was written by some late Jewish priest from oral tradition. Suffice to say now that this theory has been so thoroughly discredited that it will go down in history as one of the biggest jokes ever. Not only was writing in existence in Moses' day, but it was known as early as the mid 1930's that writing goes all the way back at least to 5500ya and no doubt to the first man, Adam. Genesis is actually a compilation of tablets, each tablet being the work of a patriarch who was an eyewitness or at least a contemporary of recorded events. This is a fascinating study and we will cover it in detail. The best summary of this is found in "Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis" by P.J. Wiseman, edited by his son, British Professor of Assyriology Donald J. Wiseman.
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Note: science doesn't proceed by enforced uniformity. Science proceeds by constant arguments which are eventually resolved by comparison to observed reality.
Great. I agree. So when are you going to go out and by your copy of "The Genesis Flood"??
Jeannot...
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Oh, I'm still awaiting your opinion on plate tectonics.
You missed it. I covered this already. The continents split during the Flood. Go buy "The Genesis Flood" by Whitcomb and Morris. (Commercial # 3?) (I don't get any royalties, Deadman)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1.) I argued that pressure is an unresolved problem in regard to helium diffusion rates in zircon. Both Farley and Reiners acknowledge this (yes, both). This combined with the other objections raised in Henke and by Jon...give unreliable methods and results for the Fenton Hill Zircon.
Yes they do. But two things... 1) They say nothing of the magnitude of the effect. It likely is very small.
Please show your calculations.
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Why would they use vacuum testing on zircons themselves if it was a problem? I understand that Farley does not have a pressure testing apparatus, but surely he could come up with one if it was important, no?
I don't know. He did say, in 2005, that the issue of pressure effects on diffusion in zircons is not settled.
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1) Helium concentration in basaltic magmatic fluids is much too small by a factor of 40 or so.
Reference, please And why consider only basaltic magma?
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2) Helium traveling through a conduit on its own or with CO2 could easily escape into the atmosphere
Maybe, depending on the geometry. So what?
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3) You have to account for the fact that the surrounding biotite contains very close to the amount of Helium produced by the calculated U-decay Helium. Just a coincidence?
My opinion is that it's pretty likely it's coincidence. Why would the biotite trap all the helum that diffused from the zircons?
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4) How do you keep the Helium in the zircons when the temperature is elevated for so long?
Perhaps by high concentration of helium outside.
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5) Let's say you can keep the Helium in. The zircon is 'open' at high temperature, right? Why wouldn't the concentrations of Helium in the zircon and the surrounding biotite equalize?
"Open" isn't like opening a door, and "closed" is not like closign a door. They would equilibrate, if given enough time. But then conditions can change and the equilibrium can be lost.
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So to summarize, the pressure testing and temperature history objections seem to be DOA (Dead on Arrival), and the infiltration objection seems like an extreme long shot.
Still just hand-waving. No data.
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Here's a suggestion: let's look at all the new zircons being tested using the Reiners/Farley method and let's test them using the Humphreys method. Would they concur with the RATE results? I bet they would!
Well ... I say if we are so close, why don't the freshmen go to the zoo to get dates instead of the sorority house?
Good point. Because chimps and gorillas crossbreed all the time. Right, Dave?
Sorry, but until you can come up with something other than "it's so obvious," we're just going to keep laughing at you.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
In other words ... JonF is tired of being shown how his rebuttals aren't working and can only come up with vague one-liners.
Good. We will move on to the next topic.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Incorygible ... Common Design Theory predicts that there will be much genetic similarity among apes and humans. Remember the Ford analogies? What you keep overlooking is non-biological differences. You are focusing all your attention on the stuff you can measure and the things you can count, i.e. nucleotides, and you are disregarding everything else. So I have answered your question.
Indeed you have answered my question, Dave. Congratulations on getting something right (the bold part). All my attention is indeed focused on the stuff we can measure and the things we can count (i.e., objective, observable reality). If you can't defend your ideas on these grounds, or if you want to hold discourse beyond observable nature, go find a church group or a bong hit. Furthermore, we are talking about life and its various forms, right down to the minutiae of morphology, genetics, behaviour, etc. If you're not talking about biology, but want to talk about "non-biological differences", go right ahead. Discuss souls, revealed destinies and Biblical doctrine anywhere you want, but don't pretend it has any relevance whatsoever in a scientific forum (including science classes). You have just admitted that "Common Design Theory" says absolutely nothing about biology, and you would rather we didn't pursue any apparent relevance it might have to "stuff we can measure", since it can't really account for what that "genetic similarity" actually tells us (i.e., any actual hypotheses we try to develop from "common design", beyond assinine car analogies, turn out to be dead wrong).
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Now how about my question? How does your 1985 texbook justify the assertion that gorillas diverged 8mya and chimps and humans diverged 5mya? I need a better answer than "well they got it from some other textbook." Who came up with all thes millions of years conjectures in the first place? Is it all based on genetic differences and known genetic drift rates or something?
Once again, I've given you the five-sentence version (hint: over a century of study in hominid fossils dated by various methods, gross morphology, and decades of protein comparisons). I've given you the sources for you to learn more. I've even told you how things have changed since the 1980s based on more comprehensive genomic research (e.g., I think it's now about 7 million years for gorillas and 4-5 for chimps, though the recent Nature paper makes a good case that this was a rather messy split and full divergence may be even more recent). Beyond that, go do your own homework, Dave.
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I am dead serious. I'm saying some things that sound silly and obvious, but I do so with good reason. When you really think about Ved's (or whoever it was) question, you realize that it is truly the question that is silly, not my answer.
Let me put it to you this way ... where would a new freshman guy on campus go looking to get a date? The sorority house? Or the zoo? You biologists get your micrometers out and get all worked up ... "My goodness!! Chimps and humans share 98.5% genetic similarity and gorillas and chimps only share 98.0%!! Heavens to Betsy!! We're related!! And boy are we close!!"
Well ... I say if we are so close, why don't the freshmen go to the zoo to get dates instead of the sorority house?
The fact is guys, we're NOT close. Our DNA is very similar, yes. But when comparing everything else, gorillas are MUCH closer to chimps than humans are to chimps. This is so obvious that it's pathetic that I have to explain it to you.
You are the silly ones. Not me.
Not from where I'm standing, Dave. Silly is trying to pretend a gut feeling and the mating preferences of frat boys constitute any form of valid/rational/scientific argument regarding common ancestry of the great apes. Besides which, if you'd read (and if you could understand) the Nature article, you'd see that we humans went to "the zoo" for our mates for quite some time.
Frat boys don't tend to pick up at family reunions, either, Dave. Does this make them unrelated to these individuals? Frat boys tend to have racial and other physical preferences in potential mates as well (e.g., no fatties when sobre!. Does this make anyone without these preferred characteristics inhuman or subhuman?
And what is this "everything else" you speak of comparing? It's obviously not genetic, or even biological (by your own admission). So what else matters, Dave? Your gut reaction to similar vs. different, human vs. subhuman, sorority vs. zoo? Not only does that dog not hunt in any rational discourse, Dave, it's really a little frightening to think this is the type of "truth" you would have your kids trust in (not to mention ironic when you consider your ilk likes to blame racism and other evils on evolutionary theory).
Not only does that dog not hunt in any rational discourse, Dave, it's really a little frightening to think this is the type of "truth" you would have your kids trust in (not to mention ironic when you consider your ilk likes to blame racism and other evils on evolutionary theory).
Just like Stephen Colbert, Dave doesn't tell the truth to us. He feels the truth at us.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
If you can't defend your ideas on these grounds, or if you want to hold discourse beyond observable nature, go find a church group or a bong hit.
That's ridiculous. There are many fields of science which depend upon indirect evidence of phenomena which we cannot measure or count. Meyer and others have pointed out many of these fields.
When I talk about non-biological differences, I am not even getting to spirits, souls, revealed destinies, etc. I am talking about advanced linguistic skills, abstract thinking ability, scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.
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Beyond that, go do your own homework, Dave.
I've read your books and I don't buy the millions of years. My question is "On what basis do YOU buy them?"
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That's ridiculous. There are many fields of science which depend upon indirect evidence of phenomena which we cannot measure or count. Meyer and others have pointed out many of these fields.
When I talk about non-biological differences, I am not even getting to spirits, souls, revealed destinies, etc. I am talking about advanced linguistic skills, abstract thinking ability, scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.
Super. And how, exactly, do those things pertain to the subject of determining common ancestry?
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Scientists actually say 'we don't know' about abiogenesis, no poof required.
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In short, it's because of non-biological differences.
If they are not caused by biology they have nothing to do with evolution. If you are going to argue that aspects of human intelligence are not a result of our more complex brains, but of some supernatural intervention, I dont see why this is an argument against common descent.
AFDave:STILL NO SUCCESSFUL REFUTATION OF HUMPHREYS
Just out of curiousity, what would you consider a successful refutation?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
There are many fields of science which depend upon indirect evidence of phenomena which we cannot measure or count. Meyer and others have pointed out many of these fields.
When I talk about non-biological differences, I am not even getting to spirits, souls, revealed destinies, etc. I am talking about advanced linguistic skills, abstract thinking ability, scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.
No, Dave, there is no science where phenomena which we cannot measure or count are considered. We can actually measure linguistic skill (ever take a foriegn language and get graded on it), abstract thinking ability (ever take an IQ test), scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.
Let me put it to you this way ... where would a new freshman guy on campus go looking to get a date? The sorority house? Or the zoo? You biologists get your micrometers out and get all worked up ... "My goodness!! Chimps and humans share 98.5% genetic similarity and gorillas and chimps only share 98.0%!! Heavens to Betsy!! We're related!! And boy are we close!!"
Well ... I say if we are so close, why don't the freshmen go to the zoo to get dates instead of the sorority house?
The fact is guys, we're NOT close. Our DNA is very similar, yes. But when comparing everything else, gorillas are MUCH closer to chimps than humans are to chimps. This is so obvious that it's pathetic that I have to explain it to you.
You are the silly ones. Not me.
dave, please read again what you have said. Basically, you consider all knowledge in biology and genetics irrelevant, vague and meaningless, if we are to discuss differences between humans and other primates, because -well, because you say so. You have nothing substantial to say besides "there are huge differences, come on, its obvious" and "well if we're so close, why don't we get married" and ridiculous stuff like that. And THAT'S pathetic, dave. Almost Thordaddy-pathetic. You're not talking to children here.
dave, what are the differences between my kitty purring on my couch, and a sabretooth tiger? They must be HUGE- come on, it's obvious! How can one possibly claim they were the same "kind" once, and diverged within 6000 years? Now if we were to compare the Tasmanian Wolf and the European wolf, then I agree... They must be the same kind, they're practically alike. I mean, it's obvious!
And how exactly are the differences between humans and chimps non-biological? What do you even mean by that? An extremely developed brain is a biological difference. A very substantial one, no doubt, but still a diversity in the biological plane. Unless you plan to break out the "S" word- but please do so in a theology forum, not here.
As for all your other old "arguments" reposted without a mere reference to their complete dismantlement... I don't have the patience anymore. Our answers to those can be found a dozen times each, if you check all those pointless previous threads. I'm fed up. Just this:
Quote (afdave @ June 14 2006,10:02)
Wells..
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You still haven't grasped the point: we have a perfect historical record of P,F,S,I,R(omanian)... all descending from Latin.
I have never denied this. I agree with it. But it is not specific enough. My explanation fills in the missing details.
[/quote]
I see. So, you accept that Portuguese originated from Vulgar Latin, and developed to a separate language by the 5th-9th Century (and that is what Encyclopedia Britannica, the source you blatantly misquoted, actually says about the origin of Portuguese... like all other sources).
But you just want to "fill in the missing details"... by saying that Portuguese didn't exist untill the 12th century, when some knights supposedly had a linguistic influence on Spanish in some undefined way.
...Sure, thordadd... dave, that makes perfect sence. Details: Filled.
Look, Dave. It must be obvious to you that you were wrong by know. Now, frankly, I couldn't care less about the origins of Portuguese; what gets to me is your amazing stubborness and inability to lower your guard and let your ego suffer this (minor) blow. And it is about your ego, dave: You're not speaking for your God or defending your faith or fighting for your beliefs in this issue. It's just about a silly trivial matter, and it's you, dave the mortal man, who hates to admit he was incorrect. That's what irritates me, and keeps me going on this- and it should irritate you too, because it makes you say absurd things like the one above, and will do so even more in the future.
Take this hint from an old troll: Give it up.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
If you can't defend your ideas on these grounds, or if you want to hold discourse beyond observable nature, go find a church group or a bong hit.
That's ridiculous. There are many fields of science which depend upon indirect evidence of phenomena which we cannot measure or count. Meyer and others have pointed out many of these fields.
Wouldn't it be great for you if evolution, geology, and all the other sciences you seek to overturn were among them? Then maybe your abstract concepts and lack of supportive data would be on an equal footing?
Quote
When I talk about non-biological differences, I am not even getting to spirits, souls, revealed destinies, etc. I am talking about advanced linguistic skills, abstract thinking ability, scientific inquiry ability, the capacity for religious thinking, the ability to create civilization, etc. etc.
Funny you mention advanced linguistic skills. I'm working on a paper on behavioral laterality in fish. Just did a comprehensive lit. review of cognitive lateralization. Read a ton of papers on hemispheric cognition in the human brain, specifically as it pertains to language and communication. Does it surprise you that the authors of these papers measured and counted lots of stuff (I can't remember a single analogy)? Didn't see any of it overturning evolutionary theory (quite the contrary, in fact).
And did you really just use human "scientific inquiry ability" as "non-biological" evidence to overturn the fruits of that inquiry? You're blowin' my mind, Dave.
Finally, please show me any scientific field, as theoretical as you want, where an argument by analogy and vague gut feelings (it's obvious! were used to deny the validity of measurements and other empirical data that were readily available. My work is actually predominantly theoretical, Dave (despite your implication that I'm a close-minded impiricist), and I'll tell ya something: when you're staring at over a century of work, entire libraries of accumulated data, a vast number of different scientific disciplines agreeing on the same thing, and the very DNA of every living thing on this planet, you better have something better than Ford analogies, appeals to abstract thoughts, and a trip to the zoo.
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Beyond that, go do your own homework, Dave.
I've read your books and I don't buy the millions of years. My question is "On what basis do YOU buy them?"
Fine. You've read what I have (sure you have), critically analyzed what I have (sure you have), and you don't buy it. Largely on "non-biological" grounds, based on who you'd do in the zoo (maybe AIG can add that to their "goo to you" slogan?). Me, I do buy it, Dave, and your question is answered. I generally trust the books, the thousands of papers I've read, the data they present, the stats they use to determine what constitutes relevant findings, the methodology they use, the cohesion of independent lines of inquiry, the scientific method in general, and peer review. When it comes to ape divergence, I trust the history (ever-changing with the data) of findings in paleontology, morphology, allozyme analysis, molecular clocks, and most recently, sequencing of entire genomes. I trust hard-working, self-critical, peer-review surviving researchers like myself, who are actually working in the relevant field (I'm not). But of course, while I'm reading as much as I can of what they've written, I always keep a careful eye out for something I don't trust and that they can't defend. Easiest way to get famous in science is to overturn a long-standing idea. Of course, bad analogies and my own mating preferences don't work in this regard. That's especially true for anything that has survived the inherent scientific cannibalism (and non-scientific objection) as long as evolution has.
Silly me, I thought you were interested in honest debate and discussion, AFDave. I mention that pressure is an unresolved factor, and you say
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1) They say nothing of the magnitude of the effect. It likely is very small. 2) Why would they use vacuum testing on zircons themselves if it was a problem? I understand that Farley does not have a pressure testing apparatus, but surely he could come up with one if it was important, no?
No one knows what the effects of pressure on zircon/He diffusion are. You cannot say they are small, or large--because YOU don't know, nor do you know how to calculate the effects. Farley doesn't have a 200-ton press because they are large and expensive and he's a freakin' geologist. It costs MONEY to even get time on a press, and in the case of the Fenton Hill samples, he's thinking that he's just doing a mining company a small job, not needing to perform intense experimentation on zircons/He/temps and pressure.
I mention the studies on pyrite glass done UNDER PRESSURE AND HEAT...and you say that I have "misread" humphreys...no, I haven't. You admit:
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His logic then is that if something softer than zircon is not substantially affected by pressure, then zircon likely should be affected even less. He also points out that the study on obsidian was done with argon which, of course, is a larger atom than Helium. This should result in an even lower change in diffusivity.
And I point out that PYRITE is 1) harder than obsidian and Helium diffuses faster through it at temps and pressures in the ranges of the Fenton Hill samples... I GO ON TO POINT OUT THAT HELIUM ACTUALLY DIFFUSES THROUGH QUARTZ, (HARDER THAN STEEL OR ZIRCON ON THE MOHS ) FASTER THAN ZIRCON , AT THE SAME TEMP RANGES....and you wave your hands and say it doesn't MATTER to Humphreys ratty results? It sure does, baboo. His claim was that hardness offsets pressures, remember? Well, it doesn't . READ THE QUARTZ PAPERS. STUDIES OF SUBSTANCES SUCH AS TITANITE ALSO SHOW THAT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRESSURE/TEMP/HARDNESS IN DIFFERENT MINERALS IS NOT LINEAR, NOT "PREDICTABLE" UNDER ANY CURRENT MODEL. It **HAS** to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis and the zircon work has NOT been done. In the Pyrite and quartz examples, you get HUGE spikes of activity in diffusion at temp/pressure variables that DO suggest that Fenton Hill zircons were infiltrated.
As for me not knowing precisely the metamict nature of the Fenton Hill samples, yeah, NO ONE DOES, since Humphreys, that good trustworthy guy...won't release any. The same guy that DIDN'T AND NEVER WILL do 3He/4He ratio work that would more than substantially CONFIRM OR DISCONFIRM his CLAIMS
Unlike you, I am not on a crusade, I get bored with answering the same questions and I don't like copy-pasting as you do. I make errors like
Quote
doesn't diffuse through glasses softer than zircon...at a rate that would explain his results?
When what I meant was "at a rate that would damage his results"
This is incredibly minor grammatical/ word choice "error" in comparison to the fact that pyrite and titanite, harder than obsidian--- and quartz, harder than steel, are affected by temperature and pressure in ways that DIRECTLY CONTRADICT HUMPHREYS
Look at how you repeat your same claims about Helium :
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1) Helium concentration in basaltic magmatic fluids is much too small by a factor of 40 or so. 2) Helium traveling through a conduit on its own or with CO2 could easily escape into the atmosphere 3) You have to account for the fact that the surrounding biotite contains very close to the amount of Helium produced by the calculated U-decay Helium. Just a coincidence? 4) How do you keep the Helium in the zircons when the temperature is elevated for so long? 5) Let's say you can keep the Helium in. The zircon is 'open' at high temperature, right? Why wouldn't the concentrations of Helium in the zircon and the surrounding biotite equalize?
Your point (1) is utter nonsense, there are far more mechanisms than just that one (2) Is hand-waving...the issue is "could He get to Fenton Hill in large concentrations sufficient to affect "open" Zircon ?" The answer is a definitive , resounding YES. I know for a fact that you have not read available material on helium geology, or you'd never say what you claimed. (3-5) As to Biotite containing He in "complimentary" amounts...bullshit. Remember Henke talking about mica He diffusion under pressure/heat? BIOTITE IS MICA. LOOK AT THE RESULTS AND DO YOUR OWN WORK. He DIFFUSES FASTER OUT OF BIOTITE AT TEMP/PRESSURE. HUMPHREYS SIMPLY SKEWED IT. I am not going to do your mathwork for you, AFDave, you have to get off your ass and do it. You have contact with Humphreys' lab...get the data. Show it.
The fact remains: Humphreys is making huge, grandiose claims about this material, and ALL of these issues COULD BE RESOLVED by testing the remaining core material. Cores generally come in at least meter-lengths. WHY DOESN'T HE ALLOW TESTING? WHY WON'T HE ALLOW SAMPLES TO BE TAKEN FROM THE SAME CORES? ...These kinds of "extraordinary claims" require extraordinary evidence, and Humphreys is behaving just like a con artist. IN fact, I say he IS one and I'd love to have him or anyone else take me to court on libel. I say flat out he's a fraud and a con artist and that he is deliberately duping idiots in order to get money out of them--because , oh, I COULD prove that to within any reasonable doubt in court.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
He DIFFUSION DATING IS DIFFERENT THAN (U-Th/He) CHRONOMETRY
and ...
STILL NO SUCCESSFUL REFUTATION OF HUMPHREYS
Dave, here's the problem. The entire geological community is aware of the fact that Fenton Hill zircons cannot be dated reliably using He diffusion. There are too many variables (thermal history of the rocks, presence of large amounts of He in the area, etc.) Humphreys' methods simply have not withstood peer review, and more important have not been replicated by anyone else, and not even by Humphreys. The only one who doesn't think Humphreys has been refuted is you.
And, as I and everyone else here have pointed out to you a million times already, you can't overturn an entire methodology, used successfully for decades, by two dubious results. You just can't. Give it up. You're repeating yourself.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In short, it's because of non-biological differences.
If they are not caused by biology they have nothing to do with evolution. If you are going to argue that aspects of human intelligence are not a result of our more complex brains, but of some supernatural intervention, I dont see why this is an argument against common descent.
In a study published in the April 12, 2002 issue of the journal Science, the scientists noted that the striking difference between these primate cousins is most evident in their brains. The disparity appears to be the result of evolutionary differences in gene and protein expression, the manner in which coded information in genes is activated in the brain, then converted into proteins that carry out many cellular functions.
The brain differences are more a matter of quantity than quality. Differences in the amount of gene and protein expression, rather than differences in the structure of the genes or proteins themselves, distinguish the two species.
Just out of curiousity, what would you consider a successful refutation?
Something that makes me go 'Hmmm ... really? I never noticed that glaring error before. OK, you're right'
This has happened one time here so far. With Dr. Wieland and a statement he made about chromosomes.
Deadman...
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His claim was that hardness offsets pressures, remember?
His claim is that hardness reduces the effect of pressure on diffusion, which he demonstrates with good studies.
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pyrite and titanite, harder than obsidian--- and quartz, harder than steel, are affected by temperature and pressure in ways that DIRECTLY CONTRADICT HUMPHREYS
Temperature, of course. But pressure? How much effect are we talking? Which studies are you citing?
Quote
Unlike you, I am not on a crusade
You may not be on a crusade personally. But the NCSE is and I think they run this forum, do they not? If not, I think it is at least fair to say that you are probably supportive of the NCSE's agenda. To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.' They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
Quite false interpretation, thus they are 'religious crusaders' with an agenda to promote. Are you with them?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
By the way, Dave, when you mentioned "abstract thinking ability" as an "immeasurable", "non-biological" argument against common ancestry of chimps, humans and gorillas, that paper I cited for ya (with the abstract) on May 24 must've slipped your mind, eh? I know that when you've read as much on this issue as you have, it's easy to forget. Here it is again:
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Hey, Dave, here's a really interesting one among many. Not only do the bulk of genetic data examined support that chimps are closer to humans than they are to gorillas, it turns out that this relationship holds for the pattern of gene activity in our brains (actually, in that very part of our brains that handles cognitive tasks):
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Title: Sister grouping of chimpanzees and humans as revealed by genome-wide phylogenetic analysis of brain gene expression profiles Author(s): Uddin M, Wildman DE, Liu GZ, Xu WB, Johnson RM, Hof PR, Kapatos G, Grossman LI, Goodman M Source: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 101 (9): 2957-2962 MAR 2 2004 Document Type: Article Language: English Cited References: 50 Times Cited: 32 Find Related Records Information Abstract: Gene expression profiles from the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of human, chimpanzee, gorilla, and macaque samples provide clues about genetic regulatory changes in human and other catarrhine primate brains. The ACC, a cerebral neocortical region, has human-specific histological features. Physiologically, an individual's ACC displays increased activity during that individual's performance of cognitive tasks. Of approximate to45,000 probe sets on microarray chips representing transcripts of all or most human genes, approximate to16,000 were commonly detected in human ACC samples and comparable numbers, 14,00015,000, in gorilla and chimpanzee ACC samples. Phylogenetic results obtained from gene expression profiles contradict the traditional expectation that the non-human African apes (i.e., chimpanzee and gorilla) should be more like each other than either should be like humans. Instead, the chimpanzee ACC profiles are more like the human than like the gorilla; these profiles demonstrate that chimpanzees are the sister group of humans. Moreover, for those unambiguous expression changes mapping to important biological processes and molecular functions that statistically are significantly represented in the data, the chimpanzee clade shows at least as much apparent regulatory evolution as does the human clade. Among important changes in the ancestry of both humans and chimpanzees, but to a greater extent in humans, are the up-regulated expression profiles of aerobic energy metabolism genes and neuronal function-related genes, suggesting that increased neuronal activity required increased supplies of energy.
In other words ... JonF is tired of being shown how his rebuttals aren't working and can only come up with vague one-liners.
No, Dave, he's not. He's getting tired of repeating himself. What he's shown you is plenty of holes in Humphreys' methodologies that Humphreys did not control for, any one of which calls into question Humphreys' results. This is what scientists do when they see weird, inexplicable results. This is why Humphreys is not a credible scientist.
Instead of trying to figure out why his result don't make sense (and they don't make sense, because they contradict humdreds of thousands of other results), Humphreys assumed they were correct because they support what he wants to believe anyway: that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Meanwhile, real scientists look at his results, point out (exactly as JonF has done) multiple potential sources of error, which Humphreys simply has not eliminated. You may think you can eliminate them by saying things like "they're likely small," or "I don't think that would have an effect," or "probably it happened this way," but you simply cannot.
T'ain't good enough, Dave. What you clearly don't understand is that when a researcher comes up with extraordinary results, the burden is on the researcher, not the critics. This is what Dembski doesn't get either. He thinks his results are entitled to be accepted unless someone can prove him wrong. Science doesn't work that way. If Dembski wants to be taken seriously, he needs to demonstrate the correctness of his results. This, he has failed to do.
You have to go out there and eliminate those sources of error in Humphreys. You can't just dismiss them away. Not when your results are completely orthogonal to everyone else's results. When no one else gets the same results as you do, and can think of a million reasons why you get the results you got, it's a pretty safe bet that you're wrong. Which is what Humphreys is.
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Good. We will move on to the next topic.
About time. This "evidence" for a young earth has been sent to the bottom so many times the wrecked hulls are starting to show above the surface.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1. Humphreys calculations show he fudged ( read skewed) the data. (fact) 2) Humphreys will not release his lab notes or other relevant sample data (fact) 3.) Humphreys claims about helium transport routes/modes are false (fact) 4.) Humphreys claims about "hardness" offsetting pressure are false (fact) 5.) Humphreys has not and will not do He isotope ratio testing despite knowing it will confirm/disconfirm his claims to an enormous degree.(fact) 6.) Humphreys claims about the Fenton Hills zircons ages are questionable and most certainly wrong I could add more, but frankly, I'm more than satisfied and bored by this. Humphreys claims are based on deliberate manipulation and false claims. I can definitely "prove" this to any board of geologists, which is why Humphreys will never face such scrutiny openly and honestly. He has no choice but to hide
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.' They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
Now, I'm in the UK, and even I know that you cant even get your ranting right. The NCSE et al are worried about religion in PUBLIC schools. Let me repeat that. PUBLIC schools. That is, ONES FOR THE EDUCATION OF EVERYONE.
Now, pause for a second and consider why that might be a good idea. Do you want your child to go to a school where people quote the Koran at them, and people say they will end up in (whatever the islamic equivalent of ####)?
THe ACLU has stood up for some people who were preaching in the public square, since they were exercising their rights to free speech in public. What you dont seem to get is that all people are interested in is not establishing a state religion. You can still get your children educated in your religion, if you home school or use a private school. Many people do. I suggest you look into it.
To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.' They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
Quite false interpretation, thus they are 'religious crusaders' with an agenda to promote. Are you with them?
And what do you think motivates these conspirators?
(Sorry, folks, I just want to see how much candy is left in this pińata.)
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Just out of curiousity, what would you consider a successful refutation?
Something that makes me go 'Hmmm ... really? I never noticed that glaring error before. OK, you're right'
This has happened one time here so far. With Dr. Wieland and a statement he made about chromosomes.
Deadman...
Quote
His claim was that hardness offsets pressures, remember?
His claim is that hardness reduces the effect of pressure on diffusion, which he demonstrates with good studies.
Quote
pyrite and titanite, harder than obsidian--- and quartz, harder than steel, are affected by temperature and pressure in ways that DIRECTLY CONTRADICT HUMPHREYS
Temperature, of course. But pressure? How much effect are we talking? Which studies are you citing?
Quote
Unlike you, I am not on a crusade
You may not be on a crusade personally. But the NCSE is and I think they run this forum, do they not? If not, I think it is at least fair to say that you are probably supportive of the NCSE's agenda. To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.' They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution and they think that 'no establishment of religion' (which is in the constitution) means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
Quite false interpretation, thus they are 'religious crusaders' with an agenda to promote. Are you with them?
I'll tell you the fact that remains: the fact remains that Humphreys did a remarkable thing. He published predictions in 2000 about Helium diffusion in zircons surrounded by biotite which were remarkably accurate.
If you are not impressed, so be it.
It was Creationists who forced geologists to discard 'uniformitarianism' in favor of 'neo-catastrophism' and 'episodicity', it was Creationists whose typological perception of nature was vindicated by molecular biology, it was Creationists whose 'Anthropic Principle' has now been vindicated, and it will be Creationists who keep pressing ahead on the cutting edge of science in spite of conventional scientists who don't appreciate their contributions.
(Sorry, guthrie ... meant to say PUBLIC schools)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It was Creationists who forced geologists to discard 'uniformitarianism' in favor of 'neo-catastrophism' and 'episodicity'...
I think you meant it was creationist dogma that forced creation scientists to discard 'uniformitarianism'...
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1. Humphreys calculations show he fudged ( read skewed) the data. (fact)
You're wrong. Get the book. I did and he explains it perfectly.
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2) Humphreys will not release his lab notes or other relevant sample data (fact)
How do you know? Did you ask him?
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3.) Humphreys claims about helium transport routes/modes are false (fact)
You are hoping they are anyway. Highly unlikely.
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4.) Humphreys claims about "hardness" offsetting pressure are false (fact)
You're wrong. And I explained why multiple times.
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5.) Humphreys has not and will not do He isotope ratio testing despite knowing it will confirm/disconfirm his claims to an enormous degree.(fact)
No one did that at the time. He has agreed that he should on future studies. What more can you ask?
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6.) Humphreys claims about the Fenton Hills zircons ages are questionable and most certainly wrong I could add more, but frankly, I'm more than satisfied and bored by this. Humphreys claims are based on deliberate manipulation and false claims. I can definitely "prove" this to any board of geologists, which is why Humphreys will never face such scrutiny openly and honestly. He has no choice but to hide.
He's not hiding and he's gaining steam. You will hear much more from him in the future. He sent his work to many conventional scientists BEFORE publication. They had very little comment.
*******************************
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I think you meant it was creationist dogma that forced creation scientists to discard 'uniformitarianism'...
Are you saying that the old Lyellian uniformitarianism is still alive?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It was Creationists who forced geologists to discard 'uniformitarianism' in favor of 'neo-catastrophism' and 'episodicity', it was Creationists whose typological perception of nature was vindicated by molecular biology, it was Creationists whose 'Anthropic Principle' has now been vindicated, and it will be Creationists who keep pressing ahead on the cutting edge of science in spite of conventional scientists who don't appreciate their contributions.
Oh really now? So now you CAN explain "ape type" vs. "human type" via molecular biology? Didn't you just fall back to "non-biological" comparisons? Vindicated, indeed.
Dave, can you please define these biological "types" for me? I mean, beyond "humans and other stuff" and "who would you do in the zoo?" It would be very helpful. As we speak, I'm working on a paper examining species concepts, attempting to come up with clear, natural, objective "types" (units) for endangered species legislation, and the input would be invaluable.
Of course, since you claim not to have studied the prolific, peer-reviewed literature on "baraminology", maybe you can't help me. In which case, how can you be sure of "vindication"? Or are you claiming molecular biology has posed no problem, challenge or contention in Linnaean taxonomy? Ever been in a room with taxonomists, Dave? It's bloody dangerous: you get lumped AND split before you know what hit you.
Oh, and why do you ignore those revolutionary Creationists who established that the Earth was much older than a few thousand years, hmmm?
I'll tell you the fact that remains: the fact remains that Humphreys did a remarkable thing. He published predictions in 2000 about Helium diffusion in zircons surrounded by biotite which were remarkably accurate.
If you are not impressed, so be it.
Dave, the reason we're not impressed is because we know his results are almost certainly wrong. The reason you are impressed is because a) you don't have sufficient knowledge to know why he's almost certainly wrong, and b) you want him to be right, so even when we tell you why he's almost certainly wrong, you don't believe it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I gave you the citations. It is not up to me to spoon-feed you. Quartz, Pyrite and Titanite studies all show that the hardness of a material does not in fact offset pressure in relation to He diffusion. Helium passes through pyrite easily UNDER pressure/temps comparable to the ranges given in the Fenton Hill samples.
Quartz (harder than steel, Dave), ---contrary to Humphreys ---( as shown in the Farley paper I CITED and gave to you...) shows much the same properties, AFDave. Saying that I have not given you the references is a hoot.
As to the Titanite, I told you to go do your homework, Dave. I am not giving you any more than I have to. Go ahead and use Humphreys, it's not hard to show he's a liar. And a fraud. And a con artist.
His response to Henke does not clear Humphreys of faking his data calculations...he did. And no, I'm not giving him money for his "books" Dave. YOU should be able to back your claims by citing him, since you say you have them.
Humphrey focuses on ONLY magmatic conduits for HE transport. That Helium can be transported via other means is easily available in all the literature on He geology. That remains fact. For Humphreys to ignore that shows he is false in his claims. That also remains a fact.
The FACT that Humphreys knew years ago about He ratios ...shows he's hiding. He's not gaining steam, he's broken down by the side of the road.
As to you asking if I am part of some secret anti-christian agenda at NCSE...no. I just despise liars like Humphreys. The Christians I know are content in their faith and unwilling to be liars for god. Humphreys and others...like you, Dave...are willing to lie for your faith. And don't say you haven't lied, Dave. Remember your claim that my ancestors "devolved" and lost written languages? The last time you attempted to mess with that, you showed you didn't even know the bible.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ah! Finally an intelligent topic on which Dave can engage.
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You may not be on a crusade personally. But the NCSE is and I think they run this forum, do they not?
No, they don't run this forum.
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If not, I think it is at least fair to say that you are probably supportive of the NCSE's agenda.
Most scientists are, since the NCSE agenda isn't what you apparently think it is.
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To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.'
It's interesting that you chose to put that phrase in quotes; did you copy it from somewhere? The NCSE is engaged in the business of making sure that religions remain as free as possible. They have no 'religious' mission of any kind, since they are not a religious organization. They're in favor of your (yes, that's right Dave, your) freedom. Their point is that in science classes we should teach science. In religion classes we should teach religion. And one should not teach the one in the other.
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They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution
It is by implication, and it doesn't mean what you think it means.
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and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
This is utter nonsense; the separation of church and state simply means that the government cannot make mention of any specific religious belief in such a fashion as to endorse it. Tell me, Dave - do you really want schools to teach your children religion? Do you really want the federal government to be in the business of chosing which faith is correct?
We're a representative democracy; it could happen that we vote in a government of Muslims. Are you quite sure that you want the government in the religion business?
This is about non-discrimination and religious freedom, Dave. It's about removing (in cases such as the 'ten-commandments' instance) pre-existing bias on the part of the Goverment in favor of one, particular religion.
Or would you rather we simply burn everyone you consider a heretic at the stake? This country was founded on the idea of religious freedom - why do you wish to remove that freedom?
Quite false interpretation, thus they are 'religious crusaders' with an agenda to promote. Are you with them?[/quote]
Oh, and why do you ignore those revolutionary Creationists who established that the Earth was much older than a few thousand years, hmmm?
My guess is that Dave will either ignore this or engage in the usual "No True Scotsman" fallacy: these couldn't have been "real" Christians, since they disagreed with Dave's "personal interpretation" of the Bible.
We're a representative democracy; it could happen that we vote in a government of Muslims. Are you quite sure that you want the government in the religion business?
Ha! Or even Catholics??!!!! I can just see dave shuddering at the thought. Heck we've even had a Catholic Pres. Close one, davey!
I think you meant it was creationist dogma that forced creation scientists to discard 'uniformitarianism'...
Are you saying that the old Lyellian uniformitarianism is still alive?
I'm saying you shouldn't get your geological information from CreationWiki.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Here's another amusing "fudge" from Humphreys, AFDave--The e-mail you cited and Humphrey's response as to why he had NOT done the He isotope ratio testing that would substantially confirm/disconfirm his claims:
Quote
From: Russ Humphreys Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 3:14 PM To: Dave Hawkins Subject: Re: 3He/4He in Zircons?
Hi Mr. Hawkins:
No we didn't think to ask the lab to look for 3He in the zircons because it wasn't the usual practice among helium/zircon researchers then (or at least I'd never heard of the practice then).
Now, the fact is that 3He/4He ratios were long known to be of EXTREME value in dating minerals and looking for non-uranium/thorium-series sources. LONG before Humphreys did his "study" in which he deliberately skewed the data.
Now, even if you say " well, it wasn't done on *ZIRCONS*...uh. really, Dave?
How do you explain this: Hurley, PM, 1952. Alpha ionization damage as a cause of low helium ratios. Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 33: 174-183. ?
Now, even if Humphreys now claims he was "unaware" of this...he WAS aware of it years ago. Henke told him to do the ratio studies years ago. He never did...and never will...why?
You got CONNED again, AFDave...this time by Russ Humphreys himself!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh, and Dave,that's not the ONLY citation dealing with zircon He ratios from the 50's or onwards. People were LOOKING for helium sources/natural gas and were VERY interested in He ratios up to today and beyond. The fact that the isotopes show differing origins was of paramount importance to gashounds sourcing the gasses themselves.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quote (afdave @ June 14 2006,10:02) Wells.. Quote You still haven't grasped the point: we have a perfect historical record of P,F,S,I,R(omanian)... all descending from Latin. I have never denied this. I agree with it. But it is not specific enough. My explanation fills in the missing details.
AFD seems to have embraced some form of Christianity where never admitting you're wrong is much more important than not lying.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Here's another amusing "fudge" from Humphreys, AFDave--The e-mail you cited and Humphrey's response as to why he had NOT done the He isotope ratio testing that would substantially confirm/disconfirm his claims:
Quote
From: Russ Humphreys Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2006 3:14 PM To: Dave Hawkins Subject: Re: 3He/4He in Zircons?
Hi Mr. Hawkins:
No we didn't think to ask the lab to look for 3He in the zircons because it wasn't the usual practice among helium/zircon researchers then (or at least I'd never heard of the practice then).
I'm confused by this email, too. To be specific, I'm wondering what Humphreys, the bold CREATIONIST PIONEER who innovatively chose to employ helium/zircon dating, could possibly mean by "usual practice among helium/zircon researchers then"?
Dave on June 2:
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I found it interesting that Norm had not heard of anyone using helium to date rocks. That's because creation scientists are pioneers, Norm. Pioneers get laughed at but they keep pressing on because they care about the truth, not peer pressure. Remember Galileo and Copernicus and Kepler? Same deal here.
Dave on June 3:
Quote
OK. So the creos didn't discover it. Too bad! They are just RE-discovering it along with the Yale lab quoted above.
Dave on June 7:
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Can you give me a paper that shows non-ambiguous data on He diffusion in zircons prior to Humphreys et al?
Dave on June 8:
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Oh really, JonF? As early as 2001, huh? Do you know when Humphreys published his predictions? Did you foget that little detail? I thought so. Here ... I'll help you. It was 2000 in this publication ...
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Anyone with any sense or any ethics at all would know that I meant before he PUBLISHED his predictions. It doesn't make any sense to get data published in 2001 to try to make some predictions in 2000, now does it? As for your other sources, the RATE Group looked at everything and nothing was relevant except for the ambiguous Soviet data mentioned.
Dave, we know your answer for where Cain found his wife. My question for you is: when Humphreys was busy pioneering/discovering/re-discovering helium/zircon research, where did he find a "usual practice among helium/zircon researchers"?
Don't you guys think that discussing portuguese and zircon with AFD is getting excessively boring? Dave isn't going to change is mind. If you still want to argue with him, I suggest you move to another topic, (forget isotopic dating, Dave will dismiss it).
Don't you guys think that discussing portuguese and zircon with AFD is getting excessively boring? Dave isn't going to change is mind. If you still want to argue with him, I suggest you move to another topic, (forget isotopic dating, Dave will dismiss it).
Yes. I can't wait to hear his description of his "global flood," and "evidence" therefor.
The problem is, the only way to get Dave to move on (despite his repeated threats to do so) is to allow him to claim "victory" (to the extent he doesn't already think he's won), and I for one will not let him do that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I still maintain that he is so dumb and crazy that he doesn't know he's wrong.
well, progress is being made. You used to think he was just dumb.
Look, folks, in case you haven't noticed by now, trying to argue logically with someone who MUST reject logic or risk having to deal with his cognitive dissonance is rather a frustrating prospect.
If you enjoy it, fine, but don't whine that Dave isn't listening to your arguments.
He simply CAN'T. You can't "fix" him in an online forum, so if you feel you need to sharpen your arguments on him, enjoy, but don't expect your arguments to be fruitful on Dave himself.
In case you had forgotten, early on Dave was shown how AIG lied to him about aspects of the GULO controversy, he at the time admitted that they were wrong.... and within two days had completely reversed himself.
Someone even made a thread to note this fact, and even ask him why he had never confronted AIG.
You really ARE fooling yourself if you believe for one second that when Dave says he can be convinced by evidence, that he really means it.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Don't you guys think that discussing portuguese and zircon with AFD is getting excessively boring? Dave isn't going to change is mind. If you still want to argue with him, I suggest you move to another topic, (forget isotopic dating, Dave will dismiss it).
I think most of us are just trying to see how bizarre of a response we can get out of him. It's still kind of interesting to see how he rationalizes some things.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Yes. I can't wait to hear his description of his "global flood," and "evidence" therefor.
I'm personaly eager to hear him about speciation. It's going to be good.
Quote
The problem is, the only way to get Dave to move on (despite his repeated threats to do so) is to allow him to claim "victory" (to the extent he doesn't already think he's won), and I for one will not let him do that.
I still maintain that he is so dumb and crazy that he doesn't know he's wrong.
well, progress is being made. You used to think he was just dumb.
Look, folks, in case you haven't noticed by now, trying to argue logically with someone who MUST reject logic or risk having to deal with his cognitive dissonance is rather a frustrating prospect.
If you enjoy it, fine, but don't whine that Dave isn't listening to your arguments.
He simply CAN'T. You can't "fix" him in an online forum, so if you feel you need to sharpen your arguments on him, enjoy, but don't expect your arguments to be fruitful on Dave himself.
In case you had forgotten, early on Dave was shown how AIG lied to him about aspects of the GULO controversy, he at the time admitted that they were wrong.... and within two days had completely reversed himself.
Someone even made a thread to note this fact, and even ask him why he had never confronted AIG.
You really ARE fooling yourself if you believe for one second that when Dave says he can be convinced by evidence, that he really means it.
It was clear after his second post that he is incapable of reason: "their arguments, not being founded in reason, cannot be swayed by reason".
I stay for the entertainment, and to watch the way a fundie mind works.
They are, after all, a danger to their fellow Christians, to their families, and to society at large; it's important to understand how their brains work.
Don't you guys think that discussing portuguese and zircon with AFD is getting excessively boring? Dave isn't going to change is mind. If you still want to argue with him, I suggest you move to another topic, (forget isotopic dating, Dave will dismiss it).
There is a very real sense in which debating anything with AFD is boring and futile...
I think the people still hammering away at it still can't believe that someone could be that impervious to reason -- that eventually, AFD will drop his arguments due to the sheer force of their ridiculousness. I personally don't see this happening.
I don't see the point in trashing AFD's YEC silliness. I'm just sticking around to humiliate him whenever he ventures out on the linguistics branch. I would say I'm staying here to 'keep him honest', but that certainly isn't happening.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Well, no, but nobody ever expresses themself perfectly. I always thought he was some combination of the two. I think religion is a typically mild and very limited kind of craziness which only very slightly hurts people. But in a few people who take it too seriously, it makes them actively, dangerously crazy, to the point that they'll do things like shoot abortion doctors or suicide bomb a cafe. On a 'Crazy Religiosity' scale where the average American is a 1, Jerry Falwell is a 5, Eric Rudolph is an 8-9, and Osama bin Laden is a 10, I'd put AFDave somewhere around 3-4. Crazy enough to go around telling all the experts they're wrong and refusing to believe otherwise, but not crazy enough to shoot the evil opposition.
Well, no, but nobody ever expresses themself perfectly. I always thought he was some combination of the two. I think religion is a typically mild and very limited kind of craziness which only very slightly hurts people. But in a few people who take it too seriously, it makes them actively, dangerously crazy, to the point that they'll do things like shoot abortion doctors or suicide bomb a cafe. On a 'Crazy Religiosity' scale where the average American is a 1, Jerry Falwell is a 5, Eric Rudolph is an 8-9, and Osama bin Laden is a 10, I'd put AFDave somewhere around 3-4. Crazy enough to go around telling all the experts they're wrong and refusing to believe otherwise, but not crazy enough to shoot the evil opposition.
well, you can't just quantitatively evaluate "crazy", there's a big qualitative aspect of it too.
IOW, there's lots of different kinds of crazy.
a sociopath and a schizophrenic don't have much in common, regardless of the degree of affliction.
Not being a psychologist, I haven't a good idea how to classify AFD's current affliction, but I'd bet serious money that cognitive dissonance plays a causative role.
as to whether Dave is actually dangerous or not, that would be entirely relative, and we don't have enough information to judge one way or the other.
However, based on what he's posted and how his mind apparently processes logic, I'd say he could at the very least be considered a significant negative influence in an instructional setting.
You wouldn't hire him as a teacher, now, would ya?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
You may not be on a crusade personally. But the NCSE is and I think they run this forum, do they not?
They do not.
Quote
If not, I think it is at least fair to say that you are probably supportive of the NCSE's agenda. To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.'
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
Quote
They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution...
And so does the Supreme Court, the final arbiter on what is and is not in the Constitution.
Quote
and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
Another lie, Davie-ol'-chap; they think that "no establishment of religion" means that the government may not promote one religion over any others. Mentioning a Creator or God in public settings is fine (althouth it's inappropriate to do so in science class, for non-Constitutional reasons).
My question for you is: when Humphreys was busy pioneering/discovering/re-discovering helium/zircon research, where did he find a "usual practice among helium/zircon researchers"?
Ah, yes. I should have been more specific.
In the RATE Books, Humphreys points out that ...
"Our diffusion dating method in Section 9 differs entirely from the "He dating" of (U-Th/He) Chronometry [Reiners, 2002]. Very crudely, the difference is this: (U-Th/He) Chronometry divides the number of He atoms in a crystal by nuclear decay rate. Diffusion dating divides the number of He atoms lost from the crystal by the diffusion rate. Some practitioners of (U-Th/He) Chronometry, in their unpublished comments about our work, have not yet understood this distinction.(RATE Book II, p. 94)
Apparently he is pioneering Helium Diffusion Dating. Others were apparently beginning to do (or had been doing for some time ... not sure) (U-Th/He) Chronometry as differentiated above.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
My question for you is: when Humphreys was busy pioneering/discovering/re-discovering helium/zircon research, where did he find a "usual practice among helium/zircon researchers"?
Ah, yes. I should have been more specific.
In the RATE Books, Humphreys points out that ...
"Our diffusion dating method in Section 9 differs entirely from the "He dating" of (U-Th/He) Chronometry [Reiners, 2002]. Very crudely, the difference is this: (U-Th/He) Chronometry divides the number of He atoms in a crystal by nuclear decay rate. Diffusion dating divides the number of He atoms lost from the crystal by the diffusion rate. Some practitioners of (U-Th/He) Chronometry, in their unpublished comments about our work, have not yet understood this distinction.(RATE Book II, p. 94)
Apparently he is pioneering Helium Diffusion Dating. Others were apparently beginning to do (or had been doing for some time ... not sure) (U-Th/He) Chronometry as differentiated above.
Perhaps you also should have answered the question. Oops, forgot, that would expose your ignorance.
'...where did [Humpheys find a "usual practice among helium/zircon researchers"?'
The problem is, the only way to get Dave to move on (despite his repeated threats to do so) is to allow him to claim "victory" (to the extent he doesn't already think he's won), and I for one will not let him do that.
How will you prevent this?
Simple. By never giving in. Either Dave will move on to another topic once he sees how thoroughly unconvinced we are…or he won't.
Either way, he loses.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You may not be on a crusade personally. But the NCSE is and I think they run this forum, do they not?
They do not.
Quote
If not, I think it is at least fair to say that you are probably supportive of the NCSE's agenda. To me, they are crusaders on a 'religious mission to sanitize schools of any mention of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer or a God.'
Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.
Quote
They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution...
And so does the Supreme Court, the final arbiter on what is and is not in the Constitution.
Quote
and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
Another lie, Davie-ol'-chap; they think that "no establishment of religion" means that the government may not promote one religion over any others. Mentioning a Creator or God in public settings is fine (althouth it's inappropriate to do so in science class, for non-Constitutional reasons).
"Our diffusion dating method in Section 9 differs entirely from the "He dating" of (U-Th/He) Chronometry [Reiners, 2002]. Very crudely, the difference is this: (U-Th/He) Chronometry divides the number of He atoms in a crystal by nuclear decay rate. Diffusion dating divides the number of He atoms lost from the crystal by the diffusion rate. Some practitioners of (U-Th/He) Chronometry, in their unpublished comments about our work, have not yet understood this distinction.(RATE Book II, p. 94)
So what, in your mind, Dave, would possibly make you think that the nuclear decay rate would be less reliable than the diffusion rate? Because it seems to me that if you're rejecting the presumption of uniformity, diffusion rates would be meaningless. For bonus points, try to answer this without quoting something.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Dave, since neither Humphreys, you, nor anyone else knows what the diffusion rate is, (because no one has sufficient data on half a dozen parameters that can affect the diffusion rate) what is Humphreys dividing the number of He atoms lost by? He's just pulling a number out of his butt, is what he's doing. Humphreys has no justification for even assuming that the diffusion rate has been constant over time, for crying out loud.
That's the problem everyone else has with Humphreys' method.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Jeannot: Yes, you're right on the subjects of zircons and Portuguese being essentially over and done. Dave is toast on these topics ( American slang meaning he's finished, defeated, done for).
His own boy, Humphreys...lied to him on the topic. His blatant quote-mining of a Portuguese citation as well as his inability to provide a worldlist of Portuguese terms derived FROM French...yeah, it's over. He can move on to Polonium halos or whatever he wants. He'll still get slaughtered.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
. . . it will be Creationists who keep pressing ahead on the cutting edge of science . . .
Below is a list of the title's from this month's issue of Geology, one of the most prestigious venues for publishing cutting edge work in the geosciences. The list represents a wide range of disciplines and every single paper draws upon and reinforces our knowledge of the earth's long history. This is just one example of the content of the hundreds of journal volumes that are published every year that relate to the age of the earth.
If the intellectual output of the overwhelming majority of the world's geoscientists is not sufficient to at least give you pause, is there any line of reason that would convince you that your desire to gain the imprimatur of science for your religious beliefs is the rear-guard action of a superstitious world-view rather than a battle at the vanguard of science?
Widespread Archean basement beneath the Yangtze craton.
Siberian glaciation as a constraint on Permian–Carboniferous CO2 levels.
New method to estimate paleoprecipitation using fossil amphibians and reptiles and the middle and late Miocene precipitation gradients in Europe.
Rapid magma ascent recorded by water diffusion profiles in mantle olivine.
The control of weathering processes on riverine and seawater hafnium isotope ratios.
Biomarkers from Huronian oil-bearing fluid inclusions: An uncontaminated record of life before the Great Oxidation Event.
Evolution of Atlantic thermohaline circulation: Early Oligocene onset of deep-water production in the North Atlantic.
Ganges basin geometry records a pre-15 Ma isostatic rebound of Himalaya.
Depleted swell root beneath the Cape Verde Islands.
Submarine volcanoes and high-temperature hydrothermal venting on the Tonga arc, southwest Pacific.
The origin of volcano-tectonic earthquake swarms.
The Kalkarindji continental flood basalt province: A new Cambrian large igneous province in Australia with possible links to faunal extinctions.
Moving hotspots or reorganized plates?.
Kinematic evolution of a tectonic wedge above a flat-lying decollement: The Alpine foreland at the interface between the Jura Mountains (Northern Alps) and the Upper Rhine graben.
Why is lawsonite eclogite so rare? Metamorphism and preservation of lawsonite eclogite, Sivrihisar, Turkey.
Active transtension inside central Alborz: A new insight into northern Iran–southern Caspian geodynamics.
Interaction of the rifting East Greenland margin with a zoned ancestral Iceland plume.
Seafloor morphology of the Sumatran subduction zone: Surface rupture during megathrust earthquakes?.
Redox decoupling and redox budgets: Conceptual tools for the study of earth systems.
The blueschist-bearing Qiangtang metamorphic belt (northern Tibet, China) as an in situ suture zone: Evidence from geochemical comparison with the Jinsa suture.
Potential of ikaite to record the evolution of oceanic ?18O.
Motion of Nubia relative to Antarctica since 11 Ma: Implications for Nubia-Somalia, Pacific–North America, and India-Eurasia motion.
Tibetan basement rocks near Amdo reveal “missing” Mesozoic tectonism along the Bangong suture, central Tibet.
Permanent Quaternary hyperaridity in the Negev, Israel, resulting from regional tectonics blocking Mediterranean frontal systems.
Just out of curiousity, what would you consider a successful refutation?
Something that makes me go 'Hmmm ... really? I never noticed that glaring error before. OK, you're right'
Not good enough, Bubba. What are the characteristics of something that makes you say "Hmm"? Because all this discussion around the Fenton Hill zircons has had at least a half-dozen "Hmm" moments for me. So, I'm kinda wondering what hurdles have to be jumped to get your attention. So, you are going to have to answer the question with more precision.
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You may not be on a crusade personally. But the NCSE is and I think they run this forum, do they not?]
Well, I suppose I should note that the NCSE particular area of interest is public science education and not the entirety of the curricullum. I can't say I've seen them take a position on the teaching of history, or comparative religion.
Quote
They apparently think that 'Separation of Church and State' is in the constitution and they think that 'no establishment of religion' means no mention of a Creator or God in public settings.
The Establishment Clause prohibits the endorsement of a particular religion/diety in public settings by a government entity. And the mention of a particular diety to the exclusion of other dieties is a de facto endorsement. That is why a manger scene alone on the public square is a no-no, but a manger seen accompanied by a creche and other such seasonal symbols is (umm) kosher. And that is where your creationist brethren get into trouble. Completely aside from a lack of good supporting science, creationism is a concept mostly associated with a limited set of conservative, Christian sects. The fact that people who adhere to different belief systems, including many Christians, might not buy into your viewpoint and stand for good science to be taught in science class just doesn't occur to you, does it?
And, anticipating your next knee jerk, I define good science as science that is characterized by sound, controlled methodology, has been independently verified hundreds (if not thousands or more) times and has withstood broad scrutiny by the scientific community. And a couple of zircons of a indeterminate geological history does not good science make.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
That's the interesting thing: ICR has to rely on claims of miraculous ( but unexplained ) "accelerated decay" that "explains" EVERYTHING that we know in geology as false. Dave BUYS this hook line and sinker, like the catfish on a mouthfull of chicken guts that I compared him to.
It's amazing that his standards for evidence are so low for his "view" and yet he wants absolute perfection from all the non-yec christian geologists that disagree with him and hold quite comfortably to a 4.5 BYA Earth . And he still has to invoke "miracles" to keep his view. Amazing
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, come on. And you guys call ME the conspiracy theorist? So you guys think Humphreys is just out there padding his pockets with Creo propaganda?
You've been watching too much Benny Hinn.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh, come on. And you guys call ME the conspiracy theorist? So you guys think Humphreys is just out there padding his pockets with Creo propaganda?
You've been watching too much Benny Hinn.
There's no conspiracy, Dave. There's an unwillingness to see what is there, in preference for seeing what one wants to see.
Just as you fervently wish for an earth 6,000 years old so you can hold to your belief that the Bible is inerrant, Humpreys wishes for an earth 6,000 years old so he can hold to his belief that the Bible is inerrant. That doesn't mean you and he are co-conspirators. It means that you both want the same thing.
Both you and Humphreys are ignoring and/or dismissing valid criticisms of his work, which indicate that he has simply not controlled for less fantastic explanations for his anomalous results. The fact that you are both driven to ignore those explanations by the same aims does not mean you're members of a conspiracy.
It does mean that you're both wrong, though.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You said here that you were told...explicitly...that his books would cover He isotope ratios. Odd that it didn't happen. At some level, Humphreys firmly believes what he promotes. At another level, he feels he has to B_S to support that which he believes in so deeply.
This is "cognitive dissonance."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
well, you can't just quantitatively evaluate "crazy", there's a big qualitative aspect of it too.
IOW, there's lots of different kinds of crazy.
a sociopath and a schizophrenic don't have much in common, regardless of the degree of affliction.
Not being a psychologist, I haven't a good idea how to classify AFD's current affliction, but I'd bet serious money that cognitive dissonance plays a causative role.
True, true, I'm not really giving like a DSM-IV-authoritative diagnosis here, but I think my scale example conveys some info.
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as to whether Dave is actually dangerous or not, that would be entirely relative, and we don't have enough information to judge one way or the other.
One reason I think he's probably harmless is, most fundies are, and he hasn't really said much about abortion, which is where christian fundies tend to get really dangerous. I'm sure he doesn't like abortion, but he doesn't seem to be out of control on the subject.
Quote
However, based on what he's posted and how his mind apparently processes logic, I'd say he could at the very least be considered a significant negative influence in an instructional setting.
You wouldn't hire him as a teacher, now, would ya?
Oh, I wouldn't hire him for anything. Not only would I not be able to trust his decision-making, he might drive away good people with his arrogant insanity.
I don't have anything to add to this thread as I am only married to a scientist and have no advanced degrees of my own (but I do read a lot of her books). However, I would like to thank the smart folks who have been replying to AFDave.
Your studied replies to his blithering have introduced me to subjects that I'd never considered, sending me off to obscure web-sites to read about language development, invertebrates, number theory, the history of science, etc. I've been learning some keen ways to present a complex thoughts along with new methods of sarcasm. My only regret is an increasingly long list of thick books that I must read....
BTW, on another list, I've found a totally humorless AF vet who regularly posts paranoid conspiracy and the occasional legal threat foused against a long-defunct gaming club. Just what does the AF do to people?
I know you’re a busy man, what with you being retired and spending all that time reading up on literal Bible scientific evidence, but you seem to be having problems with your memory. You keep forgetting to provide evidence to back up the claims you make. For example, you said this
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but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
It’s been four days now and you’ve been politely asked multiple times, but we still haven’t seen your evidence for this claim. We don’t need a detailed explanation, just a reference to the scientific paper or peer-reviewed journal you got this from will be sufficient. I know you're here every day writing many one-liners; just tack the data on to one of those many posts.
Also, when asked what you would consider a successful refutation of one of your claims, you replied
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Something that makes me go 'Hmmm ... really? I never noticed that glaring error before. OK, you're right'
Well, you claimed that radiocarbon dating was faulty based on incorrect assumptions about decay rates and C12 concentrations. You were then show how dates from C14/C12 decay rates are precisely calibrated by at least six different, completely independent methods (denrochronology, ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, speleothems, coral samples) and are accurate to within a few percent for dates back to 60,000 YBP. You were provided the actual data, including the calibration curves themselves that all overlap almost exactly.
Now I’m sure you can C&P some ICR or AIG argument as to why each individual calibration curve method is wrong, but you were asked your explanation as to why the independent curves all agree with one another. If you see six independent sets of data that you say are all screwed up, then how do you explain that all six are screwed up but screwed up in precisely the same way as to give precisely matching results over the whole date range?
If you can’t explain it, shouldn’t that make you reconsider your original claim? Why shouldn’t you be going “Hmmm ... really? I never noticed that glaring error before. OK, you're right” ?
Here’s a great chance to show all the Christian lurkers that you don’t back down from a challenge, or be big enough to admit that you are wrong.
Thanks in advance for not forgetting again to answer these questions.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
BTW, on another list, I've found a totally humorless AF vet who regularly posts paranoid conspiracy and the occasional legal threat foused against a long-defunct gaming club. Just what does the AF do to people?
Hey Marcus it's not the AF (or any other branch) that is at fault. You can find crabby curmudgeons from all branchs of the service and from the civilian world too.
I honestly think the US Military is one of the best examples of a meritocracy that can be found (till you get near the top, the higher you go it seems the more the Peter Principle kick in).
The reason I keep picking on Dave is because his service record shows he wasn't able to play the game as well as he'd have us believe.
but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
I've been trying to figure out what Dave means by this cryptic sentence. I asked him earlier if he meant that the "pre-flood" atmosphere was ~6% C02, but he never answered. Maybe he means that the ratio of Carbon-12 to Carbon-14 was a hundred times higher back then, but that doesn't make much sense either, because the current ratio is about one hundred trillion to one. Does he mean the ratio was ten quadrillion to one back then? Does it mean he thinks all carbon-derived dates are off by a factor of 100? So wooden artifacts found in the pyramids are actually from the 20th century?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
By the way, Dave, when you mentioned "abstract thinking ability" as an "immeasurable", "non-biological" argument against common ancestry of chimps, humans and gorillas, that paper I cited for ya (with the abstract) on May 24 must've slipped your mind, eh?
OK. So you agree it's measurable? Then let's measure it. I propose a test to quantify all the non-biological differences among humans, chimps and gorillas. What do you think this test will show?
It will show that humans are far different than the apes, and it will show the apes are quite similar.
Incorygible...
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Oh really now? So now you CAN explain "ape type" vs. "human type" via molecular biology? Didn't you just fall back to "non-biological" comparisons? Vindicated, indeed.
That's tough because they are so close. What I was referring to was Michael Denton's information about the discoveries in molecular biology vindicating the pre-Darwin typological perception of nature. Have you never read "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" ?? Molecular biology proved conclusively that nothing is "ancestral" to anything else as evolutionists would have liked for it to.
Deadman...
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Dave, I gave you the citations. It is not up to me to spoon-feed you. Quartz, Pyrite and Titanite studies all show that the hardness of a material does not in fact offset pressure in relation to He diffusion. Helium passes through pyrite easily UNDER pressure/temps comparable to the ranges given in the Fenton Hill samples.
You keep making irrelevant statements about the hardness issue. Look what you just said ...
"Helium passes through pyrite easily UNDER pressure/temps comparable to the ranges given in the Fenton Hill samples."
Of course it does. No one said that it didn't. I'm going to say this one more time, then move on because Eric is tired of this topic. :-)
HUMPHREYS COMPARES THE HARDNESS OF VARIOUS MINERALS ONLY TO SHOW THAT PRESSURE HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON DIFFUSIVITIES OF OTHER HARD MATERIALS.
He makes no statements about the COMPARATIVE diffusivities of different materials, which is what you keep bringing up. This is completely irrelevant.
Deadman...
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Remember your claim that my ancestors "devolved" and lost written languages? The last time you attempted to mess with that, you showed you didn't even know the bible.
Do what? How did I show I didn't know the Bible? As for your ancestors, I do believe they 'devolved' because there is overwhelming evidence that ALL mankind and ALL civilization originated within the last 6000 years in Mesopotamia (not Africa). The original civilization had all the marks of civilization--agriculture, metallurgy, music, writing, science, etc. VERY early--archaeology says at least by 5500ya, probably 6000ya. Since all mankind is descended from this original civilization, your ancestors are as well. How did they get to N. America? A guess, but probably via the Bering Strait which would have been a land bridge sometime close to the Ice Age, whcih occurred soon after the Flood.
Rilke...
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This is utter nonsense; the separation of church and state simply means that the government cannot make mention of any specific religious belief in such a fashion as to endorse it. Tell me, Dave - do you really want schools to teach your children religion? Do you really want the federal government to be in the business of chosing which faith is correct?
We're a representative democracy; it could happen that we vote in a government of Muslims. Are you quite sure that you want the government in the religion business?
This is about non-discrimination and religious freedom, Dave. It's about removing (in cases such as the 'ten-commandments' instance) pre-existing bias on the part of the Goverment in favor of one, particular religion.
Or would you rather we simply burn everyone you consider a heretic at the stake? This country was founded on the idea of religious freedom - why do you wish to remove that freedom?
Quite false interpretation, thus they are 'religious crusaders' with an agenda to promote. Are you with them?
Wow, Rilke. Didn't know you could do anything but 'troll.' I'm impressed. You apparently don't understand the issue of separation of church and state. You need to read 'The Myth of Separation' by David Barton. Here is an article from him, but you should read his book. David Barton's works are some of the best documented you will ever find. He is one of the few academics that I know of that almost exclusively uses the higher legal standard for documenting his quotes. Most academics use a lesser standard than this. Here is what he says ...
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Thomas Jefferson had no intention of allowing the government to limit, restrict, regulate, or interfere with public religious practices. He believed, along with the other Founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination-a fact he made clear in a letter to fellow-signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush:
[T]he clause of the Constitution which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes and they believe that any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly. 8
Jefferson had committed himself as President to pursuing the purpose of the First Amendment: preventing the “establishment of a particular form of Christianity” by the Episcopalians, Congregationalists, or any other denomination.
Jefferson believed that God, not government, was the Author and Source of our rights and that the government, therefore, was to be prevented from interference with those rights. Very simply, the “fence” of the Webster letter and the “wall” of the Danbury letter were not to limit religious activities in public; rather they were to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions. http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=9
In contrast to the intent of Jefferson and the intent of early courts, the NCSE is seeking to eliminate all reference to God in public school science classes. The ACLU is similarly trying to eliminate all reference to God in public school PERIOD.
This is un-American and naive. The USA was founded as a Christian nation in the sense that the laws and practices were founded upon the general principles of Christianity without favoring a particular sect of Christianity.
Improv...
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I'm saying you shouldn't get your geological information from CreationWiki.
Turns out in the case of geology, it was better info than EvoWiki. EvoWiki had to modify their uniformitarian theory to match observation, which translated into 'neo-catastrophism' and 'episodicity', which is better, but it still isn't right. One of these days, geologists will understand what Creationists have understood all along--there was a Global Flood.
Deadman...
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Now, even if you say " well, it wasn't done on *ZIRCONS*...uh. really, Dave?
How do you explain this: Hurley, PM, 1952. Alpha ionization damage as a cause of low helium ratios. Trans. Am. Geophys. Union, 33: 174-183. ?
Now, even if Humphreys now claims he was "unaware" of this...he WAS aware of it years ago. Henke told him to do the ratio studies years ago. He never did...and never will...why?
You got CONNED again, AFDave...this time by Russ Humphreys himself!!!!!!!!!!!
Humphreys didn't say that. He said "it wasn't the usual practice among helium/zircon researchers then." Meaning people like Farley. Was Farley routinely doing this at the time? I bet not.
You have just pre-disposed youself to believe that Humphreys is a liar ... (he has to be ... how can anyone be so stupid as to be a Creo!! ... so you cannot conceive of the possibility that maybe the guy really didn't think of ratio testing because Farley was not doing it at the time.
By the way, don't think they conned me by telling me this test was in the book when in fact it was not. I already covered this. I told you that it was MY assumption that the guy that told me it was in the book was a tech assistant. Turns out he is not. He's an admin guy. When he said 'YES', he was just saying 'Yes, all testing results are in the book.' He didn't have a clue about ratio tests or any other tests. He's an admin guy.
And your propensity to see a con-man behind every tree is quite obvious. I think it clouds your thinking and goes a long way to explaining why you have been conned into believing the whole giant Fairy Tale of Evolution.
The only one being conned here is yourself ... by you!
Ichthyic...
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In case you had forgotten, early on Dave was shown how AIG lied to him about aspects of the GULO controversy, he at the time admitted that they were wrong.... and within two days had completely reversed himself.
AIG never lied and I never reversed myself. Carl Wieland made a mistake. What in the world are you talking about?
Improvius...
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So what, in your mind, Dave, would possibly make you think that the nuclear decay rate would be less reliable than the diffusion rate? Because it seems to me that if you're rejecting the presumption of uniformity, diffusion rates would be meaningless. For bonus points, try to answer this without quoting something.
Good question. Simple answer. No quoting required. Creationists DO subscribe to uniformitarian processes for most periods BETWEEN Creation and the Flood, and BETWEEN the Flood and the present time. See how easy that is? And I will say this. I think Humphreys could be off either way by several thousand years due to some of the issues raised by Henke and you all. And we understand that additional experiments are necessary.
But the real beauty of the experiment is that is soundly refutes the supposed 1.5 GY scenario.
Eric...
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Dave, since neither Humphreys, you, nor anyone else knows what the diffusion rate is, (because no one has sufficient data on half a dozen parameters that can affect the diffusion rate) what is Humphreys dividing the number of He atoms lost by? He's just pulling a number out of his butt, is what he's doing. Humphreys has no justification for even assuming that the diffusion rate has been constant over time, for crying out loud.
Of course he did not know the diffusion rate BEFORE the experiment, but now he does because it has been tested. The beauty of the experiment is that he was able to PREDICT the diffusion rate correctly. Isn't this what you guys are always yapping at me about? "Nyah, nyah, nyah, Creos never make any predictions. They always just refer to analogies and wave their hands and say Goddidit."
Deadman...
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Jeannot: Yes, you're right on the subjects of zircons and Portuguese being essentially over and done. Dave is toast on these topics ( American slang meaning he's finished, defeated, done for).
Only in your dreams, my friend.
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can't you just quote chapter and verse from the book?
I did on several occasions.
Michael...
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Below is a list of the title's from this month's issue of Geology, one of the most prestigious venues for publishing cutting edge work in the geosciences. The list represents a wide range of disciplines and every single paper draws upon and reinforces our knowledge of the earth's long history. This is just one example of the content of the hundreds of journal volumes that are published every year that relate to the age of the earth.
If the intellectual output of the overwhelming majority of the world's geoscientists is not sufficient to at least give you pause, is there any line of reason that would convince you that your desire to gain the imprimatur of science for your religious beliefs is the rear-guard action of a superstitious world-view rather than a battle at the vanguard of science?
Conventional geologists have performed many good studies. No one is discounting the value of that. Creationists quote them often and are indebted to them for their work. What I am saying is that their interpretations of the data in regard to origins appear to be very flawed. I see much more sensible work coming out of the minority creationist camp in this regard. In this sense, they are 'on the cutting edge.'
Deadman...
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That's the interesting thing: ICR has to rely on claims of miraculous ( but unexplained ) "accelerated decay" that "explains" EVERYTHING that we know in geology as false.
There you go again. Exaggerating. Creationists don't say everything in geology is false. We are just more open minded and we open our eyes to additional evidence which you want to shut out.
OA...
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You keep forgetting to provide evidence to back up the claims you make. For example, you said this Quote but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
I guess it has somehow escaped you that I am still on the Helium zircon thing? I will move on when I get done with that.
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Well, you claimed that radiocarbon dating was faulty based on incorrect assumptions about decay rates and C12 concentrations.
Patience, OA, patience.
I made good on my promise to move on to "Age of the Earth" did I not? We've already covered two points there already and I have given you excellent reasons to reconsider your position of 'millions and billions of years'. Why would you think I would not make good on my other promises?
Crabby...
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The reason I keep picking on Dave is because his service record shows he wasn't able to play the game as well as he'd have us believe.
Or maybe because you are jealous that you didn't get to fly fast jets like I did? :-) So you try to make up bogus stuff about my supposed career failures because you just can't imagine how a 'Stupid Creo' could ever have gotten such a cool job as a T-38 IP? Or have friends who are fighter pilots? Huh, Crabby? Is that it? How about that silly idea you had about being an O-3 after 10 years? Did you go back and do your homework about how promotions work? You haven't even looked at my service record have you. You just want to pretend to others that you have. If you are that dishonest, then you are a disgrace to whatever branch it was you served in.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But davey, even if crabby is being dishonest (and I don't believe he is -- which, were we to use the same sort of pseudo-logic you indulge in, should be sufficient to absolve him...) -- this pales to insignificance given how your dishonesty dishonors both your service background and your religious faith. You, sir, are a contemptible specimen. Each of your posts re-confirms it. Liar Loser Lunatic
He makes no statements about the COMPARATIVE diffusivities of different materials, which is what you keep bringing up. This is completely irrelevant.
FROM HUMPHREYS
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As far as I know, nobody has measured the effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon. However I have at hand a paper[6] that gives, among other data, the pressure effect on argon diffusion in glasses, such as rhyolite obsidian. At the highest temperature to which our helium-in-zircon experiment went, 500 degrees C, the pressure effect on the glasses was almost imperceptible, a few percent per kilobar. A few hundred degrees higher than our experiment, 600 to 700°C, the pressure effect was up to only a few dozen percent per kilobar.
Several factors combine to say that the pressure effect on helium diffusion in our zircon experiments was much less than the above few percent per kilobar:
The cooler the mineral, the less the effect, and the critical part of our data was much cooler than the above, only 100 to 300 °C. Glasses should be more compressible than crystals of the same composition; glasses are generally not as hard because of weaker chemical bonds between parts. So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz. In a given mineral, helium diffusion is less affected by pressure than argon, because a helium atom is smaller than an argon atom. The smaller the atom, the less the effect on its diffusion for a given amount of pressure-induced reduction of the space between atoms. All these factors strongly suggest that the diffusion rates in our zircons were influenced far less than one percent by removing them from underground pressures to a vacuum chamber.
Humphreys compares the rates of diffusion in zircon...to that in "rhyolite obsidian" Liar.
In Pyrite and quartz, in the papers I gave you...Helium diffuses faster in materials almost as hard....and harder than steel. He also compared Steel to zircon in terms of pressure affect on diffusion. (remember those steel ball bearings? That's not about diffusion?)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 15 2006,11:46)
I think Dave's jealous that we're paying attention to someone else. Yawn.
I am starting to think that AFDave might be joking. Maybe just spinning people along.
The "non-biological differences" are sounding alarm bells.
AFDave. What are the non-biological differences between biological species? How many non-biological species do you know of? Shouldn't heavy fish like big whales sink?
However I have at hand a paper[6] that gives, among other data, the pressure effect on argon diffusion in glasses, such as rhyolite obsidian.
"Pressure effect."
See that? "Pressure effect"
He is NOT "comparing the rates of diffusion in zircon...to that in rhyolite obsidian" as you say. He's comparing the PRESSURE EFFECT.
Why is this so difficult to comprehend?
Shirley...
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You, sir, are a contemptible specimen.
And yet, you keep hugging me. :-)
Wells...
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AFDave. What are the non-biological differences between biological species? How many non-biological species do you know of? Shouldn't heavy fish like big whales sink?
Shouldn't heavy fish like big whales sink? What in the world are you talking about?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
In Pyrite and quartz, in the papers I gave you...Helium diffuses faster in materials almost as hard....and harder than steel. He also compared Steel to zircon in terms of pressure affect on diffusion. (remember those steel ball bearings? That's not about diffusion?)
No, it's not. For the 29th time (it seems), it's about the PRESSURE EFFECT ON DIFFUSION, not about comparative diffusion.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
This is un-American and naive. The USA was founded as a Christian nation in the sense that the laws and practices were founded upon the general principles of Christianity without favoring a particular sect of Christianity.
Could you explain something, please? If 'the USA was founded as a Christian nation', then why do the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights fail to mention Christianity in any way?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
By the way, Dave, when you mentioned "abstract thinking ability" as an "immeasurable", "non-biological" argument against common ancestry of chimps, humans and gorillas, that paper I cited for ya (with the abstract) on May 24 must've slipped your mind, eh?
OK. So you agree it's measurable? Then let's measure it. I propose a test to quantify all the non-biological differences among humans, chimps and gorillas. What do you think this test will show?
It will show that humans are far different than the apes, and it will show the apes are quite similar.
Dave, you never answered my question about Boeings vs. Airbuses. Do you see why "non-biological differences" are irrelevant yet? Do you understand that "non-biological differences" are useless in determining the relatedness of biological organisms?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
This is un-American and naive. The USA was founded as a Christian nation in the sense that the laws and practices were founded upon the general principles of Christianity without favoring a particular sect of Christianity.
Could you explain something, please? If 'the USA was founded as a Christian nation', then why do the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights fail to mention Christianity in any way?
It's simple. The US was not founded as a "Christian" country; and Dave's contentions that the NCSE and the ACLU are attempting to remove mention of the Christian God from public discourse are essentially complete nonsense.
The point of the 'no law respecting relgion'; the basis of the separation clause, is that the government of the United States and it's various agencies (such as public schools) may not favor any particular religion. So public-school mandated prayer specifically favors religions which engage in them. Displays of the Ten Commandments on public property explicitly favor Judaism and Christianity.
What Dave wants is for the existing bias on the part of the government of the country and the several states to be preserved.
The laws of the land don't support him. Heck, even the vary source he cited doesn't support him.
So what, in your mind, Dave, would possibly make you think that the nuclear decay rate would be less reliable than the diffusion rate? Because it seems to me that if you're rejecting the presumption of uniformity, diffusion rates would be meaningless. For bonus points, try to answer this without quoting something.
Good question. Simple answer. No quoting required. Creationists DO subscribe to uniformitarian processes for most periods BETWEEN Creation and the Flood, and BETWEEN the Flood and the present time. See how easy that is? And I will say this. I think Humphreys could be off either way by several thousand years due to some of the issues raised by Henke and you all. And we understand that additional experiments are necessary.
Perfect, that's exactly what I was expecting. So in order to test your hypothesis, you simply throw out any and all data that conflicts with it, then keep whatever anomolous and/or erroneous scraps remain. I very much like the analogy of throwing out the signal and listening to the noise. I'm sure you will disagree, but for the rest of us, it is perfectly clear that this is your methodology.
(EDIT: oops, used wrong quote the first time)
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
The laws of the land don't support him. Heck, even the vary source he cited doesn't support him.
Oh really? Why don't you start a new thread and show me how it does not?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I propose a test to quantify all the non-biological differences among humans, chimps and gorillas. What do you think this test will show?
It will show that you don't know what the #### you are talking about.
There is no such thing as "non-biological" in these differences between human and ape. Everything that you can or cannot think is defined by the structure of your brain which is determined by genetic and epigenetic inheritance.
Your mistake is assuming there are such things as non-biological difference and non-biological to you comes down to supernatural.
Dave, since neither Humphreys, you, nor anyone else knows what the diffusion rate is, (because no one has sufficient data on half a dozen parameters that can affect the diffusion rate) what is Humphreys dividing the number of He atoms lost by? He's just pulling a number out of his butt, is what he's doing. Humphreys has no justification for even assuming that the diffusion rate has been constant over time, for crying out loud.
Of course he did not know the diffusion rate BEFORE the experiment, but now he does because it has been tested. The beauty of the experiment is that he was able to PREDICT the diffusion rate correctly. Isn't this what you guys are always yapping at me about? "Nyah, nyah, nyah, Creos never make any predictions. They always just refer to analogies and wave their hands and say Goddidit."
Dave, he didn't predict the diffusion rate over time, which is critically important to determining the age of the zircons. He didn't predict it, and he still doesn't know it. No one knows it, which is why everyone knows Humphreys' conclusions are suspect. Without knowing the diffusion rate into and out of the zircons throughout the entire time since their formation, he can draw no conclusions about how old they are. That's the entire point you don't seem to be getting.
All Humphreys can do is measure the diffusion rate now. That gets him exactly nowhere. And the thing that's so bizarre about your argument is you assume the He diffusion rate has been constant over time, while at the same time assuming radioactive decay rates have varied wildly over time! One is a chemical process that varies under well-understood principles (we just don't know which effects were operative at which times, and for what durations), and the other is a nuclear process that is extremely well-understood and is known for theoretical reasons not to vary.
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Deadman...
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Jeannot: Yes, you're right on the subjects of zircons and Portuguese being essentially over and done. Dave is toast on these topics ( American slang meaning he's finished, defeated, done for).
Only in your dreams, my friend.
Then, what, are we all having the same dream, Dave? Everyone here other than you knows your argument re Humphreys zircons was DOA, because you can't refute an entire methology based on two anomalous results, even if they're correct. Why is this simple concept so beyond you?
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OA...
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You keep forgetting to provide evidence to back up the claims you make. For example, you said this Quote but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
I guess it has somehow escaped you that I am still on the Helium zircon thing? I will move on when I get done with that.
God knows why. Well, actually, I know why, too. It's due to your congenital inability to admit you're wrong. You've been proven wrong eight ways from Sunday, which is why, three weeks later, you're still discussing two microscopic zircon samples from an area of the world where it's well known that you can't use He result to determine age.
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Well, you claimed that radiocarbon dating was faulty based on incorrect assumptions about decay rates and C12 concentrations.
Patience, OA, patience.
I made good on my promise to move on to "Age of the Earth" did I not? We've already covered two points there already and I have given you excellent reasons to reconsider your position of 'millions and billions of years'. Why would you think I would not make good on my other promises?
You've given us what, Dave? You haven't given anyone here a reason to think the earth is anything less than billions of years old. The only thing you've given us a reason to believe is that you're impervious to reason.
BTW, without actually moving on, can you give us a clue as to what you mean by "the pre-deluge atmosphere contained a hundred times more C12 than currently? Are you saying the atmosphere was 6% CO2, or are you saying that only 1 part in 10E-16 of the carbon in the atmosphere was C14? Or did you mean something entirely different? This is the third time I've asked this question, without getting an answer.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I guess it has somehow escaped you that I am still on the Helium zircon thing? I will move on when I get done with that.
Actually Dave, I only questioned the 100X more C-12 in the atmosphere claim because you brought it up. How tough would it be for you to provide your reference source to us (assuming that a reference actually exists that is)? All I'm asking for is a C&P link - 5 seconds' work at best. Why can't you do even that simple thing?
And it was in the context of your claim that there is no evidence for human existence older than 6000 years ago. That is a topic that you seem to have abandoned altogether when folks began asking you for your evidence there too. When will you be addressing that 11,000 year old human village in Turkey that I pointed out to you?
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I made good on my promise to move on to "Age of the Earth" did I not?
If by "moved on" you mean you bailed out on many of your other claims before addressing any of the contrary evidence, I'd have to agree.
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We've already covered two points there already and I have given you excellent reasons to reconsider your position of 'millions and billions of years'.
Er...no, you haven't. Not even close. But you can tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.
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Why would you think I would not make good on my other promises?
Mainly because your batting average on keeping promises to provide evidence is .000. You’re ‘Oh-for-2006’ in other words.
You're not setting a very good example for the undecided Christian lurkers here Dave. I keep giving you every chance to back up your claims, but you keep letting me down. How can I possible agree with your claims you when you give me nothing to work with?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
BTW, without actually moving on, can you give us a clue as to what you mean by "the pre-deluge atmosphere contained a hundred times more C12 than currently? Are you saying the atmosphere was 6% CO2, or are you saying that only 1 part in 10E-16 of the carbon in the atmosphere was C14? Or did you mean something entirely different? This is the third time I've asked this question, without getting an answer.
He actually has answered this. His argument is that we can't know or measure pre-flood anything, because the laws of nature changed completely in that event. It wasn't just a flood, it was a complete rending and rebuilding of the very fabric of the universe.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Have you never read "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" ??
And have you ever read anything Michael Denton has written since then, he was wrong on several points and he admits it. He now seems to accept that molecular biology supports common ancestry.
Quote
Carl Wieland made a mistake.
Carl Wieland claimed to speak with authority on a subject he was so thouroughly ignorant in to make basic errors. This is dishonest. The fact that they have not corrected the error also says something.
Have you never read "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" ?? Molecular biology proved conclusively that nothing is "ancestral" to anything else as evolutionists would have liked for it to.
Gee, then how come there are so few molecular biologists who know about that? They're all still talking about molecular evolution.
You apparently don't understand the issue of separation of church and state. You need to read 'The Myth of Separation' by David Barton. Here is an article from him, but you should read his book. David Barton's works are some of the best documented you will ever find. He is one of the few academics that I know of that almost exclusively uses the higher legal standard for documenting his quotes. Most academics use a lesser standard than this. Here is what he says ...
Uh oh, Dave. Barton has been caught using unsourced quotes (likely made up by himself) and forced to admit it:
Of course, I know you've read this page for two reasons: (1) I pointed it out to you on your blog. Then you deleted the entire thread (why would you do that, Dave?) (2) Your description of the "higher legal standard" comes directly from the intro paragraph to the page where Barton admits the quotes are unsourced.
But if Barton uses a "higher standard" for sourcing his quotes, then why do the fake ones appear in his book anyway? He is essentially arguing, "Since once in a while I source my quotes, and sometimes other academics don't source quotes, I use a higher standard of excellence in my work than them." Ridiculous.
Now you have a new project: Prove that most academics use unsourced quotes to bolster their claims. Here, I'll throw you a bone:
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"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - Thomas Jefferson
...is a made-up quote.
See, this stuff is easy to find. I'm sure you'll be able to prove that folks who write books that say the US was founded on freedom of and freedom from religion are just making stuff up, right?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Wow, Rilke. Didn't know you could do anything but 'troll.' I'm impressed. You apparently don't understand the issue of separation of church and state. You need to read 'The Myth of Separation' by David Barton. Here is an article from him, but you should read his book. David Barton's works are some of the best documented you will ever find. He is one of the few academics that I know of that almost exclusively uses the higher legal standard for documenting his quotes. Most academics use a lesser standard than this.
Actually David Barton isn't particularly credible except amongst the true believers. If you want solid, unbiased information on the religiosity of the Founding Fathers you would be better of investigating the academic work of Gregg Frazer. Frazer is conservative, evangelical Christian, and (get this) a literal 6 day creationist. Just your kind of guy. But, be forewarned, Frazer won't paint the Founders as the good Christian soldiers you would want them to be.
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In contrast to the intent of Jefferson and the intent of early courts, the NCSE is seeking to eliminate all reference to God in public school science classes.
Oh my gawd! They want to only talk about science in science class? Why, the audacity!!
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The ACLU is similarly trying to eliminate all reference to God in public school PERIOD.
Well, public schools are open to people of any religious background right? Why should Jews or Hindus be subjected to Christian proselytizing in order to get an education?
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This is un-American and naive. The USA was founded as a Christian nation in the sense that the laws and practices were founded upon the general principles of Christianity without favoring a particular sect of Christianity.
Nominally Christian. But the Founders were far more influenced by Enlightment thinkers like John Locke and Jean-Jacque Rousseau. The most openly religious of the leading Fathers was John Adams and John Jay. Adams was a Unitarian (see letter to John Quincy Adams, March 28, 1816) and Jay was rather un-Christian towards Catholics (probably because of his French Huguenot ancestry). Other leading founders would not fit in well in your congregation, as it were. Benjamin Franklin and Gouverneur Morris were deists and decidely libertine in their demeanour. What Thomas Jefferson did to the New Testament would be considered borderline criminal in the circles you move in. Washington attended church, but never took communion. The personal beliefs of James Madison were probably somewhere between that of Adams and Jefferson, but his writings on the nature of religion in public life were unequivocal in their force of keeping the two from intermingling.
As far as the nation being found on Christian principles, I would say there is no doubt that many of the Founders considered Christ to be a great teacher. But he was one among many teachers that stretch back even past the Enlightenment to ancient Greece. Our legal system (expect for Louisiana, I am led to understand) is built on the base of English common law. It is well nigh impossible to draw a link between the 10 Commandments and American law. I will grant that Commandments 6, 8, and 9 are codified in American law, but you'll find them in all societies laws, Christian or not. But you'll be hard pressed to find the other 7 in the Federal Register.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
BTW, without actually moving on, can you give us a clue as to what you mean by "the pre-deluge atmosphere contained a hundred times more C12 than currently?
He actually has answered this. His argument is that we can't know or measure pre-flood anything, because the laws of nature changed completely in that event. It wasn't just a flood, it was a complete rending and rebuilding of the very fabric of the universe.
Hmm…those are two mututally-contradictory positions to take, don't you think? One the one hand, he provides us with a relatively quantitative statement: "The pre-flood atmosphere contained as much as a hundred times the C12 as the present atmosphere." Then, he admits that it's impossible to say anything about the pre-flood atmosphere, because the flood acted as some sort of "master reset" that erased all evidence of pre-flood conditions (except, evidently, actual written evidence, like the Bible).
Both statements cannot be true. So which one, if any, actually is true, Dave? Sorry if I'm misrepresenting your position, but given how little I have to go on as to what your position actually is…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
By the way, Dave, when you mentioned "abstract thinking ability" as an "immeasurable", "non-biological" argument against common ancestry of chimps, humans and gorillas, that paper I cited for ya (with the abstract) on May 24 must've slipped your mind, eh?
OK. So you agree it's measurable? Then let's measure it. I propose a test to quantify all the non-biological differences among humans, chimps and gorillas. What do you think this test will show?
It will show that humans are far different than the apes, and it will show the apes are quite similar.
Others have provided exactly the same response I will: Notice how I put quotes not only around "immeasurable", but also around "non-biological"?
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test. You haven't defined any "measurable" "non-biological" traits, much less any means of testing them. The "measurable", "non-biological" differences you have hinted at are either very much biological or completely immeasurable.
Furthermore, I cited a paper showing the MEASURABLE BIOLOGY behind cognition in the great apes. It doesn't support your bold(ed) prediction. Quite the contrary.
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Incorygible...
Quote
Oh really now? So now you CAN explain "ape type" vs. "human type" via molecular biology? Didn't you just fall back to "non-biological" comparisons? Vindicated, indeed.
That's tough because they are so close. What I was referring to was Michael Denton's information about the discoveries in molecular biology vindicating the pre-Darwin typological perception of nature. Have you never read "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" ?? Molecular biology proved conclusively that nothing is "ancestral" to anything else as evolutionists would have liked for it to.
So in other words, no, you can't explain your "ape type" vs. "human type" hypothesis via molecular biology. Big surprise.
No, I haven't read Denton's book. If the title alone wasn't enough to make me keep my money in my wallet (crisis? not from where I and the entire scientific community are standing, Dave), the reviews would have been. If the reviews weren't, your nonsensical summary would have been. What the he11 could you possibly mean by "nothing is ancestral to anything else as evolutionists would have liked"? I'm pretty sure molecular biology can still identify ancestral lineages at the organismal level, unless something drastic changed while I wasn't looking? Can my DNA no longer reveal me as the descendant of my mother and father? Why didn't I get the memo? So "nothing is ancestral to anything else" seems, er, a little off. If this is some reference to fossil remains being unlikely "ancestors", well, duh. If it implies that molecular biology has "proved conclusively" that there could be no ancestral precursors to the biochemistry we observe at present, then you (and Denton and Behe) are simply wrong. Or can you direct me to an issue of Cell or some other molecular biology journal where I will find a series of papers that "prove conclusively" that "nothing is ancestral to anything else" (whether "evolutionists" like it or not)? Actually, Dave, I'll settle for a single (peer-reviewed! paper showing that a single biochemical characteristics could have no ancestor. Good luck. Until you show me that, then I have to believe you're just blowing smoke up my a$$ with this "molecular biology shows that nothing is ancestral to anything esle" garbage.
Your mistake is assuming there are such things as non-biological difference and non-biological to you comes down to supernatural.
No. It's just things you cannot see. There are many natural things that you cannot see which do not require invocation of the supernatural. And of course, my definition of the supernatural is simply natural things which we don't presently understand.
Argy, Very few of Barton's quotes are undocumented according to his own higher standard. See what he says from the article you just linked ...
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Unconfirmed Quotations
by David Barton
(This article has created controversy in some quarters; read the background behind the “Unconfirmed Quotations” article controversy.)
The following quotations have been seen and heard in numerous books, periodicals, editorials, speeches, etc. In our research, we have not previously used a quote that was not documented to a source in a manner that would be acceptable in a scholarly work or a university text. However, we strongly believe that the debates surrounding the Founders are too important to apply solely an academic standard. Therefore, we unilaterally initiated within our own works a standard of documentation that would exceed the academic standard and instead would conform to the superior legal standard (i.e., relying solely on primary or original sources, using best evidence, rather than relying on the writings of attorneys, professors, or historians).
It is only in using this much higher standard that we call the following quotes “unconfirmed”: that is, while the quotes below have been documented in a completely acceptable fashion for academic works, they are currently “unconfirmed” if relying solely on original sources or sources contemporaneous to the life of the actual individual Founder. These original sources for these quotes may still surface (for example, a major primary document from James Madison surfaced as late as 1946), and in fact you will note that we have actually located the original sources for some to the quotes below that originally we listed as unconfirmed. However, with the remaining quotes listed below, we recommend that you refrain from using them until such time that an original primary source may be found, notwithstanding the fact that the quotes below may be documented to a number of contemporary sources.
Eric...
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All Humphreys can do is measure the diffusion rate now. That gets him exactly nowhere. And the thing that's so bizarre about your argument is you assume the He diffusion rate has been constant over time, while at the same time assuming radioactive decay rates have varied wildly over time! One is a chemical process that varies under well-understood principles (we just don't know which effects were operative at which times, and for what durations), and the other is a nuclear process that is extremely well-understood and is known for theoretical reasons not to vary.
Humphreys' diffusion rates are only assumed for a relatively short period --- 6000 years. Also, he is generous to long agers with his temperature assumptions. Your nuclear decay rates are assumed to have been constant for 4.5 GY and you don't even acknowledge any catastrophic events which could have changed them.
Therefore, my assumption of constant He diffusion is better than yours.
StephenWells ... you are lost. Go back and re-read Humphreys. Then get back to me.
OA...it won't work. I'll discuss your topic when I get ready to.
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It wasn't just a flood, it was a complete rending and rebuilding of the very fabric of the universe.
No. Just the earth.
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And have you ever read anything Michael Denton has written since then, he was wrong on several points and he admits it. He now seems to accept that molecular biology supports common ancestry.
Can you show me this?
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Gee, then how come there are so few molecular biologists who know about that? They're all still talking about molecular evolution.
Blinded by what they want to believe.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Gee, then how come there are so few molecular biologists who know about that? They're all still talking about molecular evolution.
Blinded by what they want to believe.
Blinded by that wicked old empirical evidence! Poor guys...
Don't they know the only thing you're supposed to be blinded by is the Old Testament?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
And this is it folks, the BIG question: why don't all of these scientists want to believe in the literal, scientific truth of the bible?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
According to Dave, one can't be a scientist and a Christian at the same time.
Do what??!!
(Oh ... it's Rilke. Never mind.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Humphreys' diffusion rates are only assumed for a relatively short period --- 6000 years.
So, if you assume that the answer is 6000 years, you can make the answer come out to be 6000 years? Wow And you were accusing scientists of making unwarranted assumptions about timescales when they do dating...
Your mistake is assuming there are such things as non-biological difference and non-biological to you comes down to supernatural.
No. It's just things you cannot see. There are many natural things that you cannot see which do not require invocation of the supernatural. And of course, my definition of the supernatural is simply natural things which we don't presently understand.
Dave, what is this obsession creationists have with "things you cannot see"? Can you see an atom? Or an electron? Or a quark? No. You can't even see a chromosome. Does that mean we can't measure them? Of course not.
Who cares what the "non-biological" differences are between humans and other apes, Dave? Can you even point to one? Is amount of body hair a "non-biological" difference? Is height or body weight? Is posture a "non-biological" difference? (And before you say "intelligence," I'll point out that the neurological differences between humans and other apes are more than sufficient to account for the different levels of cognitive ability).
"Non-biological differences," whatever they are, are utterly irrelevant to evolution. Your observation that chimps live in zoos and humans live in frat houses, or that frat boys prefer human chicks to chimp chicks, is utterly irrelevant to how closely related humans are to chimps relative to how close chimps are to gorillas.
Do you think your fat sister is less closely related to you than a thin stranger, just because you're thin too? Can you even begin to understand how utterly brain-dead this entire line of reasoning is? Are you ever going to address my question with respect to jetliners and helicopters?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Your mistake is assuming there are such things as non-biological difference and non-biological to you comes down to supernatural.
No. It's just things you cannot see. There are many natural things that you cannot see which do not require invocation of the supernatural. And of course, my definition of the supernatural is simply natural things which we don't presently understand.
Things I cannot see?
So, if you can't see a chromosome, then it's non-biological?
Does it become biological after you find it?
You're really screwed up there. You can't be cured until you understand why that is an absurdly irrational thing you've just said.
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test.
I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time.
Guess what the result will be!!
(Hint: the gorilla and chimp results will be similar and will differ greatly from the human!
(I really am having fun with this topic ... can we keep it going a long time? Eric?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test.
I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time.
How about WE provide the human? Because, I am willing to bet WE could choose a human that would score a similar result to the chimp and the gorilla.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test.
I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time.
Guess what the result will be!!
(Hint: the gorilla and chimp results will be similar and will differ greatly from the human!
(I really am having fun with this topic ... can we keep it going a long time? Eric?)
If the SAT test was writen in a language the Gorilla could understand (and only the Gorila) do you think that might alter the result?
All Humphreys can do is measure the diffusion rate now. That gets him exactly nowhere. And the thing that's so bizarre about your argument is you assume the He diffusion rate has been constant over time, while at the same time assuming radioactive decay rates have varied wildly over time! One is a chemical process that varies under well-understood principles (we just don't know which effects were operative at which times, and for what durations), and the other is a nuclear process that is extremely well-understood and is known for theoretical reasons not to vary.
Humphreys' diffusion rates are only assumed for a relatively short period --- 6000 years. Also, he is generous to long agers with his temperature assumptions. Your nuclear decay rates are assumed to have been constant for 4.5 GY and you don't even acknowledge any catastrophic events which could have changed them.
Dave, you've been given a million reasons why Humphreys' assumption of constant He diffusion is indefensible. Even if those diffusion rates were constant for 6,000 years, he doesn't know what those rates were. He only knows what they are now.
On the other hand, you have given exactly no reason why nuclear decay rates should ever have changed, and you've certainly given no hint of an explanation of how an entirely mechanical and chemical event (a global flood) could possibly have changed a process that is entirely governed by quantum mechanical processes. It doesn't matter how "catastropic" your flood is; you've given absolutely no reason to think it would have any effect whatsoever on nuclear decay rates.
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Therefore, my assumption of constant He diffusion is better than yours.
No it isn't, Dave. You don't even have a mechanism for how nuclear decay rates would change. Do radionuclides decay faster when they're submerged in water? No.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
According to Dave, one can't be a scientist and a Christian at the same time.
Do what??!!
(Oh ... it's Rilke. Never mind.)
Your inability to actual deal with your own arguments is duly noted. Scientists point out that your arguments are specious. Scientists point out that the Global flood didn't happen; that there is evidence that decay rates have not changed; that the world is approximately 4.5 billion years old.
Scientists.
So according to your logic, one cannot be a scientist and a Christian at the same time, because you claim to have the one and only Christian viewpoint.
Ya wanna burn those heretics now, Dave?
Tell me, Dave - a straight question, mano-a-mana:
Can a person be a Christian and accept that the world is 4.5 billion years old?
how well do you think you would do if a silverback gave you a social heirarchy test for gorilla society?
my guess is you'd be a smear on his fist in about 2 minutes.
How would a chimp do on that same test?
same likely result.
does that make chimps closer to you than to gorillas?
earlier, you used "the dating game" to suggest that a human would be ill-advised to seek companionship at the zoo (where all apes live, right Dave?). Do you think your advice would apply equally to chimps and gorillas?
do you think a chimp would date a gorilla or vice versa?
would a shark date a tuna? Heck, they're both fish, eh?
the only thing that's more ridiculous than the ICR crap you parrot are the arguments you make up on your own!
You are the nutty professor there, Dave.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time.
Guess what the result will be!!
(Hint: the gorilla and chimp results will be similar and will differ greatly from the human!
(I really am having fun with this topic ... can we keep it going a long time? Eric?)
Sure, Dave. As soon as you explain to me why we should assume that both the 737 and the A-320 are more closely related than either is to the CH-47.
Once you can prove to me that external appearance is a better indicator of relatedness than genetic similarity (my sister's blonde and I'm not, so is she less closely related to me than my girlfriend, who is also not blonde?), then you'll be getting somewhere here.
In the meantime, I'd like to know why you refuse to answer questions that you know kill your arguments. Why are you still talking about intelligence differences as "non-biological," when I've already shown you that they are biological?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Can a person be a Christian and accept that the world is 4.5 billion years old?
Of course. They would merely be a Christian who is misinformed about the age of the earth.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Article 11 from the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams with no fuss:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
I also find it amusing that fundamentalist Protestants railed against the Constitution for its lack of mention of (their) God for centuries, until they all of a sudden changed their tune in the 1950s-1960s to claim that the Constition is based on Christian practice and principles.
Oh, and this is relevant because of Dave's umpteenth claim that the U.S. is a Christian nation, founded on Christianity. Dave would be right at home with some (notice I said "some") of the academics I encounter in my work - they hate the Enlightenment, too!!!
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test.
I do. It's called the SAT Test.
Monkeys don't read English, Dave.
If we gave you, the monkeys and the apes an IQ test in Esperanto I think you'd all come out the same. Would that be fair?
We do have tests that don't require language abilities and monkeys have surprising abstract reasoning abilities -- in fact, some might do better than you on some tests.
Have you never watched a nature show where they give puzzles to monkeys to test their abilities?
Here are some subtle mental tests that give us measures:
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Article 11 from the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams with no fuss:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
I also find it amusing that fundamentalist Protestants railed against the Constitution for its lack of mention of (their) God for centuries, until they all of a sudden changed their tune in the 1950s-1960s to claim that the Constition is based on Christian practice and principles.
Oh, and this is relevant because of Dave's umpteenth claim that the U.S. is a Christian nation, founded on Christianity. Dave would be right at home with some (notice I said "some") of the academics I encounter in my work - they hate the Enlightenment, too!!!
Don't you understand Clamboy? By stating that The United States Was Founded As A Christian Nation, AFD has therefore proven this point. Simply by SAYING it! In other words, he's already won!
Any and all counterevidence you give him will simply prove that you have not Accepted Jesus, and therefore anything you say is invalidated. He wins again!
BTW, speaking of things that Creationists have to ignore, here's a cool article:
(Tho considering that the Earth is only a few thousand years old (because the OT says so) and Evolution is a secular lie, the whole article is of course invalidated.)
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
So what do I think WHAT test will show, Davey? You don't have a test.
I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time.
Guess what the result will be!!
(Hint: the gorilla and chimp results will be similar and will differ greatly from the human!
(I really am having fun with this topic ... can we keep it going a long time? Eric?)
Sounds fun! Let's apply for a grant! I'm happy to write it up for you (I'm good at it by now), and submit it to the appropriate agencies -- just help me fill in the blanks, m'kay?
First, we'd better come up with a good, bullet-proof reason for why we expect this test to demonstrate common ancestry of the gorilla and the chimp, but not the human. You know, something that will really, really make it seem a more reliable method for measuring ancestry and evolution (since the Fall, of course, Davey) than that whole DNA thang (and physical anthropology and comparative morphology and microbiology and...). After all, those agencies have pumped an awful lot of money and credibility into genomic research (and the others), and they don't like having egg on their face.
Next, we'll have to demonstrate there is no subjective bias that may enter into our test. Since inherent biases against different races and classes of HUMAN have been demonstrated for standardized testing, including the SATs, we better come up with a way to convince 'em there is no introduced anti-"ape" bias.
Third, we'll have to do something about those competing labs that will want to shoot down our results by measuring something they foolishly think is more relevant to ancestry and evolution than one's answer to "Two trains leave Chicago at a speed of..." I suspect the appropriately named Dr. Wildman over at Wayne State may try to scoop us by repeating the test with some fancy electrodes and cellular assays, then claiming that, despite our airtight scoring system, the patterns of gene expression and electrical activity while taking our test were much more similar in the human and chimp brains than in the gorilla brain. We wouldn't want that.
Fourth, we might want to rule out some additional confounding variables. Developmental and environmental effects come to mind. So, let's eliminate any regional bias by using an African human (Africa's all one environment, right?). And let's standardize by using two-year-olds. And let's control for any differences in parental care or social learning -- if we put the newborns in cages right now, they'll be ready for those SATs by the time the funds come in.
So you get to work on shoring those up, and I'll start drafting the application. Whodathunk overturning so many years of research in so many scientific disciplines demonstrating common ancestry of the great apes (including us -- the very thought! could be overturned by more careful observation and comparison of the collegial activities (both curricular and extracurricular! of humans, chimps and gorillas. We're gonna be famous, Dave!
Oh, can we include the orangutans in there, too? If I did have to go to the zoo instead of the sorority house to meet women, that luxurious copper hair and laid-back demeanour would definitely win me over. Especially when compared to the violence of the chimps and the rather scary stature of the silverback guarding his harem. Of course, that's only because my zoo doesn't have bonobos...those girls (and boys! are FREAKS, Dave. I mean it. Hey, can we have a bonobo?
Doesn't look like the No True Scotsman fallacy to me, Rilke.
Sure it does. "If you are a True Christian, then you know that the world is 6,000 years old." It is not possible to be a True Christian and know that the world is 4.5 billion years old.
Dave is just playing the card in reverse; he's still claiming that there is a single, true, unarguable set of Christian beliefs (his), and that anyone who believes differently isn't a Christian. He's just being "polite" and offering them the option of claiming to be mistaken.
Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 15 2006,15:45)
Quote (stevestory @ June 15 2006,15:29)
Doesn't look like the No True Scotsman fallacy to me, Rilke.
Sure it does. "If you are a True Christian, then you know that the world is 6,000 years old." It is not possible to be a True Christian and know that the world is 4.5 billion years old.
Dave is just playing the card in reverse; he's still claiming that there is a single, true, unarguable set of Christian beliefs (his), and that anyone who believes differently isn't a Christian. He's just being "polite" and offering them the option of claiming to be mistaken.
I thought he said they were "Blinded by what they want to believe." Still no answer on why he thinks these people are so eager to disprove a literal, inerrant bible.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I just wish one of these days he'd give us a sample of the "massive evidence for a global flood" he says he has. So far he's given us exactly no evidence to support any of his contentions, but how long can his streak continue?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I just wish one of these days he'd give us a sample of the "massive evidence for a global flood" he says he has. So far he's given us exactly no evidence to support any of his contentions, but how long can his streak continue?
I fear he can go on exactly like this til he keels over from old age...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
OA...it won't work. I'll discuss your topic when I get ready to.
When's that gonna be AFDave, the second tuesday of next week?
Or in the decade from now when you finally quit reposting your RATE views on Helium that have been beaten into a fine pink spray?
BTW it's your topic Dave, the one you brought up in claiming that there's no evidence for humans older than 6000 YBP. The one you seem unwilling and/or unable to deal with once your claims were scrutinized.
If you can't back up those dating claims you made, that's OK. After this long no one really expects anything like factual data or supporting evidence out of you. It's just a pity for you that all those potential YEC converts are gonna have to accept the ToE and old Earth by default since that's all they've seen. AFDave couldn't present any evidence he promised while the evolution supporters produced evidence for their position in droves.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Y'know, I said back there that fundamentalist Protestants had railed against the Consitution "for centuries." That was stupid. I should have said, "since its inception."
HUMPHREYS COMPARES THE HARDNESS OF VARIOUS MINERALS ONLY TO SHOW THAT PRESSURE HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON DIFFUSIVITIES OF OTHER HARD MATERIALS.
Yet he never establishes a connection between hardness and diffusivity. Why is that? Because, as has been pointed out many times, hardness does not correlaate with diffusivity. Humphreys is presenting a red herring.
Quote
But the real beauty of the experiment is that is soundly refutes the supposed 1.5 GY scenario.
The real beauty (if there is any) of the experiment is that, if (and that's a big if) it can be replicated in other studies and on other zircons, RATE may have come up with an interesting anomaly. It's far from refuting anything. "We don't know yet" is, albeit unsatisfying, is a scientific explanation that's way up on the list of explanations compared to your and Humphreys' "it's magic".
Dave, if you have no way of knowing from He studies alone how old Humphreys' zircons are, and you don't, then how can those zircons possibly refute anything about the age of those zircons, let alone the age of the earth itself?
How many times do we have to repeat the same thing over and over? I'm going to guess and say we could repeat it infinitely many times, and you still wouldn't get it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, if you have no way of knowing from He studies alone how old Humphreys' zircons are, and you don't, then how can those zircons possibly refute anything about the age of those zircons, let alone the age of the earth itself?
Well, to be fair, as far as we know if we knew all the relevant properties as functions of the relevant variables and if we knew the values of those variables during the "lifetime" of the zircons then we could calculate the age of the zircons from helium diffusion alone. However, it's essentially certain that the aamount of helium left today is not a single-valued function of age; there are many different ages which (when combined with other environmental scenarios) would result in the same amount of helium present today. So we do need more information than measurements of helium amounts, but I think everyone acknowledges that.
The argument is over whether or not Humphreys' assertions and arm-waving are sufficient evidence for knowing all the relevant values and discarding hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of independently obtained and cross-correlated and consistent evidence. I don't think so.
Quote
How many times do we have to repeat the same thing over and over? I'm going to guess and say we could repeat it infinitely many times, and you still wouldn't get it.
Well, to be fair, as far as we know if we knew all the relevant properties as functions of the relevant variables and if we knew the values of those variables during the "lifetime" of the zircons then we could calculate the age of the zircons from helium diffusion alone. However, it's essentially certain that the aamount of helium left today is not a single-valued function of age; there are many different ages which (when combined with other environmental scenarios) would result in the same amount of helium present today. So we do need more information than measurements of helium amounts, but I think everyone acknowledges that.
Except for Dave. He doesn't acknowledge that at all. Dave seems to believe that Humphreys is not only justified in assuming that He diffusion has been constant during the last 6,000 years, but that he actually knows what that rate has been for the last 6,000 years. Since Humphreys knows neither one of those things, he simply cannot make any estimates of the age of his zircons, and therefore cannot make any claims as to the age of the earth.
Quote
The argument is over whether or not Humphreys' assertions and arm-waving are sufficient evidence for knowing all the relevant values and discarding hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of independently obtained and cross-correlated and consistent evidence. I don't think so.
And so far it's been pretty much established that Humphreys has not eliminated every possible source of error in his calculations, because he simply doesn't have enough data on the thermal history of the rocks, nor on the possible contamination from other sources of helium in the vicinity. This is why, Dave, Humphreys' results simply don't pass the smell test.
Add in that his results are completely contradicted by every other result out there, and it's no wonder he hasn't made much of a splash in the field of radiometric dating.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I just wish one of these days he'd give us a sample of the "massive evidence for a global flood" he says he has. So far he's given us exactly no evidence to support any of his contentions, but how long can his streak continue?
Of course the obvious question is whether you actually have to hear it. I'm sure it'll begin with the favorite chestnut of many different cultures having a flood story in their mythology, and end with seashells on top of mountains.
No, wait, it'll end with him declaring that he's won.
God help me, I've finally reached the point where I've followed enough of these threads where I could probably argue YEC better than some of the people who believe it.
Dave, you say your method is better. People have provided you with a dozen possible ways helium diffusion rate may have changed. Now, instead of trying on and on to refute those, can you come up with just one method in which radioactive decay rates may have changed?
Use science, please.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
God help me, I've finally reached the point where I've followed enough of these threads where I could probably argue YEC better than some of the people who believe it.
Congratulations! I think that's the watermark that indicates you now have an advanced degree in anti-evolution argumentation.
now if there was only some way to make money with that...
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
As a stable isotope guy, I don't consider myself qualified to comment on the details of Dr. Humphrey's findings. I will, however, relate what I learned directly from the horse's mouth. I attended Dr. Humphrey's polished and meticulously crafted presentation at last year's Creationism Megaconference in Lynchburg, Virginia. In brief, Dr. Humphrey's argument was this: While the Ur-Pb dating of a granite core sample indicated an age for the rock of 1.5 billion years, analysis of the He diffused from zircons into the surrounding biotite indicated a much younger age for the rock - mere thousands of years. This in itself was presented as confirming evidence of the young earth model despite the contradictory Ur-Pb date. In a bold leap, Dr. Humphrey's then recalculated the rate of decay of the radioactive Ur to conform with the so recently reconfirmed 6000 year age of the earth and proposed that god had increased the rate of radioactive decay during the creation week and during the Flood (~1600 years later), asserting that the water would have absorbed the excess radiation.
Additionally, consistent with a pattern that seems all too familiar, Dr. Humphrey's conceded that he had deliberately misrepresented his research affiliation to the testing lab in order to avoid anti-creationist bias in the outcome.
A bit OT, but it was mentioned a while ago I believe... I did a search about Michael Denton, and I found a bunch of sources claiming that in his second book, "Nature's Destiny", he basically accepts evolution and common descent as an indisputable fact, and simply disputes the ability of RM+NS as a mechanism for it. Much like Behe and the others. So, is that accurate? Does anyone know? Cause it looks like another "hmm" moment for dave...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I believe Faid is correct. I have both books, but I just skimmed the evolution parts because, of course, evolution seems like a fairy tale to me.
I think Denton's feeling is that, yes, evolution is a theory in crisis, he cannot come up with an alternative theory to his liking--YECism would be far too big a leap for him--so he basically buys into common descent by default, not because there is such positive evidence confirming it.
He is a tormented man.
On p. 233 of ND, he says
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"The emerging picture [of the cell] is obviously consistent with the teleological view of nature ... there is simply no way that such prefabrication could be the result of natural selection."
and yet he still talks about evolution on p. 240,
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"Sociality in general was probably an essential element in man's biological and intellectual evolution."
But his conclusion is ...
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"All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact ... As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in these final days of the second millenium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished--the 'defender of the anthropocentric faith.' "
I have a simple solution to his dilemma: become a YEC.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Ehere in the 9 he11s did he get the idea that water would significantly modify radioactive decay rates in retained isotopes?
Humphreys didn't claim that water had any effect on decay rates. He explicitly claimed it's magic. I posted the relevant quotes a few pages ago in this thread, but I don't have time right now to dig them up again or figure out which page they're on.
now if there was only some way to make money with that...
Are you kiding? Ken Ham makes over $100K a year.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
YECism would be far too big a leap for him--so he basically buys into common descent by default
It seems to me he buys in to common descent because of the evidence. He could easily be an old earth creationist if he accepts a long earth.
I can't remeber if I have asked you this before, but do you think it's feasable that one single species of ape/monkeys evolved into all the species in the world in a few thousand years?
Can a person be a Christian and accept that the world is 4.5 billion years old?
Of course. They would merely be a Christian who is misinformed about the age of the earth.
No, that would be an honest, well-informed Christian.
I've a follow-up question. Can a person be a Christian and accept the theory of evolution? In other words, can a person be like me?- I'm one of the 6 Christians in the poll.
Personally, I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that a YEC cannot be a real Christian, but can only be some sort of book-worshipping cultist. The meat of God's message doesn't really matter to you does it? Only the words actually written in your favourite translation (KJ?) of the Bible. That's why, when confronted with scientific facts that conflict with the book, you and your fellow YECs can only respond with the most unChristian dishonesty: hand-waving, ignoring opposing arguments, appeal to authorities you know are dubious, attempts to squirm through loopholes and even outright lies.
Even better, YECs are even hypocrites when it comes to Biblical literalism. Or do you really get your medical advice from the Book of Leviticus, Dave?
Dave, people like you (and GWB, but that's another story) almost make me ashamed to call myself a Christian.
(Sorry about the outburst y'all, but I think Dave wears on everyone's patience.)
CARBON 14 IN COAL AND DIAMONDS: EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG EARTH
I think I have beat the Helium-Zircon thing to death and I won't be so bold as to claim victory in the sense that I have proven long ages are wrong with this one experiment. But I will say that it is a very interesting experiment and it is quite impressive that Humphreys was able to predict the diffusion rates so accurately. I think Henke's rebuttals are extremely weak ... especially the ones about vacuum testing, the temperature history and supposedly 'fudging' data. This becomes very clear if you read the books. The only objection that holds any water in my opinion is the infiltration question, which again is very weak. We shall see what future data brings to light in regard to this question.
So on to C14 in Coal and Diamonds ...
This is an article written for IMPACT, which is ICR's free monthly newsletter. I have the RATE Books from which this information came, so if anyone has any questions about this article, I can answer them ...
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Carbon Dating Undercuts Evolution's Long Ages (Impact #364) by John Baumgardner, Ph.D.
Evolutionists generally feel secure even in the face of compelling creationist arguments today because of their utter confidence in the geological time scale. Even if they cannot provide a naturalistic mechanism, they appeal to the "fact of evolution," by which they mean an interpretation of earth history with a succession of different types of plants and animals in a drama spanning hundreds of millions of years.
The Bible, by contrast, paints a radically different picture of our planet's history. In particular, it describes a time when God catastrophically destroyed the earth and essentially all its life. The only consistent way to interpret the geological record in light of this event is to understand that fossil-bearing rocks are the result of a massive global Flood that occurred only a few thousand years ago and lasted but a year. This Biblical interpretation of the rock record implies that the animals and plants preserved as fossils were all contemporaries. This means trilobites, dinosaurs, and mammals all dwelled on the planet simultaneously, and they perished together in this world-destroying cataclysm.
Although creationists have long pointed out the rock formations themselves testify unmistakably to water catastrophism on a global scale, evolutionists generally have ignored this testimony. This is partly due to the legacy of the doctrine of uniformitarianism passed down from one generation of geologists to the next since the time of Charles Lyell in the early nineteenth century. Uniformitarianism assumes that the vast amount of geological change recorded in the rocks is the product of slow and uniform processes operating over an immense span of time, as opposed to a global cataclysm of the type described in the Bible and other ancient texts.
With the discovery of radioactivity about a hundred years ago, evolutionists deeply committed to the uniformitarian outlook believed they finally had proof of the immense antiquity of the earth. In particular, they discovered the very slow nuclear decay rates of elements like Uranium while observing considerable amounts of the daughter products from such decay. They interpreted these discoveries as vindicating both uniformitarianism and evolution, which led to the domination of these beliefs in academic circles around the world throughout the twentieth century.
However, modern technology has produced a major fly in that uniformitarian ointment. A key technical advance, which occurred about 25 years ago, involved the ability to measure the ratio of 14C atoms to 12C atoms with extreme precision in very small samples of carbon, using an ion beam accelerator and a mass spectrometer. Prior to the advent of this accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) method, the 14C/12C ratio was measured by counting the number of 14C decays. This earlier method was subject to considerable "noise" from cosmic rays.
The AMS method improved the sensitivity of the raw measurement of the 14C/12C ratio from approximately 1% of the modern value to about 0.001%, extending the theoretical range of sensitivity from about 40,000 years to about 90,000 years. The expectation was that this improvement in precision would make it possible to use this technique to date dramatically older fossil material.1 The big surprise, however, was that no fossil material could be found anywhere that had as little as 0.001% of the modern value!2 Since most of the scientists involved assumed the standard geological time scale was correct, the obvious explanation for the 14C they were detecting in their samples was contamination from some source of modern carbon with its high level of 14C. Therefore they mounted a major campaign to discover and eliminate the sources of such contamination. Although they identified and corrected a few relatively minor sources of 14C contamination, there still remained a significant level of 14C—typically about 100 times the ultimate sensitivity of the instrument—in samples that should have been utterly "14C-dead," including many from the deeper levels of the fossil-bearing part of the geological record.2
Let us consider what the AMS measurements imply from a quantitative standpoint. The ratio of 14C atoms to 12C atoms decreases by a factor of 2 every 5730 years. After 20 half-lives or 114,700 years (assuming hypothetically that earth history goes back that far), the 14C/12C ratio is decreased by a factor of 220, or about 1,000,000. After 1.5 million years, the ratio is diminished by a factor of 2^(1500000/5730), or about 1079. This means that if one started with an amount of pure 14C equal to the mass of the entire observable universe, after 1.5 million years there should not be a single atom of 14C remaining! Routinely finding 14C/12C ratios on the order of 0.1-0.5% of the modern value—a hundred times or more above the AMS detection threshold—in samples supposedly tens to hundreds of millions of years old is therefore a huge anomaly for the uniformitarian framework.
This earnest effort to understand this "contamination problem" therefore generated scores of peer-reviewed papers in the standard radiocarbon literature during the last 20 years.2 Most of these papers acknowledge that most of the 14C in the samples studied appear to be intrinsic to the samples themselves, and they usually offer no explanation for its origin. The reality of significant levels of 14C in a wide variety of fossil sources from throughout the geological record has thus been established in the secular scientific literature by scientists who assume the standard geological time scale is valid and have no special desire for this result!
In view of the profound significance of these AMS 14C measurements, the ICR Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) team has undertaken its own AMS 14C analyses of such fossil material.2 The first set of samples consisted of ten coals obtained from the U. S. Department of Energy Coal Sample Bank maintained at the Pennsylvania State University. The ten samples include three coals from the Eocene part of the geological record, three from the Cretaceous, and four from the Pennsylvanian. These samples were analyzed by one of the foremost AMS laboratories in the world. Figure 1 below shows in histogram form the results of these analyses.
These values fall squarely within the range already established in the peer-reviewed radiocarbon literature. When we average our results over each geological interval, we obtain remarkably similar values of 0.26 percent modern carbon (pmc) for Eocene, 0.21 pmc for Cretaceous, and 0.27 pmc for Pennsylvanian. Although the number of samples is small, we observe little difference in 14C level as a function of position in the geological record. This is consistent with the young-earth view that the entire macrofossil record up to the upper Cenozoic is the product of the Genesis Flood and therefore such fossils should share a common 14C age.
Applying the uniformitarian approach of extrapolating 14C decay into the indefinite past translates the measured 14C/12C ratios into ages that are on the order of 50,000 years: 2^(-50000/5730) = 0.0024 = 0.24 pmc. However, uniformitarian assumptions are inappropriate when one considers that the Genesis Flood removed vast amounts of living biomass from exchange with the atmosphere—organic material that now forms the earth's vast coal, oil, and oil shale deposits. A conservative estimate for the pre-Flood biomass is 100 times that of today. If one takes as a rough estimate for the total 14C in the biosphere before the cataclysm as 40% of what exists today and assumes a relatively uniform 14C level throughout the pre-Flood atmosphere and biomass, then we might expect a 14C/12C ratio of about 0.4% (40%/100) of today's value in the plants and animals at the onset of the Flood. With this more realistic pre-Flood 14C/12C ratio, we find that a value of 0.24 pmc corresponds to an age of only 4200 years: 0.004 x 2^(-4200/5730) = 0.0024 = 0.24 pmc). Even though these estimates are rough, they illustrate the crucial importance of accounting for effects of the Flood cataclysm when translating a 14C/12C ratio into an actual age.
[Discussion of 'How can we throw out all the radio-isotope ages?']
The bottom line of this research is that the case is now extremely compelling that the fossil record was produced just a few thousand years ago by the global Flood cataclysm. The evidence that reveals that macroevolution as an explanation for the origin of life on earth can therefore no longer be rationally defended.
So what we have is coal which is supposedly very old (50 million to 350 million years old) giving Carbon 14 dates on the order of 50,000 years (uncorrected for the Flood)!!
Wow! What do we do with that??!!
If this is not bad enough for long agers, the RATE Report goes on to report c14 in diamonds with roughly half that found in coal (about 0.12% on average). Of course, diamonds are supposed to be much older than coal, but these C14 levels indicate an age of only 55,000 or so!!
What's going on??!!
****************************************
Arden...
Quote
Could you explain something, please? If 'the USA was founded as a Christian nation', then why do the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights fail to mention Christianity in any way?
Read "Original Intent" and "The Myth of Separation" by David Barton of Wallbuilders. Or start a new thread on this topic ... maybe I will find time to respond.
Improvius...
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Perfect, that's exactly what I was expecting. So in order to test your hypothesis, you simply throw out any and all data that conflicts with it, then keep whatever anomolous and/or erroneous scraps remain. I very much like the analogy of throwing out the signal and listening to the noise. I'm sure you will disagree, but for the rest of us, it is perfectly clear that this is your methodology.
No. Actually YOU are throwing out the huge signals that a) there was a Global Flood and b) current dating methods have bad assumptions among other things.
Eric...
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Dave, he didn't predict the diffusion rate over time, which is critically important to determining the age of the zircons. He didn't predict it, and he still doesn't know it. No one knows it, which is why everyone knows Humphreys' conclusions are suspect. Without knowing the diffusion rate into and out of the zircons throughout the entire time since their formation, he can draw no conclusions about how old they are. That's the entire point you don't seem to be getting.
No. He predicted what it would be as a function of temperature when it was experimentally measured. He made his prediction based upon his hypothesis of recent creation and one or more accelerated nuclear decay events. The enormous point that you don't seem to be getting is "How in the world can there possibly be so much Helium left in these zircons?" It shouldn't be there if they are 1.5 Ga.
Ichthyic...
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what exactly do you contribute? You can't teach. you're retired from business. Your're dumber than a box of rocks. so what is it, exactly, that you think you contribute to american society at large? Ever considered maybe you're just a waste of space?
Said by someone who has contributed exactly ZERO sciency information to this thread. Said by someone who sometimes uses proper capitalization, sometimes not. Very telling.
AFDave...
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I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time.
You all do have a good point ... namely, that it is probably not good semantics to talk about "non-biological differences." I do need a different word. Maybe "intangible differences"? I don't know. In any case, here's the deal. My point is simply that if one is to look beyond the genetic similarity, one will see huge differences between humans and both apes in question, while the differences between the apes is very minor by comparison. And the SAT Test would be a good indicator of this, but it would not be a fair test to use a 2 year old human and other such 'equalizers' to perform the test. The test should be conducted on adult specimens who have been in their natural environment. If you like, (and have the time) go get a newborn gorilla, chimp and human, then raise them together and give them all the same 'educational advantages' such as private school, piano lessons, little league baseball, etc.
I predict that even the slowest people on this thread will detect enormous differences between the humans and both apes by 8 years of age. In contrast to this, I predict that the gorilla and the chimp will behave in much the same way.
Do I have any volunteers to do this experiment? I would even pay big money to see you try it.
Eric...
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Sure, Dave. As soon as you explain to me why we should assume that both the 737 and the A-320 are more closely related than either is to the CH-47.
Wow. You're serious aren't you. OK. The 737 and A-320 are more closely related because they share more common design features: jet engines, fixed wings, 100+ passenger seats, swept wings, to name a few. They are closer to each other than to the Chinook because the Chinook has a very different design: rotary wing, no jet used for forward propulsion, vertical flight capability, etc. Compare this to our human and two ape scenario: to say it simply, the apes both act like 'animals' and the human does not. Yes, it's really that simple. Apes don't use complex language like we do, don't build civilizations, don't write scientific papers, don't compose 'Beethoven's 5th', etc. etc. It really blows my mind that we could be having this discussion, because this stuff is just so obvious to me.
Clamboy...
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"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
If anyone wants to discuss this further, I suggest a new thread, but suffice to say now that you should read David Barton's "Original Intent." Then you would see the context of this Treaty. Context means a lot in case you have not realized this before. In this case they were trying to reassure the 'Mahometans' that America was not like the imperialistic Christian nations of Europe who sent crusade against the 'Mahometans.'
There are voluminous amounts of information which speak of the 'Christian-ness' of the founding of America. Read Barton.
Eric...
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I just wish one of these days he'd give us a sample of the "massive evidence for a global flood" he says he has.
If you want a head start, go buy "The Genesis Flood" by Morris and Whitcomb. You know. One of those actual BOOKS like you guys keep telling me to buy.
JonF...
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Yet he never establishes a connection between hardness and diffusivity. Why is that? Because, as has been pointed out many times, hardness does not correlaate with diffusivity. Humphreys is presenting a red herring.
No. It is because this is irrelevant. Henke objects to vacuum testing. Humphreys responds by showing that vacuum testing is legitimate because it has very little effect on diffusivity in hard materials.
JonF...
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The real beauty (if there is any) of the experiment is that, if (and that's a big if) it can be replicated in other studies and on other zircons, RATE may have come up with an interesting anomaly.
But of course, very few will be motivated to do similar experiments other than the RATE team because most scientists don't want their idea of long ages dislodged.
JonF...
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The argument is over whether or not Humphreys' assertions and arm-waving are sufficient evidence for knowing all the relevant values and discarding hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of independently obtained and cross-correlated and consistent evidence. I don't think so.
I agree that this one experiment should not by itself throw out long age dating. But there are 2 other very good RATE experiments which I have not discussed which add to the case for a young earth. What the RATE Group is really saying is 'Look, guys. Long age theory has problems. Here's 3 (or more) big problems. Let's do more research in these areas.' Then of course, you have many, many other non-radiometric indicators of a young earth (which the RATE project doesn't even address) and which I have only just barely touched upon.
Chris Hyland...
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I can't remeber if I have asked you this before, but do you think it's feasable that one single species of ape/monkeys evolved into all the species in the world in a few thousand years?
My guess is that there was a 'monkey kind' and an 'ape kind' aboard the ark, and yes, 4500 years is plenty of time for all the varieties we see today to have come about.
George...
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I've a follow-up question. Can a person be a Christian and accept the theory of evolution? In other words, can a person be like me?- I'm one of the 6 Christians in the poll.
I should think so. Why would a person not be able to be a Christian while believing in evolution? George...
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Personally, I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that a YEC cannot be a real Christian, but can only be some sort of book-worshipping cultist. The meat of God's message doesn't really matter to you does it? Only the words actually written in your favourite translation (KJ?) of the Bible.
Actually, my favorite 'translation' of the OT is the Hebrew, which is not a translation of course. But I have to rely on Hebrew scholars to read it for me since I do not know Hebrew. I do not worship the book and I am not a cultist. I lead a very normal life in American society. I simply realize that the Bible has proven itself to be a very accurate document in the areas that we CAN verify when the archaeological evidence is examined. So it makes me suspect that it is very likely also true in the areas which we CANNOT verify.
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That's why, when confronted with scientific facts that conflict with the book, you and your fellow YECs can only respond with the most unChristian dishonesty: hand-waving, ignoring opposing arguments, appeal to authorities you know are dubious, attempts to squirm through loopholes and even outright lies.
I think the opposite is true for the most part. While it is true that some YECs are loonies and hypocrites, the YECs I have read for the most part seem much more honest and fair-minded when it comes to examining evidence that evolutionists and long age geologists.
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Even better, YECs are even hypocrites when it comes to Biblical literalism. Or do you really get your medical advice from the Book of Leviticus, Dave?
What in Leviticus are you referring to?
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Dave, people like you (and GWB, but that's another story) almost make me ashamed to call myself a Christian. (Sorry about the outburst y'all, but I think Dave wears on everyone's patience.)
Sorry to hear that! Stick with me and maybe you will change your mind. If not now, maybe on your deathbed!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
dave, why do you think Denton has a "dillema"? He accepts evolution, but rejects natural selection as responsible for it. He's got it aaaaall figured out inside his head, just like you.
He's still wrong, of course, but at least he's not in the Absolute State of Denial that you are.
But of course, you can always ask him...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Hey, Dr. Rilke-- You have to start making sense now ... no more nonsensical stuff! :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, he didn't predict the diffusion rate over time, which is critically important to determining the age of the zircons. He didn't predict it, and he still doesn't know it. No one knows it, which is why everyone knows Humphreys' conclusions are suspect. Without knowing the diffusion rate into and out of the zircons throughout the entire time since their formation, he can draw no conclusions about how old they are. That's the entire point you don't seem to be getting.
No. He predicted what it would be as a function of temperature when it was experimentally measured. He made his prediction based upon his hypothesis of recent creation and one or more accelerated nuclear decay events. The enormous point that you don't seem to be getting is "How in the world can there possibly be so much Helium left in these zircons?" It shouldn't be there if they are 1.5 Ga.
And Dave, the point you don't seem to get is there's no way of knowing how much He should be in those zircons, and we've given you a dozen reasons why that is. He didn't pick Fenton Hills at random, Dave. We've told you why he picked Fenton Hills; it's because due to the geology of the area, he expected there to be a lot of helium in those zircons, and not because they're only 6,000 years old.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Weird. According to the main board afdave is the last poster here. But I read george as the last post when I enter the thread.
EDIT: Sorry about that. Working fine now.
The counter is a bit off. You can get around this and see the latest posts by adding 10 to the start page in the url. It's the last part of the URL - so instead of "st=2020" type in "st=2030".
EDIT: Argy beat me to it.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Now Target-Drone Dave has started replying to himself:
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AFDave... Quote I do. It's called the SAT Test. You go find the gorilla and the chimp. I'll provide the human, the SAT test and the testing room. We'll give them each the same amount of time. You all do have a good point ... namely, that it is probably not good semantics to talk about "non-biological differences." I do need a different word. Maybe "intangible differences"? I don't know. In any case, here's the deal. My point is simply that if one is to look beyond the genetic similarity, one will see huge differences between humans and both apes in question, while the differences between the apes is very minor by comparison. And the SAT Test would be a good indicator of this, but it would not be a fair test to use a 2 year old human and other such 'equalizers' to perform the test
Sure, Dave. As soon as you explain to me why we should assume that both the 737 and the A-320 are more closely related than either is to the CH-47.
Wow. You're serious aren't you. OK. The 737 and A-320 are more closely related because they share more common design features: jet engines, fixed wings, 100+ passenger seats, swept wings, to name a few. They are closer to each other than to the Chinook because the Chinook has a very different design: rotary wing, no jet used for forward propulsion, vertical flight capability, etc. Compare this to our human and two ape scenario: to say it simply, the apes both act like 'animals' and the human does not. Yes, it's really that simple. Apes don't use complex language like we do, don't build civilizations, don't write scientific papers, don't compose 'Beethoven's 5th', etc. etc. It really blows my mind that we could be having this discussion, because this stuff is just so obvious to me.
Wow. Dave, I never expected this answer for you, because I expected you to at least see how obvious my trap was. No, the Airbus and the 737 are not more closely related than either is to the CH-47. For crying out loud, Dave, the 737 and the CH-47 are both manufactured by Boeing! The Airbus is by a completely different manufacturer that isn't even in the same country.
My point was, that appearances can be deceptive. The fact that you couldn't see my point is, well, kind of staggering. And it points up why you're not really qualified to have this discussion, and why your arguments are regularly being annihilated. Aside from not having the basic knowledge necessary to understand any of the areas of science we're discussing, you lack the basic reasoning ability (even in areas in which you do have expertise) that would allow you to become a scientist in the first place.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And Dave, the point you don't seem to get is there's no way of knowing how much He should be in those zircons, and we've given you a dozen reasons why that is. He didn't pick Fenton Hills at random, Dave. We've told you why he picked Fenton Hills; it's because due to the geology of the area, he expected there to be a lot of helium in those zircons, and not because they're only 6,000 years old.
That is total nonsense. The truth is if you would actually study this experiment, that they picked this because it had already been drilled. Did you not read that it was drilled in the 1970s in search of geothermal energy?
Gentry was just astute enough to notice that there was a lot of Helium in these zircons, so they got the idea to test the duffusion.
Why don't you do a literature to see if zircons in other locations have a lot of retained Helium?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That is total nonsense. The truth is if you would actually study this experiment, that they picked this because it had already been drilled. Did you not read that it was drilled in the 1970s in search of geothermal energy?
Gentry was just astute enough to notice that there was a lot of Helium in these zircons, so they got the idea to test the duffusion.
Why don't you do a literature to see if zircons in other locations have a lot of retained Helium?
In other words, Dave, Humphreys already knew the zircons would have a lot of He in them. He failed to eliminate all the non-magical reasons why there was still a lot of He in them, and leaped to the entirely unwarranted conclusion (already contradicted by other evidence) that the zircons were a few thousand years old.
Are you still amazed that the entire field of radiometric dating hasn't been overturned by the dubious results of this one experiment, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
About 14C... I'm note an expert, but you can't use 14C to date fossils that are more than 50 ky old. When the level of 14C in a sample becomes close to zero, it just can't be measured with accuracy. The smallest error in the measure, or contamination, can completely alter the results. If one measures 0.00000000001% of 14C were one were supposed to detect 0, the error is indeed infinite. This is just obvious, but AIG takes this as an argument that the Earth is 6000 years old. They're pathetic. And 14C can only be dosed in organic mater. Dating 1.5 My old fossils with this method is nonsense, and refering to this is just stupid. We have other radionuclides for that (Uranium, Strontium...). And of course, the author from AIG don't mention it. He alos forgot the fact that fossils older than 6000 years have been precisely dated with radiocarbon.
Again, AFD provided a perfect example of dishonesty from AIG.
The simple answer is that, in these cases, the 14C/12C ratio has nothing to do with the age of the specimens.
RATE is making the unwarranted assumption that the 14C is derived from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when that carbon was last "trapped", and therefore has age significance. We know there are other sources of 14C than the atmosphere. The only issues are whether or not we know all of them and which one contributes in what proportion to each particular case.
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Yet he never establishes a connection between hardness and diffusivity. Why is that? Because, as has been pointed out many times, hardness does not correlaate with diffusivity. Humphreys is presenting a red herring.
No. It is because this is irrelevant. Henke objects to vacuum testing. Humphreys responds by showing that vacuum testing is legitimate because it has very little effect on diffusivity in hard materials.
Yet Humphreys has not established that hardness is an appropriate parameter, and the evidence indicates that it is not. IOW, hardness is irelevant. Crystal structure, charge distribution, microcracking, dislocation density, ... are significant, but hardness is not. IOW, hardness does not correlate with the effect of pressure on diffusion and Humphreys has presented a red heering.
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The real beauty (if there is any) of the experiment is that, if (and that's a big if) it can be replicated in other studies and on other zircons, RATE may have come up with an interesting anomaly.
But of course, very few will be motivated to do similar experiments other than the RATE team because most scientists don't want their idea of long ages dislodged.
Well, one could certainly argue over the reason that other labs will be motivated to do similar experiments, but they certainly won't be motivated as things stand now. If RATE does a lot more experiments on a lot more zircons, especially those with a simpler history, and does more basic research on the assumptions they've made and come up with better justifications, then maybe they can get the attention of mainstream researchers. My bet is that they'll act just as they and other YEC "researchers" have in the past; they've come up with a nice story and fooled the choir, and no further work will be done.
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The argument is over whether or not Humphreys' assertions and arm-waving are sufficient evidence for knowing all the relevant values and discarding hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of independently obtained and cross-correlated and consistent evidence. I don't think so.
I agree that this one experiment should not by itself throw out long age dating. But there are 2 other very good RATE experiments which I have not discussed which add to the case for a young earth. What the RATE Group is really saying is 'Look, guys. Long age theory has problems. Here's 3 (or more) big problems. Let's do more research in these areas.' Then of course, you have many, many other non-radiometric indicators of a young earth (which the RATE project doesn't even address) and which I have only just barely touched upon.
I'm familiar with most of the RATE research, and I bet I'm very familiar with your non-radiometric young-Earth "evidence" (in fact, I bet I'm far more familiarr with it than you are). The helium in zircons thing might be an interesting anomaly but is, so far, very far from being evidence for a young Earth. 14C in coal and diamonds is flat-out not evidence for a young Earth. Polonium halos ditto. A very few, statistically insignificant, erroneous or anomolous K-Ar measurements are not ipso facto evidence for a young Earth or problems with radiometric dating, especially when the studies are performed by people with a known history of fraud in this area. The non-radiometric "evidence" for a young Earth is 100% bovine excrement.
The truth is if you would actually study this experiment, that they picked this because it had already been drilled. Did you not read that it was drilled in the 1970s in search of geothermal energy?
Gentry was just astute enough to notice that there was a lot of Helium in these zircons, so they got the idea to test the duffusion.
Why don't you do a literature to see if zircons in other locations have a lot of retained Helium?
Not enough of a reason, Davie-poo. There are lots of rock samples available that could be tested. They picked samples from an area with a complex thermal history and known high helium concentrations in the zircons. If they wanted to establish a valid dating method, they'd use lots of zircons from lots of different areas and lots of different mainstream ages. We'll see if they do that; bet they don't.
When the level of 14C in a sample becomes close to zero, it just can't be measured with accuracy.
You've got old information, Jeannot. Modern AMS technology can detect it accurately down to around 0.025 pMC, 1/10 of the levels that we are talking about in the RATE samples.
In other words, the 0.25 pMC detected in the RATE coal samples (and by other scientists--do a quick literature search, Jeannot) is around 10X the accuracy threshhold of modern AMS equipment.
The amount detected in diamonds was around 5X the accuracy threshhold.
JonF...
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The simple answer is that, in these cases, the 14C/12C ratio has nothing to do with the age of the specimens.
Says who? Says scientist who WANT the earth to be very, very old.
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RATE is making the unwarranted assumption that the 14C is derived from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when that carbon was last "trapped", and therefore has age significance. We know there are other sources of 14C than the atmosphere. The only issues are whether or not we know all of them and which one contributes in what proportion to each particular case.
Oh I see. So now you get to accuse YECs of making unwarranted assumptions. The difference is, I can defend RATE's assumptions. I don't think you can defend your assumptions about radio-metric dating (when we get to that, and we will).
As for defending the RATE assumptions, you can't say we have not accounted for 'background 14C', because we have. The numbers given already have that subtracted out by the lab.
The truth is that the geochronology community has been scratching their heads ever since AMS was invented in the 80's. They've been trying to explain this away and they cannot.
(Well, they could if they were YECs.)
JonF...
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The non-radiometric "evidence" for a young Earth is 100% bovine excrement.
OK. Fine. We shall see.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
How much would they have found at 2000m or 1000m? Am I doing my 'maths' right? Did I overlook something here?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now wait a minute dave... Before you go on parroting AiG claims, I want to make something clear... From the first pages of this thread, you overwhelmed us with quotes from Denton, praising him as the authority that would help us understand the errors of his evolutionary ways. You said he was one of those that helped open your eyes, iirc... and I can't even remember how many times you said we should buy his books, and read them to get things straight.
And now, you say you just skimmed through his second book, because you didn't really care what he had to say about evolution, since you already knew evolution was crap?
dave, when you blatantly admit things like these, how can you expect us to take you seriously?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
When the level of 14C in a sample becomes close to zero, it just can't be measured with accuracy.
You've got old information, Jeannot. Modern AMS technology can detect it accurately down to around 0.025 pMC, 1/10 of the levels that we are talking about in the RATE samples.
In other words, the 0.25 pMC detected in the RATE coal samples (and by other scientists--do a quick literature search, Jeannot) is around 10X the accuracy threshhold of modern AMS equipment.
The amount detected in diamonds was around 5X the accuracy threshhold.
Dave, that's not the point.
Established radiometric procedure states that C14 dates cannot be accurately determined for dates older than ~50,000 years. That's nine half-lives, Dave. It's not that the equipment can't detect C14 at that level; it's that at those low levels, you can no longer control for environmental contamination from other sources. RATE says they can, but just like Humphreys and his Fenton Hill zircons, they simply cannot. Their assumptions are wrong, not the entire scientific community's.
Now I want you to pay attention to something, Dave. Beyond 50,000 years, C-14 dating is known to be inaccurate (not because the equipment can't detect low levels of C14). Now, look at the dates RATE assigns for its coal and diamond samples: 50,000 years. Do you suppose this is entirely coincidental?
There's a reason C14 is not used to date objects hundreds of millions of years old. It's because C14 dating is known to be useless for those kinds of ages. It's not because the amount of C14 in objects of those ages is undetectable. It's because there are other sources of C14 that cannot be controlled for at those low levels.
This is why you need to stay away from AiG and ICR, Dave. They repeatedly lie to you, because they know they can get away with it. But the problem is, you like being lied to.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
About 14C... I'm note an expert, but you can't use 14C to date fossils that are more than 50 ky old. ... When the level of 14C in a sample becomes close to zero, it just can't be measured with accuracy. The smallest error in the measure, or contamination, can completely alter the results. If one measures 0.00000000001% of 14C were one were supposed to detect 0, the error is indeed infinite. This is just obvious, but AIG takes this as an argument that the Earth is 6000 years old. They're pathetic.
The exact point at which radiocarbon dating (with today's extremely sensitive equipment) becomes unreliable is arguable; some would say 60K years, some would say noticably less. But your accusation of the amounts being measured being too near the detection threshold or resolution limt of the equipment is incorrect. There are levels of 14C in fossil fuels (and, I have no reason to doubt, in diamonds) that are not attributable to measurement errors or post-sample-selection-contamination. From MEASURABLE 14C IN FOSSILIZED ORGANIC MATERIALS: CONFIRMING THE YOUNG EARTH CREATION-FLOOD MODEL:
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The background standard of this AMS laboratory is CO2 from purified natural gas that provides their background level of 0.077±0.005 pmc. This same laboratory obtains values of 0.076±0.009 pmc and 0.071±0.009 pmc, respectively, for Carrara Marble (IAEA Standard Radiocarbon Reference Material C1) and optical-grade calcite from Island spar. They claim this is one of the lowest background levels quoted among AMS labs, and they attribute this low background to their special graphitization technique. They emphasize backgrounds this low cannot be realized with any statistical significance through only one or two measurements, but many measurements are required to obtain a robust determination.
....
The laboratory has carefully studied the sources of error within its AMS hardware, and regular tests are performed to ensure these remain small. According to these studies, errors in the spectrometer are very low and usually below the detection limit since the spectrometer is energy dispersive and identifies the ion species by energy loss. The detector electronic noise, the mass spectrometric inferences (the E/q and mE/q2 ambiguities), and the cross contamination all contribute less than 0.0004 pmc to the background. Ion source contamination as a result of previous samples (ion source memory) is a finite contribution because 50-80% of all sputtered carbon atoms are not extracted as carbon ions and are therefore dumped into the ion source region. To limit this ion source memory effect, the ion source is cleaned every two weeks and critical parts are thrown away. This keeps the ion source contamination at approximately 0.0025 pmc for the duration of a two-week run. Regular spot checks of these contributions are performed with a zone-refined, reactor-grade graphite sample (measuring 14C/12C ratios) and blank aluminum target pellets (measuring 14C only).
The laboratory claims most of their quoted system background arises from sample processing. This processing involves combustion (or hydrolysis in the case of carbonate samples), acetylene synthesis, and graphitization. Yet careful and repeated analysis of their methods over more than fifteen years have convinced them that very little contamination is associated with the combustion or hydrolysis procedures and almost none with their electrical dissociation graphitization process. By elimination they conclude that the acetylene synthesis must contribute almost all of the system background. But they can provide little tangible evidence it actually does. Our assessment from the information we have is that the system background arises primarily from 14C intrinsic to the background standards themselves. The values we report in Table 2 and Figure 3 nevertheless include the subtraction of the laboratory’s standard background. In any case, the measured 14C/C values are notably above their background value.
It turns out that the origin and concentration of 14C in fossil fuels is important to the physics community because of its relevance for detection of solar neutrinos. Apparently one of the new neutrino detectors, the Borexino detector in Italy, works by detecting tiny flashes of visible light produced by neutrinos passing through a huge subterranean vat of "scintillation fluid". Scintillation fluid is made from fossil fuels such as methane or oil (plus some other ingredients), and it sparkles when struck by beta particles or certain other events such as neutrinos. The Borexino detector has 800 tons of scintillant. However, if there are any native beta emitters in the fluid itself, that natural radioactive decay will also produce scintillant flashes. ... So, the physicists want to find fossil fuels that have very little 14C. In the course of this work, they've discovered that fossil fuels vary widely in 14C content. Some have no detectable 14C; some have quite a lot of 14C. Apparently it correlates best with the content of the natural radioactivity of the rocks surrounding the fossil fuels, particularly the neutron- and alpha-particle-emitting isotopes of the uranium-thorium series. Dr. Gove and his colleagues told me they think the evidence so far demonstrates that 14C in coal and other fossil fuels is derived entirely from new production of 14C by local radioactive decay of the uranium-thorium series. Many studies verify that coals vary widely in uranium-thorium content, and that this can result in inflated content of certain isotopes relevant to radiometric dating
So the stuff really is there. But what's the source? If all or almost all the 14C came from the atmosphere at the time the sample formed, then that sample is somewhat less than 60K years old. But there are other known sources of 14C, such as groundwater-carried contamination and in-situ formation of 14C from 14N by high-energy particles from nearby radioactive decay. The latter is discussed further at Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits, and both diamonds and fossil fuels contain 14N. Humphreys dismisses the former source as "impossible"; I recall seeing him claim that it's impossible because diamond is such a hard material (I can't locate the source right now) but that's crap; dislocations and microcracks offer opportunities for just such contamination, and (as in the helium studies) we're talking about microscopic amounts of 14C.
So, as I pointed out in a slightly previous message, the creationist error lies in assuming the source of the 14C. If you want to date samples with 14C, you need to have good reason to believe that all or almost all of the 14C came from the atmosphere when the sample formed. Of course, that's a slam-dunk in obviously-organic well-"sealed" samples that measure as 30K years or less.
Guys, this is not my field, but I found this and had to jump in...
dave, google "c14 dating method" and read the FIRST link.
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. After 10 half-lives, there is a very small amount of radioactive carbon present in a sample. At about 50 - 60 000 years, then, the limit of the technique is reached (beyond this time, other radiometric techniques must be used for dating).
Whoops!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
One more thing, Dave. If you think the earth is 6,000 years old, how does it help you to find coal and diamonds that date to 50,000 years? If you think those dates are accurate, they make your estimate of the earth's age off by almost a full order of magnitude. How does a radiocarbon date of 6,500 years help you? Radiocarbon dating in those date ranges is accurate to a few percent.
Do you see where I'm heading, Dave? Or are you going to miss this one, too, like the one about the jetliners and the helicopter? Your young-earth dates are all over the map. Some are 5,500 years, some are 6,000 years, some are 10,000 years, some are 50,000 years. They don't converge on a single value.
By contrast, all the real data on the age of the earth converge on a single value within a few percent: 4.5 by. Data from radiometric dating, stratigraphic data, the fossil record, astrophysical data, cosmological data, they all say the same thing. Your figures don't.
If you were really interested in the truth, this would be one of those "Hmmm ... really? I never noticed that glaring error before. OK, you're right" moments.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Says scientist who WANT the earth to be very, very old.
Fascinating how Dave still isn't telling us why so many scientists would wand the earth to be very, very old... But I'll give him another chance before I just answer for him.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
RATE is making the unwarranted assumption that the 14C is derived from a source that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere when that carbon was last "trapped", and therefore has age significance. We know there are other sources of 14C than the atmosphere. The only issues are whether or not we know all of them and which one contributes in what proportion to each particular case.
Oh I see. So now you get to accuse YECs of making unwarranted assumptions. The difference is, I can defend RATE's assumptions.
Ok, then do so. Let's see your defence of RATE's assumptions that the 14C has age significance. Why did they ignore in-situ formation due to nearby radiation sources? Why did they ignore the possibility of groundwater contamination?
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I don't think you can defend your assumptions about radio-metric dating (when we get to that, and we will).
This is an area of my expertise, Davie-poo. I've been challenging creationist loons, some better informed than you, for years. I saw your standard and erroneous parroting of the "assumptions" behind radiometric dating a few pages back; you don't know what you're talking about, and you don't stand a chance.
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As for defending the RATE assumptions, you can't say we have not accounted for 'background 14C', because we have. The numbers given already have that subtracted out by the lab.
And you should note that I didn't say RATE did not account for background. I did say that they have not accounted for other known possibilities for the source of the 14C.
Put in perspective half a Dave, AiG etc are using the Piltdown technique to promote a Fraud on you.
I don't see why you even bother trying to 'convert' us using so called 'facts'.
If you value evidence based on IRRELAVENT and relativist pure emotion but not it's OBJECTIVE value why would you expect us to assign any value to your nonsense.
You disregard any evidence that you don't like, not on it's merit, but on how you 'feel'.
Imagine if a doctor or engineer disregarded the experts in their fields and expediently reached conclusions not on actual evidence but on purely selfish grounds such as their religious opinion or how much money they could make, in anybodies language they would be called a misanthrope.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Could you explain something, please? If 'the USA was founded as a Christian nation', then why do the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights fail to mention Christianity in any way?
Read "Original Intent" and "The Myth of Separation" by David Barton of Wallbuilders. Or start a new thread on this topic ... maybe I will find time to respond.
Wow, that was a non-answer, big surprise.
Musta been the pernicious influence of them wicked secular humanists Jefferson and Franklin. Just because there's absolutely nothing in the founding documents of the US that mentions Christianity, trust me, it's really there! I don't need evidence, it's just obvious, guys!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
When the level of 14C in a sample becomes close to zero, it just can't be measured with accuracy.
You've got old information, Jeannot. Modern AMS technology can detect it accurately down to around 0.025 pMC, 1/10 of the levels that we are talking about in the RATE samples.
New technologies, like laser-fusion and argon-argon dating methods have been refined to the point where the age of a volcanic particle as small as a grain of salt can be determined with great precision and accuracy.
Alas, poor Dave's larger argument about a young Earth is deeply undermined by these new techniques. They are still supporting and adding detail to a very old Earth. If things change, the Earth is going to start looking older, not younger. That's were the new discoveries not filtered by creationists are pointing.
Look at this ... they even have a name for 'Humphreys type zircons' now ...
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Implications for Timing of Andean Uplift from Thermal Resetting of Radiation-Damaged Zircon in the … - group of 3 » JI Garver, PW Reiners, LJ Walker, JM Ramage, SE … - The Journal of Geology, 2005 - journals.uchicago.edu ... 2000). Helium dating of zircons is currently in a renaissance, and application to tectonic studies is still in its infancy (Reiners et al. 2002, 2003, 2004). ...
Zircon fission track (ZFT) and (U-Th)/He (ZHe) dating of zircons along a west-east transect elucidates the thermal evolution of exhumed and uplifted rocks. The stability of fission tracks in zircons is a function of single-grain radiation damage. In samples with grain-to-grain variability in radiation damage, resetting results in variable resetting and multiple age populations. Low retentive zircons (LRZs), which have a partly disordered crystalline structure, have significant radiation damage and a low temperature of annealing (ca. 180°200°C). High retentive zircons (HRZs), which are nearly crystalline, fully anneal at temperatures in excess of ca. 280°300°C.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
On a more general note, there's a common thread running through Dave's "critiques" of radiometric dating methods. He (or, more accurately, the sources he C&Ps from) take a technique, apply it in a situation where it is known not to work (like using radiocarbon to date 250-million-year-old coal deposits), and then complain when the results don't make sense (and yes, Dave, they don't make sense when there's no rhyme or reason to the dates these results give; see my post above).
It would be as if one were to use a saw to hammer nails in, a screwdriver to apply paint, and a cutting torch to lay bricks, and then conclude that since the results are not what are claimed for those various tools, the tools must not work as advertised.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
We shall see what future data brings to light in regard to this question.
No, Dave, you won't see. You've already missed major lines of evidence. You're only paying attention to creationists and ignoring the much broader feild of geology that encompasses rock dating and gives it context. You want to argue that neither fossils nor rock dating can be trusted, and that YEC interpretations are better. In order to do this YECs have constructed a delusional geology all their own, but so far Dave deals with one tiny detail, the dating of zircons.
The larger context includes Plate Tectonics which helps explain and predict volcanism, earthquakes, and mountain building. It includes arctic ice cores and evidence of global warming. It also includes fossils found in sequences recognized and established in their broad outlines before Darwin wrote about his theory.
Geologists in the 1700s and 1800s had already noticed how fossils occured in sequences and Dave cannot deny the hundreds of millions of fossils now in museum display cases and drawers around the world. Huge dinosaurs, ancient shell beds containing hundreds of specimens, etc.. Dave is forced to claim that all these fossils are of the same age, buried in the rocks by Noah's flood.
Rejection of rock dating by YECs is easy to assume, but hard to demonstrate. In order to demonstrate his Helium-Zircon thing, Dave still has to deal with stratigraphy, the observation that older rocks lie below younger rocks and that fossils occur in a particular, predictable order. That's why we have the stratigraphic column, the divisions of geological time into Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and so on. Each time slice characterized by its own fossils. If we have a young Earth, why and how could we have the stratigraphic column? What's happening there, Dave? Do we get life on Earth re-created every couple hundred years and then rocks made around them?
The oldest rocks have no fossils, then came simple cells, then simple sea creatures, then more complex ones like fishes, then life on land, then reptiles, then mammals, then us. How can a six-day creation explain that story in the rocks?
On a more general note, there's a common thread running through Dave's "critiques" of radiometric dating methods. He (or, more accurately, the sources he C&Ps from) take a technique, apply it in a situation where it is known not to work (like using radiocarbon to date 250-million-year-old coal deposits), and then complain when the results don't make sense (and yes, Dave, they don't make sense when there's no rhyme or reason to the dates these results give; see my post above).
It would be as if one were to use a saw to hammer nails in, a screwdriver to apply paint, and a cutting torch to lay bricks, and then conclude that since the results are not what are claimed for those various tools, the tools must not work as advertised.
The way I see it, it's the "5000 year old live snail" argument, phrased again and again in more indirect and sciency-looking ways. They got nothing else.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I think I have beat the Helium-Zircon thing to death ...
Lets beat it some more. This might be relevant: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=2146411491 "Contrary to perceived wisdom, we have demonstrated that zircon typically does grow at low temperatures in slates. The exceptionally small zircons that grow in these conditions now reveal exciting potential for dating events occurring during their growth and open up new horizons for the determination of geological ages from rocks that were previously impossible to date."
Aargh. There is a study that I used in college, (quite a ways back-mid 80's?) that compared some core samples from north sea sediments to core samples from the indian ocean. There was a layer of volcanic ash at 20ish m years old that they were using to figure out C14 contamination sources. The article is probably out of date but the methodology was fantastic. It explained the concept of verifying dating techniques really well. It also did a good job of illustrating the scientific method since they were working on methodology rather than trying to figure whether the earth was really 4.5 b years old or 6000 or whatever.
I can't find it. Does anyone know what I am thinking of? Maybe I have the subject wrong or something.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
And now, you say you just skimmed through his second book, because you didn't really care what he had to say about evolution, since you already knew evolution was crap? dave, when you blatantly admit things like these, how can you expect us to take you seriously?
What am I admitting that has any bearing on anything? Denton does a beautiful job elucidating the cell and he says great things about cosmic fine tuning and the anthropic principle. He still subscribes to evolution by default because he does not have the guts to be a YEC.
Eric...
Quote
Established radiometric procedure states that C14 dates cannot be accurately determined for dates older than ~50,000 years.
I know that. I'm not using it do date anything >50,000 years. I'm using it to date something which I suspect is less than 10,000 years old.
Eric...
Quote
There's a reason C14 is not used to date objects hundreds of millions of years old. It's because C14 dating is known to be useless for those kinds of ages. It's not because the amount of C14 in objects of those ages is undetectable. It's because there are other sources of C14 that cannot be controlled for at those low levels.
No. If you read the pre 1980's literature you will find that geochronologists thought there was too small a quantities to detect in coal and diamonds. This all changed when AMS came along. Guess what. They were surprised. They thought their meters were wrong. They thought there was some contamination. They still don't know why it is so high.
And silly them. Most of them never even consider the possibility that earth might not be flat (er ... that their dating systems might be wrong ... sorry ... my mind slipped back a few centuries)
Eric...
Quote
One more thing, Dave. If you think the earth is 6,000 years old, how does it help you to find coal and diamonds that date to 50,000 years?
You're lost. Go back to square one and read my original C14 post, then get back to me.
Faid...
Quote
Guys, this is not my field, but I found this and had to jump in... dave, google "c14 dating method" and read the FIRST link. Quote . After 10 half-lives, there is a very small amount of radioactive carbon present in a sample. At about 50 - 60 000 years, then, the limit of the technique is reached (beyond this time, other radiometric techniques must be used for dating).
You're right. This is not your field and you didn't read my post very carefully. You're lost. Go back to square one and read my original C14 post, then get back to me.
Norm...
Quote
New technologies, like laser-fusion and argon-argon dating methods have been refined to the point where the age of a volcanic particle as small as a grain of salt can be determined with great precision and accuracy.
Alas, poor Dave's larger argument about a young Earth is deeply undermined by these new techniques. They are still supporting and adding detail to a very old Earth. If things change, the Earth is going to start looking older, not younger. That's were the new discoveries not filtered by creationists are pointing.
Separate issue, Norm. We'll be talking about that soon also. Alas, I'll be showing you why your dating doesn't work.
JonF...
Quote
So the stuff really is there. But what's the source? If all or almost all the 14C came from the atmosphere at the time the sample formed, then that sample is somewhat less than 60K years old. But there are other known sources of 14C, such as groundwater-carried contamination and in-situ formation of 14C from 14N by high-energy particles from nearby radioactive decay. The latter is discussed further at Carbon-14 in Coal Deposits, and both diamonds and fossil fuels contain 14N. Humphreys dismisses the former source as "impossible"; I recall seeing him claim that it's impossible because diamond is such a hard material (I can't locate the source right now) but that's crap; dislocations and microcracks offer opportunities for just such contamination, and (as in the helium studies) we're talking about microscopic amounts of 14C.
So, as I pointed out in a slightly previous message, the creationist error lies in assuming the source of the 14C. If you want to date samples with 14C, you need to have good reason to believe that all or almost all of the 14C came from the atmosphere when the sample formed. Of course, that's a slam-dunk in obviously-organic well-"sealed" samples that measure as 30K years or less.
Ah ... finally. Someone who really understands the issues here. Very good.
Now, JonF ... how can you say 'Oh, we can date this cave painting reliably or whatever, but we cannot date this coal reliably.' Why is the coal subject to 'radioactive contamination' or whatever, and the cave painting is not? They got many samples from widely varying loacales and depths. It seems that if you always go about saying 'Oh, that's contaminated but this is not, how can anything be reliably dated by C14?'
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now, JonF ... how can you say 'Oh, we can date this cave painting reliably or whatever, but we cannot date this coal reliably.' Why is the coal subject to 'radioactive contamination' or whatever, and the cave painting is not? They got many samples from widely varying loacales and depths. It seems that if you always go about saying 'Oh, that's contaminated but this is not, how can anything be reliably dated by C14?'
I already explicitly answered your question, Davie-poo. Go back and read my posts for comprehension.
Thinkk "cross-checking" and what level of contamination is required to change the calcluated date of a sample of, say, 30K years age. Remember exponentials, Davie-wavey?
Maybe that is a good point. What you aren't getting is how much c14 you are measuring. At 10,000 years the original carbon has lost x amount maybe 3 or 4 half lives. Beyond 50k years, you are measuring such a small quantity that a very small contaminant can dramatically skew the results. That same small contaminant, while it may skew the results at 10000 years, skews it a very small amount. So it might throw it off by 1-5000 years. That same amount at 100,000 years might throw it off by 100,000 years. Does that make sense?
Here's a little analogy:
Fold a piece of ordinary notebook paper in half. 1 square centimeter is x percent of your surface area. Does 1 sq. cm affect your total by alot? Could you still be generally accurate +- that 1 sq cm? Now fold your half sheet in half. Same test. That 1 sq. cm is a little more substantial. By the way, it really does help to actually fold a piece of paper.
Now, fold it in half as many times as you can and count the number of folds. Should be 7 or 8. That is the paper's half life. Now, how much in percent does your one sq. cm throw off your surface area estimation?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Since Dave still doesn't want to address this, I will. The heart of his whole argument is that the vast majority of scientists simply don't want a Christian God to exist. They don't want Him to exist because if He did, then they would have to answer to Him. They think that if they can disprove His existence, then they can rationalize living a life of reckless abandon, rejecting morality and embracing their basest desires.
This is the reason why people invented things like evolution, old-earth dating systems, and methodological naturalism. It all boils down to finding a way to weasel out of getting judged by God.
Is that about right, Dave? Go ahead and correct me if I'm off base here.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Established radiometric procedure states that C14 dates cannot be accurately determined for dates older than ~50,000 years.
I know that. I'm not using it do date anything >50,000 years. I'm using it to date something which I suspect is less than 10,000 years old.
But you're not dating anything that's less than 10,000 years old, Dave. You still haven't grasped the fundamental point here: radiometric dates correlate extremely well with figures derived from multiple other independent methods. Your phony radiometric dates don't correlate with anything else, other than your desire to have a young earth. Your "suspicions" are, quite simply, wrong.
Quote
Eric...
Quote
There's a reason C14 is not used to date objects hundreds of millions of years old. It's because C14 dating is known to be useless for those kinds of ages. It's not because the amount of C14 in objects of those ages is undetectable. It's because there are other sources of C14 that cannot be controlled for at those low levels.
No. If you read the pre 1980's literature you will find that geochronologists thought there was too small a quantities to detect in coal and diamonds. This all changed when AMS came along. Guess what. They were surprised. They thought their meters were wrong. They thought there was some contamination. They still don't know why it is so high.
That doesn't make the earth 6,000 (or 50,000) years old, Dave. It means there are sources of C14 that are not well-understood. Not unknown. Not clearly understood. There's a difference. Real scientists want to know what those sources are. They don't just jump to the completely unwarranted assumption that the earth is 6,000 (or 50,000) years old.
Quote
And silly them. Most of them never even consider the possibility that earth might not be flat (er ... that their dating systems might be wrong ... sorry ... my mind slipped back a few centuries).
Freudian slip, Dave? But you're still wrong. The idea of a young earth has (of course) occurred to these guys. But it wouldn't be a few radiometric dates that would have to be wrong. All of them would have to be wrong, and all the rest of the mountains and mountains and mountains of data pointing to an old earth would have to be wrong. The odds of that being the case are too small to compute, Dave, and subsequently, all real scientists understand that the old age of the earth is a fact, not a guess, nor wishful thinking.
Quote
Eric...
Quote
One more thing, Dave. If you think the earth is 6,000 years old, how does it help you to find coal and diamonds that date to 50,000 years?
You're lost. Go back to square one and read my original C14 post, then get back to me.
Don't need to. You tell me how results indicating that the earth is 50,000 years old helps your argument that it's only 6,000 years old. You're still missing my point. Your "evidence" for a young earth gives all kinds of discordant values. By contrast, the evidence in favor of an old earth all points to the same value.
Quote
Now, JonF ... how can you say 'Oh, we can date this cave painting reliably or whatever, but we cannot date this coal reliably.' Why is the coal subject to 'radioactive contamination' or whatever, and the cave painting is not? They got many samples from widely varying loacales and depths. It seems that if you always go about saying 'Oh, that's contaminated but this is not, how can anything be reliably dated by C14?'
If Jon doesn't mind, I'll answer this one: it's simple, Dave. When you're dating a cave painting that's 20,000 years old, you're dealing with four half-lives or less. In other words, much of the C14 should still be there.
When you're trying to date coal, you're dating something that's hundreds of thousands of half-lives old. The amount of C14 left is too small to be outside the error bars imposed by other sources of contamination. That's why you don't use C14 dating for things known (for entirely different reasons) to be hundreds of millions of years old.
Why do you think there are over 40 different methods of radiometric dating, Dave? Some are usable in some circumstances and not in others. You can't use Kr/Ar dating for things that are only a few hundred years old, and you can't use C14 dating for things that are hundreds of millions of years old. Re-read my post about the saw, the screwdriver, and the cutting torch. Do you understand the analogy?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Established radiometric procedure states that C14 dates cannot be accurately determined for dates older than ~50,000 years.
I know that. I'm not using it do date anything >50,000 years. I'm using it to date something which I suspect is less than 10,000 years old.
Dave, first you claimed that you were using C14 to date the age of coal measures. You're using a method which only works on things less than ~50,000 years old. Now you claim that you know the method's OK, because you're dating something less than 50,000 years old. You're assuming what you were trying to prove, just like you did with the zircons.
Every OTHER line of evidence and dating technique agrees that the coal is way older than that, and therefore you can't reliable use C14 to date it, because the tiniest degree of contamination invalidates the result.
I'm seeing a theme here. With the zircons, the least reliable method possible is to look at the helium diffusion- because it depends sensitively on thermal history and environmental factors, which you don't know. So of course the YECs use that method, get the wackiest possible result, and insist that it's correct. With the coal, the least reliable possible method is C14 dating, because the groundwater contamination and the 14N-14C radioactive contamination swamp your signal. So of course the YECs use that method. Pathetic.
what exactly do you contribute? You can't teach. you're retired from business. Your're dumber than a box of rocks. so what is it, exactly, that you think you contribute to american society at large? Ever considered maybe you're just a waste of space?
Said by someone who has contributed exactly ZERO sciency information to this thread. Said by someone who sometimes uses proper capitalization, sometimes not. Very telling.
I did early on, but then you seem to forget anything that happened in your threads about 2 days afterwards, so that's not surprising.
frankly I don't really blame you for forgetting, as it was quite a while ago that i decided, and stated repeatedly, that bothering to post "sciency stuff" (??) for you was a waste of time. All you keep doing is continually demonstrating how correct I was in that assessment. Tho, OA pointed out the value to lurkers. I personally think that any lurkers who bother to read this thread will get sick to their stomachs after reading the first few pages of your posts.
...and, you still haven't answered my question, which wasn't addressed to the value in this thread, which is meaningless, but:
What is it, exactly, that you think you contribute to american society at large?
You have to convince me you're not just a waste of space, Dave.
get to it.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Look at this ... they even have a name for 'Humphreys type zircons' now ...
Quote
Implications for Timing of Andean Uplift from Thermal Resetting of Radiation-Damaged Zircon in the … - group of 3 » JI Garver, PW Reiners, LJ Walker, JM Ramage, SE … - The Journal of Geology, 2005 - journals.uchicago.edu ... 2000). Helium dating of zircons is currently in a renaissance, and application to tectonic studies is still in its infancy (Reiners et al. 2002, 2003, 2004). ...
Zircon fission track (ZFT) and (U-Th)/He (ZHe) dating of zircons along a west-east transect elucidates the thermal evolution of exhumed and uplifted rocks. The stability of fission tracks in zircons is a function of single-grain radiation damage. In samples with grain-to-grain variability in radiation damage, resetting results in variable resetting and multiple age populations. Low retentive zircons (LRZs), which have a partly disordered crystalline structure, have significant radiation damage and a low temperature of annealing (ca. 180°200°C). High retentive zircons (HRZs), which are nearly crystalline, fully anneal at temperatures in excess of ca. 280°300°C.
And, Dave, when you read sentances from your link like "...folded Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks unconformably overlain by mid-Tertiary volcanics..." what do the terms "Mesozoic" and "mid-Tertiary" mean to you?
What does "Lower Cretaceous quartzites" mean to you?
And, Dave, when you read sentances from your link like "...folded Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks unconformably overlain by mid-Tertiary volcanics..." what do the terms "Mesozoic" and "mid-Tertiary" mean to you?
What does "Lower Cretaceous quartzites" mean to you?
You're assuming that Dave reads and understands his links. He doesn't. He skims them, rejecting anything which makes him think about an old earth.
It's hilarious that he brings up this paper as if it supports him, when in fact the entire methodology of the paper completely trashes what Humphreys did with his zircons.
Dave challenges JonF to a motorcycle race. He shows up on his thundering, shaking, 96-inch lowrider Harley. Jon, meanwhile, rolls up in his Fast-by-Ferracci 996. They decide to do a standard quarter mile race.
Occam's Aftershave mans the starting gun. He fires, and JonF's Ducati lifts its front wheel right off the ground, and stays that way for the first hundred yards. He passes the quarter mile marker seven seconds later, doing almost 175 MPH.
At this point, Dave's still in second gear, coming up on the hundred-yard mark. Jon circles around, having gone almost another quarter mile after easing up on the throttle, and goes back to the finish line. He waits for Dave, who shows up at about the 15-second mark. He reaches out a gloved hand to shake, saying to Dave, "Nice effort, old man."
"Yeah, I really smoked you, didn't I?" says Dave.
"Um…excuse me? What are you talking about?"
"Aren't you going to congratulate me?"
"For what, Dave? I beat you by seven seconds in an eight-second race."
"What do you mean, Jon? My bike's got way more torque than yours, and it outweighs your bike by seven hundred pounds."
"Yes, that's true, Dave, but you got to the finish line seven seconds after I did. That means I won."
"No, that's just a Ducati-rider's misconception, based on flawed assumptions. I won, because my bike puts out more torque, and besides that, it weighs more than your bike."
Jon's pretty perplexed at this point. He just eyes Dave warily, and backs away slowly, it dawning on him that he's been racing a lunatic.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I predict that even the slowest people on this thread will detect enormous differences between the humans and both apes by 8 years of age. In contrast to this, I predict that the gorilla and the chimp will behave in much the same way.
DDTTD's having ANOTHER Portuguese episode, add two more branches of science he knows nothing about. Zoology and Animal Behavior. He can't blame it on AiG or IRC either.
DDTTD, gorillas and the two known species of chimps (there may be a third species) behave in completely different ways and the behavior of the bonobos is quite different from common chimps. Someone earlier called bonobos the "freaks" of the primate world. Indeed!
Dave you are such a dilettard it's hard to fathom.
Let me head off your objection that you said much the same way. No Dilettard, they don't behave much the same way.
"No, that's just a Ducati-rider's misconception, based on flawed assumptions. I won, because my bike puts out more torque, and besides that, it weighs more than your bike."
"Plus, don't you know anything about relativity? It proves I won." Dave says.
"What are you talking about?" says JonF.
"Have you not heard of length contraction and time dilation? I believe the distance from you to the finish line was probably contracted, and the time on my clock was dilated. While it looked nonsimultaneous in your noninertial reference frame, there exists some frame in which we both crossed the line simultaneously. So you didn't win." says AFDave.
Suddenly a physicist from the stands interjects. "No, if you chart what happened on a Minkowski graph of spacetime, you'll see there's no reference frame in which you could even tie, given how long you're taking to cross the finish line. So no observer could have you even tying JonF, you totally lost, for an observer anywhere in the universe."
AFDave becomes impatient, "Blah blah blah your silly explanations are worthless because I don't understand Relativity. So much the worse for your argument. Look, doctor, I expect better from you with your Ph.D. All I said was that the Laws of Relativity are strong evidence that I won. I see you cannot refute me."
"No, that's just a Ducati-rider's misconception, based on flawed assumptions. I won, because my bike puts out more torque, and besides that, it weighs more than your bike."
No, you have it all wrong. You're ignoring what's really important: the immeasurable, non-mechanical differences between the two bikes. For example, lots of people think Harley's are "cool", therefore Dave wins.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
exactly. If you disregard the feeble stopwatch data and look at the larger similarities, there's really no reason to distinguish between JonF & bike and Dave & bike. I mean, the time difference on that stopwatch, compared to the time elapsed since noon, is like a half a freaking percent!!!! A half a freaking percent? And you call yourself a 'scientist'??!?!?!?!?!
Gather 'round gentlemen; I missed this the first time around:
Quote (afdave @ June 16 2006,10:02)
Chris Hyland...
Quote
I can't remeber if I have asked you this before, but do you think it's feasable that one single species of ape/monkeys evolved into all the species in the world in a few thousand years?
My guess is that there was a 'monkey kind' and an 'ape kind' aboard the ark, and yes, 4500 years is plenty of time for all the varieties we see today to have come about.
So—Dave thinks 4,500 years is "plenty of time" for one species of proto-monkey and one species of proto-ape to have radiated into the dozens of species of apes and hundreds of species of monkeys (New World and Old World, I wonder?) we have today. In other words, Dave doesn't just believe in macro-evolution; he believes in super-macro-humungo-evolution at blindingly-fast speed. I wonder if Dave is surprised that we don't find a new species of monkey every couple of years, and a new species of ape every couple of decades.
At the same time, Dave doesn't believe that three billion years is enough time to get from a bacterium to a jellyfish.
Hmm…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Suddenly a physicist from the stands interjects. "No, if you chart what happened on a Minkowski graph of spacetime, you'll see there's no reference frame in which you could even tie, given how long you're taking to cross the finish line. So no observer could have you even tying JonF, you totally lost, for an observer anywhere in the universe."
"No, clearly you just WANT to have won. You're blinded by what you want to believe."
Quote
My guess is that there was a 'monkey kind' and an 'ape kind' aboard the ark, and yes, 4500 years is plenty of time for all the varieties we see today to have come about.
Good lord, AFD is a Young Earth Creationist who believes that evolution happens anyway? If there was a single 'ape kind' on the ark, that means that this 'kind' in a mere 4,500 (or whatever) years evolved into Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, Orangutans, and Gibbons? That that this monkey 'kind' in a mere 4.5K years evolved into all 264 known species of monkeys?
This basically means that since Noah's ark landed, a new species of monkey has developed an average of every 17.1 years. Yow. Is it still happening now?
And yet:
Quote
At the same time, Dave doesn't believe that three billion years is enough time to get from a bacterium to a jellyfish.
My god, cognitive dissonance like that cannot be pleasant...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Good lord, AFD is a Young Earth Creationist who believes that evolution happens anyway? If there was a single 'ape kind' on the ark, that means that this 'kind' in a mere 4,500 (or whatever) years evolved into Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, Orangutans, and Gibbons? And that this monkey 'kind' in a mere 4.5K years evolved into all 264 known species of monkeys?
Thanks for looking up the numbers, Arden. I usually can't be bothered to do actual research to refute Dave's increasingly desperate claims. First, it's hardly necessary, and second, I figure if I'm in the right ballpark, that's good enough for Dave, since, "I mean, isn't it obvious?" seems to be good enough for him.
Quote
This basically means that since Noah's ark landed, a new species of monkey has developed an average of every 17.1 years. Yow. Is it still happening now?
At this rate, we'll be neck-deep in monkeys in another century…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave finally gets around to discussing radiocarbon dating.
Quote
AFDave: I know that. I'm not using it do date anything >50,000 years. I'm using it to date something which I suspect is less than 10,000 years old.
Great! Then you'll have no more lame excuses for ignoring the C14/C12 calibration data.
First, please provide a reference for this claim you made or admit it was wrong
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AFDave: but there is much evidence that there was as much as 100X more C-12 in the pre-Deluge atmosphere.
Even a bogus claim of 100x the biomass does not equate to 100x more C12 in the atmosphere. Provide your evidence for this or retract.
Second, please stop ignoring this critical question:
You claim that radiocarbon dating is faulty based on incorrect assumptions about decay rates and C12 concentrations. You have been shown several times now how dates from C14/C12 decay rates are precisely calibrated by at least six different, completely independent methods (denrochronology, ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, speleothems, coral samples) and are accurate to within a few percent for dates back to 60,000 YBP. You were provided the actual data, including the calibration curves themselves that all overlap almost exactly.
Those data sets and many others - over 40 total - are available from CalPal, the University of Cologne Radiocarbon Calibration Program Package: CALIBRATION DATA SETS
Please don't waste our time by C&Ping some ICR or AIG argument as to why each individual calibration curve method is wrong. I'm asking again for your explanation as to why the independent curves all agree with one another. If you see six independent sets of data that you say are all screwed up, then how do you explain that all six are screwed up but screwed up in precisely the same way as to give precisely matching results over the whole date range?
To the board and the lurkers: Sorry for the repeat postings but AFDave has a bad habit of ignoring all tough questions that his C&P sources don't address. I just want all the readers, especially the Christian lurkers, to see how a YEC like AFDave responds (or fails to respond actually) when he is forced to think for himself.
Remember Dave, every non-answer by you is a win for evolution and a loss for AFDave.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
To the board and the lurkers: Sorry for the repeat postings but AFDave has a bad habit of ignoring all tough questions that his C&P sources don't address. I just want all the readers, especially the Christian lurkers, to see how a YEC like AFDave responds (or fails to respond actually) when he is forced to think for himself.
Remember Dave, every non-answer by you is a win for evolution and a loss for AFDave.
And this is why we say AF Dave has lost every single argument he's had on this board. Because he has failed to answer every single substantive rebuttal of every point he's ever tried to make. He's failed to respond to rebuttals of his Portuguese argument, he's failed to respond to rebuttals to his "in the beginning was the (written) word" argument, he's failed to respond to rebuttals to his "zircons have way too much helium to be more than a few thousand years old" argument; he's failed to respond to rebuttals of his "GULO gene doesn't mean anything argument." Christ, it took him three days to respond to my stupid "airplanes and helicopters" argument.
In Dave's universe, points that contradict his points simply don't exist. He doesn't hear them. How many times has it been pointed out to him that the evidence for an old earth is derived from multiple, independent, mutually-reinforcing lines of inquiry? What he responded with? A few microscopic grains of zircon, a few crumbs of coal, some wild-ass speculations about a global flood for which he hasn't provided a particle of evidence, some completely unsupported claims that radioactive decay rates were high enough in the past to melt the planet, and some complete craziness about how 4,500 years is plenty of time for a "founder" species of monkey to radiate into hundreds of species of monkeys today.
If this track record doesn't persuade the lurkers of Dave's utter ignorance when it comes to any branch of science at all, I don't know what will.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So—Dave thinks 4,500 years is "plenty of time" for one species of proto-monkey and one species of proto-ape to have radiated into the dozens of species of apes and hundreds of species of monkeys (New World and Old World, I wonder?) we have today. In other words, Dave doesn't just believe in macro-evolution; he believes in super-macro-humungo-evolution at blindingly-fast speed. I wonder if Dave is surprised that we don't find a new species of monkey every couple of years, and a new species of ape every couple of decades.
At the same time, Dave doesn't believe that three billion years is enough time to get from a bacterium to a jellyfish.
Hmm…
Do you guys really not understand this? That is astounding. Is no one familiar with dog breeders? Or horse breeeders? Do you not understand what a short time it takes to get radically different looking dogs and horses? This is not evolution, friend. It's artificial selection and it's quite similar to natural selection and works very quickly--the only difference is with artificial selection there is a breeder making the selection. But you could give a breeder a billion years and he could not breed a jellyfish from a bacterium. Or a human from an ape. Or a bird from a dinosaur. Sorry!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But you could give a breeder a billion years and he could not breed a jellyfish from a bacterium. Or a human from an ape. Or a bird from a dinosaur. Sorry!
Let's see your evidence and/or calculations.
You ain't got any.
Your inability to comprehend reality is not evidence.
Do you guys really not understand this? That is astounding. Is no one familiar with dog breeders? Or horse breeeders? Do you not understand what a short time it takes to get radically different looking dogs and horses?
Well, as a horse owner, I understand quite well. There is one problem, dude. A breed is not the same thing as a species. The four year old AWS registered Percheron-Arab cross out in my pasture is Equus caballus. Just like her sire and just like her dam. Funny thing, the race-bred quarter horse, paint horse, and Section A Welsh out grazing with her are a pretty diverse looking lot, but are all Equus caballus too.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Just for the record AFDave; the only reason you are doing this is to brainwash your children.
A crime against humanity if ever there was one.
Remember there is no greater God than God.......Allah Akbar!!!
Die Crusader Fundy Scum!!
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Do you guys really not understand this? That is astounding. Is no one familiar with dog breeders? Or horse breeeders? Do you not understand what a short time it takes to get radically different looking dogs and horses? This is not evolution, friend. It's artificial selection and it's quite similar to natural selection and works very quickly--the only difference is with artificial selection there is a breeder making the selection. But you could give a breeder a billion years and he could not breed a jellyfish from a bacterium. Or a human from an ape. Or a bird from a dinosaur. Sorry!
Dave, Dogs are all the same species. Are baboons the same species as macaques? Are Chimps the same species as orangutans? If there's anyone here who doesn't know what they're talking about, it's you. Are you saying getting from some "founder kind" kind of monkey to both baboons and macaques is the same as getting from some "founder kind" of dog to both chihuahuas and mastiffs?
It's simply amazing how you can continue to churn out the same dreck that ignorant yahoo creationists have been spouting for 150 years. It's like creationists are simply incapable of learning from errors.
By the way, Dave. I probably shouldn't assume this: do you really understand the difference between 4,500 years and 3 billion years? Is your brain capable of understanding the enormous gulf of time between the two? Don't just reflexively say "of course I do!" because you clearly don't. Really think about it. Spend an hour or two reflecting on how long a billion years really is.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
He (or, more accurately, the sources he C&Ps from) take a technique, apply it in a situation where it is known not to work (like using radiocarbon to date 250-million-year-old coal deposits),
Interesting, isn't it, Eric, why C14 dating "doesn't work" on coal or diamonds. There is no reason why it should not. There's plenty of measurable C14 there, 10X and 5X the AMS threshhold. Enough to get the AMS labs scratching their heads going "Where in the world did that come from? It shouldn't be there! Maybe our instruments are messed up! Maybe we have contamination! Ohmigod! What do we do! The Creos are going to jump all over this!"
Jonny-wonny...
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I already explicitly answered your question, Davie-poo. Go back and read my posts for comprehension.
No you didn't. You dodged it. You have not answered my question of 'On what basis do you reject C14 dating of coal and diamonds, but you accept it for dating wooden artifacts and cave paintings?' An answer of 'Well, everyone knows you can't date coal and diamonds with C14' won't do.
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Thinkk "cross-checking" and what level of contamination is required to change the calcluated date of a sample of, say, 30K years age. Remember exponentials, Davie-wavey?
I think you are trying to say it doesn't take much. But I think you are mistaken. Takes quite a bit, there Johnny-wonny. Going from 50k to 20k is .24% to almost 9%. Here's the formula for you, Jonny-wonny. It's logarithms, not exponentials, Jonny-wonny. Remember logarithms? A = [ ln (pMC) / (-0.693) ] x 5730 Your MIT arrogance is blinding you and now you are confusing logarithms with exponentials.
Eric...
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But you're not dating anything that's less than 10,000 years old, Dave. You still haven't grasped the fundamental point here: radiometric dates correlate extremely well with figures derived from multiple other independent methods. Your phony radiometric dates don't correlate with anything else, other than your desire to have a young earth. Your "suspicions" are, quite simply, wrong.
Yes I am dating something less than 10,000 years old. And my C14 dates correlate extremely well with many other lines of evidence, 14 of them listed right here.
Also, just consider the very few things I have shown you ...
* You have NO explanation for how civilization appeared so abruptly just 6000 years ago, 194,000 years after H. Sapiens was living on earth. I do.
* You have no believeable explanation for why there is so much Helium retained in zircons. I showed you the Fenton Hill zircons, and you said, 'Yeah, well that's not enough data.' OK. So I showed you the Gold Butte zircons. And you had no answer.
* There is a revival of the U/Th/4He geochronometer taking place as we speak. http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102004/1519.pdf Of course they are not looking for a 6000 year old earth, but no doubt we will obtain much more data on high helium retentive zircons over the next few years. The RATE Group themselves will be doing other zircon tests as well.
* You have no explanation for why there is so much C14 in coal and diamonds. These should be C14 'dead' according to mainstream science. JonF's assertion of contamination is bogus because then you would have to throw out the whole method for wood artifacts, cave paintings, etc.
StephenWells...
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It's hilarious that he brings up this paper as if it supports him, when in fact the entire methodology of the paper completely trashes what Humphreys did with his zircons.
You're missing the point of bringing up the article as usual. The point is that there are probably MANY HRZ's out there. Of course, conventional geologists are not going to be testing them the same way Humphreys did because they are looking for different things.
Carlson...
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Well, as a horse owner, I understand quite well. There is one problem, dude. A breed is not the same thing as a species. The four year old AWS registered Percheron-Arab cross out in my pasture is Equus caballus. Just like her sire and just like her dam. Funny thing, the race-bred quarter horse, paint horse, and Section A Welsh out grazing with her are a pretty diverse looking lot, but are all Equus caballus too.
Yes. And the apes are a pretty diverse looking lot as well and anyone that knows anything about breeding should know that it doesn't take long to get a lot of very different looking apes.
My head just spins at some of the blindness on this thread!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Is no one familiar with dog breeders? Or horse breeeders? Do you not understand what a short time it takes to get radically different looking dogs and horses?
Looks aren't everything. Dog breeding is shallow and forced. The traits breeders have selected for were much narrower than nature selects for. Many pure breed dogs have all the symptoms of inbred human families with lots of genetic diseases. Dog breeders haven't really created a new species, not quite. In fact, dogs and wolves can still be bred together to create a hybrid.
Dog breeding is now improving because of what we've learned about genetics and evolution.
The genetic variability in monkeys is much wider. They can't all breed together and create hybrids. The genetic differences between wild canines is greater than that of dogs.
He (or, more accurately, the sources he C&Ps from) take a technique, apply it in a situation where it is known not to work (like using radiocarbon to date 250-million-year-old coal deposits),
Interesting, isn't it, Eric, why C14 dating "doesn't work" on coal or diamonds. There is no reason why it should not. There's plenty of measurable C14 there, 10X and 5X the AMS threshhold. Enough to get the AMS labs scratching their heads going "Where in the world did that come from? It shouldn't be there! Maybe our instruments are messed up! Maybe we have contamination! Ohmigod! What do we do! The Creos are going to jump all over this!"
Dave, your ignorance and inability to reason evidently knows no bounds. "No reason why it should not?" Are you smoking crack? We've already told you, multiple times, why it doesn't work. There's not enough C14 left after 10 half-lives to stand out from background contamination! How much clearer can you get? As an electrical engineer, do you understand what signal-to-noise ratios are?
It's simply amazing how repeating the same things to you over and over and over again has no discernible effect. You're really starting to remind me of Thordaddy. JonF, an expert in this area, has already gotten to the finish line, and you're not even out of second gear yet.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And the apes are a pretty diverse looking lot as well and anyone that knows anything about breeding should know that it doesn't take long to get a lot of very different looking apes.
My head just spins at some of the blindness on this thread!
Not just different looking but really different. As in they cannot breed with each other and produce fertile offspring.
Well, since as predicted AFDave is doing his best tap dance to avoid his embarrassment over facing the C14/C12 calibration evidence, I'll ask another question
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AFDave: Do you guys really not understand this? That is astounding. Is no one familiar with dog breeders? Or horse breeeders? Do you not understand what a short time it takes to get radically different looking dogs and horses?
Which of these two are more close to each other, and why?
1. Red Mazda Miata convertible 2. Red BMW Z3 3.0i convertible 3. Blue BMW 330i sedan?
By AFDave's logic, if must be 1 and 2 because hey, they superficially look alike, right?
Never mind that 2 and 3 share the same engine, drive train components, suspension design, electronics, cabin styling, etc. Those are all internal similarities, but that evidence doesn't count.
Did I get your reasoning correct on that one Dave?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
After seeing ericmurphy's astute comment to AFDave
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Dave, your ignorance and inability to reason evidently knows no bounds. "No reason why it should not?" Are you smoking crack? We've already told you, multiple times, why it doesn't work. There's not enough C14 left after 10 half-lives to stand out from background contamination! How much clearer can you get? As an electrical engineer, do you understand what signal-to-noise ratios are?
I will add:
Dave, you claim to be an EE with background in telecommunications, right?
What do you see when you try to measure a -80dBm signal on a spectrum analyzer that has a noise floor of -70dBm?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Yes. And the apes are a pretty diverse looking lot as well and anyone that knows anything about breeding should know that it doesn't take long to get a lot of very different looking apes.
(Who 'breeds apes'? ? ?)
Dave, your refusal to admit you don't know what you're talking about is pathological.
The 264 species of moneys are DIFFERENT SPECIES. That means they have significant genetic differences and CAN'T INTERBREED.
The different breeds of dogs are just varieties that all look different. They're all the same species. They can all breed no problem. Their genetic differences are negligible.
Differences of the former kind take FAR LONGER to develop. What is more, the different breeds of dog were developed under direct human pressure, not by natural selection.
Do you REALLY not understand the difference between dog breeds and species of monkeys?
Stupidity is not a Christian virtue, Dave.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
By the way, Dave. I probably shouldn't assume this: do you really understand the difference between 4,500 years and 3 billion years?
Yes. And 3 billion years is not anywhere near enough to make a jellyfish from a bacteria (your example). 3 billion X 3 billion X 3 billion isn't enough. New information simply does not arise by chance, Eric.
Eric...
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There's not enough C14 left after 10 half-lives to stand out from background contamination! How much clearer can you get? As an electrical engineer, do you understand what signal-to-noise ratios are?
And you keep closing your eyes to the fact that there is MUCH more C14 in coal over and above the 'background C14' ... there is 0.24 pMC Eric. The 'background C14' is 0.077 pMC. Let me do the math for you Eric, since you and Aftershave are trying to say I don't know anything about SNR's.
And it's not like we are pulling this stuff out of thin air. The LAB, Eric, the LAB (you know, those non-YEC, conventional labs?) analyzed this coal and everyone knows you can date things up to 60,000 years old with C14.
Well guess what. The coal comes out to 50,000 using YOUR assumptions of C14 concentration.
Forget for now the difference between this 50,000 year date and my 6000 year old hypothesis. That is a separate issue, which I will explain to you later.
How do you not see that this 50,000 year result is a really big problem for your scenario that this coal is supposedly 50-350 million years old?
Are you so blind as to see this? Does this not for a second give you pause about all those supposedly reliable radiometric dating methods?
JonF apparently is the only one on this whole thread that recognizes that the carbon is really there in the quantities we say it is in.
And the only explanation he has is "contamination."
The problem is that if you go with contamination, you have to throw the whole dating method in the trash, because ANY sample could have contamination. You cannot have it both ways.
********************************
It's interesting to me to note how desperate some of you are becoming ...
Here's k.e ... He is frustrated that I am making sense and he really wants those precious lurkers to not get 'tricked by my nonsense' and he has nothing scientific to say himself so he says ...
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Just for the record AFDave; the only reason you are doing this is to brainwash your children. A crime against humanity if ever there was one. Remember there is no greater God than God.......Allah Akbar!!!
Die Crusader Fundy Scum!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Do you REALLY not understand the difference between dog breeds and species of monkeys?
Of course I do. And the reason you do not see ape breeding is because there is no commercial market for it like there is for dogs and cats and horses, etc. My hypothesis says that the 'ape breeding' already occurred within the last 4500 years. And the various species are now relatively fixed. Can I prove this scenario? I don't know yet. I have not gotten into this very deeply. I'm into C14 right now. We shall see. I rather doubt I can. But what I can do is argue that my hypothesis is entirely plausible from what we know of species that we DO have experience breeding.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Do you REALLY not understand the difference between dog breeds and species of monkeys?
Of course I do. And the reason you do not see ape breeding is because there is no commercial market for it like there is for dogs and cats and horses, etc. My hypothesis says that the 'ape breeding' already occurred within the last 4500 years. And the various species are now relatively fixed. Can I prove this scenario? I don't know yet. I have not gotten into this very deeply. I'm into C14 right now. We shall see. I rather doubt I can. But what I can do is argue that my hypothesis is entirely plausible from what we know of species that we DO have experience breeding.
You're avoiding the main question, big surprise.
Answer me this: you really believe that evolution operates so fast that a NEW SPECIES of monkey, so genetically different from others that it cannot interbreed with them, appears on average every 17 years?
Gosh. Nothing I've ever read on monkeys or primates has ever mentioned this. Yet another one of those amazing factoids that ONLY AFDAVE KNOWS.
(And yet a bacteria cannot become a jellyfish in 3 billion + years.)
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But what I can do is argue that my hypothesis is entirely plausible from what we know of species that we DO have experience breeding.
Wrong, pinhead. No 'breeding' that anyone has ever done has ever resulted in different species.
Just to recheck, you DO know the difference between species, and breeds, right? Right?
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My hypothesis says that the 'ape breeding' already occurred within the last 4500 years.
Oh really? Who bred them?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Forget for now the difference between this 50,000 year date and my 6000 year old hypothesis. That is a separate issue, which I will explain to you later.
How do you not see that this 50,000 year result is a really big problem for your scenario that this coal is supposedly 50-350 million years old?
This is your hypothesis thread, afdave. Don't worry about our "problems" with carbon dating. Get to your problem of 50,000 year old coal.
AFDave, please explain for the Christian lurkers how your YEC 'theory' accounts for all the many different, independent C14/C12 calibration curves that precisely overlap with one another.
Your continued evasion of this critical piece of evidence says as much about your intellectual honesty as it does about the emptiness of your claims. A good Christain would not continually avoid facing the evidence, ALL the evidence.
Every non-answer = loss for AFDave, win for evolution
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
[qquote]Interesting, isn't it, Eric, why C14 dating "doesn't work" on coal or diamonds. There is no reason why it should not.
Yes, Davie-wavie, there is a reason why it should not. It's the same reason C14 dating doesn't work on marine organisms; the C14 in the samples is not derived from the atmosphere or a source in equilibrium with the atmosphere when the sample formed.
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There's plenty of measurable C14 there, 10X and 5X the AMS threshhold.
A necessary but not sufficient condition.
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I already explicitly answered your question, Davie-poo. Go back and read my posts for comprehension.
No you didn't. You dodged it. You have not answered my question of 'On what basis do you reject C14 dating of coal and diamonds, but you accept it for dating wooden artifacts and cave paintings?' An answer of 'Well, everyone knows you can't date coal and diamonds with C14' won't do.
I never provided an answer anywhere near "everyone knows you can't date coal and diamonds with C14", and I did answer your question, but I suppose you're just too stupid to see what's in front of your face.
There are several sources of C14. When we have good reason to believe that the overwhelmingly major source of C14 in a sample is the atmosphere at the time the sample was formed, that sample can be dated by the C14 method. If dating by the C14 method agrees with other methods, so much the better. A same that has far too much C14 for it to be the result of in-situ formation due to radiation (there'd have to be enough radiation around to make us all sick), that on inspection shows to have been well-protected against groundwater-borne contamination, is valid. A sample that has very little C14 and is not likely to have derived that C14 from the atmosphere is not valid.
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Think "cross-checking" and what level of contamination is required to change the calculated date of a sample of, say, 30K years age. Remember exponentials, Davie-wavey?
I think you are trying to say it doesn't take much.
Nope, wrong again. It takes a lot. Lots and lots more than we find in the coal and diamonds. You can't even understand your own numbers.
And you forgot to think about cross-correlations. Corals, tree-rings, ice-cores, varves (me hearties! ), ... all demonstrate the validity of the method.
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But I think you are mistaken. Takes quite a bit, there Johnny-wonny. Going from 50k to 20k is .24% to almost 9%. Here's the formula for you, Jonny-wonny. It's logarithms, not exponentials, Jonny-wonny. Remember logarithms? A = [ ln (pMC) / (-0.693) ] x 5730 Your MIT arrogance is blinding you and now you are confusing logarithms with exponentials.
Logarithms and exponentials are two sides of the same coin, Davie-poo. I know the numbers, and I know that 9% is 37 times larger than 0.24%. Your own numbers are telling you that the amount of contamination that makes a contaminated diamond appear to be 50K years old is totally insignificant if it appears in an organic sample that was in equilibrium with the atmosphere 20K years ago; therefore the contamination won't affect the result significantly and dating the 20K year old sample gives the corect result. That's the power of exponentials and the reason why minuscule amounts of C14 in coal and diamonds is not a problem for the entire field of C14 dating.
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And my C14 dates correlate extremely well with many other lines of evidence, 14 of them listed right here.
The only C14 dates you have presented are on the order of 60K years, which is far more than 10,000 years and does not correalte at all with the fantasies at AIG.
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* You have no explanation for why there is so much C14 in coal and diamonds. These should be C14 'dead' according to mainstream science. JonF's assertion of contamination is bogus because then you would have to throw out the whole method for wood artifacts, cave paintings, etc.
Wrong as usual, Davie-poo. The contamination is significant only for items that "date" to 50-60K years, and even then it's not always significant. Because of the power of exponentials, younger dates are not affected.
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My head just spins at some of the blindness on this thread!
Well, try opening your eyes to reality. Nobody here but you is blind.
From long hard experience here, I can assure you AFD does not understand that phrase.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
By the way, Dave. I probably shouldn't assume this: do you really understand the difference between 4,500 years and 3 billion years?
Yes. And 3 billion years is not anywhere near enough to make a jellyfish from a bacteria (your example). 3 billion X 3 billion X 3 billion isn't enough. New information simply does not arise by chance, Eric.
A common, and long-dubunked, loon claim.
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Eric...
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There's not enough C14 left after 10 half-lives to stand out from background contamination! How much clearer can you get? As an electrical engineer, do you understand what signal-to-noise ratios are?
And you keep closing your eyes to the fact that there is MUCH more C14 in coal over and above the 'background C14' ... there is 0.24 pMC Eric. The 'background C14' is 0.077 pMC.
You guys are talking about different meanings of "background", and Eric's is the more relevant meaning. The 0.077 pMC is the portion of the background noise that is due to inherent limitations in the lab's measuring equipment. Eric's speaking of the total background noise relative to the signal (which signal is the atmospherically-derived C14 if there is any). The 0.077 pMC is only a part of the overall background noise, which is due to equipment limitations, possibly groundwater contamination, possibly in-situ formation, possibly something else.
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Well guess what. The coal comes out to 50,000 using YOUR assumptions of C14 concentration.
Nope. You need your assumption that the C14 is derived from the atmosphere. Using our "assumptions", the age comes out to be un-measurable.
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The problem is that if you go with contamination, you have to throw the whole dating method in the trash, because ANY sample could have contamination. You cannot have it both ways.
Yup, any sample could have contamination; that's why we cross-check and look for possible contamiantion sources. The correlations with other methods and observations wouldn't come out as they do if we're just measuring contamination. And, due to the power of exponentials, there's no way to get enough contamination into samples 30K years old and younger to mess up the results.
"Look at this amount of genetic difference. Scientists say it happened in a few million years." "No way, not enough time." "Not enough time for chimps and apes to split?" "Chimps and apes? Oh, I thought you were referring to humans and chimps. Well, in that case, that amount of genetic difference could have happened in 4,500 years."
I wonder, is a new species of monkey evolving every 17 years an example of microevolution or macroevolution?
Actually, I think it'd require a new category, megaevolution.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Tolkien bored my knickers off ........Catholic apologetics reached its high point with Evelyn Waugh in my opinion.
Someone finish this .....please!
Otherwise I will be forced to medievil taunts ....and it will not be pretty.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Nope. You need your assumption that the C14 is derived from the atmosphere. Using our "assumptions", the age comes out to be un-measurable.
This one is going to be very easy, JonF. I think it is almost time for us to move on to evidence for a Global Flood. Because it has now become quite clear that the massive coal beds of the world were formed catastrophically in the Flood, not over millions of years as you claim.
When one understands this, it is quite easy to see how the organic material which formed coal was in contact with the pre-Flood atmosphere, hence the detectable C14.
I am glad of one thing with the C14 discussion. You (not others, but you) came at me with really the only shred of wood that can possibly keep your long age scenario afloat -- contamination. So thankfully I didn't have to spend a great deal of time explaining the basics to everyone else.
I'm tempted to insert a discussion about the text of the book of Genesis in here just before the Flood discussion. It is obvious that no one here has an appreciation of the archaeologically proven fact that this is a reliable document of eyewitness testimony.
I'll think about it over the weekend.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
it has now become quite clear that the massive coal beds of the world were formed catastrophically in the Flood, not over millions of years as you claim.
...and explain to me why these Christians, who are far far more knowledgeable about Geology than you, have come to the conclusion that YEC is impossible, based on geological facts.
Because once again, this looks to be one of those cases where everyone with expertise in a subject disagrees with you, who has absolutely no claim to any expertise in a subject.
Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Because once again, this looks to be one of those cases where everyone with expertise in a subject disagrees with you, who has absolutely no claim to any expertise in a subject.
Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
It's probably pretty disappointing to him. Before coming here, he thought that only biologists were delusional and untrustworthy. Now he knows that geologists, physicists, everybody in the scientific community has worse judgement than untrained amateurs like himself. Truly, everybody in the US science system should be fired and replaced with fundamentalist christians. Then you'd see some real scientific progress, lemme tell you!
Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
What's troubling is that only about half the population buys into your long age Darwinian fantasies in spite of all these excellent, smart scientists who are peddling the theory.
It's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Evos have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?'
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Arden said: Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
Of course not ONCE THE BEAST HAS MATED its all over sunshine!
"The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi" Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Survival ........the evolutionary engine.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
What's troubling is that only about half the population buys into your long age Darwinian fantasies in spite of all these excellent, smart scientists who are peddling the theory.
It's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Evos have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?'
Only half the population?
Do you have any figures for how many trained scientists or biologists accept 'Darwinism'? Like, people with that dreaded expertise? People with actual *knowledge*?
Do you have any figures for how many TRAINED GEOLOGISTS agree with your YEC geology?
I can tell you right now how many trained linguists agree with your theories on language.
You're avoiding the subject again. Here's the question again. As far as I can tell, you have no real expertise or training in ANY subject, except perhaps flying planes. Now, despite this lack of ANY expertise in, say, linguistics, geology, and biology, you are firmly convinced that you know more than anyone with any training in those subjects. I just sent you a link to some very serious CHRISTIAN geologists who, with great trepidation, concluded that YEC is simply totally incompatible with the geological facts.
You, with no geological training or expertise, know better than them.
Your whole MO seems to be to peddle the notion that trained people are the LAST people you would want to ask about any subject. Only untrained fundamentalist Protestants who've read an article or two and come to the same conclusion as you are to be trusted.
Okay, let's examine further your notion that untrained, ignorant people are the best qualified to make pronouncements on a subject, especially if there are a lot of them.
There are several hundred million Moslems in the world who do not agree with you on the Bible. There are a billion Hundus who also disagree with you on the Bible.
Now, that's almost two billion humans who flat out DO NOT AGREE with your opinions. That's a lot of people. More than there are Christians.
Shouldn't THEIR opinions on the subject be just as valid as Christians'? Since you value impassioned ignorance so much?
Now, "it's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Christians have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?"
Now, neither Moslems nor Hindus nor Christians have any kind of real evidence for their religious beliefs. Nothing like the evidence there is for evolution, geology, and linguistics you reject.
Why is that, Dave? Why do you reject any and all learning that makes you the least bit uncomfortable?
Set aside evolutionary biology. Why do you reject the findings of the vast majority of people with actual TRAINING in geology?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun '............ And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Thought you'd like to know that ......since arseholes can't understand anything.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Please, read Claude Shannons work on information theory. You will see that chance (I take it you mean randomness?) generates the highest information content.
What's troubling is that only about half the population buys into your long age Darwinian fantasies in spite of all these excellent, smart scientists who are peddling the theory.
It's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Evos have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?'
indeed it is troubling to us, Dave, but not for the reasons you think.
What it tells me is that when someone looks at the sky and sees the sun "rising and setting", intuitively they are more likely to believe that the sun orbits the earth.
If they refuse to accept the evidence that this is not the case, (evidently, a large number of americans do - far from a majority, but significant enough to measure) does that make a heliocentric theory incorrect?
do you think the sun orbits the earth, Dave?
why or why not?
answer those questions, and you will begin to see what is troubling over the much larger proportion of americans who refuse to accept the same level of evidence in support of the ToE.
The funny thing is, Dave, if scientists actually "indoctrinated" kids like you apparently think we do, the level of acceptance would probably be MUCH higher.
I'ts the INDOCTRINATION of religion masquerading as science that has caused the problem, although I doubt you could actually see this. You're simply too far gone.
when folks think that the right reverend is "Asking the right questions between the two theories", they've already been set on a path that will reject any evidentiary argument.
When they think that their pastor is qualified to speak to the evidence in support of ANY scientific theory, based on their experience as a pastor, then they will fail to accept any real-world evidence garnered and tested by actual scientists.
yes, Dave, THIS is troubling to many of us.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
By the way, Dave. I probably shouldn't assume this: do you really understand the difference between 4,500 years and 3 billion years?
Yes. And 3 billion years is not anywhere near enough to make a jellyfish from a bacteria (your example). 3 billion X 3 billion X 3 billion isn't enough. New information simply does not arise by chance, Eric.
Dave, you've said half a dozen times so far that "three billion years isn't enough time for this, and it isn't enough time for that, and it isn't enough time for this other thing, either." You have, so far, presented not so much as a tattered fragment of evidence to support this contention, because you have no such evidence. It's known as "argument by assertion," Dave, and it's getting you exactly nowhere. You have no idea how long it takes to get from bacterium to jelly fish. Once again, you're relying on your own personal incredulity, and based on far wrong you've been on everything so far, we have a pretty good idea how reliable a guide that is.
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Eric...
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There's not enough C14 left after 10 half-lives to stand out from background contamination! How much clearer can you get? As an electrical engineer, do you understand what signal-to-noise ratios are?
And you keep closing your eyes to the fact that there is MUCH more C14 in coal over and above the 'background C14' ... there is 0.24 pMC Eric. The 'background C14' is 0.077 pMC. Let me do the math for you Eric, since you and Aftershave are trying to say I don't know anything about SNR's.
Dave, I know enough about S/N to know how wrong you are. Do you know what percentage of carbon is C14, Dave? About 1.3E10-12%, that's how much. The "signal," after a few hundred thousand half-lives, is swamped in the noise. Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange that no matter how far back you go, the C14 levels never get below a certain point? You can go back to the beginning of time, and you'll still have an irreducible minimum of C14. That's why anyone who doesn't have his head firmly crammed up his ass doesn't use radiocarbon dating further back than 50,000 years. It has nothing to do with the sensitivity of the equipment.
Answer Mr. Aftershave's question, Dave: what do you do to detect a -80dB signal with a device with a noise floor of -70dB?
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And it's not like we are pulling this stuff out of thin air. The LAB, Eric, the LAB (you know, those non-YEC, conventional labs?) analyzed this coal and everyone knows you can date things up to 60,000 years old with C14.
Well guess what. The coal comes out to 50,000 using YOUR assumptions of C14 concentration.
And we've told you again and again that that's exactly what one would expect, and you'll get that same value for any carbon source more than 60,000 years old.
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Forget for now the difference between this 50,000 year date and my 6000 year old hypothesis. That is a separate issue, which I will explain to you later.
How do you not see that this 50,000 year result is a really big problem for your scenario that this coal is supposedly 50-350 million years old?
No. And I've told you exactly why it's not a problem for me, or for anyone else who has the faintest idea how radiometric dating works. What do you get for dates when you use a method actually suited for dating 30-150-million year deposits, Dave? Do you get 50,000 years? No. You get 30-150 million years.
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JonF apparently is the only one on this whole thread that recognizes that the carbon is really there in the quantities we say it is in.
No he's not. We all know that the C14 is in the measured quantities. For the last time, that's entirely expected. You're the only one here who thinks it's amazing, and that it proves a young earth (despite the fact that the value is still nine times lower than it should be for your hypothesis).
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And the only explanation he has is "contamination."
The problem is that if you go with contamination, you have to throw the whole dating method in the trash, because ANY sample could have contamination. You cannot have it both ways.
Yes you absolutely can. Take an eyedropper of India ink, and put it in a thimbleful of water. Now take that same eyedropper of India ink, and put it in a swimming pool. Notice any difference?
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It's interesting to me to note how desperate some of you are becoming ...
Dave the only person who should be desperate here is you. We've seen these same arguments a million times before, and they've been refuted a million times before. The only reason you aren't feeling desperate is because you've got a terminal case of Black Knight Syndrome (BKS).
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I am glad of one thing with the C14 discussion. You (not others, but you) came at me with really the only shred of wood that can possibly keep your long age scenario afloat -- contamination. So thankfully I didn't have to spend a great deal of time explaining the basics to everyone else.
I'll point out for all to see that AFDave failed to even acknowledge the C14/C12 calibration data that was presented to him four different times in the last week alone. His ridiculous RATE claims don't begin to address this contrary evidence, and AFDave himself is way too dense to think of an answer by himself.
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OA:You claim that radiocarbon dating is faulty based on incorrect assumptions about decay rates and C12 concentrations. You have been shown several times now how dates from C14/C12 decay rates are precisely calibrated by at least six different, completely independent methods (denrochronology, ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, speleothems, coral samples) and are accurate to within a few percent for dates back to 60,000 YBP. You were provided the actual data, including the calibration curves themselves that all overlap almost exactly.
Those data sets and many others - over 40 total - are available from CalPal, the University of Cologne Radiocarbon Calibration Program Package: CALIBRATION DATA SETS
Please don't waste our time by C&Ping some ICR or AIG argument as to why each individual calibration curve method is wrong. I'm asking again for your explanation as to why the independent methods all agree with one another. If you see six independent sets of data that you say are all screwed up, then how do you explain that all six are screwed up but screwed up in precisely the same way as to give precisely matching results over the whole date range?
AFDave once again disgraces the title 'Christian' by his total lack of honesty in dealing with the radiocarbon dating topic. Instead, AFDave gives us his concept of how an 'honest search for the TRUTH' means that he can misrepresent or totally ignore any and all data that exposes his scientific ignorance.
Great job Dave, Jesus would be proud. Bet you're not still showing this thread to your wife and fellow church goers, are you?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Do you REALLY not understand the difference between dog breeds and species of monkeys?
Of course I do. And the reason you do not see ape breeding is because there is no commercial market for it like there is for dogs and cats and horses, etc. My hypothesis says that the 'ape breeding' already occurred within the last 4500 years. And the various species are now relatively fixed. Can I prove this scenario? I don't know yet. I have not gotten into this very deeply. I'm into C14 right now. We shall see. I rather doubt I can. But what I can do is argue that my hypothesis is entirely plausible from what we know of species that we DO have experience breeding.
No. The reason you don't see ape breeding, Dave, is because you cannot interbreed separate species. That's the definition of species. If you can't interbreed and get fertile offspring, you've got two different species. Economics has nothing to do with it.
Dave, what happens when you breed a Great Dane and a Wienerdog? Mechanical difficulties aside (presumably we're talking a male Winerdog and a female Great Dane), you get puppies.
What happens when you breed a gorilla and a chimp? Nothing. Ick factor aside, you don't get baby Chorillas or Gimps.
Are you saying there was a market for ape half-breeds 4,500 years ago when you could get Chorillas and Gimps? And I suppose you've got some evidence for all this bestiality? Dogs have been bred for close on 4,500 years; how come they haven't differentiated into different species? You can breed wolves and dogs, and occasionally get puppies. When did wolves and dogs start differentiating, Dave? 900 years ago?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well, as a horse owner, I understand quite well. There is one problem, dude. A breed is not the same thing as a species. The four year old AWS registered Percheron-Arab cross out in my pasture is Equus caballus. Just like her sire and just like her dam. Funny thing, the race-bred quarter horse, paint horse, and Section A Welsh out grazing with her are a pretty diverse looking lot, but are all Equus caballus too.
Yes. And the apes are a pretty diverse looking lot as well and anyone that knows anything about breeding should know that it doesn't take long to get a lot of very different looking apes.
Umm, get a dictionary. Look up the noun 'breed'. Now look up 'specie'. Notice any difference?
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My head just spins at some of the blindness on this thread!
You might want to get your eye sight checked. I hear it can cause equillibrium problems.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
ORIGINS is the problem, Arden. Am I making that clear? I trust the experts in many, many, many many, fields. For instance ...
I think medical science is tremendous. I love antibiotics and anesthesia and modern surgical procedures. I love genetic research and the wonderful elucidation of the cell which we have see in modern times. I love nuclear power and nanotechnology. I love chemistry and physics and hydroelectricity and neuroscience to name a few things and on and on and on I could go.
Do you keep saying I am anti-science just to be an ass? Does it somehow make you feel better to say I hate science? Do you really have so little to say about the positive virtues of ToE that all you are able to do is blow a bunch of bogus hot air at me about how I supposedly hate science? You are really ignorant in spite of your PhD if that is your MO.
I know you were miffed about the Portuguese thing because you are a linguist and all, but that little incident illustrates beautifully how a trained professional like yourself can be completely wrong about something from his very own field of study. You keep claiming that all the linguists in the world disagree with me and you've never shown me one. I don't even think the linguists of the world CARE about Portuguese enough to even study it in the detail that I gave you. The linguists of the world say 'Portuguese is a Romance language descended from Latin ... blah, blah, blah' and that's about it, which I have consistently agreed with. But they don't give the details that I gave you. The only reason YOU are interested is because you don't like my views on origins and you want to refute me on something.
So. You'll pardon me if I don't accept everything that the experts say. I like experts. I need experts. I hire experts. But experts don't know everything. And in the area of origins, they have this curious blindness which is only explainable as resembling some sort of weird religious belief.
OA...
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Even a bogus claim of 100x the biomass does not equate to 100x more C12 in the atmosphere. Provide your evidence for this or retract.
Massive oils beds. Massive coal beds. Massive chalk beds. Massive organic material, OA, buried catastrophically. The explanation? Massive quantities of organic material pre-Flood. 100X is very conservative. Could be as high as 500X. Are you really telling me you don't know about these three HUGE instances of organic matter? Are you going to make me cite references to prove what should be so obvious to you? Have you really no idea how massive our coal, oil and chalk beds are?
OA...
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You have been shown several times now how dates from C14/C12 decay rates are precisely calibrated by at least six different, completely independent methods (denrochronology, ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, speleothems, coral samples) and are accurate to within a few percent for dates back to 60,000 YBP.
And you have been shown many times that the evidence for a young earth is much more compelling than evidence for an old earth. After I walk you through some of Humphreys 14 points, this will be even more clear to you. I will be happy to look at your "calibration data" as I have time, but I suspect I will find many holes in it just as I have been finding holes in your other arguments about origins.
Arden...
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...and explain to me why these Christians, who are far far more knowledgeable about Geology than you, have come to the conclusion that YEC is impossible, based on geological facts.
Oh yes. Of course. THESE Christians are far more knowledgeable about geology than YECs. Why? Because they believe in long ages, of course, you ninny!
Eric...
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No. The reason you don't see ape breeding, Dave, is because you cannot interbreed separate species. That's the definition of species. If you can't interbreed and get fertile offspring, you've got two different species.
I understand all this quite well and we will get into it.
But we are on C14 now and I am trying to decide which would be more fun next ...
1) The Flood 2) The Book of Genesis 3) Polonium radiohalos 4) Radiometric dating discordance
They are all fun topics ...... !
Maybe I should take a vote?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Umm, get a dictionary. Look up the noun 'breed'. Now look up 'specie'. Notice any difference?
This is why Creationists are fond of the term 'kind': it subsumes 'breed', 'subspecies', 'species', 'genus', 'family' and so on. Makes biological grouping much simpler.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Do you keep saying I am anti-science just to be an ass? Does it somehow make you feel better to say I hate science? Do you really have so little to say about the positive virtues of ToE that all you are able to do is blow a bunch of bogus hot air at me about how I supposedly hate science? You are really ignorant in spite of your PhD if that is your MO.
*yawwwwn* sorry, I fell asleep before i could finish the rest of your idiotic rant.
no Dave, we keep saying it because you DO, in fact, hate how science works. You just like the end results.
Like a hypocritical self-proclaimed environmentalist that drives an SUV to a protest against global warming.
Yup, you're even worse than that.
and as to this:
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ORIGINS is the problem, Arden. Am I making that clear?
No, Dave, not at all. Where have you discussed abiogenesis anywhere in your ranting before?
I thought we were discussing how much evolutionary theory, various dating techniques, geology, etc., invalidate your God "hypothesis"?
If you thought abiogenesis was the important issue, you should have started with that.
Idiot.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I know you were miffed about the Portuguese thing because you are a linguist and all, but that little incident illustrates beautifully how a trained professional like yourself can be completely wrong about something from his very own field of study. You keep claiming that all the linguists in the world disagree with me and you've never shown me one.
You're lying again, since several people here gave you several references, none of which supported your view.
I invite you to show me where in there it says Portuguese a mixture of French and Spanish.
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I don't even think the linguists of the world CARE about Portuguese enough to even study it in the detail that I gave you.
Bullshit. Linguists have been studying ALL the Romance languages for well over a hundred years. It's one of the best-studied areas of linguistics. This reveals just how crushingly little you know about this.
'Detail'? All you did was give us your ignorant gut hunches.
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The linguists of the world say 'Portuguese is a Romance language descended from Latin ... blah, blah, blah' and that's about it, which I have consistently agreed with. But they don't give the details that I gave you. The only reason YOU are interested is because you don't like my views on origins and you want to refute me on something.
Bullshit. You said something stupid on language, and I called you on it. We gave you several references from linguists, none of which supported your view. Your persecution complex won't win your argument here.
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Do you keep saying I am anti-science just to be an ass? Does it somehow make you feel better to say I hate science? Do you really have so little to say about the positive virtues of ToE that all you are able to do is blow a bunch of bogus hot air at me about how I supposedly hate science? You are really ignorant in spite of your PhD if that is your MO.
No, I think the consensus here is that you're a frightened little man who knows very little of science yet who is terrified that science might tell him something that contradicts his childishly literal interpretation of Genesis. Add to that an egomania that prevents you from ever admitting you're wrong, and you have a person who basically is unteachable, and who is certainly unqualified to teach anyone anything.
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Oh yes. Of course. THESE Christians are far more knowledgeable about geology than YECs. Why? Because they believe in long ages, of course, you ninny!
No, they are knowledgeable about geology BECAUSE THEY HAVE STUDIED GEOLOGY. People who have studied geology agree that YEC won't work. People who think YEC will work are people who are ignorant of geology, like you.
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So. You'll pardon me if I don't accept everything that the experts say. I like experts. I need experts. I hire experts. But experts don't know everything. And in the area of origins, they have this curious blindness which is only explainable as resembling some sort of weird religious belief.
It's too easy to laugh at this. I'll let it pass.
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So. You'll pardon me if I don't accept everything that the experts say. I like experts. I need experts. I hire experts.
"I pretend to be an expert. I ignore experts when I don't like what they say".
Incidentally, at some point, can you show us how new monkey species split off from other monkey species every 17 years? Do you happen to know what the last couple new monkeys were?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I know, I know, "hardly anyone has ever studied Portuguese in as much detail as *I* have..."
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
oh, well Dave has a relative that speaks portuguese, doesn't he?
In fact I think he claimed this made him an expert on the issue shortly after he proposed the notion that P=F+S.
I have a relative that studies mountain lions. ergo, you of course should ask me any questions about mountain lions you have, since I'm a defacto expert on the subject.
and I have a Master's Degree in....
SCIENCE!!!!
you're looney, Dave. Get help now.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Massive oils beds. Massive coal beds. Massive chalk beds. Massive organic material, OA, buried catastrophically. The explanation? Massive quantities of organic material pre-Flood. 100X is very conservative. Could be as high as 500X. Are you really telling me you don't know about these three HUGE instances of organic matter? Are you going to make me cite references to prove what should be so obvious to you? Have you really no idea how massive our coal, oil and chalk beds are?
Keep wriggling and squirming Dave, anything rather than admit you are wrong. You claimed the C12 was 100x higher in the ATMOSPHERE. Not total biomass Dave, ATMOSPHERE. Go look up the word ATMOSPHERE. The total biomass could be 500X and it wouldn't tell you what the percentage of C12 in the ATMOSPHERE would be. Yes, I'm going to make you cite your source that details how the figure of 100X the C12 in the ATMOSPHERE was calculated. I'll bet here and now that you can't do it.
While you're at it, how about producing evidence that all that biomass was alive in the same extremely narrow time frame less than 6000 years ago. I'll add to my bet that you can't produce that evidence either.
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Have you really no idea how massive our coal, oil and chalk beds are?
And do you have any idea how coal, oil, or chalk beds are produced naturally, and how long it takes for them to be formed? Apparently that is yet another area on which you are totally ignorant.
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I will be happy to look at your "calibration data" as I have time, but I suspect I will find many holes in it just as I have been finding holes in your other arguments about origins.
Delay, stall, avoid... anything that prevents you from actually dealing with the data. You're just a shining beacon of Christian honesty Dave - Jesus would be proud.
Every non-answer is still a loss for AFDave and a win for evolution. And AFDave is still 'Oh-for-2006'
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
What's troubling is that only about half the population buys into your long age Darwinian fantasies in spite of all these excellent, smart scientists who are peddling the theory.
There's nothing troubling about it, Dave. Scientists, real scientists, spend their time doing actual research, learning stuff about how the world works. They spend their time writing up grant proposals, publishing papers, doing field work, conducting experiments.
How do the guys from, say, the Dishonesty Institute spend their time? Writing up press releases, doing speaking tours, lobbying Congress, fighting lawsuits. This doesn't leave them any time to do any, you know, science-y stuff. Which means they don't have science to back them up, they have scienciness.
Which approach do you think results in a higher profile, Dave?
Quote
It's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Evos have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?'
No, Dave, it's not wrong. Scientists aren't interested in "indoctrinating" anyone. They're interested in accumulating evidence, something that creationists like you either can't be troubled to do, or in your case, something you wouldn't know if it took a giant Dobermann-sized chunk out of your ass.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
But experts don't know everything. And in the area of origins, they have this curious blindness which is only explainable as resembling some sort of weird religious belief.
"Some sort of weird religious belief", Dave? Since when do you associate religion with blindness?
Oh! The irony!
Quote
Matt.7.3 : Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Matt.7.4 : Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? Matt.7.5 : You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Search on the word "Parkinson", click on the reference they give on page 230.
Read at least the first three pages of the chapter.
Nowhere does he mention a French influence.
(Funny, must be some bizarre religious belief that Stephen Parkinson has.)
Then search on the word 'Mattoso', and click on the reference for page 248 it gives. There's a bibliography there. Full of writings on Portuguese. Whoops.
Dave, you seem to find it suspicious that none of them experts mentions your 'French and Spanish mix' idea.
There's a reason for that. It doesn't exist. People don't bother to mention it because it's not real.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I have already. Thoroughly. And those sources say what I said they say. My information I gave you is more detailed. Do you want me to give it to you again?
Arden...
Quote
Now, "it's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Christians have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?"
Christians have not had the opportunity for indocrination that Evos have had. You give me all the world's school children and all the media and all the museums and all the encyclopedias to disseminate my message and I guarantee you I can raise the worldwide % of Christians a whale of a lot. This is the kind of monopoly Evolution has had in Western society and yet only about half the population buys into it.
Norm...
Quote
"Some sort of weird religious belief", belief, Dave? Since when do you associate religion with blindness?
There are many religions in the world where people blindly follow their leaders. Evolution is similar to them although it has no declared leader.
OA...
Quote
You claimed the C12 was 100x higher in the ATMOSPHERE. Not total biomass Dave, ATMOSPHERE. Go look up the word ATMOSPHERE. The total biomass could be 500X and it wouldn't tell you what the percentage of C12 in the ATMOSPHERE would be. Yes, I'm going to make you cite your source that details how the figure of 100X the C12 in the ATMOSPHERE was calculated. I'll bet here and now that you can't do it.
I'll bet you are right. I meant to say 100X the biomass. But C12 is related to biomass. I don't have the exact correlation at my fingertips right now. We will get to that.
What is important now in relation to C14 is that AMS labs all over the world scratched their heads when they discovered C14 in coal and diamonds. They still cannot explain it.
And neither can you.
You don't even try ... all you can do is yammer at me about calibration curves and you miss the elephant in the living room of C14 in diamonds and coal.
It shouldn't be there, my friend!
But it is!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Even a bogus claim of 100x the biomass does not equate to 100x more C12 in the atmosphere. Provide your evidence for this or retract.
Massive oils beds. Massive coal beds. Massive chalk beds. Massive organic material, OA, buried catastrophically. The explanation? Massive quantities of organic material pre-Flood. 100X is very conservative. Could be as high as 500X. Are you really telling me you don't know about these three HUGE instances of organic matter? Are you going to make me cite references to prove what should be so obvious to you? Have you really no idea how massive our coal, oil and chalk beds are?
Dave, I'm going to go out on a limb here and estimate that the total amount of organic matter generated in the time before six thousand years ago is at least 500,000 times as much as the amount generated in the past 6,000 years. That's because the amount of time life has existed on this planet is at least 500,000 times as long.
(Before you argue 4,500 vs. 6,000 years, I'll tell you that the difference when compared to 3 billion years is way, way, way, way less than "a measly half a percent.")
My reasoning (as goofy as it is) is way, way (way, way) less goofy than your reasoning is. You're just making your figures up out of the air. As Mr. Aftershave has pointed out at least three or four times (I stopped counting a while ago), you've never provided a single point of data supporting your "100X" (which has now morphed into "500X") figure.
And you never answered my question (which is also Occam's question) either, Dave. Do you believe the pre-flood atmosphere was 6% CO2? You completely ducked this question on the way to your totally-unsupported claim of a measly 500X as much organic matter pre-flood as post flood.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have already. Thoroughly. And those sources say what I said they say.
You're lying again, Dave.
Okay, Dave, imagine you're looking at whatever textbook they made you read in the Air Force.
Now, it is my opinion that airplanes are all made of cheese, and can fly faster than light.
You might object that this is untrue.
When I persisted in this idea, you might point me to books about planes.
My response?
"Oh, I've read all those books. My theory is just more detailed."
Why is that any different from what you're doing?
Because, you know, Dave, you've never given us any evidence for a French influence on Portuguese. None.
(However, that fact does dovetail nicely with the total absence of any mention of this influence in any linguistic writings.)
So this clearly proves that airplanes are all made of cheese, and can fly faster than light, right, Dave?
Who needs evidence? Who needs knowledge? Dave's a Christian whose aunt speaks Portuguese! He's already won!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I have already. Thoroughly. And those sources say what I said they say. My information I gave you is more detailed. Do you want me to give it to you again?
Dave, do you think no one has noticed that you have provided no linguistic evidence to support your brain-dead idea re Portuguese? None. Not a scrap. Arden is providing you with linguistic evidence, which is the only sort of evidence that means anything at all in this context. Historical "evidence," no matter how detailed and extensive, means exactly nothing.
In other words, you have provided no evidence, detailed or not, for your wild-ass idea. None. As in, not any.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What is important now in relation to C14 is that AMS labs all over the world scratched their heads when they discovered C14 in coal and diamonds. They still cannot explain it.
And neither can you.
Dave, get your head out of the AiG website for a few seconds and do a little reading in real science. Of course there's C14 in coal, and in diamonds. C14 is created all the time by neutron capture due to radioactive decay (among other mechanisms), the same mechanism that creates it in the upper atmosphere, albeit at a lower rate, which is why we see low levels of C14 in buried strata that haven't been exposed to the atmosphere for millions of years. This is why, no matter how far back in time you go, you will find an irreducible minimum of C14.
You're the only one who doesn't have an explanation for C14.
And, I should point out, you've never explained why radiometric dating methods that are actually suited for dating 150-million-year-old deposits, don't also provide dates of 50,000 years. As usual, you completely ignore questions you can't answer.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I'm going to go out on a limb here and estimate that the total amount of organic matter generated in the time before six thousand years ago is at least 500,000 times as much as the amount generated in the past 6,000 years.
The earth has not been around that long, Eric.
Get used to it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, I'm going to go out on a limb here and estimate that the total amount of organic matter generated in the time before six thousand years ago is at least 500,000 times as much as the amount generated in the past 6,000 years.
The earth has not been around that long, Eric.
Get used to it.
But golly, Dave...
Everyone who's studied the relevant sciences absolutely disagrees with you...
I'm confused! You say one thing, educated people say another...
Is that the work of Satan?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
You give me all the world's school children and all the media and all the museums and all the encyclopedias to disseminate my message and I guarantee you I can raise the worldwide % of Christians a whale of a lot.
You missed it. They already tried that. It was called "the Dark Ages".
remember now?
but hey, since you spend time with your kids at home, and they have time to go to religious camps (your words), as well as church on sundays, how bout we set up a "darwin camp" eh?
another of your projected delusions is thinking that the amount of time kids are exposed to the ToE in k-12 is anything close to the amount of time spent being indoctrinated in your religion.
you act as if all that is ever done in public schools is some kind of evil indoctrination in the ToE.
Can't you clue yourself as to how paranoid that is?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Faid ... Believe me, I've looked at all these and they say the same basic thing. L --> P with 3 basic phases, one of which I gave you a great amount of excellent detail -- the middle phase beginning in the 12th century
None of your links refute my statement or my explanations. That's why you don't C&P any statements from them. You just give all these links that you hope no one will go look at because they don't refute anything I said.
Is that how you operate?
(The EB article doesn't help you either, Faid)
No no, Dave.
Not how it works.
The experts all say one thing.
They say the same thing because *that's what's true*.
They disagree with you.
You say a totally different thing.
You offer no evidence.
The burden of proof is on YOU.
You are not proven right simply by saying something that no one else has said.
Again, you need EVIDENCE Dave.
You haven't given us any.
Simple as that.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
None of your links refute my statement or my explanations. That's why you don't C&P any statements from them. You just give all these links that you hope no one will go look at because they don't refute anything I said.
actually they do. no need to cut and paste. Your mind is simply incapable of recognizing when you are wrong.
again, a great sign that you should visit a professional mental health care practitioner ASAP.
Interestingly, you've never denied that you're nuts, probably the only bit of denial that hasn't been typed by you yet.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Dave, I'm going to go out on a limb here and estimate that the total amount of organic matter generated in the time before six thousand years ago is at least 500,000 times as much as the amount generated in the past 6,000 years.
The earth has not been around that long, Eric.
Get used to it.
The earth has been around that long, Dave, and there's overwhelming evidence of it. Not only that, but all the applicable evidence points to the same age. Your "evidence" points to all sorts of ages: 5,500 years (what? you think humans sat on their asses for 500 years before they wrote anything down, when according to you scribes were following Adam around to write down his names for things?), 6,000 years, 10,000 years, 20,000 years, 50,000 years.
That tells everyone else something, Dave. It doesn't appear to tell you anything.
So get used to being wrong.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Faid ... Believe me, I've looked at all these and they say the same basic thing. L --> P with 3 basic phases, one of which I gave you a great amount of excellent detail -- the middle phase beginning in the 12th century
None of your links refute my statement or my explanations. That's why you don't C&P any statements from them. You just give all these links that you hope no one will go look at because they don't refute anything I said.
Is that how you operate?
(The EB article doesn't help you either, Faid)
Dave, do you understand the difference between "linguistics" and "history"? Because you completely ignored what I said earlier. When you say "I gave you a great amount of detail," you're wrong, because you didn't give any detail. You cited exactly no linguistic evidence whatsoever, which is the only evidence that matters in your "Portuguese" discussion. Historical evidence gets you exactly nowhere. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. It has no meaning whatsoever in this context.
It would be like using evidence from quantum mechanics to support your theory that Mozart was born in the 11th century BC.
Dave, we don't even need to look at any of Faid's links to know your argument is hilariously wrong, because we already know you have provided not a scrap of evidence to support it. I pointed this out to you a month ago, you ignored it then, and you're ignoring it now.
But you're not the only one who reads this thread. Everyone else knows you're clueless when it comes to linguistics, just as you are clueless about every single other topic you've ever raised on this thread, or any other thread on this site.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Faid ... Believe me, I've looked at all these and they say the same basic thing. L --> P with 3 basic phases, one of which I gave you a great amount of excellent detail -- the middle phase beginning in the 12th century
None of your links refute my statement or my explanations. That's why you don't C&P any statements from them. You just give all these links that you hope no one will go look at because they don't refute anything I said.
Is that how you operate?
(The EB article doesn't help you either, Faid)
Dave, you know darnn well how I operate, you liar, because I have presented quotes from my arguments from the beginning. And you know it, you just hope someone has forgotten. You want them again? here you go, and with extra:
Quote
In the formation of the Portuguese language, the Latin base also incorporated features of the Celtic, Greek and Hebrew languages, to which Germanic and Arabic elements were later added.
We may consider three phases in the evolution of the Portuguese language: the proto-historic phase, until the thirteenth century (a phase when there were still very close connections in written terms with Barbarous Latin), the archaic phase, until the sixteenth century (a phase in which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, one of the most important developments was the Galician-Portuguese language, with Portuguese later acquiring its own autonomy in relation to Galician) and the modern phase, with the publication of the first grammar books, by Fernγo de Oliveira, 1536, and Joγo de Barros, 1540(...)
See any french there, dave? And don't worry, I'm not as dishonest as you, the ommission is not relevant... you can check.
Quote
From the year the Romans invaded the peninsula in 218 BC up until the ninth century, the language spoken in the region was known as Romance, a variant of Latin that was an intermediary point between vulgar Latin and the modern Romance languages such as Portuguese, Spanish and French.
Quote
The appearance of the first Latin-Portuguese documents would come to pass between the ninth and eleventh centuries, marking this period as one of linguistic transition. Certain Portuguese terms appeared in these mainly Latin texts, but Portuguese, or more precisely its antecedent, Galician-Portuguese, remained an unwritten language spoken only in Lusitania.
Quote
The Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula brought about the consolidation of the spoken and written forms of Galician-Portuguese throughout Lusitania. The first non-Latin literary texts and official documents from the region were written in Galician-Portuguese, including the following collections of medieval poems known as the Cancioneiros, or songbooks:
Quote
The process of differentiation between the Portuguese and Portuguese-Galician began with the Christian advance towards the south of the Iberian Peninsula, whereby the northern dialects mixed with the southern Mozarabic dialects.
Whaddaya know, no french influence... No wait, there is this:
Quote
Between the years of 1580 and 1640, when Portugal was governed by the Spanish throne, Portuguese incorporated many Castilian words, such as bobo (fool) and granizo (hail), into its vocabulary, and the French influence of the eighteenth century in Europe brings about a divergence between the languages spoken in Portugal and its colonies.
Just like I told you. And let's see what the sources say about all Indoeuropean languages:
Quote
Italian and Portuguese are the closest modern major languages to Latin. Spanish has been influenced by Arabic and Basque. French has moved farthest from Latin in pronunciation, only its spelling gives a clue to its origins. French has many Germanic and Celtic influences.
hmm. And here it is again:
Quote
When Christians started to re-conquer the peninsula in the 11th century, the Arabs were expelled to the South. Galician-Portuguese became the spoken and written language of Lusitania. The separation between the Galician and Portuguese languages, which began with Portugal’s independence in 1185, was consolidated after the Moors were expelled in 1249.
And what about later?
Quote
Portuguese entered its modern phase in the 16th century when early lexicologists defined Portuguese morphology and syntax. When Luis de Camőes wrote Os Lusíadas, in 1572, the language was already close to its current structure of phrases and morphology. From then on, linguistic changes have been minor.
French influence during the 18th century changed the Portuguese spoken in the homeland, making it different from the Portuguese spoken in the colonies.
Oh and, of course, the EB article that "doesn't help"...
Quote
The Romance languages began as dialects of Vulgar Latin, which spread during the Roman occupation of Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, Gaul, and the Balkans and developed into separate languages in the 5th–9th centuries.
Had enough, dave? You know, you should really make up your mind. You want links or no links, quoted or not, with arguments or not? We'll be happy to oblige either way -as you see.
But this has gone far enough. After tadancing through our evidence, after COMPLETELY DISTORTING your original claims (from "Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French, and didn't even exist until some frenchman's son founded the kingdom of Portugal, and some knights blah blah" to "Hey I always said that Portuguese was derived separately from Latin, I'm just filling in the details"), and after your little trick with the EB "quote", now you have the nerve to accuse ME of misquoting? Tell you what: I DARE you, if you have even a shred of honesty, to look through all the links I posted and find where it supports your views(*), and disproves mine, and show it to me. Otherwise, kindly shut up.
(*)Your original views, mind you; I mean, the way you twist your arguments, I wouldn't be surprised if you end up saying "hey I never said Portuguese were actually linguistically influenced by French, just that some french guys helped free Portugal..."
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Now, "it's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Christians have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?"
Christians have not had the opportunity for indocrination that Evos have had. You give me all the world's school children and all the media and all the museums and all the encyclopedias to disseminate my message and I guarantee you I can raise the worldwide % of Christians a whale of a lot. This is the kind of monopoly Evolution has had in Western society and yet only about half the population buys into it.
Christianity has had, what, around about 2000 years to spread it's message? And modern science has been around, to work in round numbers, about 200 years. So, if I understand you correctly, what you are saying is that science has gained almost complete hegemony over the human mind in around one tenth the time than the Christian religion has been working at it? Why would God allow that? You'd think if He saw incompatibility between belief in Him and modern science, he would have not allowed it to gain the upper hand. Why do you suppose that is, Dave?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Faid and Arden didn't quite catch all this ... so we will walk through this a little more slowly, ready?
PORTUGUESE = SPANISH + FRENCH + OTHER FACTORS (simplified version) 1) Portuguese and Spanish were essentially the same language until about AD 1143, when Portugal broke away from Spanish control. World Book, 1993, "Portuguese Language." Faid is almost correct with his quote ...
Quote
Portuguese developed in the Western Iberian Peninsula from Latin brought there by Roman soldiers and colonists starting in the 3rd century BC. It began to diverge from other Romance languages after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, and started to be used in written documents around the 9th century. By the 15th century it had become a mature language with a rich literature. In all aspects — phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax — Portuguese is essentially the result of an organic evolution of Vulgar Latin, with fairly minor influences from other languages.
... the problem with this article is that there was no such thing as Portugal prior to the 12th century. There was only Spain. So Faid's article would be correct if it said "common language of what would become Spain and Portugal" instead of just saying "Portuguese." It's an OK article, just not specific enough. OK. Everyone with me so far?
Now ... an astute person would ask "Why did the languages begin changing in 1143?" Hmmm ... enter the word chart which you would be familiar with if you spoke both languages like me and know something of the history and you might have some clues ...
2) Language comparison Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Wow ... there is some similarity here! Let's form a hypothesis: Maybe Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French among other factors ... also the local liguistic expert at ATBC says that this hypothesis might be true if you could show a significant French influence on the country at that time ...
Now let's test this ...
3) Is there a significant French influence? Why yes there is ... fancy that!! Right in that very timeframe too!! Glory be!! Here it is again ...[quote]Of course if you get a good Medieval History Encyclopedia, you can get all kinds of details about this period in history when Portuguese and Spanish diverged. What you will see is massive Burgundian influence beginning with the influx of contingents of Burgundian knights in response to Alfonso VI who had a Burgundian wife, then the Burgundian Henry, grandson of Robert I of Burgundy then to Afonso Henriques, son of Henry. [Oh ... by the way ... I guess I'd better fill you in that Burgundy is in France ... small detail]. Anyway, Afonso Henriques captures Lisbon and sets up his capital. Then if you do some further reading, you find out that standard Portuguese is based on the dialect of Lisbon, according to Rilke's other favorite source, Encyclopedia Brittanica. Can you guess that Lisbon probably had greater French influence than anywhere else in Portugal? Maybe because of the French influence and intermarriage in the ruling class? I hope I'm not moving too fast for anyone. (Dictionary of the Middle Ages, v. 10, 1988, American Council of Learned Societies) (From the public library, a famous, non-YEC source) (Encyclopedia Brittanica, 2002, Micropedia, "Portuguese Language" for the part about official Portuguese being based on the dialect of Lisbon)
4) And of course, the Wikipedia article which acknowledges the closeness ...
Quote
Although the vocabularies of Spanish and Portuguese are quite similar, phonetically Portuguese is somewhat closer to Catalan or to French. It is often claimed that the complex phonology of Portuguese compared to Spanish explains why it is generally not intelligible to Spanish speakers despite the strong lexical similarity between the two languages. Portuguese and French
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
HOLY TAP DANCIN' CHRIST!! AFDave actually admits that he was wrong about something!!! Somebody please save this to the archives before he edits it out.
Quote
I'll bet you are right. I meant to say 100X the biomass. But C12 is related to biomass. I don't have the exact correlation at my fingertips right now. We will get to that.
You'll have to understand if no one believes you anymore. You've broken too many promises to 'get to it' to have any credibility.
Quote
What is important now in relation to C14 is that AMS labs all over the world scratched their heads when they discovered C14 in coal and diamonds. They still cannot explain it.
And neither can you.
You don't even try ... all you can do is yammer at me about calibration curves and you miss the elephant in the living room of C14 in diamonds and coal.
No Dave, the 'elephant in the living room' is the six independent lines of evidence that all confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. Not one, not two, not even three, but six independent lines of evidence for you to deny Dave. The fact that you continually refuse to deal with it shows that it bothers you greatly, and that you have yet to figure out how to deal with it, save just ignoring it.
You have to know that you're being dishonest when you ignore the calibration data, which means that Jesus knows you're being dishonest too. How do you justify your dishonest actions to Him? Do you say 'hail Mary' three times after confession and hope that covers it?
You're a sad, pathetic little man Dave. You let your ego get in the way of both your honesty and your better judgement. You will have to answer for all this dishonesty some day Dave, and you know it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
You'll have to understand if no one believes you anymore. You've broken too many promises to 'get to it' to have any credibility.
Yeah, no one except those lurkers that you said you were worried about. You'd better get with it refuting me with some sciency stuff so they don't get corrupted with my 'moronic beliefs.'
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, since you're not making any headway with any of your other "arguments," either…
In the meantime…
Dave, Dave, Dave.
I'll say it one more time: historical evidence is utterly irrelevant to your argument. So will you please shut up about it?
Your illustration of the resemblance of Portuguese, Spanish, and French means less than nothing, because it's already been pointed out to you that all three languages are descended from Latin. Duh! Of course they resemble each other!
Saying that the vocabulary of Portuguese is more similar to Catalan or French than it is to Spanish has nothing to do with whether or not Portuguese is derived from Spanish and French now, does it, Dave? All it means (at best) is exactly what it says: Portuguese vocabulary is somewhat closer to Catalan or French than it is to Spanish! How do you get from there to "Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish"?
And don't recite any more absolutely irrelevant historical claptrap about French knights clanking through Iberia in the 14th century.
It's pretty damned amusing watching you trying to instruct people who have forgotten astronomically more about the subject of discourse than you'll ever know.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yeah, no one except those lurkers that you said you were worried about. You'd better get with it refuting me with some sciency stuff so they don't get corrupted with my 'moronic beliefs.'
Right back in your face little man. You'd better get busy explaining away for the lurkers those six independent lines of evidence that confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.
When you're done with that, you can share with the lurkers how little you know about coal and oil formation, and how chalk beds are laid down.
Your ignorance is being exposed Dave, and we both know it. You're standing here with your pants around your ankles, looking sillier by the minute. The lurkers can see it all too, and it ain't pretty.
Jesus is looking down on you and frowning Dave. You're breaking His commandment to 'not bear false witness'. Are you prepared to be banished to he11 just to protect your titanic ego?
.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Hey Aftershave ... What happened to your great interest in Carbon 14?
You were hounding me for several days ...
Now that I gave you what you asked for, you're suddenly not interested anymore.
What happened? No answer for where that C14 in coal and diamonds could possibly have come from?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey Aftershave ... What happened to your great interest in Carbon 14?
You were hounding me for several days ...
Now that I gave you what you asked for, you're suddenly not interested anymore.
No Dave, I asked you for your explanation of the six independent lines of evidence that confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.
I'm still quite interested, but we both know you're too busy protecting your ego to admit you have no clue as to how to honestly respond.
I'm also quite interested in you demonstrating your ignorance about coal and oil formation, and how chalk beds are laid down.
You ever gonna address that 11,000 YO Turkish village I pointed you to, the one that was dated with dendrochronology as well as radiocarbon?
The lurkers are laughing at you with your pants around your ankles, and Jesus is getting angrier with you by the minute. You think it's a good idea to keep lying? I mean, isn't your mortal soul at stake here?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Hey Aftershave ... What happened to your great interest in Carbon 14?
You were hounding me for several days ...
Now that I gave you what you asked for, you're suddenly not interested anymore.
Unbelievable.
Dave, did you read the post Mr. Aftershave posted immediately before your post? He still hounding you, but you're pretending not to hear him. He's asking you for your explanation for the six independent lines of evidence that all confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. In what universe does that imply a lack of interest in the subject?
You don't have an answer to his question, Dave, but pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. Until you come up with an answer, you can't even pretend to believe that radiocarbon dating is inaccurate.
Quote
What happened? No answer for where that C14 in coal and diamonds could possibly have come from?
Dave, you can't pretend not to have heard people's questions, and you can't pretend not to have heard their answers, either. We're not at a bar, where you can deny you heard something or deny that you said it. You can't even delete other people's posts, so you've got nowhere to hide.
You've been given an answer to where that C14 in coal and diamonds came from. Today, you were told. Less than eight hours ago.
The C14 comes from neutron capture. The extra neutrons come from radioactive decay, high-energy cosmic rays, and other sources. There's no mystery where it comes from for anyone else, and now, there's no mystery for you, either. You've been told where it comes from, and denying that you're been told only makes you look like a liar.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No Dave, I asked you for your explanation of the six independent lines of evidence that confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.
I can answer for him. The scientists are all just seeing what they want to see, because they really, really want to prove that the Christian God doesn't exist. Because they don't want to have to answer for their sins. So they can party down without having to worry about the consequences.
Here's a great question that Dave probably won't answer:
How would you test to determine whether or not an object is over 1 million years old?
My first prediction is that he'll ignore the question. (I think he's kinda POed at me for pegging him on the "athesit scientist conspiracy" issue.) My alternate prediction is that he'll say such a test would be absurd because nothing could possibly be that old.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Davey, I used to be one of your favorites. WHat happened?
You just aren't allowed to say anything about the portuguese / french thing till you debate me on the topic. I took your bet and you never paid up.
People,
Can I get a little help here? Did I not take his bet? Did he not make the bet? Did he not utterly ignore the fact that I took the bet? Did he not declare victory without the debate?
Please, post this at the end of future posts:
Quote
Dave, you are aware that you never debated BWE even though you made a bet, he took the bet and we all witnessed it. Right? You are claiming victory in a debate you never had. You made a bet and then failed to live up to your end.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Can I get a little help here? Did I not take his bet? Did he not make the bet? Did he not utterly ignore the fact that I took the bet? Did he not declare victory without the debate?
confirmed. he's ignoring you. he's ignorant of everything else in the world, why not you as well?
I think Dave has reached the "which one of these means gay marriage" stage.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Doesn't it trouble you that this seems to happen every 5 minutes?
What's troubling is that only about half the population buys into your long age Darwinian fantasies in spite of all these excellent, smart scientists who are peddling the theory.
It's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Evos have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?'
Perhaps it has something to do with half the population being brow-beaten from the pulpit every Sunday with creationist arguments that even you would be embarrassed to use.
Half the population believes there is some truth to astrology. Half the population once believed that the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqis. Billions of people around the world believe Islam is the only true religion.
Hmm -- perhaps we're all getting it totally wrong...
You guys are going to be embarrassed and chagrined after insulting Dave so much, when it comes out in a few years that there was a secret military project to find out what happens when a troop's brain is replaced with kitty litter.
You guys are going to be embarrassed and chagrined after insulting Dave so much, when it comes out in a few years that there was a secret military project to find out what happens when a troop's brain is replaced with kitty litter.
Oh, and here I though all those scratching cats were just trying to cover up AFDave, not add to his cranium filling.
My bad.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Quote Dave, you are aware that you never debated BWE even though you made a bet, he took the bet and we all witnessed it. Right? You are claiming victory in a debate you never had. You made a bet and then failed to live up to your end.
Please don't forget.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I was at a party with some friends for the last several hours. I'd like to thank everyone who pounded AFDave in my absence. I knew I could count on you guys!
Okay, back to bitchslapping Dave the Clueless...
Quote
2) Language comparison Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Wow ... there is some similarity here!
Dave, are you in Special Ed classes? Did Jesus visit you one day and tell you that unless you were an idiot, you wouldn't get into Heaven? Did you crash a jet once and hit your head really hard?
Okay, Dave. For the umpteenth fucking time.
French and Spanish and Portuguese are similar because they're in the same language family. They're all DESCENDED FROM LATIN.
About a week or two ago. I came up with identical cognate sets from Italian, Catalan, and Romanian. Other Romance languages. THEY LOOKED JUST AS SIMILAR.
Would you like me to spend the 20 minutes it would take me to track it down?
So, fuckwit, can you please tell me, why isn't French 'a mix' of Portuguese and Romanian? Or why isn't Italian a 'mix' of Spanish and French?
(Because, Dave, your original statement was that Portuguese was a MIXTURE of Spanish and French. Not 'influenced'.)
You have offered no evidence. Just some similar words, where I could find words from other Romance languages that look just as similar.
Because you see, Junior, what grownups do in real science is to find this thing they call evidence. They gather, like, real data. In linguistics (the study of language, Dave), this means finding data in the languages in question.
So what this means, little man, is that you would have to find extraordinary similarities between French and Portuguese beyond what can be explained by their both being descended from Latin.
Guess what: you haven't done that.
I'll repeat, boldface this time:
You haven't done that.
Why?
The consensus among all those nonexistent people who never study Portuguese is that Portuguese is a normal descendant of Iberian Romance. It's closest to Spanish, but more conservative than Spanish in many ways. They only other foreign language that's influenced it to any substantial degree is Arabic. We know this because there are a fair number of Arabic loans in Spanish and Portuguese.
You seem to be very peeved that all the references 'say the same thing' about the history of Portuguese, like this is a shortcoming.
Guess what Dave: they say the same thing because that is what the facts are.
I'll say it again, Dave -- in science we have this little thing called evidence. If you don't have it, people tend not to take you seriously.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Okay, took me 20 minutes but I found it. June 8th. Dave either didn't read it or ignored it. Here it is, again:
Quote
Dave:
Since you seem to think your 'comparison' of French, Spanish and Portuguese so conclusively proves your argument, I decided to do what you wouldn't, and add more Romance languages to the mix.
To help people out, the set AFD originally posted (I assume copied off the web) gave the words for 'have', 'man', 'body', 'night', 'son', 'made', 'good' and 'and'.
Here's the chart AFD gave:
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Here are three additional languages Dave neglected:
Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i
Anyway, Dave, do you see the similarities?
Several centuries ago, scholars figured out there was this thing called 'language families', which means languages that are descended from the same ancestor language. In this case, we happen to know what the language was. It was Latin, which is rather well documented. And you see, related languages tend to have SIMILARITIES, because they keep old words from when they were one language.
Now, Dave, back to the chart. See how Romanian, Italian, and Catalan fit right into your chart as well. Funny, that.
Now by your reasoning, AFD, shouldn't this data show just as well that Portuguese is a 'mix' of Spanish and, say, Italian? Or Spanish and Romanian?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
LOL Faid, what did you do before the internet? Did you go to the morgue and kick the bodies?
*Smack* *Smack* "Had enough? Had enough now, bitch?!?!?!"
Faid definitely has a gift. He's willing to go to a lot more work than I am to ensure AFD's full humiliation. I'm boring, I just try to explain how linguistics works and how AFD's blather means nothing. Faid dissects AFD's gibberish bit by bit and points out where he's lying and where he's making shit up. Teeth all over the sidewalk. A wonderous thing to behold.
Faid, we thank you.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Some people have talked about starting new AFD threads to discuss certain facets of his, uh, 'theories'. I think if we do that, or if we feel the need to retitle this thread (its name doesn't seem very apt anymore) we should title it as follows: "A NEW MONKEY EVERY SEVENTEEN YEARS: THE YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISM OF AFDAVE."
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'll use it to post my synthesis of Dave's "sins".
If you want to go ahead and start the thread, please feel free! You can write the 'vision statement' for the thread. I'd be honored to have my title used.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Sure, why not? From what you wrote, however, it looks like another blitzkrieg walk for us, dave...
You know, I fail to notice any retraction or apologies for your lying claims that my sources don't support me... but then, that was expected. Maybe it's against your religion, Idunno... What was also expected was that you'd be devastatingly wrong again. After all, you did simply c&p your previous "arguments" about some nefarious linguistic influence some French crusaders had, although it's impossible for you to even argue for it... and all you can do is point us to historical events, as if they have the slightest linguistic significance. Same old, same old. This, however, seems kinda new:
Quote
... the problem with this article is that there was no such thing as Portugal prior to the 12th century. There was only Spain. So Faid's article would be correct if it said "common language of what would become Spain and Portugal" instead of just saying "Portuguese." It's an OK article, just not specific enough. OK. Everyone with me so far?
Sorry dave, but wrong again. There was no common ancestral language of Spanish and Portuguese at that time. As our sources say (you did say you read them, right? ), the languages that led to Portuguese and Spanish were already separate from the 9th century. Galician-Portuguese for Portuguese, and Castillian for Spanish. Remember those pictures I posted, dave? the link is there above your post. I remember you said they were "nice"; did you look at the pretty colours hard enough?
Nice try for a smokescreen, dave. Just be careful not to set your pants on fire again.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
You're welcome, Arden... Actually, I'm much less patient than you: I get easily irritated when a person with afdave's history here has the nerve to accuse me of dishonesty. That's all.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
...I don't even think the linguists of the world CARE about Portuguese enough to even study it in the detail that I gave you. The linguists of the world say 'Portuguese is a Romance language descended from Latin ... blah, blah, blah' and that's about it...
I'm one of the lurkers.
I think this is a key to understanding AFDave. He seems to actually believe that scientists work the way he does. You read a few web sites, click through a few links, and sort of half-ass your way through an issue intuitively, and then you're done.
It's one of the most remarkable displays I've ever seen, on the internet or anywhere else.
I've read a fair bit about evolution, and about evo/creo controversies, but I think it's fair to say that before this thread I was completely ignorant about the Portugeuse language.
Dave, I'm not a linguist. But I want to say to you, if you want to convince the lurkers, you need to make more of an effort to actually defend the positions you stake out. Saying things are just 'obvious' is a clear sign of someone who has no interest in actually studying an issue, and expects his casual intuitions to be accepted as true.
Many of you have said this better than I could but I thought I'd just chime in to give one data point about those lurkers.
And thank you to all of the scientists and educated amateurs who have led me to so many interesting new things to learn about.
There are several funny things about the last few posts ...
1) Faid really thinks his Portuguese argument is better than mine 2) Arden agrees 3) Both of them forget that I've had several people on this thread agree with me -- unprecedented! -- who ever hear of an ATBCer agreeing with a Creo!! 4) Arden has chided me about 'the proper way that an academic argues' and yet he says, '"Listen you *&%$, I'll tell you what, you *&%$^#, you're nothing but a stupid little &^%$%&!!!" -- very academic, indeed! 5) Aftershave and Eric are scratching their heads about how coal and diamonds could possibly have C14, and all they can say is "Well, we don't know where it came from, but look at tree rings, look at varves, look at these other things ..."
Not now, boys. I'm looking at C14.
And it's kinda fun!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
5) Aftershave and Eric are scratching their heads about how coal and diamonds could possibly have C14, and all they can say is "Well, we don't know where it came from, but look at tree rings, look at varves, look at these other things ..."
The Big Lie is especailly inappropriate today, Davesicle.
EVOLUTIONISTS ARE DESPERATE TO PROVE DEEP TIME AND ARE BLIND TO YOUNG EARTH EVIDENCES
(If anyone still wants to talk about C14, be my guest)
(Aftershave just wants me to go look at tree rings and varves and stuff ... remember ... this is the guy back when I was talking about Helium and Zircons, he had no input on that discussion, and yet kept begging me to talk about C14. Hmmmm ... do I see a pattern here?
Evolutionists want Deep Time ... evolutionists NEED Deep Time. They have found what they think is scientific confirmation of their Deep Time in radiometric dating. And it is a bit tempting. If one looks at nothing else, one would be tempted to trust it. But therein lies the problem. Multiple other lines of evidence are literally screaming out that the earth is young. Here are some of them ...
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1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast. The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this “the winding-up dilemma,” which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same “winding-up” dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called “density waves.”1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope’s discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the “Whirlpool” galaxy, M51.2
2. Too few supernova remnants. Crab Nebula (photo courtesy of NASA)
According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.3
Rivers and dust storms dump mud into the sea much faster than plate tectonic subduction can remove it. Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.
5. Not enough sodium in the sea. Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.
6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.
Electrical resistance in the earth’s core wears down the electrical current which produces the earth’s magnetic field. That causes the field to lose energy rapidly. The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field (“dipole” and “non-dipole”) is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field’s total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.15
7. Many strata are too tightly bent. In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.16
8. Biological material decays too fast. Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20
9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years. Radio Halo (photo courtesy of Mark Armitage) Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.21 “Squashed” Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 “Orphan” Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.23,24
10. Too much helium in minerals. Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.
11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata. With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world’s best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.
12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons. Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.
13. Agriculture is too recent. The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.31
14. History is too short. According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.31 http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4005.asp
So our next topic will be ...
EVOLUTIONISTS BELOVED RADIOMETRIC DATING IS UNRELIABLE
Subtitle: The RATE Group is honest enough to show you that radiometric dating discordance is the rule, not the exception.
Wow! Look at that! Lot's of discordance!
This table, of course, is from the 2nd RATE book and the team took samples from all over the place and had them tested in a leading lab (non-Creo, mind you).
That should give you some food for thought over the weekend ...
I'll see you on Monday!
(Extra credit: Is there a pattern to the discordance? What might this indicate?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I see that you did give me the actual text of your quotes instead of just sending me off to some links and hoping I don't read them ...
But the stuff you gave me still does nothing to disprove my statement: P=F+S+other factors. I saw the Latin roots, but I already admitted this long ago. I saw some Arabic influence, but I have admitted this as well (other factors).
Anyway ... I really don't think you are dishonest ... just misinformed and maybe a bit miffed that you can't make me see it your way?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Half a Dave/ Black Ku-nig-it 'alright, well call it a draw' on the Portuguese thingy.
AF Dave your kids are going to find out you are blithering loony, keep going. Please don't stop now.
Hey, do you let them watch the Monty Python Movies?
I thought not .....a little inconvenient when you are brainwashing them.
Do they still read this thread? Be honest.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Multiple other lines of evidence are literally screaming out that the earth is young. Here are some of them ...[/i]
All PRATTs, Dave-o-rama-and all debunked already several pages ago in this thread. See also Index to Creationist Claims
Quote
So our next topic will be ...
EVOLUTIONISTS BELOVED RADIOMETRIC DATING IS UNRELIABLE
Subtitle: The RATE Group is honest enough to show you that radiometric dating discordance is the rule, not the exception.
Wow! Look at that! Lot's of discordance!
Er, no, Davie-ol'-dork, that's not a lot of discordance; it's an infinitesimal number of discordant dates obtained by people with a known history of fraud in this area. Even if the results are correct (establishing which would take a lot more data than you have posted here, see below), it doesn't support "radiometric dating discordance is the rule, not the exception".
Quote
This table, of course, is from the 2nd RATE book and the team took samples from all over the place and had them tested in a leading lab (non-Creo, mind you).
Of course; there aren't any creationist labs. There also aren't any honest creationist geologists. We need third-party analyses of the sample selection and collection methods, location specifications, minerology and microscopic analyses, and the raw dating lab data. Just a table like that, from a pack of known and proven liars, is meaningless.
I note that they did whole-rock analyses of samples from Mt. Ngauruhoe, which is automatically invalid unless they did a heroic job of separating the xenoliths
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(Extra credit: Is there a pattern to the discordance?
(If anyone still wants to talk about C14, be my guest)
Sorry AFDave, we haven't even begun to discuss the C14/C12 data. Are you admitting defeat and running away so soon? Another one-sided loss for AFDave as he cowardly backs down from yet another challenge. Who'da thunk it?
Oh, and you also avoided explaining how you think coal, oil, and chalk beds form, and how an 11,000 YO village in Turkey can exist before your 6000 YO Earth was formed.
Quote
Aftershave just wants me to go look at tree rings and varves and stuff
That's right AFDave, I do. I want you to honestly address all the evidence that's been placed right in front of you. Dendrochronology, lake varves, ice core samples, ocean sediment samples, etc.; ALL the evidence that is used to independently confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. ALL the evidence that blows your target drone '6000 year old Earth' out of the sky. The evidence won't go away Dave, even though you are too intellectually dishonest and inept to deal with it.
That you continually refuse to do so says more about you and your arguments than I ever could. How do you think other Christians view your lying, evasive behavior? Are you showing this thread to your wife and children as an example of how to 'honestly seek the TRUTH'? Is this your idea of being a good Christian role model to them?
If I don't hear any objections, I think I will post all my C14/C12 calibration data on your blog. It's not like you get many hits, but then your immediate family and friends could get a better look at how you deal with challenges. You're objectively looking for the TRUTH so you shouldn't complain, right?
BTW, if you are going to C&P Humphreys' young earth arguments directly from ICR in "Gish Gallop" style , at least have the decency to cite the source so you don't look like a plagiarist. And have the IQ to remove the footnote references too.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
1) Faid really thinks his Portuguese argument is better than mine 2) Arden agrees 3) Both of them forget that I've had several people on this thread agree with me -- unprecedented! -- who ever hear of an ATBCer agreeing with a Creo!!
Agree with you, on what??? I've certainly never agreed with you. I don't remember anyone who has. Name one person who's agreed with any of your points for your hypothesis. Just because I take your personal claims about being a sucessful businessman and Air Force pilot at face value, doesn't mean I agree with you.
If you're referring to one of my posts, I was trying to help you understand that your original statement about Portuguese was hard to defend because it was so simplistic: That your original statement defined Portuguese as a mix of French and Spanish and nothing else!!!!
You don't get to add my (stupidly) suggested phrase "among other things" to your original statement and claim victory!
4) Arden has chided me about 'the proper way that an academic argues' and yet he says, '"Listen you *&%$, I'll tell you what, you *&%$^#, you're nothing but a stupid little &^%$%&!!!" -- very academic, indeed!
Boy, I totally get it, Arden. I'm only a minor player here. With the flood of responses to afdave, it's taken a while for him to get to some words of mine to have his way with. I can clearly see how angry it makes a person feel to have his words raped by afdave. He is impervious to reason.
Do you guys remember the time when dave started counting points that he conceded? He got to one, then stopped. Now he just says "we've covered that"
Dave, is this another one of your completely unsupported assertions?
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,06:54)
There are several funny things about the last few posts ...
3) Both of them forget that I've had several people on this thread agree with me -- unprecedented! -- who ever hear of an ATBCer agreeing with a Creo!!
Because I've read this entire thread, and I'm unaware of anyone—anyone—admitting to agreeing with you that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish. If you believe there are some people here who agree with that, why don't you post their names, so they'll know who you're talking about and can speak for themselves.
Quote
5) Aftershave and Eric are scratching their heads about how coal and diamonds could possibly have C14, and all they can say is "Well, we don't know where it came from, but look at tree rings, look at varves, look at these other things ..."
Another Dave Delusion™.
Dave, I told you exactly where the C14 in coal and diamonds comes from. I've told you at least twice. You've ignored me both times, as if I hadn't even said anything. In fact, you've directly claimed that I haven't said anything! Do you realize how dishonest this makes you look?
Right, all we can say is, "Dave, we know exactly where the C14 came from, we've told you where it came from, and in the meantime, can you explain to us why at least six completely independent sources of evidence confirm C14 curves exactly?
And you think this is head-scratching.
Quote
Not now, boys. I'm looking at C14.
No you're not. Because if you were, you would see how Mr. Aftershave's argument completely annihilates yours. You cannot simply ignore all the confirmatory evidence from other fields that completely confirms the accuracy of radiocarbon dating. The fact that you're trying to do so is further evidence that you don't have the faintest notion how science actually works.
Have you watched that Black Knight video yet, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Wasn't Larry Fafarman suffering some sort of mental problem? AFDave sounds as if he has the same one. The arguments are different, the blindness to being repeatedly defeated is similar.
EVOLUTIONISTS BELOVED RADIOMETRIC DATING IS UNRELIABLE
Subtitle: The RATE Group is honest enough to show you that radiometric dating discordance is the rule, not the exception.
Wow! Look at that! Lot's of discordance!
This table, of course, is from the 2nd RATE book and the team took samples from all over the place and had them tested in a leading lab (non-Creo, mind you).
Ten results, Dave. Ten. Do you know how many rocks have had their ages determined radiometrically in the last half century? Hundreds of thousands, Dave. So you're looking at an error rate of tiny fractions of a percent, even if those figures are accurate. And based on RATE's (or is it 2nd RATE's?) track record, I wouldn't be surprised if all of them are fraudulent.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
afdave wants a Young Earth ... afdave NEEDS a Young Earth. He has found what he thinks is scientific confirmation of his Young Earth in radiometric dating. And it is a bit tempting. If one looks at nothing else, one would be tempted to trust it. But therein lies the problem. Multiple other lines of evidence are literally screaming out that the earth is old.
I totally agree with all of your projections afdave!
Wasn't Larry Fafarman suffering some sort of mental problem? AFDave sounds as if he has the same one. The arguments are different, the blindness to being repeatedly defeated is similar.
There are several funny things about the last few posts ...
1) Faid really thinks his Portuguese argument is better than mine 2) Arden agrees 3) Both of them forget that I've had several people on this thread agree with me -- unprecedented! -- who ever hear of an ATBCer agreeing with a Creo!! 4) Arden has chided me about 'the proper way that an academic argues' and yet he says, '"Listen you *&%$, I'll tell you what, you *&%$^#, you're nothing but a stupid little &^%$%&!!!" -- very academic, indeed! 5) Aftershave and Eric are scratching their heads about how coal and diamonds could possibly have C14, and all they can say is "Well, we don't know where it came from, but look at tree rings, look at varves, look at these other things ..."
Not now, boys. I'm looking at C14.
And it's kinda fun!
Dave, I've noticed you do this kind of whining a lot when you're backed into a corner on your arguments, can't actually defend your position anymore, and want to change the subject. Is that what we're seeing here?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, I know data is not really your friend, and you distrust data of any kind not taken from AIG, but I would like you to comment on this:
Portuguese: haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e Spanish: haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i French: avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si
You provided the data on Sp, Fr, & Pr; this is a more complete 'cognate set' as those non-existent people who never work on Romance languages would call it.
Now, with your amount of basic data DOUBLED here, would you like to tell me why your original data proved your point, and why this new data does not completely destroy your theory?
If you don't like that idea, you can do my other idea I invited you to do, which is finding a large mass of data from Portuguese which can ONLY be interpreted as French influence and not common inheritance from Latin. You know, doing research, finding data about the language, that sort of thing. (Not just talking about French knights and declaring that you've already won.)
At this point, I'd be content with either.
Just think! You'd be the first person ever to linguistically analyze Portuguese!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The sad thing is Dave is not even close to the first person to arrive at any of his ideas. He is the older kid from the Squid and The Whale.
Davey, what's wrong, am I scaring you? Did you get my folding paper analogy to C14?
Moron.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
AFDave seems to be under the misconception that --if you lie loud enough and long enough and avoid topics, while redefining terms and using every fallacy and rhetorical ploy known to man....that THAT kind of behavior = "I win."
I particularly like the pretense at being a victim, Dave. You began your threads by insulting, you get smeared on your claims and now all you can do is the Gish Gallop to save face. Why is honest, direct give-and-take debate beyond you ? Simple--you have to use these tatics to continue making more false claims.
Even when you have been shown wrong, as in the obvious Portuguese lies that you maintained, you have to pretend that you "won."
The bad part is you're obsessive-compulsive and a liar. The good part is that people around you are bound to notice your insane monomania.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Wasn't Larry Fafarman suffering some sort of mental problem? AFDave sounds as if he has the same one. The arguments are different, the blindness to being repeatedly defeated is similar.
Yes, Larry's brother took the time to detail his particular deficiencies once.
It's hard to say whether Dave suffers the same thing or not, but you're absolutely right about the commonalities of behavior.
...but it's not just those two that share them, just about any creobot can be found to share them to a great extent.
Gawp:
You're being irresponsible.
Deadman:
Quote
The good part is that people around you are bound to notice your insane monomania.
hmm, I'd bet not, or if they have, they think them "harmless".
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Dave, keep up the good work. You're not just demonstrating the truth of the Bible, but your posts also expose the immaturity of the other side.
I strongly suspect that GoP is just messing with us here...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Deadman-- Wecome back! I thought you had abandoned me!
What are you referring to when you say I am doing the Gish Gallop? The C12/C14?
I said I am happy to continue to answer questions on that ... do you have some?
Aftershave does and I will be covering them.
Also, in my excitement to move to the next topic, I forgot that I have not yet shown you anything about pre-Flood C14 ratios ...
We'll cover that tomorrow as well ... then on to Isochron Discordance.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I said I am happy to continue to answer questions ...
But you don't answer them. You re-interpret them to suit your ignorance.
When you linked an article with phrases like "...folded Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks unconformably overlain by mid-Tertiary volcanics..." I asked you what do the terms "Mesozoic" and "mid-Tertiary" mean to you? I asked what does "Lower Cretaceous quartzites" mean to you?
Instead of answering the question, you just wrote the, well, geologists got it wrong. What wrong? Everything? Do you know why Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks are Mesozoic miogeoclinal rocks? Or why mid-Tertiary volcanics are mid-Tertiary volcanics? How did they arrive at these names, Dave? Be specific.
AFDave: (1) use your computer to look up "Gish Gallop." (2) Notice how you haven't answered Occam's questions? (3) Notice how you ignored ericmurphy on C14 and diamonds? (4) Notice how you avoid the simple fact that you cannot and have not shown any word list of Portuguese terms derived directly from French?
So, Dave, why is it that you avoided all those things and then fill up pages with other material without answering what is asked you?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I answer Occam's questions that are relevant. But he's trying to get me off on tree rings and varves and God knows what. I am somewhat flexible in my outline, but I cannot just go for every rabbit trail.
I am not aware of how I ignored Eric on C14 and diamonds. I think I have answered everything that is on topic and relevant. JonF had the most salient points so I concentrated on him.
You will notice that I am polite to people who don't play silly games. Like you for instance, for a while. You were pretty civil on the helium-zircon topic and we took it about as far as it could go. Where we are at is that we disagree ... but at least we got our points across.
The people that act asinine, though, are a different matter. My approach is simply to shine a spotlight on their own asininity so that everyone can see it clearly.
Norm ... I understand the name of the geologic periods very well and actually will be using them in our discussion of the Flood. Yes, I think the long ages they represent are without basis and therefore bogus, but I will use the names nonetheless for convenience.
Deadman ... you forget what the issue was with the Portuguese discussion, so I will remind you ... I made a casual generalization: P=F+S, in a conversation about something else. Rilke very rudely intruded into the conversation and said I was an idiot. So I challenged her and she lost. Then Arden and Faid got all wrapped around the axle wanting to split hairs about the precise origin of Portuguese. There was no need for this because I was simply making a generalization similar to "the sky is blue." So what we ended up with was something like this ...
AFD: The sky is blue Arden/Faid: No it's not AFD: Yes it is Arden/Faid: No it's not, it's raining here and the sky is gray. AFD: OK. Fine, so it's not blue all the time. I agree. Arden/Faid: It's nighttime and the sky is black AFD: OK. Fine, guys. Whatever you say. I still say the sky is blue. Arden/Faid, etc.: AFD is a liar and a lunatic. He says the sky is blue. Norm: Quit splitting hairs. Ved: Let's just say "The sky is blue most of the time" Improvius: can we just come to a compromise?
When you really step back and think about the Portuguese discussion, it is a real hoot!!
Now what is really going on is that Arden and Faid really, really want me to lose because they don't like my view of origins. So on they go! How long? Who knows?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
You know, Dave, you really need to do better than just cutting and pasting an entire webpage from AiG. It's not like we haven't seen these same, wearisome "arguments" presented a million times before, and seen them shot down as flaming ruins a million time as well. Fortunately, since all the hard (well, not hard, but time-consuming) work of refuting them has already done, I don't have to do much work either.
(Sorry about the formatting; I gave up fighting with it. But you can figure out who said what from the busted formatting codes.)
So:
[quote=afdave,June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG]1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.[/quote]
Response: [quote] Spiral arms are density waves, which, like sound in air, travel through the galaxy's disk, causing a piling-up of stars and gas at the crests of the waves. In some galaxies, the central bulge reflects the wave, giving rise to a giant standing spiral wave with a uniform rotation rate and a lifetime of about one or two billion years.
The causes of the density waves are still not known, but there are many possibilities. Tidal effects from a neighboring galaxy probably cause some of them.
The spiral pattern is energetically favorable. Spiral configurations develop spontaneously in computer simulations based on gravitational dynamics (Carlberg et al. 1999).[/quote]
To which I will add: stars at the edges of galaxies have shorter orbital periods than would be indicated by assuming all the mass of the galaxy is made up of visible matter. This is strong evidence for a lot of invisible matter, nature unknown, which makes AiG's argument nonsensical to begin with.
[quote=afdave,June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG]
2. Too few supernova remnants. [/quote]
Response:
[quote]Many more SNRs have been found, including many Stage 3 remnants older than 20,000 years. And the census is not over yet. If the universe is old, many SNRs should have reached the third, oldest stage, and that is what we see. The evidence contradicts a young universe, not an old one.
Davies's estimate of what proportion of SNRs should be visible to us is grossly oversimplified. It is impossible to say with certainty what proportion should be visible. Furthermore, he ignores data, including observations of possible old remnants, that would weaken his case.
SNRs are relatively hard to see. They would not be visible for one million years, the figure Davies used in his calculations. A million years is the theoretical lifetime of a remnant; it will be visible for a much shorter time because of background noise and obscuring dust and interstellar matter. Fewer than 1 percent of SNRs last more than 100,000 years. It may be that as few as 15-20 percent of supernova events are visible at all through the interstellar matter.
Supernovas are evidence for an old universe in other ways: Supernovas are evidence that stars have reached the end of their lifetime, which for many stars is billions of years. The formation of new stars indicates that many are second generation; the universe must be old enough for some stars to go through their entire lifetime and for the dust from their supernovas to collect into new stars. It takes time for the light from the supernovas to reach us. All supernovas and SNRs are more than 7,000 light-years from us. SN 1987A was 167,000 +/- 4,000 light years away. [/quote]
[quote=afdave,June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG]3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.[/quote]
Response: [quote]The comets that entered the inner solar system a very long time ago indeed have evaporated. However, new comets enter the inner solar system from time to time. The Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt hold many comets deep in space, beyond the orbit of Neptune, where they do not evaporate. Occasionally, gravitational perturbations from other comets bump one of them into a highly elliptical orbit, which causes it to near the sun. [/quote]
and:
Quote
As of June 2000, more than 250 objects in the Kuiper Belt have been observed directly (Buie 2000), and it alone can be the source of short-term comets.
The Oort cloud has not been observed directly (although Sedna, a planetoid discovered in March 2004, might be in the Oort cloud), but its presence is well supported based on observations of long-period comets.
If there were no source for new comets to come from, all comets would have the same age. They do not. Some are young and have lots of gasses; others are little more than gravel heaps.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Response:
Quote
Yes, more sediment is deposited in the oceans than is removed by subduction. However, subduction is not the only fate of sediment deposited into the oceans. Some sediment deposited on the continental margin can become part of the continent itself if the sea level falls or the land is uplifted. Some calcium and organic sediments become biomass or ultimately dissolve. Some sediment becomes compacted as it deepens, so its volume is not indicative of the original sediment volume. Some sediment is "scraped" off of subducting plates and becomes coastal rocks.
The uniformitarian assumption in the claim is not valid. Tectonics involves ocean basins forming and spreading, but it also involves them closing up again (the Wilson cycle). When the basins close, the sediment in the oceans is piled up on the edges of continents or returned to the mantle. Much of British Columbia was produced when the Pacific Ocean closed a few hundred million years ago and land in the ocean accreted to the continent.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
5. Not enough sodium in the sea.
Response:
Quote
Austin and Humphreys greatly underestimate the amount of sodium lost in the alteration of basalt. They omit sodium lost in the formation of diatomaceous earth, and they omit numerous others mechanisms which are minor individually but collectively account for a significant fraction of salt.
A detailed analysis of sodium shows that 35.6 x 1010 kg/yr come into the ocean, and 38.1 x 1010 kg/yr are removed (Morton 1996). Within measurement error, the amount of sodium added matches the amount removed.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.
Response:
Quote
The earth's magnetic field is known to have varied in intensity (Gee et al. 2000) and reversed in polarity numerous times in the earth's history. This is entirely consistent with conventional models (Glatzmaier and Roberts 1995) and geophysical evidence (Song and Richards 1996) of the earth's interior. Measurements of magnetic field field direction and intensity show little or no change between 1590 and 1840; the variation in the magnetic field is relatively recent, probably indicating that the field's polarity is reversing again (Gubbins et al. 2006).
Empirical measurement of the earth's magnetic field does not show exponential decay. Yes, an exponential curve can be fit to historical measurements, but an exponential curve can be fit to any set of points. A straight line fits better.
T. G. Barnes (1973) relied on an obsolete model of the earth's interior. He viewed it as a spherical conductor (the earth's core) undergoing simple decay of an electrical current. However, the evidence supports Elsasser's dynamo model, in which the magnetic field is caused by a dynamo, with most of the "current" caused by convection. Barnes cited Cowling to try to discredit Elsasser, but Cowling's theorem is consistent with the dynamo earth.
Barnes measures only the dipole component of the total magnetic field, but the dipole field is not a measure of total field strength. The dipole field can vary as the total magnetic field strength remains unchanged.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
7. Many strata are too tightly bent.
Response: I don't even need to do any research to rebut this argument, Dave. I heard the rebuttal on a tourist train ride in Campe Verde, AZ. The strata in question were deeply buried, where the temperature is much higher, and subsequently the strata in question were much more ductile than they are at the surface. Deeply buried rock at high temperatures bents much further without fracturing than cooler rock at the surface. Color me unimpressed.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
8. Biological material decays too fast. Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20
Soft tissue and blood have not been recovered from dinosaur fossils.
Response:
Quote
Schweitzer et al. did not find hemoglobin or red blood cells. Rather, they found evidence of degraded hemoglobin fragments and structures that might represent altered blood remnants. They emphasizd repeatedly that even those results were tentative, that the chemicals and structures may be from geological processes and contamination (Schweitzer and Horner 1999; Schweitzer and Staedter 1997; Schweitzer et al. 1997a, 1997b). The bone is exceptionally well preserved, so much so that it may contain some organic material from the original dinosaur, but the preservation should not be exaggerated.
The bone that Schweitzer and her colleagues studied was fossilized, but it was not altered by "permineralization or other diagenetic effects" (Schweitzer et al. 1997b). Permineralization is the filling of the bone's open parts with minerals; diagenetic effects include alterations like cracking. Schweitzer commented that the bone was "not completely fossilized" (Schweitzer and Staedter 1997, 35), but lack of permineralization does not mean unfossilized.
An ancient age of the bone is supported by the (nonradiometric) amino racemization dating technique.
Soft tissues have been found on fossils tens of thousands of years old, and DNA has been recovered from samples more than 300,000 years old (Stokstad 2003; Willerslev et al. 2003). If dinosaur fossils were as young as creationists claim, recovering DNA and non-bone tissues from them should be routine enough that it would not be news.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years. Radio Halo (photo courtesy of Mark Armitage) Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals.
Response:
Quote
Polonium forms from the alpha decay of radon, which is one of the decay products of uranium. Since radon is a gas, it can migrate through small cracks in the minerals. The fact that polonium haloes are found only associated with uranium (the parent mineral for producing radon) supports this conclusion, as does the fact that such haloes are commonly found along cracks (Brawley 1992; Wakefield 1998).
The biotite in which Gentry (1986) obtained some of his samples (Fission Mine and Silver Crater locations) was not from granite, but from a calcite dike. The biotite formed metamorphically as minerals in the walls of the dike migrated into the calcite. Biotite from the Faraday Mine came from a granite pegmatite that intruded a paragneiss that formed from highly metamorphosed sediments. Thus, all of the locations Gentry examined show evidence of an extensive history predating the formation of the micas; they show an appearance of age older than the three minutes his polonium halo theory allows. It is possible God created this appearance of age, but that reduces Gentry's argument to the omphalos argument, for which evidence is irrelevant (Wakefield 1998).
Stromatolites are found in rocks intruded by (and therefore older than) the dikes from which Gentry's samples came, showing that living things existed before the rocks that Gentry claimed were primordial (Wakefield 1998).
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
10. Too much helium in minerals.
We've already done this one to death. I didn't even bother posting the refutation of this one; it's been thoroughly refuted right here. Read this thread, Dave, if you want to see how thoroughly this "evidence" has been refuted.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.
Same thing with this one. No need to beat a dead horse.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
Response:
Quote
The fact that some people buried bodies does not mean all did. In many cases, such as wars, plagues, natural disasters, and lone people getting lost, people get killed without even any consideration of funerals. Some land, such as swamps, hardpans, and ground frozen in winter, makes burial impractical at best. Even today, common funerary practices include incineration, exposure to the scavengers and elements, and burial at sea.
Burial alone does not preserve a body. In many acid soils, all organic matter can easily decay in 1,000 years. Hot, damp conditions in the tropics will also decay bodies and leech bones quickly. Groundwater, plant roots, digging animals, or a combination of these can also speed decay to the point where nothing would remain after a few thousand years. Erosion or reuse of the land by humans may unbury the body, at least to the point that the bones are subject to greater decay. Sea level rise, volcanism, modern construction, or other processes may make the land unreachable now.
All of these are significant factors. Fossilization is not a common process. And we have examined only a tiny fraction of the land where bodies might be buried. The few thousand remains we have found are well in line with a 185,000-year human history.
We would not expect the burial of artifacts to be common. There would be no reason to bury cheaper tools, such as pounding stones, with people. More valuable artifacts would not likely be buried with poor people.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
13. Agriculture is too recent.
Response:
Quote
Why is it implausible that humans lived for a long time without agriculture? Agriculture allows higher population densities, but it leads to an overall decrease in the quality of life over that of hunter-gatherers (Diamond 1987). In particular, agriculture requires much more work for a lower quality, less dependable diet, and it increases disease. There was no pressing reason to adopt agriculture in the first place.
The end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago may have facilitated the origin of agriculture at that time. The changed climate may have made agriculture possible in more areas, and/or it may have led to a human population increase which required agriculture to sustain.
It is possible that agriculture has been discovered several different times over the last 180,000 years. Climate change, even over relatively short periods of a few decades, has caused the collapse of agricultural societies in historical times, and the climate has changed dramatically over the last 180,000 years. Agriculture in the distant past may have been lost repeatedly.
The assumption that humans have not changed in intelligence over the past 185,000 years is unsupportable and many not be true. A team of geneticists has found evidence that human brains have evolved adaptively recently (and may still be evolving). Two genes associated with brain size have genetic variants whose high frequencies indicate that they spread under strong positive selection. A haplotype (genetic variant) of the Microcephalin gene arose about 37,000 years ago (95 percent confidence interval of 14,000 to 60,000 years) (Evans et al. 2005). An ASPM haplotype arose only about 5800 years ago (95 percent confidence interval of 500 to 14,000 years) (Mekel-Bobrov et al. 2005). It should be emphasized that the effects of these haplotypes is currently unknown; the evidence for strong selection indicates only that their effects are important, that humans have evolved recently in some way. It may be significant that they occurred around the same times as the introduction of modern humans to Europe and the origins of art (about 40,000 years ago) and the rise of agriculture and writing (about 10,000 to 6,000 years ago). It is also possible that these genes are not relevant to the origins of agriculture but others are. The larger point is that there is evidence that humans continue to evolve in subtle ways.
Regardless of whether we know why more technological progress was not made earlier, humans do have a long record, stretching back much, much farther than 6000 years, and we do have good indications of levels of technology during this history. "I do not know why this happened" does not lead logically to "this did not happen."
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,07:43, c&p'ing from AiG)
14. History is too short.
We've already laughed this one out of court, Dave. But since this was all so easy to find…
Response:
Quote
Agriculture brings with it many cultural changes, including cities, significant personal property, and trade. All the earliest known writings are recordkeeping for property in agricultural societies. There was no need for such records before the development of agriculture and its consequences. Thus, the origin of agriculture also determined the origin of writing.
Recent human evolution (also discussed with the origin of agriculture) may have applied to writing, too.
The thing that's so laughable about your "evidence," Dave, is that it's so old, so tired, so ridiculous, that I didn't even have to do any research to refute it. Every single one of these preposterous claims was rebutted, all on one page.
You think you're bringing up arguments we've never seen before. We've seen them all a million times before, and they're stale.
And, of course, given that you just c&p'd them from one source that has all the credibility of tooth fairy sightings, it's hardly worth the effort to bother refuting them. The only reason I did bother is because otherwise you'll claim you've "won" yet again. I mean, you'll still claim you've won, but even the lurkers will know how ridiculous your claims are.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
God, Dave, sometimes it's just incredible how blockheaded you are.
Quote (afdave @ June 18 2006,22:00)
I answer Occam's questions that are relevant. But he's trying to get me off on tree rings and varves and God knows what. I am somewhat flexible in my outline, but I cannot just go for every rabbit trail.
No, you don't answer Occam's "relevant" questions. The question he asked you is as relevant is it is possible to be. He asked you to explain how it could be that six different, entirely independent chains of evidence perfectly corroborate radiocarbon dating. It doesn't get any more relevant than that, Dave. He's not changing the subject to tree rings and varves, etc. They are the subject. The reason we know for a fact that radiocarbon dates are accurate is because they match other dates using completely different, independent lines of evidence. These aren't some "rabbit trail." They directly refute your claims about radiocarbon dating. Since you cannot answer Occam's question, you lose on the radiocarbon dating. Just as you've lost every single other argument you've made on this site.
Quote
I am not aware of how I ignored Eric on C14 and diamonds. I think I have answered everything that is on topic and relevant. JonF had the most salient points so I concentrated on him.
Have you been smoking crack, Dave? You claimed I have no idea where the C14 comes from in coal and diamond. I told you exactly where it comes from: it comes from neutron capture from radioactive decay in the vicinity and from high-energy cosmic rays.
Now. Do you still claim that I have no idea where that C14 comes from, Dave? Even after I've told you exactly where it comes from?
I think you sadly underestimate the intelligence of the people who read this site, Dave. You're getting nothing past anyone. Except, perhaps, for Mr. Paley, but I think he knows what's up. I think he's just encouraging you, even knowing your arguments are bogus.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Deadman ... you forget what the issue was with the Portuguese discussion, so I will remind you ... I made a casual generalization: P=F+S, in a conversation about something else. Rilke very rudely intruded into the conversation and said I was an idiot. So I challenged her and she lost. Then Arden and Faid got all wrapped around the axle wanting to split hairs about the precise origin of Portuguese. There was no need for this because I was simply making a generalization similar to "the sky is blue." So what we ended up with was something like this ...
AFD: The sky is blue Arden/Faid: No it's not AFD: Yes it is Arden/Faid: No it's not, it's raining here and the sky is gray. AFD: OK. Fine, so it's not blue all the time. I agree. Arden/Faid: It's nighttime and the sky is black AFD: OK. Fine, guys. Whatever you say. I still say the sky is blue. Arden/Faid, etc.: AFD is a liar and a lunatic. He says the sky is blue. Norm: Quit splitting hairs. Ved: Let's just say "The sky is blue most of the time" Improvius: can we just come to a compromise?
You lost, Dave. We demonstrated that both your intitial statement, your various inaccuracies and cover-ups for your embarrassing errors afterwards, and your attempt to change your story and cover up were lies.
Simply lies. You lost on the Portuguese thing because you made an idiotic comment - vacuous, illiterate, and generally brain dead.
I just like reminding you of that particular loss on your part because you keep lying about it.
Gentlemen, I give you Dave "I'm a liar for Christ and too stupid to know it" Hawkins.
Loser.
Liar.
Lunatic.
But God is he funny.
Keep it up, Dave - stick up for your right to make a complete and total fool of yourself simply by writing a post.
You'll have to understand if no one believes you anymore. You've broken too many promises to 'get to it' to have any credibility.
Yeah, no one except those lurkers that you said you were worried about. You'd better get with it refuting me with some sciency stuff so they don't get corrupted with my 'moronic beliefs.'
Well, based on the fact that every single lurker who has delurked has basically agreed that you're an idiot of the first water, I don't think you have much going for you, Dave.
Dave, you ignored this the first three times I posted it. I want your comments now.
You posted a cognate set with French, Portuguese and Spanish that you (delusionally) thought supported your argument.
I have doubled the data. Here it is, again:
Portuguese: haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e Spanish: haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i French: avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si
Now, with your amount of basic data DOUBLED here, would you like to tell me why your original data proved your point, and why this new data does not completely destroy your theory?
If you don't like that idea, you can do my other idea I invited you to do, which is finding a large mass of data from Portuguese which can ONLY be interpreted as French influence and not common inheritance from Latin. You know, doing research, finding data about the language, that sort of thing. (Not just talking about French knights and declaring that you've already won.)
This is what an honest person would do. My expectations are dismally low, but that is the unanimous consensus here.
Put up or shut up. It's kind of sick to think you consider being dishonest and delusional to be a 'hoot'. I think we're hoping that you're not THAT pathetic. And I really hope you're not genuinely SO STUPID that you can't see why this data sinks your theory.
Oh, also, Dave?
A couple weeks ago you said the Indians of North and South America originally had writing but lost it. You offered no proof of this at all. I asked you for proof. You ignored it. Proof now. What is your evidence?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
What's troubling is that only about half the population buys into your long age Darwinian fantasies in spite of all these excellent, smart scientists who are peddling the theory.
It's amazing to me that you don't scratch your head and say ... 'Hmmm ... with all this opportunity that we Evos have to indocrinate everyone with our theory, why don't they buy it? Could it be wrong?'
If you are a sample of that general population, then I'd say the reason we're not reaching them is that they are simply too stupid to understand.
I mean, there really is no other way to put it, Dave - you made a stupid statement about Portuguese, and were put in your place; you made a stupid statement about relativity and were put in your place; you made stupid statments about Helium, diamonds, history, pretty much every branch of science, and were put in your place.
And you lied about yourself and your 'military' record.
Be a christian: own up to your own sins. #### is nasty place, Dave - I'd hate to see you there.
I know you were miffed about the Portuguese thing because you are a linguist and all, but that little incident illustrates beautifully how a trained professional like yourself can be completely wrong about something from his very own field of study.
Regrettably, since your arguments were bogus, you didn't manage to show Arden anything except your extraordinary ignorance of linguistics.
Quote
You keep claiming that all the linguists in the world disagree with me and you've never shown me one.
A flagrant and outright lie.
Quote
I don't even think the linguists of the world CARE about Portuguese enough to even study it in the detail that I gave you.
But since you took all of the little detail your provided from other's people's research, this is yet another lie.
Quote
The linguists of the world say 'Portuguese is a Romance language descended from Latin ... blah, blah, blah' and that's about it, which I have consistently agreed with.
Nope, you haven't. You've blathered on irrelevant topics. But you still lost, Dave. I don't mind pointing it out to you, because I'm sure you wish to be honest with yourself. You lost. Get over it.
Quote
But they don't give the details that I gave you.
But since the details you provided were irrelevant details, they don't matter.
Quote
The only reason YOU are interested is because you don't like my views on origins and you want to refute me on something.
No, it's because you were completely wrong on a topic that Arden knows well.
If someone told you that the NT was obviously wrong because Jesus and Moses were gay lovers who adopted Judas for a little S&M bonding, you'd probably be annoyed when they couldn't prove it.
Well, Dave - they were. And your argument is just as bogus.
Let's see: what would it take to show that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish?
You'd have to show that Portuguese vocabulary was made of French and Spanish words.
Have you done this? Nope.
You'd had to show that Portuguese prounciation was made of French and Spanish pronunciations.
Have you done this? Nope.
You'd have to show that Portuguese grammar was made of French and Spanish grammar.
Have you done this? Nope.
Dave: 0 Posters: 30+
Look, Dave, I know you feel embarrassed for being wrong; I know you feel frustrated that you can't show that you were right; I know you hate being defeated so easily by non-Christians.....
Get over it. It's going to happen to you for the rest of your life.
I love the way target drone QFDave thinks he can rewrite his history here and no one will notice. We all know how QF made this claim about Portuguese:
Quote
I actually speak quite a bit of Spanish and Portuguese (which of course is Spanish and French mixed).
When this was shown to be laughably wrong, and in a desperate attempt to save face, QF changed his story to
Quote
I meant exactly what I said ... It is an accurate GENERALIZATION to say that 'Portuguese is a mixture of Spanish and French'
Got that? It’s an ACCURATE GENERALIZATION, not a statement of absolute fact.
And now it’s changed again to
Quote
.. I made a casual generalization: P=F+S, in a conversation about something else.
Now it’s a CASUAL GENERALIZATION. Next week it will be ‘street theater’, and the week after next Dave won’t have said it at all.
All that whining about GENERALIZATION, and yet this is the same bonehead who offered this passage from World Book as an iron clad, can’t be wrong, proof positive of a less than 6000 YO young Earth.
Quote
"But the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago with the invention of writing."
But the ‘tard can’t grasp the fact that the statement is a GENERALIZATION where ‘world history” roughly means ‘the period of time when humans began changing their lifestyle from nomadic hunter-gather tribes into agricultural based permanent city-states and began recording their transactions.”
QFDave:
Loser Liar Lunatic
But his brainless YEC regurgitations do make for great targets.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
1.) If you know what the Gish Gallop is, then why ask me about it?
2.) You lost your claim on Portuguese for the very reason that I stated: the ONLY way that you can win that claim is to show that French plays any major influence in ***words*** used in the Portuguese language itself.
SHOW a WORDLIST of terms IN Portuguese derived from French
The "phonetics" of Portuguese can be called "similar" ...but you have not shown it is derived from French at all, nor will you.
3.) Occam's questions pertained directly to your claims, Dave. You just avoid them, as you always do when cornered. Just as you did on your claim that Amerinds all lost their written languages, Dave. That's when you switched your claim, Dave. to " well, the Aztec and Maya" And when I pointed out that the Maya and Aztec never lost a written language but adopted another...you ran from your re-statement of your claim.
4.) Yes, you ignored ericmurphy for the same reason you ignored what I posted on zircons and how Humphreys himself lied to you----- along with your false claim that "Humphreys was not comparing materials" about how pressure affected diffusion between GLASSES like rhyolite obsidian and how it likely affects zircon, which he didn't test under pressure. You say :
Quote
HUMPHREYS COMPARES THE HARDNESS OF VARIOUS MINERALS ONLY TO SHOW THAT PRESSURE HAS LITTLE EFFECT ON DIFFUSIVITIES OF OTHER HARD MATERIALS...He makes no statements about the COMPARATIVE diffusivities of different materials, which is what you keep bringing up. This is completely irrelevant.
and yet Humphreys does in fact compare pressure and diffusivity rates of zircon, rhyolite and later, steel ball bearings, saying pressure would have no real effect...but as I showed, it does. Humphreys says straight out:
Quote
As far as I know, nobody has measured the effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon. ....However I have at hand a paper[6] that gives, among other data, ****the pressure effect on argon diffusion in glasses****, such as rhyolite obsidian. At the highest temperature to which our helium-in-zircon experiment went, 500 degrees C, the pressure effect on the glasses (rhyolite, Dave) was almost imperceptible...Glasses should be more compressible than crystals of the same composition; glasses are generally not as hard because of weaker chemical bonds between parts. So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz.
He goes on to discuss why zircon, " harder than steel" would not be affected by pressure, Dave...in terms of diffusion, and he compares zircon to steel ball bearings...
But you insist on trying to pretend words mean what YOU want them to mean, like Humpty-Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, you think that you can change the very definitions of words to suit your delusions.
Quote
"When I use a word," Humpty Dave Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
Nah, it doesn't work that way, Baboo.
Oh, and (5) No you don't really know the Bible, Dave. I pointed out where your claim about.. Civilizations centers existing , THEN the tower of Babel happening...runs exactly contrary to Genesis. If this discussion were just on the errors and lies and contradictions of the Bible, you'd be toast there, too.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Something struck me while I was noting your lies on Amerind languages, Dave---I was thinking of all the Aztecan (Nahua)-derived terms in Spanish that show the direct relationship of one language to the other...and sure enough...
Nahuatl has been an exceedingly rich source of words for the Spanish language as the following examples show. Some of them are restricted to Mexico or Mesoamerica, but others are common to all the Spanish-speaking regions in the world and a number of them have made their way into many other languages via Spanish. achiote, acocil, aguacate, ajolote, amate, atole, axolotl, ayate, cacahuate, camote, capulín, chamagoso, chapopote, chayote, chicle, chile, chipotle, chocolate, cuate, comal, copal, coyote, ejote, elote, epazote, escuincle, guacamole, guachinango, guajolote, huipil, huitlacoche, hule, jacal, jícama, jícara, jitomate, malacate, mecate, metate, metlapil, mezcal, mezquite, milpa, mitote, molcajete, mole, nopal, ocelote, ocote, olote, paliacate, papalote, pepenar, petaca, petate, peyote, pinole, piocha, popote, pozole, pulque, quetzal, tamal, tianguis, tiza, tomate, tule, zacate, zapote, zopilote. (The persistent -te or -le endings on these words are Spanish reflexes of the Nahuatl 'absolutive' ending -tl, -tli, or -li, which appears on (most) nouns when they have no other affixes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl_language
See, DaveTard? that's how real linguists show relationships of one language to another in terms of loanword lists. The same can be done with Arabic and Spanish...
But Dave...YOU can't show the same thing with French and Portuguese... not even to the degree that Nahua influenced Spanish. You're not even vaguely honest, Dave
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I answer Occam's questions that are relevant. But he's trying to get me off on tree rings and varves and God knows what. I am somewhat flexible in my outline, but I cannot just go for every rabbit trail.
Occam's questions and postings (some of which I posted also) are directly relevant to the validity of C14 dating. You have ignored then because you have no answer.
Quote
I am not aware of how I ignored Eric on C14 and diamonds. I think I have answered everything that is on topic and relevant. JonF had the most salient points so I concentrated on him.
You have not even acknowledged the existence of the issues that are on-topic and relevant; the correlations between C14 dating and other independent methods; the formation of C14 in-situ by neutron capture; and the transport of C14 by groundwater.
{ABE} Oh, and you lied when you claimed Eric had not provided an explanation for the C14 contamination.
[quote=ericmurphy]You know, Dave, you really need to do better than just cutting and pasting an entire webpage from AiG. It's not like we haven't seen these same, wearisome "arguments" presented a million times before, and seen them shot down as flaming ruins a million time as well. Fortunately, since all the hard (well, not hard, but time-consuming) work of refuting them has already done, I don't have to do much work either.[/quote] Nicely done. Dave'll ignore it. A few comments:
Quote
Quote (afdave @ ]6. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast.[/quote)
Response:
Quote
The earth's magnetic field is known to have varied in intensity (Gee et al. 2000) and reversed in polarity numerous times in the earth's history...
This does not acknowledge that Humphreys has a somewhat different model than Barnes. Creationists have made much of the claim that Humphreys' model "predicted" the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune before they were measured. Humphrey's model is discussed at On Creation Science and the Alleged Decay of the Earth's Magnetic Field, about 3/4 of the way down, under the heading "Current Creationist Status". Humphreys' prediction is not very impressive.
Quote
[quote=afdave]7. Many strata are too tightly bent.
Response: I don't even need to do any research to rebut this argument, Dave. I heard the rebuttal on a tourist train ride in Campe Verde, AZ. The strata in question were deeply buried, where the temperature is much higher, and subsequently the strata in question were much more ductile than they are at the surface. Deeply buried rock at high temperatures bents much further without fracturing than cooler rock at the surface. Color me unimpressed.
I might add that hydorostatic compression (technically, equal diagonal terms in the stress matrix) are also key to the folding.
Quote
[quote=afdave]8. Biological material decays too fast. Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20
Of course, DNA experts have not insisted "that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years". In re mitochondrial Eve:
Quote
1. The claim is founded primarily on the work of Parsons et al. (1997), who found that the substitution rate was about 25 times higher in the mitochondria control region, which is less than 7% of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Revised studies of all of the mtDNA find that the control region varies greatly in substitution rates in different populations, but that the rest of the mtDNA shows no such variation (Ingman et al. 2000). Using mtDNA excluding the control region, they placed the age of the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years ago.
Gibbons (1998) refers to mutations that cause heteroplasmy (inheritance of two or more mtDNA sequences). This does not apply to mitochondrial Eve research, which is based only on substitution mutation rates.
2. A study similar to the mtEve research was done on a region of the X chromosome which does not recombine with the smaller Y chromosome; it placed the most recent common ancestor 535,000 +/- 119,000 years ago (Kaessmann et al. 1999). Since the population size of X chromosomes is effectively three times larger than mitochondria (two X chromosomes from women and one from men can get inherited), the most recent common ancestor should be about three times older than that of the Mitochondrial Eve, and it is.
OK, this stupid system will not preview or post my next reply, as a standalone message or an edit to an existing message, so I'lkl just jave to post it unformatted
ericmurphy: "You know, Dave, you really need to do better than just cutting and pasting an entire webpage from AiG. It's not like we haven't seen these same, wearisome "arguments" presented a million times before, and seen them shot down as flaming ruins a million time as well. Fortunately, since all the hard (well, not hard, but time-consuming) work of refuting them has already done, I don't have to do much work either."
Nicely done. Dave'll ignore it. A few comments:
"6. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast."
"The earth's magnetic field is known to have varied in intensity (Gee et al. 2000) and reversed in polarity numerous times in the earth's history. ..."
This does not acknowledge that Humphreys has a somewhat different model than Barnes. Creationists have made much of the claim that Humphreys' model "predicted" the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune before they were measured. Humphrey's model is discussed at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/magfields.html , about 3/4 of the way down, under the heading "Current Creationist Status":
"It is for this reason that I am not impressed by Humphreys' confidence in his theory's ability to predict the magnetic dipole moments for Uranus and Neptune, before the Voyager spacecraft observed them. Humphreys' predictions for Uranus {20, page 146} and Neptune {20, page 147} both state that the dipole strength should be "on the order of 10^24 J/T". He connects these predictions to his theory by selecting a value for k = 0.25 in both cases, computing a dipole strength at creation, and then estimating a characteristic decay time assuming a core conductivity similar to the terrestrial planets. This brings on the estimate of 10^24 J/T, but remember that the dipole at creation is an entirely free parameter. A peek at Humphreys' table II {20, page 147} shows that the dipole for Jupiter is 1.6 × 10^27, for Saturn 4.3 × 10^25, and for Earth 7.9 × 10^22. From these values alone, with reference to no theory at all, one can immediately see that the dipole values for Uranus and Neptune must be larger that Earth's 10^22 and smaller than Saturn's 10^25, so that anything in the 10^23 to 10^24 range is an obvious guess anyway. All Humphreys has to do is come up with a dipole at creation that is about the same as Saturn's is now, and the result is going to be very nearly right. We now know the dipole values for Uranus {3.7 × 10^24 J/T} and Neptune {2.1 × 10^24 J/T}, which do indeed agree with Humphreys' order of magnitude predictions. But to hail this as a confirmation of his theory is not very rewarding. Indeed, it is my position that Humphreys' theory cannot be confirmed, since it predicts at once every possible observed field, and is therefore useless for predicting anything.
Eventually the Humphreys theory has become distinct from the Barnes theory. Humphreys decided that the evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Earth's magnetic field has reversed its polarity a number of times is too convincing, and that such reversals must have occurred. In doing so, Humphreys also rejects Barnes' idea that the Earth's field has been decaying exponentially ever since creation, and has instead postulated a more complex history for the magnetic field, built around the presumption that the field reversals happened very rapidly, taking perhaps no more than a few days to a few weeks {23, 24}. Humphreys had already postulated this idea, when he found support from a paper by Coe & Prevot in 1989 {25}, which showed evidence of a rapid change in the angle of the dipole moment of the Earth's magnetic field during the cooling time of a lava flow. Coe & Prevot have expanded on the observations and theory since then {26, 27a} (and so has Humphreys {28}), and the effect certainly appears to be real, or at least credible. Humphreys has interpreted these results as an implication that all field reversals are very rapid, and this allows him to concentrate all of them into the single year of the Genesis Flood. However, one must remember that the results reported by Coe & Prevot include only a few out of hundreds or thousands of examples of field reversal measurements. The vast majority of the known examples would have required the entire reversal to take place while the lava flows were still hotter than the Curie temperature, or worse yet, argue against rapid reversal by recording what appear to be the intermediate stages of a single reversal event. Finally, others have shown that the evident rapid reversals described by Coe & Prevot may be explained by processes not related directly to those in the Earth's core {27b}, but rather by magnetic storm effects that may become significant at the surface of the Earth during a reversal, when the dipole field is relatively weak."
"7. Many strata are too tightly bent."
"Response: I don't even need to do any research to rebut this argument, Dave. I heard the rebuttal on a tourist train ride in Campe Verde, AZ. The strata in question were deeply buried, where the temperature is much higher, and subsequently the strata in question were much more ductile than they are at the surface. Deeply buried rock at high temperatures bents much further without fracturing than cooler rock at the surface. Color me unimpressed."
I might add that hydorostatic compression (technically, equal diagonal terms in the stress matrix) are also key to the folding.
"8. Biological material decays too fast. Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts."
Of course, DNA experts have not insisted "that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years". In re mitochondrial Eve:
"1. The claim is founded primarily on the work of Parsons et al. (1997), who found that the substitution rate was about 25 times higher in the mitochondria control region, which is less than 7% of the mitochondrial genome (mtDNA). Revised studies of all of the mtDNA find that the control region varies greatly in substitution rates in different populations, but that the rest of the mtDNA shows no such variation (Ingman et al. 2000). Using mtDNA excluding the control region, they placed the age of the most recent common mitochondrial ancestor at 171,500 +/- 50,000 years ago.
Gibbons (1998) refers to mutations that cause heteroplasmy (inheritance of two or more mtDNA sequences). This does not apply to mitochondrial Eve research, which is based only on substitution mutation rates.
2. A study similar to the mtEve research was done on a region of the X chromosome which does not recombine with the smaller Y chromosome; it placed the most recent common ancestor 535,000 +/- 119,000 years ago (Kaessmann et al. 1999). Since the population size of X chromosomes is effectively three times larger than mitochondria (two X chromosomes from women and one from men can get inherited), the most recent common ancestor should be about three times older than that of the Mitochondrial Eve, and it is. "
PRE-FLOOD C14 LEVELS: BAD ASSUMPTIONS OF THE LONG AGERS
We have shown that there are easily detectable levels of C14 in coal and diamonds and that this was a major surprise to scientists when they discovered it thanks to the new AMS technology invented in the 1980s. The RATE Team cites several examples of studies in the past 20 years which ATTEMPT to investigate the source of this C14, but they cannot come up with anything plausible. (See below for one such citation). In situ neutron capture does not account for it either as the RATE Group clearly shows in their calculations (see discussion below -- I can supply more detail if desired). Liquid transport of C14 does not work either unless you apply this to ALL samples dated by C14. Also, why didn't the study cited below mention liquid transport as a possibility? They have NO explanation.
So where we are is that there is far more C14 in coal and diamonds than the Long Agers expected. Just like there is far more helium in zircons than they expected. Hmmm... what to do? Well, we can always take the approach of just saying that Creos are liars and fraudsters, which is the approach taken by some here. Or we could be honest and say ... "Hmmmm ... maybe we should have a look at those assumptions we used for dating the earth at 4.5 Ga."
I hope at least on your deathbeds when you are 5 minutes from meeting your Creator, maybe you will consider some of this information you have been given. Maybe then it will all gel in your minds and the lightbulb will come on and you will say "I get it! The Bible really is true! The earth really is only about 6000 years old. There really was a Flood! There really is a Creator, and I am about to meet Him!" And like the thief on the cross, you too can make your amends with Him before it's too late!
Well, I certainly can't force the lightbulb to come on for you. It either will come on or it won't. It's up to you. But what I can do is continue giving you good information.
Since we (or at least I) have settled this idea that samples supposedly hundreds of millions of years old are dated at 50,000 years by C14, the obvious question is, "Well Dave, I thought you said 6000 years or 4500 years, not 50,000. What's up with that?"
Good question. It comes down to assumptions again, namely about pre-Flood levels of carbon. Again, I will let the RATE Group explain it to you ...
[quote]With a date for the Biblical Flood derived from the Masoretic Hebrew text of only about 4500 years ago, which is less that the C14 half-life, one would expect that C14 in plants and animals buried in this cataclysm to be detectable today. What sorts of C14/C values might we expect to find today in organic remains of plants and animals that perished during this global event which rapidly formed the Cambrian to middle-upper Cenozoic part of the Phanerozoic geological record? Such a cataclysm would have buried a huge amount of C from living organisms to form today's coal, oil, and oil shale, probably most of the natural gas, and some fraction of today's fossiliferous limestone. Estimates for the amount of C in this inventory are typically several hundred times greater than what resides in the biosphere today [Brown, 1979; Morton, 1984; Scharpenseel and Becker-Heidmann, 1992; Giem, 2001]. These studies indicated the bioshpere just prior to the cataclysm would have had, conservatively, 300-700 times the total C relative to our present world. Living plants and animals would have contained most of this biospheric C, with only a tiny fraction of the total resident in the atmosphere. The vast majority of this C would have been C12 and C13, since even in today's world, only about one C atom in a trillion is C14. ... [if we assume similar C14 levels and we assume that] the total amount of biospheric C were, for example, 500 times that of today's world, the resulting C14/C ratio would be 1/500 of today's level, or about 0.2 pMC.[/quote]
They admit that this estimate is not certain, but it's a good guess, and certainly a great deal better than the Long Ager estimates simply because Long Agers don't even account for the Flood at all.
Accounting for the C14 decay over the span of 4500 years since the Flood reduces the pre-Flood level by a factor of 0.6, so that organisms with 0.2 pMC of C14 4500 years ago would display a level of 0.12 pMC today, which of course is close to what we find. So the computed "ages" of C14 are probably off by a factor of 10 or so, speaking in rough numbers.
OK. Shoot me down if you can. But don't try to say something like "There was no Flood." Wait until I give you my evidence for it before you do that. (I shouldn't have to give you evidence for the Global Flood -- the evidence is so enormous, but I will anyway.)
Eric...[quote]You think you're bringing up arguments we've never seen before. We've seen them all a million times before, and they're stale. [/quote]
Actually, I knew that you have seen these before. But you guys cut and paste your stuff periodically so I took the liberty to do so as well. I have done you the courtesy of copying off your rebuttals into a separate file for later discussion. I assume you C&Ped from T.O. since the supposed rebuttal is all on one link?
Eric...[quote]Dave, you've said half a dozen times so far that "three billion years isn't enough time for this, and it isn't enough time for that, and it isn't enough time for this other thing, either." You have, so far, presented not so much as a tattered fragment of evidence to support this contention, because you have no such evidence. [/quote]
Eric, my friend ... listen ... you cannot even point to ONE example of a mutation which increases information. The truth is that mutations decrease information content. It doesn't take a rocket scientist ... one does not need a formal proof to know that no matter how much time you have, you will not make a jellyfish from a bacteria in 3 billion years or 3B X 3B years if NONE of the necessary mutation add information content. Now do you get it?
DrewHeadley ... Also Eric...[quote]AFD...New information simply does not arise by chance
Please, read Claude Shannons work on information theory. You will see that chance (I take it you mean randomness?) generates the highest information content. Here is a copy of his work: http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf [/quote]
No. I mean information. How in the world did you arrive at your conclusion with that paper? It's 55 pages on the Mathematical Theory of Communication.
Eric...[quote]Dave, I know enough about S/N to know how wrong you are. Do you know what percentage of carbon is C14, Dave? About 1.3E10-12%, that's how much. The "signal," after a few hundred thousand half-lives, is swamped in the noise. Doesn't it strike you as a bit strange that no matter how far back you go, the C14 levels never get below a certain point? You can go back to the beginning of time, and you'll still have an irreducible minimum of C14. [/quote]
Yes. It does strike me as very strange. That is precisely why I bring it up. In fact, it is so strange that the AMS labs have been scratching their heads to try to explain it for over 20 years. Eric, you and Aftershave need to get up to speed with JonF. I really did not want to backtrack to cover this basic stuff, but you guys seem to think I'm just dodging, so I will try to help you understand. JonF understands this and he is to the point where the AMS labs are illustrated by this conclusion from Nadeau et al. [2001] entitled, "Carbonate 14C background: does it have multiple personalities?" They analyze many 'old' samples including shells and foraminifera. Here's what they conclude...
[quote]The results ... show a species-specific contamination that reproduces over several individual shells and foraminifera from several sediment cores. Different cleaning attempts have proven ineffective, and even stronger measures such as progressive hydrolization or leaching of the samples prior to routine preparation, did not give any indication of the source of contamination. ... So far, no theory explaining the results has survived all the tests. No connection between surface structure and apparent ages could be established.[/quote]
OK? Now... let's put all this silliness about SNR's behind us once and for all. The deal is that AMS labs cannot figure out where this contamination comes from. Of course, they will not consider the possibility that the C14 is there because the samples are YOUNG. No one would consider that because they are committed to Long Ages. Well, one of these days, if creationists keep hammering them with the facts, maybe they will. And maybe you will too. Also, Eric, you cannot say that Carbon Dating works for ages up to 60,000 years (this is the figure I read BTW), then turn around and say 'Well, except in the case of coal.'
Eric...
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And we've told you again and again that that's exactly what one would expect, and you'll get that same value for any carbon source more than 60,000 years old.
No, no, no. This is NOT what anyone expected when the AMS technique was invented. You guys call me the liar, but the truth is that either you are very ignorant of the history of C14 measurement or YOU are a liar. I just showed you one paper from 2001. There are many more, but I get tired of typing and trying to permeate cement with information. And again, I must keep focused on my primary goal -- to educate MYSELF on these topics and at the same time give Evos a fair shake at trying to dislodge the points of YEC Theory.
Eric...
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C14 is created all the time by neutron capture due to radioactive decay (among other mechanisms), the same mechanism that creates it in the upper atmosphere, albeit at a lower rate, which is why we see low levels of C14 in buried strata that haven't been exposed to the atmosphere for millions of years. This is why, no matter how far back in time you go, you will find an irreducible minimum of C14.
Yes. If you were really interested in TRUTH, you would spend a few bucks and buy the RATE books. Then you would know that this question is thoroughly treated there. Do you have any idea how much C14 is generated in situ by subsurface neutrons? It's about 9 X 10^(-6) pMC. Do you know how small that is? It's 13,000 times smaller than the mean value of 0.12 pMC measured by the RATE Group in their diamond samples. Not a factor Eric. Probably this is why JonF did not bring this up. He knows that the only hope for long agers is Contamination from somewhere. But he doesn't know where from and neither do the AMS people.
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You're the only one who doesn't have an explanation for C14.
Quite the opposite. You don't have an explanation. I do.
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And, I should point out, you've never explained why radiometric dating methods that are actually suited for dating 150-million-year-old deposits, don't also provide dates of 50,000 years. As usual, you completely ignore questions you can't answer.
Why would I explain that? What does that have to do with anything?
Eric...
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The earth has been around that long, Dave, and there's overwhelming evidence of it. Not only that, but all the applicable evidence points to the same age. Your "evidence" points to all sorts of ages: 5,500 years (what? you think humans sat on their asses for 500 years before they wrote anything down, when according to you scribes were following Adam around to write down his names for things?), 6,000 years, 10,000 years, 20,000 years, 50,000 years.
No. My evidence tells me about 6000 years. We are using YOUR assumptions for C14 when we get 20,000 and 50,000 for various samples. We use your assumptions so that you don't get confused with too many issues at once. The 20,000 and 50,000 year sample ages simply show that your multi-million year scenarios have serious problems. Once an open-minded person (other than you) understands this basic idea, then he is enlightened enough to move on to finer detail, namely that the conventional C14 assumptions are wrong and that the supposed 50,000 year date should really be about 4500 years, etc. Are you getting it yet?
OA...
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No Dave, I asked you for your explanation of the six independent lines of evidence that confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.
Again, if you can show me what they have to do with C14 dating specifically, I'll be happy to address them. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until I get to them in my sequence.
Arden...
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Here's the chart AFD gave:
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Here are three additional languages Dave neglected:
Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i
Linguistic evidence, Dave, linguistic evidence. OK. Fine linguistic evidence. I've given it several times. Here it is again. Arden, your chart shows that your 3 languages belong to the same family ... wonderful. We knew that already. Not very novel info. But again, my chart gives more detail in that it shows a definite influence on Spanish by French to produce Portuguese ALL WITHIN the same language family.
We will be talking more about language families in general when we get to th Tower of Babel.
JonF...
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Er, no, Davie-ol'-dork, that's not a lot of discordance; it's an infinitesimal number of discordant dates obtained by people with a known history of fraud in this area. Even if the results are correct (establishing which would take a lot more data than you have posted here, see below), it doesn't support "radiometric dating discordance is the rule, not the exception".
Of course; there aren't any creationist labs. There also aren't any honest creationist geologists. We need third-party analyses of the sample selection and collection methods, location specifications, minerology and microscopic analyses, and the raw dating lab data. Just a table like that, from a pack of known and proven liars, is meaningless.
I note that they did whole-rock analyses of samples from Mt. Ngauruhoe, which is automatically invalid unless they did a heroic job of separating the xenoliths Quote (Extra credit: Is there a pattern to the discordance? Yes. What might this indicate?) Fraud.
There is truly no hope for you. ...
AFD: Isochron discordance is the rule, not the exception JonF: No it's not AFD: I have heard that geologists obtain many discordant results, but simply don't publish them -- they trash them with the explanation that they are an 'anomaly.' JonF: Nonsense. Go prove it to me. AFD: Well, I'll work on it, but it will take time. In the mean time, here's some results from the RATE Group that show the discordance. JonF: Yeah, well everyone knows they are Fraudsters. AFD: Why do you say so? They are highly qualified scientists in their fields. One on the team is from Los Alamos and another from Sandia. JonF: It's proven that they are fraudsters. AFD: By what? JonF: They say the earth is 6000 years old, for cryin' out loud. That's fraud! Just like you. You're a fraud. It's obvious! AFD: Oh, I see. Thanks for showing me your cards. We'll move on now.
Aftershave...
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Oh, and you also avoided explaining how you think coal, oil, and chalk beds form, and how an 11,000 YO village in Turkey can exist before your 6000 YO Earth was formed.
Too easy. Give me some harder questions. Your 1st answer: The Flood. Your second answer: Invalid C14 assumptions. No accounting for pre-Flood carbon levels.
Aftershave...
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If I don't hear any objections, I think I will post all my C14/C12 calibration data on your blog.
You cannot post anything on my blog. I shut down comments because some of them were so childish and asinine. In case you have not noticed, I don't really spend much time at MY blog. I'm having too much fun here finding out just how weak the ToE and Long Ages Theory is!
Ved...
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Do you guys remember the time when dave started counting points that he conceded? He got to one, then stopped.
That's because you only convinced me of one.
Eric...
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Ten results, Dave. Ten. Do you know how many rocks have had their ages determined radiometrically in the last half century? Hundreds of thousands, Dave.
Yes. Hundreds of thousands. WHich means that they probably discarded about 500,000 of them which didn't agree with 'Standard Geologic Time.'
Ghost of Paley...
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Dave, keep up the good work. You're not just demonstrating the truth of the Bible, but your posts also expose the immaturity of the other side.
Thanks, Paley. You might want to clarify with these guys. They think you are being sarcastic.
Eric...
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The question he asked you is as relevant is it is possible to be. He asked you to explain how it could be that six different, entirely independent chains of evidence perfectly corroborate radiocarbon dating. It doesn't get any more relevant than that, Dave. He's not changing the subject to tree rings and varves, etc. They are the subject. The reason we know for a fact that radiocarbon dates are accurate is because they match other dates using completely different, independent lines of evidence. These aren't some "rabbit trail." They directly refute your claims about radiocarbon dating.
Independent lines of evidence that 'confirm' your interpretation of ages associated with C14 levels are not on topic at the moment. We are talking specifically about the surprising fact that C14 is found in coal and diamonds. I realize that you want to talk about other independent lines of evidence. I do too. But not now.
I have thoroughly refuted your nonsense about SNR's by showing you one example of many of conventional AMS labs having no answer as to why there are detectable levels of C14 in samples which should not have any.
And I have thoroughly refuted your nonsense about in situ contamination by radioactive decay. See above.
Now we are discussing pre-Flood levels of C14.
Arden...
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A couple weeks ago you said the Indians of North and South America originally had writing but lost it. You offered no proof of this at all. I asked you for proof. You ignored it. Proof now. What is your evidence?
Answered this long ago. Archaeology has confirmed that civilization began in Mesopotamia about 6000 years ago. I know you think that humans lived before that, but your proof is faulty (cave paintings erroneously dated older than 6000 ya). So the only real evidence we have (written records) says that humans have only been on the planet for about 6000 years. And archaeology has shown that they were able to write at least as far back as 5500ya, but doubtless all the way back to Adam, around 6000 ya. I have not shown you the evidence for this yet, but I will. The N. Am and S. Am Indians (and all peoples of the earth) descended from ONE COUPLE and ONE CIVILIZATION, which appeared upon the earth about 6000 ya. They had writing among other things. So all I have to do to show that the N. Am and S. Am indians lost their ability to write is show the plausibility of the Biblical version of human history. You may ask how the Indians got here? The most plausible explanation is that they walked here from Asia via a land bridge -- the Bering Strait -- which was a land bridge sometime close to the time of the Flood because of the lower sea level and massive polar ice caps. The people of Asia in turn migrated east from Mesopotamia. We will cover this in more detail later.
Rilke...
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And you lied about yourself and your 'military' record.
Rilke, your looniness defies logic, especially considering that you just got a PhD. First child molestation. You got spanked for that. Then child abuse. Spanked again. Now I lied about my military record? Wow! Words fail me ...
Deadman...
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and yet Humphreys does in fact compare pressure and diffusivity rates of zircon, rhyolite and later, steel ball bearings, saying pressure would have no real effect...
Look what you said ... "and yet Humphreys does in fact compare pressure and diffusivity rates of zircon, rhyolite and later, steel ball bearings," ... He absolutely DOES NOT compares pressure and diffusivity rates. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials. Let me repeat it for you several times so you get it.
He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials.
There. Got it now?
Deadman...
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Oh, and (5) No you don't really know the Bible, Dave. I pointed out where your claim about.. Civilizations centers existing , THEN the tower of Babel happening...runs exactly contrary to Genesis. If this discussion were just on the errors and lies and contradictions of the Bible, you'd be toast there, too.
What in the world are you talking about? Civilization existed all the way back to Cain according to the Bible. Have you not read Genesis 4? It talks about agriculture, music and metallurgy. That's the marks of civilization, my friend.
Deadman...
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But Dave...YOU can't show the same thing with French and Portuguese... not even to the degree that Nahua influenced Spanish. You're not even vaguely honest, Dave
I've showed you over and over again, but you are too deaf with the noise of your own arguments to listen.
JonF...
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You have not even acknowledged the existence of the issues that are on-topic and relevant; the correlations between C14 dating and other independent methods; the formation of C14 in-situ by neutron capture; and the transport of C14 by groundwater.
Show me how the RATE Group is incorrect in showing that neutron capture is infinitesimally small. Show me some papers that study C14 transport by groundwater. I showed you one of researchers that have absolutely no idea where the C14 came from. Also show me why groundwater would not be a problem for other specimens dated by C14. If you throw out my coal and diamonds, you have to throw out many of your things.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OA: No Dave, I asked you for your explanation of the six independent lines of evidence that confirm the accuracy of radiocarbon dating.
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AFDave...namely that the conventional C14 assumptions are wrong and that the supposed 50,000 year date should really be about 4500 years, etc. Are you getting it yet?
Again, if you can show me what they have to do with C14 dating specifically, I'll be happy to address them. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until I get to them in my sequence.
AFDave’s dishonest attempts at avoiding discussion continue unabated. You think that six independent lines of evidence that confirms the C14 assumptions were correct, evidence that confirms the accuracy of C14 dating, evidence that directly refutes your 6000 YO earth claims, has nothing to do with C14 dating??
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OA: Oh, and you also avoided explaining how you think coal, oil, and chalk beds form, and how an 11,000 YO village in Turkey can exist before your 6000 YO Earth was formed.
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AFDave: Too easy. Give me some harder questions. Your 1st answer: The Flood. Your second answer: Invalid C14 assumptions. No accounting for pre-Flood carbon levels.
No Dave, ‘The FLUD’ is NOT an answer. I asked you for your specific details as to how the fields were formed, including how long it took. Show us some of that ‘sciency’ stuff Dave.
Also, the 11,000 YO Turkish settlement was dated by dendrochronolgy Dave, and merely cross-verified with C14 testing. Once again, you need to come up with a reason as to why the two independent dating methods gave the same age, which is way older than 6000 years.
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OA: If I don't hear any objections, I think I will post all my C14/C12 calibration data on your blog.
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AFDave: You cannot post anything on my blog. I shut down comments because some of them were so childish and asinine.
Translation: Too many people were embarrassing me on my home turf by posting actual scientific data, so I deleted those entries and cut off all discussion.
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AFDave :I hope at least on your deathbeds when you are 5 minutes from meeting your Creator, maybe you will consider some of this information you have been given. Maybe then it will all gel in your minds and the lightbulb will come on and you will say "I get it! The Bible really is true! The earth really is only about 6000 years old. There really was a Flood! There really is a Creator, and I am about to meet Him!" And like the thief on the cross, you too can make your amends with Him before it's too late!
So says Mr “I’m not about religion, I only want the scientific TRUTH!!”
Every day you sink deeper into your cesspool of lies and evasions Dave. You think Jesus would approve of your actions? How about your fellow Christians? Can you feel those he11fires burning yet Dave? Because if you don’t stop lying and avoiding, you’ll get there sooner than you think.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Eric, my friend ... listen ... you cannot even point to ONE example of a mutation which increases information. The truth is that mutations decrease information content.
Could you explain how duplication and divergence (of genes, genetic modules and whole genomes), acting with selection could not generate information becuase Im pretty sure they can. If you want a good example how evolution can increase informtion in an information theory sense, try here.
Unfortunately creationists like to invent their own definitions of information, but Shannon information is the most universally recognised.
Earlier in this thread I predicted AFDickead's (don't worry he is well accustomed to it) posts would get longer.
AFDickhead lost Dover. Boo hoo hoo.
If or when religious facists like AFDave get to change the law of the land from Roman to the sharia law of Jerusalem his posts will be just 2 words ''F*uck you"
How's the brainwashing going D/2?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Could you explain how duplication and divergence (of genes, genetic modules and whole genomes), acting with selection could not generate information becuase Im pretty sure they can. If you want a good example how evolution can increase informtion in an information theory sense, try here.
Unfortunately creationists like to invent their own definitions of information, but Shannon information is the most universally recognised.
My personal knowledge of this at the moment, like yours, is intuitive, but there are some good books and other resources on this available. My experience has been that it is the evolutionists who are the ones who invent new definitions to suit their purposes. There is much information about this topic at ... you guessed it ... AIG, ICR and DI. Maybe I will be able to study this topic myself one day in more detail.
OA...
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Translation: Too many people were embarrassing me on my home turf by posting actual scientific data, so I deleted those entries and cut off all discussion.
No. BWE put some comment on there about "Goat Sex and God."
Very childish. I don't need comments like that on my blog.
OA...
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Also, the 11,000 YO Turkish settlement was dated by dendrochronolgy Dave, and merely cross-verified with C14 testing.
We will talk about dendrochronology when I get ready to talk about it. Remember how you hounded me about C14? Well, we got there. Now we are still there. Have patience.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDave: Eric, my friend ... listen ... you cannot even point to ONE example of a mutation which increases information. The truth is that mutations decrease information content.
AFDave gets caught lying again. I provided this information to AFDave back in April, and he commented on it so I know he read it
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Posted by OA, April 18 2006,21:11 Here is a mutation to a protein that was documented in a population in Italy. It helps reduce the risk of arteriosclerosis (clogged arteries), heart attack, and stroke. The mutation is now becoming fixed in the local population. There are many others if you cared to look for them - Google is your friend.
Unless Dave wants to claim the mutation made the population lose the ability to not lower the risk of arteriosclerosis
FYI Dave, the Morton you refer to in this statement
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Estimates for the amount of C in this inventory are typically several hundred times greater than what resides in the biosphere today [Brown, 1979; Morton, 1984; Scharpenseel and Becker-Heidmann, 1992; Giem, 2001].
is Glenn R. Morton, who was a YEC geology major in school but who totally reversed his position after working as a geologist in the field and seeing the old Earth evidence first-hand. Glenn is still a devout Christian who is quite active on a number of C/E boards (like TWeb). He provides much old Earth evidence and writes extensively about how the YEC 'scientists' are nothing but charlatans who duped him when he was younger.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, some people say you're boring, which I just can't understand. The hilarity of conversations that go like this is just impossible to not laugh at:
Dave: Here's a sentence in 3 languages to prove portuguese is french and spanish mixed!
Arden: Here's 3 more languages to add. See, they all look the same. It's called a language family.
Dave: My chart of 3 languages is MORE DETAILED than your chart of 6, which includes my chart!
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
BS D/2 do you think you are fooling anyone except yourself?
Give us a Jeremiah, you know you want to.
Or are you going to cowardly hide behind devilish nonsense?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
My experience has been that it is the evolutionists who are the ones who invent new definitions to suit their purposes.
I gave you a link to a paper where an 'evolutionist' showed that mutations can cause an increase in information using the universally accepted definition.
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There is much information about this topic at ... you guessed it ... AIG, ICR and DI.
You'll have to excuse me for reading biology and computer science journals instead.
if we assume similar C14 levels and we assume that] the total amount of biospheric C were, for example, 500 times that of today's world, the resulting C14/C ratio would be 1/500 of today's level, or about 0.2 pMC.
See, there's the lie. There's no reason to assume similar C14 levels (one could even call it a "begging the question fallacy"), but there is plenty of reason to assume similar C14/C12 ratios (because the biomass would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere) ... of course that blows their argument right out of the water. One doesn't even have to consider other relevant questions like "where did all this biomass live?"
[qiuote]They admit that this estimate is not certain, but it's a good guess, and certainly a great deal better than the Long Ager estimates simply because Long Agers don't even account for the Flood at all. [/quote] It's a horrible guess. There's no flood to account for. If their scenario were corect, we'd see a step in the C14 calibration curves and results.
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Do you have any idea how much C14 is generated in situ by subsurface neutrons? It's about 9 X 10^(-6) pMC. Do you know how small that is? It's 13,000 times smaller than the mean value of 0.12 pMC measured by the RATE Group in their diamond samples. Not a factor Eric. Probably this is why JonF did not bring this up. He knows that the only hope for long agers is Contamination from somewhere. But he doesn't know where from and neither do the AMS people.
Actually, Davie-wavie, I brought it up several times. And it appears to be the most likely explanation, especially for diamonds. Post the RATE group calculations and we'll critique them. Bet they made some assumptions as silly as the "same levels of 14C" one above.
Oh, and somebody's mixing up the units or something ... 9x10^-6 isn't pmc (percent modern carbon), it's 12C/14C.
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You're the only one who doesn't have an explanation for C14.
Quite the opposite. You don't have an explanation. I do.
"It's magic" is not a scientific explanation.
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Er, no, Davie-ol'-dork, that's not a lot of discordance; it's an infinitesimal number of discordant dates obtained by people with a known history of fraud in this area. Even if the results are correct (establishing which would take a lot more data than you have posted here, see below), it doesn't support "radiometric dating discordance is the rule, not the exception".
Of course; there aren't any creationist labs. There also aren't any honest creationist geologists. We need third-party analyses of the sample selection and collection methods, location specifications, minerology and microscopic analyses, and the raw dating lab data. Just a table like that, from a pack of known and proven liars, is meaningless.
I note that they did whole-rock analyses of samples from Mt. Ngauruhoe, which is automatically invalid unless they did a heroic job of separating the xenoliths Quote (Extra credit: Is there a pattern to the discordance? Yes. What might this indicate?) Fraud.
There is truly no hope for you. ...
AFD: Isochron discordance is the rule, not the exception JonF: No it's not AFD: I have heard that geologists obtain many discordant results, but simply don't publish them -- they trash them with the explanation that they are an 'anomaly.' JonF: Nonsense. Go prove it to me. AFD: Well, I'll work on it, but it will take time. In the mean time, here's some results from the RATE Group that show the discordance. JonF: Yeah, well everyone knows they are Fraudsters. AFD: Why do you say so? They are highly qualified scientists in their fields. One on the team is from Los Alamos and another from Sandia. JonF: It's proven that they are fraudsters. AFD: By what? JonF: They say the earth is 6000 years old, for cryin' out loud. That's fraud! Just like you. You're a fraud. It's obvious! AFD: Oh, I see. Thanks for showing me your cards. We'll move on now.
Cute scenation, Davesicle, but irrelevant. Given that you have produced an infinitesimal number of discordant results, produced by known frauds (not because they say the Earth is 6,000 years old ... that's stupidity, not fraud ... but because they have committed frauds such as dating samples from Mt. Ngauruhoe [loaded with xenoliths] without admitting the effect xenoliths have, and purposefully faking isochrons (which might even be valid in a way they didn't expect); see ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project), and these known frauds have not made the relevant information easily available as they have the zircon-helium, 14C, and halo results (are they hiding something?) ... the most parsimonious hypothesis is that the results are somehow fraudulent. But they might not be frauds. Of course, you have ignored the fact that right or wrong, the number of results presented is several orders of magnitude too few to support a claim of common dicscordance in radiometric results. If and when you have a few tens of thousands of discordant resuslts, then you may have something to say.
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WHich means that they probably discarded about 500,000 of them which didn't agree with 'Standard Geologic Time.'
Unsupported assertion. You think geologists have enough money to pay for all those alleged discarded tests?
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He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials.
He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials USING INVALID PARAMETERS ...HARDNESS DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials USING INVALID PARAMETERS ...HARDNESS DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials USING INVALID PARAMETERS ...HARDNESS DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials USING INVALID PARAMETERS ...HARDNESS DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials USING INVALID PARAMETERS ...HARDNESS DOESN'T CORRELATE WITH EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY.
There. Got it now?
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You have not even acknowledged the existence of the issues that are on-topic and relevant; the correlations between C14 dating and other independent methods; the formation of C14 in-situ by neutron capture; and the transport of C14 by groundwater.
Show me how the RATE Group is incorrect in showing that neutron capture is infinitesimally small. Show me some papers that study C14 transport by groundwater. I showed you one of researchers that have absolutely no idea where the C14 came from. Also show me why groundwater would not be a problem for other specimens dated by C14. If you throw out my coal and diamonds, you have to throw out many of your things.
I was correct, this is your first acknowledgment of the issues, and you still havene't addressed all the relevant issues.
Show us the RATE calculations (why aren't they on the Web? Something to hide?) and we'll comment.
I don't claim to know enough about the source of the 14C; you and the RATE group do; you need to support your assertions and you have not yet done so.
I have already discussed why groundwater cointamination and in-situ formation are not a problem for relatively small (30K years or so) 24C ages. Go back and read for comprehension.
I do appologize for my last comment on your blog: "When you are having gay sex with goats do you think about heaven?"
I figured you would delete it but I thought it might get you to start the conversation back up. Founders? Remember? You had given up after asking that I buy a book. I did buy it remember?
Anyway, I hope we can put that messy episode behind us. We are all friends here, right?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dave, some people say you're boring, which I just can't understand. The hilarity of conversations that go like this is just impossible to not laugh at:
Dave: Here's a sentence in 3 languages to prove portuguese is french and spanish mixed!
Arden: Here's 3 more languages to add. See, they all look the same. It's called a language family.
Dave: My chart of 3 languages is MORE DETAILED than your chart of 6, which includes my chart!
Um, yes, I was going to point that out. I'm glad to see I wasn't hallucinating.
Somewhere in AFD's universe, three languages constitutes 'more detail' than six.
Dave is brain damaged. I don't think I can stomach this much longer.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Dave, some people say you're boring, which I just can't understand. The hilarity of conversations that go like this is just impossible to not laugh at:
Dave: Here's a sentence in 3 languages to prove portuguese is french and spanish mixed!
Arden: Here's 3 more languages to add. See, they all look the same. It's called a language family.
Dave: My chart of 3 languages is MORE DETAILED than your chart of 6, which includes my chart!
-------------- I hope an animal never bores a hole in my head and lays its eggs there because I might think I have a good idea but its really just the eggs hatching.
It did, Argy, it did. (You know ... the animal ... it did lay eggs in your head) ... What in the world are you talking about?
BWE...
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Anyway, I hope we can put that messy episode behind us. We are all friends here, right?
Of course. You are one of the most entertaining ones here. I get bored with the simplistic 'Dave's a liar ... Jesus would be sad ... AFDickhead lost Dover. Boo hoo hoo ...' and the like :-)
You bought the book! Excellent! Did you like it?
******************************
JonF... one of my rare sources at ATBC of anything resembling 'sciency' sounding stuff ... I will look at your claims and get back to you in the morning.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh no. I see the same animal laid eggs in Arden's head also ...
Here guys ... let me simplify this for you ...
1) Arden gave 3 different language comparisons 2) His language comparisons simply showed that those three are in the same family 3) AF Dave's 3 comparisons showed not only how his three are in the same family, but also specifically how P=S+F.
Conclusion: AFDave's list gives more detailed info.
Whew! Get those eggs out of your head, guys!
Arden...
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Dave is brain damaged. I don't think I can stomach this much longer.
Didn't you say that about 60 pages ago? Why are you still here? Hanging around to hear about the Tower of Babel, maybe?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Spanish haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Portug haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e French avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et
Here are three additional languages Dave neglected:
Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i
Linguistic evidence, Dave, linguistic evidence. OK. Fine linguistic evidence. I've given it several times. Here it is again. Arden, your chart shows that your 3 languages belong to the same family ... wonderful. We knew that already. Not very novel info. But again, my chart gives more detail in that it shows a definite influence on Spanish by French to produce Portuguese ALL WITHIN the same language family.
(my emphasis)
Of course, having to synthesize two parts of a chart is very difficult, so the illustrious hairless Chatfield did it for you (see p. 74):
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Dave, you ignored this the first three times I posted it. I want your comments now.
You posted a cognate set with French, Portuguese and Spanish that you (delusionally) thought supported your argument.
I have doubled the data. Here it is, again:
Portuguese: haver homem corpo noite filho feito bom e Spanish: haber hombre cuerpo noche hijo hecho bueno y Catalan: haver home cos nit fill fet bo i French: avoir homme corps nuit fils fait bon et Italian: avere uomo corpo notte figlio fatto buono e Romanian: avea om corp noapte fiu facut bun si
Now, with your amount of basic data DOUBLED here, would you like to tell me why your original data proved your point, and why this new data does not completely destroy your theory?
AFDave, I'm really curious. Did you read Glenn Morton's testimony of why he left ICR and now campaigns against their YEC deception? What are your thoughts on it?
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http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.html
For years I struggled to understand how the geologic data I worked with everyday could be fit into a Biblical perspective. Being a physics major in college I had no geology courses. Thus, as a young Christian, when I was presented with the view that Christians must believe in a young-earth and global flood, I went along willingly. I knew there were problems but I thought I was going to solve them. When I graduated from college with a physics degree, physicists were unemployable since NASA had just laid a bunch of them off. I did graduate work in philosophy and then decided to leave school to support my growing family. Even after a year, physicists were still unemployable. After six months of looking, I finally found work as a geophysicist working for a seismic company. Within a year, I was processing seismic data for Atlantic Richfield.
This was where I first became exposed to the problems geology presented to the idea of a global flood. I would see extremely thick (30,000 feet) sedimentary layers. One could follow these beds from the surface down to those depths where they were covered by vast thicknesses of sediment. I would see buried mountains which had experienced thousands of feet of erosion, which required time. Yet the sediments in those mountains had to have been deposited by the flood, if it was true. I would see faults that were active early but not late and faults that were active late but not early. I would see karsts and sinkholes (limestone erosion) which occurred during the middle of the sedimentary column (supposedly during the middle of the flood) yet the flood waters would have been saturated in limestone and incapable of dissolving lime. It became clear that more time was needed than the global flood would allow.(See http://www.seg.org/publica....336.pdf for an article showing an example of a deeply buried karst. For a better but bigger (3.4 meg) version of that paper see http://www.netl.doe.gov/publica....4-1.PDF
One also finds erosional canyons buried in the earth. These canyons would require time to excavate, just like the time it takes to erode the Grand Canyon. This picture was downloaded from a site which is now gone from the web. It was http://ic.ucsc.edu/~casey/eart168/3DInterpretation/Deltain3d1.gif
I worked hard over the next few years to solve these problems. I published 20+ items in the Creation Research Society Quarterly. I would listen to ICR, have discussions with people like Slusher, Gish, Austin, Barnes and also discuss things with some of their graduates that I had hired.
In order to get closer to the data and know it better, with the hope of finding a solution, I changed subdivisions of my work in 1980. I left seismic processing and went into seismic interpretation where I would have to deal with more geologic data. My horror at what I was seeing only increased. There was a major problem; the data I was seeing at work, was not agreeing with what I had been taught as a Christian. Doubts about what I was writing and teaching began to grow. Unfortunately, my fellow young earth creationists were not willing to listen to the problems. No one could give me a model which allowed me to unite into one cloth what I believed on Sunday and what I was forced to believe by the data Monday through Friday. I was living the life of a double-minded man--believing two things.
By 1986, the growing doubts about the ability of the widely accepted creationist viewpoints to explain the geologic data led to a nearly 10 year withdrawal from publication. My last young-earth paper was entitled Geologic Challenges to a Young-earth, which I presented as the first paper in the First International Conference on Creationism. It was not well received. Young-earth creationists don't like being told they are wrong. The reaction to the pictures, seismic data, the logic disgusted me. They were more interested in what I sounded like than in the data!
John Morris came to the stage to challenge me. He claimed to have been in the oil industry. I asked him what oil company he had worked for. I am going to let an account of this published in the Skeptical Inquirer in late 86 or early 87. It was written by Robert Schadewald. He writes,
"John Morris went to the microphone and identified himself as a petroleum geologist. He questioned Morton's claim that pollen grains are found in salt formations, and accused Morton of sounding like an anticreationist, raising more problems than his critics could respond to in the time available. Morris said that the ICR staff is working on these problems all the time. He told Morton to quit raising problems and start solving them. "Morton chopped him off at the ankles. Two questions, said Morton: 'What oil company did you work for?' Well, uh, actually Morris never worked for an oil company, but he once taught petroleum engineering at the University of Oklahoma. Second, How old is the Earth?' 'If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning.' Morton then said that he had hired several graduates of Christian Heritage College, and that all of them suffered severe crises of faith. The were utterly unprepared to face the geologic facts every petroleum geologist deals with on a daily basis. Morton neglected to add that ICR is much better known for ignoring or denying problems than dealing with them."
It appeared that the more I questions I raised, the more they questioned my theological purity. When telling one friend of my difficulties with young-earth creationism and geology, he told me that I had obviously been brain-washed by my geology professors. When I told him that I had never taken a geology course, he then said I must be saying this in order to hold my job. Never would he consider that I might really believe the data. Since then this type of treatment has become expected from young-earthers. I have been called nearly everything under the sun but they don't deal with the data I present to them. Here is a list of what young-earthers have called me in response to my data: 'an apostate,'(Humphreys) 'a heretic'(Jim Bell although he later apologised like the gentleman he is) 'a compromiser'(Henry Morris) "absurd", "naive", "compromising", "abysmally ignorant", "sloppy", "reckless disregard", "extremely inaccurate", "misleading", "tomfoolery" and "intentionally deceitful"(John Woodmorappe) 'like your father, Satan' (Carl R. Froede--I am proud to have this one because Jesus was once said to have been of satan also.) 'your loyality and commitment to Jesus Christ is shaky or just not truly genuine' (John Baumgardner 12-24-99 [Merry Christmas]) "[I] have secretly entertained suspicions of a Trojan horse roaming behind the lines..." Royal Truman 12-28-99
Above I say that I with drew from publishing for 10 years. I need to make one item clear. It is true that I published a couple of items in the late 80s. The truth is that these were an edited letter exchange I had with George Howe. When George approached me about the Mountain Building symposium, I told him I didn't want to write it. He said that was ok he would write it, give it to me for ok and then publish it. Since it was merely splicing a bunch of letters together, it was my words, but George's editorship that made that article. To all intents and purposes I was through with young-earth creationist (not ism yet) because I knew that they didn't care about the data.
But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.
"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"
That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.
And being through with creationism, I very nearly became through with Christianity. I was on the very verge of becoming an atheist. During that time, I re-read a book I had reviewed prior to its publication. It was Alan Hayward's Creation/Evolution. Even though I had reviewed it 1984 prior to its publication in 1985, I hadn't been ready for the views he expressed. He presented a wonderful Days of Proclamation view which pulled me back from the edge of atheism. Although I believe Alan applied it to the earth in an unworkable fashion, his view had the power to unite the data with the Scripture, if it was applied differently. That is what I have done with my views. Without that I would now be an atheist. There is much in Alan's book I agree with and much I disagree with but his book was very important in keeping me in the faith. While his book may not have changed the debate totally yet, it did change my life.
Here is professional geologist Glenn Morton's detailed analysis of why coal could not have formed 4500 years ago in a 'great Flood'.
I would love to see the global flood explanation for roots growing in a marine sandstone beneath coal during the global flood. How does one do that? How do they explain 7 coal seams there each home grown? Can any YEC explain this?
Any smart-assed 'sciency' comments Dave?
Every non-answer is a loss for AFDave and a win for evolution!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
1) Arden gave 3 different language comparisons 2) His language comparisons simply showed that those three are in the same family 3) AF Dave's 3 comparisons showed not only how his three are in the same family, but also specifically how P=S+F.
Conclusion: AFDave's list gives more detailed info.
Okay. Let's get this out in the open.
AFD gave three languages.
I added THREE MORE to that. Six languages.
My chart contained all the data your chart gave.
So explain please why your chart 'gave more detailed info'?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
No. I mean information. How in the world did you arrive at your conclusion with that paper? It's 55 pages on the Mathematical Theory of Communication.
I understand your confusion over my choice of citation. It was not a good idea to throw the document at you without telling you how to read it. On pages 10 and 11 Shannon lays out an equation that quantifies the amount of information from a signal source (which could be the genome). The equation is:
pi stands for the probability of a certain symbol appearing while K is a constant. Adding up all pi with i going from 1 to n should give you one.
There are two important things to note with this equation. The first is that the interpreted content of the message is not quantified in information theory. It is only the probability of symbols appearing that is being quantified. Secondly, an information channel where each symbol has an equal probability of occurring has the highest information content. You can do the math for yourself to demonstrate what I have stated above. However, I will give you an example. Say we have a binary signal source with each bit having equal probability of appearing, such as: 111010001010 or 111111000000
If you do the math, and what our answer in units of bits we get: -K*(0.5 * log2(0.5) + 0.5 * log2(0.5)) = -K * (-0.5 + -0.5) = K What this shows is that information content for both messages is the same. Now, let’s consider another binary information source, this time its signal is: 111111111111
Again, we do the math: -K * (1 * log2(1) + 0 * log2(0)) = -K * (0 + 0) = 0 A channel always in the same state has no information content. On page 11 of Shannon’s paper, he graphs what I have just said.
This is for a binary signal source where p and q are the probabilities of two symbols occuring.
These results are counter-intuitive to most of our notions of information in everyday life. We usually do not think of a random process having the same information content, or possibly more, than a "structured" one. But this is also validated by other measures of information such as Kolmogorov information.
The measure of information that I have given above is the standard in the sciences and mathematics, and biology is a science. When you say that random mutation causes the genome to lose information, it does not square with the definition of information used in the relevant fields. A mutation that results in the probability of a certain symbol increasing when its probability is less than 1/n will increase the information content of a signal. The opposite is also true.
If we were to start with a signal such as 1111111111 and mutate it randomly (where we replace a symbol at a random position in the signal with either a 1 or 0 of equal probability), as time -> infinity the information content of the signal will approach K, the maximum amount of information. Likewise, if we start with a signal such as 111111000000, which already has an information content of K, and apply the same mutation principle the information content will tend to stay around K, the maximum amount of information.
Thus, mutation does not always lower the information content of a signal. I hope this clears up some confusion that can happen over what information is and how it is defined in the sciences.
This post is really aimed at the various lurkers, so that no one forgets that Dave is unable to back up any of his claims. I don't actually expect him to answer, since he unable to answer. After all, when you lie the first time, it's difficult to support it without lying a second time.
Dave claimed:
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Says who? Says scientist who WANT the earth to be very, very old.
Supply proof. Prove that this statement isn't simply your personal opinion. Show that these scientists actually WANT the earth's age to be that.
Make George proud to be a Christian: be ethical for a change.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
My personal knowledge of this at the moment, like yours, is intuitive, but there are some good books and other resources on this available. My experience has been that it is the evolutionists who are the ones who invent new definitions to suit their purposes. There is much information about this topic at ... you guessed it ... AIG, ICR and DI. Maybe I will be able to study this topic myself one day in more detail.
This definition of information was not created for "evolutionists". It is the definition used in all fields, from phsyics to computer science to biology and everything in between. Shannon's work has stood the test of time and been confirmed with other rigorous definitions of information. To call it into question without providing evidence or another theory that better explains the observations in these fields is unwarrented.
To the Lurkers, ask yourselves, has AFDave provided any evidence that this definition of information was invented by or only kept around because of evolutionists? He is insinuating that.
Edit: Also, if you are going to make claims such as
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New information simply does not arise by chance
and then when questioned on it say
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My personal knowledge of this at the moment, like yours, is intuitive ... Maybe I will be able to study this topic myself one day in more detail.
it gives the impression that you do not know what you are talking about. Please, in the future if you have a point do not make it unless you can back it up.
Dave, can you move on to something else? We've covered your C14 arguments thoroughly and refuted all of them. What else you got?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
When you say that random mutation causes the genome to lose information, it does not square with the definition of information used in the relevant fields. A mutation that results in the probability of a certain symbol increasing when its probability is less than 1/n will increase the information content of a signal. The opposite is also true
Of course, in the incredibly unlikely event that someone can get Davie to come up with his definition of information, it'll likely reduce to "that which is decreased by mutation".
There's also the rare but observed occurrence or a mutation happening, then the reverse mutation happening, leaving that portion of the genome in its original state. If all mutations lose information, what is the information content of that portion of the genome after those two mutations?
Dave, can you move on to something else? We've covered your C14 arguments thoroughly and refuted all of them. What else you got?
Only in your dreams have you refuted them. But of course, I have sense enough to know we will probably never agree, so yes, I will move on soon.
Rilke...
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This post is really aimed at the various lurkers, so that no one forgets that Dave is unable to back up any of his claims.
Rilke's worried about the lurkers ... I love it!
"Don't forget, lurkers, Davie doesn't know what he's talking about even though he sounds like he does. He's very clever with words and very sneaky like all the rest of those dumb ol' Creos. You might get confused! Trust us! WE are the experts!"
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"Don't forget, lurkers, Davie doesn't know what he's talking about even though he sounds like he does.
Actually Dave you sound like a blustering, complete ignoramus on scientific topics, which comes as no surprise since you are a blustering, complete ignoramus on scientific topics.
Now how about your explanation for the six independent lines of evidence that validate C14 dating? Or your comments on Glenn Morton's experiences with ICR?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
AFDave the Joseph Goebbels of YECers is a Hypocrite.**
**HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
(From The Devils Dictionary)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
It takes a very ignorant person to read it without either laughing or crying.
Oh, by the way Davey, There was a glaring ommision in your last post:more detail here.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
"Don't forget, lurkers, Davie doesn't know what he's talking about even though he sounds like he does. He's very clever with words and very sneaky like all the rest of those dumb ol' Creos. You might get confused! Trust us! WE are the experts!"
It is good for Dave to admit that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't think any of the lurkers have any real doubts at this point, but I'm glad Dave confirmed it.
I am also realizing that the poor children that Dave is going to try to abuse by feeding them nonsense are a great deal more intelligent that he has demonstrated them to be. Most of them (I hope) will demonstrate criticial thinking skills and laugh at him. I'm sure that the first time one of his children points out that he's a moron of the first order he is going to be "surprized" and "hurt". But such a day will come, no doubt of it.
Now, Dave, it's time for you to demonstrate that you possess ethics. You haven't so far, but I have hope.
Dave claimed:
Quote
Says who? Says scientist who WANT the earth to be very, very old.
Supply proof. Prove that this statement isn't simply your personal opinion. Show that these scientists actually WANT the earth's age to be that.
Make George proud to be a Christian: be ethical for a change.
Wow. I'm gone for a few hours, and Dave's "arguments" are eviscerated, yet again, leaving bloody entrails all over the floor. As blood sports go, it's definitely my favorite! The Black Knight never had it so bad; all he lost were a couple of (well, okay, three) limbs.
So—in order not to drive everyone crazy with another 20,000-word obliteration of Dave's, I mean AiG's, claims, I'll just make a few points with respect to his first one. You know, the one about spiral galaxies not being tangled up enough.
Dave, do you have any conception of how long it takes to form a galaxy? Well, cosmologists do, because they know the oldest galaxies are a few hundred million years older than the universe itself is. The oldest spiral galaxies are somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 billion years old (for the time being we're all going to ignore, for reasons that could fill a book, Dave's plaintive bleating about the universe only being 6,000 years old).
The spiral arms aren't formed by the galaxies' rotation, Dave. They're density waves, whose origin is not well-understood. But think of it this way, Dave: if those spiral arms were formed by the galaxies' rotation, how wound up would we expect them to be after 6,000 years?
Not at all, that's how much. Stars might move a few light years in 6,000 years. Spiral arms can stretch over tens of thousands of light years. If spiral arms were formed by galactic rotation, and the universe were only 6,000 years old, we would not expect to see a single spiral galaxy out there. The mere existence of spiral galaxies completely blows your 6,000 year theory of the age of the universe out of the water, Dave.
Now, let's move on to stars for a moment. You're aware, aren't you, Dave, that the earth is made entirely out of supernova remnants, right? Well, other than the hydrogen (essentially none of the helium on earth is primordial). All of the iron, silicon, carbon, aluminum, strontium, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. etc. etc. is formed in the interior of super-massive stars and is returned to the interstellar medium in a supernova explosion, which typically can be seen from one end of the observable universe to the other.
Oh, you don't believe in supernovas, Dave? But you used their existence in one of your "proofs" of a young earth! Since it takes at least hundreds of millions of years for even the most massive stars to supernova, how do they happen in 6,000 years? Did God set them off himself? (I have this image of a star with a couple of wires trailing away from it to a little detonation box, with a guy in long silky white dress pressing down on the plunger. Boom! )
It takes a lot more than 6,000 years for a giant molecular cloud to undergo collapse far enough even for a star to begin producing energy from gravitational collapse, let alone thermonuclear fusion. At least hundreds of thousands of years, Dave. Not 6,000 years. And besides, why do we see stars that are more than six thousand years away? More Lorentz transformations for objects virtually at rest relative to the earth (by lightspeed standards)?
The truth is, Dave, your phony 6,000 year-old universe is refuted by evidence from every imaginable branch of science, from biology to geology to chemistry to particle physics to quantum mechanics to astrophysics to cosmology. You'll never, ever, in a hundred lifetimes ever be able to refute more than a miniscule fraction of all that evidence, and it's all cumulative. It's not a chain of reasoning, only as strong as the weakest link. It's all separate and independent, and it all points in the same direction.
So, Dave. Since you've lost on everything else you've attempted here (and, by the way, when can we expect to see your evidence for your beloved planet-destroying flood?), do you want to take on the evidence for planet- and star-formation? Or am I going to have to wait for you to give up on your Portuguese fantasy?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You shouldn't have to wait on the Potuguese bit, I set up a thread for it. Dave made a bet and I took it. link here
We know that Davey isn't a welcher so I'm sure he'll get over there to have that discussion. He has yet to address his claim in terms of his bet. I wouldn't be too hard on him for it. He has had a tough time refuting all the other things he's brought up. Now that he has time to focus in on the one thing, I'm sure he will.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Yes kids, it's time for yet another PORTUGUESE DISCUSSION.
The advantage of the Portuguese posts is that it's possible to demonstrate just how poorly constructed, how badly argued, and how generally worthless Dave's arguments are. In particular, they are good for getting at the fundamental inability to reason which so characterizes our poor Dave. In other cases, he can simply cut-n-paste his rebuttals from various creationist sites (thus demonstrating that he's incapable of original thought, but that's another story); in the Portuguese case, it's entirely his own stupidity that we've defeated. And when poor Dave is out-gunned, it's pretty appalling to see.
Now, Dave's original assertion: that Portuguese was just Spanish and French mixed, is absurd without even any supporting argument. All three languages are modern end-points of the evolution of Latin; to claim that one of them is a mixture of the others is as absurd as claiming that selasphorus rufus is a mixture of homo sapiens and Tachyglossus aculeatus.
A nonsense statement, in other words.
However, one could try to fashion an argument to support the contention; by examining the nature of language, and how the various parts interact.
A language, basically speaking (Arden, I'd appreciate corrections as necessary) consists of a vocabulary (words for things); grammar (rules both formal and informal for assembling and modifying those words to convey meaning); and pronunciation (rules both formal and informal for vocalizing those words).
Now, how could Dave show that Portuguese is French and Spanish mixed?
1) He could demonstrate that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish vocabulary.
2) He could demonstrate that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish grammar.
3) He could demonstrate that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish pronunciation.
Or some combination of 1, 2, and 3.
What has Dave actually done?
Well, first of all, he's done none of the above: in other words, Dave made a linguistic claim and has not attempted to defend it with linguistic arguments.
So what has Dave done? He has presented a historical argument; and a personal opinion argument.
Dave claims that the presence of Burgundians in a particular region of Spain at the time of the initial divergence between Spanish and Portuguese implies that "Portuguese is French and Spanish mixed".
But note - this is simply another claim. Dave has not demonstrated that the presence of a small number of speakers of another language is sufficient to make Portuguese a mixture of that language and its initial parent.
Dave has offered his personal opinion that the three languages sound similiar. But sounding or appearing similar does not imply that Portuguese is a mixture of French and Spanish.
So, let's sum up:
1) Dave made a linguistic claim that is false.
2) Dave attempted to support his linguistic claim with non-linguistic arguments (which contained numerous inaccuracies that poor Dave had to be corrected on).
3) Dave completely failed to show that his inappropriate arguments were supportive of his position.
4) Dave lied about the whole thing.
So we see that Dave's major problem is an inability to apply critical thinking to a problem: he doesn't understand how to construct an argument; how to defend an argument; and his volatile temper leads him to make indefensible and indeed mind-bogglingly stupid claims in the first place.
Note that nothing in this chain of problems directly stems from his theism: the elements of the chain stem directly from poor Dave's limited intellectual capacity.
For poor Dave, there is little hope: he is condemned to a life of embarrassment, ignominity, and harrassment for his stupidity. Let us hope that his children don't take after him, and show some actual critical thinking skills. For their sake. (She wipes a tear from her eye as she thinks sadly about poor Dave's even poorer, more unfortunate children.)
I haven't even presented my counter-argument. What's that tell ya?
Davey, if you're ready, I set up a thread for it here.
Thanks
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I'm not surprised by your aphasia in regard to what Humphreys said about zircon, pressure, hardness of materials and temperatures, Dave. Aphasia affects people with brain disorders of various sorts, including mental illness.
Again, here is what Humphreys says:
Quote
Zircon, on the other hand, is among the hardest of minerals, 7.5 on the Mohs scale. That is harder than the best steel (6.5), and even harder than quartz (7.0)... Zircon, being harder than steel, would be much less compressible than lead. So pressure should affect diffusion rates much less than in lead... In 1996, those considerations made me think that the pressure effect on hard minerals is negligible... As far as I know, nobody has measured the effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon. However I have at hand a paper that gives, among other data, the pressure effect on argon diffusion in glasses, such as rhyolite obsidian. At the highest temperature to which our helium-in-zircon experiment went, 500 degrees C, the pressure effect on the glasses was almost imperceptible, a few percent per kilobar. A few hundred degrees higher than our experiment, 600 to 700°C, the pressure effect was up to only a few dozen percent per kilobar...Glasses should be more compressible than crystals of the same composition; glasses are generally not as hard because of weaker chemical bonds between parts. So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz.
IN regard to this, you earlier said on this thread:
Quote
My understanding is that damaged or not damaged, zircons are extremely hard, making Helium diffusion rates quite independent of pressure.
But, Dave... you then say:
Quote
He absolutely DOES NOT compares pressure and diffusivity rates. He compares the EFFECT OF PRESSURE ON DIFFUSIVITY with other materials.
But there Humphreys is...comparing pressure and diffusivity rates in obsidian glass...and zircon. BUT DAVE, he is using the argument that pressure should not affect diffusion in ZIRCON as much as it does glasses like obsidian.. put on your special AirTard Snoopy "thinking" helmet now...
He brought up Obsidian because he wanted to compare pressure effects on diffusion in "soft" obsidian glass....to zircon... which is harder, and should, in his words, "suffer less" from the effects of pressure on diffusion rates.
I showed this was a false assumption in regard to hardness offsetting the effects of pressure on diffusion rates, since Pyrex and quartz both show comparable hardnesses to zircon...yet diffuse He more quickly than zircon. Pyrex in particular under pressure and heat diffuses MORE. Pyrex is a glass, Dave.
Another point, Dave, You mentioned on p. 61 of this thread that you "had heard" that the Harrison and Sasada temperature data would be "integrated over time and modeled" in the RATE II book...was it, Dave?
Or were you lied to again by those mean nasty RATE mens, like they did about He ratios being done?
Or Humphreys lying to you about He Isotope ratios not being done " because no one did them at that time" Despite the fact that people did do them to determine the sources of He concentrations? ...Humphreys still won't do those simple isotope tests...and never will, because it keeps simpletons like you buying his books.
Now, as far as 14C in diamonds...I'd dearly love to see those calculations of Humphreys showing that cosmic rays and uranium cannot account for it. You say the RATE book has those calculations, so...whip 'em out.
As far as why you were wrong about the bible earlier in this thread, Dave... you said that civilizations*** begin***.. in the areas you listed (Mexico, China, etc. )... **THEN** disperse FOLLOWING a Tower of Babel incident...What does chapter 11 of Genesis say? Exactly the opposite.
Making things up about what the bible says , like your claim that scribes followed adam around carving things in stone..prior to the appearance of metallurgy, even in your scheme...is called fantasy. Nowhere in the Bible can you support this, so you make it up. Like most of your claims, or the ones you steal from ICR and AIG and Henry Morris...fantasy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Come come now. To be fair, Davey hasn't yet had a debate either. I set up a thread for it here. Let's wait and see how he does. I am not an expert on the subject either so it seems like he might have a chance. How can we know until he tries?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
You should also include AFD's assertion that smaller amounts of data provide more information than larger amounts, and his claim that before he came along, no one had ever tried to linguistically analyze Portuguese and Romance before. Those were both moments we'll always cherish.
Quote
A language, basically speaking (Arden, I'd appreciate corrections as necessary) consists of a vocabulary (words for things); grammar (rules both formal and informal for assembling and modifying those words to convey meaning); and pronunciation (rules both formal and informal for vocalizing those words).
Yeah, pretty much.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Sorry Dave; what you are doing is child abuse: the deliberate mistreatment of children in order to ensure that they remain intellectually stunted and cognitively crippled for their entire lives.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
cosmologists ... know the oldest galaxies are a few hundred million years older than the universe itself is.
Erk?
Oops. Should I point out my error for Dave, or let him find it himself? :-)
Of course, he thinks the entire universe, including the part of it that's billions of lightyears away but is still visibile here on earth, is only a couple of weeks old (when you're this far wrong, the difference between weeks and millennia is pretty insignificant) so god knows what he would make of my misstatement.
Also, I should have specified the visible universe, because more than 14 gly out who knows what's out there.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Here's my contribution to the humor section of today's thread---"AFDave's Song" ..sung to the tune of "Rawhide" (see the movie "The Blues Brothers" with John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd for reference.)
Trollin', trollin' , trollin' See those fundies trollin' Watch their lies a-growin', in size! He11-bent for leather Condemn in any weather Claiming that god is on their side--
Don't try to understand 'em Just rope, spur, and brand 'em They'll still be acting smug and snide
Ride 'em in, let 'em out, Ride 'em in, cut 'em out, Ride 'em in Rawhide! ---------------------------------------------
TY, TY, TY *Bows*
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
1) Arden gave 3 different language comparisons 2) His language comparisons simply showed that those three are in the same family 3) AF Dave's 3 comparisons showed not only how his three are in the same family, but also specifically how P=S+F.
Conclusion: AFDave's list gives more detailed info.
Okay. Let's get this out in the open.
AFD gave three languages.
I added THREE MORE to that. Six languages.
My chart contained all the data your chart gave.
So explain please why your chart 'gave more detailed info'?
Arden, Arden. You're forgetting the new "Law of Information". Evolution (and by extension, "evolutionists") simply cannot generate new information. The law is, of course, universal, and applies to random internet diatribes as much as random mutation. Furthermore, it is conservative, and ensures that the specified complexity of a YEC argument cannot exceed that of a rather slow four-year-old.
I was going to tell you about what we did on Father's Day ... I thought you might be interested.
We planned to go to Carrabba's for lunch after church got out and I thought it would be nice to invite one of my relatives being the charitable, church going guy I am.
So I went down to the Kansas City zoo and told them I was here to pick up one of my relatives to take him to lunch. They were confused when I made my way to the Chimpanzee cage. I tried to explain to them that the chimpanzee and I were closely related and that I wanted to take him out to eat. Well, they wouldn't go for it, so I left and snuck around back. I coaxed the chimp to come with me by giving him a banana and got him in my car.
I had quite a time keeping him in the seatbelt, but we finally got to Carrabba's where the rest of my family was waiting. They let us in , but it was a complete disaster. The chimp spilled coke and threw rolls at other customers. He kept screeching and smiling at everyone and climbing on the rafters. Boy, you should have seen him with the spaghetti! The customers loved the show, but the manager was very upset. He did not want this chimp in his restaurant, but I kept explaining that all the scientists in the world say there's not much difference between chimps and humans and "Why do you have to be so predjudiced??!!" ... "In fact," I said, "they say humans are even closer to chimps than gorillas are!!" He was not impressed and finally got his way.
We left and I decided that the scientists sure have some funny ideas.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Not bad, but I have to be honest. The posts where you try to be "sciencey" are WAYYY funnier.
I especially love the one about the worldwide conspiracy of atheist scientists.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Hi Dave, I see you are logged into the board! Hey, check this out.!
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I know that there is another thread whose title addresses this basic subject, but hey! Here is where the action is, so if I may:
Let us assume that a worldwide flood occured ~4,500 years ago. All life forms (and for the sake of argument, we'll leave it at land life forms) were destroyed except for the diverse representative kinds that were safe aboard a very large ship built by a very old (by today's standards) man named Noah, who with his family (including some in-laws) were spared.
We have learned in this thread that the subsequent ~4,500 years were enough to produce all species of monkey, ape, etc., from a male and female representative of their kind. This has been estimated by some as requiring an average of 17 years per species since the end of the flood, and is characterized by such words as "hyperevolution."
I don't know about that. 17 years is, well, a while. I started thinking, "Hmmm, why not?" But then I thought, "What about other types of animals? Say, beetles, for instance?" I went to our friend wikipedia, and found out that there are ~350,000 known species of beetle. So, if we assume a male and female of the beetle kind left alive after the flood (as we did with apes and monkeys), that makes an average of...hold on a sec, I'm a putz with math...hmmm, carry the 3, no, I mean, the 7, no, I mean, oh heck....ah! ~78 new beetle species per year since the end of the flood, or....one new species every 4.7 days! And that's on average!
17 years per species, and you call that "hyperevolution"?!? Pshaw, I say, P-SHAW!!!
"Don't forget, lurkers, Davie doesn't know what he's talking about even though he sounds like he does. He's very clever with words and very sneaky like all the rest of those dumb ol' Creos. You might get confused! Trust us! WE are the experts!"(emphasis added)
It is good for Dave to admit that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't think any of the lurkers have any real doubts at this point, but I'm glad Dave confirmed it.
I am also realizing that the poor children that Dave is going to try to abuse by feeding them nonsense are a great deal more intelligent that he has demonstrated them to be. Most of them (I hope) will demonstrate criticial thinking skills and laugh at him. I'm sure that the first time one of his children points out that he's a moron of the first order he is going to be "surprized" and "hurt". But such a day will come, no doubt of it.
Now, Dave, it's time for you to demonstrate that you possess ethics. You haven't so far, but I have hope.
Dave claimed:
Quote
Says who? Says scientist who WANT the earth to be very, very old.
Supply proof. Prove that this statement isn't simply your personal opinion. Show that these scientists actually WANT the earth's age to be that.
Make George proud to be a Christian: be ethical for a change.
I was going to tell you about what we did on Father's Day ... I thought you might be interested....
Ha ha ha! Gee Dave, what a new, creative zinger!
You wanna know what's even funnier?
A sh*t-for-brains ex AF pilot who doesn't know squat about the biological or physical sciences, and who is caught waddling about with his pants around his ankles as he tries in vain to dodge those embarrassing C14 calibration method questions!
Now that's entertainment!
Hey, did you hear about the conversation QFDave had with his wife when they got back from the zoo?
“Good night, mother of five” “Good night, father of two”
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Young Davie broke bread with his brother, Though his brother was covered with hair. And even though Dave tried to snub him, His brother tried hard to be fair. He knew that young Dave was just yearning To show where he was on the tree, So now the great zoo has poor Davie, To be laughed at by you and by me.
Gentlemen, I give you Dave "I'm just an ape" Hawkins.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
But then I thought, "What about other types of animals? Say, beetles, for instance?" I went to our friend wikipedia, and found out that there are ~350,000 known species of beetle. So, if we assume a male and female of the beetle kind left alive after the flood (as we did with apes and monkeys), that makes an average of...hold on a sec, I'm a putz with math...hmmm, carry the 3, no, I mean, the 7, no, I mean, oh heck....ah! ~78 new beetle species per year since the end of the flood, or....one new species every 4.7 days! And that's on average!
But Dave seems to think all this hyperevolution happened safely in the past, say, more than a couple thousand years ago. Which means you're being way conservative with your speciation rate for beetles. We're talking two new species a week for a couple of thousand years!
And then what happened, Dave? Were the beetles tired from all that fecundity? Because there's definitely not a new species a week forming now, or I think zoologists would know about it. Unless there's some huge coverup.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yeah, Then what happened Davey? Oh, by the way, you bet me that you could prove your Portuguese thing. I accepted. Are you forfeiting? Should I start writing my post for your blog? If you can't find the thread I started, the link is here. Thanks,
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Or for that matter do you even have a clue what the carbon cycle is and why scientists don't debate it?
Oh yeah, just a reminder about the Portuguese bet you made. I know it's easy to forget and all so I am posting the link again. just in case you lost it.
Cheers. P.S. Global warming is sort of wrapped up with the Carbon cycle. But, since Stupid christianity- the kind that requires adherents to be stupid, like yours ferinstance- fights anything that data suggests, you probably don't worry too much about global warming eh?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dang DDTTD how many times does BWE have to stand up and call you out?
This is the guy who claims he has a fighter pilot hanging out in a bar background, DIRECTLY CHALLENGED!
I've known fighter studs and whirly bird drivers who'd a stood up right quick and addressed the challenge IMMEDIATELY!
What does this suggest? The few times DDTTD ventured into a bar, he got his ass handed to him on a platter AND Dilettard Dave is a pencil necked sunken chested fighter pilot wannabe who didn't get the seat he wanted because he didn't have the right stuff.
I wouldn't let Dilettard Dave pilot a chair much less drive me somewhere in a taxi.
Can Dilettard Dave tell the difference between a Chimp and a Gorilla without an AIG sign explaining the difference?
Hi Dave, I see you are logged into the board! Hey, check this out.!
it just goes to show; when Davey the supposedly successful businessman is asked to "put his money where his mouth is", he just can't do it.
this is clear evidence that he really DOESN'T believe any of the stuff he has spouted continually here. Otherwise, why would he pass up a sure bet?
besides, IIRC the terms weren't even monetary in nature as proposed by BWE. Dave should not only be happy to jump at the chance, but more than willing to up the stakes!
Dave, what are you, a chicken?
or just so unsure of yourself that you can't even accept a gentleman's wager on the outcome of even something as simple as what BWE has proposed?
I'm leaning towards flightless bird myself, with a heavy dose of yellow running in a streak down your backside...
Actually, the mere fact you refuse to wager on your own contentions means that we defacto win every argument we ever had with you.
Until you're willing to back up what you say, you've simply lost.
DO YOU WANT TO BE A LOSER AND A CHICKEN, DAVE??
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Old half-a-dave a successful businessman? I can certainly imagine him *believing* that inflatable dartboards would be all the rage, and even *believing* that he's a wild success, but reality has a way of intruding.
Belief rarely translates to success -- it far more often leads either to knowlege or failure. And we know which road Davey's approaching the end of...
Wish I could say I was glad to be back, Dave, but thanks. Oh, by the way, you should check out what that chimp is saying about you -- boy, was he embarrassed!
I'm glad you had a nice Father's Day. Me, I took a few days off and spent a long weekend hooking and grilling some of our more extended family members (not to mention swatting no small number of the family pricks). Because yes, Dave, not only are you an ape, but phyletically speaking, you're also a fish. Good luck with that one. I'm sure you'll figure out how that works into the whole "vindicated, pre-Darwin typological perception of nature". I look forward to being regaled with tales of how you and your family drove to the local aquarium and tried to take a shark to your 4th of July BBQ. What fun!
Anyhow, now I'm back to the daily grind. For most, that would probably mean making ends meet, working for my pay, trying to keep my girlfriend happy, and spending time with friends and family. Of course, being a scientist with so many funny ideas that need promoting (oh no, what do the latest polls say about what the public believes?!, my daily routine actually involves trying to come up with more insidious ways to pull the wool over everyone's eyes and make the earth and the universe look really, really old. After all, before health and love and wealth and happiness, my greatest desire is that the planet be exactly 4.5 billion years old. Nothing else matters. Why? I dunno. I think it has something to do with fulfilling my basest desires, which I might finally get around to exploring if we ever make this dog hunt.
THREE MAJOR EVIDENCES FOR A YOUNG EARTH AND COUNTING
1) HISTORY IS TOO SHORT. This one is easy -- the Evos would have you believe that humans existed on the earth for 194,000 years, then 'Presto!' they suddenly invented the ability to write just 6000 years ago. Realy likely story, guys!
2) TOO MUCH HELIUM IN SHALLOW ZIRCONS. Humphreys does a great job of showing this on the Fenton Hill zircons. Unfortunately there are not a lot of scientists looking at low-depth zircons, but there probably will be soon, given the renewed interest in Helium-in-Zircon studies. If there were, we would no doubt find many examples similar to the RATE Group's example. Most other scientists are looking at deep zircons (4000m and lower) chasing theories of thermal history, etc. All bogus Old Earth stuff and quite boring. I did find one other fairly shallow zircon report -- 3900m at Gold Butte -- the retained helium in these zircons correlated nicely with Humphreys' data, so JonF's contention that Fenton Hill is an anomaly is no doubt false. It will be interesting to see what future studies unfold.
3) SUPPOSEDLY 'C14 DEAD' COAL AND DIAMONDS NOT DEAD AFTER ALL. (AMS Labs conversations beginning in the 1980's) "Ooooops! Why are we finding C14 in coal and diamonds? Hey, Mac, you better check for contamination! No contamination, sir. What? You must be mistaken. Check again! Checked again, sir. Six ways from Sunday, but there's no contamination." [20 years later] "Hey Mac, did you find any plausible source for contamination? No sir, still checking! I'm sure we'll find it if we check long enough, sir. Er ... I'm out of money, sir, could you get me another grant? Sir? Sir? Are you there, sir? Hello? Sir? Are you there?"
4) CONVENTIONAL RADIOMETRIC DATING GIVES DISCORDANT RESULTS. I present evidence of this and JonF predictably yells 'Fraud!' Never mind that the RATE Group got 10 rock units of widely varying characteristics and tested many samples in each rock units, and had them tested by leading labs. JonF ... "This just CAN'T be true ... I've been taught all my life that the all the various methods agree! ... it's gotta be fraud ... after all ... those are just a bunch of dimwit YECs running the tests ... what do they know ... I'm from MIT ... everyone knows I am much smarter than those stupid YECs."
Well, well, well ... I guess this is how it will be for everything I present ... That's OK. I expected it.
BWE ... I already won the Portuguese thing. Have you been snoozing all this time? Rilke never paid me though. Maybe you could pay up for her? Actually ... never mind ... keep your money. I don't want to give you my Paypal info. You'd probably do something dastardly with it.
JonF...
Quote
See, there's the lie. There's no reason to assume similar C14 levels (one could even call it a "begging the question fallacy"), but there is plenty of reason to assume similar C14/C12 ratios (because the biomass would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere) ... of course that blows their argument right out of the water. One doesn't even have to consider other relevant questions like "where did all this biomass live?"
Well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you there is a very good case made for this in the RATE Book, so I won't bother telling you. I've accomplished my goal of convincing myself that there is a good explanation. Maybe you could buy the book! As for your question of "where did all this biomass live" the answer is quite easy. On the earth. YECs think there was a large "super-continent" prior to Flood and the rest of the earth was covered with a relatively shallow sea. We're not talking about 500X the number of land animals, here, Jonny. Is that what you thought? We are talking about the organisms that formed coal, oil and chalk, for example.
JonF...
Quote
It's a horrible guess. There's no flood to account for. If their scenario were corect, we'd see a step in the C14 calibration curves and results.
No. There's no Flood. There's only Millions and millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the Earth But there's no Flood! There's only marine fossils on mountain tops, but no Flood! Wink, wink. That's right, JonF, no Flood!
JonF...
Quote
And it appears to be the most likely explanation, especially for diamonds. Post the RATE group calculations and we'll critique them. Bet they made some assumptions as silly as the "same levels of 14C" one above. Oh, and somebody's mixing up the units or something ... 9x10^-6 isn't pmc (percent modern carbon), it's 12C/14C.
If your explanation is so likely, show me a paper that agrees with you. No, the units are pMC. No one talks about 12C/14C. The relevant ratio is 14C/12C.
JonF...
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"It's magic" is not a scientific explanation.
That's not my explanation. My explanation is simple: coal and diamonds were formed rapidly during the Flood. And they still have easily detectable levels of C14 because the Flood was recent -- only about 4500 years ago.
JonF...
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Given that you have produced an infinitesimal number of discordant results, produced by known frauds (not because they say the Earth is 6,000 years old ... that's stupidity, not fraud ...
So your "truth meter" is kinda like voting? If enough scientists "vote" for a particular explanation, you'll vote with them so you can continue to be popular and be in the "in" crowd? So no one will ridicule you for having a novel thought? This reveals that you are not really interested in searching for the truth, JonF. Many great advances in science have come as a result of a small minority of non-mainstream researchers being gutsy enough to speak the truth in spite of ridicule. Don't be a lemming! Open your mind! I can speak from personal experience that in many areas, it is better to think for yourself than to follow the crowd. It was my independent thinking in spite of the naysayers that made me so successful in business that I have as much time as I want now to argue with you guys.
JonF...
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Unsupported assertion. You think geologists have enough money to pay for all those alleged discarded tests?
Sure. Why would they not? Other scientists have plenty of money to waste on other fruitless enterprises, like 'How the Immune System Evolved' and the like.
JonF...
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Show us the RATE calculations (why aren't they on the Web? Something to hide?) and we'll comment.
They are on pp. 614-616 of the RATE II Book. They cite about 5 studies and make a convincing case. Why are they not on the web? Same reason most scientific papers are not on the web. They want you to PAY for them. I don't feel like typing it all out for you. Sorry!
JonF...
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I have already discussed why groundwater cointamination and in-situ formation are not a problem for relatively small (30K years or so) 24C ages. Go back and read for comprehension.
In situ is dead. RATE demolishes it easily. Contamination is your only chance. But you have not given me jack squat about it.
INFORMATION THEORY AND BIOLOGY -- Drew Headley and Chris Hyland ... You guys really need to get some Creationist books ... try Dr. Lee Spetner - "Not By Chance" - also see his dialogue with Edward Max at http://www.trueorigin.org/spetner2.asp Your understanding of information as it relates to biology would be broadened.
Eric...
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Dave, do you have any conception of how long it takes to form a galaxy? Well, cosmologists do, because they know the oldest galaxies are a few hundred million years older than the universe itself is. The oldest spiral galaxies are somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 billion years old (for the time being we're all going to ignore, for reasons that could fill a book, Dave's plaintive bleating about the universe only being 6,000 years old).
The spiral arms aren't formed by the galaxies' rotation, Dave. They're density waves, whose origin is not well-understood. But think of it this way, Dave: if those spiral arms were formed by the galaxies' rotation, how wound up would we expect them to be after 6,000 years?
Not at all, that's how much. Stars might move a few light years in 6,000 years. Spiral arms can stretch over tens of thousands of light years. If spiral arms were formed by galactic rotation, and the universe were only 6,000 years old, we would not expect to see a single spiral galaxy out there. The mere existence of spiral galaxies completely blows your 6,000 year theory of the age of the universe out of the water, Dave.
Eric, my friend, why do you think so small? You're thinking of galaxies as if they were formed by human technology or something. You've got to get your mind used to thinking about an Infinite, Super Intellect -- God -- who formed the galaxies. I've got news for you. God is bigger than galaxies! A novel thought for you, I know, but undeniable if we are honest.
Why is it such a difficulty for you guys to imagine a star or a galaxy being formed with it's light field being in place? A mature creation? There is another theory out there as well ... have you never read "Starlight and Time?" Go buy the book and get back to me.
Eric...
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You're aware, aren't you, Dave, that the earth is made entirely out of supernova remnants, right?
No, my friend. How many times do I have to tell you that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days? Take your supernova remnants fairly tale somewhere else please. This theory will end in the garbage can along with you 'Goo to You' Theory.
Eric...
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The truth is, Dave, your phony 6,000 year-old universe is refuted by evidence from every imaginable branch of science, from biology to geology to chemistry to particle physics to quantum mechanics to astrophysics to cosmology.
Funny. Precisely the opposite is true if you want to observe evidence and admit the possibility of an Intelligent Creator. The evidence points to a very young universe as I have begun to show you , but you are too blind to see. The Apostle Paul (yeah, way back in the 1st Century) wrote about people like you ...
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"Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools ...
Deadman ...
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Another point, Dave, You mentioned on p. 61 of this thread that you "had heard" that the Harrison and Sasada temperature data would be "integrated over time and modeled" in the RATE II book...was it, Dave?
It was. pp. 51-52. Go buy the book, Deadman. What happened to your civil debate? How long did that last? 5 pages or so? Now you are just blathering nonsense like the other trolls about Humphreys being a liar and me being an idiot.
Deadman...
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As far as why you were wrong about the bible earlier in this thread, Dave... you said that civilizations*** begin***.. in the areas you listed (Mexico, China, etc. )... **THEN** disperse FOLLOWING a Tower of Babel incident...What does chapter 11 of Genesis say? Exactly the opposite.
Making things up about what the bible says , like your claim that scribes followed adam around carving things in stone..prior to the appearance of metallurgy, even in your scheme...is called fantasy. Nowhere in the Bible can you support this, so you make it up.
I said civilization began in Genesis 4. Your ancestors are descended from this first civilization and I explained how they probably got here. Here's the bit from Genesis 4 ...
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16 ¶ Then Cain went out from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. 17 And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, [city=civilization ... see that boys?] and called the name of the city after the name of his son-Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech. 19 ¶ Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah. 20 And Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. [agriculture, boys, agriculture ... do you see?] 21 His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. [music, boys ... you know ... civilized people play music] 22 And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron. [metallurgy, boys]
Do you see that now, Deadman? Waaaaay back in Genesis 4. Archaeology has confirmed this by the way and has refuted the phony "Bronze ages and Iron ages, etc." Mankind had a high level of civilization all the way back to 3500 BC and no doubt to Adam himself. Your view of history is messed up, Deadman. That's why you don't understand that your ancestors once had the ability to write, but later lost it.
Improvius...
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I especially love the one about the worldwide conspiracy of atheist scientists.
No conspiracy. Just an incorrect consensus. Remember Dembski's piece I gave you on the "History of Erroneous Consensus's" (Or is it Consensi?) Here it is again ...
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There is a great thread here (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1300661/posts) FreeRepublic concerning a 2003 speech by Michael Crichton.
It includes:
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.
In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let’s review a few cases.
In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth . One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no. In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compellng evidence. The consensus said no. In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent “skeptics” around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.
Comment by tribune7 — June 10, 2006 @ 8:18 pm
Clamboy...
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17 years per species, and you call that "hyperevolution"?!? Pshaw, I say, P-SHAW!!!
I'm not sure where you guys got off on this track. YECs really cannot say how many kinds were originally created. But it is entirely reasonable to postulate one ape kind that diversified into the ape species that we see today. I did not have to look very hard to find this. Do you guys have some phobia about searching AIG? There are some excellent resources there to brighten your 'evolution darkened' minds. If you don't like YEC authors, you will still be pleased because there are many non-YEC ones quoted. Here is what a Harvard Zoology professor has to say ...
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SPECIATION WITHOUT MUTATION http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v16/i1/bird.asp Richard Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard. In his book The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change he says there are instances in which ‘speciation and divergence of new full species’ have obviously occurred using ‘the available repertoire of genetic variants’,(3) without requiring any ‘novelties by new mutation’. In other words, an ancestral species can split into other species within the limits of the information already present in that kind—just as creationists maintain must have happened.(4)
Footnotes: (3) Columbia University Press, 1974, p. 186. Lewontin refers to ‘new mutations’, as he believes that all existing variation came about by copying accidents (‘old mutations’) in the first place. However, that is belief, not observation. Note that a ‘downhill’ mutation can theoretically cause a reproductive barrier (and speciation) without adding any new, functional information.
(4)For evidence that this can happen very rapidly, see ‘Darwin’s finches—evidence of rapid post-Flood migration’, Creation magazine Vol. l4 No. 3, June–August 1992, pp. 22–23.
Eric...
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But Dave seems to think all this hyperevolution happened safely in the past, say, more than a couple thousand years ago. Which means you're being way conservative with your speciation rate for beetles. We're talking two new species a week for a couple of thousand years!
Go ahead and dig your hole, Eric. I will be burying you soon on this topic as well, just like I have buried you so far on 'Age of the Earth.' You can do some pre-reading if you like at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/kinds.asp I have not studied up thoroughly on this topic yet, but there are an increasing number of creationists who have. When we get through 'Age of the Earth', we will investigate this in more detail.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If this here world is only ~6000 years old, and that there flood were only about ~4000 years ago, and we know roughly how many of each "kind" were on the boat (from that there Baaahble), how fast did each "kind" have to evolve to give us all the different species we have now?
I mean let's take "dog kind", are hyenas dogs? What about jackals? What about Tasmanian devils or thylacines? Foxes? Wolves? I mean some of these beasties is quite different Davey my boy, just how fast did they evolve from "dog kind" momma and poppa?
What about bears too? Is a panda part of the chain o'kiddies from "bear kind" momma and poppa? What about grizzlies, koalas and polars?
Just how many dang animals were on that arky arky Dave? How many different species today make up a "kind" Davey? And heck, just what IS a "kind" anyway?
Old half-a-dave a successful businessman? I can certainly imagine him *believing* that inflatable dartboards would be all the rage, and even *believing* that he's a wild success, but reality has a way of intruding.
Not going to be, Shirley ... was already. Where do you think I get all this free time to argue with you? Do you think I'm on welfare or something? (Actually, you probably do.) Anyway ... Return hugs!
k.e ...
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Hey, half a Dave, you drive a car don't you? How was crude oil formed?
Oh very good, k.e ... a science question. And I thought all you ever talked about was how I'm a Fascist, Terrorist Fundy!
Crude oil was formed during the Flood ... rapidly buried organic material. Or were you not aware that oil is made from organic material? I am into alternative fuels ... did you know that you can burn french fry oil -- the stuff that is made from crops -- like Canola? I have a diesel Suburban and I have a company that delivers purified Waste Vegetable Oil to burn in it. You see? Organic material=Oil. It's pretty neat stuff. Now ... why don't you go out and buy a nice picture of Noah and the Ark so as to show your gratitude for his having the foresight to survive the Flood and be your ancestor (you wouldn't be here if it were not for Noah). And every time you look at that picture, you can think of all that wonderful crude oil that was formed!! :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Louis-- If you really want to know, go buy the "Genesis Flood" by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. If you are too cheap to buy the book, go to AIG and search their site. Or if you don't want to do that, just stick around and I'll cover it eventually.
Cheers back!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No conspiracy. Just an incorrect consensus. Remember Dembski's piece I gave you on the "History of Erroneous Consensus's" (Or is it Consensi?) Here it is again ...
Come on now, Dave. Don't hold back on us. You keep telling us how important it is for the great atheist scientist conspiracy to prove that the world is so very old. You are the one insisting that they "see what they want to see." You are the one telling us about the hundreds of thousands of disagreeable data samples that are disposed of in secret.
So just go ahad and say it. Tell us more about these atheist scientists who are conspiring to make the world seem older than it is. Why are you so afraid to put your conspiracy theory into words? Are you afraid that we'll somehow think less of you? That we'll think you're suffering from some sort of paranoid delusion?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Well, well, well ... I guess this is how it will be for everything I present ... That's OK. I expected it.
Good show, Dave! You predicted your own lack of engagement and dishonest "summaries". Of course, we expect them now, too.
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I've accomplished my goal of convincing myself...
Again, way to set that bar high, Davey.
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Why are they not on the web? Same reason most scientific papers are not on the web. They want you to PAY for them.
I'm not in the habit of paying out of my pocket for "scientifc papers", Davey. That would get expensive right quick. I'm sure the RATE group's work merits my university having an academic subscription, right? Curious that I can't find it in our catalogue nor our online service. Maybe they should publish in one of the tens of thousands of journals we do have access to...
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God is bigger than galaxies! A novel thought for you, I know, but undeniable if we are honest.
Um, if we are honest (I can barely type this with a straight face and my breakfast where it belongs), shouldn't we agree with you that the Theory of Relativity demonstrates that God lives outside of time and space? Thus, how can he be "bigger" than galaxies?
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Why is it such a difficulty for you guys to imagine a star or a galaxy being formed with it's light field being in place?
Well, theologically speaking, the Christian God I've read about is said to be honest and forthright in his creation, and not deceptive like many of his followers. Hence, purely on theological grounds, I take issue with the idea that He would plant evidence documenting a history that never existed...
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The Apostle Paul (yeah, way back in the 1st Century) wrote about people like you ... Quote "Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools ...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not the same verse that used to (maybe still does?) make Ray Martinez cream his shorts?
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Here is what a Harvard Zoology professor has to say...
Ah, you guys do love your quote mining. Given his credentials, I'm sure you would consider Lewontin equally authoritative in everything evolutionary, right Davey? (You might be surprised at what Lewontin considers under the purview of evolution.)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Are you afraid that we'll somehow think less of you?
Oh yeah. I'm worried about that ... can't you tell?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
It's a horrible guess. There's no flood to account for. If their scenario were corect, we'd see a step in the C14 calibration curves and results.
No. There's no Flood. There's only Millions and millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the Earth But there's no Flood! There's only marine fossils on mountain tops, but no Flood! Wink, wink. That's right, JonF, no Flood!
You know, this reminds me that you haven't ever answered any of the questions put to you on plate tectonics. Since you brought this up, perhaps now is a good time. You up for it, Bubba? My guess is no, you will ignore it again, like you ignored it before. But, who knows.......
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Are you afraid that we'll somehow think less of you?
Oh yeah. I'm worried about that ... can't you tell?
Yes, I can. It's the only reason I can think of to explain why you are so reluctant to discuss the motives behind this conspiracy.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Why does only America have this blotto called creationism and the rest of the world only laugh at it? I know it has been attempted in other countries, like the UK, yet all in all the people still laugh at it. Heck, a BIG proportion of Christians laugh at it. In fact, I think the majority of Christians worldwide laugh at it. So, a little population in America think they are God's gift to the world, and that everyone should just agree with them and do what they say, since they say so.
Bite me!
But Dave, please don't stop. Our comedy over here are not nearly as good as the US exclusive creo comedy. I will be sad when the rapture comes, because I will miss the creos a lot. Oh well, back to Python then
17 years per species, and you call that "hyperevolution"?!? Pshaw, I say, P-SHAW!!!
I'm not sure where you guys got off on this track. YECs really cannot say how many kinds were originally created.
Why not, Dave? You know how big the Ark was, right? So, knowing how much space was available you could figure out how many "kinds" could fit into the Ark. This sounds like an area where you could do some original scientific work instead of just regurgitating AIG work. Just remember to leave enough space for a years worth of food. Oooh, don't forget you'll need some buffer space to keep the carnivores away from the leaf-eaters. Go for it. This could be really exciting and place your name in the pantheon of Creationist scientists.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I would love to see the global flood explanation for roots growing in a marine sandstone beneath coal during the global flood. How does one do that? How do they explain 7 coal seams there each home grown? Can any YEC explain this?
Don’t your butt cheeks get cold, waddling around with your pants around your ankles all the time? Apparently acting like a dishonest chickenshit is part of your Christian credo. In what verse of your Bible does Jesus tell you to act like a dishonest chickenshit, huh Dave?
ETA: *Clarification: Earliest traces of habitation at the Turkish village at Çatal Hüyük have been dated to 11000 YO via radiocarbon dating, but the dendrochronology record from houses there only extends back to 9000 YO.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Well as I said in the past 1/2 a Dave's post will get longer and Funy terrorist? D/2? ...forget that...try Fundy Khemer Rouge except year zero was 4000BCE.
scum
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You've got to get your mind used to thinking about an Infinite, Super Intellect -- God -- who formed the galaxies. I've got news for you. God is bigger than galaxies!
Yup, the Creator of All That Is, seen and unseen, from the smallest subatomic particle to the furthest quasar, amuses himself by turning people into pillars of salt, getting certain men to mangle their goolies, and bouncing a bunch of bronze age nomads around the middle east smiting women and children. It just doesn't make sense. The god described in the Old Testament is just too parochial to have created the Universe we live in.
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Why is it such a difficulty for you guys to imagine a star or a galaxy being formed with it's light field being in place?
For the simple reason that IF this is true, it implies that the Creator is deliberately decieving us as to the true nature of his creation. Peculiar behaviour for One who embodies ultimate truth and ultimate righteousness, don't you think? Sheesh, dave, you're as bad at theology as you are at science....
All of them (creationists/Fundie Xtians/Talibhan /Khemer Rouge/Al Qaeda ) they are chicken sh*it liars on both science AND religion
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
A Play on sounds SE AFDave = aaa eeef dave haa eef dave
half a dave
1/2 a dave
D/2
borrowed partly from J. Cambell's readings of Joyce's Finnegans Wake
Finn's (HCE's) two sons Shem and Shaun were only half the man their father was. A subtle construct of mans mental dichotomy in a single story...the mono-myth.. a bible in reverse.
One the worldly traveler, 1/2 priest, entrepreneur intent on converting the world for personal gain the other the consummate terrorist artist.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Why is it such a difficulty for you guys to imagine a star or a galaxy being formed with it's light field being in place? A mature creation? There is another theory out there as well ... have you never read "Starlight and Time?" Go buy the book and get back to me.
Eric...
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You're aware, aren't you, Dave, that the earth is made entirely out of supernova remnants, right?
No, my friend. How many times do I have to tell you that God created the heavens and the earth in six literal days? Take your supernova remnants fairly tale somewhere else please. This theory will end in the garbage can along with you 'Goo to You' Theory.
So, there we have it, ladies and gentlemen: Dave's entire "Creator God Hypothesis" boils down to this: "Goddidit!"
Galaxies? God made 'em! In a matter of minutes! With their light already streaming towards us so it looks like they're billions of years old! Where did all those elements come from that make up the earth and everything on it? Not from supernovas, ya idjit! God made 'em! Right in his own kitchen! Amazin' stuff! Ya shoulda been there!
Pathetic, Dave. You've been reduced to tales that wouldn't satisfy a four year old. You came here claiming you were interested in the scientific evidence supporting evolution, but when it was presented to you, you waved it away with a "goddidit" argument that would shame an IDiot.
Why do you even mention things like C14, zircons, etc. when your answer for everything is "goddidit" anyway? You mention the number of supernovas as evidence for a young earth, but then in essentially your next message you deny the existence of supernovas anyway!
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Funny. Precisely the opposite is true if you want to observe evidence and admit the possibility of an Intelligent Creator. The evidence points to a very young universe as I have begun to show you , but you are too blind to see.
Dave, you have yet to present a single shred of evidence to support the notion of a young earth, you you're not getting there from the evidence, you're getting there from blind religious faith. I don't care whether you say you're "religious" or not. You're guided by faith alone, without regard to evidence at all. You don't even really know what "evidence" is, and wouldn't recognize it if you saw it.
And what's this, all of sudden you're peddling creationist tracts here? Rather than present your "evidence," you want us all to go out and buy books by your creationist mentors. What, do you get some kind of kickback or something? Is this some sort of marketing scheme? Present your evidence, dude, or you're dead in the water. A month and a half later, we're still waiting for any evidence for anything you've said. I mean, other than "goddidit," which frankly is beyond tedious.
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Eric...
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But Dave seems to think all this hyperevolution happened safely in the past, say, more than a couple thousand years ago. Which means you're being way conservative with your speciation rate for beetles. We're talking two new species a week for a couple of thousand years!
Go ahead and dig your hole, Eric. I will be burying you soon on this topic as well, just like I have buried you so far on 'Age of the Earth.' You can do some pre-reading if you like at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/kinds.asp I have not studied up thoroughly on this topic yet, but there are an increasing number of creationists who have. When we get through 'Age of the Earth', we will investigate this in more detail.
Amazing, sir Black Knight, how you can think you've "buried" anyone, on any topic, on any thread you've posted to. How many people do you think you've persuaded with any of your "arguments," other than yourself? Whom do you think agrees with a single one of your points, Dave?
You're never going to get through your "age of the earth" arguments, because you're never going to persuade anyone (especially since you seem a bit short in the evidence department). The only way you'll ever get past it is to simply give up. Know why, Dave? Because you're wrong, always have been, always will be, and everyone here knows it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Half of a projected image of what created him? (un-be-known to him....himself)
Not complete.
1/2
get it?
Its a poetic thing..
Like the whole frikkern bible...except the parts where it says to kill everything...that's real..because it really happened..just like Rawananda, Pol Pot etc etc.
THAT's 4 u D/2.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Every time I read that, Tennyson's poem springs into my head.
Half a Dave, half a Dave, Half a Dave onward,...
Half a Dave, Half a Dave, Half a Dave onward Into the valley of Knowledge Rode the 60 IQ moron ‘For ICR!’ cried Half a Dave 'Evidence be dammed’ he said Into the valley of Knowledge Rode the 60 IQ moron
'Forward, the Fundy Brigade!' Was Half a Dave dismay'd ? Not tho' the ex-pilot knew AIG had blunder'd: His not to make reply, His not to reason why, His but to squirm & lie, Into the valley of Knowledge Rode the 60 IQ moron
Science to the right of him Science to the left of him Science in front of him Peer-reviewed evidence Storm'd at with data well His refutations stunk Cowardly away he slunk Away from the valley of Knowledge Ran the 60 IQ moron
When can his stupidity fade? O the wild ass claims he made! All the world laughed Laughed at the claims he made! Laughed at Fundy Half a Dave, The 60 IQ moron!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
INFORMATION THEORY AND BIOLOGY -- Drew Headley and Chris Hyland ... You guys really need to get some Creationist books ... try Dr. Lee Spetner - "Not By Chance" - also see his dialogue with Edward Max at http://www.trueorigin.org/spetner2.asp Your understanding of information as it relates to biology would be broadened.
I am aware of Dr. Spetner's work and have not found it convincing since he uses he own definitions for quantifying information that depend on the interpretation of it, something that is so relative to be meaningless as a rigorous definition. His work is used only by him and other creationists, not by the physics, mathematics, computer science, or biology communities. That alone should raise some questions of his work. However, I have not read the link you posted before so I will give it a try. I am moving from across the country this week and next to start grad school and will be out of comission. But I have my laptop and the documents so I guarantee a response when I get a chance.
Also, I noticed you did not even respond to my explanations, nor did you point me to a specific counter-claim (I scanned the link and could not find a direct refutation, perhaps I missed it?). So, I take it you do not have evidence to back up your previous claim that mutations cannot add information? Are all the mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, and scientists who use the standard (non-creationist) formulation of information theory wrong? Are all their results wrong?
Edit: If anybody wants to jump in and refute AFDave's, wait sorry I mean AIG's and Dr. Spetner's claims, feel free.
The cold (or hot) steel of modernity cuts the horse flesh from beneath the romantic(smooch) Knight.
The canons farted in their general direction.
Their mothers smelled of elderbery and their fathers were all hamsters ...either way.
Hey ho! Rocinante!! ....that skiny old, broken down horse known as religion.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Edit: If anybody wants to jump in and refute AFDave's, wait sorry I mean AIG's and Dr. Spetner's claims, feel free.
I'm not sure any of Dave's claims are refutable. I mean, come on. He says God created all those hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, each containing hundreds of billions of stars, in two or three days, and then made them look like they'd been there all along (because, um, he wanted to test our faith?).
How would we go about refuting such a claim? I mean, there's no limit to what God can do, being outside of time and space and all, and I can't even think of a way to refute the claim that those galaxies and stars don't even exist, but God reaches into our brains and makes us think they exist.
Confronted with a god that powerful, who knows what kinds of tricks he could be playing on us?
But the "information theory" stuff is easy to refute. You want to generate lots of new information, Dave? Simple. Run a random number (or even pseudo-random number) generator for a few seconds. Voila! Instant information.
If Dave knew anything about Shannon information, he'd realize how brain-dead his whole argument is.
But the galaxy stuff…well if God is infinitely powerful, and infinitely deceptive, how can we know if those galaxies even exist?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A Play on sounds SE AFDave = aaa eeef dave haa eef dave
half a dave
1/2 a dave...
I liked the Tennyson idea. Sorta brings up the whole mistaken instructions and futility of the enterprise that Dave is on. Yet he charges on regardless.
"I refuse to let your 'facts' intrude-- I know you researchers collude. That bible you've ignored, it proves that the Lord, quickly buried some corn and got crude!"
THREE MAJOR EVIDENCES FOR A YOUNG EARTH AND COUNTING
I see you've given up on the rest of the Humphreys list your posted.
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See, there's the lie. There's no reason to assume similar C14 levels (one could even call it a "begging the question fallacy"), but there is plenty of reason to assume similar C14/C12 ratios (because the biomass would be in equilibrium with the atmosphere) ... of course that blows their argument right out of the water. One doesn't even have to consider other relevant questions like "where did all this biomass live?"
Well, you wouldn't believe me if I told you there is a very good case made for this in the RATE Book, so I won't bother telling you. I've accomplished my goal of convincing myself that there is a good explanation. Maybe you could buy the book! As for your question of "where did all this biomass live" the answer is quite easy. On the earth. YECs think there was a large "super-continent" prior to Flood and the rest of the earth was covered with a relatively shallow sea. We're not talking about 500X the number of land animals, here, Jonny. Is that what you thought? We are talking about the organisms that formed coal, oil and chalk, for example.
Well, since you don't have an argument, you lose this one. BTW,"there's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument". And 100X the biomass don't fit on the Earth no matter how the land and water are distributed.
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It's a horrible guess. There's no flood to account for. If their scenario were corect, we'd see a step in the C14 calibration curves and results.
No. There's no Flood. There's only Millions and millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the Earth But there's no Flood! There's only marine fossils on mountain tops, but no Flood! Wink, wink. That's right, JonF, no Flood!
Yup, Davie-doodles, no flood. None of what you said is evidence for a flood. Cripes, Leonardo da Vinci figured out in the 15th century that the marine fossils on mountains did not result from a flood! You're a lot of centuries behind.
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And it appears to be the most likely explanation, especially for diamonds. Post the RATE group calculations and we'll critique them. Bet they made some assumptions as silly as the "same levels of 14C" one above. Oh, and somebody's mixing up the units or something ... 9x10^-6 isn't pmc (percent modern carbon), it's 12C/14C.
If your explanation is so likely, show me a paper that agrees with you. No, the units are pMC. No one talks about 12C/14C. The relevant ratio is 14C/12C.
OK, I made a typo, I meant 14C/12C. The burden of proof is on you, Davie-pie, you're the one who claims to know wheree the C14 is coming from. SHow us the dccalculations that "prove" it can''t be in-situ formation.
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"It's magic" is not a scientific explanation.
That's not my explanation. My explanation is simple: coal and diamonds were formed rapidly during the Flood. And they still have easily detectable levels of C14 because the Flood was recent -- only about 4500 years ago.
Like I said. Magic.
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Given that you have produced an infinitesimal number of discordant results, produced by known frauds (not because they say the Earth is 6,000 years old ... that's stupidity, not fraud ...
So your "truth meter" is kinda like voting? If enough scientists "vote" for a particular explanation, you'll vote with them so you can continue to be popular and be in the "in" crowd? So no one will ridicule you for having a novel thought? This reveals that you are not really interested in searching for the truth, JonF. Many great advances in science have come as a result of a small minority of non-mainstream researchers being gutsy enough to speak the truth in spite of ridicule. Don't be a lemming! Open your mind! I can speak from personal experience that in many areas, it is better to think for yourself than to follow the crowd. It was my independent thinking in spite of the naysayers that made me so successful in business that I have as much time as I want now to argue with you guys.
Not al all, You still haven't caught on. You've established that radiometric dating can be wrong when performed by YECs Even if we stipulate, just for the sake of this argument, that the YEC results may be right, all you've established is that it's possible for some particular results of radiometric dating to be wrong. Big whoop, Davie-plop, everyone knows that. To establish that we should distrust radiometric dating, you need to establish that discordance is common. 10 discordant results is "once in a very, very, very, great while". 1,000 discordant results is "once in a very great while". 100,000 discordant resutls is "once in a while". 500,000 discordant results is "Gee, maybe there is a problem here".
You lose again, Davie-poo. "There's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument".
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Unsupported assertion. You think geologists have enough money to pay for all those alleged discarded tests?
Sure. Why would they not? Other scientists have plenty of money to waste on other fruitless enterprises, like 'How the Immune System Evolved' and the like.
Yuh, right, Davie-doodles. Big bucks in geology. Donald Trump is a piker compared to an academic geologist. Wotta maroon you are.
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Show us the RATE calculations (why aren't they on the Web? Something to hide?) and we'll comment.
They are on pp. 614-616 of the RATE II Book. They cite about 5 studies and make a convincing case. Why are they not on the web? Same reason most scientific papers are not on the web. They want you to PAY for them. I don't feel like typing it all out for you. Sorry!
You lose again, Davie-poo. "There's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument"
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I have already discussed why groundwater cointamination and in-situ formation are not a problem for relatively small (30K years or so) 24C ages. Go back and read for comprehension.
In situ is dead. RATE demolishes it easily. Contamination is your only chance. But you have not given me jack squat about it.
My reply is in my reply to your silly mesage claiming that logs are different from exponentials, Davie-ol'-dork. Page 71 of the thread. You lose again, Davie-poo. "There's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument [quote]Why is it such a difficulty for you guys to imagine a star or a galaxy being formed with it's light field being in place? A mature creation? [/q uote] I choose not to believe in a trickster, liar God.
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There is another theory out there as well ... have you never read "Starlight and Time?" Go buy the book and get back to me.
I just want to de-lurk long enough to observe that one of Dave’s fundamental tactics is backfiring (not that it worked well to begin with). At the start of this thread, Dave quickly adopted an M.O. that consisted of making an outlandish statement, then watching as a large number of responses were posted, and picking out a very few of those to “respond” to. Dave’s responses were indeed “science-y” and would certainly fool an uneducated layman. Then a large number of responses would again roll in, Dave would again pick a very few, and ignore the really hard ones.
But as the thread has grown, the sheer number of “ignored” posts gets pretty big, and frankly, Dave, it makes you look pretty bad. You might claim that it is difficult to answer twenty posters, and you’d be right: it is difficult, but it is not impossible. Hey, YOU’RE the one with all that fruits-of-success leisure time to invest; make a list or something, and answer them ALL. Hint: it’s OK to say “I don’t know”. Real scientists say that all the time.
It's so obvious that mutation and selection can add information that even some IDiots admit it. Dembski occasionally admits it, but claims the natural rate is too slow.
Are you afraid that we'll somehow think less of you?
Oh yeah. I'm worried about that ... can't you tell?
It is a little surprising you don't seem to care what a terrible advertisement for Christianity you are.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Cripes, Leonardo da Vinci figured out in the 15th century that the marine fossils on mountains did not result from a flood!
Which has been a pet peeve/amazement to me ever since I read that bit of his notes. I mean, here's this guy, living in the 15th century, everyone around him thinks the earth is the center of the universe and that the Flood really happened...
And he takes a walk in the mountains, comes home, and writes a little entry in his notebook saying: obviously this marine fossils mean that these rocks were once on the bottom of the sea, so the landscape must have changed over a tremendous length of time. Incidentally, the stars are just like the Sun, they're just much much further away, and the earth is a planet.
And then he didn't tell anyone else! He had the scientific revolution right there in his head, he was centuries ahead of his time, and he just noted it down and then went off to design siege engines and invent the ball bearing and paint masterpieces and build mechanical dragons to frighten his party guests* and chat with the King of France and... gaaaah. Of course, that's probably because he could see perfectly well that getting done for heresy wasn't his best career move.
Leonardo is my pick for smartest human being on record.
But as the thread has grown, the sheer number of “ignored” posts gets pretty big, and frankly, Dave, it makes you look pretty bad.
And here's one that should be really, really easy, Dave. How deep were those floodwaters, exactly? 20 feet? 100 feet? A thousand feet? And what was the depth at which locations? My apartment is 200 feet above sea level. If you live anywhere near Kansas City, MO, your house is more like a thousand feet above sea level. So you're under 20 feet of water, and I'm under a thousand feet of water?
And don't make me buy some stupid book, Dave. Tell me yourself. I don't make you go out and buy hundreds of dollars' worth of books.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Cripes, Leonardo da Vinci figured out in the 15th century that the marine fossils on mountains did not result from a flood!
Which has been a pet peeve/amazement to me ever since I read that bit of his notes. I mean, here's this guy, living in the 15th century, everyone around him thinks the earth is the center of the universe and that the Flood really happened...
And he takes a walk in the mountains, comes home, and writes a little entry in his notebook saying: obviously this marine fossils mean that these rocks were once on the bottom of the sea, so the landscape must have changed over a tremendous length of time. Incidentally, the stars are just like the Sun, they're just much much further away, and the earth is a planet.
And then he didn't tell anyone else! He had the scientific revolution right there in his head, he was centuries ahead of his time, and he just noted it down and then went off to design siege engines and invent the ball bearing and paint masterpieces and build mechanical dragons to frighten his party guests* and chat with the King of France and... gaaaah. Of course, that's probably because he could see perfectly well that getting done for heresy wasn't his best career move.
Leonardo is my pick for smartest human being on record.
*he really did this.
Very well put.
It's one thing to understand these things when others have figured them out. It's quite another to understand them when no one else will figure them out for a couple centuries.
(And of course it's yet another thing to reject them when everyone has figured them out.)
It's fascinating how for all its scientific posturing, YEC is really more like 12th-century alchemy than anything else. And that's on a good day...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Howdy Lurkers! Time for another session of "Stump the Chump"! Yes, it's time to ask Davie another question!
We have demonstrated that Davie is a coward.
We have demonstrated that Davie lies.
We have demonstrated that Davie is ignorant of science.
We have demonstrated that Davie has no original ideas.
But can we still "Stump the Chump"? You bet!
Dave said,
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I love it!
"Don't forget, lurkers, Davie doesn't know what he's talking about even though he sounds like he does. He's very clever with words and very sneaky like all the rest of those dumb ol' Creos. You might get confused! Trust us! WE are the experts!"(emphasis added)
Note: Davie admits that he's a fool. But he he also shows that he lies, since he says, "he sounds like he does". Sorry, Davie, you don't sound like you know what you're talking about. That's why no lurker believes you.
It is good for Dave to admit that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I don't think any of the lurkers have any real doubts at this point, but I'm glad Dave confirmed it.
I am also realizing that the poor children that Dave is going to try to abuse by feeding them nonsense are a great deal more intelligent that he has demonstrated them to be. Most of them (I hope) will demonstrate criticial thinking skills and laugh at him. I'm sure that the first time one of his children points out that he's a moron of the first order he is going to be "surprized" and "hurt". But such a day will come, no doubt of it.
Now, Dave, it's time for you to demonstrate that you possess ethics. You haven't so far, but I have hope.
Dave claimed:
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Says who? Says scientist who WANT the earth to be very, very old.
Supply proof. Prove that this statement isn't simply your personal opinion. Show that these scientists actually WANT the earth's age to be that.
Make George proud to be a Christian: be ethical for a change.
9TH TIME OF ASKING
9TH TIME OF ASKING
9TH TIME OF ASKING
9TH TIME OF ASKING
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(To the tune of "He's a jolly good fellow")
Poor Dave's an ignorant fundie, Poor Dave's an ignorant fundie, Poor Dave's an ignorant fundie, a coward, and he lies.
He lies because he's scared, He lies because he's vain,
Poor Dave's an ignorant fundie, A coward and he lies!
BWE ... I already won the Portuguese thing. Have you been snoozing all this time? Rilke never paid me though. Maybe you could pay up for her? Actually ... never mind ... keep your money. I don't want to give you my Paypal info. You'd probably do something dastardly with it.
Um. Davey,
Maybe I was sleeping. Because I don't remember even saying word one about it. I was waiting until you made a formal announcement. Did you present all of your evidence? Because if you did, I can put up a good counter-argument that might do you in.
Maybe the other kind people here can help refresh our memories,
Did I ever debate Davey on the Portuguese thing? I forgot.
Dave, I made a thread for the debate: the link is here.
If you'd rather debate something else, perhaps plate techtonics, I'd be happy to do that for the same stakes. My point was and is that you are too dumb to debate that the sky is blue let alone the evolution of the Portuguese language.
It's not that I even think you are wrong. It's just that I think that you don't know how to support any argument. If you'd like to reverse sides and have me argue for the French/ portuguese connection I'd be willing.
But Dave, you can't claim victory. You haven't had the debate. Unless I am being forgetful I don't think I have made any counter claims yet. I set up a thread for it. Link here.
I C&P'd the wager and the statement you'd be defending. See if I missed the mark somewhere. I don't mind being wrong. (I'm not a christian you know)
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
BWE, I don't think you should really bother anymore. dave won't respond.
You see, he is afraid. He's afraid that the combination of arrogance and ignorance he displays will be obvious to the people who think highly of him, and might read this.
I can see no other reason behind his actions. Remember, he started by betting money on this:
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AF Dave says that Spanish and Portuguese were essentially the same language until 1143 AD when Portugal broke away from Spanish control under a French nobleman by the name of Henry of Burgundy. From this point on, the languages diverged into the modern situation. The primary influence on the linguistic divergence was the French language.
And that was his "later, more specified" statement, the one he claimed was 100% true.
Without ever backing out in my claims, I pointed out to him how wrong he was... and we claimed he won.
I showed him that it was not so... After lots of ignoring, he reverted to his original P=S+F statement, and claimed he won.
we showed to him how wrong he was... after lots of more ignoring, he turned it to P=S+F+"other factors", and claimed he won.
Those who still had the patience, showed him his immense mistakes again... After much more ignoring, he turned that to "P=S+F+"other factors" and anyway I never denied that Portuguese was derived separately from Vulgar Latin what are you saying... ...And of course, claimed he won. And this is where we are today.
This pathetic display of childish behavior and immaturity is more fitting for a 13yo, not a husband and a father. It's sad. Sorry dave, that's how I see it. You totally lost me when you admitted and apologized for saying that I hadn't provided quotes to support my views, and then you kept arguing without addressing them, like I never provided them in the first place. It was like they didn't exist for you.
It's obvious that dave knows our arguments very well, but simply refuses to address them. All he wants, like he said, is to convince himself... Although that is not entirely true: He was convinced before he even came here.
What he really wants is to compliment himself, and his ego: To emerge from this hornet's nest of atheists victorious and thriumphant; And, in his mind, that WILL happen, and he won't let trivial things like arguments and logic stand in his way. It's like it's already done. I'm sure he's even got his "ending speech" all ready to c&p.
What can we do to help him? Nothing, really. Every attempt will lead to another denial recital, along with a few more comments about how he wishes we see the truth "in our deathbeds" (what's up with that, btw? Is that as far as his pastor allows him to go with the usual "you'll burn forever in the lake of fire" threats?).
But we can enjoy ourselves with arguments like the "selective breeding of apes" all around the world for 4000 years. Man that was precious.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I like his "God created those photons in mid-flight, 99.99999% of the way across the universe from their origins in quasars, just to fool us into thinking the universe is billions of years old." Good thing Dave's too smart to be fooled by the Supreme Being and Creator of All That Exists™, right?
But I really wish he would just answer my one simple question, the one I've been asking for weeks: how deep were those floodwaters? Given Dave's striptease on providing evidence for his global inundation, you'd think he could at least throw us one little bone…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Respectfully, I think that Dave is simply unaware that he hasn't yet debated me on the topic. I'm sure that once he notices my posts, he will take up the challenge immediately.
He can follow this link to begin whenever he gets a chance.
Dave, I am right about you aren't I? It was an oversight wasn't it?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
He's afraid that the combination of arrogance and ignorance he displays will be obvious to the people who think highly of him, and might read this.
This brings up an obvious question:
If Dave is so convinced we are all wrong, and so convinced he has presented overwhelming proof of the correctness of his position, and so convinced he has won all the arguments....
Has he posted a link to this thread on his own blog?
I haven't looked in a while, but I don't recall his having done so.
Dave, remembe when you said THIS on the very first page of this thread:
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I expect to be required to do a great deal more work ... and I may fail. I admit that. If you used the same approach and your explanation was better, then it would be reasonable to adopt yours, to be sure.
Somehow, this doesn't jibe with the next 78 pages, does it?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
[I probably should have posted this on the "New Monkey Every Seventeen Years" thread, but I thought it would be fun for Dave to read it.]
I was browsing through the July issue of Scientific American tonight, when it occurred to me that, now that Dave has corrected all the errors in my beliefs about the universe, I realize virtually every single article in the issue is completely, totally wrong, based on flawed and unsupportable assumptions, misinterpretation of the evidence, and ideas that are clearly wrong because, well, "isn't it obvious?"
Here are some examples:
1) Page 11: "New Monkey Genus is First in 83 Years" Clearly wrong. As Dave has demonstrated, a new kind of monkey should show up four times as often. Unless, somehow, the last four species of monkeys discovered were all in the same genus.
2) An article in the "News Scan" section says, "For decades, scientists have known that supernovae, the explosive deaths of giant stars, trigger reactions to forge most of the heavy elements in the universe." But Dave informs me that this notion that supernovae create heavy elements is a "fairy tale," and actually God cooked them up in his laboratory, probably Monday morning, before getting started on the earth and the sea.
3) A whole article on the top 10 achievements of the Hubble Space Telescope is riddled with falsehoods and inaccuracies. No. 3 in the top ten is, of course, Supernovae, but Dave has informed me that supernovae are a fairy tale concocted by atheist scientists to get out of going to church on Sunday. No. 4 discusses the birth of solar systems out of circumstellar accretion disks, which often produce narrow jets of gas along magnetic field lines. Of course, this is completely false. God creates solar systems in his basement kitchen, and it doesn't take hundreds of thousands of years; it only takes a couple of days. No.5 on the Hubble's greatest hits is halo stars surrounding M31, coming in a wide range of ages, from six to eight billion years old all the way up to eleven to thirteen billion years old. Of course, this is totally wrong, and impossible, too, because the universe is only six thousand years old, not fourteen billion years old. How did all these guys end up being off by almost seven orders of magnitude? What a waste of money that telescope is!
No. 6 concerns supermassive black holes and their role in galaxy formation. Well, first of all, who's ever seen a black hole? Astronomers claim they can't be seen because they're too, well, black, but that's just a coverup for the fact that they don't exist. And they certainly didn't have anything to do with galaxy formation; that's God's job.
Greatest Hit No. 7 is Gamma Ray Bursts, which are believed to be caused by—you guessed it—supernovae. Those wacky astronomers blame everything on those mythical supernovae! You'd think they'd realize they can't pull the wool over our eyes now that Dave has straightened us out!
No. 8 concerns the edge of space. The article claims that the oldest galaxies out there are only a few hundred million years younger than the universe itself (I almost typed "older" again, Jon! ), but of course that's absurd. How can they be a few hundred million years younger than the universe if the universe is only a couple of weeks, I mean, a few thousand years, old? They'd have to not even be born yet! I mean, that's just, you know, ridiculous.
No. 9 is just completely wrong. The universe is 13.7 billion years old? Give me a break! How could these astronomers be so gullible, and how could they think that we could be so gullible, especially now that Dave's explained everything for us!
No. 10 is about an accelerating expansion of the universe, which isn't obviously boneheaded, except that these lunatics think it started five billion years ago! Come on! There wasn't anything to accelerate five billion years ago, except for God, who has a mailing address outside of space and time and besides since he can shrink distances in all three directions at once time goes by a lot quicker (or was it slower, I can never remember) for him, anyway.
Now that's a lot of things completely wrong in one six-page article, but we're not done yet. There's another whole article about color vision in birds, and how birds and reptiles have four different cones in their retinae, all sensitive to different wavelengths of light, most mammals have lost two of them, but primates have regained one of them to end up with three different types of cone cells.
Well, okay, Dave tells us it's possible for mammals to have lost a couple of types of cone cells. After all, that's what happens over time to God's perfect creations. They tend to fall apart after a while. (Does God provide a warranty on his workmanship?) But let's face it: there's no way primates could have regained an extra type of cone cell; that would take evolution! And come on, how many times does Dave have to tell us that evolution is a myth? Made up by atheist scientists so they don't have to feel guilty after they've gone to a nudie show and felt up the strippers. They have the unmitigated audacity to publish this ridiculous chart that shows how early bird ancestors (clearly drawn to imply that they looked kinda like dinosaurs), early birds, and modern birds all have four color receptors. Then there's this other chart that shows a mammal ancestor (cleverly drawn to resemble an early synapsid) with four cones, an early mammal (which looks suspiciously like a shrew; what do they think they're getting away with?) with only two receptors, and then early primates and modern humans with three receptors. I mean, come on! Isn't it obvious how wrong that is?
And that's not all. There are two reviews of books about early hominids: The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, and The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body. I scarcely have time to point out every single major error in these two books, but I can tell just from the first few paragraphs, where they're talking about fossil remains from four to six million years ago, that it's not even worth reading the rest of the review. The Singing Neanderthal book says something about a 36,000 year old flute (I didn't read it too closely after I saw that; I mean, why bother?), which told me all I need to know about how credible that book's going to be!
I mean, I just can't tell you how irresponsible it is for Scientific American's editors to publish this garbage, month in and month out, year after year. They're all a bunch of Darwinist degenerates who just want to take advantage of your daughters when your back is turned, and seriously, guys, I've seen scientists in the back of this bar I go to, selling crack to preschoolers. I mean, do you believe it? It's just shocking what a few years of postgrad education in the sciences will produce in terms of antisocial behavior!
I'm shocked, just shocked, at what goes on behind those lab doors.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Crude oil was formed during the Flood ... rapidly buried organic material. Or were you not aware that oil is made from organic material? I am into alternative fuels ... did you know that you can burn french fry oil -- the stuff that is made from crops -- like Canola? I have a diesel Suburban and I have a company that delivers purified Waste Vegetable Oil to burn in it. You see? Organic material=Oil. It's pretty neat stuff. Now ... why don't you go out and buy a nice picture of Noah and the Ark so as to show your gratitude for his having the foresight to survive the Flood and be your ancestor (you wouldn't be here if it were not for Noah). And every time you look at that picture, you can think of all that wonderful crude oil that was formed!! :-)
Wait, wait, let me get my head round this... If you're right, all the crude oil in the world formed during the Flood; in other words, if you're right, it's possible to convert biomass to crude oil by subjecting it to the conditions found at the bottom of an ocean for a period of around one year... and against the background of oil companies investing billions in opening up new sources of crude oil, you're setting up a business in...alternative fuel...
I think you are using the scientific method without realizing it...
Oh dear me. Otnay ootay ightbray, as my grandad would say...
....Made up by atheist scientists so they don't have to feel guilty after they've gone to a nudie show and felt up the strippers.
Funny you should mention that, but just a couple of weekends ago I was on a stag weekend (buck's party in the US and Oz?) in London with my friends (I'm the best man, I had to organise it AND turn up. Of course against my wishes. Honest).
After the usual alcoholic libations, go-karting, embarassing the groom to be etc we all went into a very high class nudie bar which had some nudie shows, one of which involved two ladies who appeared to be very confused. I think they had lost something and were looking for it in each other's naughty wee wee regions. I couldn't be certain. Anyway, my friend said he'd explain it to me with the aid of some educational videos and documentaries he had at home. Which was nice of him.
As an atheist scientist* I didn't feel guilty at all, not just because I didn't touch the strippers (they don't let you, and have several very large gentleman nearby to make sure you don't even look at them funny. Perfectly reasonable) but because:
a) My wife had given me permission (very useful).
b) I felt exceedingly happy to be exploited by these charming ladies, some of whom were apparently paying their way through university by taking donations from the gentlemen present to give lessons in comparative anatomy (strictly visual only).
c) I also discovered by talking to these charming ladies, in a polite and earnest fashion, that they make in the region of Ł2000-Ł3000 net per week, which as a fully qualified PhD scientist with nearly 7 years industrial experience I make net per month (here in the UK at least, why else do you think I want to emigrate to the US? More churches?). And while I work 50 to 80 hour weeks for the world's premier pharma company doing research that saves them tens of millions of pounds and saves people's lives across the world, these lovely young ladies get to waggle their mammary glands in some chap's face and get Ł20 for the priviledge.**
But luckily I'm not bitter!***
Louis
* I also kick puppies, shoot babies and rape nuns, but I don't like to brag.
** I do wish I was a good looking woman on these occasions, but the feeling passes after I have been for a good lie down.
*** I'm actually not, so of those girls looked uncomfortably cold. They should have put a vest on I reckon. Oh yes, and they don't get to play with multimillion pound chemistry sets!
Do I need to point out which sections of this are humourous? I realise we have creationists, and worse, Americans in the readership!
2) An article in the "News Scan" section says, "For decades, scientists have known that supernovae, the explosive deaths of giant stars, trigger reactions to forge most of the heavy elements in the universe." But Dave informs me that this notion that supernovae create heavy elements is a "fairy tale," and actually God cooked them up in his laboratory, probably Monday morning, before getting started on the earth and the sea.
Incorygible...[quote]I'm sure the RATE group's work merits my university having an academic subscription, right? Curious that I can't find it in our catalogue nor our online service. Maybe they should publish in one of the tens of thousands of journals we do have access to...[/quote]
Why don't you ask your library to subscribe to AIG-TJ and CSRQ? Most mainstream journals are predjudiced against the creationist view in case you had not noticed.
BTW ... I still don't understand why you just believe all those books you read that say the gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya. Do you accept that with no justification from the books? Did my silly story about going to Carrabba's help you understand why it seems so foolish to me for you guys to say that humans and chimps are closer than chimps and gorillas?
[quote]Thus, how can he be "bigger" than galaxies?[/quote]
Bigger in the sense that a painter is "bigger" than his painting. It is fascinating to me that most of you cannot grasp the idea of God fashioning his universe as a sculptor might fashion a sculpture or a painter might paint a painting.
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Well, theologically speaking, the Christian God I've read about is said to be honest and forthright in his creation, and not deceptive like many of his followers. Hence, purely on theological grounds, I take issue with the idea that He would plant evidence documenting a history that never existed...
Eric also seems baffled that God could make a star or a galaxy with its light field in place. What is so strange about this? How is this somehow deceptive? It seems silly to me for God to make beautiful stars and beautiful galaxies -- but oops! Sorry guys ... no one can see them for another zillion years when the light finally reaches you! No. It makes much more sense to make them and also make them visible at the same time. But I am interested in the "Starlight and Time" theory as well. Not saying I buy it yet. Don't even understand it yet. But it sounds interesting. Why would you not even consider either of these two possibilities? You cannot prove your view, so it could be wrong.
carlsonjok...
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You know, this reminds me that you haven't ever answered any of the questions put to you on plate tectonics.
Actually, I have several times ... here it is again ... I think there was one super-continent before the Flood, then it broke apart during the Flood and began separating into the present day continents.
Renier...
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Why does only America have this blotto called creationism and the rest of the world only laugh at it? I know it has been attempted in other countries, like the UK, yet all in all the people still laugh at it. Heck, a BIG proportion of Christians laugh at it. In fact, I think the majority of Christians worldwide laugh at it. So, a little population in America think they are God's gift to the world, and that everyone should just agree with them and do what they say, since they say so.
In case you have not noticed, America is the current leader of the world. America has historically been the leader of the world because America has historically honored the Creator of the world. Psalm 33:12 says, "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people He has chosen as His own inheritance." To my knowledge, America is the only nation on earth with reference to the Creator in one of it's founding documents (The UK may as well, I do not know ... certainly the UK used to be a Christian nation as well back in its glory days). I'm sure you are familiar with this line ... "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Something else to note is that historically speaking, more Christians have believed in the literal truth of Genesis than have not. It appears to me that this will again be the situation among Christians worldwide very soon. The twin frauds of Darwinism and the Documentary Hypothesis which together purported to discredit the book of Genesis, are themselves being discredited among Christians and more slowly, academia. The main Protestant denominations are reaping the fruits of their rejection of Biblical authority and people are leaving. This, combined with the emptiness of atheism and the worship of science (this would be you guys) is fueling the growth of "mega-churches" and people are coming to the truth like never before on a global scale. You should read about what is going on in China today. What Hudson Taylor started 300 (?) years ago has become a veritable wildfire, with Christianity now spreading to the cities as well as the rural areas. CEOs are becoming Christians and having Bible studies in their companies, the Chinese government for the first time ever is now printing free Bibles for their people, but they cannot keep up!!! Oh, and you should hear the stories I hear about Iraq. The pastor friends I have who go there say the people are thanking America for liberating them. There are churches starting all over the place there and Awana clubs where kids memorize Bible verses.
So Renier, the people that laugh at creationism are the "post-Christian" nations ... primarily Europe. And of course, the jury is out on America ... is it a "post-Christian" nation as well? Time will tell.
Renier...
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I will be sad when the rapture comes, because I will miss the creos a lot.
You will be sad when the Rapture happens for more reasons than that. Have you read the "Left Behind" series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins? It's interesting. People laughed at Noah when he said there would be a Flood. Then they stopped laughing when it came. Now they laugh again because they shut their eyes to the evidence screaming at them from the rocks that the Flood really happened. People laughed at the thought of the Messiah coming in spite of over 300 Old Testament prophecies predicting aspects of His life. But he came and fulfilled the prophecies over 2000 years ago. Now they are laughing at the idea of a mass disappearance of Christians during the prophesied "Rapture." And, like before, they will stop laughing when it really happens. People are an odd bunch.
carlson...
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Why not, Dave? You know how big the Ark was, right? So, knowing how much space was available you could figure out how many "kinds" could fit into the Ark.
This is old news, carlson. There was plenty of space. Morris and Whitcomb covered this back in 1961 in "The Genesis Flood." At that time Ernst Mayr was reporting about 1,000,000 animal species in existence today of which only about 17,600 of these were mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, which of course, would be the only ones needing an ark. The original number of kinds was undoubtedly less than this for reasons already stated. But if you take this number and assume sheep sized animals on average, you only need about 73 railroad stock cars. The ark had a volume at least as large as 522 stock cars, based on 1 cubit=18 inches. My opinion is that it was bigger than this because according to Newton, the cubit was 25 inches. But in either case, you can see that there would have been plenty of room for the animals and humans, plus food, plus extra space. I have some good pictures which depict what it may have been like. Maybe I will post them soon.
k.e...[quote]halfa Dave finds salavtion in fat! Green Fuel's Dirty Secret [/b] k.e, you like to imagine the worst about people, don't you. Here's the technology for making the alternative fuel that I use ... www.greenfuelonline.com ... their technology actually cleans up the air while making a useful product. I am currently using recycled cooking oil which is good, but this company does even better by producing the oil in not just an environmentally friendly way, but actually an environmentally constructive way.
Eric...
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You came here claiming you were interested in the scientific evidence supporting evolution,
Yes, and the 'evidence' for evolution (the macro version anyway) was pathetic as you are now seeing with 'skeptic' on his thread. It still blows my mind that you actually believe this Fairy Tale.
Eric...
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Why do you even mention things like C14, zircons, etc. when your answer for everything is "goddidit" anyway?
I have explained this before ... If there is an Infinite Creator God, then "Goddidit" is always a possibility unless we can come up with a process. Why is this concept so difficult for you to grasp? Have you never had a garden? Do you rely completely on natural processes to grow your garden? No, of course not. What would happen if you did? You would throw those tomato seeds out on your lawn and guess what would happen? You would get ZERO tomatoes. No. You have to "intervene in your universe" and till up a small piece of your lawn, right? Then you intervene again and plant some tomato transplants and water them in. Now you can sit back for a while and let natural processes take their course. But pretty soon, you will have to "intervene in your universe again" and pull some weeds, stake the plants, etc. But for the most part, the natural processes do the majority of the work. Do you see?
Why is it so difficult for you to imagine that God does the very same thing with His universe? I have no trouble at all with God taking great pleasure in fashioning the universe (and specifically the earth) to be a wonderful place for mankind to live, complete with nighttime views of beautiful stars, and mature plants bearing fruit to feed him. Why are you so opposed to this hypothesis? Really, tell me why ... it is fascinating to me how anyone could be so closed-minded to this very real possibility.
Eric...
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Dave, you have yet to present a single shred of evidence to support the notion of a young earth,
I have walked you through 3 in great detail. Humphreys has given you 14, which I'm betting you don't even understand because you just C&Ped a rebuttal from T.O. Do you remember what happened when I took you through a typical T.O. rebuttal? It fell apart upon close inspection, didn't it? Remember Dr. Max and GULO? My guess is that the same thing will happen with the "List of 14" when I have time to look at them in detail.
Eric...
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You're never going to get through your "age of the earth" arguments, because you're never going to persuade anyone (especially since you seem a bit short in the evidence department).
Oh yes I am. I may not convince you, but that is your problem, not mine. I cannot open your eyes for you.
Drew...
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I am aware of Dr. Spetner's work and have not found it convincing since he uses he own definitions for quantifying information that depend on the interpretation of it, something that is so relative to be meaningless as a rigorous definition.
I appreciate the information you have given me on this topic. Unfortunately, I don't have time to research the Spetner/Max controversy right now. I do intend to purchase Dr. Spetner's book at some point and read it plus the relevant internet posts. Reading the RATE Books is taking up my time now.
JonF...
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I see you've given up on the rest of the Humphreys list your posted.
Why do you assume I have given them up? I have not. I just need to stay with the RATE topic until I complete it, then move on to those.
JonF...
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Well, since you don't have an argument, you lose this one. BTW,"there's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument".
OK, fine. But I won't type it for you ... how about a scan? How good are your eyes?
JonF...
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And 100X the biomass don't fit on the Earth no matter how the land and water are distributed.
Don't argue with me. Argue with Brown, 1979; Morton, 1984; Scharpenseel and Becker-Heidmann, 1992; and Giem, 2001. Baumgardner didn't just pull this out of thin air. I think you are tripping over the idea of 100X the biomass on TODAY's land area. But you are overlooking the fact that there is much evidence that the pre-Flood land area was much, much larger than it is today. Have you never studied submarine geology? Much of the sea floor was undoubtedly ABOVE WATER at some point in history. Things were different before the Flood, Jon, much, much different.
JonF...
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None of what you said is evidence for a flood.
Right. And a wreckage of twisted metal with 18 wheels lodged in the middle of my living room is not evidence that a truck jumped the interstate and ran into my house!
JonF...
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To establish that we should distrust radiometric dating, you need to establish that discordance is common.
I have satisfied myself that it is quite common. I can't help it if you have no interest in this. Your loss. Go ahead and wallow in your ignorance. It is only my responsibility to lead you to the water. I cannot make you drink.
Joe...
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Hey, YOU’RE the one with all that fruits-of-success leisure time to invest; make a list or something, and answer them ALL.
Hey, welcome back, Joe. Somebody here said I should admit when I do not know something. They were implying that I never do that, but that it's OK to do. The truth is that I have admitted many times that I do not know everything. In fact, I did so very recently with the Information Theory question. And Joe, you are wrong that I need to answer all the questions. No one can possibly do that. But I can answer many of them and I have and I will continue to do so. I can answer enough questions to settle quite clearly the question of the historicity of the Book of Genesis, which is my main focus.
Eric...
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And here's one that should be really, really easy, Dave. How deep were those floodwaters, exactly? 20 feet? 100 feet? A thousand feet? And what was the depth at which locations? My apartment is 200 feet above sea level. If you live anywhere near Kansas City, MO, your house is more like a thousand feet above sea level. So you're under 20 feet of water, and I'm under a thousand feet of water?
I don't know exactly. But there is much evidence that ...
1) there were no pre-Flood mountains, just gentle rolling hills 2) the sea was much shallower than it is today 3) underground water reservoirs were massive prior to the Flood 4) there were "waters above" of some sort (yes, I know Dillow's theory didn't work, but that does not mean there is NO "waters above" theory possible)
Eric, the Global Flood scenario is really not hard to imagine ... think about it. God intervenes (remember the gardener analogy?) for a short time and does something to set off massive tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic action. This causes a chain reaction which breaks up the "fountains of the deep." This, combined with massive rainfall inundates the (then low elevation) land surface with water. The super-continent splits apart, the sea floor begins to lower and mountain ranges are uplifted. As this happens, water begins to run off in torrents forming the Grand Canyon and other features, much as we saw with Mt. Saint Helens in the 1980's. But I cannot spend much time on these details now. Soon, I will give you excerpts from "The Genesis Flood" which is really the book that has started the creationist revolution you are seeing now. If you have never read this book I think you are in for a surprise.
Eric...
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No. 3 in the top ten is, of course, Supernovae, but Dave has informed me that supernovae are a fairy tale concocted by atheist scientists to get out of going to church on Sunday.
Where did I say supernovae are a fairy tale? Come on, Eric. I said "a supernova formed our planet" is a fairy tale. If you are going to try to refute me, at least try to refute the statement I actually made.
Louis...
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As an atheist scientist* I didn't feel guilty at all, not just because I didn't touch the strippers (they don't let you, and have several very large gentleman nearby to make sure you don't even look at them funny.
Why don't they let you touch them? I mean if we are going to say that Biblical morals are stupid, why not throw them completely out the window? Why not touch them and more? Didn't the hippies in the 60's do this type of thing? Pretty much do whatever they wanted to do? I'll answer my own question. They don't let you touch them because they know where that leads. And where it leads if unrestrained has been proven to be quite destructive as the 60's hippies demonstrated. Venereal diseases, single parent families, burned out, dysfunctional sex drive, etc., etc. God created the male/female thing and He knows the best way for humans to achieve maximum enjoyment from it. Financially incentivizing young girls to become playthings for men harms these young girls in ways that are not apparent at first. Women are human beings, not toys. The bouncers you refer to are preventing the physical problems, but they are not preventing the non-physical problems which result from a "women are playthings" mentality. God created a perfect plan for men and women called marriage which maximizes physical and emotional enjoyment for all involved--husbands, wives and children--over the long haul. I can personally attest to the success of this plan over the last 17 years of my marriage. Man wants to come up with his own plan, and the bad results are obvious in our society today. Now I'm not saying my blood is not red, mind you. I have the same temptations that any man does. But I am saying that restraint is a good thing for society and God knew it, which is why He caused it to be written in the Bible.
Nebo...
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Wait, wait, let me get my head round this... If you're right, all the crude oil in the world formed during the Flood; in other words, if you're right, it's possible to convert biomass to crude oil by subjecting it to the conditions found at the bottom of an ocean for a period of around one year... and against the background of oil companies investing billions in opening up new sources of crude oil, you're setting up a business in...alternative fuel... I think you are using the scientific method without realizing it... Oh dear me. Otnay ootay ightbray, as my grandad would say...
Are you saying it's not too bright to invest in alternative fuel technology? Do you not read the newspaper? Are you not aware of all the massive developments taking place in alternative fuels? How long do YOU think the crude reserves will last? Especially with China and other countries industrializing as they are? Are you not aware of the growing usage of biodiesel in Europe? Nebo, economics drives this thing, my friend. You are correct that the oil companies are spending billions to open up new sources, but how many new sources are there? I don't know the answer, but they are finite. And when the cost of pumping crude equals the cost of producing oil from crops (or algae--my preference) then guess what will happen? Are you a businessman, Nebo? If so, what business? I'm curious to know where your claimed business wisdom comes from.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
How much? D@mn the price of sin!! But heck the wages ARE good.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You are correct that the oil companies are spending billions to open up new sources, but how many new sources are there? I don't know the answer, but they are finite
ta da!
And why are they finite?
Think 130 million years ago, half an arsehole!
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You know, this reminds me that you haven't ever answered any of the questions put to you on plate tectonics.
Actually, I have several times ... here it is again ... I think there was one super-continent before the Flood, then it broke apart during the Flood and began separating into the present day continents.
Actually, that isn't an answer. That is a supposition that you pulled out of your ass. Or AIG's ass. Or ICR's ass. I'm not sure, since they are virtually indistinguishable. The problem is that you have provided no empirical proof of such an event. Heck, you haven't even provided an empirical mechanism. In short, all you are providing is bluster.
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Renier...
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Why does only America have this blotto called creationism and the rest of the world only laugh at it? I know it has been attempted in other countries, like the UK, yet all in all the people still laugh at it. Heck, a BIG proportion of Christians laugh at it. In fact, I think the majority of Christians worldwide laugh at it. So, a little population in America think they are God's gift to the world, and that everyone should just agree with them and do what they say, since they say so.
In case you have not noticed, America is the current leader of the world. America has historically been the leader of the world because America has historically honored the Creator of the world.
Well, we've gone over this before. The founders were far more influenced by the Enlightenment than by any general or specific religious system of belief. What the founders honored was the natural rights of men: But, let's have a pop quiz. Who was it, Dave, who said the following: "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
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carlson...
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Why not, Dave? You know how big the Ark was, right? So, knowing how much space was available you could figure out how many "kinds" could fit into the Ark.
This is old news, carlson. There was plenty of space. Morris and Whitcomb covered this back in 1961 in "The Genesis Flood." At that time Ernst Mayr was reporting about 1,000,000 animal species in existence today of which only about 17,600 of these were mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, which of course, would be the only ones needing an ark. The original number of kinds was undoubtedly less than this for reasons already stated. But if you take this number and assume sheep sized animals on average, you only need about 73 railroad stock cars. The ark had a volume at least as large as 522 stock cars, based on 1 cubit=18 inches. My opinion is that it was bigger than this because according to Newton, the cubit was 25 inches. But in either case, you can see that there would have been plenty of room for the animals and humans, plus food, plus extra space. I have some good pictures which depict what it may have been like. Maybe I will post them soon.
I do not see. The problem is you have provided the veneer of math without having actually done so. So, I think there is still fertile ground for you to become the great creationist scientist that you aspire to. You should start with the number of kinds (which I would note that you failed to provide) and then you can get into proving that microevolutionary mechanisms could provide the diversity we see todayin just a few short millenia. Come on, man. Did you leave your cajones at 30,000 feet? Define some original research here and go for it. You could graduate from preaching at the cheap seats here and propel yourself onto a national or even a global stage. Wouldn't that be great? Your a smart guy but you are, as others have pointed out, a dilletante. You absorb and regurgitate the work of others. Here is a chance to make your own name by doing something original.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Don't argue with me. Argue with Brown, 1979; Morton, 1984; Scharpenseel and Becker-Heidmann, 1992; and Giem, 2001. Baumgardner didn't just pull this out of thin air. I think you are tripping over the idea of 100X the biomass on TODAY's land area. But you are overlooking the fact that there is much evidence that the pre-Flood land area was much, much larger than it is today. Have you never studied submarine geology? Much of the sea floor was undoubtedly ABOVE WATER at some point in history. Things were different before the Flood, Jon, much, much different.
I bet myself before I logged on this morning that I'd find another lie-filled, fact free post from QFDave and - *ding* - there it was. Now I owe myself lunch.
QFDave continues to cite professional geologist Glenn Morton even though it was shown that Morton retracted his views in this paper, and disavowed all the pseudoscience of the YEC charlatans at ICR. Baumgardner was shown to be another YEC backstabber who ignored Morton's old Earth evidence also, and accused Morton of not being a TrueChristian ™. Where have we heard that line before?
And true to lying form, QFDave absolutely refuses to discuss any of the evidence that refutes his 6000 YO Earth canard:
no discussion on C14 calibration curves no discussion of human artifacts dating way older than 6000 YO no discussion of Glenn Morton's dealings with ICR no discussion of Glenn Morton's old Earth evidence
Here is another one of Glenn Morton's many fine YEC refuting articles that dishonest QFDave just can't deal with:
QFDave continues to be the poster boy for YEC stupidity, arrogance, and dishonesty. Dave also continues to show his distain for Christianity and the Bible, which teach us that bearing false witness i.e. lying - is a sin.
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I have satisfied myself that it is quite common. I can't help it if you have no interest in this. Your loss. Go ahead and wallow in your ignorance. It is only my responsibility to lead you to the water. I cannot make you drink.
I’m sure you satisfy yourself all the time QFDave, and you’re right that we have no interest in your mental masturbations. You keep lying and claiming “victory”, and the rest of us will laugh and continue to discover and deal with the physical realities of the natural world. We can lead you to 150+ years of positive evidence, but we can’t make you think.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Actually, that isn't an answer. That is a supposition that you pulled out of your ass. Or AIG's ass. Or ICR's ass. I'm not sure, since they are virtually indistinguishable. The problem is that you have provided no empirical proof of such an event. Heck, you haven't even provided an empirical mechanism. In short, all you are providing is bluster.
You are correct on one count ... that I have not yet provided YOU with the proof. There is much proof available, though, and if you stick around long enough, I will show it to you.
cj...
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Well, we've gone over this before. The founders were far more influenced by the Enlightenment than by any general or specific religious system of belief. What the founders honored was the natural rights of men: But, let's have a pop quiz. Who was it, Dave, who said the following: "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
You would not have the slightest chance of winning an argument with David Barton on the Founders. He shows quite clearly that America was founded as a Christian nation from the founders own original writings. The problem is that you will probably never bother to read what he says. And I'm not going to take the space to show you on this thread right now.
cj...
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I do not see. The problem is you have provided the veneer of math without having actually done so.
No. The problem is with you. This is quite easy math that I have given you, but you are offended at the idea of the Bible being true and the Flood being a real possibility, so you resort to lamely trying to insult me. As for my aspirations of some great global platform, I have none. I only have a desire to "bloom where I am planted" and do my small part in revealing truth to people. If God wants me to do bigger things in the future, He will make that clear and provide a way.
k.e...
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And why are they finite? Think 130 million years ago, half an arsehole!
They are finite because there was only so much buried in the Flood. There will be no more because God has promised never to send a global flood again.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I bet myself before I logged on this morning that I'd find another lie-filled, fact free post from QFDave and - *ding* - there it was. Now I owe myself lunch.
Pretty risky bet, there, OA. Maybe you could bet yourself that the sun will rise tomorrow. :-) I'm not real interested in what Glenn has to say. I'm more interested in what YOU have to say ... if it has to do with science, that is.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You are correct that the oil companies are spending billions to open up new sources, but how many new sources are there? I don't know the answer, but they are finite. And when the cost of pumping crude equals the cost of producing oil from crops (or algae--my preference) then guess what will happen?
Well, some enterprising creationist who, by thinking through the logical implications of the Flood, realises that you can convert dead trees into crude oil by putting them in a huge hydraulic press for a year could make a killing. Now there's an interesting bit of research - manufacturing crude oil in the lab. Not only would you be providing evidence for the Flood in the rapid formation of oil, you'd get rich, too!
You have to wonder why those oil companies are spending all that money on deep sea drilling and other expensive technology when they could just manufacture the danged stuff in a lab....unless, of course, they know that it really takes millions of years of sustained pressure and high temperatures to convert biomass into oil...nah, better to keep spending the cash on oil rigs than admit that geology is all just atheist propaganda...
D/2 God has promised no such thing otherwise the New Orleans flood would never have happened.
And who are you to say what God has promised?
Osama has a better line to god than you, is he right?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Man that has to be the longest 25 seconds in history!!
D/2 what about the flood due to co2?
Or is the co2 released into the atmosphere due to burning fossil ):) fuels discounted at the same RATE as your dummed down stupid c14 argument?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Why don't you ask your library to subscribe to AIG-TJ and CSRQ? Most mainstream journals are predjudiced against the creationist view in case you had not noticed.
Oh, it's bigger than just that, Davey. The conspiracy you keep alluding to goes right to the top. Not only are the libraries and journals prejudiced, but so are the indices and search engines and reviewers and grant agencies and pretty much the entire scientific machinery. It's amazing what a stranglehold all that "wanting to believe in an old earth" has, isn't it? By pure desire and force of will, and despite being such a minority relative to the common-sense folk like yourself, we've managed to stifle the prolific Creationist literature that would otherwise have revolutionized the way science is practiced. Paradigm-shifting findings beyond reproach are rotting away in the locked drawers of pioneering, true-believing researchers everywhere, waiting to see the light of day when Big Bad Naturalism is overthrown, right? A new, utopic age of understanding awaits us, if only we can topple the current regime! Can I please have some of what you're smokin'?
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BTW ... I still don't understand why you just believe all those books you read that say the gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya. Do you accept that with no justification from the books? Did my silly story about going to Carrabba's help you understand why it seems so foolish to me for you guys to say that humans and chimps are closer than chimps and gorillas?
Dave, you said you read the books. I imagine you paid careful attention to the chapters I referenced. So you no doubt absorbed dozens of pages of text and diagrams and figures and tables on fossil hominins. You no doubt flipped through page after page on protein comparisons (maybe after reading the prior review chapter for background on how this stuff worked, eh?). You no doubt flipped to the references to get an idea of the actual texts and journal papers where these results were coming from (meaning you wouldn't ever contend that, even in these intro-level textbooks, the data were given "with no justification", right?). Furthermore, you no doubt integrated this new information with the many papers and other sources you've been linked to in this (and the other) thread. You no doubt read a few of the primary papers, just to go right to the source. So, after following me every step of the way, as you've claimed, if you still don't know why I "believe all those books" (what a silly concept!, I can't help you. By the way, if you've even been reading just my posts, you'd remember that I've repeatedly stated that the most recent papers and books I "believe" actually put the LCA of all three of these great apes at about 7 mya, and the LCA of chimps and humans 3.5-5 mya (in a really messy break-up with lots of post-separation gettin' it on). That was just a few weeks ago, Dave, and I know you've read that paper, right? Those dates are the best we've got now, but may change when we can get at the question in even finer detail (e.g., fully sequencing the gorilla genome might revise the 7 mya somewhat). It's amazing what avenues are open to refining one's information when you don't stop at "humans and apes are similar genetically, but the exact genetic relationships drawn from millions of data points are irrelevant -- it's the intangible stuff that counts".
As for your little story, perhaps you gleaned from my response that all it helped me understand is that you're not even trying. You came on this board pretending you wanted to see the science. You were shown the science. You claimed it all seemed foolish to you, and tried to make us understand your position with a little hypothetical annecdote about table manners (following others about who frat boys find attractive and who would score better on SATs). If you can't see why those little tales seem foolish to those of us who live and work in the reality-based, empirical, scientific community, Dave, well...what more can I say? Other than congratulations for stumbling into the epitome of an argument from personal incredulity -- best I've seen yet.
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Bigger in the sense that a painter is "bigger" than his painting. It is fascinating to me that most of you cannot grasp the idea of God fashioning his universe as a sculptor might fashion a sculpture or a painter might paint a painting.
Okay, so you don't mean bigger in any quantifiable sense. You really love the intangible, eh, Davey? Almost as much as you love pretty-sounding but vacuous analogies. So fine, God "painted" or "sculpted" us. Therefore, maybe you want to teach Creationism in Fine Art classes? Plenty of room for considering and portraying God there. I myself have marvelled at the beauty of Michelangelo's portrayals of Creation, and gone through many books of Christian artwork. Or maybe God wrote the universe and all of time into a novel to be read by his Creation? So maybe we should teach about God in Literature? I seem to recall reading plenty about Creation in the works of Spenser and Milton and Bunyan. But science, Davey, well, science is about what is tangible and what we can measure. It rarely resorts to analogy, only as shorthand for teaching, and where it does so, it is but a veneer for a deep, measurable understanding of the cold, hard facts of what is going on and how we know this. So if you want your stuff to be under the purview of science, you'd better give us those cold, hard facts and not pretty words. So far, you've got analogy, anecdotes, hand-waving speculation, denial of entire disciplines and libraries worth of the very methodology and empirical data that you don't have (but desperately need to be taken seriously), and a couple lousy cut-and-pasted outlying data points obtained by an even lousier method. It doesn't take an evil global conspiracy to brush that aside with a giggle, Dave.
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Eric also seems baffled that God could make a star or a galaxy with its light field in place. What is so strange about this? How is this somehow deceptive? It seems silly to me for God to make beautiful stars and beautiful galaxies -- but oops! Sorry guys ... no one can see them for another zillion years when the light finally reaches you! No. It makes much more sense to make them and also make them visible at the same time. But I am interested in the "Starlight and Time" theory as well. Not saying I buy it yet. Don't even understand it yet. But it sounds interesting. Why would you not even consider either of these two possibilities? You cannot prove your view, so it could be wrong.
Where to start with this, Dave? Cannot prove our view? Sure we can, as much as we can "prove" anything. You do understand basic physics, right? Do the names Michelson-Morley ring a bell? Einstein? Hawking? If they do, we can dispense with any ideas about variation in the speed of light (because you'd be aware that this would cause more problems than it solves for the YEC argument when it comes to being even within striking distance of reality). But you claim not to understand this yet, which is fine -- start with those names and get back to us.
For now, we'll deal just with your aesthetic argument. Of course, you know that light isn't just something that makes stars pretty, right? You know it contains information (real information, not the stuff you guys like to go on bout), right? You know that this information contains a history -- times and events that can be observed, right? If those times and events didn't happen, exactly what is your "honest" God trying to pull here? And what of those supernovae and related phenomenon Eric asks about? There, we have stars that we can conclude -- by the very powers of observation and reason that God granted us -- winked out of existence far more than 10,000 years ago. Which means they never existed -- they're just potentially pretty, flashy things that God planted where we can't really see how pretty and flashy they are. However, with our most powerful technology, we can tell that there's a really cool show goin' on. Just a light show we can't see, Dave? Is your God the AV guy at the biggest rock show in existence, for which we have the "obstructed view" seating? Mine isn't.
I have here in my hand Ladeeez and Gennelman a God discounted C14 atom. Yes for a small sum no more than your tythe you can have a C14 atom that has a 1/100 of a half life. Yes that's right a genuwhine fast C14 atom. Now be quick before someone else grabs it. Cleetus and I have to get to the next town before nightfall.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Actually, that isn't an answer. That is a supposition that you pulled out of your ass. Or AIG's ass. Or ICR's ass. I'm not sure, since they are virtually indistinguishable. The problem is that you have provided no empirical proof of such an event. Heck, you haven't even provided an empirical mechanism. In short, all you are providing is bluster.
You are correct on one count ... that I have not yet provided YOU with the proof. There is much proof available, though, and if you stick around long enough, I will show it to you.
Oh, I've been around here a while and I've heard you say that alot. But, you have delivered precious little. You are, in the secular vernacular, a tease.
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cj...
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Well, we've gone over this before. The founders were far more influenced by the Enlightenment than by any general or specific religious system of belief. What the founders honored was the natural rights of men: But, let's have a pop quiz. Who was it, Dave, who said the following: "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law."
You would not have the slightest chance of winning an argument with David Barton on the Founders.
Well, I am an engineer and I don't pretend to be a historian. But, Barton would be eaten alive by Gregg Frazer. Did you ever look into Frazer like I suggested some time back? He is a evangelical, 6 day creationist, so he should have instant credibility with you. Or are you avoiding him since he would force you to face uncomfortable truths?
Oh, by the way, you didn't answer the question. Who said it? I'll give you a hint. It was the same person that said "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
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He shows quite clearly that America was founded as a Christian nation from the founders own original writings. The problem is that you will probably never bother to read what he says. And I'm not going to take the space to show you on this thread right now.
Barton is something of a joke amongst serious historians. I have however, added Gregg Frazer to my reading list. Have you?
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I do not see. The problem is you have provided the veneer of math without having actually done so.
No. The problem is with you. This is quite easy math that I have given you, but you are offended at the idea of the Bible being true and the Flood being a real possibility, so you resort to lamely trying to insult me.
I didn't insult you Dave. I pointed out that you didn't provide any number of kinds. Without that, you were just throwing around numbers in the hopes that no one noticed there was more unknowns than equations. And if you do provide that, then it should be a short step for you to prove that all the diversity of life could evolve from those kinds. But I predict that you won't.
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As for my aspirations of some great global platform, I have none. I only have a desire to "bloom where I am planted" and do my small part in revealing truth to people. If God wants me to do bigger things in the future, He will make that clear and provide a way.
God wants you to regurgitate AIG stuff whole and unaltered? Why is that? Isn't AIG perfectly capable of explaining themselves?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
At that time Ernst Mayr was reporting about 1,000,000 animal species in existence today of which only about 17,600 of these were mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, which of course, would be the only ones needing an ark.
Can you please qualify the "of course" in that statement? Why would the (combined) millions of species of insects, fish (these guys are my speciality, Dave, and before you say "what! they live in water!", let me tell you they have a few tolerance limits that the flood would play havok with, to say the least), plants, fungi, arachnids, molluscs (see fish), crustaceans (see fish) and nematodes, to say nothing of many bacteria, need the ark?
Now we find, interestingly enough, that Dave has begun to admit that he's a liar. Very intriguing. Note the following post by Dave "I lie for God. I might even lay down for God, if that's what God wants." Hawkins.
OS said
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I bet myself before I logged on this morning that I'd find another lie-filled, fact free post from QFDave and - *ding* - there it was. Now I owe myself lunch.
Dave, being the idiot that he is, agrees with OS:
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Pretty risky bet, there, OA. Maybe you could bet yourself that the sun will rise tomorrow. :-)
In other words, Dave admits that it's a given that every day will bring a lie-filled, fact-free post from Target Drone Dave.
Right there. Black and white. Dave confesses that he's a liar. Ya gotta love this man: stupid, ignorant, dishonest, but willing to admit that he lies and his posts are free of facts.
That's real progress Dave; a real step forward.
Now if you could just bring yourself to stop abusing children, we'd be making some real progress.
Well, since you don't have an argument, you lose this one. BTW,"there's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument".
OK, fine. But I won't type it for you ... how about a scan? How good are your eyes?
Well, it looks like noise near the detection limit.
Some have statistically no radiocarbon.
Given that the background correction depends on the type of sample, who applied the "standard" correction: the RATE people? Were any comments made on the reliability of the results done by the lab analysts, specifically addressing this issue?
Why don't you ask your library to subscribe to AIG-TJ and CSRQ? Most mainstream journals are predjudiced against the creationist view in case you had not noticed. ...
because Creationists are stupid down to their C14 and have not done any research.
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BTW ... I still don't understand why you just believe all those books you read that say the gorillas diverged at 8mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya. Do you accept that with no justification from the books? Did my silly story about going to Carrabba's help you understand why it seems so foolish to me for you guys to say that humans and chimps are closer than chimps and gorillas?
I'm surprised no one else jumped on this on this one davey. Man, you are really, really stupid.
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Thus, how can he be "bigger" than galaxies?...
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Bigger in the sense that a painter is "bigger" than his painting. It is fascinating to me that most of you cannot grasp the idea of God fashioning his universe as a sculptor might fashion a sculpture or a painter might paint a painting.
It is just as fascinating to me that you can. I'm doing it now oooooooohhhhhhhhmmmmmm..... I'm channeling a little midieval (the good old days) sculptor, his tongue out just a we bit, curled almost imperceptably over his top lip in concentration.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Eric also seems baffled that God could make a star or a galaxy with its light field in place. What is so strange about this? How is this somehow deceptive? It seems silly to me for God to make beautiful stars and beautiful galaxies -- but oops! Sorry guys ... no one can see them for another zillion years when the light finally reaches you! No. It makes much more sense to make them and also make them visible at the same time. But I am interested in the "Starlight and Time" theory as well. Not saying I buy it yet. Don't even understand it yet. But it sounds interesting. Why would you not even consider either of these two possibilities? You cannot prove your view, so it could be wrong.
Dave, I've noticed that you consistently mistake "I can easily imagine how it could have happened that way" for "it happened that way."
That fact that it's not a logical impossibility for an omnipotent being to have created a 10-billion-year-old galaxy in an instant does not mean an omnipotent being created a 10-billion-year-old galaxy in an instant. The truth of the matter is, scientists have a reasonably detailed understanding of galaxy creation. But according to you, they're all wrong. You assert, without the tiniest scrap of evidence, that God created a hundred billion galaxies, with all their light in place, by ten o'clock in the morning of his first day on the job.
And we're supposed to believe that why? Sure, all of the scientific knowledge developed over the last 500 years could be wrong (and it would have to be, for you and Bill Paley to be right), but what are the chances of that? Have you ever given that any thought, Dave?
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Eric...
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You came here claiming you were interested in the scientific evidence supporting evolution,
Yes, and the 'evidence' for evolution (the macro version anyway) was pathetic as you are now seeing with 'skeptic' on his thread. It still blows my mind that you actually believe this Fairy Tale.
Dave, you've consistently demonstrated that you're unclear on what "evidence" is, or even what it looks like. How do you think you're qualified to make credibility determinations of "evidence" when you wouldn't know "evidence" if it ran you over with an eighteen-wheeler?
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Eric...
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Why do you even mention things like C14, zircons, etc. when your answer for everything is "goddidit" anyway?
I have explained this before ... If there is an Infinite Creator God, then "Goddidit" is always a possibility unless we can come up with a process. Why is this concept so difficult for you to grasp?
Dave, I grasp the concept just fine. I can certainly imagine God having "poofed" the universe into existence 20 minutes ago. It's not a failure of imagination, Dave. It's a failure of evidence. You have yet to show me any natural phenomenon that cannot have existed but for the intervention of your "Infinite Creator God"™.
"Goddidit" is certainly a possibility, and no scientist denies it. But where does that get you epistemologically? If you assume "goddidit," what else is there to say about it? That's not science, Dave, and if we assumed "goddidit" every time we saw something unusual, we'd all still be squatting in caves.
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Eric...
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Dave, you have yet to present a single shred of evidence to support the notion of a young earth,
I have walked you through 3 in great detail. Humphreys has given you 14, which I'm betting you don't even understand because you just C&Ped a rebuttal from T.O. Do you remember what happened when I took you through a typical T.O. rebuttal? It fell apart upon close inspection, didn't it? Remember Dr. Max and GULO? My guess is that the same thing will happen with the "List of 14" when I have time to look at them in detail.
Dave, no rebuttal of your "evidence" has ever "fallen apart." Are you joking? Every single claim you've ever made has been eviscerated, obliterated, annihilated, dematerialized. The only person here who doesn't think so is you. That's due to your Black Knight Cloak of Invulnerablity™.
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Eric...
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You're never going to get through your "age of the earth" arguments, because you're never going to persuade anyone (especially since you seem a bit short in the evidence department).
Oh yes I am. I may not convince you, but that is your problem, not mine. I cannot open your eyes for you.
You're not going to be able to convince anyone, Dave. Haven't you noticed your failure to convince a single person here of any one of your claims?
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Eric...
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And here's one that should be really, really easy, Dave. How deep were those floodwaters, exactly? 20 feet? 100 feet? A thousand feet? And what was the depth at which locations? My apartment is 200 feet above sea level. If you live anywhere near Kansas City, MO, your house is more like a thousand feet above sea level. So you're under 20 feet of water, and I'm under a thousand feet of water?
I don't know exactly. But there is much evidence that ...
1) there were no pre-Flood mountains, just gentle rolling hills 2) the sea was much shallower than it is today 3) underground water reservoirs were massive prior to the Flood 4) there were "waters above" of some sort (yes, I know Dillow's theory didn't work, but that does not mean there is NO "waters above" theory possible)
And of course you have plenty of evidence to support these phony assertions. So the Appalachians are 4,500 years old, and by an odd coincidence, so are the Andes, the Sierra Nevadas, and the Himalayans. Who knew?
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Eric, the Global Flood scenario is really not hard to imagine ... think about it.
"Imagining" it isn't the hard part, Dave. Finding any evidence for it is the hard part, and of course, you've provided exactly no evidence for it.
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Eric...
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No. 3 in the top ten is, of course, Supernovae, but Dave has informed me that supernovae are a fairy tale concocted by atheist scientists to get out of going to church on Sunday.
Where did I say supernovae are a fairy tale? Come on, Eric. I said "a supernova formed our planet" is a fairy tale. If you are going to try to refute me, at least try to refute the statement I actually made.
They have to be a fairy tale, Dave. If a supernova detonated within 6,000 light years of the earth, we would all be toast. And since all supernovae have detonated within 6,000 ly of the earth (how else could we see them), we've been toasted a dozen times over at least.
So you see, Dave, supernovae are a fairytale, in your universe.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well, some enterprising creationist who, by thinking through the logical implications of the Flood, realises that you can convert dead trees into crude oil by putting them in a huge hydraulic press for a year could make a killing. Now there's an interesting bit of research - manufacturing crude oil in the lab. Not only would you be providing evidence for the Flood in the rapid formation of oil, you'd get rich, too!
You have to wonder why those oil companies are spending all that money on deep sea drilling and other expensive technology when they could just manufacture the danged stuff in a lab....unless, of course, they know that it really takes millions of years of sustained pressure and high temperatures to convert biomass into oil...nah, better to keep spending the cash on oil rigs than admit that geology is all just atheist propaganda...
There's no nutty creationists that I am aware of doing what you are proposing. Drilling for oil is an excellent enterprise as long as it lasts. What I am into is this ... www.greenfuelonline.com ... someday (maybe soon) the price of fossil fuel will rise to the point where it becomes economically feasible to produce alternative fuels on a large scale.
But you are naive if you think millions of years was required to create the existing sources of oil, natural gas and coal. All it took was large quantities of biomass which got buried under the right conditions of temperature, pressure, etc. This most likely happened durign the Flood year.
k.e ...
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And who are you to say what God has promised?
I don't say. The Bible says. k.e ...
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D/2 what about the flood due to co2?
Do what?
Incorygible...
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Oh, it's bigger than just that, Davey. The conspiracy you keep alluding to goes right to the top.
No conspiracy. Just a rather arrogant consensus that the Bible is a fairy tale and anything that sound 'Biblical" or 'religious' is pretty much ignored with no investigation.
Incorygible...
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By the way, if you've even been reading just my posts, you'd remember that I've repeatedly stated that the most recent papers and books I "believe" actually put the LCA of all three of these great apes at about 7 mya, and the LCA of chimps and humans 3.5-5 mya (in a really messy break-up with lots of post-separation gettin' it on). That was just a few weeks ago, Dave, and I know you've read that paper, right?
You keep repeating this, but why? My question is why? Why the millions of years? Do you have some math formula or something? Or is it just a regression of 'this book quotes this other book which quotes this other book which quotes this other book' etc. etc. all the way back to Darwin or somebody? Who put it in print first in modern times that apes and humans had a common ancestor several mya? And why did they say this? That's what I am trying to get you to tell me.
Incorygible...
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So if you want your stuff to be under the purview of science, you'd better give us those cold, hard facts and not pretty words.
I have, and I continue to do so, but you reject them.
Incorygible ...
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For now, we'll deal just with your aesthetic argument. Of course, you know that light isn't just something that makes stars pretty, right? You know it contains information (real information, not the stuff you guys like to go on bout), right? You know that this information contains a history -- times and events that can be observed, right? If those times and events didn't happen, exactly what is your "honest" God trying to pull here? And what of those supernovae and related phenomenon Eric asks about? There, we have stars that we can conclude -- by the very powers of observation and reason that God granted us -- winked out of existence far more than 10,000 years ago. Which means they never existed -- they're just potentially pretty, flashy things that God planted where we can't really see how pretty and flashy they are. However, with our most powerful technology, we can tell that there's a really cool show goin' on. Just a light show we can't see, Dave? Is your God the AV guy at the biggest rock show in existence, for which we have the "obstructed view" seating? Mine isn't.
These are definitely some tough questions. I do not claim to have a definitive answer, but I don't think you do either. You've made some assumptions and come up with a theory which says the universe is 15 by old (or whatever the number is), but you cannot conclude anything definite. I'm just saying that I think it is unwise to ridicule any theory about something we really don't have much information about. I am not as sure about a young universe as I am about a young earth and a short human history. Have you noticed that I have not made any claims about the age of the universe? I admit I am merely speculating about that. But I also think there is really a God who has really revealed Himself through nature. And I am humble enough to admit that maybe He knows some things about 'universe building' that I do not know.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OA: I bet myself before I logged on this morning that I'd find another lie-filled, fact free post from QFDave and - *ding* - there it was. Now I owe myself lunch
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QFDave: Pretty risky bet, there, OA. Maybe you could bet yourself that the sun will rise tomorrow.
So you agree that it’s a sure bet for you to be dishonest when you post. I knew we could find some common ground.
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QFDave: I'm not real interested in what Glenn has to say. I'm more interested in what YOU have to say ... if it has to do with science, that is.
Of course you’re not interested – it’s personal testimony from a professional geologist who worked directly with ICR, and who got so disgusted with their dishonesty that he decided to quit and expose their lies. You’re also not interested in the technical articles that Morton has written that directly refute your YEC horseshit, because you have no answer for them. What a surprise!
You have no interest in the technical questions I and others keep asking for the same reason. If you can’t find a quick C&P answer at one of your brain dead fundy apologetic sites, you’re hopelessly lost. Just look at how you have avoided all discussion on the C14 calibration, and the 11000 year old village in Turkey, and the other >6000 YO human artifacts, and the Canadian coal formations, and the carbonate hardgrounds, and the lack of RATE peer review, etc. The list of things you run from gets longer every day. All the regular readers and all the lurkers have watched you waddle around with your pants by your shoes, and laughed at your feeble attempts at avoidance.
What’s really a shame is how you keep debasing the Christian faith by your continued lying and ignoring all contrary evidence. I really do wonder what kind of an example you think you are setting for anyone reading your tripe.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
1) I was making a joke intended for people capable of rational thought and with a sense of humour. You have demonstrated that you do not belong to this group of people.
2) I actually have/had no overwhelming desire to actually touch the ladies at Tottenham Court Road's Spearmint Rhino (Hi Carina!). This was also part of the joke.
3) Before you give an irrelevant, erroneous and utterly worthless lecture on morals to anyone, cease and desist from being an intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt, lying hypocrite with reasoning capabilities that would be shown up by a house plant and then people might pay attention
4) Do fuck off, there's a good chap.
Any part of that unclear? I can spell the longer words for you if you require it.
time Ernst Mayr was reporting about 1,000,000 animal species in existence today of which only about 17,600 of these were mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, which of course, would be the only ones needing an ark.
What about the ants, Dave? Can they live under water too? Or did Noah take a few thousand ants with him, too, maybe one of each species since they wouldn't take up much room. Of course, it would have taken a while to get a pair of each species...
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Just a reminder D/2 the Bible 'says' nothing. It does not talk. What YOU read and WHAT you think those writings may mean are totally up to you.
You are in no position to make any claims more authoritively than anyone else, nobody is ....not you.... not me.... not Osama.
If it is written that C14's half life is X years then you may want to ask the author how he arrived at such a conclusion.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Barton is something of a joke amongst serious historians.
Why? He's far more thorough than any other historian I have ever read. Maybe by 'serious historians' you mean 'revisionist historians.' No. I have never read your guy. Give me a link or a title or something.
cj...
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And if you do provide that, then it should be a short step for you to prove that all the diversity of life could evolve from those kinds. But I predict that you won't.
You predict wrong. But not today. We have one more item on the RATE agenda. And I am trying to decide which topic would be more fun to do next ... the Flood or the Tablet Theory of Genesis. Both are great topics.
Inc...
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Can you please qualify the "of course" in that statement?
Yes, but not today. See above.
Rilke...
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Dave, being the idiot that he is, agrees with OS: Quote Pretty risky bet, there, OA. Maybe you could bet yourself that the sun will rise tomorrow. :-) In other words, Dave admits that it's a given that every day will bring a lie-filled, fact-free post from Target Drone Dave.
Wow. I normally pass up Rilke's stuff, but this one was too bizarre not to highlight. Would anyone else like to take a shot at explaining what in the world she is talking about? And I guess she means 'OA'? Not 'OS'? Didn't you just recently get a PhD, Rilke?
Tracy...
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Given that the background correction depends on the type of sample, who applied the "standard" correction: the RATE people? Were any comments made on the reliability of the results done by the lab analysts, specifically addressing this issue?
The lab applied the standard correction of 0.077pMC. They used this with full knowledge of the type of samples being analyzed.
BWE...
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I'm surprised no one else jumped on this on this one davey. Man, you are really, really stupid.
What? FOr believing chimps and gorillas are more similar than chimps and humans? Yeah, I know. That is really stupid. I'm trying to re-educate myself and the manager at Carrabbas.
Eric...
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That fact that it's not a logical impossibility for an omnipotent being to have created a 10-billion-year-old galaxy in an instant does not mean an omnipotent being created a 10-billion-year-old galaxy in an instant.
I agree. I don't assert that He did definitely. I simply assert that it is a possibility because there is much other evidence that He exists and that He has some pretty amazing capabilities that we don't know much about.
Eric...
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The truth of the matter is, scientists have a reasonably detailed understanding of galaxy creation. But according to you, they're all wrong. Eric...
I admit they may know a thing or two. But you act like they know everything about it. Eric...
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You assert, without the tiniest scrap of evidence, that God created a hundred billion galaxies, with all their light in place, by ten o'clock in the morning of his first day on the job.
I don't assert it. I propose it as a hypothesis. There are other hypotheses out there besides the 15 BY hypothesis. But again, I'm not as interested in 'Age of the Universe' as I am in 'Age of the Earth.' I could be wrong about God making galaxies and such with their light fields in place and this would have no affect on my YEC Theory.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I also want ask Dave about Ducks and Fish. Are Ducks and Fish evil, Dave?
After all if the purpose of the flood was to eradicate evil etc blah blah waffle rhubarb, then surely ducks and fish were kind of exempt from the problems caused by, well what amounts to nothing other than a large amount of water.
I mean if the whole planet was flooded wouldn't some of the surface debris, ya know, kind of float up and form "log jam" type floating islands where ducks could rest after a hard day's evil. And the fish would barely have noticed (apart from that whole salinity problem you've yet to address. Look out! Exploding fish! But we won't worry about that Davey, after all the facts don't bother you now do they? Water off a duck's back so to speak, eh?).
I reckon ducks are evil and fish are in cahoots with them. It's a duck/fish/satan/atheisticerised liberal scientista conspiracy isn't it Dave. That's why crispy duck tastes so good and medics always tell you that fish is good for you. They're trying to get you to be a little bit more satanic by eating fish and duck. It's all so clear, I don't know why I didn't see it before!
And water, what about water? After all we knew that you shouldn't drink water because fish fuck in it, but this could be part of the evil conspiracy. I mean, it's scientists (read evil baby kicking atheists) who developed all that water treatment chemistry, they MUST by lying so we drink water with fish semen in it, which makes as even more satanic. Oh woe is me!
That's why Sir ToeJam has chosen marine biology, he is eviiiillll! And his knew logo is a fish type mythical thingy, PROOF!
You've made some assumptions and come up with a theory which says the universe is 15 by old (or whatever the number is), but you cannot conclude anything definite. I'm just saying that I think it is unwise to ridicule any theory about something we really don't have much information about. I am not as sure about a young universe as I am about a young earth and a short human history.
Dave, you have no idea about the ocean of evidence used to calculate the age of the universe, evidence that's been accumulating for the past 100 years. Scientists such as Allan Sandage have spent their entire careers accumulating data in an attempt to determine the age of the universe. Painstaking measurements of stellar and galactic spectra, analysis of stellar and galactic evolution, analysis of the cosmic microwave background to unprecedented levels of precision. They didn't make "some assumptions and come up with a theory, Dave." Thousands of people have spent decades of their lives in a slow, painful accumulation of data, a concept entirely foreign to you, and then spent additional decades analyzing that data and providing a theoretical framework that accounts for it.
We have incredible mountains of data supporting the age of the universe. When Maarten Schmidt and James Gunn were accumulating data on quasars back in the mid-eighties to determine their redshift, they were filling up 140-megabyte tapes with spectral data an hour. That's in 1985, Dave. A giant hard disk in 1985 was 200 megabytes. They were filling up seven of them every night, for nights on end.
The amount of data accumulated since then, from much more powerful sensors, has exploded. The Hubble telescope alone accumulates terabytes of data every year. You think that's not much information?
Dave, you really need to get out of the ICR and AiG ghetto and get out into the big wide world once in a while. You have no idea what's going on out there, and how thoroughly your toy universe has been discredited.
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Have you noticed that I have not made any claims about the age of the universe? I admit I am merely speculating about that. But I also think there is really a God who has really revealed Himself through nature. And I am humble enough to admit that maybe He knows some things about 'universe building' that I do not know.
And what do you mean you've made no claims about the age of the universe, Dave? 6,000 years. How many times have you said that? Don't say you're only talking about the earth, because that would be a lie. Any time anyone has talked about anything anywhere being more than 6,000 years old, you've objected. 6,000 years is the figure you're stuck with, unless you want to start retracting some of your claims.
And once you're started, there's no reason ever to stop.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well, since you don't have an argument, you lose this one. BTW,"there's a great argument but I can't be bothered to provide it" equals "I ain't got an argument".
OK, fine. But I won't type it for you ... how about a scan? How good are your eyes?
My eyes are reasonably good. I see they used an world-wide average neutron flux, when it is known that the neutron flux varies widely over geography and depth, and exposure to which certainly can vary over time. Those calculations are worthless.
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And 100X the biomass don't fit on the Earth no matter how the land and water are distributed.
Don't argue with me. Argue with Brown, 1979; Morton, 1984; Scharpenseel and Becker-Heidmann, 1992; and Giem, 2001. Baumgardner didn't just pull this out of thin air. I think you are tripping over the idea of 100X the biomass on TODAY's land area. But you are overlooking the fact that there is much evidence that the pre-Flood land area was much, much larger than it is today. Have you never studied submarine geology? Much of the sea floor was undoubtedly ABOVE WATER at some point in history. Things were different before the Flood, Jon, much, much different.
There is no evidence that the exposed surface area of the Earth has ever been significantly larger than it is today. There's lots of evidence that it's always been roughly the same while life's been around. Brown and the others did pull it out, but "thin air" is not what I'd characterize as the source. You obviously haven't studied submarine geology; the vast majority of the ocean floors are new material, extruded from oceanic ridges, that has never been above water since solidification.
But, Davie-kins, I'll be glad to listen. Show us the calculations of the amount of exposed surface area, the density of biomass per unit area, and the reasons why assuming the same amount of C14 is reasonable before this alleged flood.
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None of what you said is evidence for a flood.
Right. And a wreckage of twisted metal with 18 wheels lodged in the middle of my living room is not evidence that a truck jumped the interstate and ran into my house!
I see all you have left is irrelevancies.
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To establish that we should distrust radiometric dating, you need to establish that discordance is common.
I have satisfied myself that it is quite common. I can't help it if you have no interest in this. Your loss. Go ahead and wallow in your ignorance. It is only my responsibility to lead you to the water. I cannot make you drink.
Yeah, but you'll obviously fall for any twaddle that appears to support your preconceptions. You want to think that 0.00001% is "quite common", that's your right, but nobody with any breain funciuton is going to agree with you.
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Eric, the Global Flood scenario is really not hard to imagine ... think about it. God intervenes (remember the gardener analogy?) for a short time and does something to set off massive tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic action. This causes a chain reaction which breaks up the "fountains of the deep." This, combined with massive rainfall inundates the (then low elevation) land surface with water. The super-continent splits apart, the sea floor begins to lower and mountain ranges are uplifted. As this happens, water begins to run off in torrents forming the Grand Canyon and other features, much as we saw with Mt. Saint Helens in the 1980's. But I cannot spend much time on these details now. Soon, I will give you excerpts from "The Genesis Flood" which is really the book that has started the creationist revolution you are seeing now. If you have never read this book I think you are in for a surprise.
It's realy hard to imagine how any life could survive that. When you start covering such things, don't forget to calculate the amount of heat released. And, of course, you'll show us how water runoff created the Goosenecks and the other features of the Grand Canyon that are totally unlike what we saw at Mr. St. Helens
2) I actually have/had no overwhelming desire to actually touch the ladies at Tottenham Court Road's Spearmint Rhino (Hi Carina!. This was also part of the joke.
Oh, yes, Louis. I forgot how sophisticated you really are. I forgot how beneath you it would be to want to touch one of those ladies. Silly me!
Louis...
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3) Before you give an irrelevant, erroneous and utterly worthless lecture on morals to anyone, cease and desist from being an intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt, lying hypocrite with reasoning capabilities that would be shown up by a house plant and then people might pay attention
YOU are paying attention to a 'house plant' speak. What does that say about you?
Louis...
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4) Do fuck off, there's a good chap.
So much for the thin veneer of sophistication.
Louis...
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Any part of that unclear? I can spell the longer words for you if you require it.
By all means. Spell it out as clear as you like. It helps my case when people like you mouth off ...
Louis...
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I also want ask Dave about Ducks and Fish. Are Ducks and Fish evil, Dave?
No Louis. Ducks and Fish are not evil. Where did you get that idea? You are the first person in history to ever ask me that! Is your anger at me giving you a Biblical morality lesson clouding your clear thinking?
Eric...
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Dave, you have no idea about the ocean of evidence used to calculate the age of the universe, evidence that's been accumulating for the past 100 years. Scientists such as Allan Sandage have spent their entire careers accumulating data in an attempt to determine the age of the universe.
Fine. Have it your way. As I said, an old universe really does no harm to YEC Theory.
Eric...
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And what do you mean you've made no claims about the age of the universe, Dave?
I do THINK the universe is also only 6000 years old, but I am not dogmatic about this because I have not studied it much. Again ... I don't think I really care.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Please tell us how you arrived at the dates you have been giving us for historical events, i.e.
Earth created 6000 years ago Humans created 5500 years ago 'The Flood' 4500 years age Tower of Babel 4200 years ago, etc.
Don't just say 'from the Bible', that's a cowardly cop-out. I would like to see your evidence and calculations as to how you arrived at those exact dates, and what their accuracy is. Is the age of the Earth 6000 +/- 100 years? +/- 1000 years? +/- 4.5 billion years?
Same for the Flood dating. How did you get that number, and how accurate is your figure?
Are you using Bishop Ussher's number of Oct. 23, 4004 B.C as the date of creation?
What assumptions did you make in obtaining these results?
Please show all your work and calculations. Thanks
But that's not evidence of anything except someone's fanciful interpretation of non-verified Biblical ages. That doesn't cut the muster in anyone's scientific results. What I want to see is corroborating non-biblical scientific evidence that give the dates you claim. If I had never heard of the Bible but had unlimited time, money, and scientific resources to determine those ages, how would I do it?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
That fact that it's not a logical impossibility for an omnipotent being to have created a 10-billion-year-old galaxy in an instant does not mean an omnipotent being created a 10-billion-year-old galaxy in an instant.
I agree. I don't assert that He did definitely. I simply assert that it is a possibility because there is much other evidence that He exists and that He has some pretty amazing capabilities that we don't know much about.
Dave, if your hypothesis that "goddidit" is to have any use at all, you're going to need to explain how he did it. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and mine.
I know, you haven't developed your hypothesis that far. And, no doubt, you never will, because God is presumably much smarter than you, and you wouldn't be able to understand how he did it anyway.
But that's exactly why my hypothesis is way better than yours, Dave. My hypothesis (although I'm honest enough to admit that it's not "my" hypothesis; it's the consensus hypothesis, or more accurately a theory, of the astronomical community) not only proposes mechanisms to account for galaxy formation, but actually provides evidence that those mechanisms can work! Imagine that! Evidence! Hows that for "sciency-ness"?
"Possibility" just doesn't cut it, Dave. Who cares if it's "possible"? How probable is it? And you have no way of knowing that.
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Eric...
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The truth of the matter is, scientists have a reasonably detailed understanding of galaxy creation. But according to you, they're all wrong. Eric...
I admit they may know a thing or two. But you act like they know everything about it.
No I don't, Dave. That's your insecurity speaking (or whining, as the case may be). What science knows is dwarfed by what it doesn't know, in any scientific discipline, and neither I nor anyone else has claimed otherwise.
You're the one who claims he has all the answers, and argues by assertion without reference to any actual evidence. You're the one who can't believe I can't grasp that your explanation is better than mine (despite the fact that you don't really have an explanation).
Astronomers hardly know everything about galactic formation. There's a long way to go before anyone can make that claim. But they're a lot further along than you are, with your "poofosity." You know nothing, not one tiny little thing, about how God could have created a galaxy.
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Eric...
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You assert, without the tiniest scrap of evidence, that God created a hundred billion galaxies, with all their light in place, by ten o'clock in the morning of his first day on the job.
I don't assert it. I propose it as a hypothesis. There are other hypotheses out there besides the 15 BY hypothesis. But again, I'm not as interested in 'Age of the Universe' as I am in 'Age of the Earth.' I could be wrong about God making galaxies and such with their light fields in place and this would have no affect on my YEC Theory.
You don't propose it as a "hypothesis," Dave. You propose it as a wild-ass guess. You've provided not a single scrap of evidence, and without evidence, a hypothesis is indistinguishable from a guess.
And how can you not be "interested" in the age of the universe, Dave, if the Bible is, as you claim, inerrant? The Bible has some very definite (if mutually contradictory) things to say not just about the creation of the earth, but about the creation of the universe at large. If the Bible is wrong about how the universe was created, why should you credit anything it says about how the earth was created?
No, Dave, we're not going to let you pick and choose which rebuttals you're going to deal with. Until you falsify some evidence the scientific community has developed over the past 500 years, that evidence stands. So far you're batting zero on that count.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Please tell us how you arrived at the dates you have been giving us for historical events, i.e.
Earth created 6000 years ago Humans created 5500 years ago 'The Flood' 4500 years age Tower of Babel 4200 years ago, etc.
Don't just say 'from the Bible', that's a cowardly cop-out. I would like to see your evidence and calculations as to how you arrived at those exact dates, and what their accuracy is. Is the age of the Earth 6000 +/- 100 years? +/- 1000 years? +/- 4.5 billion years?
Same for the Flood dating. How did you get that number, and how accurate is your figure?
Are you using Bishop Ussher's number of Oct. 23, 4004 B.C as the date of creation?
What assumptions did you make in obtaining these results?
Please show all your work and calculations. Thanks
AFD also claimed once that something like a dozen languages resulted from The Big Guy Upstairs zapping the Tower of Babel. You could ask him where he got those figures as well.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Barton is something of a joke amongst serious historians.
Why? He's far more thorough than any other historian I have ever read. Maybe by 'serious historians' you mean 'revisionist historians.'
No. I mean serious historians. That they come to conclusions you may not like doesn't make them necessarily revisionist. Or are you suggesting that you have exclusive ownership of the truth in history, in addition to biology, paleontology, cosmology, linguistics,.....? Oh heck, is their any subject you are not better informed on then actual practitioners?
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No. I have never read your guy. Give me a link or a title or something.
Strictly speaking, he isn't "my guy".He is an evangelical and a 6 day creationist, of which I am neither. He is "your guy." That is why I suggested him to you. I have recently read biographies of 7 different of the Founding Fathers (technically 7 and a half because I left a biography of Governuer Morris on an airplane on the way back from a business trip in Mexico before I could finish it) by 7 different authors and none of them agreed with your supposition. But, as to the link:
And if you do provide that, then it should be a short step for you to prove that all the diversity of life could evolve from those kinds. But I predict that you won't.
You predict wrong.
Since you have yet to provide anything, my prediction is, at worst, neither proved nor disproved. But, I suppose it is possible that you might actually prove me wrong in the future.
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But not today.
Indeed.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Hey Dave, I know you're a busy man, but if you get a chance, would you mind giving me your take in the Ann Coulter thread? If you have time, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.
And what do you mean you've made no claims about the age of the universe, Dave?
I do THINK the universe is also only 6000 years old, but I am not dogmatic about this because I have not studied it much. Again ... I don't think I really care.
Of course you care, Dave. If the rest of the world is right, your "inerrant" Bible is wrong, and there goes all your justification for thinking the world is 6,000 years old. Because, other than the fairytales in the Bible, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to think the world is 6,000 years old.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No conspiracy. Just a rather arrogant consensus that the Bible is a fairy tale and anything that sound 'Biblical" or 'religious' is pretty much ignored with no investigation.
You're wrong, Dave. You're not the first to use the Bible as a source of hypotheses. It's been used in exactly that fashion for two thousand years. Caused no small degree of consternation when those hypotheses didn't pan out. Where the Bible matches the evidence (e.g., history), it remains a source of information. Where it doesn't (e.g., science), there's not much left to investigate. And "arrogance" is an interesting characterization by somebody with such lofty opinion of his own faith and knowledge that he's willing to discount practically every biologist, physicist, and geologist on the planet.
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You keep repeating this, but why? My question is why? Why the millions of years? Do you have some math formula or something? Or is it just a regression of 'this book quotes this other book which quotes this other book which quotes this other book' etc. etc. all the way back to Darwin or somebody? Who put it in print first in modern times that apes and humans had a common ancestor several mya? And why did they say this? That's what I am trying to get you to tell me.
Why, Dave? Why? I repeat it because it illustrates the difference between your worldview and mine, and the projections you make. You are so confident in revelation without method, assertion without evidence, and knowledge without information that you assume that's where my "belief" comes from. You really think we can trace scientific understanding of life and the universe back to the pronouncements of some prophet on a mountain top, analogous to the source of your knowledge. Yes, Dave, books quote other books. They summarize them, answering the "why" on one level. If you want more, you go to those other books. But if you really think all of evolutionary theory (or even just the phylogeny of the great apes) reduces to "who put it in print first", you just don't get it.
But to answer your simple (and rather irrelevant) question: "Who put in print first in modern times that apes and humans had a common ancestor several mya? And why did they say this?"
Once again, I will refer you to that Lewin book you said you read, specifically Chapter 3 "Historical Views", which I referenced for you:
"During the past century, the issue of our relatedness to the apes has gone full cycle. From the time of Darwin, Huxley and Haeckel until soon after the turn of the centruy, humans' closeses relatives were regardes as being the African apes, the chimpanzee and gorilla, with the Asian great ape, the orangutan, being considered to be somewhat separate. Then, from the 1920s until the 1960s, humans were distanced from the great apes, which were said to be an evolutionarily closely-knit group. Since the 1960s, however, conventional wisdom has returned to its Darwinian cast."
... [skip 2 pages of description regarding the players and positions in the first half of the 20th century] ...
"During the 1950s and 1960s, fossil evidence of early apes accumulated at a significant rate, and it seemed to show that these creatures were not simply early versions of modern apes, as had been tacitly assumed. This meant that those authorities who accpeted an evolutionary link between humans and apes, but did not accept a close human/African ape link, did not now have to go way back in the history of the group to 'avoid' the specialization of the modern species. At the same time, those who insisted that the similarities between African apes and humans were the result of common heritage, not parallel evolution, were forced to argue for a very recent origin of the human line. Prominent among proponents of this latter argument was Sherwood Washburn, of the University of California, berkeley.
"One of the fossil discoveries of the 1960s -- in fact, a rediscovery -- that appeared to confirm the notion of parallel evolution to explain human/African ape similarities was made by Elwyn Simons, then of Yale University. Ramapithecus was the fossil specimen, an apelike creature that lived in Eurasia about 15 million years ago and appeared to share many anatomical features (in the teeth and jaws) with hominids. Simons, later supported closely by David Pilbeam, proposed Ramapithecus as the beginning of the hominid line, thus excluding a human/African ape connection.
"Arguments about the relatedness between humans and African apes took place against a rethinking about the relatedness among the apes themselves. In 1927, G.E. Pilgrim had suggested that the great apes be treated as a natural group, with humans evolutionarily more distant. The idea eventually became popular, and was the accepted wisdom until molecular biological evidence undermined it in 1963, the work of Morris Goodman at Wayne State University. Goodman's molecular biology on blood proteins indicated that humans and the African apes formed a natural group, with the orangutan more distant.
"Thus, the Darwin/Huxley/Haeckel position was reinstated, with first Gregory and then Washburn its champions. Subsequent molecular biological -- and fossil -- evidence seems to confrim Washburn's original suggestion that the origin of the human line is indeed recent, lying between 5 and 10 million years ago. Ramapithecus was no longer regarded as the first hominid, but simply one of many early apes."
... [skip a few pages discussion of more recent fossil hominids, too use, etc., not to mention historical phylogenetic trees showing the perceived evolutionary relationships between men and apes, including a 1927 version with "negroes" and "negroids" divering not long after Neanderthal] ...
"During the past decade, not only has there been an appreication of a spectrum of hominid adaptations -- which includes the notion simply of a bipedal ape -- but the lineage that eventually led to Homo sapiens has come to be perceived as much less human. Gone is the notion of a scaled-down version of a modern hunter-gatherer way of life. In its place has appeared a rather unusual African ape adopting some novel, un-apelike modes of subsistence.
"Hominid origins are thereforenow completely divorced from any notion of human origins. Questions about the beginning of the hominid lineage are now firmly within the territory of behavioral ecology, and do not draw upon those qualities that we might perceive as separating us from the rest of animate nature. [HINT: These are "qualities" like writing, SATs, and table manners, Dave] Questions of human origins have now to be posed within the context of primate biology."
... [Exit the chapter on Historical Perspectives demonstrating that there was NO pronouncement by any patriarchal authority, but that thought developed, changed, and changed back more than once as the evidence appeared. Turn to Chapter 9 on Molecular Perspectives, which describes dated fossil finds and DNA data.] ...
"The shape of the hominoid tree according to the molecular evidence available in the early 1980s was therefore as follows: gibbons split away first, about 20 million years ago; orangutans next, about 15 million years ago; leaving humans, chimpanzees and gorillas in an unresolved three-way split, close to 5 million years ago. A three-way split of a lineage is biologically unlikely, and in this case it meant that the timing of the different divergences was so tightly bunched that none of the techniques was able to prise it apart with any confidence.
"Meanwhile, most morphologists had since the 1960s accepted the notion of a human/African ape clade, with an African ape clade existing within that. The expectation among molecular biologists, therefore, was that their data would confirm this pattern. showing that the common ancestor of humans and the African apes diverged to produce the human lineage on the one hand and an African ape lineage on the other, which then subsequently split to produce gorillas and chimpanzees.
[WOW, eh Dave? In the early 1980s, they were still expecting chimps to be closer to gorillas. Do you think a certain amount of your "I wouldn't invite a chimp to dinner" thinking led to that expectation? Kinda different then your idea that we have an innate, arrogant urge to convince everyone he's a monkey, eh?]
"It was therefore something of a surprise when, in 1984, Charles Sibley and Jon Ahlquist, then of Yale University, published data on DNA-DNA hybridization that strongly implied that chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. Gorillas evolved from the human/African ape common ancestor between 8 and 10 million years ago, they concluded, leaving humans and chimpanzees briefly sharing a common ancestory of their own, and splitting at between 6.3 and 7.7 million years ago."
Then we have a table, titled "Converging Evidence":
Time Ape/human divergence date (millions of years) Fossils Molecules 1980s 5-8 5-8 1970s 15 5 1960s 30 5
Then we have a tree, with Time -- Millions of years, illustrating:
So, your question of how I arrived at my 1985 prediction, way back when? Simple. By 1985, molecular and fossil data had converged on a split between humans and other apes (i.e., chimps) at 5 million years ago (the number I used). The gorilla estimate from 1989 was 7.7-11.0, but this included some of the new DNA techniques that we were supposed to be "predicting". So I went with a ballpark around 8 mya, which was the upper end of the 5-8 mya range of the "convergence" between fossils and "molecules", nicely "between 5 and 15, but closer to 5" from early 1980s fossil discoveries, the lower end of the 8-10 mya range from the first 1984 foray into DNA technology (which I would have been rightly skeptical of, but intrigued, in 1985), and closest to the 5 mya for the "three-way-split" from established molecular studies.
That's where I got my dates for in my silly (but fun) little hypothetical exercise, Dave. Don't you wish you could give an answer like that for your own arguments? Something other than "it's obvious" or "imagine you went to dinner/bed/school with a chimp"? Ever?
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Incorygible...
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So if you want your stuff to be under the purview of science, you'd better give us those cold, hard facts and not pretty words.
I have, and I continue to do so, but you reject them.
Dave, rejection of analogies, arguments from incredulity and arguments from ignorance is not a rejection of facts.
Quote
These are definitely some tough questions. I do not claim to have a definitive answer, but I don't think you do either. You've made some assumptions and come up with a theory which says the universe is 15 by old (or whatever the number is), but you cannot conclude anything definite. I'm just saying that I think it is unwise to ridicule any theory about something we really don't have much information about. I am not as sure about a young universe as I am about a young earth and a short human history. Have you noticed that I have not made any claims about the age of the universe? I admit I am merely speculating about that. But I also think there is really a God who has really revealed Himself through nature. And I am humble enough to admit that maybe He knows some things about 'universe building' that I do not know.
They are tough questions, Dave. But you're wrong -- I have absolutely no need to answer them. That's your prerogative. Since I don't believe life/the Earth/maybe the universe was created 6,000 years ago, I don't have to come up with a way to make reality fit inside my book. Why there is starlight from a billion light years away fits just fine with my theories of the universe. What about yours?
Oh, and you can't weasel out on the Universe thing:
Quote
Genesis 1:
1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.
2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day.
Looks to me like the stars and the light were made on the first day, two days before the earth, eh? Don't you even know your own books?
From a chimp, Man could not have arose, origins you should learn from frescoes Michaelangelo knew Your dumb Darwin's askew And you're outta here 'cause you're homos -dt
Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it. link here.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
No conspiracy. Just a rather arrogant consensus that the Bible is a fairy tale and anything that sound 'Biblical" or 'religious' is pretty much ignored with no investigation.
I take this as an admission that you were mistaken when you accused scientists of being "Blinded by what they want to believe". And when you referred to evolution as a con. And when you accused scientists of falsifying data so that they could prove the Earth is billions of years old.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Thanks to Incorygible for posting that excellent account of hominid origins- the contrast against Dave's babbling is glorious. It's especially noteworthy that the finding that we're genetically closer to chimps is so recent, and that it was a finding which contradicted everyone's expectations.
Quote (incorygible @ June 21 2006,12:47)
Quote
Genesis 1:
1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.
2 the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
3 Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
4 God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.
5 God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day.
Looks to me like the stars and the light were made on the first day, two days before the earth, eh? Don't you even know your own books?
Amusingly, the sun doesn't get created until 'day' three.
Notice, while we're at it, that God is not described as creating the waters. Heaven and earth, yes, but the waters are supposed to be there already. God divides them, in verse 7, and gathers them, in verse 9, but apparently he doesn't create them. This appears to be a development from the Sumerian and Babylonian myths; Sumer had earth and heaven emerging from the sea (Nammu) while Babylon starts with the sweet water and the bitter water (Apsu and Tiamat).
Dave, did God create the water?
Plus, of course, there's the problem that Genesis 1 has creation in the order
Light Heaven Dry land Plants Stars, sun and moon Water creatures and birds Land creatures Man and woman
whereas Genesis 2 has it in the order
Adam Paradise (plants) Land animals and birds Eve
You'll note that the two are in contradiction on the order of creation of man and plants, of birds and animals, and of man and woman. This is one reason why we gave up on taking the Bible literally; you can't, because it contradicts itself. Perfectly understandable to a rational mind, but apparently not to a fundy.
Dave said, long long ago, that he had an obvious explanation...
My God, Dave - you really are stupid. I thought so at first, but then I thought - no, no one can be this dumb. I was wrong.
YOU WROTE THE POST. YOU'RE THE ONE WHO POINTED OUT THAT IT'S A SURE BET THAT YOU (DAVE) WILL POST A LIFE-FILLED, FACT-FREE POST EVERY DAY.
Shall we run over this for you? Of course! You want the lurkers to be reinforced in their understanding that you're a moron, and this one is classic.
You replied to a posty O[/i]ccam's [b]Aftershave. OA said
Quote
I bet myself before I logged on this morning that I'd find another lie-filled, fact free post from QFDave and - *ding* - there it was. Now I owe myself lunch.
Got that? OA? You can read, can't you Dave? O and A?
Now, what was 2nd Lt. "I'm so illiterate I can't spell" Dave's response to the Aftershave?
Quote
Pretty risky bet, there, OA. Maybe you could bet yourself that the sun will rise tomorrow. :-)
See, Dave compares OA's bet to one on whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow. But the sun rising tomorrow is a sure bet. Hence, betting on Dave making a stupid post is a sure bet.
Stephen Wells! It was you. I knew there was someone here who was asking about the apparent conflict of the creation account in Genesis.
I think this will tip the scales for me to talk about Genesis and cover your question before we talk about the Flood.
Right after our last RATE topic which we will do tomorrow.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, if you're going to go with the standard tapdance (i.e., Genesis 1 is written in the perspective and order of events for God or a third-person observer; and Genesis 2 is written in the perspective and order of events for Adam), please don't bother. We've heard it before. We know your position just as well as we know ours. Try to catch up, eh?
Right after our last RATE topic which we will do tomorrow.
We've sufficiently shredded RATE, so I don't think anyone needs to go back to that. Let's just jump right into Genesis stuff.
Here's my first open question: what, if anything, does the bible tell us about snakes? Give me your answers, and then we'll see how the bible compares to reality.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Also, I want an explanation for how the mountains didn't exist, the continents were much larger, and the oceans were much shallower, 4,500 years ago.
Flood + magic. Any other questions?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Yeah. I want to know how this "magic" happened. Like, you know, mechanisms. And "I don't know" isn't an acceptable answer, Dave. After all, you've been perfectly willing to make unsupported assertions in the past; what's holding you back now? A failure of imagination?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yeah. I want to know how this "magic" happened. Like, you know, mechanisms.
Well, then it wouldn't be magic, now would it?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Good point. If we can figure out how it happened, it couldn't have been magic, therefore it's not God's work, therefore that can't be how it really happened.
Besides, if I can imagine God doing it, God must have done it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
here it is again ... I think there was one super-continent before the Flood, then it broke apart during the Flood and began separating into the present day continents.
How far apart are the continents today? If they began as one super-continent, when did they stop moving apart? Is it 500 years ago? Right around the time that Columbus came over?
Wikipedia says the width of the Atlantic is between about 2800 and 4800 kilometers, so let's say the Atlantic has an average width of 3800 km. For North America to drift away from the coast of Africa and form this 3800 km ocean in 4000 years, it would be moving at a rate of almost 1 km every year. That's 1000 meters every year, or about 2 and 3/4 meters every day. That's almost 9 feet each and every day for 4000 years.
Do you really believe that the Americas hurtled away from Africa by 9 feet every day for 4000 years and then stopped? What caused it to stop? If this kind of movement of the earth's crust was a normal event, why isn't still going on at this incredible rate? Is it possible for this to happen again?
Why weren't there catastropic earthquakes and tsunami every day that the earth was undergoing such a radical transformation?
Or did it all happen underwater while the Earth was covered by the flood? The flood hid this radical transformation of the Earth and acted as a shock absorber? That's why there weren't earthquakes. Is that your theory?
I've read some whoppers in my days, but this super-continent one of yours, it's the winner.
AFDave, when are you going to address all the scientific details that you've been avoiding for the past two months?
Things like the C14 calibration data? and the 11000 YO village in Turkey? and Glenn Morton's testimony about ICR? and the Canadian coal fields? and the carbonate hardgrounds? and your scientific evidence for how you determined those Biblical dates? and plate tectonics? and the water source for the 'Flood'? and evidence that startlight was created 'on the way'?
You keep promising to address these things 'tomorrow', or 'soon' but that day never comes.
Your little fantasy world keeps getting more and more bizarre, while that pile of lies and excuses you vomit up keep gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
The Dave Hawkins “Good Christian” example: no evidence, no honesty, no integrity, no original thoughts, no explanation for contrary data, no clue.
You’re gonna fry in he11 for the lies you tell here, you know that don’t you Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, if you're going to go with the standard tapdance (i.e., Genesis 1 is written in the perspective and order of events for God or a third-person observer; and Genesis 2 is written in the perspective and order of events for Adam), please don't bother. We've heard it before.
And it doesn't work anyway- Genesis 2 specifically states that the creation of Adam happens before any plants grow. Even relativity won't save this there's no frame of reference where spatially colocated events are in order A->B in one frame and B->A in another.
But let's see Dave pull another "Cain's wife" non-explanation, shall we?
Oh, by the way, you didn't answer the question. Who said it? I'll give you a hint. It was the same person that said "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
oh! oh! I know! pick me!
this person coincidentally has the same initials that most folks around these parts used to abreviate the last part of my old handle (which was Sir_Toejam, for those unfamiliar).
You know, Dave, one of those founding fathers you were so convinced were all of the same worldview as yourself.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
"And God said,'Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yeilding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind.... And the evening and the morning were the third day" (Gen. 1:11-13)
"And God made two lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.... And the evening and morning were the fourth day" (Gen. 1:14-19).
So, god makes plants on the third day and the sun and moon on the fourth. Photosynthesis couldn't happen-- but I bet god "majicked" that one, too, eh? And warmed the earth so that they wouldn't freeze, too.
And by the way, on the flood bit, you do have to account for all seeds that would not be able to live in water for a year. And the insects. And the fish who can't live in turbid, saline environments, and everything else mentioned.
Here's a particular favorite of mine, Dave: There are numerous bacterial and viral diseases that cannot live outside the human body...
Who on the ark had syphilis, Dave? Gonnorhea?
Are you related to them? Is that what happened to your brain?
I love how you came into this forum insisting that you were "not religious" but were instead "scientific and skeptical" and when it comes down to it, you knew all along that you had your religious-based "majick" claims about god souping up not just decay rates, but creating the stars for entertainment...despite the fact that we see protostars forming today. Science says that the sea teemed with animals and vegetable life long before life appeared on land. Genesis gives the opposite order. But I bet you'll mealy-mouth your way around that, too.
In any instance where facts have contradicted your biblically-based claims , you have opted for the inerrancy of the bible, dave, which is what i said you would do long ago. Your whole house of cards rests on that. You're not close to being a skeptic, you're an absolutist that can't even back his claims and instead relies on lying and avoiding--to try to maintain the claim of biblical inerrancy that you have. You're a joke, sonny boy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Your problem here,Dave, is the same problem that the Creationist nutcases have always faced: you are trying to negate millions of hours of science with nothing more than your opinion. When shown the data that contradicts you, you reject it on the basis of.....your *opinion*. If only your incredulity & opinion were empirical evidence, you might have a case, huh?
There are muslim apologists that do the very same thing as the fundamentalist literalist christian apologists. But you'd ultimately reject their claims because they're not biblically-based. I reject both of those camps not because I am anti-religion per se, but because I view it as dishonest to try to force-fit data by lying and avoiding. I have friends with strong Christian religious views that are quite content with a "prime mover" god and don't have to lie about literal floods and acellerated decay rates and god creating stars with built-in age and redshifts and other nonsense that you feel you must take literally because you're an absolutist in terms of inerrancy. Your god is essentially toxic.
Your god is the god of punishment and damnation for mere disbelief, the god that slaughters amalekite and amorite babies by the sword and can't manage to save them, but can magic up the fake appearance of age in the universe. Your god apparently divides its attentions between overseeing the entire universe at all times in all dimensions for every living creature everywhere, and giving a crap about whiny fundamentalist christian zealots and their poisonous power-mongering ideas. Your god takes sides. Your god favors ass-sucking sycophantic idiots that bleat their love while cursing anyone that doesn't think JUST like them.
Believing in God should not make you dumb. believing in divine power should not make you a blind lockstep zealot drone, bowing and kneeling and feeling unworthy and sinful and dirty. Belief should not make you need to lie, twist, conceal and pervert what decent humans have done, or know in sciences, arts, the humanities.
Your god is the god of lies, and bears no resemblance to an honorable Christian god.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, by the way, you didn't answer the question. Who said it? I'll give you a hint. It was the same person that said "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
oh! oh! I know! pick me!
this person coincidentally has the same initials that most folks around these parts used to abreviate the last part of my old handle (which was Sir_Toejam, for those unfamiliar).
You know, Dave, one of those founding fathers you were so convinced were all of the same worldview as yourself.
Very good. The conservative Christians often take the quote from his memorial that reads "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every from of tyranny over the mind of man" as proof that he is one of their own. I find this amusing in much the same way I find politicians using Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" as a campaign theme song amusing. Because, in context, the quote means quite the opposite of what they think it does.
The quote was, umm, mined from a letter written to Benjamin Rush and reads, when extended fore and aft, "....the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro' the U. S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me...."
Notice also the lack of capitalization of "God". At one time I had an URL for a photo of the letter showing the lack of capitalization, but I cannot seem to find it anymore.
And,by golly, we won't even get into what he did to the New Testament. Ay yay yay!!!
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
1) Hi there; I'm a rational christian; I'm here to discuss any questions you might have. 2) Uh...well, the bible doesn't quite say *that*; I think-- 3) Where? Where in the bible do you see--oh. Well, that's out of context. 4) Yes it is. 5) Look, that's not a fair question. So...maybe you can tell me how we got here. You don't believe you came from monkeys, do you? 6) I already told you why that was out of context; don't change the subject. 7) Yes I did; scroll up. 8) Why can't you just believe in God? 9) John 3.16 says Jesus died for your sins, you selfish sinful unworthy atheist/agnostic/unbeliever/Darwinist/materialist 10) believe me or burn in he11 for ever and ever. 11) Yeah, whatever, Fools; I'll laugh at you from heaven while you burn in he11 with your monkey parents LOL! 12) Therefore, science is wrong.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
AFDave promised us he'd get around to explaining all that contrary evidence in a day or two. Just because he's broken every single promise to address the data in the past doesn't mean we shouldn't take him at his word now. And surely a good TrueChristian ™ like AFDave would never lie, because lying is a sin.
Of course with AFDave's f*cked up 'Earth was created in 6 days' time scale, a day can take 4.5 billion years, plus or minus...
See, he's right on schedule!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What I like most about Dave is his complaints about being forced to chase down "rabbits." But he hasn't seen the worst of it yet, not by a long shot. So far, in terms of his criticisms of the evidence in favor of an old earth, he's touched upon radiocarbon dating, and…um, that's about it. His huge long digression about helium in zircons doesn't actually count, because no one dates old rocks using helium in zircons. He seems to have forgotten that there's something like forty different radiometric dating techniques, and he hasn't even dealt with one of them in a way that satisfies anyone other than his own, extremely gullible self.
He has this strange idea that all the confirmatory evidence correlating radiocarbon dates is some sort of digression. Boy is he ever in for a surprise.
But frankly I hope he gives up and declares "victory." I've been waiting forever for his evidence that the Himalayas formed in 4,500 years. Let's see…30,000 feet in 4,500 years. If I've done my math right, isn't that about six feet a year? Or, maybe they did all the growing they're going to do in 2,000 years? Well, that's only 15 feet a year. They couldn't have finished much later than that, since written records in the area go back a lot further than that, and I think someone would have written down mountains growing faster than trees, don't you think?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
..."The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes."
no doubt some creobot somewhere has used this to justify making abortion illegal.
"See! See! Even the founding fathers recognized how good sense leads to abortion!"
In fact, it sounds just like something Ray Mummert would say.
sorry, couldn't resist.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
1) Hi there; I'm a rational christian; I'm here to discuss any questions you might have. 2) Uh...well, the bible doesn't quite say *that*; I think-- 3) Where? Where in the bible do you see--oh. Well, that's out of context. 4) Yes it is. 5) Look, that's not a fair question. So...maybe you can tell me how we got here. You don't believe you came from monkeys, do you? 6) I already told you why that was out of context; don't change the subject. 7) Yes I did; scroll up. 8) Why can't you just believe in God? 9) John 3.16 says Jesus died for your sins, you selfish sinful unworthy atheist/agnostic/unbeliever/Darwinist/materialist 10) believe me or burn in he11 for ever and ever. 11) Yeah, whatever, Fools; I'll laugh at you from heaven while you burn in he11 with your monkey parents LOL! 12) Therefore, science is wrong.
You forgot "I already won", which belongs somewhere around 6 or 7, and "It's obvious!" somewhere around 8 or 9.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I've been waiting forever for his evidence that the Himalayas formed in 4,500 years. Let's see…30,000 feet in 4,500 years. If I've done my math right, isn't that about six feet a year? Or, maybe they did all the growing they're going to do in 2,000 years? Well, that's only 15 feet a year. They couldn't have finished much later than that, since written records in the area go back a lot further than that, and I think someone would have written down mountains growing faster than trees, don't you think?
I envision this interchange:
US: Dave, how on earth can the Himalayas have grown to 29,000 feet in 6,000 years?
AFD: The Himalayas were created by the Flood. Only took a week or so.
US: WHAT? Dave, since when does a flood create a mountain range, much less one 29,000 feet tall?
AFD: LOL! I already proved that yesterday! Check the AIG link.
US: What? ? Where? You never tried to explain this before!
AFD: It's just obvious! You atheists just have this weird need to think the Himalayas took millions of years to form. The Earth is 6,000 years old. Get used to it.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it. link here.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
Maybe they aren't showing up in you browser Dave.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I finally joined this board after lurking for several months just to add my two cents to Afdave's imaginary musings.
No, Afdave, you have NOT convinced me. You never answer specific questions. Your ideas are completely demolished by the posters to this board, who provide ample evidence against you. Your "arguments" would not convince a middle school student - whom I have taught for 12 years.
So, my question to this board is: why do you persist? Why do you think creos like Dave will change? Why do you spend so much time & energy trying to show him the errors of his ways? Isn't there something better you could be doing than trying to point out errors in thinking to the likes of Afdave?
Just wonderin', and not complaining. but I want to know why the regulars to this board continue to beat their heads against a brick wall.....
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
It should be obvious to even you by now that your repetitive droning and ignoring of data aren’t accomplishing anything, save wasting board space and trying the patience of most everyone.
Here’s the deal – I don’t like seeing you get beaten up so badly day in and day out, although most probably agree you deserve it. It’s like watching a crippled kid get picked on in gym class. You really need to understand that we have seen everything you’re C&Ping from AIG and ICR literally dozens of times, and we have pointed out their same dumbass errors dozens of times. It’s boring us to tears. When we do give you a chance to reason for yourself (like by explaining why the six independent lines of evidence for C14 calibration all agree) you stand there dumb as a fence post.
The only thing, the only thing you bring to the discussion that’s of the slightest interest is our fascination with the psychological makeup of people like you. I’m talking about otherwise intelligent, successful, normal people who have this incredibly huge blind spot when it comes to any scientific evidence that contradicts their narrow religious views.
If you have an honest desire for the truth, then don’t post anymore of that tired old Creationist bullshit from Humphreys or Baumgartner or Sarfati or Woodmorappe. Instead, have an honest discussion about folks like Glenn Morton, who actually worked for ICR and saw every dishonest thing they do up close and personal. Analyze his actions for us, then analyze your own. Tell us why you refuse to even discuss Glenn’s experiences, and the testimony on his web page of those many other geologists he works with who used to be YECs also. Tell us why you won’t even look at the young Earth refuting evidence that we keep setting right in front of you.
Every last piece of ‘evidence’ you have presented to support your YEC position has been met with detailed rebuttals. Even if you don’t agree with the data, you have to admit that your arguments were addressed. You, however, have flat out refused to even acknowledge most of the evidence against your YEC position. It’s not that you’re too busy and can’t get to it either. It’s that you just flat out refuse to deal with anything that causes your cognitive dissonance to spike. Go look at yourself in the mirror and see if you can convince yourself you’re honestly seeking the truth, because you sure aren’t convincing anyone here.
You have a choice to make. You can keep on your present path, keep regurgitating the same old tired pseudoscience crap that you’re too ignorant to understand anyway, keep ignoring all contrary evidence. Do that and you’ll keep getting people frustrated and angry with you, or thinking you’re a clown, or (like I do) both. OR you can try moving past that and start having honest discussions about ALL the evidence. It would make our respect level for you rise above the bottom scraping level it now occupies, that’s for sure.
Over to you Mr ‘honestly seeking the TRUTH’.. Show us what ya got.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
So, my question to this board is: why do you persist? Why do you think creos like Dave will change? Why do you spend so much time & energy trying to show him the errors of his ways? Isn't there something better you could be doing than trying to point out errors in thinking to the likes of Afdave?
Just wonderin', and not complaining. but I want to know why the regulars to this board continue to beat their heads against a brick wall.....
In a couple of words: because it's fun!
We know no one here has a snowball's chance in, um…of ever changing Dave's mind about anything. It's just entertaining to watch him stumble around, his head stuck in a wooden milk bucket, until he trips over his own feet and falls head-first into the watering trough, scaring the chickens.
That he just staggers to his feet, arms out in front of him to avoid hitting anything else, and then declares victory doesn't take the fun out of it.
Admittedly, the constant repetition gets kind of unnerving (it's with a kind of sick fascination that we watch Dave delude himself), but when he says things like "Why didn't anyone tell me that chimps are supposedly closer to humans than they are to gorillas," or "all the world's mountain ranges are less than 6,000 years old," or "supernovae didn't produce the elements that make up the earth, God did, in his nucleotide oven," it makes it kind all worthwhile.
And, for unwashed and unlearned non-specialists like me, it's a great opportunity to learn stuff from people who are actually doing work in the relevant (and even not-so-relevant) fields. Where else would you get to read discourses by Ph.D.s in linguistics, chemistry, physics, and biology over just how powerful and overwhelming the evidence in favor of, well, whatever's being discussed really is? I've definitely learned a few things here I never would have learned on my own, in a relatively painless and effort-free way.
And what's so wrong about that?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So, my question to this board is: why do you persist? Why do you think creos like Dave will change? Why do you spend so much time & energy trying to show him the errors of his ways? Isn't there something better you could be doing than trying to point out errors in thinking to the likes of Afdave?
This was discussed just a few weeks ago, but there are two basic reasons. The first is for the benefit of any lurkers out there, especially young people who are just being exposed to scientific viewpoints, to show them just how shallow and inane the YEC 'arguments' really are. The second is because it stimulates interesting discussions and learning among the pro-science regulars here too. I learn something new and interesting almost every time I visit.
It's not about AFDave at all, even though his titanic ego wishes it to be. It's about learning, and teaching, and the importance of scientific integrity.
Welcome to ATBC by the way.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
So, my question to this board is: why do you persist? Why do you think creos like Dave will change? Why do you spend so much time & energy trying to show him the errors of his ways? Isn't there something better you could be doing than trying to point out errors in thinking to the likes of Afdave?
not a day goes by I don't wonder why myself. The answer seems to be:
1. Yourself. There are always lurkers popping in and out that occasionally de-lurk and express appreciation for the effort.
2. simple fun. lot's of folks like poking a dead body with a stick. (put this one under the humor category)
3. training. just testing argumentation techniques.
4. research (lax). some (myself for example) like to see if there is ANY argument that can penetrate the bullet-headed creobot, and document their reactions to specific arguments. AFD has given me lots to think about, nothing relating to the content of his posts, but in how he reacts to information.
5. "the MacGuffin" factor. You might have noticed several interesting sub topics that have started as a result of something idiotic that AFD said.
that about covers it, AFAICT.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Wikipedia says the width of the Atlantic is between about 2800 and 4800 kilometers, so let's say the Atlantic has an average width of 3800 km. For North America to drift away from the coast of Africa and form this 3800 km ocean in 4000 years, it would be moving at a rate of almost 1 km every year. That's 1000 meters every year, or about 2 and 3/4 meters every day. That's almost 9 feet each and every day for 4000 years.
Quote
ericmurphy, Posted on June 21 2006,21:28
I've been waiting forever for his evidence that the Himalayas formed in 4,500 years. Let's see…30,000 feet in 4,500 years. If I've done my math right, isn't that about six feet a year? Or, maybe they did all the growing they're going to do in 2,000 years? Well, that's only 15 feet a year. They couldn't have finished much later than that, since written records in the area go back a lot further than that, and I think someone would have written down mountains growing faster than trees, don't you think?
Okay, so now ArFDave has to explain why San Francisco isn't steaming towards Tokyo, QE2 style. And why New Orleans is still at or below sea level, 300+ years after its settlement by white people who wrote stuff down.
Also, the Sierras are pointy like the Himalayas, while the Adirondacks are much smoother. (Apologies for the sciencey jargon.) Why is that? No shortage of 60-grit available -- could the Creator have lost interest before finishing the project?
Because religion has great potential to be annoying and it eases the sting if we taunt them. We may have to deal with them in school boards, local politics, maybe even law firms, but we don't have to like them.
And, I assume I speak for many here, I think about it alot. I dunno why. I've read Old and new bibles, some of the koran and book of mormon, Lau Tsu, lots of stuff by Thich Nat Han, Dali Lama, lots of zen authors (And shopenhauer who was in the zen party without knowing it), and, western philosophers including some of the religious ones Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Luther (Well, he wasn't really a philosopher and I've only read a few translated pamphlets of his) etc. and along comes this guy who claims that we need to bow down before his provincial little god who sits at his potter's wheel, sculpting little figurines and contemplating his (He) emotional state at the moment. Not to toot my "wisdom" horn because it's all malarkey but my point is that reading gilgamesh and learning about the flint trade at Uruk ought to be enough to show them that neither they nor anyone else has a fuckin clue about god. But these poor bastards have too much invested to give up so they go out in the world to harass the rest of us with their ridiculous crap about some kind of knowledge of god when god isn't even a word that they can define in a way that means anything. I wouldn't mind if they would just shut up about it but they dont. They harass us at work, they pick fights with our kids over fuckin jesus, they make laws that inhibit others' will to be wierd, and they justify it with a crock of shit such as Davey Dickhead has been ladeling from. Here, we can listen to them politely and hear what they have to say and then expose it to the cold hard light of reality. Politely of course. And then, once they have proven their mettle at ignoring evidence, repeating lies and showing a tendency to want to dictate morals to others, we get to release all our pent up statements that we can't say to the local school board member because our kid's in school or the lawyer across the street because he is vindictive in the typical christian fashion or the maintenance worker who tries to tell you about fags or scumbags or worthless people while trying to hand you a fucking bible because he has your car apart already and you want him to put it together again. We get to say it all to folks like DaveyDickhead ® , knowing full well that his brain is already ruined from too many hits of blotter Jesus when he was a kid, but being nonetheless thankful for someone to embody the rest of the goddam christians/muslims/jews/hindus/ whatever that think that they know the right answer and that it came from their own personal god and that it should be law.
Wouldn't be a problem but his stupid fuckin god wants to make rules in the same world I live in. Sorry, the idea is stupid and you are a sucker. Don't drag me into it.
**edit
Quote (BWE @ June 21 2006,14:02)
Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it. link here.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
Maybe they aren't showing up in you browser Dave.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
but my point is that reading gilgamesh and learning about the flint trade at Uruk ought to be enough to show them that neither they nor anyone else has a fuckin clue about god
they might even try reading the book of Job in their own KJV sometime.
what's really funny is I can imagine Kent Hovind in the role of Job, and essentially god saying to him:
"WERE YOU THERE, IDIOT?"
amazing bunch of hypocrites these creobots are.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Notta: I have world cup fever and I'm giddy? Okay, I like learning and this forces me to hone whatever skills I have in debate, even if it's one-sided. I don't think AirHead there will change his views, he's shown a remarkable range of mental issues. Still, it's worthwhile to show him that there's a lot of data against YECzoids and now much that he can hang his hat on-- other than to cover his pointy little head.
Other times, I'm bored of listening to show tunes or discussing the minutiae of Gilbert and Sullivan with stevestory, OA, Ichthyic and others, so I need a diversion. Oh, he11, I shouldn't have said that. Please erase this from your memory.
We will now return to our regular programming.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
In the Melpomenian muse (or possibly the Thalian):
{Enter MacBiologist, stage left}
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps promise all their works for the next day, To the last detail which will destroy science; And all our yesterdays have been spent on Refuting fools like them. Out, out, brief nutter! Life's too short to educate you, but a kook Who struts and frets his hours upon the 'net And then is doomed to fail: we have seen your Kind before, deluded crank, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it. link here.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
Maybe they aren't showing up in you browser Dave.
um, did i already say this?
You know I have offered to trade sides if you think your side is too weak. Did you catch that?
Davey, does it hurt?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
There's no nutty creationists that I am aware of doing what you are proposing.
But... why not? Don't they actually believe in the Flood?
Quote
someday (maybe soon) the price of fossil fuel will rise to the point where it becomes economically feasible to produce alternative fuels on a large scale.
But why bother when you know that it's possible to convert biomass to fossil fuel in around 360 days?
Quote
But you are naive if you think millions of years was required to create the existing sources of oil, natural gas and coal. All it took was large quantities of biomass which got buried under the right conditions of temperature, pressure, etc. This most likely happened durign the Flood year.
Well, this thread is supposed to be about testing hypotheses, isn't it? You have your hypothesis right there - all fossil fuels were formed during the Flood -- and you have a theoretical prediction: subject biomass to the right conditions of temperature and pressure for around a year, and you'll end up with fossil fuel.
So, all that's missing is the experimental verification. I'm sure there must be some wealthy creationist philanthropist who would stump up the cash for an appropriate laboratory, that could simulate the conditions of the Flood. Let's face it, demonstrating that fossil fuels can form in a year is almost as good as finding Precambrian rabbits.
Isn't that exactly the kind of innovative science that someone who doesn't want to be a lemming, and has thrown off the dead shackles of athiestic darwinism should be doing? I mean, don't creationists actually believe in what they say?
For some reason, nobody's calculated the heat released by inefficiency in the transport system, or the heat released by stopping the continents after they've rushed around the globe like drunken ballerinas. That kinetic enegy's gotta go somewhere.
Waltie's calculations of the energy in the water erupting from below are especially ludicrous; an MIT ME should know better than to consider only the energy involved in releasing the compression of the (almost incompressible) water.
Some amusing calculations at A Few Silly Flaws In Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory, pointing out one of the many ways in which creationist "flood theories" cook everyone, and the fact that Waltie's erupting water would be well on its way out of the solar system by now.
Not for AFD/2 (how should we worship you oh Lord).
Liars all who, bible make, history, His-story, is to bake lies for his children. To prop up His-story. No bible lies, unless unread. Un-red the marks of Jesus, for 'tis revelation, nil capital- a rich man cannot enter the kingdom of god. Nor a revealer, for silver and moral alone, who for want of glory, despises truth.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Not to pile on (well OK, to pile on) poor confused AFDave, here is another detailed critique of why his "Pangea took 2000 years to form the continents we see today" fantasy is just another steaming heap of YEC dung.
But the motion of the pre-Permian continents are not consistent with what Baumgardner proposes. And the Paleozoic continental distribution is not the Pangean distribution.
The YEC leaders don’t talk about this issue when they support runaway subduction. It doesn’t make it into their literature. If it hadn’t been for this one question by Austin, this problem would not be there at all. As I have said, not a single geological feature I was taught by the YECs (if it differed from conventional geology) turned out to be true. All YEC geology is fraught with problems (read that as observationally falsified).
And to add insult to injury, here is yet another detailed geological analysis that shows Baumgardner's 'catastrophic plate tectonic' scenario is impossible
In essence, the problem for young earth creationists is to develop a self-consistent model of rapid spreading that can yield the bathymetric profiles observed in the current ocean floors. Modern geology has already done so and the conductive cooling model of the ocean floor fits perfectly within the old earth paradigm.
The conductive cooling predicted by modern geology also matches the age distribution on either side of the ridge. The predicted age of a piece of ocean floor based on conductive cooling is a near perfect match for the radiometric and magnetostratigraphic age11 of the ocean floor. These observations are not consistent with the hypothetical profile shown in Figure 4. For example, radiometric ages in the convective region would be nearly identical and would show greatest change in the conductive region. This is contrary to what we observe. In short, the observed bathymetry is a near perfect match for an old earth model and seriously challenges the model proposed by Baumgardner and other advocates of rapid drift.
Enjoy!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Not to support any of AFD's idiotic conjecture but he can't be wrong about everything...
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
Under the right conditions, it apparently takes a lot less than a year:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
Not to support any of AFD's idiotic conjecture but he can't be wrong about everything...
All AFDave has to do now is provide evidence that those extreme pressure and temperature conditions existed naturally and everywhere on the planet for the year following the FLUD.
Anyone wanna bet we get a 'Goddidit' miracle as an explanation?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Not to support any of AFD's idiotic conjecture but he can't be wrong about everything...
Interesting.
Now we just have to figure out how a flood could (1) produce water heated to 250 degrees C in the first stage; (2) produce high concentrations of lime or carbon monoxide; (4) produce dry regions greater than 500 degrees C for the second stage; (4) transport the organic materials (100X the current biomass, right?) between superheated limed regions; (5) not boil, bake, dissolve or poison all those created kinds that didn't "need" the ark in the process (not to mention Noah and his bioboat); and (6) not superheat the very planet itself.
Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it. link here.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
Maybe they aren't showing up in you browser Dave.
um, did i already say this?
You know I have offered to trade sides if you think your side is too weak. Did you catch that?
Davey, does it hurt?
There are lots of ways to convert biomass to natural gas. I was going to provide a link but I like making unsubstantiated claims.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dear Occam's Various Toiletries and Grooming Appliances,
As a slight deviation from thread relevance, I'd like to point out that what you are discussing is PRECISELY what YECs etc do.
They claim all of modern science is wrong, while (ironincally) trying to shore up their biblical babble with science. The really amusing thing is they think they can play "pick the explanation" as if that solves their problems. Look at what GoP is up to at the moment. He is playing an eternal shell game with concepts he doesn't understand but thinks support his claims (and they don't). It follows a simple pattern: 1) make bullshit claim, 2) google like crazy to find even vague, superficial support for said claim, 3) when claim is refuted, google like crazy for anything that might help you, 4) repeat something you don't understand but you think helps you.
Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it. link here.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
Maybe they aren't showing up in you browser Dave.
um, did i already say this?
You know I have offered to trade sides if you think your side is too weak. Did you catch that?
Davey, does it hurt?
There are lots of ways to convert biomass to natural gas. I was going to provide a link but I like making unsubstantiated claims.
that would be my point
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
They claim all of modern science is wrong, while (ironincally) trying to shore up their biblical babble with science. The really amusing thing is they think they can play "pick the explanation" as if that solves their problems. Look at what GoP is up to at the moment. He is playing an eternal shell game with concepts he doesn't understand but thinks support his claims (and they don't). It follows a simple pattern: 1) make bullshit claim, 2) google like crazy to find even vague, superficial support for said claim, 3) when claim is refuted, google like crazy for anything that might help you, 4) repeat something you don't understand but you think helps you.
And didn't he promise to explain yesterday why decoherence is not a problem for his model? I'm still waiting for him to tell me why he thinks quantum phenomena like Pauli Exclusion and quantization are relevant to macroscopic phenomena like planetary orbits. I wonder if he thinks planets' spin axes are quantized…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
It is fascinating how important it is for them to keep their feet in their mouths[QUOTE]Quote (BWE @ June 21 2006,14:02) Oh good, Dave, you are reading my posts. I was afraid they weren't showing up for you. Hey, are you ever going to have that debate about portuguese with me? I set up a thread for it.
Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Thanks so much.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dear Occam's Various Toiletries and Grooming Appliances,
For the record - I'm Occam's Aftershave and I do not support any YEC positions. I've been using the OA nik for about 3 years now on various E/C boards.
Occam's Toothbrush is a different entity who began posting here recently and for some reason picked a nik that's very similar to mine. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I hope
I don't like the confusion his choice causes, but I guess it's his right in a free country.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
JUSTIFYING YOUR SKEPTICISM, OR, MISERY LOVES COMPANY
It was interesting to read the latest psychoanalysis of me and to hear your responses to the new guy. I have often thought it strange that some of you guys are worried about the lurkers "converting" to YECism here. Personally, I don't expect it now and I never have. It appears to me that people come to Panda's Thumb looking for justification to be a skeptic. They are looking for scientific sounding reasons to reject the Bible and set up their own morality and it helps to have some like minded people that affirm what they want to believe. Now as sure as I say this, I will piled on with denials like "We come here to discuss science, you moron! What in the world are you talking about?" Well yes. Part of it is science, but there is a very subtle thing going on here. The subtle thing is that you have a lot of truth, but its mixed in with a lot of error concealed in sometimes inconspicuous places. Combine this with a blindness which all humans are subject to when they want to believe something, and you have a very powerful deception. Everyone is familiar with the 'Love is blind' concept. Well this is the same way. Skeptics can't stand those "goddam christians/muslims/jews/hindus/" and the feeling is so strong that, like the love-struck teenager, they cannot see the glaring errors in their theories.
Now I said above that people don't come to Panda's Thumb looking for reasons to become a believer. They come to justify their skepticism. That raises the question of why I am here, which has been raised before.
1) I am not looking to justify any skepticism, although I would become one if given some good reasons. And I am sincere when I say that. It has been interesting to me to watch 'skeptic' on his thread talk about how evolutionary theory needs to be re-invented. He knows there is a glaring problem, but he cannot bring himself to be 'crazy' enough to embrace the real truth--YECism.
2) I am looking to see if skeptics have any arguments of substance. So far, I have not found many. There are a few that seem plausible, but when you look at the totality of evidence, they are weak.
3) I'm finding out which YEC arguments hold water and which do not. I am finding that many of the rebuttals at Talk Origins (I didn't even know T.O. existed before I came here ... there's something I learned) are rebutting arguments that the "mainstream YECs" don't even use. And many of the rebuttals I have encountered there are not very good rebuttals as I have demonstrated here. (Dr. Max, Dr. Henke, etc.)
4) And last but not least, I am giving people the truth about Planet Earth, the Creator and the Bible which is His message to mankind. They don't recognize it as truth now, but maybe they will on their deathbeds when they are 5 minutes from meeting their Creator. It's funny the effect that the prospect of death has on someone!
THE EVIDENCE FOR THE CREATOR GOD REVIEWED I have given you ample evidence for believing that there is a Super-Intelligence who created the Engineering Marvels we see in the Natural World. I have given you excellent evidence that a Great Intelligence probably "tuned" the parameters of the universe to support life on Planet Earth with the pinnacle of life being mankind himself. I have given you evidence that there is an Originator of Morality which is necessarily required by the phenomenon of the Universal Moral Code or "conscience" impressed on the heart of all mankind. We have touched on the Laws of Relativity and pointed out how they are supportive of certain Biblical assertions about God.
Our study of "Age of the Earth" pointed out that History is too Short for the evolutionary scenario of the history of mankind to be plausible. We pointed out certain findings of the RATE Group which show that 1) modern radiometric dating is discordant, 2) the large amount of helium retained in zircons argues against the idea of a 4.5 BY old earth and 3) AMS labs were quite shocked to find easily detectable levels of C14 in coal and diamonds. It should not be there!! The earth is young, friends, like 6000 years young, and the universe probably is too, although I have not investigated this evidence in detail
Many here at ATBC are still choking on the idea of a Global Flood and we will tackle that soon. But another "choke item" is the Book of Genesis itself. Many today still believe the now discredited "Documentary Hypothesis" of Genesis authorship which essentially relegates Genesis to oral tradition and mythology. This is as far from the truth as is possible to conceive as I will show you. The truth is that the Bible believing founders of modern science had it right ... Genesis is actual history ... reliable eyewitness testimony of the patriarchs named. Let us investigate!
THE BOOK OF GENESIS: EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS FROM THE DAWN OF TIME It is no coincidence that when we first began discussing the 'Age of the Earth' topic, I presented the 'History is Too Short' argument first. Many of you were surprised and I think some YECs would be surprised that this was my first point. But I will continue to argue that it is extremely powerful. Maybe up until the latter part of the 19th century a person would have some excuses to buy into the fantasy that humans roamed the earth for almost 200,000 years before inventing writing, I don't know. What I do know is that the 20th century was a century of discovery. In science and in archaeology. It is incredible how much digging has taken place and what amazing things have come to light.
Today I will do a book review and show you some things which you may have never heard before, judging from the lack of rebuttals at Talk Origins. The book is entitled "Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis." What this book does is show clearly that Genesis is "Eyewitness History" re-establishing the pre-JEDP view of the Book of Genesis. The book was written by Air Commodore P.J. Wiseman and edited and updated by his son, Professor of Assyriology Donald J. Wiseman. This material has been referred to by many Bible commentators including the late, great Henry Morris, R.K. Harrison and Josh McDowell, but I had never personally examined the book. I found a used copy (had to pay $85! and what a treat it has been. Absolutely fascinating book!
P.J. Wiseman was assigned to Iraq during the years 1923-25 and 1931-33. He was very interested in archaeology and took the opportunity to visit the principal excavations supervised by Sir Leonard Woolley, S.H. Langdon and others. P.J. Wiseman's idea was a simple one. Taking his cue from the recurrent "catch-lines" or colophons (as they are now called) in Genesis of the form., "These are the generations (family histories) of ...," he examines them as clues to the literary structure of Genesis and as indicative of its origin and transmission. He takes the Genesis narratives as they stand and relates them to well-attested ancient literary methods. Mr. Wiseman always thought that such a subjective theory as that of the Wellhausen school would hardly have been conceived or copied had the many literary tests (among them thousands of cuneiform tablets which have since been discovered) been known at that time.
For those of you who do not know, the Documentary Hypothesis or Graf/Wellhausen Theory assumed erroneously that the invention of writing post-dated Moses and so the theory asserts that Genesis was composed by later authors, supposedly made up of 4 documents denoted as J, E, D, and P. This hypothesis has been thoroughly discredited by 20th century archaeology, but a positive, plausible theory was wanting until this book was written.
Since P.J. Wiseman's book was written there have been many more colophons discovered among the cuneiform texts which have been found in Babylonia. They have been published by H. Hunger, Babylonishce und Assyrische Kolophone (1968) and by E. Leichty, "The Colophon" in Studies Presented to A.L. Oppenheim (1964), pp. 147-154. These substantiate the references to this scribal device which is the "key" to the elucidation of the documents which were composed in Genesis.
Recent discoveries of Semitic literature from Syria and Mesopotamia, among them many dated texts ca. 2300 BC--notably the finds in 1975-76 from Tell Mardih (Ebla) and, from a millenium later, the Akkadian texts from Ras Shamra (Ugarit)--show the continuity in tradition both of scribal education and literary practices. In many instances tablets show them to have continued virtually unchanged for a further two milleniums. Unlike the Wellhausen theories, based on subjective assessment of the Hebrew text alone, these extra-biblical documents give us fixed and dated points along this stream of tradition.
The Preface to the book is written by R.K. Harrison whose Introduction to the Old Testament, (1969) referred to this work. He gives a good history of the Graf-Wellhausen Theory from its roots with Jean Astruc in 18th century. He notes that the majority of scholars prior to Astruc believed that Genesis was written by Moses, but that Astruc questioned this. It is interesting that Astruc was very close to the truth when he proposed that Genesis was a compilation. The problem was that he did not have the light of modern archaeology to guide his work, so he proposed the famous and now discredited JEDP documents. He basically proposed that since writing was not thought to be invented until the time of David (ca. 1000 BC), the Genesis material had to be merely oral tradition passed down by the Jews and finally taking on written form during the kingdom years of Israel. Of course, late 19th and 20th century archaeology has clearly shown that writing goes all the way back to at least 3500 BC and no doubt to the dawn of history--back to Adam himself.
THE VIEWPOINT STATED The 'Tablet Theory of Genesis' proposes that the book of Genesis was originally written on tablets in the ancient script of the time by the patriarchs who were intimately concerned with the events related, and whose names are clearly stated. Moreover, Moses, the compiler and editor of the book, as we now have it, plainly directs attention to the source of his information.
Chapter 1 is entitled "Introduction." Wiseman says "Such a statement needs adequate confirmation by the writer, and on the part of the reader a patient study of all the evidence on which it is based. When this evidence has been scrutinized, the author would claim that it is attested by facts so numerous and verified by undesigned coincidences so overwhelming, that almost every critical difficulty regarding Genesis disappears."
Chapter 2 is entitled "Discoveries in Babylonia" and is a fascinating review of a truly incredible enterprise. One stands in awe of the perseverance and fortitude of those tough archaeologists spending year after year of their lives digging up priceless treasures. Wiseman does a good job summarizing the finds beginning with Claude James Rich in Babylon to Paul Emil Botta and his finds at Nineveh (one of the tells was interestingly called Nebi Yunus--i.e. Prophet Jonah). Botta, of course, discovered the palace of Sargon mentioned in the Biblical book of Isaiah. The British really got interested in 1839 when Austen Henry Layard visited the Near East. In 1845, he went to a mound called Nimrud--the Calah of Genesis 10 and discovered an Assyrian palace and numerous cuneiform tablets. Many more wonderful finds were unearthed including the great human-headed, winged lions now in the British Museum and the now famous obelisk of Shalmaneser III--inscribed on which are the words, "I received the tribute of Jehu Son of Omri silver and gold, etc." confirming again the historicity of the Bible. Layard's assistant later found the great library of Ashurbanipal. It was among these tablets that George Smith found the king's copies of the Babylonian Creation and Flood tablets 20 years later and immediately became famous by translating them. In 1888, the Americans joined the archaeological effort in Babylonia and thousands of tablets were discovered at Nippur. At the dawn of the 20th century, the discovery of the Code of Hammurabi placed us in possession of the laws prevalent in the days of Abraham. Wiseman continues to describe the activities of Woolley and his excavations at Ur. From the very beginning of the work, this expert archaeologist demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt the high state of civilization existing in early times. In 1924, Wiseman was shown a tablet which had just been found at Al Ubaid, some four miles from Ur. It belonged to the period of 5000 years ago and was one of the most ancient specimens of writing then known. C.J. Gadd, of the British Museum, who that season was at Ur, had found on it the names of two Sumerian rulers, one of whom was known but the other up to the moment of discovery had been regarded even by archaeologists to be quite legendary. Wooley's excavations show that writing and a high degree of advanced civilization existed as far back as 2650 BC. At Nippur was found a large number of inscriptions dating before the time of Abraham which mention the "ten rulers who reigned before the Flood." Of course the Weld Prism give the complete list of these "pre-Flood kings" the length of lives of which is now in line with the Biblical lengths due to better translation. Wiseman also notes that Dr. H.H. Frankfort reported in his Third Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Tell Asmat (Eshunna) that, "... we discover that the representation on cylinder seals, which are usually connected with various gods, can all be fitted in to form a consistent picture in which a single god worshipped in this temple forms the central figure. It seems, therefore, that at this early period his various aspects were not considered separate deities in the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon." This shows that polytheism developed after monotheism, not the other way around as is often imagined.
Chapter 3 is entitled "Evidence for Advanced Civilizations" and Wiseman points out that "No more surprising fact has been discovered by recent excavation than the suddenness with which civilization appeared in the world. This discovery is the very opposite to that anticipated. It was expected that the more ancient the period, the more primitive would excavators find it to be, until traces of civilization ceased altogether and aboriginal man appeared. Neither in Babylonia nor Egypt, the lands of the oldest known habitations of man, has this been the case." All the real evidence we have, that of Genesis, archaeology, and the traditions of men, points to the Mesopotamian plain as the oldest home of man. Far Eastern civilization, whether Chinese or Indian, cannot compete in antiquity. Writing about the era of 3500 BC, Sir Leonard Woolley says in The Sumerians: "It is astonishing to find that at this early period the Sumerians were acquainted with and commonly employed not only the column, but the arch, the vault and the dome, architectural forms which were not to find their way into the western world for thousands of years. That the general level of civilization accorded with the high development of architecture is shown by the richness of the graves. Objects of gold and silver are abundant, not only personal ornaments but with vessels, weapons and even tools being made of the precious metals ..." Frankfort cites the use of glass and true bronze at 2600-2700 BC and "a most unexpected discovery made during the last season, that iron was used for tools before 2700 BC--more than fifteen hundred years before the day when the first iron dagger known was sent, presumably by a Hittite king, as a present to the youthful Tutenkhamen of Egypt." Wiseman concludes this chapter with the statement that "Neither the Bible nor Babylonian excavation know anything of uncivilized man." I have already given the Biblical account of ancient civilization, but I will give again ...
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16 Then Cain went out from the presence of the LORD and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. 17 And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son-Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad; and Irad begot Mehujael, and Mehujael begot Methushael, and Methushael begot Lamech. 19 Then Lamech took for himself two wives: the name of one was Adah, and the name of the second was Zillah. 20 And Adah bore Jabal. He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. 21 His brother's name was Jubal. He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute. 22 And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron.
Chapter 4 is entitled "Methods of the Scribes in 3000 BC" and begins by pointing out that "One of the most remarkable facts which has emerged from archaeological research, is that the art of writing began in the earliest historical times known to man." Written records have now been found as far back as 3500 BC, but it is probable that writing is as old as man himself--ca. 4000 BC. Wiseman discusses the development of writing from the earliest pictographic forms to cuneiform, then begins a description of ancient scribal practices. He covers clay tablets, papyrus and the history of the deciphering. He points out that it was not desirable to make clay tablets too large for obvious reasons and that when the lengthy nature of writing required more than one tablet, it was necessary to adopt a means to preserve their proper sequence. This was achieved by the use of titles, catch-lines, and numbering. The title was taken from the first words of the first tablet, followed by the serial number of that tablet, just as a title is often repeated at the head of each page of a book and each page is numbered. As an additional safeguard it was also the practice to use "catch-lines" in which the present usage is to repeat the first two or three words of a subsequent page at the end of the preceding page as shown in Babylonian tablets.
In Chapter 5, "The Key to the Structure of Genesis," Wiseman demonstrates that the master key to the method of compilation that underlies the structure of the book of Genesis is to be found in an understanding of the phrase "These are the generations of ..." These are found at 2:4, 5:1, 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 11:27, 25:12, 25:19, 36:1, 36:9, and 37:2. It is important to note that the word "Genesis" is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word translated "generations" (toledoth) and what we have is indeed a book of family histories. The book of Genesis therefore contains 11 tablets as follows:
Tablet # Division Contents 1 1:1-2:4 Origins of the heavens and the earth 2 2:5-5:2 Origins of Adam 3 5:3-6:9a Origins of Noah 4 6:9b-10:1 Origins of the Sons of Noah 5 10:2-11:10a Origins of Shem 6 11:10b-11:27a Origins of Terah 7-8 11:27b-25:19a Origins of Ishmael and Isaac 9-11 25:19b-37:2a Origins of Esau and Jacob
In this way, Moses clearly indicates the source of the information available to him and names the persons who originally possessed the tablets from which he gained his knowledge. These are not arbitrarily invented divisions; they are stated by the author to be the framework of the book.
The scholars who divided the Bible into chapters and verses obviously did not understand this and this has been a source of confusion. How clear it would have been had the Book of Genesis been divided into 11 chapters, each chapter corresponding to a toledoth, or a Family History with the "signature line" of "These are the generations of ..." !! Wiseman points out that the phrase "these are the generations of ..." is not an introduction or a preface to the history of a person, as is so often imagined and he goes into detail with proof as to why this is not the case. He goes on to show with much documentation that the phrase is meant to be the concluding sentence of the record already written and not an introduction to the subsequent record. Wiseman give much support for this position for which I shall name two items. In support of these 11 divisions each with their concluding "toledoth" phrase, consider that ...
1) In no instance is an event recorded which the person or persons named could not have written from his own intimate knowledge, or have obtained absolutely reliable information. 2) It is most significant that the history recorded in the sections outlined above, ceases in all instances before the death of the person named, yet in most cases it is continued almost up to the date of death or the date on which it is stated that the tablets were written.
In confirmation of the first point, it will be seen in a later chapter that these narratives bear all the marks of having been written by those who were personally acquainted with the events recorded ... such as the simplicity of the account of the sun and moon. They are given no names ... simply referred to as the greater light and the lesser light. If the account had been later, no doubt names would have been assigned such as 'samas' for the sun god. The first chapter is so ancient that it contains no mythical or legendary matter. These myths and legends had not yet had time to grow. There is no trace of nationalistic or philosophic systems. Neither Babylonian, Egyptian or Jewish modes of thought find a place in it. Genesis 1:1-2:5 is pure. It is surely the threshold of written history. The truth is that the Babylonian accounts of Creation and the Flood are grotesque distortions of the original account.
In confirmation of the second point, it is significant to note that in almost every instance where it is applicable, the history contained in the section indicated ends just before the death of the person whose name is given at the conclusion of the tablet. Tablet 1 bears no name, it simply reads, "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth." No one could have "signed" this tablet but the Creator himself.
Wiseman concludes this chapter with summaries of each tablet showing the reasonableness of the case for the tablet theory.
One criticism raised against Genesis is the order of creation. In Genesis 1, the animals are stated to have been created before man. In Genesis 2, the order is reversed. This difficulty disappears when the tablet nature of the book of Genesis is understood. It is quite conceivable that the first tablet was intended to give a time sequence account of creation. The second tablet was written by Adam and is written with a focus on mankind and his activities of which the taxonomy of the animal kingdom was a part. There is no good reason to suppose that Adam is contradicting the order of creation in the first tablet. He is simply emphasizing the pinnacle of God's creation--man--then filling in the details of what he considers to be man's most important activities--taxonomy of the animal kingdom and the creation of his wife.
Chapter 6 is entitled "The Great Age of the Book" and Wiseman lists evidence that Genesis was compiled in the present form (excluding chapter and verse divisions) by Moses and that the documents from which he compiled it were written much earlier. The various lines of evidence may be summarized as follows:
1) The presence of Babylonian words in the first 11 chapters. 2) The presence of Egyptian words in the last 14 chapters. 3) Reference to towns which had wither ceased to exist, or whose original names were already so ancient in the time of Moses, that as compiler of the book, he had to insert the new names, so that they could be identified by the Hebrews living in his day. 4) The narratives reveal such familiarity with the circumstances and details of the events recorded, as to indicate that they were written by persons concerned with those events. 5) Evidences that the narratives were originally written on tablets and in an ancient script.
The remaining chapters of the book are entitled ...
Chapter 7 - "Who Wrote the Original Tablets?" Chapter 8 - "Was Moses the Compiler?" Chapter 9 - "Theories Now Obsolete" Chapter 10 - "Genesis Defends Itself" Chapter 11 - "The Titles for God", and Chapter 12 - "Jesus and the New Testament Authors"
Chapter 13 is entitled "Conclusion" and makes a Summary List of 24 evidences for the original thesis of the book, again , that the book of Genesis was originally written on tablets in the ancient script of the time by the patriarchs who were intimately concerned with the events related, and whose names are clearly stated. Moreover, Moses, the compiler and editor of the book, as we now have it, plainly directs attention to the source of his information.
Here are his 24 summarized points ...
1) Archaeological research (which commenced after "higher criticism" had produced its theories) has, in recent years, given us the ancient and contemporary background of Genesis, which agrees with its contents (Chapter 2). 2) The Genesis narratives imply that rapid development took place in early history. Archaeologists have dug down into virgin soil and found that a high state of culture existed in times previously called "prehistoric." They even assert that long before the time of Abraham, Sumerian civilization had reached its zenith (Chapter 3). 3) As far back as archaeology has been able to go, and in the earliest times, examples of writing have been found. During the period covered by the greater part of Genesis, writing has been discovered to be in common use even for ordinary commercial transactions (Chapter 4). 4) The contents of the earlier chapters of Genesis claim to have been written (Chapter 5). 5) Both Scripture and archaeology give evidence that the narratives and genealogies of Genesis were originally written on stone or clay tablets, and in the ancient script of the time (Chapters 4 & 5). 6) We now know something of the literary methods used by the ancients. Prominent among these was the colophon of the tablet. In our examination of Genesis we find a similar literary method, for the formula, "These are the origins (generations) of ...," was the ancient conclusion which Moses inserted indicating the source from which he obtained the narratives and genealogies (Chapters 5 and 6). 7) Other literary methods were the use of "titles" and "catchlines" in order to bring the tablets together in proper sequence. Although Genesis (as we know it) is a book compiled by Moses, there are still traces of the use of these literary means of preserving sequence (Chapter 6). 8) In some instances indications are provided giving the date when the tablet was written. This is given in a most archaic way and very similar to the method prevailing in very ancient times (Chapter 6). 9) In confirmation of (4) to (8) above, we have shown that in no instance is an event recorded that the person (or persons) named in chapter 5 [of Genesis] could not have written from personal knowledge, or have obtained absolutely unmistakable contemporary information. In Chapter 7, the positive evidence is reviewed showing that they were so written. The familiarity with which all the circumstances and details are described is noted. 10) Additional corroboration is found in the significant fact that the history recorded in the sections written over the names of the patriarchs ceases in all instances on the date on which the tablet is stated to have been written or, where no date is given, before the death of that person. In most cases it is continued almost up to the date of the patriarch's death (Chapter 5). 11) The presence of "Babylonian" words in the first eleven chapters is further evidence that the contents of the earliest narratives and genealogies were written during the lifetime of the earliest patriarchs of Genesis, for they used that language. 12) The presence of Egyptian words and Egyptian environment in the last fourteen chapters of Genesis adds its irresistible testimony that those chapters were written in Egypt (Chapter 6). 13) The first tablet, that of the Creation, seems to have been written at the very dawn of history. This is evidenced by its archaic expressions, for it was put into writing before names had been given to the sun and moon and before polytheism had arisen or clans developed (Chapter 7). 14) There is no statement in Scripture to support the supposition that all the narratives and genealogies were handed down verbally; on the contrary, they claim to have been written down (Chapters 5, 7 and 8). 15) Many references are made to towns which had either ceased to exist or whose names are so ancient that the compiler had to insert the names by which they were known in his day. These new names and explanations fit exactly with the circumstances of a people then on the edge of the land of Canaan, and about to enter it; thus indicating that Moses used earlier records and that he was the compiler of the book (Chapters 6 and 8). 16) That Genesis should still contain archaic expressions and show traces of the literary aids associated with the use of clay tablets is a witness to the fidelity with which the text has been handed down to us (Chapter 6 and 8). 17) It is clear that the ordinary Babylonian tablets of the Creation and the Flood are a corrupted form of the Genesis record. The narratives of Genesis are not merely a purified form of the Babylonian accounts (Chapter 2). 18) Archaeology has completely undermined the "myth and legend" theory [of Genesis}. Evidences of persons once thought by critics to be mythical have been discovered by archaeologists (Chapter 9). 19) The difficulties alleged against Genesis by "higher critics" vanish quite naturally when it is understood that the narratives and genealogies were first written on tablets in an ancient script, by the persons whose names they bear, and that the book was compiled by Moses. Any differences in phraseology and style are just what we would expect in these circumstances (Chapter 10) 20) The "repetition of the same event," of which modern scholars speak, is shown to harmonize exactly with the arrangement of the tablets from which the book was composed and to conform to ancient Sumerian usage (Chapter 10). 21) The outstanding examples brought forward by critics to suggest a late date for Genesis are shown to prove the reverse (Chapter 10). 22) The documentary theory was originated in order to account for the use of the name Jehovah in Genesis and the exclusive use in certain sections (which we claim to have been tablets) of one particular name or title for God. On the basis of the documentary theory the unwieldy structure of "higher criticism" has been reared. It can, however, be shown that there are other possible explanations for the varying use of the divine names. This is especially the case when it is seen that in the book of Genesis we have contemporary and translated records (Chapter 11). 23) The writers of the New Testament base important arguments and illustrations on the narratives of Genesis. These arguments and illustrations would be worse than useless--they would be misleading--unless these narratives rest on historical facts (Chapter 12). 24) The testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to the narratives contained in Genesis is of greater value than all the preceding evidence and constitutes the pinnacle of these evidential verifications of its history. To the Christian mind, the testimony of Christ must be decisive (Chapter 12).
These twenty-four strands woven together make a cumulative muster of evidences, so exceptional both in character and importance, that they establish the antiquity of Genesis as a contemporary record of events upon a sure foundation. This foundation is the internal testimony of the book itself, supported by the external corroboration of archaeology.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
They are looking for scientific sounding reasons to reject the Bible and set up their own morality and it helps to have some like minded people that affirm what they want to believe...
And I'm here to help em find those reasons you moronic half-wit.
[quote[... Part of it is science, but there is a very subtle thing going on here. The subtle thing is that you have a lot of truth, but its mixed in with a lot of error concealed in sometimes inconspicuous places. Combine this with a blindness which all humans are subject to when they want to believe something, and you have a very powerful deception.[/quote]
Oh the irony. Davey, you should read Sake and O Henry.
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Everyone is familiar with the 'Love is blind' concept. Well this is the same way. Skeptics can't stand those "goddam christians/muslims/jews/hindus/" and the feeling is so strong that, like the love-struck teenager, they cannot see the glaring errors in their theories.
I wish to take umbrage with your use of the word skeptics. You seem to imply that there is a teensy-weensy ounce of validity to your stupid provincial god idea and I would like to be the first to point out that there isn't. While I am "skeptical" of your claims it is not because I am a "skeptic" it is because you are deluded.
When are you going to debate portuguese with me?
Imagine writing a post on my blog. oooo.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
JUSTIFYING YOUR SKEPTICISM, OR, MISERY LOVES COMPANY
It was interesting to read the latest psychoanalysis of me and to hear your responses to the new guy. I have often thought it strange that some of you guys are worried about the lurkers "converting" to YECism here. Personally, I don't expect it now and I never have. It appears to me that people come to Panda's Thumb looking for justification to be a skeptic. They are looking for scientific sounding reasons to reject the Bible and set up their own morality and it helps to have some like minded people that affirm what they want to believe. Now as sure as I say this, I will piled on with denials like "We come here to discuss science, you moron! What in the world are you talking about?" Well yes. Part of it is science, but there is a very subtle thing going on here. The subtle thing is that you have a lot of truth, but its mixed in with a lot of error concealed in sometimes inconspicuous places. Combine this with a blindness which all humans are subject to when they want to believe something, and you have a very powerful deception. Everyone is familiar with the 'Love is blind' concept. Well this is the same way. Skeptics can't stand those "goddam christians/muslims/jews/hindus/" and the feeling is so strong that, like the love-struck teenager, they cannot see the glaring errors in their theories.
Woo-hoo! Now that's the stuff I've been waiting to hear. Man, I thought Dave was never going to come right out and say it.
EDIT: I see now that I was wrong about Dave believing in a conspiracy per se. Rather, he believes that the vast majority of the world's scientists are wrong because they are so very full of hate. They need to prove that the Earth is billions of years old because they hate God. So while they share a common motivation, methodology, and goals, they all do so as autonomous individuals rather than as an organized group.
Nope, no conspiracy here.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
JUSTIFYING YOUR SKEPTICISM, OR, MISERY LOVES COMPANY
It was interesting to read the latest psychoanalysis of me and to hear your responses to the new guy. I have often thought it strange that some of you guys are worried about the lurkers "converting" to YECism here. Personally, I don't expect it now and I never have. It appears to me that people come to Panda's Thumb looking for justification to be a skeptic. They are looking for scientific sounding reasons to reject the Bible and set up their own morality and it helps to have some like minded people that affirm what they want to believe. Now as sure as I say this, I will piled on with denials like "We come here to discuss science, you moron! What in the world are you talking about?" Well yes. Part of it is science, but there is a very subtle thing going on here. The subtle thing is that you have a lot of truth, but its mixed in with a lot of error concealed in sometimes inconspicuous places. Combine this with a blindness which all humans are subject to when they want to believe something, and you have a very powerful deception. Everyone is familiar with the 'Love is blind' concept. Well this is the same way. Skeptics can't stand those "goddam christians/muslims/jews/hindus/" and the feeling is so strong that, like the love-struck teenager, they cannot see the glaring errors in their theories.
Woo-hoo! Now that's the stuff I've been waiting to hear. Man, I thought Dave was never going to come right out and say it.
Personally, I'm waiting for the "I used to be an atheist, because I was angry with God" testimony. That one always gives me the giggles.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Personally, I'm waiting for the "I used to be an atheist, because I was angry with God" testimony. That one always gives me the giggles.
LOL Yeah. "I used to be an atheist, and a drinker, and used all kinds of the drugs, I freebased a lot of the marijuana, I smoked a lot of cocaine, I slept around with lots of hot girls..."
I am finding that many of the rebuttals at Talk Origins (I didn't even know T.O. existed before I came here ... there's something I learned) are rebutting arguments that the "mainstream YECs" don't even use.
Yeah, I'm wondering about that too. I have made vague allusions to it, but they were too subtle for Ghosty. After all, I only asked him directly about it several times.
I want to know why there is only one extraterrestrial object per orbital in Ghosty's quantum atom/molecule/f -block element conducting band/single alkali earth atom in a double well potential solar system/universe/whatever the sam heck he wants it to be at the time. After all, these are spinning quantum objects right? What about spin pairing, good stabilising energy that, your spin pairing is. Does you the power of good. What about paramagnetism, after all these extraterrestrial objects are just like electrons around a nucleus, I mean that's what Ghosty told us (and is now desperately back peddling away from so far he looks red). Lot's of single "electrons" about make your atom paramagnetic, not one of them bulk properties like ferromagnetism or the Kondo effect (not THAT made me laugh).
I predict at least level 6 weaselling, level 9 denial, and level 7 obfuscatory bullshit and argument ignoring from Ghosty sometime very soon.
Louis
P.S. Who had page 82 on the "AFDave conversion explosion all comers sweepstake"? I was too optimisitc I though it would be page 12. Remember boys and girls, Jesus loves you, which is why he wants you to sew your eyes shut, ignore the evidence he supposedly created all around you in one of his other guises, and why he wants to send you to he11 if you touch another man's pee pee. As Bill Hicks put it "Believe or Die. Thank you lord ofr all those options!".
Personally, I'm waiting for the "I used to be an atheist, because I was angry with God" testimony. That one always gives me the giggles.
LOL Yeah. "I used to be an atheist, and a drinker, and used all kinds of the drugs, I freebased a lot of the marijuana, I smoked a lot of cocaine, I slept around with lots of hot girls..."
Yeah, whatever, rockstar.
And you gave it all up for god? Proof! proof that religion makes you stupid.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Wow, Dave. And I thought you hadn't posted this morning because you were busy doing something else. Turns out you were writing War and Peace.
Fortunately, it's unncessary even to reply to 90% of what you wrote, but I thought I'd take the time to say the same things to you I've been saying since you started this thread 2500 posts ago.
Quote (afdave @ June 22 2006,11:45)
JUSTIFYING YOUR SKEPTICISM, OR, MISERY LOVES COMPANY
What gives you the idea that we're miserable, Dave? You're providing a great deal of entertainment here, with your quaintly hilarious ideas about how the world was poofed into existence a few thousand years ago. Since I'm not getting paid to do this, do you think I'd do it if I didn't enjoy it?
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It appears to me that people come to Panda's Thumb looking for justification to be a skeptic. They are looking for scientific sounding reasons to reject the Bible and set up their own morality and it helps to have some like minded people that affirm what they want to believe.
So now the scientists are just "trying to sound scientific," and it's the Bible that has the real "sciency-ness"? Nice try, Dave.
You know, the funny thing is, the vast, vast majority of Christians understand that the Bible is an excellent source of information on spiritual matters, but don't make the utterly bone-headed mistake of assuming it should be taken as a literal history of the universe. People who reject the stupidity and vapidity of YEC aren't "rejecting the Bible," Dave. They just know it's not intended to be a scholarly work on cosmology, astrophysics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, biology, chemistry, and plate tectonics. Only the truly deluded such as yourself make that mistake.
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Now as sure as I say this, I will piled on with denials like "We come here to discuss science, you moron! What in the world are you talking about?" Well yes. Part of it is science, but there is a very subtle thing going on here. The subtle thing is that you have a lot of truth, but its mixed in with a lot of error concealed in sometimes inconspicuous places.
And you know, Dave, the most hilarious thing about you is that you think that you are qualified to discover error in the work of professional scientists with decades of experience in their field of study. You're not even qualified to recognize evidence, let alone evaluate it or make credibility determinations as to its interpretation. That you've been wrong about every single criticism of the evidence in favor of any position anyone here has ever taken is conclusive proof of your manifest lack of qualifications for the job. You're a dillettante, Dave, and an ignorant one at that.
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Combine this with a blindness which all humans are subject to when they want to believe something, and you have a very powerful deception. Everyone is familiar with the 'Love is blind' concept. Well this is the same way. Skeptics can't stand those "goddam christians/muslims/jews/hindus/" and the feeling is so strong that, like the love-struck teenager, they cannot see the glaring errors in their theories.
Dave, we don't think your ideas are wrong because we hate Christians (my parents are both Christians); we think they're wrong because they're flat-out contradicted by the evidence. All the evidence, Dave. And they're supported by none of the evidence. You're engaging in massive projection here.
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1) I am not looking to justify any skepticism, although I would become one if given some good reasons. And I am sincere when I say that.
No you're not. You've been given abundant evidence that your loony-tunes ideas about the history of the earth and the universe are laugably, comically, hilariously wrong. Have you budged in your beliefs?
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It has been interesting to me to watch 'skeptic' on his thread talk about how evolutionary theory needs to be re-invented. He knows there is a glaring problem, but he cannot bring himself to be 'crazy' enough to embrace the real truth--YECism.
But somehow you've failed to note that Mr. Skeptic has yet to even articulate what his objections to current theory are. He can't even tell us what he thinks is wrong with current theory, let along point out any "glaring" flaws with it. He seems to have some sort of hangup about mutations being "random," and even after we've explained to him that mutations are not "random" in the mathematical sense of the word, he still squirms in discomfort, without being able to articulate what his discomfort stems from. It's pretty clear at this point that his difficulties with the theory are all traceable to his lack of understanding of that theory.
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I am looking to see if skeptics have any arguments of substance. So far, I have not found many. There are a few that seem plausible, but when you look at the totality of evidence, they are weak.
Dave, you've demonstrated you don't even understand the arguments presented to you, and consequently have no basis for evaluating their strength or weakness.
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I'm finding out which YEC arguments hold water and which do not. I am finding that many of the rebuttals at Talk Origins (I didn't even know T.O. existed before I came here ... there's something I learned) are rebutting arguments that the "mainstream YECs" don't even use. And many of the rebuttals I have encountered there are not very good rebuttals as I have demonstrated here. (Dr. Max, Dr. Henke, etc.)
We're finding out what we expected to find: that no YEC arguments hold water. You haven't demonstrated any problems with any of the various rebuttals to YEC arguments, other than to yourself. Meanwhile, I, as a non-specialist, have learned from listening to people like JonF and Deadman and OA just how pathetic those YEC arguments really are.
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And last but not least, I am giving people the truth about Planet Earth, the Creator and the Bible which is His message to mankind. They don't recognize it as truth now, but maybe they will on their deathbeds when they are 5 minutes from meeting their Creator. It's funny the effect that the prospect of death has on someone!
Nope. You're giving them fairy tales that are no more supportable or believable than the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.
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THE EVIDENCE FOR THE CREATOR GOD REVIEWED I have given you ample evidence for believing that there is a Super-Intelligence who created the Engineering Marvels we see in the Natural World. I have given you excellent evidence that a Great Intelligence probably "tuned" the parameters of the universe to support life on Planet Earth with the pinnacle of life being mankind himself. I have given you evidence that there is an Originator of Morality which is necessarily required by the phenomenon of the Universal Moral Code or "conscience" impressed on the heart of all mankind. We have touched on the Laws of Relativity and pointed out how they are supportive of certain Biblical assertions about God.
Dave, you can't give us a "review" of evidence you haven't supplied yet. You still don't get the difference between "argument" and "evidence." Point to one piece of evidence you've supplied that the universe is "finely tuned." Point to one piece of evidence that there is a "universal moral code." Point to one piece of evidence that Relativity Theory supports your "creator god" notion.
You haven't supplied "evidence" of anything, Dave. You dont' even know what "evidence" is.
But despite your Black-Knight-inspired propensity to proclaim victory in every argument to participate in, you're still pretty amusing.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
My eyes are reasonably good. I see they used an world-wide average neutron flux, when it is known that the neutron flux varies widely over geography and depth, and exposure to which certainly can vary over time. Those calculations are worthless.
They don't vary so much as to make a difference in this context JonF. We're talking about 1/13,000 of the mean pMC value for diamond! Show me evidence that what you say makes a difference. I'm betting you cannot.
JonF...
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There is no evidence that the exposed surface area of the Earth has ever been significantly larger than it is today. There's lots of evidence that it's always been roughly the same while life's been around. Brown and the others did pull it out, but "thin air" is not what I'd characterize as the source. You obviously haven't studied submarine geology;
JonF ... just one example for you ... this was known way back in 1948 when you were but a wee chap (or maybe just a thought?) ... try Francis P. Shepard: Submarine Geology, (New York, Harper's, 1948), pp. 231-233. Talks about great submarine canyons which exist in great numbers around every continent of the world, the Hudson River Canyon being a great example. Or how about the Head of the Geology Dept. at Michigan Univ. way back in 1959 saying "Can we as seekers of truth, shut our eyes any longer to the obvious fact that large areas of sea floor have sunk vertical distances measured in miles?" (Kenneth Landes, "Illogical Geology," Geotimes, VOl. III, No. 6, Mar 1959. p. 19) You really are missing out, JonF, by not reading the "Genesis Flood" by Whitcomb and Morris. Come on. Spend the 20 bucks. It won't kill you.
JonF..
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Right. [Referring to Evo blindness to Flood evidence] And a wreckage of twisted metal with 18 wheels lodged in the middle of my living room is not evidence that a truck jumped the interstate and ran into my house! I see all you have left is irrelevancies.
No. It's actually quite relevant.
JonF...
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Yeah, but you'll obviously fall for any twaddle that appears to support your preconceptions. You want to think that 0.00001% is "quite common", that's your right, but nobody with any breain funciuton is going to agree with you.
Galileo had a minority viewpoint too, my friend.
OA...
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Please tell us how you arrived at the dates you have been giving us for historical events, i.e.
1) Earth created 6000 years ago 2) Humans created 5500 years ago 3) 'The Flood' 4500 years age 4) Tower of Babel 4200 years ago, etc.
1) The 6000 year number comes from the Ussher Chronology (4004 BC), but it is well supported by the Oxford Univ prof that I quoted you in World Book a long time ago says that "the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago, and by 20th century excavations just referred to in today's post. 2) I didn't intend to say that humans were created 5500 YA. My guess is 6000 ya 3) The date of the Flood comes from doing some math on the numbers in the Biblical text. I may be off a few years. I'll try to fine tune it for you when we cover the Flood in detail. 4) Again, this is approximate.
Why are you so interested in exact dates?
OA...
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If I had never heard of the Bible but had unlimited time, money, and scientific resources to determine those ages, how would I do it?
I'd go all over the world searching for mounds that I could excavate. This has been done in the 20th century. Guess what they found? The earliest written records have been found in the Mesopotamian plain and they are dated at around 5500 BC. Now someone shows you the Bible. Guess what. Archaeology and the Bible agree in every detail! So what you Occam's Aftershave do in response to this amazing evidence? Believe it, silly! (Or you could close your eyes and ears and begin shooting your mouth off loudly on ATBC about how stupid YECs are.) Your choice!
Eric...
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Dave, if your hypothesis that "goddidit" is to have any use at all, you're going to need to explain how he did it. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and mine.
There are certain things I cannot explain about HOW Goddidit. If you were honest, you would admit this same thing is true with you. For example ... you cannot explain how the first life form came to be ... you know the abiogenesis thing? You have no explanation. And yet here it is. How did it get here? I assume you say something comparable to "Goddidit" such as "Evolutiondidit."
Eric...
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But that's exactly why my hypothesis is way better than yours, Dave. My hypothesis (although I'm honest enough to admit that it's not "my" hypothesis; it's the consensus hypothesis, or more accurately a theory, of the astronomical community) not only proposes mechanisms to account for galaxy formation, but actually provides evidence that those mechanisms can work! Imagine that! Evidence! Hows that for "sciency-ness"?
I cannot comment on your hypothesis for the formation of the universe because I have not studied that much, but your hypothesis about the evolution of life forms on earth is complete nonsense. It flies in the face of everything we observe in science, it cannot be demonstrated in the lab although repeated attempts have been made (by mutilating poor fruit flies), and it defies all logic and sound reason. In contrast to that, the God Hypothesis (at least as it explains life on earth) agrees with everything we observe in science and is quite logical. It also answers many questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil which evolutionary theory is utterly bankrupt to try and answer. The evolutionary ideas about apes and human makes me laugh every day! To think that people with PhD's think that chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas just because of their DNA truly staggers my imagination!
Eric...
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Astronomers hardly know everything about galactic formation. There's a long way to go before anyone can make that claim. But they're a lot further along than you are, with your "poofosity."
I doubt they are further along. We shall see when I get to that topic. That's what you guys have been claiming all along and I have seen just how empty of any evidence your claims really are. And in spite of your repeated claims that I don't present any evidence, the exact opposite is true.
Eric...
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And how can you not be "interested" in the age of the universe, Dave, if the Bible is, as you claim, inerrant?
OK fine. I'll be interested. Just not today.
Arden...
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AFD also claimed once that something like a dozen languages resulted from The Big Guy Upstairs zapping the Tower of Babel.
Oh yes. We will get to this as well. We will also talk about a topic I raised with Faid ... "The Origin of the 7 Day Week" ... I think Faid will be surprised.
Carlson...
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No. I mean serious historians. That they come to conclusions you may not like doesn't make them necessarily revisionist.
I'll tell you what. You start a thread about August or so (whenever we get done with this thread) and David Barton and I will take you on. This is an important topic to me. Deal?
Incorygible ... I read your extensive post which purports to show me WHY evolutionists believe in the millions of years thing for ape and human ancestry. What it appears to boil down to is this ...
1) We have some fossils that look like human ancestors [Never mind that if we look at them really closely they either look like they are fully ape or fully human] 2) We've looked at the DNA and it is close [we've been through this - chimps are 0.5% or so closer to humans than gorillas are to chimps] 3) We know there couldn't possibly be a Creator God who made humans and apes as seprate kinds because ... well ... you know ... everyone knows that Genesis is just a nice Creation Myth 4) So humans and apes had to come about by natural processes -- no Intelligent Designer involved -- to say so would be unscientific !!! 5) Hmmm ... let's dream up a way that this could be explained ... Hey guys, remember Darwin? 6) Cool! Finches can change so maybe apes can change into humans!! Yippee! We're gettin' close to a solution! So what's the mechanism? Well mutations of course. Voila! Some of them add information (I think ... I hope ... isn't there something about some Nylon-eating bacteria that added info? Yeah ... I'm sure of it ... Spetner was all wet on that debate ... sure of it) 7) How long does it take? Well, a really long time because not too many mutations [only one that we can think of ... and even that is probably a farce] add information. We'll have to tell everyone that it takes millions of years so they will believe us that it is possible. 8) OK. Now we are cookin'. Let's do some math on the DNA so that it sounds really believable that we know what we are talking about, press the 'COMPUTE' button and PRESTO!!! MAGICO!!!
Gorillas diverged at 8 mya and chimps and humans diverged at 5mya.
[Notice the 'mya' and even more sciency sounding 'Ma' which gives an air of importance and scientific-ness to our terminology ... you know ... using Latin and using abbreviations always makes one look smart, even if you're not]
BWE...
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Or, if you'd rather just concede, I'll get busy writing that post for your blog.
Boy are you way behind. I told you a long time ago ... Rilke lost ... if anyone owes anyone, Rilke owes me. I never bet you. Do you want to pay up for her? And you cannot post anything to my blog. I shut that down about 3 weeks ago because of your Goat sex post. i didn't really care about comments anyway, though.
Stephen Wells...
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Notice, while we're at it, that God is not described as creating the waters. Heaven and earth, yes, but the waters are supposed to be there already. God divides them, in verse 7, and gathers them, in verse 9, but apparently he doesn't create them. This appears to be a development from the Sumerian and Babylonian myths; Sumer had earth and heaven emerging from the sea (Nammu) while Babylon starts with the sweet water and the bitter water (Apsu and Tiamat). Dave, did God create the water?
I'm sure He did. Why not? Do you think he didn't create centipedes just because He does not name them specifically? you've got it backwards. The myths you refer to came from Genesis ... not the reverse.
You criticism of the order of creation is handled in my long post on Genesis.
Bing...
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Or did it all happen underwater while the Earth was covered by the flood?
Wow. I can see from this and subsequent posts that you all have very little understanding of the Flood. Boy do I have some good news for you!
Toothbrush...
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Under the right conditions, it apparently takes a lot less than a year:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
Not to support any of AFD's idiotic conjecture but he can't be wrong about everything...
Thanks...support from an unlikely source.
JonF...
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Walt Brown has been pushing the "catastrophic plate tectonics" bit for years; http://www.creationscience.com/. Some amusing calculations at A Few Silly Flaws In Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory, pointing out one of the many ways in which creationist "flood theories" cook everyone, and the fact that Waltie's erupting water would be well on its way out of the solar system by now.
Hmmm...I'll have a look at his version sometime.
Incorygible...
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Interesting.
Now we just have to figure out how a flood could (1) produce water heated to 250 degrees C in the first stage; (2) produce high concentrations of lime or carbon monoxide; (4) produce dry regions greater than 500 degrees C for the second stage; (4) transport the organic materials (100X the current biomass, right?) between superheated limed regions; (5) not boil, bake, dissolve or poison all those created kinds that didn't "need" the ark in the process (not to mention Noah and his bioboat); and (6) not superheat the very planet itself.
Now you guys are getting somewhere! Keep asking these smart questions and you too will find the truth about the Flood! Maybe I won't even have to explain it to you!
Louis...
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They claim all of modern science is wrong, while (ironincally) trying to shore up their biblical babble with science. The really amusing thing is they think they can play "pick the explanation" as if that solves their problems. Look at what GoP is up to at the moment. He is playing an eternal shell game with concepts he doesn't understand but thinks support his claims (and they don't). It follows a simple pattern: 1) make bullshit claim, 2) google like crazy to find even vague, superficial support for said claim, 3) when claim is refuted, google like crazy for anything that might help you, 4) repeat something you don't understand but you think helps you.
Louis ... you are seeing things ... are your eyes all screwy from being at the girly bar?
Eric...
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And didn't he promise to explain yesterday why decoherence is not a problem for his model?
What in the world is this about?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No. I mean serious historians. That they come to conclusions you may not like doesn't make them necessarily revisionist.
I'll tell you what. You start a thread about August or so (whenever we get done with this thread) and David Barton and I will take you on. This is an important topic to me. Deal?
In the mean time, can you guess who said this: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."?
For bonus points, can you guess who it was said to?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
I especially like the threat aftard poses about the death bed conversion, hurry and find jeebuz before its too late!
The gun to the head approach for jesus works best on cowards and children, davey. You probably won't find many of either here. That's probably why you have failed to convert anyone in this forum. All you have accomplished so far is convincing everyone you are a clueless moron.
You're like a bad street preacher who won't shut up and you harass pedestrians all over town harping about finding the lord before it's too late. Pathetic.
Why not spend your time on more fruitful efforts and convert some Muslims, but keep in mind they get 73 virgins when they go to heaven, Christians get zero so you had better come up with a convincing reason why your god is better than theirs. On the surface I'd go for the religion that promises 73 virgins myself.
I especially like the threat aftard poses about the death bed conversion, hurry and find jeebuz before its too late!
Dave could have saved everyone a lot of time if he'd just posted a Chick tract right at the beginning of the thread.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Oh yes. We will get to this as well. We will also talk about a topic I raised with Faid ... "The Origin of the 7 Day Week" ... I think Faid will be surprised.
Surprised? Hardly. You'll just do the same things you did when you supposedly "beat down" the GULO issue, or when you "won" the Portuguese (non-) debate: You'll just say the same things you said when we first had this discussion, ignore any and all of our counterarguments (or twist them according to your liking), and declare another victory for your ego- sorry, your "God".
You've ceased to surprise me long ago, dave. And, after your "ape-breeding" assertion, I don't think there's anything you can say that will surprise me.
But by all means, do some more copypasting from your favorite "sciencey" sources, and try to prove once again that the effect is the cause and vice versa. We can use the extra laughs.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave: nice to see you can write a minor novel on topics unrelated to the questions that were asked you, but fail miserably even in the contents of that novel.
You're in my ballpark now...even though I dislike historical/ classical archaeology in the middle east and mediterranean. Turns out I have met Ira (Israel) Finkelstein at one of the AIA meetings, just didn't know who he was. Finkelstein is basically one of the top dogs in biblical archaeology...he's one of the people that raised so many doubts about the alleged "James Ossuary" that it led to the current trials for forgery underway now in Israel...
I recommend you read his " Finkelstein, Israel; Silberman, Neil Asher (2002). The Bible Unearthed." And learn about how wrong you really are about the archaeology of the region and your YEC claims.
You see, Dave, your recital of P.J. Wiseman's claims stems from ...1936... later updated by his son "D.J." in 1985 or so. You might want to update. As far as the "documentary hypothesis " being dead in the water, well, perhaps, but that's not of any real interest to me, despite the fact that vatican scholars estimate that SOME FORM of the hypothesis is accepted by 90% of current researchers...others seem to reject it entirely like Cassuto. Irrelevant to me.
The reason I mentioned Finkelstein was in regard to your claim that the Archaeology of the region lacks sites predating civilization. Let's take one example: Jericho.
Preceding the bronze-age "biblical" jericho, we find the Natufians, AFDave. early proto agriculturalists. Certainly they herded animals and evidence is that they began the first domestication of grains. Dates on the culture go back to 12,000 BCE and generally extend to about 8,500 BCE in most areas. See "The Natufian Culture in the Levant: Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture." Ofer Bar-Yosef Evolutionary Anthropology Volume 6 : Pages 159 - 177 (1998)http://www.columbia.edu/itc/anthropology/v1007/baryo.pdf
So, what does this mean for your "24 points?"
Well it means that this site and many, many others in the near east negate your claims. This site alone, and Catal Huyuk, and hundreds of others show that your literalist, fanatic interpretation is ...wrong. The age obviously runs against your dates for the emergence of civilizations ,your claims that no predecessors to state-level systems are found, your claims that writing is found in all complex societies, etc. etc. Sumerian culture likewise is preceded by known archaeological sites and remains. Same with Egyptian. Same with Mycenean and Minoan, same with every other state-level system that we know of.
The interesting thing for me is that Biblical Archaeology, as a weird little sub-field of "classical" (historical) archaeology ...is largely populated by "believers"...Christians and Jews interested in the record of the region...and you would say that they are all wrong. All the state-level systems in the middle east are preceded by known archaeological phases that you have to say are simply wrong. But those claims are not just from atheist/darwinian /materialist scientists, they are also from honestly religious folks working in the middle east that simply don't take the bible literally in all aspects. You don't actually know about the archaeology TODAY, but because you have a predetermined absolutist claim to uphold, regardless of the evidence, you are now libelling all of them, too ( bearing false witness is supposed to be a sin, jackass). Again, showing how you would rather lie than deal with reality.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
AFDave was offered another olive branch, and a chance to engage in honest discussion about the topics being discussed here, but decides instead to stick with his lying and ignoring contrary evidence ways. Sad but not unexpected. Thinking that someone as mentally hosed as Fundy Dave could ever deal with an honest appraisal of his position, or could think for himself was just a fleeting dream.
Oh well, life moves on. Let’s look at AFDave’s latest batch of stupidity and lies.
First we get the same old “I’ve proved a young Earth” claims, and we still get no mention of the C14 calibration evidence, or all the examples of human culture dating back 40,000 years, etc.
Dave, how about that Turkish village that has been dated with independent methods to 7000 BC?
Now Dave wants to use contemporary archaeology as evidence of a literal Genesis. Dave thinks that since some of the places mentioned in the Bible are real places, that ALL of the Bible must be true. Wow! So by AFDave’s logic, since Arthur Conan Doyle mentioned London (a real place) in his stories, then Sherlock Holmes was a real live person. Great logic there, for a tard that is.
Next let’s look at the timelines involved. According to Dave’s and AIG’s timeline, Humans (Adam & Eve) were created at 4200 BC, the FLUD occurred at 2349 BC, and the Tower of Babel at approximately 2200BC. Keep those dates in mind.
Now Dave starts talking about finding tablets at the ancient city of Ur. Turns out that Ur has been thoroughly excavated and examined, and there is abundant archaeological evidence that Ur was inhabited continuously from 5000BC to 300 BC. So from Dave’s own sources, Ur was inhabited from 800 years before the creation of Humans, and was inhabited right through the FLUD without being the least bit disturbed.
Then, Dave refers briefly to Egyptian history, but Egyptian history contains detailed records of the Dynasties going back to 3250BC up to the present and going right through the FLUD without being the least bit disturbed.
Oops! Looks like AFDave f*cked up his history again!
Now, let’s look at more evidence for language and culture
Dave references the Akkadian texts (a form of Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform early writing) which are reliably dated to 2800 BC, again before the FLUD. Then, Dave refers to Chinese culture, which has a detailed, continuously documented history dating back to over 3000 BC. Somehow this Chinese civilization also went right through the FLUD without being the least bit disturbed.
Oops! Looks like AFDave f*cked up his history yet again!
Now note that the Chinese language and Babylonian languages are completely different from one another, even in this ‘pre-FLUD’ time frame. But according to Dave there was only ONE universal language until the Tower of Babel at 2200BC.
Oops! Looks like AFDave f*cked up his story one more time!
I could keep pointing out AFDave’s stupidity for days, but frankly it gets pretty boring. Anyone else want to take a shot at exposing AFDave’s lies and ignorance? It’s not hard to do.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Erm, no. No evidence of a global flood wiping out the civilizations I just mentioned, and many others known to have existed. No evidence of an "Egyptian Captivity/Exodus," no evidence of the plagues in Egypt, The story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho didn't happen , despite Bryan Wood's attempt at redating. Solomon is not known at all in the archaeology, despite the biblical claim that he ruled from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Zilch. Read Finkelstein and Silber's (2001) "The Bible Unearthed : Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts "
This is not to say that the historical aspects of the bible are not supported in various ways by archaeology---but it IS to say that your view is not, Dave. No global flood, no YEC pipe-dreams.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
To reinforce what Occam's just posted, Dave, let me offer what I posted to you wayyyyyyyy back on page 12 of this thread in regard to the "global flood.":
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But there's a problem, Dave: Your whole edifice of cards balances on this one point: that the Bible is absolutely true. Yet you admit that the Global flood, wiping out all things on the face of the Earth...happened at between 2000-3000 BCE. Let's look at why you are wrong:
During this period that the BIBLE says the "global flood " happened, the records of various groups continue uninterrupted: By 2375 BC, most of Sumer was united under one king, Lugalzaggisi of Umma, Sumerian records continue on.Uninterrupted by any mention of global flooding . The earliest surviving inscriptions in Akkadian go back to 2500 B.C. and are the oldest known written records in a Semitic tongue. They continue in an unbroken record.
Egyptian history during the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC) continues unbroken by global flooding . 2200 bc is the date of oldest existing document written on papyrus, prior to that, we have inscriptions and incised clay tablets as well. The Chinese had settled in the Huang He (or "Ho" in some translations) , or Yellow River, valley of northern China by 3000 BC. In the Indus Vallley, we have the Early Harappa Phase C, 2550 BC which continues unbroken to c.1900 BC . We also have the early minoan and mycenean groups in the mediterranean, and as for the new world, Researchers publishing in the Dec. 23 edition of the scientific journal Nature date the first complex society of the Americas, from roughly 3000 to 1800 B.C. NONE of these groups were destroyed by any "global flood" NONE.
But you'll say it's all a lie, Dave, because the "dates" must be wrong, or some other similarly dishonest shit. But there's a problem with that, too, Dave.
We have to either : (1) reject the factual historicity of the Flood account; (2)accept the historicity of the Flood account, but explain away the clear Biblical dating of the event, showing the Bible is in error; or (3) accept the Biblical account and chronology, and reject the massive amount of written and archaological evidence establishing the chronology of history in the near East. This chronolgy is not just supported by radiometric dating methods (C-14, etc.), but other absolute NON-radiometric methods as well: dendrochronology, corals, varves, ice cores, stalagmite/stalactites and more. Now, how could it be that ALL of those dating methods agree that no global flood happened and that the archaeology and other sources are correct?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
1) I am not looking to justify any skepticism, although I would become one if given some good reasons. And I am sincere when I say that. It has been interesting to me to watch 'skeptic' on his thread talk about how evolutionary theory needs to be re-invented. He knows there is a glaring problem, but he cannot bring himself to be 'crazy' enough to embrace the real truth--YECism.
OK, Dave. Here is a completel sincere and honest question on my part.
What evidence would convince you that you were wrong? What data would persuade you that YEC is not true?
Be precise. Give actual details.
So far, you have not demonstrated that you would even entertain contrary data.
So tell us exactly what evidence would convince you, and we'll see if such data exists.
Quote (Rilke's Granddaughter @ June 22 2006,15:39)
So tell us exactly what evidence would convince you, and we'll see if such data exists.
As a follow-up, what kind of test would you perform to determine whether or not an object is older than 10,000 years? How about a test to see if an object were older than 1,000,000 years? 1,000,000,000 years?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I finally joined this board after lurking for several months just to add my two cents to Afdave's imaginary musings.
No, Afdave, you have NOT convinced me. You never answer specific questions. Your ideas are completely demolished by the posters to this board, who provide ample evidence against you. Your "arguments" would not convince a middle school student - whom I have taught for 12 years.
So, my question to this board is: why do you persist? Why do you think creos like Dave will change? Why do you spend so much time & energy trying to show him the errors of his ways? Isn't there something better you could be doing than trying to point out errors in thinking to the likes of Afdave?
Just wonderin', and not complaining. but I want to know why the regulars to this board continue to beat their heads against a brick wall.....
I think the rationale is that it's 'for the lurkers'.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Please tell us how you arrived at the dates you have been giving us for historical events, i.e.
1) Earth created 6000 years ago 2) Humans created 5500 years ago 3) 'The Flood' 4500 years age 4) Tower of Babel 4200 years ago, etc.
1) The 6000 year number comes from the Ussher Chronology (4004 BC), but it is well supported by the Oxford Univ prof that I quoted you in World Book a long time ago says that "the story of world history begins only about 5,500 years ago, and by 20th century excavations just referred to in today's post. 2) I didn't intend to say that humans were created 5500 YA. My guess is 6000 ya 3) The date of the Flood comes from doing some math on the numbers in the Biblical text. I may be off a few years. I'll try to fine tune it for you when we cover the Flood in detail. 4) Again, this is approximate.
Why are you so interested in exact dates?
He's not interested in exact dates, Dave. He's interested in the error bars. When you look at a radiocarbon date, you see, e.g, 15,000 y +/- 750 years. When you look at a Ur-Pb date, you see e.g. 2.707 by, +/- .07 by. Why is it that your dates don't have error bars, Dave? Is it because they're made up out of thin air? That's how I see it.
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OA...
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If I had never heard of the Bible but had unlimited time, money, and scientific resources to determine those ages, how would I do it?
I'd go all over the world searching for mounds that I could excavate. This has been done in the 20th century. Guess what they found? The earliest written records have been found in the Mesopotamian plain and they are dated at around 5500 BC. Now someone shows you the Bible. Guess what. Archaeology and the Bible agree in every detail! So what you Occam's Aftershave do in response to this amazing evidence? Believe it, silly! (Or you could close your eyes and ears and begin shooting your mouth off loudly on ATBC about how stupid YECs are.) Your choice!
Nice try, Dave. Archaeology has nothing to say about dates millions of years in the past, but the Bible does. And the Bible is completely wrong on those dates, by multiple orders of magnitude. If the Bible had valid error bars, it would say things like, "fall from grace, 5,900 y, +/- 200,000 y."
And in the meantime, let me ask you this, Dave. Given that the oldest written records date back to not much longer than when the Bible was written, would we expect to see dates earlier than that? The earliest written records set a floor on how old the earth is, not a ceiling. It's flat-out impossible for the earth to be younger than the earliest written records, but the only reason you've given for why the earth couldn't be immensely older than that is your own personal incredulity, which as you can imagine has no credibility at all around here. It's still the dumbest argument for a young earth I've ever heard advanced.
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Eric...
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Dave, if your hypothesis that "goddidit" is to have any use at all, you're going to need to explain how he did it. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and mine.
There are certain things I cannot explain about HOW Goddidit. If you were honest, you would admit this same thing is true with you. For example ... you cannot explain how the first life form came to be ... you know the abiogenesis thing? You have no explanation. And yet here it is. How did it get here? I assume you say something comparable to "Goddidit" such as "Evolutiondidit."
Not even close, Dave. Astronomers have at least the beginnings of an understanding of how galaxies came to be, by reference to anisotropies in the CMB, theories of gravitational attraction and conservation of angular momentum which lead to accretion disks, and theories of galactic evolution that give some insight into the structure of galaxies today. You, on the other hand, don't have the first idea how God could have created a galaxy (or anything else for that matter). You can't even hazard a guess as to how God would go about creating a galaxy. And no amount of studying ICR or AiG literature is going to give you the slightest hint either, because none of those sources have even the beginnings of a wild-ass guess as to how God has actually done any of the things he's claimed to have done.
And by the way, Dave, for what is not the first and certainly not the last time, evolution has nothing to do with theories of abiogenesis. Those theories have at least a rough outline of how various solutions, exposed to conditions believed to existed on the early earth, could at least in principle have resulted in self-replicating pre-biotic forms. Again, you have absolutely no idea, not the wildest speculation, as to how God could have created life. You don't even have hand-waving, for crying out loud.
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Eric...
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But that's exactly why my hypothesis is way better than yours, Dave. My hypothesis (although I'm honest enough to admit that it's not "my" hypothesis; it's the consensus hypothesis, or more accurately a theory, of the astronomical community) not only proposes mechanisms to account for galaxy formation, but actually provides evidence that those mechanisms can work! Imagine that! Evidence! Hows that for "sciency-ness"?
I cannot comment on your hypothesis for the formation of the universe because I have not studied that much, but your hypothesis about the evolution of life forms on earth is complete nonsense. It flies in the face of everything we observe in science, it cannot be demonstrated in the lab although repeated attempts have been made (by mutilating poor fruit flies), and it defies all logic and sound reason.
Dave, you claim to have read the Theobald article on the evidence for common descent I provided for your edification, but clearly you're lying when you say you've read it. It's not a hypothesis, Dave; it's a fact. Evolutionary biologists may not have a perfect understanding of the mechanisms driving common descent, and there may be some controversy as to the interrelatedness of different organisms, but to claim that it "flies in the face of everything we observe in science" is laughable. We already know you don't read this stuff, Dave. You just "skim" it, until you realize it's about evolution, and then you just dismiss it. It's the only way you can maintain your suspension of disbelief.
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In contrast to that, the God Hypothesis (at least as it explains life on earth) agrees with everything we observe in science and is quite logical.
Dave, your God Hypothesis amounts to "goddidit," which as has been explained to you a million times, explains nothing. It's completely devoid of any explanatory whatsoever. "Goddidtit" has all the explanatory power of saying "it happened."
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To think that people with PhD's think that chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas just because of their DNA truly staggers my imagination!
I'm sorry to say this, Dave, but the reason it staggers your imagination is because, well, you're an idiot when it comes to science. You simply don't know enough about science to even understand the evidence, let alone critique it.
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Eric...
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Astronomers hardly know everything about galactic formation. There's a long way to go before anyone can make that claim. But they're a lot further along than you are, with your "poofosity."
I doubt they are further along. We shall see when I get to that topic. That's what you guys have been claiming all along and I have seen just how empty of any evidence your claims really are. And in spite of your repeated claims that I don't present any evidence, the exact opposite is true.
Dave, you've already admitted that you don't know anything about galaxy formation, so if scientists knew anything at all about how they form, they'd still be ahead of you.
Dave, if you think you've provided evidence, please favor us with what that evidence is. Claiming that there's a "universal moral code," is not the same as providing evidence that there is one. On the other hand, I've provided evidence—gay marriage, anyone? abortion on demand, anyone?—that there is no universal moral code, and I cannot fail to point out that you never even responded to my post.
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Eric...
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And how can you not be "interested" in the age of the universe, Dave, if the Bible is, as you claim, inerrant?
OK fine. I'll be interested. Just not today.
As I said, Dave, you've got so much work in front of you trying to overturn the last 500 years of science, you may never get there.
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Eric...
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And didn't he promise to explain yesterday why decoherence is not a problem for his model?
What in the world is this about?
You should read your compatriot Ghost of Paley's travails on his geocentrism thread, Dave. He's got an even tougher row to hoe than you do, and he's suffering just as grievously (and seems to be almost as oblivous to it as you are).
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The problem remains the same one that Dave has had since the beginning of this entire exercise: he quite simply, literally, and completely does not understand what "evidence" is. Not in the slightest. That's why he's so clueless when we point out that he hasn't presented evidence. He doesn't know what it is.
Now why he doesn't is entirely a matter of speculation.
Here's another point I've been curious about. Dave said the following
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I've earned respect in every endeavor I have undertaken.
Note the phrase earned. This is important to my question.
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I earned the respect of the EE faculty at my university and was given a great graduation job working on SDI, even though they knew I was going into the AF and would only have me a short time.
Once again, Dave uses the phrase earned.
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I earned the right to be a fighter pilot by graduating 4th in my class of 40 at ENJJPT (google it if you like). I had many friends who were fighter pilots and earned their respect as a PIT Instructor while training them to be IPs. I had two fighter pilots in my wedding--one F-15 guy and an A-10 guy. All my fighter pilot friends understood why many of us 'FAIPs' didn't get our fighters that we earned--a rule change in the AF--some would say an unlucky break--but from my perspective, the hand of God who knew best for me.
I re-emphasize: the term is earned.\
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I earned the respect of my wife for whom I tabled my fighter pilot dreams--I could have continued to chase it even after the rule change, but decided my family was more important.
Again, earned.
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I earned respect in the business world by putting my customers needs first and building a unique company which was acquired by a global transaction processing company. I am now retired because I earned my retirement, not because someone gave it to me.
The important point, the one that Dave emphasizes is earned. He earned these things.
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So there is no need to lecture me on 'earning respect.' I understand it at least as well as you do. But I can only do my part. I cannot make anyone here respect me if they refuse to do so even when I give respectable arguments.
So there's the bafflement: Dave, what do you think you've done to earn any respect here? Whether or not you think our counter-arguments are correct, did you earn respect from your faculty by not listening and ignoring what they said? Did you earn the right to be a pilot by simply stating "I'm a pilot - you're wrong?" Did you earn the respect of your wife by simply telling her you were a great person?
All you have done here is present arguments that we disagree with. In what sense does that earn you any respect?
The bottom line here, Dave, is that we tease you, make fun of you, laugh at you, and generally treat you like an amiable buffoon because you have not earned our respect. More importantly, you have not even tried to earn our respect.
That you are the butt of jokes, that you are treated in much the same fashion that we treat chewing gum stuck to the bottom of a chair is that you have done nothing whatsoever to earn our respect.
And without respect, we're not going to listen to anything you say.
Let me offer you an example, to help you understand this issue:
Let's say that someone came to you and said, "The Bible is a poopy-head book because it's written in Swahili, and Moses shot Isiah with a magnum 44 while Jesus was watching!" And when you pointed out that this was nonsense, he claimed, "No! It's true! You just don't want it to be true!"
Would you take this person seriously? Would this person have earned your respect?
To think that people with PhD's think that chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas just because of their DNA truly staggers my imagination!
We think that chimps and people are GENETICALLY closer than chimps and gorillas because we have measured the GENETIC distance.
Rather like concluding that London and Cambridge are GEOGRAPHICALLY closer than London and Edinburgh because we have measured the GEOGRAPHIC distance.
If we measured, say "% of body covered with fur", the obviously chimps and gorillas would be more similar. But fur coverage is not particularly relevant to descent, whereas genetic distance is. Similarly, London and Edinburgh share certain properties, such as "being a national capital", which may make them metaphorically "closer" to each other than to Cambridge, but that's not relevant to geography.
Dave's imagination has fallen and it can't get up.
OA and Deadman raise a good point. I am not dogmatic about the 4004 BC date for Creation. I understand that there may be some names left out of Biblical genealogical tables and some other issues. Creation could have been as early as 7000 BC with the Flood somewhere around 5000 BC. It is obviously very difficult to nail this down with certainty.
Here is a chart which gives possibilities which I agree with ...
The point of my article is that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history and is proven to be so by 20th century archaeology.
I do, however, believe it is possible that the Ussher chronology could be correct and the dates that Deadman and OA raise could be incorrect.
I don't think it matters a lot one way or the other.
My goal is in my post this morning was twofold...
1) to show how silly the 200,000 year scenario for humans history is, and 2) how reliable Genesis is as a written, eyewitness historical record
My post accomplished that rather nicely!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now there is wholly predicable response you can make, Dave: you can whine (as you have already done), "Boo-hoo! You guys just won't respect 'cause I'm Christian. Boo-hoo!" To which there is only one rational response:
Stercor.
We respect someone with rational arguments; we respect someone with the ability to reason; we respect someone who commands facts; we respect someone who can reason on their own; we repsect someone who can admit mistakes.
Those kind of people we can respect, whether or not the person is YEC, OEC, atheist, Taoist, etc.
Respect isn't handed to you here for being an atheist, nor denied you because you're a Christian. It's earned.
And without respect, we're not going to listen to anything you say.
How do you reconcile this statement with the fact that you've been listening to me for 83 pages? Actually more counting the other threads. Huh, Rilke?
Wells...
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We think that chimps and people are GENETICALLY closer than chimps and gorillas because we have measured the GENETIC distance.
Fine. I agree GENETIC distance is close. What's your point? My point is that if all you look at is genetics then you are blissfully naive and hopelessly misguided. You've had a virtual lobotomy and you don't even know it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) to show how silly the 200,000 year scenario for humans history is, and 2) how reliable Genesis is as a written, eyewitness historical record.
My post accomplished that rather nicely!
Actually, no, Dave, your post this morning failed abjectly, utterly, and comprehensively. And, to add frosting to the Danish, I can prove it.
Everyone here disagrees with you. Not one person has been persuaded by you. Everyone thinks your position is a laughable, comical joke.
So in what way did you "accomplish" your goal, Dave?
So here's your chance to prove me wrong. Indentify one person who has posted this thread who is persuaded by your arguments, and get that person to post a comment admitting to having been persuaded that the "200,000 year scenario is silly," and that "Genesis is a written, eyewitness historical record."
Now, for the record, for Dave to prove me wrong, he doesn't have to prove these statements are correct. He merely has to demonstrate that he's persuaded someone (I suppose I should clarify by adding "other than himself") that these two statements are corrrect.
Have at it, Mr. Hawkins.
[Edit: I should also add Bill Paley. Not that Dave will have persuaded him of anything, since he already believed this stuff, but I just don't want to give Dave an obvious out.]
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Fine. I agree GENETIC distance is close. What's your point? My point is that if all you look at is genetics then you are blissfully naive and hopelessly misguided. You've had a virtual lobotomy and you don't even know it.
Tell me Dave, what [edit: are the units of] hereditary material of organisms called? You probably learned it in elementary school.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
We think that chimps and people are GENETICALLY closer than chimps and gorillas because we have measured the GENETIC distance.
Fine. I agree GENETIC distance is close. What's your point? My point is that if all you look at is genetics then you are blissfully naive and hopelessly misguided. You've had a virtual lobotomy and you don't even know it.
Let me ask you something, Dave: is it meaningful, for the purposes of determining ancestry, to talk about anything other than genetics?
Why are you related to your mom, Dave? Is it for some other reason than your genetic relationship?
I assume that you're not related to your wife (I'm pretty sure you're not that kinky). Why do we say that you're not related, Dave? Is there some form of relationship or non-relationship other than genetics?
You're genetically related to your grandfather, but not to your flight instructor, right? Why is that? Do you compare amount of hairiness, or taste in clothes, or regional accent to determine relatedness, Dave? What other criteria do you use to determine whether you're related to someone else? Are you more closely related to Steven Hawking or to Richard Dawkins? Are you equally related to both because your last name differs from each of them by the same number of letters?
Dave, we use genetics (where genes, rather than fossil remains, are available) to determine relationships between organisms because no other criterion matters. What other biological characteristic is passed on from parents to children?
(I suppose this is where Dave says something about non-biological differences being used to disprove biological relatedness.)
That you don't understand this makes me wonder if you've had a lobotomy.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I understand that there may be some names left out of Biblical genealogical tables and some other issues.
Yeah, Dave, there's a lot of issues there. You see, the Bible's internal dating does in fact give the date range of 2250-2500 BCE for the flood. Not 5000 BCE. Since you used AIG, this is how they calculated the date they use, Dave: "The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years. " http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v4/i1/noahs_flood.asp
You are left with the same choices I gave you, Dave:
We have to either : (1) reject the factual historicity of the Flood account; (2)accept the historicity of the Flood account, but explain away the clear Biblical dating of the event, showing the Bible is in error; or (3) accept the Biblical account and chronology, and reject the massive amount of written and archaeological evidence establishing the chronology of history in the near East. This chronology is not just supported by radiometric dating methods (C-14, etc.), but other absolute NON-radiometric methods as well: dendrochronology, corals, varves, ice cores, stalagmite/stalactites and more.
My choice is #1...how about you, Dave? And can you back it?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oops! Sorry; I usually don't read posts by others past the one from Dave I'm responding to. To do otherwise feels slightly like cheating. I have to admit, one of my guilty pleasures here (okay, I don't really feel that guilty about it) is to rip Dave a new one in some area of inquiry (radiometric dating, genetics, astronomy, etc.) and then later read a post by someone who actually has expertise in the subject which basically says the same thing. It's no fun if I read it first and then post.
Unfortunately, this probably means I occasionally spoil someone else's fun. For this I am deeply sorry. Which shouldn't be construed to mean I'll try not to do it again in the future. :-)
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
FUNNY/NOT-SO-FUNNY RIDDLES Q: What' the last thing to go through a bug's mind before he smashes into your windshield? A: His bottom.
Q: What's the last thing to go through Mr Christopher's mind before the 18 wheeler that jumped the median smashes into his car? A: Oh my Goodness! AFDave was right!! Hello? God? Are you there?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) You have to close your eyes and your ears to dismiss the evidence of the Global Flood 2) Your millions of years is a fairy tale
Actually, Dave, I don't see why either one of these should be a problem for Mr. Death, because you haven't provided evidence (and I do mean any evidence whatsoever) for either a global flood; or that our "millions of years" (which should actually be "billions of years") is a "fairy tale."
I think this is probably the tenth or twelfth time I've asked you, Dave, but are you ever going to provide any actual "evidence" (as opposed to argument or assertion that "there's overwhelming evidence") for your climatological event? So far you've told us all there's tons of evidence for a flood, but so far you haven't shown us even a teensy-tiny bit of this alleged "evidence." Jumping up and down and pointing to the Grand Canyon isn't exactly "evidence," Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave: AIG gives the standard derivation of the "Flood Year" which was not new to Ussher, nor is Ussher's the final word on the matter. So, Dave, if you want to show how the bible supports a deeper date, show me. Don't use absent (non-existent) "evidence" as "proof" dave, show me how you arrive at your date using the bible.
You make the claim, Dave, you back it up, kid. Don't try to avoid, don't try to deflect, don't try to dance around it or place some fantasy burden of proof on me, jackoff. Back your claims
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, this is the part I don't get about your god. Is he so insecure about his creation, and workmanship thereof, that if it turns out that I don't believe he created it, I can't get into heaven? If I don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible, St. P is going to turn me away and send me to the elevator that only has a "down" button?
Why is it so important to your god that I believe that he, and he alone, is responsible for this rather bleak and inhospitable universe? I'd think he'd actually be kind of embarrassed about it. After all, as far as we know, the only place life can exist is on earth. Even if we buy your belief that the universe is only a few hundred thousand miles wide (just out of curiosity, Dave—how big do you think the universe is?), it's in a pretty small minority of that volume that life is even possible.
But even if your god thinks he did a bang-up job whipping up his little creation, why in the big wide world would my opinion matter to him? Why does he even care whether I believe in him? And if he does care so much (so much that he has built his own private torture chamber so he can punish me for my disbelief for all eternity), why did he try to hide the evidence so thoroughly?
After all, only a tiny, tiny minority of human beings believes in the literal truth of the Bible. Let's be generous and say 100 million people worldwide believe your little red book is perfectly accurate. That's a bit less than two percent of the total. Your god hasn't done a very good job of advertising his workmanship. If he were a general contractor, he would have gone out of business ten billion, I mean 5,800, years ago.
So, fifty years from now, when I'm lying on my deathbed, about to breathe my last, can you think of any reason why I should be worried that your god will be mad at me if I don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible?
I think you're projecting, Dave. I believe you're projecting your own insecurities and doubts onto your god. I frankly would be astonished if your god gave a crap what I believed. If he were about to send me to the concentration camp for my lack of belief, I think I'd have to say, "Dude, why the insecurity? Is my opinion that important to you? And if so, why? Are you afraid that if I don't believe you created the entire universe, I'll think you're a failure or something? And if I did, why would you care what I think?"
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OA and Deadman raise a good point. I am not dogmatic about the 4004 BC date for Creation. I understand that there may be some names left out of Biblical genealogical tables and some other issues. Creation could have been as early as 7000 BC with the Flood somewhere around 5000 BC. It is obviously very difficult to nail this down with certainty.
Which is exactly why I asked you earlier: How do you determine dates in a scientific manner independent of the Bible? I know a dating technique that's accurate to a few percent up to 50,000 years, and has been independently verified by at least six different methods. Would you like me to explain it to you?
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The point of my article is that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history and is proven to be so by 20th century archaeology.
All 20th century archaeology has shown is that many of the places listed in the Bible are actual historical sites. Only a tard of the first order would conclude that means that every event mentioned in the same book must be literally true.
Holy crap Dave, just how stupid can you be? If I show you evidence that the Empire State Building really exists, is that also evidence that in 1933 a giant gorilla named King Kong actually climbed the thing and swatted down biplanes?? I think you just established a new 'most idiotic YEC argument to date' benchmark.
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I don't think it matters a lot one way or the other.
Of course it matters you f*cktard. Your whole friggin' argument hinges on the accuracy of your dates for 'creation'. If you can't establish any dating accuracy, then why can't we accept 6000 BC +/- 4.5 billion years as the creation date?
Your kids must be scared spitless to take you to PTA meetings, lest you open your mouth and embarrass them to death with your rampant tard stupidity.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
A.F. Dave: If anyone gets too smug about the molecular evidence, I have some interesting references in the LUCA thread, and will be happy to supply some more if you wish. Molecular phylogenies are definitely a weakness for Darwin.
[afdave:] Show me evidence that what you say makes a difference. I'm betting you cannot.
evidence:afdave::water:duck's back
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[The Wraith of Gawd:]Molecular phylogenies are definitely a weakness for Darwin.
I'm sure as he11 not going to go through all 561 posts on that thread to get to the punchline of that joke, but I'll note, just for the record, that actual scientists appear not to agree with Paley on this.
"The Date of Noah’s Flood by Dr J. Osgood".... "The art of the Biblical chronologist or Date-finder is a mystery to most, so let me explain how such a date can be found. Firstly, I will take a brief look at the assumptions or starting points which I will use....The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years. "
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
[The Wraith of Gawd:]Molecular phylogenies are definitely a weakness for Darwin.
I'm sure as he11 not going to go through all 561 posts on that thread to get to the punchline of that joke, but I'll note, just for the record, that actual scientists appear not to agree with Paley on this.
You don't need to, Russel. Bill ran out of steam on the molecular phylogenies a few pages into it. The rest of the posts largely discuss Bill's (subsequently abandoned) geocentric "model." The last post Bill makes on his LUCA thread about phylogenetic trees seems to be somewhere on page 6 (which is about 180 posts in). He seems to have pretty much conceded that the molecular, etc. evidence in favor of the consensus phylogenetic tree is adequate to support it. His posts on page 5 of the LUCA thread teeter on the edge of concession. He'll probably deny this now, but you can read his posts easily enough.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
He seems to have pretty much conceded that the molecular, etc. evidence in favor of the consensus phylogenetic tree is adequate to support it. His posts on page 5 of the LUCA thread teeter on the edge of concession. He'll probably deny this now, but you can read his posts easily enough.
Sorry to butt in, but what the.....? If I recall, I was trying to reach an understanding on our epistemological differences. If I gave you the impression that I was conceding my argument, then either you weren't paying attention or I am an even more dreadful writer than I feared. If what you're saying is true, how do you explain my arguments in the fish debate with Brazeau? This makes no sense on any level.
If what you're saying is true, how do you explain my arguments in the fish debate with Brazeau?
see, more evidence to support my position that gawp's trollish nature is secondary to his ignorance.
and... Just like AFDave, whenever gawp poots on the subject of cladistics, he always assumes himself more knowledgeable than the actual practitioners, and always assumes he wins those "debates" (read as: "gawp gets torn a new one").
if gawp were honest with himself, he would see he has much more in common with AFD in the way he presents and processes arguments than he would care to admit.
I'm sticking with my vote.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
1) You have to close your eyes and your ears to dismiss the evidence of the Global Flood 2) Your millions of years is a fairy tale
As Mr. Murphy succinctly points out, Dave...you haven't given any "evidence" for me to close my eyes to. Not that I would, if it were valid and not just hand-waving. If you want to try your skills at dealing with "flood" claims, feel free to try, my boy.
But you may as well stuff a few magazines in your drawers, since you're going to be spanked again--which you appear to enjoy, by the way. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just that you should acknowledge your true nature more openly, Daveykins. Step out of the closet and breathe the fresh, clean air of unashamed masochism, pookie. Tell you what -- I'll let you lick the hairbrush after I'm done
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Deadman, don't forget sites like Meadowcroft Rock Shelter (PA) or Monte Verde (Chile) that shows our ancestors were smart enough to get out of the Middle East WELL before those silly Sumerians or Israelites pissed off their gods to the point of being inundated with Gods love.
The discovery of a 5000 year old quipu in Peru shows the Caral were keeping records well before DDTTD's mythic Tower of Babel incident.
So, Dave, your entire response to the fact that you have yet to earn any respect is a pointless quip?
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How do you reconcile this statement with the fact that you've been listening to me for 83 pages? Actually more counting the other threads. Huh, Rilke?
We haven't been listening to you Dave - we think you're an idiot who is good for a laugh. That's all. If you thought you were showing us anything, well, then it's back to the question of respect.
You claimed that you earned respect in your college. But did you earn respect by writing a paper and demanding an "A"? Not a bit.
You earned respect by writing a paper (or taking an exam - English doesn't seem to be a field you excel in, given the poorly-worded posts you present) by actually writing a paper that your professors accepted.
And so on through your life. Do you think your customers would have accorded you any respect if you had simply said, "here's a product. You'll love it. Now shut up and give me your money"? No. You earned your respect by producing a product they wanted.
But here on this forum you haven't done that. You haven't even tried to earn any respect. You've never once tried to make an argument that your opponents - the ones whose respect is essential would accept.
And without that, you've got nothing.
We treat you as a clown, Dave. A performing circus monkey who - predictable as clockwork - trots out some outmoded argument we've refuted a thousand times. You're the court dwarf; the butt of derision and laughter. We refute your points so that you spring back up and say something even stupider.
And all because you've never even tried to earn any respect.
An intelligent person could do it. A Christian would do it.
pissed off their gods to the point of being inundated with Gods love.
lol. exactly.
I wonder if we could calculate the size of God's bladder from the historical records that do indicate a largish flood occured, that might have covered a certain amount of area around the Mediterranean.
Let's see, if the bulk of an area the size of Mesopotamia was completely covered in God's love...
hmm...
carry the one...
ahh, got it.
and before you ask what the answer is...
heck no, I ain't gonna tell you! Read about it in the book I'm gonna publish:
"The Explanatory Power of the Excretions of Godlike Entities: A Historical and Analytical Perspective."
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Deadman, don't forget sites like Meadowcroft Rock Shelter (PA) or Monte Verde (Chile)
I admire Tom Dillehay's work at Monte Verde. I was real skeptical at first, looking for organic detergents in the water that might have skewed the dates there (from samples sent to our labs) , etc., but...uh, it's the real deal. He had two plane loads of people flown down to check it out. Great work, even if Stuart Feidel, who I used to respect, is giving Tom some shit: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/clovis/
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Not to support any of AFD's idiotic conjecture but he can't be wrong about everything...
Very well, I withdraw my "not too bright" remark in the context of impugning afdave's business acumen.
However, when I read something like this...
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To think that people with PhD's think that chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas just because of their DNA truly staggers my imagination!
...I realize it still applies in the scientific arena.
As a slight deviation from thread relevance, I'd like to point out that what you are discussing is PRECISELY what YECs etc do.
They claim all of modern science is wrong, while (ironincally) trying to shore up their biblical babble with science.
Sorry ... in America "they" means multiple people ... not just one person. You were talking about YECs. I can read pretty well ... thanks for the concern though. On the other hand, maybe you are telling the truth and in your mind, all those nasty things you said were not meant to be applied to me ... hmmm ... in that case, I thank you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
[Scripture] also answers many questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil which evolutionary theory is utterly bankrupt to try and answer.
But, but, but, Galileo's theories are utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
Kepler's laws of planetary motion are utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
Einstein's theory of relativity is utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
The laws of aerodynamics are utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
Weather forecasting is utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
The semiconductors in my computer are utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
The spanner I used to stop my tap dripping is utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil...
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite He11 of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
(Psst, Are you watching closely, you might need to learn how to do what I am about to do.)
Oops, my bad, I assumed (quite wrongly) that you were talking about the specifics of my discussion with GoP, not the general points about YECs that I was making. This was entirely my mistake, I fucked up, I screwed the pooch, I made the booboo. I was reading with my brain in a different gear to what I was reading. Don't know how I managed it, what a maroon etc. Bad idea this posting when annoyed about an entirely different matter lark. I take it all back, you CAN read on occasion. I apologise without reservation.
(There now, not that hard to accomplish when one is wrong is it Davey?)
Louis
P.S. Sorry, but the general points about YECs in general, and especially as they apply to you in particular remain and are accurate. Brain was in correct gear when I posted that.
1. "I'm right and you are wrong". Faith and a personal relationship with the God of your choice ensures this. 2. When you have nothing to say, hurl insults-- but don't curse. Remember, you are superior by virtue of saying "stuff it" rather than "stick it up your ass." If others respond with standard anglo-saxon epithets, note it as a sign of their evil. 3. Regard and portray your own violent reactions -- whether physical, psychological, or verbal -- as defensive. Remember, YOU are a victim of ungodly secularists, liberals, and demons in human form. 4. Always see yourself and you personal actions as part of God's plans for the world. Recognise that you are part of Gods will for the betterment of mankind. 5. Be prepared at all times to avoid and bluster, particularly when backed into a corner in an argument 6. If you do err, remember, that's part of God's personal plan for you , not something for which you should apologise, retract or make amends for, except secretly to your God--unless you forgive on behalf of other people unconnected with you for whom you don't have that right anyhow 7.Profess humility but avoid the actual experience of it. 8.Refuse to take in information that differs from your own view and oppose all such information in simple ways (e.g. by viewing it as atheistic propaganda). Knowledge is bad, remember Adam and Eve! 9.Refuse to accept that reality is complex, and not merely black and white. 10. Remember that while others may have their personal beliefs, yours are infinitely superior because God says so
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
My eyes are reasonably good. I see they used an world-wide average neutron flux, when it is known that the neutron flux varies widely over geography and depth, and exposure to which certainly can vary over time. Those calculations are worthless.
They don't vary so much as to make a difference in this context JonF. We're talking about 1/13,000 of the mean pMC value for diamond! Show me evidence that what you say makes a difference. I'm betting you cannot.
I'm not saying that I have evidence of it making a difference, I'm saying that your support for your claim of it not making a diference is inadequate. I don't know where the 14C is coming from. I do know that the `4C level in coal correlates very well with the uranium content of teh surroundings, and that means something that any hypothesis you propose is going to have tro explain. I know of some possibilities, and as I've written many times, "we don't know is a possible scientific answer and is way ahead of your "it's magic".
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JonF...
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There is no evidence that the exposed surface area of the Earth has ever been significantly larger than it is today. There's lots of evidence that it's always been roughly the same while life's been around. Brown and the others did pull it out, but "thin air" is not what I'd characterize as the source. You obviously haven't studied submarine geology;
JonF ... just one example for you ... this was known way back in 1948 when you were but a wee chap (or maybe just a thought?) ... try Francis P. Shepard: Submarine Geology, (New York, Harper's, 1948), pp. 231-233. Talks about great submarine canyons which exist in great numbers around every continent of the world, the Hudson River Canyon being a great example. Or how about the Head of the Geology Dept. at Michigan Univ. way back in 1959 saying "Can we as seekers of truth, shut our eyes any longer to the obvious fact that large areas of sea floor have sunk vertical distances measured in miles?" (Kenneth Landes, "Illogical Geology," Geotimes, VOl. III, No. 6, Mar 1959. p. 19) You really are missing out, JonF, by not reading the "Genesis Flood" by Whitcomb and Morris. Come on. Spend the 20 bucks. It won't kill you.
None of those are evidence for those submarine canyons ever having been exposed to the air, nor are vertical motions evidence for such. Those canyons formed underwater ("crack" canyons are very different from erosion canyons), and those vertical motions started and finished underwater.
{ABE} I note that your references are from before plate tectonics was widely accepted or understood, and are therefore ipso facto obsolete on any questions of the motion of the Earth's surface. We know a lot more about such motions today than we did 50-60 years ago.
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JonF..
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Right. [Referring to Evo blindness to Flood evidence] And a wreckage of twisted metal with 18 wheels lodged in the middle of my living room is not evidence that a truck jumped the interstate and ran into my house! I see all you have left is irrelevancies.
No. It's actually quite relevant.
Really. Explain exactly how.
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JonF...
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Yeah, but you'll obviously fall for any twaddle that appears to support your preconceptions. You want to think that 0.00001% is "quite common", that's your right, but nobody with any breain funciuton is going to agree with you.
Galileo had a minority viewpoint too, my friend.
Yup, Davie-doodles, and they lauged at Bozo the Clown. Being laughed at is not evidence for correctness.
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OA...
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If I had never heard of the Bible but had unlimited time, money, and scientific resources to determine those ages, how would I do it?
I'd go all over the world searching for mounds that I could excavate. This has been done in the 20th century. Guess what they found? The earliest written records have been found in the Mesopotamian plain and they are dated at around 5500 BC.
Wrong agIn, Davie-poo. Look into the Chinese records.
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Now we just have to figure out how a flood could (1) produce water heated to 250 degrees C in the first stage; (2) produce high concentrations of lime or carbon monoxide; (4) produce dry regions greater than 500 degrees C for the second stage; (4) transport the organic materials (100X the current biomass, right?) between superheated limed regions; (5) not boil, bake, dissolve or poison all those created kinds that didn't "need" the ark in the process (not to mention Noah and his bioboat); and (6) not superheat the very planet itself.
Now you guys are getting somewhere! Keep asking these smart questions and you too will find the truth about the Flood! Maybe I won't even have to explain it to you!
We asked these smart questions years ago. We answered those smart questions years ago. We found the truth about the flood. It didn't happen.
There was some speculation a few years back that the day the Mediterranean spilled into what then became the Black Sea might have inspired some of these flood stories. I think Ballard - of Titanic fame - found the remains of inundated villages way under the current shoreline. Anyone up on this?
Also - I'm drawing a blank on the Roman/Greek version of the flood story. Can someone recall the protagonists' names - or the gist of the story?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
THE BOOK OF GENESIS: EYEWITNESS NEWS FROM THE DAWN OF TIME
The book of Genesis was originally written on tablets in the ancient script of the time by the patriarchs who were intimately concerned with the events related, and whose names are clearly stated. Moreover, Moses, the compiler and editor of the book, as we now have it, plainly directs attention to the source of his information.
I got very little resistance to this idea yesterday. OA and Deadman raised some valid points about how we cannot be dogmatic about Biblical chronologies. I agreed that the Creation might be dated as early as 7000 BC and the Flood might be as early as 5000 BC. This, however, does no damage to YEC Theory and my point yesterday about the eyewitness nature and originality of the Genesis record.
Again, many of the founders of modern science believed in a literal, historical Genesis record, and 20th century archaeology has proven them correct!
************************************************
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Arden...[quote]On the subject of Dave's unfinished business and his intemperate statements about language, I'd like to 'enter this into the record': a few weeks ago, when trying to show that the newness of writing 'proved' a Young Earth, he stated that all the Indians of North and South America originally had writing but later lost it. Naturally, he offered absolutely no evidence for this, and when I demanded he prove this statement he of course never replied.[/quote] You missed it, Arden. Deadman asked the same thing and I answered him about 5(?) pages ago. Here it is again ... it's quite short. ALL humans are descended from people who lived in the 'Cradle of Civilization' ... that is ... Mesopotamia. They all spoke one language and they all had a high level of civilization ... see Genesis 4. We know that these people could write from the earliest times. See yesterday's 'Book of Genesis' discussion. Conclusion: the ancestors of the N. Am. and S. Am 'Indians' used to have writing ability, but lost it over time.
Improvius...[quote]EDIT: I see now that I was wrong about Dave believing in a conspiracy per se. Rather, he believes that the vast majority of the world's scientists are wrong because they are so very full of hate. They need to prove that the Earth is billions of years old because they hate God. [/quote] Almost ... just substitute the word 'pride' for 'hate.' Pride was the original sin of Lucifer (Isaiah 14), and it continues to plague all of us to the present day.
Eric...[quote]What gives you the idea that we're miserable, Dave?[/quote] How could it not be miserable? You walk through life thinking that this world sure is a screwed up place ... look at all the poverty and crime and such ... then when you get old you think about dying and what are your thoughts then? Either you think death is the end of it all or you worry that the Fundies might be right and you might go to the hot place. The only enjoyment you have is jokes and parties and job enjoyment and learning and sports and the like--all very passing stuff. It gets old. I know. I've had all the pleasures this life can offer and it all gets old. I've had fast cars, fast girls and fast jets -- they get old. I've had poverty and I've had lots of money. There are advantages and disadvantages to both--strange but true. But as Solomon--the richest king of his time--said, "Vanity of vanities. All is Vanity." This is often why people drink. You are a created being, Eric. Created by the God of the Bible. And you will find no lasting fulfillment in this life until you admit that and find His purpose for your life.
I've done this and as a result, my life is fulfilled EVERY DAY!! I wake up in the morning excited about getting to my computer and sharing the wonderful truth about God and His Word! I'm excited to see my wife when she wakes up and comes to see me because she is on the same page as me. We are working together to raise up the next generation of productive, God-honoring kids. It's exciting to think that God just might use one of our kids to be the next Hudson Taylor whom God used to transform China, or the next John or Charles Wesley whom God used to basically save England, or the next Martin Luther who helped give Europe her freedom from Popery. My kids wake up and they are a joy to me. They love me and obey me and want to please me and they are such fun! As for how I will spend my time when I get done with my "God Hypothesis" here, I don't know what I will be doing next. I never know what my next "assignment" will be. God has always kept me guessing, but I know that it will be exciting. It always has been. And I tell you ... the really exciting thing is this ... God is going to make a new heaven and a new earth! He is going to restore the Creation to how it was in Eden! When you really get your head around the truth of that, you cannot help but walk around all day excited! How can the various troubles of life get you down for long if you know that this life will soon be over and a Perfect Existence is coming? And the wonderful thing is that it's REALLY going to happen! It's as verifiable as anything in science. I have proven to myself through painstaking study that there really is a God and the Bible really is his message to mankind and that the things that are predicted there will come to pass!
Eric...[quote]So now the scientists are just "trying to sound scientific," and it's the Bible that has the real "sciency-ness"? Nice try, Dave.
You know, the funny thing is, the vast, vast majority of Christians understand that the Bible is an excellent source of information on spiritual matters, but don't make the utterly bone-headed mistake of assuming it should be taken as a literal history of the universe. People who reject the stupidity and vapidity of YEC aren't "rejecting the Bible," Dave. They just know it's not intended to be a scholarly work on cosmology, astrophysics, chemistry, geology, paleontology, biology, chemistry, and plate tectonics. Only the truly deluded such as yourself make that mistake.[/quote] If those Christians you were talking about really followed the teachings of Christ as their moniker implies, then they would believe in a literal, 6-day Creation of the world and a literal, earth destroying Flood. Christ himself taught the literalness of these two events. So you need to ask yourself, 'Are those people really Christians?' Have you ever heard what I call 'The Scariest Verse in the Bible?'...[quote]Jesus said ... "Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!' (Matthew 7:22-23) [/quote] There are many people, Eric, who claim the name of Christ, but who are none of His. You are correct that the Bible was not intended to be a science text, but it was intended to be accurate where it describes the physical world ... and that, we find, it is.
Eric...[quote]Point to one piece of evidence you've supplied that the universe is "finely tuned."[/quote] You say I have given no evidence for this. What would you accept as evidence for it?
cj...[quote]In the mean time, can you guess who said this: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."?[/quote] Jefferson. To the Danbury Baptist Association. Now a bonus-bonus question for you ... do you know the context and the intent of the letter? I'll answer the question for you ...
The Danbury Baptists were concerned that the new constitution was not specific enough in preventing the government from interfering with religion. They said, "But sir, our constitution of government is not specific ... therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights." Jefferson's reply to them quoted above satisfied them because it was clear that the "wall of separation" was erected to keep government from intruding into religion, not to keep religion from being practiced in government as is it is erroneously interpreted today. The older courts understood this and reinforced it. Read Reynolds v. United States (1878) and Commonwealth v. Nesbit and Lindenmuller v. The People to see how early courts interpreted this letter. You will see that the modern interpretation was a completely novel thing beginning with the Everson case in 1947. Prior to that, the courts understood Jefferson's intent to keep the government out of the religion regulation business unless there were clearly identified acts which they named--human sacrifice, polygamy, incest, infanticide, etc. Such acts, even if perpetrated in the name of religion, would be stopped because they were subversive of good order. But the government was never to interfere with traditional religious practices outlined in "the Books of the Law and the Gospels"--whether public prayer, the use of Scriptures, etc.
You would know all this if you would read David Barton's books.
Mr. Christopher...[quote]speaking of morality and the bible, davey, let's talk about your god knocking up a 13 year old girl. And she was married at the time to a 73 year old. [/quote] What are you referring to?
Rilke...[quote]What evidence would convince you that you were wrong? What data would persuade you that YEC is not true?[/quote] Already been through this, but you were too busy blathering about child molestation at the time.
Improvius...[quote]As a follow-up, what kind of test would you perform to determine whether or not an object is older than 10,000 years? How about a test to see if an object were older than 1,000,000 years? 1,000,000,000 years?[/quote] There are not any truly reliable tests to determine the age of objects older than things for which we have written records. The reason is because all of them are subject to assumptions which we cannot be sure of. However, there are better and worse assumptions we can make. For instance, I think my assumptions regarding helium and zircons are better assumptions than yours regarding the isochron dating methods.
Eric...[quote]Why is it that your dates don't have error bars, Dave? Is it because they're made up out of thin air?[/quote]The dates come from the Masoretic text of the Bible. But there is some evidence that some names are left out of some of the genealogy tables. It is unknown how many are left out, but there are reasonable limits. So this is why I say that Creation is dated between 7000 and 4000 BC, and the Flood is dated between 5000 and 2300 BC. These are much smaller error numbers than you have to try to explain. You have to try to justify millions of years with errors numbering in the millions of years.
Eric...[quote]Nice try, Dave. Archaeology has nothing to say about dates millions of years in the past, but the Bible does. And the Bible is completely wrong on those dates, by multiple orders of magnitude. If the Bible had valid error bars, it would say things like, "fall from grace, 5,900 y, +/- 200,000 y."[/quote] Utter foolishness. The Bible says nothing of millions of years because this is pure speculation on your part. The only reason you need millions of years is to support your supposed evolutionary scenario. But the funny thing is ... millions of years doesn't even help you. Even billions of years would not help your scenario because no matter how much time you have, you're not going to transform a bacterium to a jellyfish (your example). The Bible does not deal in fairy tales, my friend, it deals in facts. Historically and scientifically verifiable facts.
Eric...[quote]It's flat-out impossible for the earth to be younger than the earliest written records,[/quote] No one said the earth is younger than written records. The earth is slightly older than written records. Earth is created, then plants and animals, then man, then written records ... see?
Eric...[quote]Astronomers have at least the beginnings of an understanding of how galaxies came to be, by reference to anisotropies in the CMB, theories of gravitational attraction and conservation of angular momentum which lead to accretion disks, and theories of galactic evolution that give some insight into the structure of galaxies today. [/quote] WAGs, Eric, purely WAGs.
Eric...[quote]And by the way, Dave, for what is not the first and certainly not the last time, evolution has nothing to do with theories of abiogenesis.[/quote] Yes. I have been told this. That is my point. You have absolutely no idea how life began and neither do I. But I at least have some clues about Someone who might possibly exist who might know how it began and Who might have had something to do with it.
Eric...[quote]It's not a hypothesis, Dave; it's a fact. Evolutionary biologists may not have a perfect understanding of the mechanisms driving common descent, and there may be some controversy as to the interrelatedness of different organisms, but to claim that it "flies in the face of everything we observe in science" is laughable.[/quote] Common descent is not a fact. It's a hypothesis, and a poor one. Yes, there are some tantalizing pieces to it, but the HUGE problem with it is that you cannot observe macroevolution changing even though you have tried--with fruit flies. It was an utter failure. Bacterial resistance is no help for your theory either. The chimp-human-gorilla comparisons you make are a complete joke. Only a scientist too proud to admit he is wrong is silly enough to say that humans and chimps are more closely related than gorillas and chimps. I've illustrated this for you in numerous, funny ways and you still don't get it.
Eric...[quote]Dave, your God Hypothesis amounts to "goddidit," which as has been explained to you a million times, explains nothing. It's completely devoid of any explanatory whatsoever. "Goddidtit" has all the explanatory power of saying "it happened."[/quote] When you take some medicine for an ailment that you have, can you explain how it works? No. You say "ThePharmaCompanyDidit." Now if you are so motivated, you could go and investigate how the Pharma Company makes various medicines and no doubt it would be interesting, but you probably are not going to do that. If you are like most people, you just take it on authority that the Pharma Company knows what it is doing and you just take the medicine.
Same situation with God and the World of Nature and YEC scientists. YECs cannot explain everything about the natural world. But they are trying to understand it as science progresses just like you are. We read Popular Science and Discover and National Geographic, just like you do. We would very much like to know how "Goddidit" but our current limited understanding of how He did it is not a reason to say He does not exist. This would comparable to saying that the Pharma Company doesn't exist because we don't understand how the medicine works.
Do you see?
Eric...[quote]To think that people with PhD's think that chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas just because of their DNA truly staggers my imagination!
I'm sorry to say this, Dave, but the reason it staggers your imagination is because, well, you're an idiot when it comes to science. You simply don't know enough about science to even understand the evidence, let alone critique it. [/quote] Why don't you come with me to Carrabba's and help me explain this to the manager? What you mean is 'I don't understand Evolution' and you are correct because no one can truly understand something that is so impossible and contradictory with reality.
Eric...[quote]On the other hand, I've provided evidence—gay marriage, anyone? abortion on demand, anyone?—that there is no universal moral code, and I cannot fail to point out that you never even responded to my post.[/quote] None of this refutes Lewis' argument. He covers this objection thoroughly. You might want to have a look at the actual book. It's cheap. You can even buy it in paperback or used. There are a lot of copies floating around in the world.
Eric...[quote]Let me ask you something, Dave: is it meaningful, for the purposes of determining ancestry, to talk about anything other than genetics? Why are you related to your mom, Dave? Is it for some other reason than your genetic relationship?[/quote] Within the limits of the 'Created Kind,' of course, the only thing that is meaningful is genetics. But when you try to fantasize that humans are in the same category as animals, then you miss the boat entirely by considering only genetics. Open your mind up.
Eric...[quote]You're genetically related to your grandfather, but not to your flight instructor, right? Why is that? Do you compare amount of hairiness, or taste in clothes, or regional accent to determine relatedness, Dave? What other criteria do you use to determine whether you're related to someone else? Are you more closely related to Steven Hawking or to Richard Dawkins? Are you equally related to both because your last name differs from each of them by the same number of letters?[/quote] Funny you should mention these things. There is yet another type of "relatedness" that the Bible talks about. Did you know that it's possible for two people from different families to be more closely related than members of their own physical family? The Bible speaks of the "New Birth" -- when a person believes God, he is said to be "born again' -- I'm sure you've heard the term. This is a real thing, Eric. God literally gives you a new spiritual life which you never had before. In this way, "born-again" people are more closely related to non-"born-again" people. You can read about this in the Gospel of John Chapter 3.
Eric...[quote]Dave, this is the part I don't get about your god. Is he so insecure about his creation, and workmanship thereof, that if it turns out that I don't believe he created it, I can't get into heaven? If I don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible, St. P is going to turn me away and send me to the elevator that only has a "down" button?[/quote] Jesus simply said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6). I don't understand completely WHY it is this way. But I've investigated the Bible enough to know that this stuff is for real. I think I understand a little bit, though. If you planned a nice big party, who would like to have in attendance? People who don't think you exist? People who have no interest in you? People who may resent you? People who hate your guts? No. You want people who like you to come. People who agree with you. People who believe in you. Your friends. Why would God be any different? If you don't think He exists and you don't want to be with Him, why would He force you to come to His 'party'? He won't. He'll let you have your own party with your own friends. The problem is, you have no idea how bad a party it will be without God in it. A party like this is called He11.
[quote]Why is it so important to your god that I believe that he, and he alone, is responsible for this rather bleak and inhospitable universe? I'd think he'd actually be kind of embarrassed about it. After all, as far as we know, the only place life can exist is on earth. Even if we buy your belief that the universe is only a few hundred thousand miles wide (just out of curiosity, Dave—how big do you think the universe is?), it's in a pretty small minority of that volume that life is even possible./[quote] Would it not be an insult to the giver of a fine party to give credit for the party to someone else? No YEC to my knowledge has ever said that the universe is only a few hundred thousand miles wide. Where did you get that looney idea?
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But even if your god thinks he did a bang-up job whipping up his little creation, why in the big wide world would my opinion matter to him? Why does he even care whether I believe in him? And if he does care so much (so much that he has built his own private torture chamber so he can punish me for my disbelief for all eternity), why did he try to hide the evidence so thoroughly?
Same as you care for your children. You care for your children, do you not? You want them to love you, do you not? You want them to choose right instead of wrong and have happy life, do you not? Why should it be any different with God and his children which He created?
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After all, only a tiny, tiny minority of human beings believes in the literal truth of the Bible. Let's be generous and say 100 million people worldwide believe your little red book is perfectly accurate. That's a bit less than two percent of the total. Your god hasn't done a very good job of advertising his workmanship. If he were a general contractor, he would have gone out of business ten billion, I mean 5,800, years ago.
I don't know what the proportions of saved vs. unsaved people (believers vs. unbelievers) are. But I do know that Jesus said "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Matthew 7:13-14)
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So, fifty years from now, when I'm lying on my deathbed, about to breathe my last, can you think of any reason why I should be worried that your god will be mad at me if I don't believe in the literal truth of the Bible?
I'm not sure what He will say about your ideas about the literal truth regarding Creation, but I can tell you what the Bible says about accepting or rejecting Him. I have given you that already. The Bible says that "Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness." (Romans 4:3). The whole book of Romans explains all this very well. John is a good book to read also. Here's a good link for an online Bible. http://www.biblegateway.com
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I think you're projecting, Dave. I believe you're projecting your own insecurities and doubts onto your god. I frankly would be astonished if your god gave a crap what I believed. If he were about to send me to the concentration camp for my lack of belief, I think I'd have to say, "Dude, why the insecurity? Is my opinion that important to you? And if so, why? Are you afraid that if I don't believe you created the entire universe, I'll think you're a failure or something? And if I did, why would you care what I think?"
Think what you want. It's your life. No one can make you believe or not believe anything.
OA...
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I know a dating technique that's accurate to a few percent up to 50,000 years, and has been independently verified by at least six different methods. Would you like me to explain it to you?
I know. Carbon 14. But we have already talked about how it is based upon assumptions which do not take the Flood into account. This is a big problem for the method and must be remedied. As for your 6 lines, my guess is that they have similar problems. We shall see!
Deadman...
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"The Date of Noah’s Flood by Dr J. Osgood".... "The art of the Biblical chronologist or Date-finder is a mystery to most, so let me explain how such a date can be found. Firstly, I will take a brief look at the assumptions or starting points which I will use....The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years. "
If he is not using Ussher explicity, then he is implicitly. In other words, he is using the same assumptions as Ussher.
Do you have any substantive objections to my assertion that the Book of Genesis is reliable eyewitness history?
Rilke...
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So, Dave, your entire response to the fact that you have yet to earn any respect is a pointless quip?
I have an interesting observation about respect. Would a crowd of teeny-boppers at a rock concert have respect for Pavarotti if he showed up and sang "O Solo Mio" at their rock concert? No. Is it because Pavarotti is not respectable? No. It is because of the audience. Same thing here, Rilke. Now you can legitimately ask why Pavarotti would do such a thing. And you can legitimately ask why AFDave would show up in front of this crowd. But we have been have over that already.
Steve & Chris...
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Maybe Wes will reenable polling, and we can see if anybody finds AFDave persuasive. Hmm... I wonder how that will turn out.
Probably about like 'Pavarotti and the Teeny-boppers' ...
Nebo...
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However, when I read something like this... Quote To think that people with PhD's think that chimps and humans are closer than chimps and gorillas just because of their DNA truly staggers my imagination!
...I realize it still applies in the scientific arena.
Or does it? Maybe you could be mistaken here too ... hmmmm ...
Nebo...
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But, but, but, Galileo's theories are utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil... [etc. etc.]
Your point I guess is that Scripture is bankrupt to answer scientific questions? Of course there are many it does not answer because that is not its primary purpose. But where it speaks about the natural world, it is accurate.
Lou FCD...
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Top Ten Signs You're a Fundamentalist Christian
10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
Not outraged. Just observe that the evidence does not support the notion of other gods.
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9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.
True. Because the evolution claim tries to eliminate the "made in the image of God" part. The Biblical truth of "our bodies are dirt" applies only to our bodies and is quite accurate.
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8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.
I don't laugh at them. I just claim they are wrong. But yes, God is a Triune God - weird, but true.
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7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" including women, children, and trees!
Thou shalt not kill never applied to God ... people are owned by Him ... He can do as He pleases with them. He has reasons for what He does which we do not understand. "Don't kill" also does not apply to governments or agents of gevernments. Have you noticed that? It also does not apply to the animal kingdom. It only applies to individual humans.
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6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.
What? Do you think the Spirit of God was somehow being immoral? Adultery laws, like murder laws only apply to humans, my friend, not God. Do you have some weird idea that the Holy Spirit somehow took on a man's body and slept with Mary?
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5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (few billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a few generations old.
You need to read my long 6/22 post (about noon) about your supposed "Bronze Age tribesmen."
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4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects - will spend Eternity in an infinite He11 of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most "tolerant" and "loving."
Would you think it unfair if a rich man invited the whole town to a party and only a few people showed up? Do you think it is unfair that many people were given fair warning about Hurricane Katrina and not everyone listened and evacuated?
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3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in "tongues" may be all the evidence you need to "prove" Christianity.
I don't go for Benny Hinn type side shows.
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2 - You define 0.01% as a "high success rate" when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% FAILURE was simply the will of God.
You have some really un-Biblical ideas about prayer.
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1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
Wanna bet?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But where it speaks about the natural world, it is accurate.
Ok. So what, if anything, does the bible tell us about snakes?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
And what does it say about curing Leprosy? Always a favorite....
And btw, davey, you keep claiming that archaeology has confirmed the historical accuracy of the Bible. You could not be more wrong, as has been repeatedly and thoroughly pointed out to you. But you keep lying about it -- is this a requirement for Christians, or optional behavior?
I know. Carbon 14. But we have already talked about how it is based upon assumptions which do not take the Flood into account. This is a big problem for the method and must be remedied. As for your 6 lines, my guess is that they have similar problems. We shall see!
AFDave, please clarify your arguments against C14 dating for me
You claim C14 is not reliable for dates before the Flood, but is OK for dates after the Flood. Is that correct?
You claim the ratio of C14/C12 was from 100X to 500X lower before the Flood than after, but you don’t know precisely much lower. Is that correct?
You claim the decay rate from C14->C12 was substantially faster before the Flood than after, but you don’t know how much faster. Is that correct?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Would you think it unfair if a rich man invited the whole town to a party and only a few people showed up?
Not at all. The unfair part would be if the rich man then tortured everyone who didn't show up for all eternity. Its a small distinction, but somewhat valid, I think.
-------------- "Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburgers." Abbie Hoffman
I know. Carbon 14. But we have already talked about how it is based upon assumptions which do not take the Flood into account. This is a big problem for the method and must be remedied. As for your 6 lines, my guess is that they have similar problems. We shall see!
AFDave, please clarify your arguments against C14 dating for me
You claim C14 is not reliable for dates before the Flood, but is OK for dates after the Flood. Is that correct?
You claim the ratio of C14/C12 was from 100X to 500X lower before the Flood than after, but you don’t know precisely much lower. Is that correct?
You claim the decay rate from C14->C12 was substantially faster before the Flood than after, but you don’t know how much faster. Is that correct?
Let me make it easy for you.
If any data somehow conflicts with biblical timelines, it's because:
1) Your data is in error because you didn't figure in Flood changes.
or
2) Either consciously or unconsciously, you have fudged the data so as to disprove the existence of God.
Dave allows for no other option to explain conflicting data. The 3rd possibility, which would be that the conflicting data is correct and the bible is in error, is not a possible outcome of Dave's mental filter. It is, therefor, impossible to convince Dave that the bible is not literally accurate in all scientific matters.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You asked if I had objections to genesis being accurate history, yes, I gave them to you already, and you refused to deal with them. As to your claim that you "answered" my questions about Amerinds losing written languages, you didn't do that either. Making a claim based on no evidence at all is not an "answer."
Let's use an example: if I said that your ancestors originated in Antarctica and I pointed to the popol vuh and said, "see, it says you emerged from a cold cave"...that doesn't ANSWER any questions you may have asked me about EVIDENCE, it merely points to an unsubstantiated assertion.
Your "response" to my question about showing me evidence that MY ancestors HAD writing and lost it...is " look at Genesis" Well, as I pointed out, I don't consider the mythos of Bronze Age goatherders to be a reliable guide to human history PRIOR to other verifiable points in time-- like the period of the Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian/Egyptian king/ruler lists.
I gave you substantive arguments about the "order" of creation in genesis...like plants before the sun, land organisms before those in the seas/oceans, and you never responded. I mentioned the lack of evidence for the "global flood, " the exodus tales, the plagues of egypt, the lack of any evidence for Solomon, who allegedly " ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt" yet was not mentioned by ANYONE in any king/ruler lists, nor is there any archaeological evidence of this alleged empire. Nor is there any archaeological evidence to support your claims of a mythical Tower of Babel near which all humans resided. In fact, all available data says your claim is so laughably false as to be ludicrous.
I gave you data on the Natufians that predate your extended date of the creation of the earth, and by the way, dave? I asked you to BACK YOUR CLAIM about YOUR dating of the flood, biblically. SHOW me how you arrived at your date. Because you are either contradicting the bible or the bible is in error. One or the other. As to your false claim that Ussher is "implicitly" used in deriving the date year of the flood by AIG's "Dr. Osgood", that's b-s, too...as I said, Ussher was not the first or the last to look at dates and lifespans and genealogies to derive a date of the "flood" year. Now, back your claims, Dave.
I don't view the book of genesis as a reliable historical record of anything , dave, least of all your claims...if you have ANY evidence to support the claims you made, present it, you sure as shit haven't given ANY evidence at all on the validity of your claims about babel, or the flood, or anything really, in genesis.Back your claims, baby boy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I have an interesting observation about respect. Would a crowd of teeny-boppers at a rock concert have respect for Pavarotti if he showed up and sang "O Solo Mio" at their rock concert? No. Is it because Pavarotti is not respectable? No. It is because of the audience. Same thing here, Rilke. Now you can legitimately ask why Pavarotti would do such a thing. And you can legitimately ask why AFDave would show up in front of this crowd. But we have been have over that already.
So AFDave sees himself as a scientific Pavarotti, singing his technical arias in front of us scientifically illiterate bumpkins who just can't appreciate his genius.
You owe me a can of monitor cleaner for that one Dave.
Hey Dave, explain to me again how if a book mentions an actual real-world place, that means that every event described in the book is literally true.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
[quote=afdave,June 23 2006,11:04] Eric...[quote]Point to one piece of evidence you've supplied that the universe is "finely tuned."[/quote] You say I have given no evidence for this. What would you accept as evidence for it?[/quote] That's not the point, Dave. As I pointed out about 30 pages ago, there is, in fact, evidence of a finely-tuned cosmos. As I also pointed out 30 pages ago, "fine tuning" is simply not a good argument for the existence of God. But you have not presented any evidence of fine tuning. You think you have, but you haven't. This is because after all our instruction in the matter, you still do not understand the distinction between "evidence" and "argument."
[quote]I hate this board's inability to keep track of quote marks[/quote]
[quote]Eric...[quote]Why is it that your dates don't have error bars, Dave? Is it because they're made up out of thin air?[/quote]The dates come from the Masoretic text of the Bible. But there is some evidence that some names are left out of some of the genealogy tables. It is unknown how many are left out, but there are reasonable limits. So this is why I say that Creation is dated between 7000 and 4000 BC, and the Flood is dated between 5000 and 2300 BC. These are much smaller error numbers than you have to try to explain. You have to try to justify millions of years with errors numbering in the millions of years.[/quote] How do you figure, Dave? Most radiometric dating techniques have error bars of a few percent. By contrast, your error bars, according to the figures you just gave,are more like 50%, and for much more recent dates!
Do you understand the difference between "precision" and "accuracy" Dave?
[quote]Eric... [quote]Nice try, Dave. Archaeology has nothing to say about dates millions of years in the past, but the Bible does. And the Bible is completely wrong on those dates, by multiple orders of magnitude. If the Bible had valid error bars, it would say things like, "fall from grace, 5,900 y, +/- 200,000 y."[/quote] Utter foolishness. The Bible says nothing of millions of years because this is pure speculation on your part. The only reason you need millions of years is to support your supposed evolutionary scenario.[/quote] Dave, do geologists need millions (or billions) of years for anything? No. They don't need any particular date. They get a date based on the evidence, and all the evidence points in the same direction.
Why do cosmologists need a particular age, Dave? They're not trying to prove evolution. They're trying to explain the evidence they see in their telescopes.
[quote]But the funny thing is ... millions of years doesn't even help you. Even billions of years would not help your scenario because no matter how much time you have, you're not going to transform a bacterium to a jellyfish (your example). [/quote]
Okay, Dave, put your money where your mouth is. Show me your argument that it's impossible for a bacterium to evolve into anything else. Show me the mechanism that prevents it. You can't, because there isn't one. Your entire argument on this point boils down to your personal incredulity.
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Eric...
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Astronomers have at least the beginnings of an understanding of how galaxies came to be, by reference to anisotropies in the CMB, theories of gravitational attraction and conservation of angular momentum which lead to accretion disks, and theories of galactic evolution that give some insight into the structure of galaxies today.
WAGs, Eric, purely WAGs.
And you know this how, Dave? You've already admitted you haven't even researched the issue. You're one of the few people I've ever met who can dismiss evidence you haven't even looked at yet.
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Eric...
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And by the way, Dave, for what is not the first and certainly not the last time, evolution has nothing to do with theories of abiogenesis.
Yes. I have been told this. That is my point. You have absolutely no idea how life began and neither do I. But I at least have some clues about Someone who might possibly exist who might know how it began and Who might have had something to do with it.
Actually, Dave, I do have a clue as to how life might have arisen, and so do people who work in that area. No one knows exactly how it did happen, but there are definitely working hypotheses as to how it might have arisen. You, on the other hand, have absolutely no idea whatsoever how life might have arisen. None at all.
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Eric...
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It's not a hypothesis, Dave; it's a fact. Evolutionary biologists may not have a perfect understanding of the mechanisms driving common descent, and there may be some controversy as to the interrelatedness of different organisms, but to claim that it "flies in the face of everything we observe in science" is laughable.
Common descent is not a fact. It's a hypothesis, and a poor one. Yes, there are some tantalizing pieces to it, but the HUGE problem with it is that you cannot observe macroevolution changing even though you have tried--with fruit flies. It was an utter failure. Bacterial resistance is no help for your theory either. The chimp-human-gorilla comparisons you make are a complete joke. Only a scientist too proud to admit he is wrong is silly enough to say that humans and chimps are more closely related than gorillas and chimps. I've illustrated this for you in numerous, funny ways and you still don't get it.
You can deny common descent all you want, Dave, but everyone here knows you're wrong, and they know why, too. You've never read and understood Theobald, which I know for a fact, because you've never leveled a single critique at anything Theobald says. You merely skimmed the first paragraphs and then gave up. You don't even read what YECs have to say about common descent!
Your complaint that no one has ever witnessed macroevolution is just as mentally retarded now as it was the first time you brought it up. It takes a minimum of a billion and a half years to get from a bacterium to a jellyfish. Does it surprise you that no one has witnessed a process that takes a billion years happen in the lab?
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Eric...
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Dave, your God Hypothesis amounts to "goddidit," which as has been explained to you a million times, explains nothing. It's completely devoid of any explanatory whatsoever. "Goddidtit" has all the explanatory power of saying "it happened."
When you take some medicine for an ailment that you have, can you explain how it works? No. You say "ThePharmaCompanyDidit." Now if you are so motivated, you could go and investigate how the Pharma Company makes various medicines and no doubt it would be interesting, but you probably are not going to do that. If you are like most people, you just take it on authority that the Pharma Company knows what it is doing and you just take the medicine.
But Dave, you cannot, even in principle, try to investigate how "goddidit." It's simply un-doable. Which is why saying "goddidit" is exactly equivalent to saying "it happened."
On the other hand, if I wanted to know how a particular drug worked, I could go out and research it. In principle, I could perform the experiments themselves. Can you, even in principle, perform experiments to figure out how "goddidit"? No.
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Same situation with God and the World of Nature and YEC scientists. YECs cannot explain everything about the natural world. Do you see?
That's the understatement of the century. YECs cannot explain anything about the world. Saying "goddidit" is the same thing as saying "we have absolutely no idea how it happened." Not only that, YECers don't even care how goddidit. Thinking they know goddidit is more than enough to satisfy their curiosity.
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Eric...
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On the other hand, I've provided evidence—gay marriage, anyone? abortion on demand, anyone?—that there is no universal moral code, and I cannot fail to point out that you never even responded to my post.
None of this refutes Lewis' argument. He covers this objection thoroughly. You might want to have a look at the actual book. It's cheap. You can even buy it in paperback or used. There are a lot of copies floating around in the world.
Dave, if people have disagreements over moral issues, how can there possibly be a "universal moral code"? There can't be. Q.E.D. I'm not talking about people not being able to live up to a moral code; I'm saying they're disagreeing over what is and what is not moral. Q.E.D.
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Eric...
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Let me ask you something, Dave: is it meaningful, for the purposes of determining ancestry, to talk about anything other than genetics? Why are you related to your mom, Dave? Is it for some other reason than your genetic relationship?
Within the limits of the 'Created Kind,' of course, the only thing that is meaningful is genetics. But when you try to fantasize that humans are in the same category as animals, then you miss the boat entirely by considering only genetics. Open your mind up.
Dave, explain to me what other features other than genes are meaningful in determining if two people are related. Now, tell me what features are meaningful in determining if two organisms are related. Color? Size? Taste? Or are you saying the relatedness outside of "kinds" is a meaningless concept? Well, Linneaus didn't think so, and he was a creationist.
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Eric...
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You're genetically related to your grandfather, but not to your flight instructor, right? Why is that? Do you compare amount of hairiness, or taste in clothes, or regional accent to determine relatedness, Dave? What other criteria do you use to determine whether you're related to someone else? Are you more closely related to Steven Hawking or to Richard Dawkins? Are you equally related to both because your last name differs from each of them by the same number of letters?
Funny you should mention these things. There is yet another type of "relatedness" that the Bible talks about. Did you know that it's possible for two people from different families to be more closely related than members of their own physical family? The Bible speaks of the "New Birth" -- when a person believes God, he is said to be "born again' -- I'm sure you've heard the term. This is a real thing, Eric. God literally gives you a new spiritual life which you never had before. In this way, "born-again" people are more closely related to non-"born-again" people. You can read about this in the Gospel of John Chapter 3.
And the point of all this is what, Dave? How many times do we have to point out to you that, as far as we godless heathens are concerned, your bible is authority for exactly nothing. Sure, it's got some great tales, and it has some insights into spirituality, but other than that it's worthless crap. There's nothing more tedious that some religious crackpot spouting chapter and verse from the Bible to prove something about the real world. As far as I'm concerned your Bible has no more merit as an authority on anything than "Alice in Wonderland" does.
In other words, Dave, the only measure of relatedness that has any meaning in the real world is genetics. Nothing else means anything.
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After all, as far as we know, the only place life can exist is on earth. Even if we buy your belief that the universe is only a few hundred thousand miles wide (just out of curiosity, Dave—how big do you think the universe is?), it's in a pretty small minority of that volume that life is even possible.
No YEC to my knowledge has ever said that the universe is only a few hundred thousand miles wide. Where did you get that looney idea?
Well, given how lunatic your ideas in general are, Dave, it wouldn't surprise me to discover you think the universe is a few hundred miles wide. After all, your compatriot GoP, who is also a young-earth compatriot and biblical literalist, seems to believe, to the extent you can pin him down to a figure, that the universe is 4.5 ly wide (which isn't much less ridiculous). Since you've never favored us with your opinion on the subject, I believe I'm entitled to make any assumption whatsoever as to your beliefs, since in general there's no rhyme or reason to them anyway.
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Think what you want. It's your life. No one can make you believe or not believe anything.
Sure they can. If they can back up what they want me to believe with solid evidence and persuasive argument. Not to put too fine a point on it, you have provided neither.
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OA...
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I know a dating technique that's accurate to a few percent up to 50,000 years, and has been independently verified by at least six different methods. Would you like me to explain it to you?
I know. Carbon 14. But we have already talked about how it is based upon assumptions which do not take the Flood into account.
This is what we call assuming what you're trying to prove, Dave. You've provided no evidence that your flood ever happened, but you think anything that doesn't take your flood (which never happened) into account must be wrong.
One last time, Dave: where's your evidence for your flood?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
He's gone back to his tactic of: "wait until the page fills up with questions/assertions/statements of various kinds, then cherry-pick ones you want to respond to"
Also , re his claim of being a "Pavarotti"...this isn't the first time gasbag dave has compared himself to others who he apparently admires...his comparing himself to Newton, Maxwell, and recently, Galileo come to mind...and what is this deal with referring to yourself in the third person, Dave?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I don't know where the 14C is coming from. I do know that the `4C level in coal correlates very well with the uranium content of teh surroundings, and that means something that any hypothesis you propose is going to have tro explain. I know of some possibilities, and as I've written many times, "we don't know is a possible scientific answer and is way ahead of your "it's magic".
Well, at least you acknowledge that you do not know where it is coming from. Good. I of course cannot say decisively either, but saying that maybe it came from the pre-Flood atmosphere is not appealing to magic. It's appealing to a hypothesis which has much support from the 'millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.' I'm sorry if you do not think that is good evidence for a Global Flood. I do.
jonF...
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None of those are evidence for those submarine canyons ever having been exposed to the air, nor are vertical motions evidence for such. Those canyons formed underwater ("crack" canyons are very different from erosion canyons), and those vertical motions started and finished underwater.
And your support for this idea is?
JonF...
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{ABE} I note that your references are from before plate tectonics was widely accepted or understood, and are therefore ipso facto obsolete on any questions of the motion of the Earth's surface. We know a lot more about such motions today than we did 50-60 years ago.
Probably uniformitarians such as yourself did not understand plate tectonics well until later, but Morris and Whitcomb understood it somewhat and talked about in "The Genesis Flood" (p. 271)
JonF...
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Being laughed at is not evidence for correctness.
You are correct, but NOT being laughed at is also not evidence for correctness. Laughing or not laughing is irrelevant, but some people here seem to think that it is. They try to say 'Dave, look how many people laugh at you and what a minority viewpoint you have. Therefore, you are wrong.' This is faulty reasoning and Galileo is a good example of this faulty reasoning.
JonF...
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Wrong agIn, Davie-poo. Look into the Chinese records.
No, Jonny-poo. China was not founded until AFTER the Tower of Babel. Long chronology - 4000 BC or so maybe. Short chronolgy - 2100 BC or so. Here's Wiki for you ...
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The first dynasty according to Chinese sources was the Xia Dynasty, but its references have traditionally been believed to be legendary. Until scientific excavations were made at early bronze-age sites at Erlitou in Henan Province, it was difficult to separate myth from reality in regard to the existence of the Xia Dynasty. But since then, archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the possible existence of the Xia dynasty at the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts.
However, the first reliable historical dynasty is the Shang, who settled along the Huang He River from eastern China, dating from the 18th to the 12th centuries BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China
JonF..
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We asked these smart questions years ago. We answered those smart questions years ago. We found the truth about the flood. It didn't happen.
Your eyes are closed.
Improv...
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Ok. So what, if anything, does the bible tell us about snakes?
Why do you ask? Can you elaborate?
Shirley...
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And what does it say about curing Leprosy? Always a favorite....
And btw, davey, you keep claiming that archaeology has confirmed the historical accuracy of the Bible. You could not be more wrong, as has been repeatedly and thoroughly pointed out to you.
Wanna give me some examples of how I am wrong? Leprosy? Jesus cured some. What else do you want to know?
OA...
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You claim C14 is not reliable for dates before the Flood, but is OK for dates after the Flood. Is that correct?
No. My claim is that conventional Carbon 14 dates are too old because they do not account for pre-Flood atmospheric ratios.
OA...
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You claim the ratio of C14/C12 was from 100X to 500X lower before the Flood than after, but you don’t know precisely much lower. Is that correct?
That is correct. It is difficult to know precisely. But we can make some educated guesses. So it comes down to your guesses vs. our guesses. Who can justify their guesses better? I think we can, of course.
OA...
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You claim the decay rate from C14->C12 was substantially faster before the Flood than after, but you don’t know how much faster. Is that correct?
No. I don't claim this.
MrsPeng...
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Not at all. The unfair part would be if the rich man then tortured everyone who didn't show up for all eternity. Its a small distinction, but somewhat valid, I think.
Do you consider that the National Weather Service tortured the people who they warned but who chose to stay in New Orleans? I don't think they did. They simply warned of something inevitable and the people chose to not heed the warning. God simply warns people of something inevitable, but He does not force people to avoid it. To do so would violate the whole free will thing. In other words, God wants to 'throw a really good party' for His kids. He invites everyone to come and warns that NOT coming to the party will be a really bad deal for you. But He's a gentleman and doesn't force anyone to come to his party.
Improv...
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The 3rd possibility, which would be that the conflicting data is correct and the bible is in error, is not a possible outcome of Dave's mental filter.
Of course the Bible COULD be in error, but no one has yet shown me one. Maybe you could be the first?
Deadman...
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YOu asked if I had objections to genesis being accurate history, yes, I gave them to you already, and you refused to deal with them.
You raised the long/short chronology issue and I dealt with it easily. As for the Natufians (??), if your dating them with C14, then that is a no-brainer. Bad assumptions. Already covered. If not, how are you arriving at your dates?
Deadman...
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Your "response" to my question about showing me evidence that MY ancestors HAD writing and lost it...is " look at Genesis" Well, as I pointed out, I don't consider the mythos of Bronze Age goatherders to be a reliable guide to human history PRIOR to other verifiable points in time-- like the period of the Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian/Egyptian king/ruler lists.
Then you need to re-read my 6/22 post on the Book of Genesis. If you think Genesis is just "mythos of Bronze Age goatherders" then you are hopelessly lost in error. I copied off your Solomon and Creation order and Tower of Babel claims and I will look into them in the proper sequence.
OA...
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So AFDave sees himself as a scientific Pavarotti, singing his technical arias in front of us scientifically illiterate bumpkins who just can't appreciate his genius. You owe me a can of monitor cleaner for that one Dave.
You especially fit the role of scientific 'Teeny-bopper' well.
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Hey Dave, explain to me again how if a book mentions an actual real-world place, that means that every event described in the book is literally true.
Didn't say that. I just said that no one has shown me an error yet, so why should I believe the book is false? Maybe you could be the first and make a name for yourself.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave: if you call anyone here a "scientific teeny-bopper" then I can justly call you a scientific zygote. Your ability to handle science is virtually nil.
Your claim about China from wikipedia is a point in case, Dave. Dynasty =/= first evidence of chinese civilization, dolt.
You claim
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Of course the Bible COULD be in error, but no one has yet shown me one. Maybe you could be the first?
Sure, Dave, I just gave you some. And the fact is that you have never shown how you arrived at you r new dates for the flood, biblically. The bible GIVES a specific date range that is false, baby boy. This alone shows error in the bible.
As to your claim that you have already somehow shown 14C dating to be "false" that's another pile of Dave. You've made an assertion about large amounts of organic material , pointed to chalk bed and organics that accumulated over millions of years, then say " there's my proof" well, that's not good enough, baby boy. Besides which, you were given dating on the Catal Huyuk site that's from dendro, and there are multiple other sites in the region dated by non-radiometric methods, or directly tied to non-radiometric methods, such as corals, varves, stalactites/stalagmites/flowstone/ice cores. Which you avoided like the plague.
As to your claim ( again) that you actually answered what I asked about EVIDENCE that amerinds had written languages and lost them, you continue to point to genesis as if that proves anything. No, it doesn't...and you earlier wanted to make a bet with someone about your knowledge of the bible? well, back your claims with that, baby. Show me your evidence about your date for the flood, or your claims about Babel being verified, or your claim that the bible is inerrant in terms of what I listed earlier. ####, I KNOW you can't come close to doing that. I'll take your bet, Dave, you're just a windbag...DEAL WITH SUPPORTING YOUR CLAIMS...not JUST by pointing to the bible but showing how the bible is supported IN SPECIFIC to the QUESTIONS RAISED . When I say that I am not impressed with the mythos of bronze-age goatherders, I can back what I say, Dave...try backing your claims
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Here's a question, Dave. Early on in this thread you said you believed that the evidence convinced you the Bible is correct absolutely, rather than the other way around. My question is, which evidences for a young earth/implications of a young earth with flood disaster would you believe if you had never even heard of the Bible? Obviously it can't be all of them; for example, your only "evidence" for N. American Amerinds having written language is based upon the Bible.
As an aside, in your opinion (since churches disagree on this matter), if one dies never having heard of the Bible or God, do they go to ####?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Of course the Bible COULD be in error, but no one has yet shown me one. Maybe you could be the first?
This isn't possible because your brain simply won't accept any such data. As you've clearly demonstrated, you will attribute any conflicting data to human error: either somebody forgot the flood, or they're trying to disprove God.
The mental shield you have constructed is impenetrable. There is no conceiveable way to convince you of anything that goes against a strict, literal interpretation of the bible.
Think of it this way:
Assume, for a second, the Earth really IS billions of years old, and some brilliant scientist had come up with a conclusive test to demonstrate that age.
Now, how would you be able to tell whether or not this scientist had really discovered the truth? How would you be able to discern if he was correct. or if he was deluding himself, or if he were simply some sort of con artist? The fact is, Dave, that there would simply be no way whatsoever for the scientist to convince YOU that his old earth theory was true.
So you see, whether you realize it or not, your "challenge" is utterly disingenuous. It is impossible to convince you of biblical inerrancy because your mental constructs simply won't allow for that possibility.
You can answer the question about snakes if you want, or simply ignore it like you do so many other questions here. I am merely proposing another test of biblical inerrancy for my own amusement. I have no doubt that you will remain unaffected by it, whether you respond or not.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Thou shalt not kill never applied to God ... people are owned by Him ... He can do as He pleases with them. He has reasons for what He does which we do not understand.
I suppose for you this "explains" why an ALL-LOVING, ALL-GOOD omnipotent, omniscient god...ordered the deaths of little babies in the Old Testament?
When I brought that up earlier in this thread, you invoked predestination, saying the babies were GOING to be so evil that god just ordered them to die by the sword.
By the way, Dave, is causing pain to a child by stabbing them to death with a sword...bad?
Is this why the bible says in at least 3 places that god creates evil?
The Bible says in another three places that the son shall not suffer for the evil of the father, Dave...yet you conveniently overlook that when you explain away the violent deaths of babes in arms--deaths ordered by God, Dave, if the bible is "all-true"
So let's recap...An all-good god orders the painful violent deaths of babies that have themselves done no wrong, and cannot be held responsible for the sins of the fathers and unless you invoke the claim of PREDESTINATION ( which is antithetical to Christian precepts) .... your only explanation is to shrug and say " well, the bible must be right?" No wonder you refer to yourself in the third person and compare yourself insanely to Newton and Maxwell and Galileo, then claim that everyone around you is wrong and you're capable of overturning all of science by pointing to the bible and saying " the book, the book!!"...
Well, there's a story about another guy that did that..FitzRoy, who was captain of the ship that Darwin sailed on...The Beagle...he appeared during the Huxley-Wilberforce debates, marching up and down the aisles holding up the bible and shouting " the book, the book!!"
Later, this man who defended slavery ( against Darwin) and all manner of evil in the bible, this "good christian" ...went home and cut his own throat.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Well, at least you acknowledge that you do not know where it is coming from. Good. I of course cannot say decisively either, but saying that maybe it came from the pre-Flood atmosphere is not appealing to magic. It's appealing to a hypothesis which has much support from the 'millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.' I'm sorry if you do not think that is good evidence for a Global Flood. I do.
Dave, if I go to the dump, and see layer upon layer of garbage, laid down in strata, and I see that the oldest strata have newspapers with dates in the 1970s, and in the topmost layers I see newspapers with dates from last week, what kind of idiot would I have to be to suppose that all of that garbage was deposited all at once in some sort of garbage-generating catastrophe?
But that's what you're trying to get us to believe, Dave. You're using evidence that there's a lot of dead organic matter buried underground to persuade us that all that organic matter was deposited all at once. Your argument simply doesn't make any sense, even if we couldn't find fossils in those deposits and use them to figure out how many millions of years it took to lay them down.
Also, I should probably fix JonF's typography (if I may). He probably should have said "I don't know where that C14 came from," which is no doubt accurate, since no one knows exactly where it came from. But your claim that the presence of any C14 at all is proof of recent provenance is completely indefensible, until you have excluded all possibility of alternative explanations. This is especially crucial for your argument, Dave, because your argument is contradicted by all of the other evidence. All of it.
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JonF...
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{ABE} I note that your references are from before plate tectonics was widely accepted or understood, and are therefore ipso facto obsolete on any questions of the motion of the Earth's surface. We know a lot more about such motions today than we did 50-60 years ago.
Probably uniformitarians such as yourself did not understand plate tectonics well until later, but Morris and Whitcomb understood it somewhat and talked about in "The Genesis Flood" (p. 271)
And how is that possible, Dave? Plate tectonics didn't even have any observational support or theoretical underpinning until the mid-sixties, so if Morris and Whitcomb were talking about it before then (and they weren't), they were talking out of their asses without any reference to supporting data at all.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Good Lord! I have avoided this thread for the last month or so, and coming back I see that afdave is still going and going... He must be trying to overcome the Uncommonly Dense thread.
-------------- Overwhelming Evidence: Apply directly to the forehead.
Do you consider that the National Weather Service tortured the people who they warned but who chose to stay in New Orleans? I don't think they did. They simply warned of something inevitable and the people chose to not heed the warning. God simply warns people of something inevitable, but He does not force people to avoid it. To do so would violate the whole free will thing. In other words, God wants to 'throw a really good party' for His kids. He invites everyone to come and warns that NOT coming to the party will be a really bad deal for you. But He's a gentleman and doesn't force anyone to come to his party.
Terrible analogy. The National Weather Service wasn't responsible for Katrina, and could do nothing to stop it from happening. God, supposedly, can do as he pleases. He sets the rules, and determines every person's fate. (Or is the Great White Throne of Judgement simply a sham?)
A better analogy would be to say that the Mafia was throwing a really great party for everybody with the tacit understanding that if you don't show up things will go really bad for you. The problem is that some people never received their invitations, some got garbled messages and turned up at the wrong place or the wrong time, and some received their invites from known liars and didn't believe them.
But no matter the reason, those who failed to show up got a visit from heavies wielding baseball bats and tommy guns to mete out their punishment. Oh, and by the way, the Mafia Boss is such a gentleman, and would never force anyone to attend his party, but woe betied you if you disrespect him by not turning up.
Q: What's the last thing to go through Mr Christopher's mind before the 18 wheeler that jumped the median smashes into his car? A: Oh my Goodness! AFDave was right!! Hello? God? Are you there?
What up, dave? Are you afraid that your veiled threat of "I hope you recant on your DEATHBEDS, when you DIE of DEATH" doesn't work that well? Or are you just losing your cool?
Pathetic.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
You know, every once in a while I have to step back for a moment and get some perspective on how utterly absurd what AF Dave wants us to believe really is.
I was visiting my parents a few weeks ago, and I was telling my mom, who while not particularly religious, definitely believes in a god who created the universe and is concerned about what happens in it—I was telling her about our own AF Dave, explaining that he believes that the Bible is literally true and that God created the universe in six literal days.
She couldn't believe it. She simply couldn't imagine how anyone could be so idiotic as to actually believe such a thing.
And really, Dave. God created the entire universe in six days? Do you know how mentally-retarded that sounds? Even if you really only claim that he created the earth and all living things on it in six literal days…do you realize how farcical that sounds? Every once in a while, I step back and think about how astoundingly gullible someone would have to be to believe such utter claptrap.
I find it especially amusing when Dave quotes scripture to prove some point ("But it says right here in the Bible that—"), or when he utters such complete inanities as claiming that people who are "born again" are somehow more closely related than siblings who aren't born again. Come on, Dave—not everyone is as blinded by their faith as you are. As far as I'm concerned, people who are "born again" are deluding themselves, and until you can show some actual evidence otherwise, I'm entitled to ignore any such claims.
But for the love of God, Dave, could you be any more vacuous? Your inability to see any evidence that contradicts your stupid book o' myths (and, oh is there a lot of evidence of that) makes you say the most astoundingly vapid things. All that coal, all that crude oil, and all those chalk deposits happened in a year or so why? Because your Bible tells you so? Give me a break.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dear f-ed up DaveTard2: " You're going to die and MY god is going to torture for eternity for DOUBT " makes your god look insane, evil, selfish, childish, insecure and petty.
You think an all-loving god thinks as evilly as you? I prefer to think that the Bible is completely wrong than to believe the existence of such an ugly little god.
The part that disgusts me at your true nature is this: I'd bet a great deal of money you direct this same nasty little strongarm blackmail tactic... towards tiny kids that can't defend themselves against your terroristic shit.
Much like in the instance where you called my relatives "devolved," Dave -- be glad you're not in my arm's reach. Sanctimonious hypocritical lying power-mongering egotistic scumbag.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I spoke to the tooth-fairy today. She told me she was tired of god and his little band of terrorists, so she kicked his ass and threw him in his own ####.
I know it's true because the tooth-fairy doesn't lie.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
In the mean time, can you guess who said this: "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."?
Jefferson. To the Danbury Baptist Association. Now a bonus-bonus question for you ... do you know the context and the intent of the letter? I'll answer the question for you ...
The Danbury Baptists were concerned that the new constitution was not specific enough in preventing the government from interfering with religion. They said, "But sir, our constitution of government is not specific ... therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights." Jefferson's reply to them quoted above satisfied them because it was clear that the "wall of separation" was erected to keep government from intruding into religion, not to keep religion from being practiced in government as is it is erroneously interpreted today.
Now who is the revisionist? When viewed in conjunction with "director's cut" of the "altar of god" text, it is pretty obvious that when Jefferson talks about a wall of separation, he meant a wall. Not a door where only one side had the key. To put this in terms you might understand, Jefferson envisioned a short, not a diode.
The Baptists were a minority sect at the time and were already some-what persecuted by the mainline sects, particulary the Anglicans. The government interference they feared was a second order affect of the establishment of a state religion, which was certainly a desire of those mainline sects, which the "altar of god" text refers to. The wall of separation meant to keep religion and government out of each other's business. And no amount of shoddy scholarship on Barton's part will change that.
By the way, what do you think of what Jefferson did to the New Testament?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Now who is the revisionist? When viewed in conjunction with "director's cut" of the "altar of god" text, it is pretty obvious that when Jefferson talks about a wall of separation, he meant a wall. Not a door where only one side had the key. To put this in terms you might understand, Jefferson envisioned a short, not a diode.
The Baptists were a minority sect at the time and were already some-what persecuted by the mainline sects, particulary the Anglicans. The government interference they feared was a second order affect of the establishment of a state religion, which was certainly a desire of those mainline sects, which the "altar of god" text refers to. The wall of separation meant to keep religion and government out of each other's business. And no amount of shoddy scholarship on Barton's part will change that.
By the way, what do you think of what Jefferson did to the New Testament?
Dave doesn't understand that final arbiter of what the Constitution says is the U.S. Supreme Court, not the Bible, and certainly not AF Dave.
Every time the Supreme Court has heard establishment clause cases, it's ruled the same way: government is to stay out of the business of religion, and religion is to stay out of the business of government.
The laws of the United States draw their authority from one place: the Constitution. Even Scalia has never successfully been able to argue that the laws of the United States are based on the Bible. Every time some state legislature or out-of-control judge has tried to decide otherwise, they've been wrong.
So…about that evidence for a global flood, Dave…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OA: Hey Dave, explain to me again how if a book mentions an actual real-world place, that means that every event described in the book is literally true.
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AFDave: Didn't say that. I just said that no one has shown me an error yet, so why should I believe the book is false? Maybe you could be the first and make a name for yourself.
You're lying again Dave. Here are your exact words:
Quote (Posted by AFDAve @ June 22 2006,16:48)
The point of my article is that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history and is proven to be so by 20th century archaeology.
Why you feel compelled to lie about it we can only speculate, but you did indeed say it.
Now tell me how having Biblical sites excavated by 20th century archaeologists proves that the events in Genesis are literal.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
That's not the point, Dave. As I pointed out about 30 pages ago, there is, in fact, evidence of a finely-tuned cosmos. As I also pointed out 30 pages ago, "fine tuning" is simply not a good argument for the existence of God. But you have not presented any evidence of fine tuning. You think you have, but you haven't.
What!!?? So I go to all this trouble chasing Penrose and Hoyle and whoever else and you say "Don't bother. I'm already convinced that the universe is fine tuned for life??!!" Why didn't you tell me that in the first place and I would have saved my breath. But I still want to know what you think WOULD be evidence for this if it's not citing the works of physicists. What am I supposed to do? Go take all those measurements of the parameters of the universe myself?
Eric...
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By contrast, your error bars, according to the figures you just gave, are more like 50%, and for much more recent dates! Do you understand the difference between "precision" and "accuracy" Dave?
Well unfortunately, Eric, that's the nature of dating ancient history. At least it's real history from written records and not wild speculation about supposed millions of years.
Eric...
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Why do cosmologists need a particular age, Dave? They're not trying to prove evolution. They're trying to explain the evidence they see in their telescopes.
Agreed. But I'd bet money they have great contempt for "my little provincial god of the Bronze age tribesmen" like Deadman here and they are biased toward the evolutionary timescale and thus are willing to make some assumptions that they otherwise would not make. Don't you think?
Eric...
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Okay, Dave, put your money where your mouth is. Show me your argument that it's impossible for a bacterium to evolve into anything else. Show me the mechanism that prevents it. You can't, because there isn't one. Your entire argument on this point boils down to your personal incredulity.
It's theoretically possible, but the odds against it are so staggering that it is more reasonable to believe that it will not. The burden of proof is on YOU to show that it can. No one has shown me anything close yet. We've been through the supposed bacteria evolution and it's all a loss of information. And I'm skeptical about the nylon eating one. I have not had time to research that one.
Eric...
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And you know this how, Dave? You've already admitted you haven't even researched the issue. You're one of the few people I've ever met who can dismiss evidence you haven't even looked at yet.
OK. Most likely WAGs. Is that better? I'm saying this based on their record in the past. But hey, they may prove me wrong.
Eric..
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You, on the other hand, have absolutely no idea whatsoever how life might have arisen. None at all.
Actually I do. God spoke. Why are you allergic to this one?
Eric...
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It takes a minimum of a billion and a half years to get from a bacterium to a jellyfish. Does it surprise you that no one has witnessed a process that takes a billion years happen in the lab?
The magic POOF!! of the evolutionist = Millions of Years. See ... you appeal to POOFS just as much as I do. You just have different names for your POOFs. Mine's called God. Yours is called "Millions of Years." (Sorry ... billions)
Eric...
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But Dave, you cannot, even in principle, try to investigate how "goddidit." It's simply un-doable. Which is why saying "goddidit" is exactly equivalent to saying "it happened."
No. It's like saying "ThePharmaCompanyDidit" about how medicine got here. Say that over to yourself several times.
Eric...
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Can you, even in principle, perform experiments to figure out how "goddidit"? No.
Yes. We can. The 20th century was full of such "revealings" of how God did it. Have you ever heard of biomimetics? We ask, "How did God do it?" and we study it. Then we try to imitate it. Engineer geeks like me love this stuff.
Eric...
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Dave, if people have disagreements over moral issues, how can there possibly be a "universal moral code"?
Easy. They don't have to agree on everything. Lewis admits variation. But the universal part is that every society has a standard. Here's an example. Can you name a single society who would not say it is a good societal principle to do for others what you would like others to do for you. Now they may not do it themselves. They may word it differently like "be nice to those who are nice to you" or something. But they all say it is a good idea. I'll bet money there is no society on earth that would argue that one. Are there any societies that you can think of that admire traitors? I don't think there are any. I could give you more examples. But you get the idea.
Deadman...
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Your claim about China from wikipedia is a point in case, Dave. Dynasty =/= first evidence of chinese civilization, dolt.
Don't like Wikipedia? OK. When do you think China was founded ... according to written records.
Argy...
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My question is, which evidences for a young earth/implications of a young earth with flood disaster would you believe if you had never even heard of the Bible?
Other historical records would be the best. Then stratigraphy, C14, dendro, etc.
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As an aside, in your opinion (since churches disagree on this matter), if one dies never having heard of the Bible or God, do they go to ####?
This is just opinion ... I cannot quote you a Scripture passage on this ... I think people can learn about God from Nature and can believe on Him.
Improv...
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Assume, for a second, the Earth really IS billions of years old, and some brilliant scientist had come up with a conclusive test to demonstrate that age.
Now, how would you be able to tell whether or not this scientist had really discovered the truth? How would you be able to discern if he was correct. or if he was deluding himself, or if he were simply some sort of con artist? The fact is, Dave, that there would simply be no way whatsoever for the scientist to convince YOU that his old earth theory was true.
It's true that reliable historical records such as the Bible are hard to contradict. It would have to be some pretty good evidence to overpower that. The Bible has proven itself to be amazingly accurate in cases where we can verify it.
Tell me what you want to know about snakes and I'll try to answer.
Deadman ...
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[Long piece on God killing babies etc.]
Here's the deal, Deadman ... I can only report to you what the Bible says and Hebrew and Greek scholars can interpret what it means. I cannot explain WHY everything is as it is. But I am smart enough to see that the Bible is an uncanny Book. Uncanny in its historical accuracy in the parts we can verify. Uncanny in its predictions. Uncanny in its description of human nature. It is a book that makes you take notice and it requires an explanation. I have come up with no sensible explanation other than it is what it says it is -- the Word of the Creator God to mankind. Now, if it is what it says it is, then it really doesn't make any sense for me to sit around and try to pontificate about what God should and shouldn't be doing, now, does it? The fact is, He will do what He will do. And it's in my best interest to find out as much as possible about what that is. It's no use debating theological ideas with you because you are not even to first base, i.e. you don't even believe that the God of the Bible exists.
Eric...
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And how is that possible, Dave? Plate tectonics didn't even have any observational support or theoretical underpinning until the mid-sixties, so if Morris and Whitcomb were talking about it before then (and they weren't), they were talking out of their asses without any reference to supporting data at all.
The Bible talks about the earth being divided, Eric. The Bible was written before the 60's. Now Morris and Whitcomb don't necessarily believe that this passage is talking about plate tectonics, but the idea was raised long before Modern Tectonic Plate Theory was discussed.
Tacitus...
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Terrible analogy. The National Weather Service wasn't responsible for Katrina, and could do nothing to stop it from happening. God, supposedly, can do as he pleases. He sets the rules, and determines every person's fate. (Or is the Great White Throne of Judgement simply a sham?)
A better analogy would be to say that the Mafia was throwing a really great party for everybody with the tacit understanding that if you don't show up things will go really bad for you. The problem is that some people never received their invitations, some got garbled messages and turned up at the wrong place or the wrong time, and some received their invites from known liars and didn't believe them.
OK. Neither analogy is great, actually. How does one make an analogy of God? Here's what I think the Bible says ... basically God created the universe which includes people. He made them with a choice to "hang out with Him" or not. He told everybody how cool it is be with Him -- wrote it write into their consciences, I think. I think people can simply observe Nature and understand a lot about God. And I think if they really want to know Him more, he will 'move heaven and earth' to send a missionary. This is what the book of Jonah illustrates. Somehow the creation of beings with choice necessarily creates the possibility of great evil, especially when you are talking about powerful beings like Lucifer and his angels. So God describes to us in the Bible the possibility of the choice to not be with Him as He11. I'm sure it's a metaphor of some sort. It obviously is not the type of fire we are familiar with, but whatever it is, He's communicating that it is bad stuff. We can comprehend the possibility of choice creating evil because we experience it with our own children. With God, it's just on a much bigger scale.
Deadman...
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Dear f-ed up DaveTard2: " You're going to die and MY god is going to torture for eternity for DOUBT " makes your god look insane, evil, selfish, childish, insecure and petty.
You think an all-loving god thinks as evilly as you? I prefer to think that the Bible is completely wrong than to believe the existence of such an ugly little god.
The part that disgusts me at your true nature is this: I'd bet a great deal of money you direct this same nasty little strongarm blackmail tactic... towards tiny kids that can't defend themselves against your terroristic shit.
So you are concerned about kids? Tell me ... what do you do for kids now to prove to me that you care for them? Or are you just pretending to care about them because you don't like my beliefs?
Deadman...
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Much like in the instance where you called my relatives "devolved," Dave -- be glad you're not in my arm's reach. Sanctimonious hypocritical lying power-mongering egotistic scumbag.
Don't get mad at me. It's just historical fact.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
When viewed in conjunction with "director's cut" of the "altar of god" text, it is pretty obvious that when Jefferson talks about a wall of separation, he meant a wall.
What director's cut?
Quote
Now tell me how having Biblical sites excavated by 20th century archaeologists proves that the events in Genesis are literal.
When viewed in conjunction with "director's cut" of the "altar of god" text, it is pretty obvious that when Jefferson talks about a wall of separation, he meant a wall.
What director's cut?
Quote
Now tell me how having Biblical sites excavated by 20th century archaeologists proves that the events in Genesis are literal.
It would have to be some pretty good evidence to overpower that.
See? You can't even answer the question. Your mind is incapable of it.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Why didn't you tell me that in the first place and I would have saved my breath.
well, at first we all told you to save your breath anyway, unless you wish to actually provide hard evidence to support your positions.
now, You've become a great source of humorous insipiration, and a great example of what the fundy worldview does to folks minds and ability to process information in a rational fashion.
so go ahead and keep on spoutin' there, Davey. You appear to have almost as many fans here as the other Dave over on UD.
oh, and have you posted a link to this thread on your blog yet?
why not?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
My question is, which evidences for a young earth/implications of a young earth with flood disaster would you believe if you had never even heard of the Bible?
Other historical records would be the best. Then stratigraphy, C14, dendro, etc.
I guess I was unclear. I mean which of the evidences that you have talked about over the 87 pages of comments here would you support having never heard of the Bible. A worldwide flood? Catastrophic movement of the continents? Earth created in 6 days? Common ancestry of siamangs and chimps, but not chimps and humans? Age of the earth? Age of stars? Separate creation of languages? Vapor canopies? I'm sure you can think of others.
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As an aside, in your opinion (since churches disagree on this matter), if one dies never having heard of the Bible or God, do they go to ####?
This is just opinion ... I cannot quote you a Scripture passage on this ... I think people can learn about God from Nature and can believe on Him.
(I'll take that as a yes). I suppose that explains the high prevalence of omnimax monotheism among peoples never introduced to the Abrahamic religions.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
[quote=afdave,June 23 2006,17:22] What!!?? So I go to all this trouble chasing Penrose and Hoyle and whoever else and you say "Don't bother. I'm already convinced that the universe is fine tuned for life??!!" Why didn't you tell me that in the first place and I would have saved my breath.[/quote]
Dave, I did tell you that "in the first place." I told you a long time ago it was a waste of time arguing that "cosmic fine tuning" was evidence for the existence of God. You ignored me, and continued to argue exactly that. Worse, you claimed you had provided evidence for cosmic fine tuning, which as I've pointed out half a dozen times, you've failed to do.
Further, I didn't say I'm "convinced" that the universe is fine-tuned for life. I said that evidence exists for that contention, which isn't the same thing as saying that evidence is persuasive.
The truth is, I did tell you you'd be wasting your time providing evidence of fine tuning. How is it my fault that, having ignored me, you wasted your time and mine? Or, you would have wasted your time and mine if you'd ever actually provided any evidence. Which you didn't. Even though you claimed you did.
[quote]But I still want to know what you think WOULD be evidence for this if it's not citing the works of physicists. What am I supposed to do? Go take all those measurements of the parameters of the universe myself? [/quote]
What you're supposed to do, Dave, is drop the whole argument. We've been around this particular mulberry bush enough already. I told you that even if you provided evidence for cosmic fine tuning, which you haven't, it still wouldn't get you anywhere, because the argument, even when based on evidence, is simply unavailing.
[quote]Eric... [quote]By contrast, your error bars, according to the figures you just gave, are more like 50%, and for much more recent dates! Do you understand the difference between "precision" and "accuracy" Dave? [/quote] Well unfortunately, Eric, that's the nature of dating ancient history. At least it's real history from written records and not wild speculation about supposed millions of years.[/quote]
Exactly, my dear Dave. Which is why real scientists don't rely entirely on written records. For those records to be credible, they need to be corroborated by external, independent evidence. Your bible stories about the origins of the earth are not just uncorroborated, they're flat-out contradicted by independent evidence. It's not wild speculation, Dave. It's evidence from hundreds of thousands of observations and experiments carried out by tens of thousands of professional scientists over the past five centuries. It's not the scribblings of semi-literate tribesmen from five millennia ago.
[quote]Eric...
Quote
Why do cosmologists need a particular age, Dave? They're not trying to prove evolution. They're trying to explain the evidence they see in their telescopes.
Agreed. But I'd bet money they have great contempt for "my little provincial god of the Bronze age tribesmen" like Deadman here and they are biased toward the evolutionary timescale and thus are willing to make some assumptions that they otherwise would not make. Don't you think?[/quote] Wrong, Dave. They're trying to come up with internally consistent and coherent explanations for what they see in their telescopes. They know they're seeing things out there that are too far away to have been created six millennia ago. I doubt they're even thinking about evolution or bronze-age tribesmen when they're looking at galaxies 500 million lightyears away.
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Eric...
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Okay, Dave, put your money where your mouth is. Show me your argument that it's impossible for a bacterium to evolve into anything else. Show me the mechanism that prevents it. You can't, because there isn't one. Your entire argument on this point boils down to your personal incredulity.
It's theoretically possible, but the odds against it are so staggering that it is more reasonable to believe that it will not.
Dave, you have no idea what the odds are of live evolving over billions of years. For all you know, the probability is close to one.
Quote
The burden of proof is on YOU to show that it can. No one has shown me anything close yet. We've been through the supposed bacteria evolution and it's all a loss of information. And I'm skeptical about the nylon eating one. I have not had time to research that one.
Yes, you're right. Evolutionists do have the burden of showing life can have arisen from non-life without guidance from a higher intelligence. This is a fertile area of research. But to sit back, as you do, and say it cannot possibly have happened, and therefore goddidit, is intellectual defeatism of the first order. Creationists aren't even trying, Dave. How soon will they come with an answer if they never even look for one?
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Eric...
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And you know this how, Dave? You've already admitted you haven't even researched the issue. You're one of the few people I've ever met who can dismiss evidence you haven't even looked at yet.
OK. Most likely WAGs. Is that better? I'm saying this based on their record in the past. But hey, they may prove me wrong.
Get back to me after you've read up one current theories on galaxy formation and then tell me if you think they're rank speculation. Actually, don't bother. You've made it clear that you've made up your mind already, without even looking at the evidence.
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Eric..
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You, on the other hand, have absolutely no idea whatsoever how life might have arisen. None at all.
Actually I do. God spoke. Why are you allergic to this one?
And that created life how, Dave? Vibrations in his voice caused organic molecules to start replicating? This is supposed to be an explanation of something? It's not a matter of allergy, Dave. You haven't given me anything to be allergic to.
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Eric...
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It takes a minimum of a billion and a half years to get from a bacterium to a jellyfish. Does it surprise you that no one has witnessed a process that takes a billion years happen in the lab?
The magic POOF!! of the evolutionist = Millions of Years. See ... you appeal to POOFS just as much as I do. You just have different names for your POOFs. Mine's called God. Yours is called "Millions of Years." (Sorry ... billions)
Wrong, Dave. The theory of evolution has well-explored and well-articulated mechanisms for how bacteria get to jellyfish. No POOFing required.
But that's not the point. You criticise macroevolution because no one's ever seen it in the lab. No one's ever seen a redwood grow from a seed to a 300-foot-tall tree. Does that mean it can't happen?
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Eric...
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But Dave, you cannot, even in principle, try to investigate how "goddidit." It's simply un-doable. Which is why saying "goddidit" is exactly equivalent to saying "it happened."
No. It's like saying "ThePharmaCompanyDidit" about how medicine got here. Say that over to yourself several times.
No, Dave, it's nothing whatever like saying "ThePharmaCompanyDidIt." You honestly can't see the difference? In principle, I can go out and do the research and find out exactly how the pharmaceutical company did it's research. I can read the experimental protocols, look through the chemistry and biology, and figure out how it happened.
Now, if you want to find out how "goddidit," what would your analogous research be? Where would you start?
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Eric...
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Can you, even in principle, perform experiments to figure out how "goddidit"? No.
Yes. We can. The 20th century was full of such "revealings" of how God did it. Have you ever heard of biomimetics? We ask, "How did God do it?" and we study it. Then we try to imitate it. Engineer geeks like me love this stuff.
No. You can't. You have absolutely no idea what methods God used for producing life. Did he use test tubes and bunsen burners? You claim "He spoke." Do you think engineers can use the same techniques? Do you think God uses the same techniques engineers use?
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Eric...
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Dave, if people have disagreements over moral issues, how can there possibly be a "universal moral code"?
Easy. They don't have to agree on everything. Lewis admits variation. But the universal part is that every society has a standard. Here's an example.
Dave, all your argument shows is that all societies have some sort of moral code, and that those moral codes have some area of overlap. To think that that somehow argues for the existence of God is, quite frankly, laughable. We've gone over this a million times before, and you clearly do not wish to understand why that is.
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Eric...
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And how is that possible, Dave? Plate tectonics didn't even have any observational support or theoretical underpinning until the mid-sixties, so if Morris and Whitcomb were talking about it before then (and they weren't), they were talking out of their asses without any reference to supporting data at all.
The Bible talks about the earth being divided, Eric. The Bible was written before the 60's. Now Morris and Whitcomb don't necessarily believe that this passage is talking about plate tectonics, but the idea was raised long before Modern Tectonic Plate Theory was discussed.
Dave, in order for this argument to get you anywhere, you have to show what the Bible means by the earth being "divided." Plate tectonics has nothing to do with the earth being "divided." The earth is in one piece. Never been different. There's no evidence that the term "continent," to say nothing of continental drift, had any meaning for the writers of the Bible. I doubt it ever even occurred to them that continents not only moved in the past, but are moving even as we speak. Are you aware of that, Dave?
You can't just point to random sentences in the Bible that vaguely resemble some piece of scientific evidence and conclude that the Bible anticipated science. Morris and Whitcomb, even if they believed that continents' positions have changed over time, had no idea why, or how. Nor could they give any indication of the relative positions of those continents at any point in the past, especially since they believe the past ended 6,000 years ago. The continents' position hasn't changed significantly in the last hundred thousand years, let alone the last 6,000 years.
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Much like in the instance where you called my relatives "devolved," Dave -- be glad you're not in my arm's reach. Sanctimonious hypocritical lying power-mongering egotistic scumbag.
Don't get mad at me. It's just historical fact.
It'll be a "fact," Dave, when you can provide some actual evidence for it. Which, I cannot fail to point out, you have failed to do. Just like every other claim you've made.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A thing that amazes me is the ease in which dave sprouts out this assertion:
That only we humans have to obey this instinctive, hard-coded Universal Moral Code, not God who made it -and, come to think of it, we don't have to obey it either, if Gawd tells us not to...
And he doesn't even realize how he tears poor C.S.Lewis' arguments (and, ergo, his own) to shreds by doing so.
Keep up the good work dave.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Yeah, you seem to be having some issues with it there Eric. We forgive you, though.
(I'm sure no one will hold it against you if you want to go back and edit, but don't feel obligated either.)
I gave up on the editing. It's not like I'm posting and then finding the problems; I see the problems in preview, and can't get them to go away, even with wholesale removal and retyping of swaths of Dave's drivel (you can imagine how painful it is to type that stuff up). The iB code as it shows in my posts is as it appears in the editing window, so if anyone can show me what the problem is, I'd be most appreciative.
It seems the problem is mostly to do with nested quotes—and lots of 'em. If I don't use nested quotes, I don't get problems.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric: Try to attribute all quotes to the person who wrote them (for example, by c&p "[quote=afdave,June 23 2006,17:22]" instead of just "[quote]", in the beginning of all dave's quotes).
I think that's the only way you can get quotes within quotes... If that's the problem.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
[quote][quote]Eric: Try to attribute all quotes to the person who wrote them (for example, by c&p "
Quote (afdave @ June 23 2006,17:22)
" instead of just "
Quote
", in the beginning of all dave's quotes).
I think that's the only way you can get quotes within quotes... If that's the problem.
let's see if that's correct...
hmm, i think i might see the problem. as suspected, it doesn't have to do with attribution; standard nested quotes are working fine; I think the system may be picking up on code that is embedded within the quotes themselves, that it shouldn't be.
example, you see the mess above? the nesting worked, but as you can see the results were not exactly as predicted; it looks like the system picked out the code you put in "quotes" when I tried to enclose it in a nested quote.
so it seems probable that the system is dealing with code inside of quotes differently when it is embedded inside of another quote.
er, if that makes sense.
let's see what happens if i remove the "quoted" bit out...
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Eric: Try to attribute all quotes to the person who wrote them (for example, by afdave,June 23 2006,17:22 instead of just, in the beginning of all dave's quotes).
I think that's the only way you can get quotes within quotes... If that's the problem.
yup.
I think the problem is occurring when there are quoted areas in Dave's screeds that somebody tries to put inside of a nested quote; the system picks up "false code" that it should ignore.
as a workaround, I would suggest doublechecking the material you wish to nested quote for possible inclusion of code you think the system would normally ignore in a normal quote.
playing some more...
Quote (afdave @ June 23 2006,17:22)
What!!?? So I go to all this trouble chasing Penrose and Hoyle and whoever else and you say "Don't bother. I'm already convinced that the universe is fine tuned for life??!!" Why didn't you tell me that in the first place and I would have saved my breath.
Quote
Quote (afdave @ June 23 2006,17:22)
What!!?? So I go to all this trouble chasing Penrose and Hoyle and whoever else and you say "Don't bother. I'm already convinced that the universe is fine tuned for life??!!"
Why didn't you tell me that in the first place and I would have saved my breath.
[quote=afdave,June 23 2006,17:22] What!!?? So I go to all this trouble chasing Penrose and Hoyle and whoever else and you say "
Quote
"Don't bother. I'm already convinced that the universe is fine tuned for life??!!" Why didn't you tell me that in the first place and I would have saved my breath.
bing! yup, that's what's going on. you can place code in quotes like this "[quote]" in the body of the post with no problem, but when you try to include it in a nested quote like the last one above, things get messy.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Dear F-ed up DaveTard2: I want you to watch carefully---this is how it's done. You asked me one question in your little evasion tactic there, DaveTard:
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Here's the deal, Deadman ... And it's in my best interest to find out as much as possible about what that is. It's no use debating theological ideas with you because you are not even to first base, i.e. you don't even believe that the God of the Bible exists... So you are concerned about kids? Tell me ... what do you do for kids now to prove to me that you care for them? Or are you just pretending to care about them because you don't like my beliefs? Don't get mad at me. It's just historical fact.
THere's two parts to that, so I'll actually do what you can't and won't do, DaveLiar: I'll answer you directly. I donate money, time and my own labor each and every year, as I have each and every year of my life since I was 24. That was many years ago, DaveTard.
Now I'll respond to your bullshit about "you don't even believe that the God of the Bible exists.." Really, Dave? So point to where I said that here. Show me you have ANY honor at all, scumbag.
Show where I unequivocally rejected all concepts of god.
You can't-- you hypocritical , lying, false accuser.
I specifically rejected your cartoon version of god, Dave, and I am not like YOU. I don't have to wear God like a status symbol, I don't have to threaten people with a sick nasty little god like the one you have , Dave. And don't try to say that's "my" god, too---no it's not. Your god is solely a product of your f-ed up mind, DaveScum
Now, why didn't you answer what I asked you directly, DaveHypocrite? HOW did you claim to calculate that the Flood occurred 5000 years ago, DaveLiar? Why aren't you breaking out all that evidence to support your claims of that and your inerrant Bible claims, DaveTard? Why didn't you respond to all the points I raised in my last 3 posts?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
hmm, i think i might see the problem. as suspected, it doesn't have to do with attribution; standard nested quotes are working fine; I think the system may be picking up on code that is embedded within the quotes themselves, that it shouldn't be.
example, you see the mess above? the nesting worked, but as you can see the results were not exactly as predicted; it looks like the system picked out the code you put in "quotes" when I tried to enclose it in a nested quote.
so it seems probable that the system is dealing with code inside of quotes differently when it is embedded inside of another quote.
er, if that makes sense.
I have the feeling there might be non-printing characters that the system is picking up as iB code. Here I am, thinking all I have to is match opening and closing codes, the way you'd do in HTML, but no matter how careful I am, things still go awry.
Maybe if I take all formatting codes out from between codes. I usually try to do that, anyway. No sense in providing additional emphasis for Dave, is there?
And maybe if I tried doing shorter posts…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
hmm, i think i will add a 6th point to my list as to why this thead continues on and on.
6. People really like using Dave as a whipping boy, and Dave seems to enjoy it.
like i said:
woo hoo! bring out the chains and rubber suits!
and they say the Davinci Code was worthless....
Quote
The Teacher tells Silas to go to Saint-Suplice immediately and retrieve the keystone. Before obeying, Silas engages in some “corporal mortification,” a masochistic practice of physical self-punishment, as a way of doing penance for sins. Silas tightens the barbed cilice, a punishment belt, around his thigh, and flagellates himself, all the while repeating his mantra: “Pain is good.”
so, Dave:
Is pain good? You must be bearing an awful lot of sin to take this much whipping.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Now tell me how having Biblical sites excavated by 20th century archaeologists proves that the events in Genesis are literal.
1) The received tradition prior to Astruc was that Genesis was a literal, eyewitness historical record. 2) Some goofy scholars came up with the Documentary Hypothesis and sold it to academia. They believed it for at least a hundred years. Many still do. 3) 20th Century archaeology showed just how goofy these scholars were. 4) So now we are back to the pre-Astruc postion of Genesis being a literal, eyewitness, historical record. 5) There has never been an archaeological find which controverted a Biblical statement. Archaeology has always confirmed the Bible. 6) There are plenty of things for which we have not found archaeological confirmation, however, why should we doubt the things we have not yet confirmed when the record has been perfect so far?
Eric...
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Creationists aren't even trying, Dave. How soon will they come with an answer if they never even look for one?
Creationist are looking in more productive ways than evolutionists are and they are wasting less time because they don't waste energy trying to explain how the immune system evolved and so on. Creationists are far more productive scientists than evolutionists. You keep forgetting who founded modern science -- creationists!
Eric...
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Wrong, Dave. The theory of evolution has well-explored and well-articulated mechanisms for how bacteria get to jellyfish. No POOFing required.
Sorry. Well-articulated, well-explored POOFs!
Eric...
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But that's not the point. You criticise macroevolution because no one's ever seen it in the lab. No one's ever seen a redwood grow from a seed to a 300-foot-tall tree. Does that mean it can't happen?
I've changed my views. I think Bozo the Clown created the universe ... but he did it so slow that I cannot show you how he did it. But trust me!! He did do it!! Sure, Eric, let's propose anything! WHy not? I mean ... just because no one's ever seen it happen, doesn't mean it couldn't now, does it? Can you really not see how foolish you sound? You are saying Evolution did it. It's too slow to see, and we cannot duplicate it in the lab, and we don't know how it works, but we are sure it happened!!
Eric...
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In principle, I can go out and do the research and find out exactly how the pharmaceutical company did it's research.
In principle, I can go out and find out how God did it if I research long and hard enough. In fact we've already uncovered many of the ways that God has done things.
Eric...
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You claim "He spoke." Do you think engineers can use the same techniques? Do you think God uses the same techniques engineers use?
Obviously "He spoke" is a simplistic explanation. He actually used techniques far beyond our technology. But its fun to try to understand it as much as we can.
Eric...
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There's no evidence that the term "continent," to say nothing of continental drift, had any meaning for the writers of the Bible. I doubt it ever even occurred to them that continents not only moved in the past, but are moving even as we speak. Are you aware of that, Dave?
You have a very brutish understanding of the knowledge of the ancients. Some time I will enlighten you about some of the things they knew.
Eric...
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Morris and Whitcomb, even if they believed that continents' positions have changed over time, had no idea why, or how.
You are so blind that you don't even believe in a global Flood and you're trying to tell me what Morris and Whitcomb knew and didn't know?
Deadman...
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I donate money, time and my own labor each and every year, as I have each and every year of my life since I was 24. That was many years ago, DaveTard.
So you donate time, money and labor for kids? Tell me more. I want to find out why you are so concerned about these kids that you say I am lying to.
Deadman...
Quote
Now I'll respond to your bullshit about "you don't even believe that the God of the Bible exists.." Really, Dave? So point to where I said that here.
OK. You disagree? Then fill me in. You certainly don't seem to believe in the same God I believe in. Do you believe in a God? Fine. Tell me where I can read about him.
Deadman...
Quote
Now, why didn't you answer what I asked you directly, DaveHypocrite? HOW did you claim to calculate that the Flood occurred 5000 years ago, DaveLiar?
Haven't I covered this before? I accept dates falling anywhere between the short and long chronology. 7000BC-4000BC for Creation. 5000BC-23000BC for the Flood. The difference is unknown names which may be left out of genealogies. How hard is that to understand? I told you I would answer your other questions in proper sequence.
Now, have you got anything to refute my evidence that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history? (Since that is your specialty?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now, have you got anything to refute my evidence that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history? (Since that is your specialty?)
Dave, you are simply unable to process anything that would refute your beliefs, and that's all there is to it. You are incapable of recognizing evidence. As I've pointed out, you can't even begin to explain how you might recognize it. See? I'll ask you again: How would you discern true from false evidence refuting your beliefs?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
you don't even believe that the God of the Bible exists..
What Deadman has done is point out that you lied.
You completely, 100% lied.
A whole lie.
A completely untruth.
A lie, monkeyboy.
Because Deadman has never said that.
Ever.
Never.
And when Deadman asked you to support your lie:
Quote
Really, Dave? So point to where I said that here.
You lied again and avoided the answer.
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OK. You disagree? Then fill me in. You certainly don't seem to believe in the same God I believe in. Do you believe in a God? Fine. Tell me where I can read about him.
You lied Dave. You lied about someone on the board (not that you don't lie on a regular basis about pretty much everything, including your so-called air force record).
Yes, Dave, there is archaeology that directly refutes and shows the bible false. Now answer what I asked you about HOW you claim to have calculated the date of 5000 BCE for the flood, DaveLiar. Since you're back to your defensive mode of never responding directly, we'll apparently have to treat you like the child you are, again. Answer my questions as I answered yours, DaveLiar. Hypocrite. False accuser.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Don't keep dancing around the questions and data I point at you directly, DaveCoward. I asked you many times to back your claims on things you say and you always avoid directly answering. When I asked you about American Indians losing their written languages, you pointed to the Maya and Aztec, but that was NOT what you first claimed, DaveLiar. You made and continue to make sweeping statements about ALL Amerinds having and losing written language. SHOW HOW YOU DETERMINE THIS.
Again, as I pointed out in your earlier claims...simply pointing to the Popol Vuh would not convince any rational human that their ancestors emerged from primordial caves in an origin myth, so you can't RATIONALLY expect me to accept your claims when you just point to a book like the Bible that is demonstrably filled with false statements and contradictions.
Show me HOW you calculated that 5000-year-old flood FROM THE BIBLE, Dave. I'll take you up anyday on your "bet" that you "know" the bible better than others here, Dave...You're a total f-ing liar.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You are the most amazing trained monkey, monkey-boy: we crank the music and you dance with wild abandon.
No. In case you haven't noticed, I'm the one cranking the music and you have been dancing with me for 86 pages now! :-)
Deadman...
Quote
Since you're back to your defensive mode of never responding directly, we'll apparently have to treat you like the child you are, again. Answer my questions as I answered yours, DaveLiar. Hypocrite. False accuser.
You can change back to ranting and raving if you like. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing ... presenting evidence for my Creator God Hypothesis. I answered all your questions that I am going to now. I'm glad to know that you don't have any refutation of my evidence for the historicity of Genesis. BTW-- Still waiting to know how you will demonstrate your great love for kids, since you apparently have so much more love and concern for them than I do, and you think I am harming them. ALso, did you ever look up my dad's Indian tribe?
Rilke...
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Oh, Davie? Do you have any evicence to support your claim?
Yes, Rilke. It's on page 82. Where have you been?
Hey Rilke ... do you think I'm a liar? I'm not quite sure and I'm concerned.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, I did look up your "dad's Tribe" and I'm sure you'd be able and willing to answer questions on that, but you can't and won't on your own lying claims here.
I gave you evidence for the falsity of the accounts in genesis, you just keep refusing to deal with them, as you just said
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" I answered all your questions that I am going to now. "
As far as my great love for anyone...that is irrelevant. My point was that you use the threats of your cartoon version of god to afflict and control children, which is far more immoral than any atheist statements I have seen here. Threatening children with fear of your petty god is pretty low, but that's what I would expect out of the son of a man who lied about the Wai-Wai "becoming extinct" Your dad was in one minor village that was eroding due to other white people using poisons and guns to terrify the inhabitants, big deal. He exaggerated the effect of his conversions to make a buck out of the suffering of others. Other villages along the Essequibo river and elsewhere were not in the same condition, according to both the Danish, Smithsonian and UN studies of the 50's and 60's. And I bet you'll have a lot to say about that, but little to say about anything relevant to what you claimed earlier.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Your own false claims about me show the manner of person you are, DaveScum, and I have come to expect little out of you but avoidance and fallacies. Of course you have no way to back your allegations---you're a liar. This is demonstrable as well.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Heh, I really like your delusional lying claim on this page, AFDave:
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I'm glad to know that you don't have any refutation of my evidence for the historicity of Genesis.
Let's see...way back on PAGE 12 of this thread, I posted this;
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Dave: Your whole edifice of cards balances on this one point: that the Bible is absolutely true. Yet you admit that the Global flood, wiping out all things on the face of the Earth...happened at between 2000-3000 BCE. Let's look at why you are wrong:
During this period that the BIBLE says the "global flood " happened, the records of various groups continue uninterrupted: By 2375 BC, most of Sumer was united under one king, Lugalzaggisi of Umma, Sumerian records continue on.Uninterrupted by any mention of global flooding . The earliest surviving inscriptions in Akkadian go back to 2500 B.C. and are the oldest known written records in a Semitic tongue. They continue in an unbroken record.
Egyptian history during the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC) continues unbroken by global flooding . 2200 bc is the date of oldest existing document written on papyrus, prior to that, we have inscriptions and incised clay tablets as well. The Chinese had settled in the Huang He (or "Ho" in some translations) , or Yellow River, valley of northern China by 3000 BC. In the Indus Vallley, we have the Early Harappa Phase C, 2550 BC which continues unbroken to c.1900 BC . We also have the early minoan and mycenean groups in the mediterranean, and as for the new world, Researchers publishing in the Dec. 23 edition of the scientific journal Nature date the first complex society of the Americas, from roughly 3000 to 1800 B.C. NONE of these groups were destroyed by any "global flood" NONE.
But you'll say it's all a lie, Dave, because the "dates" must be wrong, or some other similarly dishonest shit. But there's a problem with that, too, Dave.
We have to either : (1) reject the factual historicity of the Flood account; (2)accept the historicity of the Flood account, but explain away the clear Biblical dating of the event, showing the Bible is in error; or (3) accept the Biblical account and chronology, and reject the massive amount of written and archaological evidence establishing the chronology of history in the near East. This chronolgy is not just supported by radiometric dating methods (C-14, etc.), but other absolute NON-radiometric methods as well: dendrochronology, corals, varves, ice cores, stalagmite/stalactites and more. Now, how could it be that ALL of those dating methods agree that no global flood happened and that the archaeology and other sources are correct?"
Two days ago (p.83, this thread), I posted this concerning the "historicity" of genesis:
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No evidence of a global flood wiping out the civilizations I just mentioned, and many others known to have existed. No evidence of an "Egyptian Captivity/Exodus," no evidence of the plagues in Egypt, The story of Joshua and the walls of Jericho didn't happen , despite Bryan Wood's attempt at redating. Solomon is not known at all in the archaeology, despite the biblical claim that he ruled from the Euphrates to the Red Sea. Zilch. Read Finkelstein and Silber's (2001) "The Bible Unearthed : Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts "
This is not to say that the historical aspects of the bible are not supported in various ways by archaeology---but it IS to say that your view is not, Dave. No global flood, no YEC pipe-dreams.
On page 85 of this thread, I posted this:
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I gave you substantive arguments about the "order" of creation in genesis...like plants before the sun, land organisms before those in the seas/oceans, and you never responded. I mentioned the lack of evidence for the "global flood, " the exodus tales, the plagues of egypt, the lack of any evidence for Solomon, who allegedly " ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt" yet was not mentioned by ANYONE in any king/ruler lists, nor is there any archaeological evidence of this alleged empire. Nor is there any archaeological evidence to support your claims of a mythical Tower of Babel near which all humans resided. In fact, all available data says your claim is so laughably false as to be ludicrous. I gave you data on the Natufians that predate your extended date of the creation of the earth, and by the way, dave? I asked you to BACK YOUR CLAIM about YOUR dating of the flood, biblically. SHOW me how you arrived at your date. Because you are either contradicting the bible or the bible is in error.
But you still lyingly claim I have not raised those points and data? You're not very honest at all, DaveLiar.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Creationists aren't even trying, Dave. How soon will they come with an answer if they never even look for one?
Creationist are looking in more productive ways than evolutionists are and they are wasting less time because they don't waste energy trying to explain how the immune system evolved and so on. Creationists are far more productive scientists than evolutionists. You keep forgetting who founded modern science -- creationists!
Yeah. Right, Dave. That's why creationist "scientists" are accomplishing all kinds of "science." Publishing papers, curing disease, explaining all kinds of natural phenomena with their one-size-fits-all "goddidit" miracle cure. Nice try.
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I've changed my views. I think Bozo the Clown created the universe ... but he did it so slow that I cannot show you how he did it. But trust me!! He did do it!! Sure, Eric, let's propose anything! WHy not? I mean ... just because no one's ever seen it happen, doesn't mean it couldn't now, does it? Can you really not see how foolish you sound? You are saying Evolution did it. It's too slow to see, and we cannot duplicate it in the lab, and we don't know how it works, but we are sure it happened!!
Bozo makes about as much sense as your goddidit myth, Dave. I can definitely see how foolish you sound. Do you not believe in anything you can't see, Dave? Because that's how it sounds from here.
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In principle, I can go out and find out how God did it if I research long and hard enough. In fact we've already uncovered many of the ways that God has done things.
Think so, Dave? Tell me where you'd look. I can tell you exactly where I'd go to find out how a beta blocker works. Now tell me where you'd go to find out how God synthesized carbon for making all that coal. And tell me where you, or anyone else, has ever uncovered how God has done anything.
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You have a very brutish understanding of the knowledge of the ancients. Some time I will enlighten you about some of the things they knew.
Dave, there's essentially no chance you know anything about the ancients I don't know. I mean, anything that actually happened. I guarantee you I've forgotten way, way more about the history of science than you'll ever know. Your ignorance of history is exceeded only by your ignorance of science.
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You are so blind that you don't even believe in a global Flood and you're trying to tell me what Morris and Whitcomb knew and didn't know?
So Dave, when are you going to post some evidence, right here on this very thread, that shows there was ever a global flood? Because so far, you're coming up empty every time I ask. Do you have the goods, or not? I'm getting sick of your empty promises to provide evidence for a flood, or for anything else, for that matter. Put up or shut up, dammit.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OA: Now tell me how having Biblical sites excavated by 20th century archaeologists proves that the events in Genesis are literal.
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AFDave: 1) The received tradition prior to Astruc was that Genesis was a literal,eyewitness historical record.
Tradition for who Dave? Certainly not for the scientific community. Oral or even written ‘traditions’ are just worthless folklore unless you can back them up with hard evidence.
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2) Some goofy scholars came up with the Documentary Hypothesis and sold it to academia. They believed it for at least a hundred years. Many still do. 3) 20th Century archaeology showed just how goofy these scholars were. 4) So now we are back to the pre-Astruc postion of Genesis being a literal,eyewitness, historical record.
No Dave, the scientific community is not ‘back’ since it was never there in the first place. You’re lying again.
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5) There has never been an archaeological find which controverted a Biblical statement. Archaeology has always confirmed the Bible.
Pure unadulterated bullshit Dave. Myself and others have given you dozens of examples of archaeological finds that directly contradict your 7000 YO age of the Earth claim. We could provide thousands more if we had to. The fact is that you continue to lie about the evidence because you’re too much of a scumbag to deal with it honestly.
Want to prove me wrong? Then let’s discuss the dating of the Catal Huyuk settlement and the multiple independent ways that C14 dates are confirmed NOW. Do you have the ‘nads? Or will you avoid discussion and show everyone again what a cowardly liar you are?
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6) There are plenty of things for which we have not found archaeological confirmation, however, why should we doubt the things we have not yet confirmed when the record has been perfect so far?
Because that’s not how science works you moron. You want to make fantastic claims? Then provide your own positive evidence. Things aren’t assumed ‘true’ until proven false. Folklore events are assumed to be merely folklore until you provide positive evidence for the occurrence.
Now try again DaveTard2. List the positive evidence found by archaeologists that prove a literal creation of the Earth less than 7000 YBP, a literal creation of all living things at the same time, and a worldwide cataclysmic flood that killed almost every living thing and moved the continents tens of thousands of miles less than 5000 YBP.
You have been asked multiple times how to scientifically and independently confirm the Biblical dates you keep throwing around without referencing the Bible. You have yet to answer. How does a YEC archaeologist date a settlement in South America, or Australia, or somewhere not mentioned in the Bible?
It that such a hard question that you can’t even come up with a good lie? How very unAFDavelike.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I think Dave might have been a little drunk tonight. Seemed a bit more petulant than he usually is.
I could feel the doubt creeping in. He can feel the walls crumbling—you know, those five-foot-thick earthen walls—the ones that keep his doubt at bay. That certitude that he clings to, like a drowning man clinging to the last bit of floating wreckage…it was feeling slippery and insubstantial. He knows his claims are absurd, preposterous, transparent. At least he does when his guard is down.
It's a lot of work maintaining this level of denial. When he's tired, maybe a little buzzed, it kind of slips. Only for a second, but it terrifies him. He can only endure it for a little while.
"Archaeology has always confirmed the Bible." Sure, Dave. In some other universe, perhaps, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
I think of creationism—this last, desperate holdout of the ignorance and blindness—it's like a barely-above-sea-level atoll that's getting smaller and smaller as the temps go up and the sealevel rises. When Dave's well-rested and feeling confident, he feels like he's on the vanguard of something new and different. But when he's overtired, stressed out, the veneer wears thin in places, and he can feel that water coming up over his ankles.
Sure, he'll be his usual, cocky, overconfident self by the time he wakes up tomorrow. Especially after a good breakfast and a nice heapin' helpin' o' scripture to bolster his faith.
But the places you can hide your vicious, tyrannical little god get smaller every year, Dave. A god of the gaps has less and less room to hide in every year, every month, every day.
Is that what your God truly fears, Dave? That if people stop believing in him, he'll cease to exist? That's what most gods fear, and it's what makes them reach for their thunderbolts, ready to smite unbelievers.
But unbelievers know what those thunderbolts are made of, and it ain't 'lectricity…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Haven't I covered this before? I accept dates falling anywhere between the short and long chronology. 7000BC-4000BC for Creation. 5000BC-23000BC for the Flood. The difference is unknown names which may be left out of genealogies. How hard is that to understand? I told you I would answer your other questions in proper sequence.
Now, have you got anything to refute my evidence that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history? (Since that is your specialty?)
Hmmm, Genesis is a literal eyewitness account of history but we have a difference in dates due to unknown names left out of the geneologies. "and some other issues."
So how do these names get left out of the geneologies?
DDTTD sends us to a site that claims the bible is a literal eyewitness account and that it was recorded on tablets (clay or stone, ahh who cares).
The nomadic Israelites were trudging around the wilderness and lugging around clay or stone tablets while keeping the sheep and goats in the flock, the pigs and the shellfish out of the diet, smiting the enemies of the lord and they NEVER cached any of this heavy stuff.
Where are the tablets of clay or stone that back up this hypothesis? 20th century archaeologists haven't found a single one of them. NOT A ONE! Pfft, who needs them. WE have the Torah! I apologize to any Hebrew lurkers who might be out there.
Tablets concerning Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim and the flood are all over the place. The earliest known library has them.
DDTTD will have you believe they are second hand, illegitimate, incorrect and blasphemous.
You have a very brutish understanding of the knowledge of the ancients. Some time I will enlighten you about some of the things they knew.
Please do, Mr Daniken- I mean dave. Tell us again all about the amazing knowledge of the ancient Eguptians- they knew the radius of the Earth, did you say? Something about the Pyramids?
i've a feeling this will be even better than your "ape breeding" scenario.
Do you have the slightest idea of how unbelievably silly you sound, when you try to venture even a tiny bit on your own into fields not directly covered by your AiG mentors?
Pathetic.
Oh and, like I said: Nothing has directly disproved the Iliad yet- in fact, Troy turned out to be real! Should I get my sacrificial altar to Neptune ready, dave? The Earth-Shaker longs for the smell of burning horses...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I don't know where the 14C is coming from. I do know that the `4C level in coal correlates very well with the uranium content of the surroundings, and that means something that any hypothesis you propose is going to have tro explain. I know of some possibilities, and as I've written many times, "we don't know is a possible scientific answer and is way ahead of your "it's magic".
Well, at least you acknowledge that you do not know where it is coming from. Good. I of course cannot say decisively either, but saying that maybe it came from the pre-Flood atmosphere is not appealing to magic. It's appealing to a hypothesis which has much support from the 'millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth.' I'm sorry if you do not think that is good evidence for a Global Flood. I do.
It's not evidence; it's speculation. Your claim that the coal and oil formed during the flood is an ad-hoc appeal to magic (if there were any mechanism for it, we'd be using it to make coal and oil righit hnow). Your claim of 100x more biomass before the Flood is an appeal to magic. And your speculation of "coming from a pre-flood atmosphere" doesn't stand up to cursory examination. If your claim were true, we would see steps in the calibration curves that you have refused to address. If your claim were true it wouldn't fit with your claim that radioactive decay was accelerated during the alleged flood. You make the commmon mistake of treating science as millions of unconnected and independent facts, when in reality it's one connected whole. Your claims are a mish-mash of physically impossible and mutually contradictory fantasies.
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jonF...
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None of those are evidence for those submarine canyons ever having been exposed to the air, nor are vertical motions evidence for such. Those canyons formed underwater ("crack" canyons are very different from erosion canyons), and those vertical motions started and finished underwater.
And your support for this idea is?
Read up on plate tectonics, Davie-poo. I notice you failed to address the problem that your quotes say nothing about more land area having been exposed to the air.
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{ABE} I note that your references are from before plate tectonics was widely accepted or understood, and are therefore ipso facto obsolete on any questions of the motion of the Earth's surface. We know a lot more about such motions today than we did 50-60 years ago.
Probably uniformitarians such as yourself did not understand plate tectonics well until later, but Morris and Whitcomb understood it somewhat and talked about in "The Genesis Flood" (p. 271)
Morris and Whitcomb's fantasies are physically impossible (unless you want to invoke magic), were stolen from Price without attribution, are contradicted by the evidence, and bear no resemblance to the theory of plate tectonics.
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Being laughed at is not evidence for correctness.
You are correct, but NOT being laughed at is also not evidence for correctness. Laughing or not laughing is irrelevant, but some people here seem to think that it is. They try to say 'Dave, look how many people laugh at you and what a minority viewpoint you have. Therefore, you are wrong.' This is faulty reasoning and Galileo is a good example of this faulty reasoning.
Yes, but I certainly haven't claimed that your ideas are wrong because you're a laughable and gullible moron. And I don't recall anyone else doing so in this thread or any other. You were the one that brought up laughing at Galileo in an obvious attempt to imply that your ideas are right because we're laughing at you ... remember this?:
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JonF... Yeah, but you'll obviously fall for any twaddle that appears to support your preconceptions. You want to think that 0.00001% is "quite common", that's your right, but nobody with any brain funciton is going to agree with you.
Galileo had a minority viewpoint too, my friend.
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JonF... Wrong again, Davie-poo. Look into the Chinese records.
No, Jonny-poo. China was not founded until AFTER the Tower of Babel. Long chronology - 4000 BC or so maybe. Short chronolgy - 2100 BC or so.
Look at those goalposts fly, Davie-doodles! We're talking about written records and you suddenly switch the subject to founding of dynasties. Not too bright, Davie-dido. Your errors on this subject have already been addressed in detail by others, so I won't bother to repeat.
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Now we just have to figure out how a flood could (1) produce water heated to 250 degrees C in the first stage; (2) produce high concentrations of lime or carbon monoxide; (4) produce dry regions greater than 500 degrees C for the second stage; (4) transport the organic materials (100X the current biomass, right?) between superheated limed regions; (5) not boil, bake, dissolve or poison all those created kinds that didn't "need" the ark in the process (not to mention Noah and his bioboat); and (6) not superheat the very planet itself.
Now you guys are getting somewhere! Keep asking these smart questions and you too will find the truth about the Flood! Maybe I won't even have to explain it to you!
We asked these smart questions years ago. We answered those smart questions years ago. We found the truth about the flood. It didn't happen.
Your eyes are closed.
Nope, Davie-pootles, wide open. But you will have to explain it to us. In detail. Using thermodynamics and physics and chemistry and geology. No magic. Show us your answers to those smart questions.
Okay, Dave, put your money where your mouth is. Show me your argument that it's impossible for a bacterium to evolve into anything else. Show me the mechanism that prevents it. You can't, because there isn't one. Your entire argument on this point boils down to your personal incredulity.
It's theoretically possible, but the odds against it are so staggering that it is more reasonable to believe that it will not. The burden of proof is on YOU to show that it can.
No, Davesicle, you are the one that claimed that the odss against abiogenesis are staggering. It's your claim, let's see the calculations.
As far as my great love for anyone...that is irrelevant. My point was that you use the threats of your cartoon version of god to afflict and control children, which is far more immoral than any atheist statements I have seen here.
There are two things to note here ...
1) I still don't think you "love children" as much as you pretend to. Do you have any children of your own? If you do, do you spend time with them and care for them, and teach them things in life they need to know? Do you sacrifice your own desires for their needs? Have you ever adopted a child? Do you serve at the local orphanage? Have you ever changed a diaper? Do you play baseball with them when you'd rather watch TV?
2) Let's pretend my views of God are false. OK? So in this case you say I am harming children by teaching them my views, right? And you say this is far more immoral than any atheist statements made here. My question is ... on what basis is this more immoral? What standard of morality are you imposing on me? Yours? What if my standard is different than yours? What if my standard of morality elevates cruelty to children? Do you see where I am going? Silly isn't it. The point is ... even though you and I disagree vigorously about the nature of God, we both agree on certain standards of morality. I agree with you that cruelty to children is much worse than many other offenses. So you have provided yet another confirmation of C.S. Lewis' Universal Moral Code.
DEADMAN MAKES UP LIES BECAUSE HE CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE SELFLESSNESS OF MISSIONARIES Deadman...
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Threatening children with fear of your petty god is pretty low, but that's what I would expect out of the son of a man who lied about the Wai-Wai "becoming extinct" Your dad was in one minor village that was eroding due to other white people using poisons and guns to terrify the inhabitants, big deal. He exaggerated the effect of his conversions to make a buck out of the suffering of others. Other villages along the Essequibo river and elsewhere were not in the same condition, according to both the Danish, Smithsonian and UN studies of the 50's and 60's.
I don't know about other villages, Deadman. I only know that my dad went to this one because they were dying out, by their own admission. If you like, I can arrange a conversation with the chief (or any other older person you want) through an interpreter. I could even take you down there - wouldn't mind visiting myself - you can ask any of the old guys you like and they will tell you, "We were dying out until 'Kmam' (that's what they call him) came to us and told us about Jesus. We believed on Him and our lives began to change. Now we are a growing, happy people." You check your stats, Deadman. In the 40's they numbered about 400 and were declining. Now they number over 3000 and are growing like crazy. They were dying out because they were killing their own babies and they had wars with other villages, and had much disease. They also had very destructive lifestyles. If you knew my dad, you would never say he did anything for money. The man was dirt poor all his life. Always drove very old cars until for the first time when he was about 70, someone gave him a new one. You should see the houses we lived in as a kid -- crackerboxes. This man has a brilliant mind ... two Masters degrees (didn't want a PhD because he didn't want people to call him "Dr.") -- could have lived like a king in America, but gave it up to live in a grass hut (yeah, I could show you pictures) with a God-forsaken jungle tribe in South America. You just have no idea what you are talking about, Deadman. You make things up to try to justify your skepticism and you are obviously miserable in doing so because you blow up and shoot your mouth off a lot. You even wanted to hit me yesterday! Why don't you start being honest about the truth for a change and embrace the life-changing truth of God's Word like the Wai-wais did?
As for your "objections" to the historicity of Genesis, I disposed of them easily already ...
1) The first one goes away with the flexible chronology I gave you 2) The second one is not even a criticism of Genesis at all ... it's a criticism of Exodus. And you cannot say something stated in the Bible did not happen because we have not yet found archaeological proof for it. The fact is that no statement in the Bible has EVER been controverted by archaeology yet, so why should we think it will in the future? 3) Your third point has nothing to do with the question of whether or not Genesis was intended to be taken as literal, eyewitness history. It is a question of "Was the author telling the truth?" Do you see the difference? My goal on page 82 was to show that Genesis was not an oral tradition finally written down sometime after Moses. I showed that it was written history, copied down by people who lived contemporaneously with the events described.
I know you have lots of objections about a lot of things, but what I am looking for now is objections to this last statement above. Do you have any?
*********************************************
Eric...
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Dave, there's essentially no chance you know anything about the ancients I don't know.
Well, here's some things they knew around 2000BC -- probably before that:
1) The constant PI 2) Earth moves around the sun 3) 365.242 days in a solar year 4) Earth-sun distance 5) Earth was a sphere 6) Polar diameter of the earth 7) Many "modern" architectural forms: the column, arch, vault and dome 8) The Flood and 'Earth movements' (plate tectonics?)
Did you know they knew all that? I like reminding people of this because many people in academia today have this nonsensical, brutish view of early man which has been shown to be totally false.
Aftershave...
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Tradition for who Dave? Certainly not for the scientific community.
Oh yes. The science community. Most of them were Biblical literalists and most of them were creationists. Did you forget that small detail?
OA...
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Oral or even written ‘traditions’ are just worthless folklore unless you can back them up with hard evidence.
What are you talking about? Did you not read my lost post on page 82? How much more hard evidence do you need? Do you want me to take you personally over to the British Museum and let you touch this stuff?
OA...
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No Dave, the scientific community is not ‘back’ since it was never there in the first place.
Yes, you're probably right. Why not hang onto the Documentary Hypothesis Myth in addition to the Darwinian Myth? If we are into mythology, why not go all the way?
OA...
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Pure unadulterated bullshit Dave. Myself and others have given you dozens of examples of archaeological finds that directly contradict your 7000 YO age of the Earth claim.
No. Actually you have not given me a single one. Some people have said things like "You cannot find any trace of Solomon's kingdom" or "You can't find any evidence of the Exodus plagues" ... Fine. That's a big difference. What I said is the "No archaeological find has ever controverted a Biblical statement." I did not say that we have archaeological support for every Biblical statement. That's impossible. We're never going to find an artifact that supports every Biblical statement. But we've found plenty. And not a single one has been in disagreement with a Biblical statement.
Now that is simply UNCANNY! What a remarkable record! This is truly a Supernatural Book!
I already debunked your C14 dating ... I'm not going to waste time explaining it to you again.
OA...
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How does a YEC archaeologist date a settlement in South America, or Australia, or somewhere not mentioned in the Bible?
I don't know any necessarily YEC archaeologists. The great archaeologists I mentioned on p. 82 are the only ones I am concerned with. I actually don't know how they arrived at the 5500 ya date for the beginning of civilization in Mesopotamia, and later dates for Egypt, China and all other civilizations, but I like it, I know that. It agrees with my worldview and contradicts yours. Pretty slick, I'd say, eh?
Eric...
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I think Dave might have been a little drunk tonight. Seemed a bit more petulant than he usually is.
I could feel the doubt creeping in. He can feel the walls crumbling—you know, those five-foot-thick earthen walls—the ones that keep his doubt at bay. That certitude that he clings to, like a drowning man clinging to the last bit of floating wreckage…it was feeling slippery and insubstantial.
Good performance, Eric. The audience is cheering!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What I said is the "No archaeological find has ever controverted a Biblical statement."
Try to be more accurate, Dave. What you really should say is, "I've never accepted the existence of an archaeological find that controverted a Biblical statement."
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
I'll bet that questions like that one just show up as "fnord" for Dave.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Looks like I got forgotten this morning. Here's my question again:
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I guess I was unclear. I mean which of the evidences that you have talked about over the 87 pages of comments here would you support having never heard of the Bible. A worldwide flood? Catastrophic movement of the continents? Earth created in 6 days? Common ancestry of siamangs and chimps, but not chimps and humans? Age of the earth? Age of stars? Separate creation of languages? Vapor canopies? I'm sure you can think of others.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Well dave, since you keep bashing poor C.S.L. with your arguments, someone has to come to the poor guy's aid...
So, dave: If your God came to you, beyond any doubt in your mind, and told you you should kill babies in his name, because that is his will at the moment and he knows better, would you do it dave?
A simple yes or no will do.
Also: While you think about it, tell us what your inerrant book says about the value of Pi, the Sun-Earth distance and the polar diameter of the Earth.
You do know that the ancients actually discovered most of these things, right dave? By using (and thereby setting the foundations for) the scientific method? And were reasonably accurate? Or is it that your god had switched favors, and preferred to whisper into the ear of Pythagoras, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes instead?
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Now that is simply UNCANNY! What a remarkable record! This is truly a Supernatural Book!
You are talking about the Iliad, I presume... Thanks, dave! Wanna chew some leaves and foretell the future with me?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Try to be more accurate, Dave. What you really should say is, "I've never accepted the existence of an archaeological find that controverted a Biblical statement."
No. My statement was accurate. Can YOU come up with an archaeological find that has controverted a Biblical statement? I bet you cannot.
Eric...
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Dave's method of winning arguments:
Eric is getting tired. It's no fun trying to defend the glories of Evolution because ... well, there isn't any glory to defend. So he makes up stuff about how I supposedly win arguments, says I'm drunk, says my walls are crumbling, etc. Eric, you could always throw in Rilke's technique --- say I'm a child molester. That was a really effective one!
Faid...
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So, dave: If your God came to you, beyond any doubt in your mind, and told you you should kill babies in his name, because that is his will at the moment and he knows better, would you do it dave?
No. I would not. This is one of those 'have you stopped beating your wife?' questions. God does not 'come to people' and tell them things these days that I am aware of. He did that in the days before the Scriptures were completed. That is no longer necessary. We have 'Moses and the Prophets' now to quote someone famous (Jesus). Why do we need God speaking directly to us?
Faid...
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Also: While you think about it, tell us what your inerrant book says about the value of Pi, the Sun-Earth distance and the polar diameter of the Earth.
You do know that the ancients actually discovered most of these things, right dave? By using (and thereby setting the foundations for) the scientific method? And were reasonably accurate? Or is it that your god had switched favors, and preferred to whisper into the ear of Pythagoras, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes instead?
Why don't you tell me your version of which ancients knew these things and how they knew them. Then I'll tell you mine. You obviously haven't a clue about what mine is.
Argy...
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I guess I was unclear. I mean which of the evidences that you have talked about over the 87 pages of comments here would you support having never heard of the Bible. A worldwide flood? Catastrophic movement of the continents? Earth created in 6 days? Common ancestry of siamangs and chimps, but not chimps and humans? Age of the earth? Age of stars? Separate creation of languages? Vapor canopies? I'm sure you can think of others.
Flood-yes. Continental movements-yes. Earth in 6 days-no. My common ancestry ideas-yes. Age of the earth/stars-no. Separate creation of languages-yes. Age of humans-yes. Vapor canopy-no.
So as you can see, there are some things I would know about from non-Biblical sources, and there are some things I would not. But happily we DO have the Bible ...
And here is the remarkable thing about it ...
The Bible is the oldest, most reliable history book ever. Say what you want to about its theology. Laugh at Jonah and the whale and Moses crossing the Red Sea if you like, but when the Bible speaks of places, it is accurate. When the Bible speaks of kings, it is accurate. When the Bible speaks of people groups and nations, it is accurate. When the Bible speaks about the origins of civilization, it is accurate. When the Bible speaks of great events of history, it is accurate. This is a remarkable thing. Reasonable people may disregard the Bible's theology. Anti-supernaturalists such as yourselves will disregard the miracles. But only a fool would disregard it's historical statements in light of the wealth of 20th century archaeology.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If you continue to try to spread Origin through this galaxy, we will be forced to contact the Asgard to assist us in locating Merlin's super-anti-ascended-beings weapon which will cancel you out, and you and your masters will cease to exist.
Love,
The Inhabitants of Reality.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Have you heard of the UPANISHADS or the Hindu Vedas ?
Historians agree that they are among the oldest texts known of today, older that the "Imaginary history of the Jewish People" otherwise know as the Old Testament.
Dave your acceptance of false evidence discredits any attempt you make to use ANY evidence, everyone here knows you are unreliable.
We do not have the original writing for those texts only copies.
But we do have ORIGINAL rock art 20,000 - 50,000 years old, evidence you can go see for yourself.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Can YOU come up with an archaeological find that has controverted a Biblical statement? I bet you cannot.
Of course, you still don't get it. It is impossible for anyone to present evidence that you would accept, because your mental fitlers will not allow for any such evidence.
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
I'll bet that questions like that one just show up as "fnord" for Dave.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Have you heard of the UPANISHADS or the Hindu Vedas ? Historians agree that they are among the oldest texts known of today, older that the "Imaginary history of the Jewish People" otherwise know as the Old Testament.
Yes. How old do you say they are?
Improv...
Quote
Of course, you still don't get it. It is impossible for anyone to present evidence that you would accept, because your mental fitlers will not allow for any such evidence.
Translation: I don't have any archaeological evidence that controverts a Biblical statement, so I will just sling mud.
Quote
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
It's real easy. Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it. Go try. You are so sure the Bible is wrong, it should be easy for you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The Bible is the oldest, most reliable history book ever.
Dave, that statement is contradicted by the Bible itself.
Think of some of the earliest stories in the Bible. Where did Moses escape from? From Egypt, right? Where did Joseph interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh? Egypt.
Do you think Egypt didn't have an older religion, an older history?
Those histories still exist in part. We know Pharaoh Akhenaten introduced monotheism in Egypt before there was a Moses. It didn't last long.
Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it.
Fundies say that archaeology supports the accuracy of the Bible. Archaeology only supports at most the general background of the Bible. Egypt did, indeed, exist and some other nations and geographic information are real -- Just like New England exists in a Stephen King novel. Archaeology does not support every biblical claim. It does not support anything about creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, or even the conquest of the Holy Land.
If such instances of historical accuracy are so significant, then an equal claim for accuracy can be made for the Iliad and Gone with the Wind. Remember that guy who found Troy using the works of Homer? Does that mean Achilles really existed and was invulnerable? That Helen was so beautiful they fought a war over her?
The Bible contains anachronisms. Details attributed to one era actually apply to a much later era. For example, camels, mentioned in Genesis 24:10, were not widely used until after 1000 B.C.E.
The Exodus, which should have been a major event, does not appear in Egyptian records. There are no traces in the Sinai that one would expect from forty years of wandering of more than half a million people. And other archaeological evidence contradicts it, showing instead that the Hebrews were a native people.
There is no evidence that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were nearly as powerful as the Bible indicates; they may not have existed at all.
In "The Bible Unearthed," Israel Finkelstein and Neil Silberman display a rare talent among scholars--the ability to make specialized research accessible to a general audience. In this book the authors reveal how recent archaeological research forces us to reconsider the historical account woven into the Hebrew Bible. Among the conclusions they draw are:
1) The tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are largely legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. This is seen in anachronisms such as the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time, in many of the stories.
2) There is good reason to believe that the Exodus never happened. Had migrants to the number of even a small fraction of the 600,000 claimed in the Bible truly sojourned in the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years, archaeological evidence of their passage would be abundant. In fact, there are no traces of any signifant group living in the Sinai at the supposed time of the Exodus.
3) The Israelite "conquest" of Canaan, such as there was, was far from the military invasion of the books of Joshua and Judges. Many of the cities described as being conquered and destroyed did not even exist at the time, while those that did were small, unfortified villages, with no walls to be brought down, by blowing trumpets or otherwise.
4) While there is evidence that a historical David existed, and founded some sort of ruling dynasty known by his name, there is good reason to believe that he did not rule over the powerful united monarchy described in II Samuel. One reason for doubt: Jerusalem, portrayed as the great capital of a prosperous nation, was during the time of David little more than a village.
5) Neither Israel nor Judah emerged as organized kingdoms until significantly after the supposed period of the united monarchy. Israel does not appear as a recognizable kingdom until the time of the Omrides of the 9th century BCE, while Judah does not appear as such until the late 8th century BCE, at the time of kings Ahaz and Hezekiah.
Along with their revision of the biblical account of history, Finkelstein and Silberman attempt to explain the origins of the Hebrew Bible, suggesting that the composition of much of the Bible can be tied to the religious agenda of King Josiah of Judah during the late 7th century BCE. While the origins of the Bible will never be known with certainty--there simply isn't enough evidence--Finkelstein and Silberman definitely provide a plausible interpretation.
The authors, as I noted above, do a superb job of making their work understandable to non-specialists; since even college history majors often don't study the ancient Near East, they take care to include sufficient background information for the reader to understand the context of their account. Anyone with an interest in the subject will find "The Bible Unearthed" to be fascinating reading. And anyone who thinks the Bible is an accurate history book should definitely read it.
So, dave: If your God came to you, beyond any doubt in your mind, and told you you should kill babies in his name, because that is his will at the moment and he knows better, would you do it dave?
No. I would not. This is one of those 'have you stopped beating your wife?' questions. God does not 'come to people' and tell them things these days that I am aware of. He did that in the days before the Scriptures were completed. That is no longer necessary. We have 'Moses and the Prophets' now to quote someone famous (Jesus). Why do we need God speaking directly to us?
Shhh! Don't tell Pat Robertson.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
I termed your terrorizing children with threats of god immoral based on my OWN views, not universal views.
The fact that you are still likely terrorizing them says you don't hold my views, nor I yours. So much for universal. The fact that the Wai-wai and many other groups engage in infanticide commonly shows that false "reverence" for children is not universal either. I could give you hundreds of examples of cultures that have done this in the past or up to this day. So much for universal.
As far as the Wai-wai are concerned, everything I wrote was accurate. And no, I can't go "ask" their chief at that time (Elka),he's dead. Died in '95 or so. Other Wai-Wai that did NOT experience the interference of your father did just fine and are also experiencing explosive population growth since the Guyana, Brazilian and Venezuelan governments started protecting their lands (somewhat) during the 60's onwards. No magic needed--as I said a long time ago, they needed to be left alone by every outsider, including your meddling father.
Faid brings up a good point about the bible using 3 as Pi, and the flat earth it describes. and yes, exodus is in exodus, duh. You asked for anything that contradicted the bible since it was inerrant . I gave you those and I included those finds that would still contnue to show that your CURRENT claim of a 5000-year-old flood is a lie.
And no, you didn't SHOW how you got that 5000-year date for the flood, Dave: You keep avoiding showing how it would be calculated from the bible. Because you can't show it without INTERPOLATING your own claims. You would have to make claims based on what is NOT there in the bible, Dave.
China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, The Andes, Australia, Africa and Europe all had cultures that SHOULD have been wiped out by your "extended age" flood, Dave....but they were not.
Nor have you shown how you arrived at your date for that mystery flood. Try working on that and keeping your Dad from meddling with the lives of others, K? Thnx.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You make things up to try to justify your skepticism and you are obviously miserable in doing so because you blow up and shoot your mouth off a lot. You even wanted to hit me yesterday! Why don't you start being honest about the truth for a change and embrace the life-changing truth of God's Word like the Wai-wais did?
Hah, that's cute, Dave. First you lie about my theistic views, now you want to lie about my emotional/psychological state? I'm happy as a clam ( a known mirthful mollusk) and engaged in moving to New Zealand with Fractatious, who is beautiful and brilliant ( eidetic memory) and the daughter of a chief in her own right. (Tuhoe, the only non-treaty Maori group).
Yep, I said you should be glad you're not in my arm's reach, Dave, when you talk about things you have to lie about, like my ancestors being "devolved" If your faith leads you to lying as you do, using fallacies and avoidance as you do, twisting reality and the words of others as you do...nah, I'll pass. As I said, I know the Bible very well, and I view it as a veneer of history on a core of myth, with heaping helpings of magic and politics thrown in.
The errors and outright falsehoods in the bible and other religious works don't bother me, though, Dave...but they bother you. In the immortal words of Ian Anderson ( Jethro Tull) "He's not the kind of god you have to wind up on Sundays" You have a toy, cartoon god with the (non-universal) morals of a mafia thug, as others have noted. I don't remotely need to accept that kind of god, Dave.
Now, How about that Catal Huyuk archaeology? How about the pre-dynastic Egyptian and Chinese? How about the Sumerian? The sheer mass of sites related to cultures beyond 10K YA is ..staggering. Hundreds of thousands of sites and references ...but for you, they're all imaginary. Ah, if nothing else, YOU make me laugh, Dave
I gave you references for the Americas, too...predating your flood and running right through it with no sign of the genocidal god you love so much. Tsk.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Think of some of the earliest stories in the Bible. Where did Moses escape from? From Egypt, right? Where did Joseph interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh? Egypt. Do you think Egypt didn't have an older religion, an older history?
Norm, The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not Jewish history. They are much older. The Book of Genesis is a compilation of 11 ta
Think of some of the earliest stories in the Bible. Where did Moses escape from? From Egypt, right? Where did Joseph interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh? Egypt. Do you think Egypt didn't have an older religion, an older history?
Norm, The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not Jewish history. They are much older. The Book of Genesis is a compilation of 11 tablets, the first two being the oldest documents ever written. Go read my essay on page 82, then we can argue intelligently.
Norm...I see you are reading Silberman and Finkelstein, but I see you still fail to give me even ONE archaeological find that contradicts a Biblical statement. All you can do is speculate about how the Exodus probably never happened.
Norm...
Quote
Archaeology only supports at most the general background of the Bible.
My friend, someone has been feeding you nonsense. You need to educate yourself on Biblical archaeology. Start with my essay on page 82.
Deadman-- Good detective work on Elka, the Wai-wai chief. I am impressed! But I didn't say go talk to him, silly. Of course he's dead. I told you to go talk to the current chief and to some older people in the tribe. You will find you are mistaken about the Wai Wai tribe--I cannot speak for other tribes. But of course you won't go talk to him. You WANT to believe that missionaries are selfish "meddlers" just like you WANT to believe that you are related to apes. But if you did talk to them, they would verify my account. You could also read the two books "Christ's Witchdoctor" and "Christ's Jungle" and get the same information I am giving you from an outsider.
Your attitude toward missionaries is unfortunate. Do you realize, Deadman, that you live in a free country today because of missionaries? Do you like America? Do you like the freedoms we enjoy? We enjoy them because someone like my dad carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the natives in England long ago. And the Pilgrims carried this Christianity and the freedom it brings to America. I know there were many injustices, too. But without those missionaries to England, you would be living under tyranny today.
The Wai-wais will tell you the fear they lived in before my dad came. They will tell you that they killed their babies because of FEAR of the evil spirits, not because they thought it was right (so much for your rebuttal of universal morality). They will tell you that their lives were miserable -- they lived in squalor and constant drunkenness. They lived with hopelessness. And they will tell you that they were dying out. They used to ask my dad "What will you do when we are all gone?" We've seen anthropologists (that think like you) come in and talk to us about the "beautiful savages." What nonsense!! Those guys never stuck around long enough to even find out what the natives really had to say for themselves. They came with their preconceived notions about how white people should leave those savages alone, then they left and wrote their foolish books. It was my dad who sacrificed his life for them, not the anthropologists. It was my dad who helped them with their crops, pulled their rotten teeth, got them glasses, gave them medicine, helped their ladies deliver breeched babies, showed them how to love their enemies instead of kill them in revenge, befriended them, and earned their undying respect forever.
But go on. Wallow in your delusions if you must. You're not going to buy what I say anyway, about this or anything else.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Think of some of the earliest stories in the Bible. Where did Moses escape from? From Egypt, right? Where did Joseph interpret the dreams of the Pharaoh? Egypt. Do you think Egypt didn't have an older religion, an older history?
Norm, The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not Jewish history. They are much older. The Book of Genesis is a compilation of 11 ta
Dave, you're trying to move the goal posts again. You said that "The Bible is the oldest, most reliable history book ever." Now you're only saying it's only the first few chapters of Genesis that are older, something you can't prove.
A book is a book, not it's first few paragraphs. If your book mentions a people with another book then your book cannot be older than their book, that's logic.
Can you prove that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are much older than the creation myths of ancient Sumer? In order for it to be true, Hebrew would have to be the oldest language and it is not. The oldest story is logically the earliest story dated in the earliest language.
...you still fail to give me even ONE archaeological find that contradicts a Biblical statement.
You're blind.
What about the anachronism evidence that the tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. One anachronisms is the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time.
Do you like America? Do you like the freedoms we enjoy?
Deadman, I see you are moving to NZ. Everything I said about America applies to NZ as well b/c of its English roots.
PS: I'm still waiting for you to prove to me with the testimony of your actions how much you love kids.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The first 11 chapters of Genesis are not Jewish history. They are much older. The Book of Genesis is a compilation of 11 tablets, the first two being the oldest documents ever written. Go read my essay on page 82, then we can argue intelligently.
So, in addition to creating a completely bogus geology to support the flood, it appears you now have a bogus creationist archeology.
Last I heard the Epic of Gilgamesh was probably the oldest written story ever found. It is not the oldest example of language however and it most probably is not the first story -- just the first we've found. It comes from ancient Sumeria, originally written on 12 clay tablets in cunieform script. It is about the adventures of the historical King of Uruk (somewhere between 2750 and 2500 BCE).
It's not the first chapers of Genesis -- but it does mention a flood and a few Bible-like tidbits. This only proves that the Bible's authors plagerized parts of their very different story.
No, I don't buy your revisionist history, Dave. So? As I said, the Wai-Wai that lived elsewhere did just fine. You might try reading a history of the region to find out WHY the Wai-Wai your daddy encountered were so screwed up-- It wasn't due to anything else but Christians like you who decided to decimate them. If they had been left alone from the beginning, without people feeding them alcohol ( they had none before white people, stupid) and taking their economic base from them, they'd have been fine, just as other non-missionary-influenced groups became.
Your claim that CHRISTIANITY alone or even remotely led to freedon TODAY in america is amusing. Tell that to american blacks who were enslaved by...christians. Look at the constitution and bill of rights for references to non-europeans, Dave--tell me what it says about freedom and democracy for them there. Tell that to amerinds who were subjected to genocide by ....christians. Trying to play the "patriotic" card in the name of religion is typical of your ploys, Davey. And just as transparent.
Your claim that the Wai-wai infanticide practices were due to fear is amusing, showing you have no grasp of the Ethnology of the group. Try reading the CIIPR work from 1985-86 on Ethnology, ethno-astronomy and ethno-archaeology as well as documenting the significant cultural changes that had happened during the past 30 years -- Right during that period your Daddy was busy meddling with people that needed ONLY a return to their economic base and protection from other meddling christian savages.
Again, as you lied about my theistic views and my emotional state, you now try to lie about my view of Amerinds as being some naive, pollyannaish one? Shit, my ancestors would have given your daddy to the women so they could amuse themselves (and not by sex, Baboo) . I have no illusions about how brutal any group can be, mine included, or even the Christians that you seem to virtually deify. I LIKE the fact that my ancestors would fight assholes like your "good christians" to the death.
Your father seems to have been a decent enough guy, but wayyyyy back when I first brought this up, I said what I did now--if all you Christians would have kept out of their lives, they'd be fine and this is shown by the fact that the outlying Wai-Wai, the ones smart enough to avoid Europeans...did fine, and continue to do fine. Your Daddy's meddling destroyed their culture, finishing what other Christians started. Look at global Christian history-- they come with whiskey and guns, then they steal the land, then they steal the ideology of groups. Is this ALWAYS? No, but it has happened so many times that it IS a pattern observable in history. By the way, I say the same thing about Islam too...the amount of Islamic slave trade/cultural destruction in Africa and elsewhere is also staggering.
Look at the history of Europe and you'll see Celtic/Scythian/Pictish/Germanic/Mediterranean/Slavic cannibalism and head-hunting, infanticide and warfare galore...just as we see elsewhere. The issue is not Nationality, Race, or anything else, it is about POWER, the ability to get others to do what one wants them to do---If I give you 20 atomic bombs and 20 tons of gold and isolate you on..say Mars, just as a thought experiment.. alone...you have no power.
On the other hand, put people around you, and you will always have competition ...competition that includes ideological power-based views that are literally designed to control others. You seem to view Christianity as the "designed" culmination of theistic development, but the Muslims see it otherwise. They and you Christians are going to kill each other in the name of your respective gods, just as you killed others in the name of your gods. All about power, baby.
Now...no, you have not shown how you derived that 5000 year date for the "new flood of Dave" in the Bible. Do so. I'd be curious how you want to now twist the bible, as you have so many other things, in your egocentric little view.
And, as I mentioned..EVERY site (I'll exclude carbon-dated sites) that extends beyond your dating , or runs THROUGH your claims about a 5kya flood...contradicts Genesis. You were offered many. IN anatolia, Catal Huyuk, In China, the Hongshan, Yangshao, Liangzhu, and Taosi Longshan cultures, In the americas, The Peruvian Coastal cultures, the proto-Olmec, the mound cultures ( for example, Eva in Tennessee, Indian Knoll in kentucky, etc.) The Southwest American sites and materials aren't JUST dated by radiocarbon, they are supported by DENDROCHRONOLOGY, the very thing you...avoid, as well as things like amino acid racemization, faunal analysis , obsidian hydration, thermoluminescence . etc. etc. Humboldt cave, Lovelock cave, gatecliff shelter, the C.W. Harris site, Clear Lake Basin, THERE ARE THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF SITES THAT YOU HAVE TO CLAIM ARE **ALL** FALSELY dated. EVEN WHEN THEY ARE NOT DATED BY 14C!!!
I could list sites for weeks on end in Africa, Europe, Australia, all of which would NOT be based on C14 exclusively, that you would avoid just in the same way you avoid Catal Huyuk...because it contradicts genesis and your "revised AFDave Flood date" that you can't even support
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave,Dave, Dave---why is it that everytime you type your ignorance onto the board here, that you NEVER seem to bother to check your mosquito brain? You say:
Quote
Do you like America? Do you like the freedoms we enjoy? Deadman, I see you are moving to NZ. Everything I said about America applies to NZ as well b/c of its English roots. PS: I'm still waiting for you to prove to me with the testimony of your actions how much you love kids.
1.) The Maori HAD freedom and liberty PRIOR to the European invasion. Did they fight with each other, sure just as Americans fight and kill each other. Your suggestion that freedom and liberty was ONLY to be had by Christians imposing it...goes against everything we know in history and archaeology and anthro. American Indians had freedom and liberty and representative "democractic" systems before the arrival of europeans, dumbshit. You think that "Christians" invented it? That's like saying "europeans invented the bow and arrow"
2) I volunteer time, money and effort at the local,national and global level. In los angeles, for the AIDS Project Los Angeles, because a young friend died of it. At a National level, The American Indian Education Foundation, at a global level, UNICEF. And yeah, I donate money for other things in regard to the environment and political activism that directly or indirectly benefits kids.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So, dave: If your God came to you, beyond any doubt in your mind, and told you you should kill babies in his name, because that is his will at the moment and he knows better, would you do it dave?
No. I would not. This is one of those 'have you stopped beating your wife?' questions. God does not 'come to people' and tell them things these days that I am aware of. He did that in the days before the Scriptures were completed. That is no longer necessary. We have 'Moses and the Prophets' now to quote someone famous (Jesus). Why do we need God speaking directly to us?
Sorry no bonus, davesy. It is a perfectly normal question, and that's why you avoid answering it as usual. "God wouldn't speak to us today" is not an answer, and you know it; it has no relevance to the question, which regards morality, as you darnn well know. Our Universal Moral Code is hardcoded in all of us from the beginning, remember? (if it's not, well, it's not instinctive but just cultural). What if you were Joshua, dave? What if you were a soldier of Joshua, and your beloved leader came to you and said "Yahveh came to me, and said we must butcher all men, women, children and babies of the ___ until nothing remains breathing"? WHAT WOULD YOU DO, DAVE?
There's no avoiding this question, dave. Answer it, or admit you can't. Don't try to play games; you're not dealing with children here.
Quote (afdave @ June 24 2006,11:08)
Faid...
Quote
Also: While you think about it, tell us what your inerrant book says about the value of Pi, the Sun-Earth distance and the polar diameter of the Earth.
You do know that the ancients actually discovered most of these things, right dave? By using (and thereby setting the foundations for) the scientific method? And were reasonably accurate? Or is it that your god had switched favors, and preferred to whisper into the ear of Pythagoras, Aristarchus and Eratosthenes instead?
Why don't you tell me your version of which ancients knew these things and how they knew them. Then I'll tell you mine. You obviously haven't a clue about what mine is.
Oh I think I do, dave. Although I may be wrong, of course, unlike you the Inerrant Soldier of God. So, you want my version? You could easily obtain it by googling the names I provided. Here, let me help you get going:
For starters. Now, please tell me how the ancient egyptian dynasties already knew the polar diameter of the earth. Seeing you engage in Pyramidology and Von Danikenism will match your "ape breeding" scenario in entertainment- almost.
Oh and, once again: what does the Bible tell us about all these things, dave? Or is Osiris the one true god after all?
But what am I saying- we have already established that the Greek Pantheon is the real deal... After all, the Iliad remains unrefuted! AND it was the basis for archaeological predictions that came TRUE! Beat that, Moses!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Try to be more accurate, Dave. What you really should say is, "I've never accepted the existence of an archaeological find that controverted a Biblical statement."
No. My statement was accurate. Can YOU come up with an archaeological find that has controverted a Biblical statement? I bet you cannot.
Dave, we've already given you a dozen or more archaeological finds that flat-out contradict the bible. Pretty much every archaeological find in North or South America contradicts the Bible, especially the ones from 8-12,000 B.C. What about the Turkish settlement from 12,000 years ago? That doesn't contradict the Bible? What about the Lascaux caves?
The problem is, Dave, evidence that contradicts your world-view is invisible to you. An example would be when you claimed I had no idea where C14 in coal came from, after I'd already told you three times. If you don't like it, it doesn't exist.
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Eric is getting tired. It's no fun trying to defend the glories of Evolution because ... well, there isn't any glory to defend. So he makes up stuff about how I supposedly win arguments, says I'm drunk, says my walls are crumbling, etc.
Tired? I haven't even started, Dave. If you don't give up first, you'll be trying to explain away evidence for evolution, an old earth, and an old universe for the next twenty years. You know why? Because I will never run out of evidence, Dave. New discoveries are being made that confirm the scientific worldview faster than I could ever post them for you to try to try to explain away. You'll never keep up.
But I'm glad you've finally admitted that you don't win arguments around here. That's a start.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, there's essentially no chance you know anything about the ancients I don't know.
Well, here's some things they knew around 2000BC -- probably before that:
1) The constant PI 2) Earth moves around the sun 3) 365.242 days in a solar year 4) Earth-sun distance 5) Earth was a sphere 6) Polar diameter of the earth 7) Many "modern" architectural forms: the column, arch, vault and dome 8) The Flood and 'Earth movements' (plate tectonics?)
Did you know they knew all that?
Why, yes, Dave, I do believe I did know these various historical trivia. Your dates are a little off; most of this knowledge dates back to a few hundred years, not two millennia, B.C., but I'll agree with you that the people who figured these things out were "ancients."
But Dave, I'd learned most of that by eighth grade.
And the "ancients" knew squat about plate tectonics. They knew about as much you do, i.e., nothing.
And they certainly didn't "know" anything about any global flood, because there never was a global flood. (By the way, Dave, are you going to start posting some evidence that your flood ever happened, or are you going to shut up about it?)
And furthermore, none of these ancient worthies learned any of this stuff by studying their bible. They went out and used exactly the same methods scientists use today to find the answers to questions. They didn't read them in a book, for crying out loud.
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I like reminding people of this because many people in academia today have this nonsensical, brutish view of early man which has been shown to be totally false.
Right, Dave. You, with your vast knowledge of science, love to go around correcting academic historians of science, who forgot more last week about the history of science than you'll ever know.
You can't judge scientists by the level of scientific knowledge demonstrated by your fellow parishioners, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Let's see...Over 3 DOZEN different verified radiometric methods used to date archaeological materials, and Dave says that they're all false because god souped up the decay rate...despite the fact that such an event would literally convert water to scalding killing steam and melt the Earth. So Dave needs another miracle on top of that to save life from his killer god.
Dating methods Dave ignores (among others) include Archaeomagnetic Dating Coral sequences Deep Sea cores Dendrochronology Electron Spin Resonance Faunal Analysis Fission-track Dating Obsidian Hydration Optically Stimulated Luminescence Palynology Stalactites/Stalagmites/Flowstone Thermoluminscence Typology Varves
Dave also refuses to show his dating of the "global flood," to show PRECISELY defined evidence for his creation story and flood, or to even discuss sites that are not dated by 14 C exclusively.
Dave repeatedly lies not merely about his quote-mining and failure to support his claims, but also trivial things like my "religious" views. More importantly...his refusal to directly answer questions allows Dave to "cherry-pick" his way through things, pretending that he's "covered" topics which he has not. Lies upon lies are not very convincing, Davey--I bet your daddy hasn't read through this thread, eh? Too embarassed, I bet.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
As predicted, another day is here and a now sobered up QFDave begins his daily lying regimen.
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OA: Tradition for who Dave? Certainly not for the scientific community.
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QFDave: Oh yes. The science community. Most of them were Biblical literalists and most of them were creationists. Did you forget that small detail?
Maybe 200 years ago, but certainly not now. Did you forget that small detail? Science has come a long way since then Dave. Maybe you should learn a little bit of it.
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OA: Oral or even written traditions are just worthless folklore unless you can back them up with hard evidence.
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QFDave: What are you talking about? Did you not read my lost post on page 82? How much more hard evidence do you need? Do you want me to take you personally over to the British Museum and let you touch this stuff?
Sure Dave, and I'll show you a manuscript for King Kong that proves giant gorillas climbing buildings in NYC are real. A stone tablet inscribed with folklore is still just folklore you moron, unless you provide positive evidence for the events described on the tablet.
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OA: No Dave, the scientific community is not 'back' since it was never there in the first place.
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QFDave: Yes, you're probably right. Why not hang onto the Documentary Hypothesis Myth in addition to the Darwinian Myth? If we are into mythology, why not go all the way?
Sorry Dave, the scientific community only works with positive evidence. That thing you are 100% lacking. Hence, your need to lie and try to prop up your stories.
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OA: Pure unadulterated bullshit Dave. Myself and others have given you dozens of examples of archaeological finds that directly contradict your 7000 YO age of the Earth claim
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QFDave: No. Actually you have not given me a single one.
Now you're flat out lying again Dave. What about the 9000 YO settlement at Catal Huyuk? What about the 28,000 YO cave art at Lascaux? You were directly challenged to discuss and analyze the dating of these things, but you ran like a coward again when faced with the prospect of actual scientific evidence.
Every artifact older than 7000 YO directly contradicts your literal Bible views Dave, and there are millions of them.
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QFDave: Some people have said things like "You cannot find any trace of Solomon's kingdom" or "You can't find any evidence of the Exodus plagues" ... Fine. That's a big difference. What I said is the "No archaeological find has ever controverted a Biblical statement." I did not say that we have archaeological support for every Biblical statement. That's impossible. We're never going to find an artifact that supports every Biblical statement. But we've found plenty. And not a single one has been in disagreement with a Biblical statement.
Lies, lies, and more lies from Missionary Dave. What Science really says is "You haven't provide any evidence that the Earth is only 7000 YO." Or "You haven't provide any evidence that the entire Earth surface was covered for a year by a global that killed almost all life only 5000 YO." AND YOU HAVEN'T Dave, because such evidence DOESN'T EXIST. Science also provides millions of pieces of evidence that shows those two events didn't happen the way your literal Bible claims. That data DOES EXIST and you were provided with plenty. That you choose to be a lying, willfully ignorant dumbshit is your problem Davie Dear, not Science's.
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QFDave: I already debunked your C14 dating ... I'm not going to waste time explaining it to you again.
Lying must come as naturally to you as farting, doesn't it Gaseous Dave. You have yet to address my basic question about the six independent methods that are used to accurately calibrate radiocarbon dating. You can't explain why we have a continuous dendrochronology record extending back 11000 years. You can't explain why we have a continuous lake varve record extending back 29000 years. You can't explain why we have a continuous ice core sample record extending back over 100,000 years. You can't explain why all these phenomenon extend well past 7000 years ago. And best of all, you can't explain why to within a few percent dates for all these phenomenon agree with the C14 results.
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OA: How does a YEC archaeologist date a settlement in South America, or Australia, or somewhere not mentioned in the Bible?
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QFDave: I don't know any necessarily YEC archaeologists. The great archaeologists I mentioned on p. 82 are the only ones I am concerned with. I actually don't know how they arrived at the 5500 ya date for the beginning of civilization in Mesopotamia, and later dates for Egypt, China and all other civilizations, but I like it, I know that. It agrees with my worldview and contradicts yours. Pretty slick, I'd say, eh?
You know of an ex-YEC geologist, Glenn Morton, who used to work for ICR but got disgusted with their lies and became an OEC. You know he changed his views when saw the actuall, physical, old Earth evidence for himself. Glenn's a real embarrassment for you isn't he, since you still use ICR as one of your primary information sources, right? That's why you refuse to discuss his evidence and experiences.
And guess what Dumbass Lying Dave - all those dates you are so cock-proud of were actually confirmed via C14 radiocarbon dating. So either you accept the C14 results as valid and be a hypocrite, or you throw them out and are left with NO way to date ANY historical find. Real 'sciency' approach there Davie Dumbass.
Are you going to teach your kids to be lying, thieving Missionaries like you and your Daddy were? Keep that family tradition of 'Lying for Jesus' going?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
When Dave says we haven't given him evidence to support a particular assertion, he's not lying. In his universe, we actually haven't given him evidence, because he can't see it. He is simply constitutionally incapable of seeing things that contradict his worldview.
If I'm right, that wouldn't make him a liar. It would make him deeply delusional, but that's a different thing.
But, on the other hand, I could be wrong.
There's one area of law (other than the obvious perjury statutes) where evidence that someone is lying is one of the elements of proof. That's fraud. When you say someone is perpetrating a fraud, you're basically saying they're lying.
Now, sometimes, you have to prove that someone is intentionally representing something as true that they know to be false. This is usually a hard kind of fraud to prove, because other than an admission, either in writing or some sort of unimpeachable third-party testimony, it's hard to prove that someone knows what he is saying is false.
But a lot of species of fraud also have equivalents of knowledge. Sometimes, you merely have to prove that someone said something they should have known was false. Also, someone can be "deliberately ignorant" of facts that would show them that something they said is false. Or, there's "reckless disregard" of facts that would demonstrate the falsity of their statements.
We're not in a court of law here, guys, so we don't actually have to prove that Dave knows what he's saying is false. But it's pretty clear, given his deliberate ignorance of numerous facts he's been provided, and his reckless disregard of other facts, that whether Dave knows what he's saying is true or not, we can pretty much convict him of effectively being a liar, even if he thinks he's not lying.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
... he's not lying. In his universe, we actually haven't given him evidence, because he can't see it. He is simply constitutionally incapable of seeing things that contradict his worldview.
You mean that afdave is like the missionary in the movie Erik the Viking?
... he's not lying. In his universe, we actually haven't given him evidence, because he can't see it. He is simply constitutionally incapable of seeing things that contradict his worldview.
You mean that afdave is like the missionary in the movie Erik the Viking?
Hmm…I've seen Erik the Viking about a million times, but not in a long while. I remember the King of Atlantis telling everyone not to worry as the water comes over his chin, but can't remember the Missionary. I'll have to rent it again, I suppose…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
It's real easy. Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it. Go try. You are so sure the Bible is wrong, it should be easy for you.
See, Dave? You STILL can't answer the question. Your brain just can't handle it.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
It's real easy. Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it. Go try. You are so sure the Bible is wrong, it should be easy for you.
Se, Dave? You STILL can't answer the question. Your brain just can't handle it.
Perhaps I'll try.
Dave: Give a hypothetical example of an archaeological piece of data contradicting the Bible, and the specific methods used to generate that data.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
If I'm right, that wouldn't make him a liar. It would make him deeply delusional, but that's a different thing.
AirFarceDave could be insane. Or he could just be a tard. But my money's on purposeful and willful liar.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Eighty-eight pages and still no proper hypothesis....
I've been burdened with knowledge, reading the vast amount of intelligent replies to this... person. Yet, I see no variance in opinion, no sign of growth, no delight of learning on his part. My book list keeps getting longer and he's denying anything that unsettles his concrete views.
I can't add to the science here but I'd still like to alleviate the social burden he represents. Is there some foundation that works to cure Severe Neophobia and Ossified Mentation?
I can't add to the science here but I'd still like to alleviate the social burden he represents. Is there some foundation that works to cure Severe Neophobia and Ossified Mentation?
Like many mental illnesses, SN and OM cause their victims to reject treatment, if they're aware of the sickness at all.
If we can't cure them, at least we can work to limit their impact on society.
-------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G
Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF
THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS ACADEMIC MORALIZER Deadman, I'm talking about you. I asked you about what you do for kids because you accused me of harming them by teaching them about the Bible. My suspicion was that you have no great love for kids at all ... you are just an academic who loves to moralize and pontificate about other people and what they should or should not do, but you don't do any of it yourself.
Come to find out, I was right. You don't care 2 hoots for kids. You were just pretending that you did. Are you and Fractatious going to have some kids when you get to NZ? Or adopt some? I doubt it. When I ask you to demonstrate your great love for kids, you just say you give money to people with AIDS. So, enough preaching at me about harming kids, OK? I and my wife have sacrificed countless personal pleasures for our five natural kids and we are adopting a sixth. I wish I could adopt more, there is so much need in the world. So many kids have no parents to love them. Maybe I will start an orphanage like George Muller.
As if that weren't enough, then you start moralizing about my dad. You have ZERO firsthand experience with a real jungle tribe ... you've just read some books about it and now you're going to lecture my dad who sacrificed 50 years of his life to save these people from extinction and get them on the road to viability. You talk all this academic nonsense about the CIIPR work from 1985-86 on Ethnology, ethno-astronomy and ethno-archaeology, but you haven't a clue because you were not there. Neither was the anthropologist for long. They typically stayed there just long enough for an interview with MY DAD and his co-workers about the Wai-Wai. They didn't want to stick around for any of the dirty work. These guys were arrogant academic jerks and were well known for coming in with pre-conceived notions ... they would ask these loaded questions and put words in my dad's mouth. Then they would go away and write what they wanted to write. They were basically like hostile newspaper people. Your neat little book says the white man just needed to stay out of their way so they could expand their economic base? You are clueless, man. Do you know what these people's economic base was? They had NO contact with white people prior to my dad, by the way, at least not in the 20th century. Their economic base was hunting and gathering and very limited farming. Had been that way for many, many years. They weren't dying out because of their loss of economic base. They were dying out because they were killing each other and their own babies. And lest you think we lived richly on the backs of the natives, we didn't. We lived in a humble thatch roofed house just like they lived. I carried firewood for my mom to use in her wood stove and I carried water from a rain barrel and the river to drink. We ate with them in their houses and they ate with us in ours. Their kids were my playmates growing up. We hunted lizards as kids together and swam in the river together. These people are like family to my family. And they are forever indebted to my dad and will tell you so.
You are right about one thing ... the record of Institutional Christianity is dismal. The Catholic Church has been as despotic as is possible to imagine down through history. My dad was harrassed by Catholic priests trying to extort money from the Wai-wais. And Protestant America hasn't always been pretty either. Slavery is a perfect example. But Lincoln did fix it, did he not? At least we repent when we do wrong.
Now, do something for me there Deadman. If you think that the Christian English influence on NZ was nothing special as you imply (actually you said it was harmful), then why don't you join the Maori tribe there and live like the Maoris did pre-English influence, OK? Is that your plan? I doubt it. You'll probably live richly like a Westerner. And while you are benefitting from Western society which was the product of a Christian world view, you have the audacity to criticize it. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!!!
Deadman...
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the outlying Wai-Wai, the ones smart enough to avoid Europeans...did fine, and continue to do fine.
Outlying Wai-wais, Deadman? There is not a single Wai-wai village that my dad has not had contact with. What in the world are you talking about?
PSEUDO-DENDROCHRONOLOGY: MORE WISHFUL THINKING BY THE EVOS Deadman...
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Now, How about that Catal Huyuk archaeology? How about the pre-dynastic Egyptian and Chinese? How about the Sumerian? The sheer mass of sites related to cultures beyond 10K YA is ..staggering. Hundreds of thousands of sites and references ...but for you, they're all imaginary. Ah, if nothing else, YOU make me laugh, Dave
I gave you references for the Americas, too...predating your flood and running right through it with no sign of the genocidal god you love so much. Tsk.What about the Catal Huyuk?
All the cultures you mention beyond 5,500 YA are not dated with written records. It's all C14 or some other equivocal method like dendrochronology. Here is the real story on Dendrochronolgy written by plant physiologist Dr. Don Batten - a guy with no long age pre-conceived fairy tale notions. http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp As usual, evolutionists are trying to twist a dating method with certain assumptions to fit their beloved viewpoint of gradualist human evolution. They just HAVE to have some "scientific" method of validating their ideas of a 200,000 year history of mankind. So they take a perfectly good method of dating LIVE trees, add some goofy assumptions that no one would ever make unless they were trying to justify long ages, and PRESTO! Pseudo-Dendrochronolgy! See? Look at all these artifacts that are 10,000-30,000 years old! See? This provides a wonderful cross-check of C14 dating (never mind that BOTH of them are flawed, wink, wink).
GENESIS: THE MOST ANCIENT WRITTEN RECORDS THERE CONTAINED If anyone has questions about ancient written records, you should read page 82 of this thread first. Apparently some of you are confused about what I am claiming. Again, to clarify ...
I am saying that the Book of Genesis is a Compilation of written, eyewitness history. It is composed of the material from 11 tablets, edited by Moses ca. 1400 BC. The tablets themselves vary in age, the oldest being the first two dated at least at 3200BC (latest date for Adam in old age), the later tablets being dated near the end of the lives of the patriarchs named at the end of each tablet. So the tablets thus compiled by Moses represent the oldest written records. Much older that the Gilgamesh epic. Examination of the two makes it clear as well that the Gilgamesh Epic was copied from these older records, not vice-versa. The Gilgamesh Epic is quite irrational and full of gross polytheism, which is proven to have developed AFTER the original mono-theism.
Norm...
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What about the anachronism evidence that the tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. One anachronisms is the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time.
You have old info. People used to think writing was not invented until after Moses. Do you think that too? There are no anachronisms that I am aware of. 20th century archaeology has refuted those ideas.
Deadman...
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You seem to view Christianity as the "designed" culmination of theistic development, but the Muslims see it otherwise. They and you Christians are going to kill each other in the name of your respective gods, just as you killed others in the name of your gods. All about power, baby.
It is the culmination of theism. But it wasn't developed. It was revealed in the beginning (wasn't called Christianity back then, though, although it was essentially the same thing.) Have you ever noticed one key difference between Islam and Christianity? How the two were propagated during the first 300 years of their existence? Go study that and get back to me. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Deadman...
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1.) The Maori HAD freedom and liberty PRIOR to the European invasion. Did they fight with each other, sure just as Americans fight and kill each other. Your suggestion that freedom and liberty was ONLY to be had by Christians imposing it...goes against everything we know in history and archaeology and anthro. American Indians had freedom and liberty and representative "democractic" systems before the arrival of europeans, dumbshit. You think that "Christians" invented it? That's like saying "europeans invented the bow and arrow"
OK. Fine. If you think the American Indians had it so great, why don't you go live like them. If you can't decide on a tribe, my dad could help you out. Come on, Deadman, are you up for it? No, you're not. You'll live high on the hog like a Westerner, then sling mud at Christians who founded Western Civilization. Biting the hand that feeds you. Shameful!!
Faid...
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What if you were Joshua, dave? What if you were a soldier of Joshua, and your beloved leader came to you and said "Yahveh came to me, and said we must butcher all men, women, children and babies of the ___ until nothing remains breathing"? WHAT WOULD YOU DO, DAVE?
OK. Now you have framed a decent question and given it some context. Answer: I would obey. You see, there was a different authority system in place in Joshua's day than there is now. Divine authority was verified by supernatural miracles in his day. Remember Moses and the signs and the plagues? Then authority was specifically handed down to Joshua. then to the judges, then to the prophets of Israel. Since the time of Christ, divine authority has transitioned from the prophets to the Apostles, then to the completed Scriptures which in turn delegate authority to governments so long as they don't violate the Scriptures.
For starters. Now, please tell me how the ancient egyptian dynasties already knew the polar diameter of the earth. Seeing you engage in Pyramidology and Von Danikenism will match your "ape breeding" scenario in entertainment- almost.
1) The constant PI 2) Earth moves around the sun 3) 365.242 days in a solar year 4) Earth-sun distance 5) Earth was a sphere 6) Polar diameter of the earth 7) Many "modern" architectural forms: the column, arch, vault and dome 8) The Flood and 'Earth movements' (plate tectonics?)
Items 1-6 were known by the builders of the Great Pyramid. These values were built into the pyramid and there were many more than these. Personally, I don't think it was the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramid. They built the lesser ones, but not the Great. Read the book by the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, Piazzi Smyth, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid" published in 1880 after he personally investigated it on location in Egypt for four months in 1865. Smyth believes the Pyramid was completed in 2170BC, i.e. shortly after the Flood, but not by Egyptians. Smyth believes the builder to be one named 'Philitis' by Herodotus, a 'Hyksos' king who 'sojourned' in Egypt. In any case, someone knew these things and this pretty much overturns the modern idea that ancient man was dumb and brutish.
As for Item (7), the Sumerians used these architectural forms as far back as 3000 BC--maybe farther. See my essay on p. 82 of this thread, where I quote the authorities who actually excavated this stuff.
As for Item (8), the knowledge of the Flood is well known. I cannot demonstrate the knowledge of 'earth movements' unequivocally. I have already mentioned the quotation about 'in the days of Peleg, the earth was divided,' but this may refer to something else. I'll look and see if there are other references. I might have to drop that one, which is fine.
Eric...
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Why, yes, Dave, I do believe I did know these various historical trivia. Your dates are a little off; most of this knowledge dates back to a few hundred years, not two millennia, B.C., but I'll agree with you that the people who figured these things out were "ancients." But Dave, I'd learned most of that by eighth grade.
Nope. You are the one way off on your dates. See above.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
All the cultures you mention beyond 5,500 YA are not dated with written records. It's all C14 or some other equivocal method like dendrochronology.
LOL. And how do you infer dating from written records? Unequivocal indeed.
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Here is the real story on Dendrochronolgy written by plant physiologist Dr. Don Batten - a guy with no long age pre-conceived fairy tale notions.
Sure, dendrochronology and radiocarbon always agree, but it's only the result of their independent flaws. Don't forget to add the dozens of dating methods in the lot, Dave.
AIG says:
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Claimed older tree ring chronologies depend on the cross-matching of tree ring patterns of pieces of dead wood found near living trees. This procedure depends on temporal placement of fragments of wood using carbon-14...
That's not what I learned. Methinks AIG is again, full of sh*t.
What about the anachronism evidence that the tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. One anachronisms is the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time.
You have old info. People used to think writing was not invented until after Moses. Do you think that too? There are no anachronisms that I am aware of. 20th century archaeology has refuted those ideas.
You are like the missionary in Erik the Viking!
Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that. Moses was in Egypt and Egypt is still full of old writing and we know that writing evolved from earlier non-Egyptian writing. It's part of your delusion, Dave, that you would throw that lame straw man around.
Good lord, Dave -- I even linked The Egyptian Book of the Dead which probably reflects writing and religious belief older than Moses. This a measure of how little attention you are paying to what is being said.
My info isn't that old. "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts" by Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein was published in 2001. So, that's 21st century archaeology, not:
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20th century archaeology has refuted those ideas.
If you are unaware of anachronisms:
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There are no anachronisms that I am aware of.
It is because you are not paying attention.
The use of camels anachronisms is from Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein:
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The tales of patriarchs such as Abraham are largely legends composed long after the time in which they supposedly took place. This is seen in anachronisms such as the use of camels, not domesticated in the Near East until nearly 1000 years after Abraham's time, in many of the stories.
Dave, people here are watching you stumple around blindly in our information universe. We're all seeing things you can't see.
Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that.
Oh really, now! How about Astruc and Wellhausen ... you know ... the guys who came up with the Documentary Hypothesis? They based their whole theory on the idea that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write. So they decided that the Pentateuch was just oral tradition which was eventually written down during the kingdom years of Israel.
Come on, Norm. You should know this stuff. But I'm glad to see that you at least have discarded that fairy tale. Believe it or not, some liberal seminaries still teach the Documentary Hypothesis. And I would bet that some here still beleive it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that.
Oh really, now! How about Astruc and Wellhausen ... you know ... the guys who came up with the Documentary Hypothesis? They based their whole theory on the idea that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write. So they decided that the Pentateuch was just oral tradition which was eventually written down during the kingdom years of Israel.
Come on, Norm. You should know this stuff. But I'm glad to see that you at least have discarded that fairy tale. Believe it or not, some liberal seminaries still teach the Documentary Hypothesis. And I would bet that some here still beleive it.
I don't know Astruc and Wellhausen but saying that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write doesn't mean that writing did not exist yet! There are illiterate people in the world today -- does that prove writing doesn't exist today?
Dave, your logical abilities are pathetic. You're brain damaged.
Neil Asher Silberman and Israel Finkelstein also think the Bible was mostly written later, with much of the Bible tied to the religious agenda of King Josiah of Judah during the late 7th century BCE. That doesn't mean writing didn't exist. They used some old myths, but shaped them to their "religious" and political needs. (In other words, they lied in order to manipulate people.)
Like the missionary in Erik the Viking you're not able to see the rest of the world with its different religions, different writings and histories.
The origins of the Bible will never be known with certainty--there simply isn't enough evidence to say anything for certain--Finkelstein and Silberman definitely provide a plausible interpretation. You, Dave, do not.
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
It's real easy. Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it. Go try. You are so sure the Bible is wrong, it should be easy for you.
Se, Dave? You STILL can't answer the question. Your brain just can't handle it.
Perhaps I'll try.
Dave: Give a hypothetical example of an archaeological piece of data contradicting the Bible, and the specific methods used to generate that data.
Guess what? Dave STILL can't answer it.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Oh wait, maybe PI is one of those things that changed during the flood.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
It's real easy. Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it. Go try. You are so sure the Bible is wrong, it should be easy for you.
Se, Dave? You STILL can't answer the question. Your brain just can't handle it.
Perhaps I'll try.
Dave: Give a hypothetical example of an archaeological piece of data contradicting the Bible, and the specific methods used to generate that data.
Guess what? Dave STILL can't answer it.
I'm with you guys. We can stop this discussion if Dave can't answer this.
All the cultures you mention beyond 5,500 YA are not dated with written records. It's all C14 or some other equivocal method like dendrochronology. Here is the real story on Dendrochronolgy written by plant physiologist Dr. Don Batten - a guy with no long age pre-conceived fairy tale notions. http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp As usual, evolutionists are trying to twist a dating method with certain assumptions to fit their beloved viewpoint of gradualist human evolution. They just HAVE to have some "scientific" method of validating their ideas of a 200,000 year history of mankind. So they take a perfectly good method of dating LIVE trees, add some goofy assumptions that no one would ever make unless they were trying to justify long ages, and PRESTO! Pseudo-Dendrochronolgy! See? Look at all these artifacts that are 10,000-30,000 years old! See? This provides a wonderful cross-check of C14 dating (never mind that BOTH of them are flawed, wink, wink).
Hey Davie Dumbass, remember way back when we first started talking about radiocarbon dating and I posted this?
Quote (OA: June 10 2006 @ 00:07)
Radiocarbon dating is an extremely well known and well researched branch of science. It is one of the backbones of archaeology, especially paleoarchaeology. The scientist who pioneered it, Willard Frank Libby, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960 for his work. Today there are over 130 labs worldwide providing radiocarbon dating services, doing millions of dollars in business. The science even has its own peer-reviewed journal, Radiocarbon, to keep up on the latest developments.
C14 dating does have limitations, but these are understood and accounted for. It is well known that the level of C14 in the atmosphere can vary due to external factors – cosmic ray level due to solar activity, climate change that disrupts the carbon flow between the ocean / organic matter into the atmosphere. It is also know that the C14 level in individual samples can vary due to external factor such as sample contamination. That is why radiocarbon dating has been subjected to rigorous multiple independent calibration methods. These methods include denrochronology (tree-ring dating), ice core samples from glaciers, ocean sediment core samples, varve core samples from freshwater lakes, and speleothems (cave deposits). All these methods combined have provided calibration curves accurate to +/- a few percent for dates up to 60,000 years old. Go do your homework now Davie Girl, because we will be addressing all of these methods in detail.
See, you’re got a really tough job ahead Washout
You can make up some unsupported fantasy about C14/C12 ratios being 100x different You can make up some unsupported fantasy about C14/C12 decay rate being not constant You can lie about trees growing 10-20 rings a year instead of 1 You can lie about all the ice core samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. You can lie about all the ocean core samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. You can lie about all the lake varve samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. You can lie about all the cave deposits being off by greater than a factor of 10.
But what is really going to tax your lying circuits is explaining how all the above methods are wrong due to completely different causes but still all give dating results that agree precisely with each other.
I did that because I knew you would, when pressed, just C&P the same old tired bullshit from AIG or ICR. Sure called that one right, didn't I?
You, Davie Dumbass, still have the same problem. Claiming each individual method is wrong still doesn't help you, moron. You still need to explain why all the independent calibration methods give dates that all agree precisely with each other.
You can't begin to address that one Davie dear, because it would require you to
1. have an original thought 2. post an honest response for the first time in your lying life.
So here you stand again Davie, pants around your ankles, looking foolish. Another day, another episode of the AFDave the Clown show.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I am saying that the Book of Genesis is a Compilation of written, eyewitness history. It is composed of the material from 11 tablets, edited by Moses ca. 1400 BC. The tablets themselves vary in age, the oldest being the first two dated at least at 3200BC (latest date for Adam in old age), the later tablets being dated near the end of the lives of the patriarchs named at the end of each tablet. So the tablets thus compiled by Moses represent the oldest written records. Much older that the Gilgamesh epic. Examination of the two makes it clear as well that the Gilgamesh Epic was copied from these older records, not vice-versa. The Gilgamesh Epic is quite irrational and full of gross polytheism, which is proven to have developed AFTER the original mono-theism.
So what part of "folklore written on a stone table is still just folklore unless you can come up with some positive evidence that the events described actually took place" don't you understand?
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Nope. You are the one way off on your dates. See above.
For the fifth time Davie:
How do you independently date archaeological finds like your tablets above without using the Bible as a self-reference?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Postulate 1: In Dave's universe, if a tree falls in the forest, and no one's there to write about it, it didn't happen.
Postulate 2: If no tree falls in the forest, but someone writes that it did, it did happen.
Also,I'd like to point out, just for the record, that despite my and others' repeated requests for at least two weeks now, Dave persists in his failure to present any evidence whatsoever for his beloved "flood."
Of course, he hasn't really presented any "evidence" for anything else, either, but I told him to either put up some evidence for his flood, or stop bringing it up.
Which is it gonna be, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Keep in mind, Dave, that if we were to accept that you've debunked C-14 dating (50,000 year old coal doesn't help you anymore than us), and dendrochronology, and whatever else, then that means that you also don't get to use those methods to date things for your arguments. What unequivocal evidence does that leave you with, Dave? An inscribed date on a clay tablet? "Adam - 3200BC" ? What methods could we use? Does the bible give solid dates?
Davey-Child, your lies are getting more frequent, more shrill, more desperate You say Lie#1
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You don't care 2 hoots for kids. You were just pretending that you did. Are you and Fractatious going to have some kids when you get to NZ? Or adopt some? I doubt it.
Yes, Dave, as a matter of fact, that is part of the plan.
Lie#2
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When I ask you to demonstrate your great love for kids, you just say you give money to people with AIDS.
Ahem, Dave...what I said was "I volunteer time, money and effort at the local,national and global level. In los angeles, for the AIDS Project Los Angeles, because a young friend died of it. At a National level, The American Indian Education Foundation, at a global level, UNICEF. And yeah, I donate money for other things in regard to the environment and political activism that directly or indirectly benefits kids."...See the part about "time and effort?" Meaning I work at the regional level FOR the American Indian Education Foundation, liar
Lie#3
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You have ZERO firsthand experience with a real jungle tribe
Now, short of knowing my life, Dave, how can you say this? I worked IN Belize with the Quiche Maya, who hunt, gather and farm and are the poorest of the Maya groups and still live in ordinary huts.
By pretending to "know" my life, my religious views, my emotional state, you wound up lying about all of those, Dave. Does the term "hubris" mean anything to you? Here's a hint, Davey-child...try ASKING about a person's life before you start pretending to KNOW it.
Lie#4
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You talk all this academic nonsense about the CIIPR work from 1985-86 on Ethnology, ethno-astronomy and ethno-archaeology, but you haven't a clue because you were not there. Neither was the anthropologist for long
Ther were a total of five anthropologists and archaeologists working there from 1985 to 1986. Not one.
Lie#5
Quote
They had NO contact with white people prior to my dad, by the way, at least not in the 20th century. Their economic base was hunting and gathering and very limited farming. Had been that way for many, many years. They weren't dying out because of their loss of economic base
Uh, Dave, this is an utter lie. Anyone can read the CIIPR/Danish/Smithsonian/United Nations reports. The group your father contacted is at Kanashen. Don't lie so blatantly, boy. I also doubt that your father contacted the group in the highland reaches of the Essequibo river who didn't contact anyone until 1990. You might ask if your Daddy also went into Brazil (which I sincerely doubt, looking at the map and knowing how hard travel there would be) -- The WaiWai live there, too, you know.
The rest of your drivel is just more tedious piles of steaming Dave. Your claim that dendrochronology is "flawed" somehow is amusing, though, Dave...so discuss it. Show you know what you're talking about instead of copy-pasting some crank from AIG. You won't, because you're dishonest.
As for telling me to "go live like " the Maori or " If you think the American Indians had it so great, why don't you go live like them. " Nah, I don't have to please you. It's not hypocritical to point out inconvenient facts like I did, and still live the life I choose. What IS hypocritical is you pretending to be a Christian while spewing lies and falsely accusing others...hypocrite
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Of course I do not think writing was not invented until after Moses. No one who knows anything ever believed that.
Oh really, now! How about Astruc and Wellhausen ... you know ... the guys who came up with the Documentary Hypothesis? They based their whole theory on the idea that Moses was a dumb, brutish nomad who didn't know how to write. So they decided that the Pentateuch was just oral tradition which was eventually written down during the kingdom years of Israel.
Come on, Norm. You should know this stuff. But I'm glad to see that you at least have discarded that fairy tale. Believe it or not, some liberal seminaries still teach the Documentary Hypothesis. And I would bet that some here still beleive it.
Okay, there is a fundy belief that Genesis was originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, before the Epic of Gilgamesh. It was proposed by Percy J. Wiseman in his 1936 book, "New Discoveries in Babylonia about Genesis". It's out-of-print currently, so finding out what exactly they're talking about isn't going to be easy.
Nammu is the Goddess of the watery abyss, the primeval sea. She may be the earliest of deities within Sumerian cosmology as she gave birth to heaven and earth. (Kramer 1961 p. 39) She is elsewhere described both as the mother of all the gods and as the wife of An. (Kramer 1961 p. 114) She is Enki's mother. She prompts him to create servants for the gods and is then directed by him on how, with the help of Nimmah/Ninhursag to create man. (Kramer 1963 p. 150; Kramer 1961 p. 70)
There are possibly such clay tablets in which a polytheistic account has some parallel to Genesis -- religions do mix their myths up a lot in the ancient times (even today, New Agers think they're Christans and use astrology and practice Buddhist mediation).
Smyth simply manipulated a large amount of numbers he had by making a very large number of measurements of stones, angles, heights, etc. of the pyramids...he then manipulated those same measurement results by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing in the same way that numerologists do.
Piazzi Smyth wrote, "I have never accused, and do not propose to tax, those profane Egyptians with having had anything to do with the design of the Great pyramid." (p. 90) He held them in contempt, writing of "Egyptian idolaters," their "peculiar and alas! degrading religion," and their "vile hieratic system." (p. 6). He goes on to say the pyramids were "designed by God"
It figures that you wouldn't deal with the archhaeology honestly, Dave. Like the mastabas and step pyramids ( like that of Djoser, zoser or d'zoser) which show the gradual development of the pyramid form through time...by the ordinary egyptians. Try reading "How the Great Pyramid Was Built" by Craig B. Smith and Zahi Hawass, the current director of Egyptian archaeology.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Okay, Dave, Let's look at your "unbiased expert" Don Batten, who says
Quote
However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault.
Unbiased? Uh, yeah, right.
Let's review "Dr." Don's claims
1. He claims that specific species of pine, like Pinus radiata...produce multiple rings per year. But the interesting thing is that your expert offers no citations at all. This is from New Zealand work that is discussed at http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/free_issues/NZJEcol10_77.pdf . The data is from FARMED trees in an artificial setting and a non-seasonal environment.
2. Dendro and 14C are used in a "circular " way to confirm each other. False. Multiple non-radiometric methods are used to check dendro records. They include the dating methods I have listed previously
3. In all the hundreds of thousands of tree ring studies ever performed, Don Batten finds a total of TWO that were questioned : one was re-measured, the other was withdrawn due to procedural/methodological problems
To conclude, Dave: your "expert" is both biased and wrong in the thrust of his arguments, which he attempts to present as being a grand indictment of dendrochronology as a whole. His examples were cherry-picked and weak, much like yours...using the same techniques people have come to expect from creationists.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
It is telling that Dave will instantly dismiss mountains of archaeological evidence (much more that he could hope to read) and yet clings to a theory about the authorship of Genesis which is based on nothing but the merest speculation about a few repetitions of a single phrase found in the manuscript.
From that we get the original form (tablets), the original authors (God, Adam) and even the dates they were written. Wow! Amazing! Gee, I wish the rest of science worked that well. We'd be travelling the stars on little more than cold fusion and flux capacitors by now.
I see afdave has reached a new low in accusing others of being insufficiently concerned and involved in the welfare of children. I'm not going to bother looking up the exact quote, but I recall a bit of advice from Jesus somewhere in the New Testament. Something like, "don't 'pray' like the Pharisees, 'I thank thee, Lord, that thou didn't make me like other men' ". I get the impression that Jesus was really down on self-righteousness, don't you?
On another note though. The New Testament "documents" an incident that surely would not go unnoticed by contemporary Jewish, Roman and Greek historians if it actually happened. The "slaughter of the innocents", I think it's called, where Herod the Great supposedly had all newborn boys in his realm murdered to eliminate his prophesied successor. Is there any hint of this anywhere outside of Christian scripture?
Okay, Dave, Let's look at your "unbiased expert" Don Batten, who says
Quote
However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then it’s the interpretation of the data that is at fault.
Unbiased? Uh, yeah, right.
Such is the same for the rest of Dave's sources. From AiG:
Quote
No apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.
and ICR:
Quote
The Bible, consisting of the thirty-nine canonical books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament, is the divinely-inspired revelation of the Creator to man. Its unique, plenary, verbal inspiration guarantees that these writings, as originally and miraculously given, are infallible and completely authoritative on all matters with which they deal, free from error of any sort, scientific[sic] and historical as well as moral and theological.
Of course, we atheistic scientists also have a statement of faith. From the Federation of American Graduate Schools in Science:
Quote
The goal of science is to exterminate faith in Christ, whose teachings are antithetical to our secular humanist worldview. Data suggesting consonance between natural history and Biblical scripture should be viewed with skepticism, and rejected if contradicted by data that favors a godless worldview.
Fair is fair, I guess.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
How bad a lunatic idiot is AFDave? So bad he makes Davetard look sensible by comparison:
Quote
Problems:
1) We are reading a secondhand account of what Christ said and do not know that the quotes are accurate. And I’m sure you’ve heard of quote mining.
2) We are reading an english translation of an ancient language and there are undoubtedly meanings and nuances lost or mangled in translation.
3) The custody and integrity of the written record is questionable. It’s not like we have these quotes from a preserved copy of the Jerusalem Times Herald from 40 A.D. They’ve passed through more or less a lot of hands and could have been modified along the way.
4) The difference between the God the old testament and the God of the new testament is so striking that to me they can hardly be the same God. It’s almost like someone saw that a mean and vengeful God in the old testament was losing popularity and that a gentle and loving God needed to step in for the religion to continue. In other words the linkage looks contrived to me. An invention.
5) If God wanted us to know these things why did He need human spokesmen and human writers to communicate and record it? God could have emblazoned the ten commandments on the face of the moon instead of on stone tablets that Moses could carry down off the mountain.
6) Billions of people around the world believe something different. Are you really sure they’re all wrong and you’re right?
Yeah, but he must know the backwash will let it pass from one ear to the next without the slightest interference.
The only thing that sticks is all the god talk.
They must be so deperate for a bit of fundy pussy.
They should follow my policy 'don't ask don't tell' you can tell 'em you believe anything they like as long as you get to third base.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Or does it? Maybe you could be mistaken here too ... hmmmm ...
I could be mistaken about you knowing absolutely nothing about the scientifc method, geology, biology, genetics, lingusitics, astronomy and physics, but 85 pages of this thread strongly suggests not.
Quote
Quote
But, but, but, Galileo's theories are utterly bankrupt to try and answer questions such as the origin of language, morality and evil... [etc. etc.]
Your point I guess is that Scripture is bankrupt to answer scientific questions? Of course there are many it does not answer because that is not its primary purpose. But where it speaks about the natural world, it is accurate.
*sighs and beats head gently against wall* No, my point is that science is the wrong tool for answering moral questions. Building a moral code on the theory of evolution (or on any other scientific theory) is like using a hammer to write poetry.
Only someone who was completely ignorant about science would think that it was possible to answer moral questions with scientific theories...
So I don't understand why you're so in awe of Kepler, Galileo, Newton and Einstein's ideas, when they have exactly the same provenance and say exactly the same things about God as Darwin's and Dawkins'. Could it be that you don't actually understand anything about the science business...?
Thou shalt not kill never applied to God ... people are owned by Him ... He can do as He pleases with them. He has reasons for what He does which we do not understand.
Sheesh, and people say they find the idea of being descended from apes demeaning...
Quote
"Don't kill" also does not apply to governments or agents of gevernments. Have you noticed that? It also does not apply to the animal kingdom. It only applies to individual humans.
Yeah, right. "No animal shall sleep in a bed WITH SHEETS. ".
But where, exactly, does it say that these commandments don't apply to governments or agents of governments...?
Did you know they knew all that? I like reminding people of this because many people in academia today have this nonsensical, brutish view of early man which has been shown to be totally false.
Oh man... you're really and truly in another world....
Dave, it's becoming increasingly clear that you believe the Bible is self-authenticating. You believe that if the Bible says something, it's necessarily true, and that nothing external to the Bible has ever contradicted it.
The rest of us know that's not true. We've given you abundant evidence that the Bible is riddled with inaccuracies, and that you're incapable of even acknowledging the existence of such evidence doesn't change that.
I warned you a long time ago that appeals to the Bible to prove that something happened wasn't going to get you anywhere. As far as pretty much everyone here other than you is concerned, the Bible is at best allegory, and probably almost entirely fiction.
I suppose you could waste a lot of time trying to persuade us otherwise, but given the tsunami of evidence sweeping aside any realistic possibility that the Bible could be accurate, you have no chance of succeeding.
If you want us to believe in some biblical account of something, you're going to have to come with entirely independent supporting evidence. If you can't, or can't be bothered to, come up with that independent supporting evidence, then everyone here is pretty much going to ignore anything that Bible says happened.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
As a friend of mine who used to work for NASA once said:
Quote
Hmm..... talking donkey, talking snake, 900 year old man, sun stopping in sky, 6000 year old universe, slavery is ok, pi equals three, unicorns exist , flood which never happened, insects have 4 legs, children should be bashed against rocks, men live in giant sea creatures,...... hmm, nah, sounds like bullshit to me. "Salient," Jan.12, 2004
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What if you were Joshua, dave? What if you were a soldier of Joshua, and your beloved leader came to you and said "Yahveh came to me, and said we must butcher all men, women, children and babies of the ___ until nothing remains breathing"? WHAT WOULD YOU DO, DAVE?
OK. Now you have framed a decent question and given it some context. Answer: I would obey. You see, there was a different authority system in place in Joshua's day than there is now. Divine authority was verified by supernatural miracles in his day. Remember Moses and the signs and the plagues? Then authority was specifically handed down to Joshua. then to the judges, then to the prophets of Israel. Since the time of Christ, divine authority has transitioned from the prophets to the Apostles, then to the completed Scriptures which in turn delegate authority to governments so long as they don't violate the Scriptures.
Well, dave, thanks for finaly answering, after I "framed a decent question" (Although I did no such thing, I just spponfed it to you again and you couldn't claim you didn't get it now). However, you still miss the point, or pretend to: The point is morality, dave. That Instinctive, hard-coded Universal Moral Law that exists in all people, since the beginning of time, remember that? So, let's see what your answer tells us.. You are a faithful Israelite soldier. You love your God, and you cherish the fact that he has made you capable of telling right from wrong. Then one day, your beloved leader Joshua comes and says to you "see, I had this chat with Yahveh, and he says we should slaughter all the babies of the Younamethemites". So, what do you do? Easy. You say "well, since The Man Joshua says so, and he's like that with god, as they say, I guess that's what I must do!" And YOU DO IT dave. Without any guilt, hesitation or remorse, you slay innocent babies, you butcher a whole people, and then you wash your hands of all the blood and get a good night's sleep.
Oh man. I can hear poor C.S.Lewis' bones creaking from where I stand...
Thank you, dave, for proving without doubt that your religion, just like so many others, is in fact founded on MORAL RELATIVISM. And for once again sawing off the branch you're sitting on, of course.
For starters. Now, please tell me how the ancient egyptian dynasties already knew the polar diameter of the earth. Seeing you engage in Pyramidology and Von Danikenism will match your "ape breeding" scenario in entertainment- almost.
1) The constant PI 2) Earth moves around the sun 3) 365.242 days in a solar year 4) Earth-sun distance 5) Earth was a sphere 6) Polar diameter of the earth 7) Many "modern" architectural forms: the column, arch, vault and dome 8) The Flood and 'Earth movements' (plate tectonics?)
Items 1-6 were known by the builders of the Great Pyramid. These values were built into the pyramid and there were many more than these. Personally, I don't think it was the ancient Egyptians who built the Great Pyramid. They built the lesser ones, but not the Great. Read the book by the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, Piazzi Smyth, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid" published in 1880 after he personally investigated it on location in Egypt for four months in 1865. Smyth believes the Pyramid was completed in 2170BC, i.e. shortly after the Flood, but not by Egyptians. Smyth believes the builder to be one named 'Philitis' by Herodotus, a 'Hyksos' king who 'sojourned' in Egypt. In any case, someone knew these things and this pretty much overturns the modern idea that ancient man was dumb and brutish.
deadman: Daaaaaaamn! I had dave all worked up to start talking about Pyramidology, maybe even tell us how, by the grace of god, a razor gets sharper under a paper pyramid... And you go and spill the beans! Now he'll switch to denial mode, and we'll never get him to address it!
Oh well... dave, can you at least tell us what your Inerrant Bible says about all this amazing knowledge the ancients had?
Sorry, did you say something? No? Didn't think so...
Seems that your god dictated an inerrant book to his favorite children, and yet, for some reason, prefered to disclose all the amazing truths of the world around us to the heathens alone, eh dave?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
You are confusing poor AFDave, you are pulling him in all directions. Poor guy
Dave my friend, pal and buddy,
Ignore all the rest of the guys. I basically want to stop working for a living and have a cunning plan. I'll write me a creationist book. My biggest stumbling block is the fossil record. No I don't mean to tear apart the Evilutionists version of it. That's easy and been done.
I want to be able to explain it. You see the same animals seem to pop up in the same layers world wide. The layers seem to appear in the same order worldwide.
I tried by looking at how big they were but you have itty-bitty creatures mixed in with the big guys. I thought about how fast they could run to get to higher ground but still no good as the big slow guys are mixed in with the little fast guys.
What's even worse when you cut across the layers you have fossils that look like they were buried in a desert in sand underneath fossils that look like they were buried in a sea underneath fossils that look like they were buried in a quiet lake.
You're going to have to do something quick as my wife is going to insist that I get an honest job pretty soon. I'll give you 25% of all sales. If you can't help, I going to have to go with the ID crowd and a man has his dignity (besides how many ways can you say -- if it looks designed then it is, unless it isn't.
Ok this thread is getting pretty boring. Could someone let me know if Dave actually says something interesting or if he actually moves onto evolution.
Yes Dave I know you're trying to work through your arguments methodically but there's no point. Evolution is disproved if you can prove a young Earth, and since you cant you might as well abandon the geology arguments. Yes I know you want us all to read Henry Morris, but since were talking about very old books have you read the new geology by George Macready Price? Youll find all the standard creationist dating arguments in there, and it was written in 1923. Morris said that he got a lot of his arguments from there, and it was written with the assumption that geologists had misinterpreted their data becuase otherwise they contradicted Price's religious beliefs. Price's religious beliefs were based on the 'visions' of Ellen White, one of the founders of the Seventh Day adventist church, which appeared to be hallucinations caused by partial complex seizures. So here we can trace the origin of the modern creationist movement to mental illness, which puts things nicely in perspective.
Also Dave, can you explain why the majority of church leaders before there was such thing as geology or evolution thought the 'days' in Genesis 1 were meant to be taken figuratively?
Evolution is disproved if you can prove a young Earth, and since you cant you might as well abandon the geology arguments.
No he shouldn't. Evilutionists think they need at least three billion years to get from bacteria to jellyfish, but they're wrong. They need at least three thousand billion million hundred trillion godzillian years, and even then, they wouldn't have enough time. Even if they had all that time and were getting paid time and a half over forty, they still wouldn't have enough time. The odds of life ever existing without God "poofing" it into existence are so eensy teensy tiny weenie that it just boggles the mind that anyone would think it could happen any other way than if God just furrowed his godly brow and made it happen just by thinking really hard about it.
There. Dave's disproved the last hundred and fifty years of biological science without even working up a sweat.
Thank you for coming to the show—good night!
Jesus loves you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
2) Let's pretend my views of God are false. OK? So in this case you say I am harming children by teaching them my views, right? And you say this is far more immoral than any atheist statements made here. My question is ... on what basis is this more immoral? What standard of morality are you imposing on me? Yours? What if my standard is different than yours? What if my standard of morality elevates cruelty to children? Do you see where I am going? Silly isn't it. The point is ... even though you and I disagree vigorously about the nature of God, we both agree on certain standards of morality. I agree with you that cruelty to children is much worse than many other offenses. So you have provided yet another confirmation of C.S. Lewis' Universal Moral Code.
I won't presume to pretend anything about your views on God, I will say your views of science and morality are ridiculous.
Your presumptuous assumptions about Universal Morality are hilarious too.
How does Ba'al Moloch and his followers fit into the Universal Morality scheme of things? How does Spartan Morality fit in, those nasty ole foy buckers?
Silly? Yes, your arguments are silly, much like your AF career.
need at least three thousand billion million hundred trillion godzillian years, and even then, they wouldn't have enough time.
Exactly, so the age of the Earth is really irrelevant, and this discussion seems to be going round in circles so I suggest we agree to disagree and get onto something more interesting like how one monkape kind can expand into and incredibly diverse group of species in just a few thousand years through only the processes creationists accept as valid.
Quote
I wonder if the bible is consistent with the Book of Origin?
To be fair at least stargate gives a decent reason as to why the Ori need to be worshipped. I have yet to hear one for Christianity. Ps becuase you'll go to #### is not a decent reason.
To be fair at least stargate gives a decent reason as to why the Ori need to be worshipped. I have yet to hear one for Christianity. Ps becuase you'll go to #### is not a decent reason.
You know, I find it funny that Stargate's (what would you call it - parallel? dark parody? allegory? I'm going with dark parody) dark parody makes more sense than the real thing.
And by applying Davie's logic, Stargate is The Truth because -
There really is a place called Egypt. There really are pyramids in Egypt. There really are other galaxies. There are written records (10 years of weekly scripts written by many authors AND a screenplay, mind you). Stargate SG1 has produced a spinoff, and is itself spun off from a deeper, more ancient wisdom starring Kurt Russell. Once a week millions of people gather to hear all about it. Some physics guy postulated wormholes. There is no evidence that contradicts The Truth of Stargate. If there is any evidence that contradicts The Truth of Stargate, it is wrong, misinterpreted, or can otherwise safely be ignored because it comes from Atheistic Scientists. Some guy on TV was visited by aliens who probed his butt. Jesus loves you.
Therefore the entire Stargate Universe has been proven.
Hallowed are the Ori.
(Don't even get me started on Battlestar Galactica and the twelve tribes...)
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
I love the smell of intellectual dishonesty on a Monday morning...
I returned from a nice long weekend at the cottage to find Dave had "responded" to my lengthy post of 21 June, in which, after being coninually hounded by Dave (despite the fact he claimed to have already read the book in question), I painstakingly typed many paragraphs of text, summarized what I didn't type, and showed in minute detail how I applied this information to arrive at the numbers I used in a fun little exercise testing the evolutionary hypothesis against Dave's "CGH" for their ability to predict ape phylogenies. (For the lurkers, I encourage you to read my posts of 25 May and 21 June, among others, to see what Dave is actually "responding" to here -- it makes it all the sweeter and more obvious to see what a cowardly PoS Dave makes of himself.)
And without further ado...
Quote
Incorygible ... I read your extensive post which purports to show me WHY evolutionists believe in the millions of years thing for ape and human ancestry. What it appears to boil down to is this ...
1) We have some fossils that look like human ancestors [Never mind that if we look at them really closely they either look like they are fully ape or fully human] 2) We've looked at the DNA and it is close [we've been through this - chimps are 0.5% or so closer to humans than gorillas are to chimps] 3) We know there couldn't possibly be a Creator God who made humans and apes as seprate kinds because ... well ... you know ... everyone knows that Genesis is just a nice Creation Myth 4) So humans and apes had to come about by natural processes -- no Intelligent Designer involved -- to say so would be unscientific !!! 5) Hmmm ... let's dream up a way that this could be explained ... Hey guys, remember Darwin? 6) Cool! Finches can change so maybe apes can change into humans!! Yippee! We're gettin' close to a solution! So what's the mechanism? Well mutations of course. Voila! Some of them add information (I think ... I hope ... isn't there something about some Nylon-eating bacteria that added info? Yeah ... I'm sure of it ... Spetner was all wet on that debate ... sure of it) 7) How long does it take? Well, a really long time because not too many mutations [only one that we can think of ... and even that is probably a farce] add information. We'll have to tell everyone that it takes millions of years so they will believe us that it is possible. 8) OK. Now we are cookin'. Let's do some math on the DNA so that it sounds really believable that we know what we are talking about, press the 'COMPUTE' button and PRESTO!!! MAGICO!!!
The most polite thing I can say is that there's some interesting, unsupported exegesis, Davey. More properly, it's laughable childish aping (yuk yuk) that wouldn't cut it on the playground, much less in any forum of rational adults. I've been patient, meticulous, and honest with you, Dave (he11, I've even tried to be mostly polite). I've answered the questions you have asked in serious and time-consuming detail. This much is readily apparent. So, too, is the fact that your juvenile rant, which engages NONE of the actual content of my posts (both original and, by 'request', copied from sources you claim to have read), firmly establishes you as a jackass who doesn't deserve to be taken seriously in the slightest.
Dave, when it comes to our little debate, you lost it long ago. When it comes to any resemblance to rational discourse, you lost it before we began. Judging from your latest screed, I think now you are simply losing it.
Get help. Get educated. But not from or by me. Adios.
incory- well, I for one sure did appreciate your detailed post about the history of the current understanding of the divergence of Humans, Chimps, and Gorillas. Thanks for the excellent read!
Dave's summary is the Disney movie version by comparison, firmly grounded in reality the same way as "The Bridge on the River Kwai" movie was, to put it mildly. I don't really blame him, I suppose. Unless he's going to start opening up his mind anytime soon, there's not much of a possible comeback to the kind of a knockout blow you dealt him.
Wow I didnt see that that's special stuff. I do love it how creationists all say that the fossil are either fully ape or fully human, but different creationists have very different opinions on which ones are fully ape and fully human. Same with mammal-like-reptile-vice-versa.
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So humans and apes had to come about by natural processes -- no Intelligent Designer involved -- to say so would be unscientific !!!
I asked an evolutionary biologist friend about this the other day, the converstaion went something like this.
Me: Do you think you know all the processes of evolution? Him: no Me: How can you say then that you can prove that life evolved entirely via unintelligent processes? Him: I have never said that. Me: How can you say then that intelligent design isnt true? Him: Since they claim that they can detect design the burden of proof is on them. What we are saying is that the processes that we are aware of fit the data very well, and we can make good predictions. Intelligent design may or may not be true but they have to prove it. Me: Fair enough
My (I) “discussion” with Dave (D) in a nutshell, replacing ape phylogeny with one of Dave’s favorite analogies (i.e., “the sky is blue”):
D: I have SHOWN EVIDENCE of how God made the sky orange.
I: Er, Dave…you DO know the sky is blue, right?
D: What?! I’ve never heard or read anything that says the sky is blue! Do them crazy scientists really believe this?
I: Dave, here are a few papers on Rayleigh scattering. They show how longer wavelengths (e.g., orange at 600 nm) pass through atmospheric molecules, whereas shorter wavelengths (e.g., blue at 450-500 nm) are absorbed and scattered throughout the sky, making it appear blue.
D: NANOmetres? NANO? As in 10^-9? Oooohhh, look at this fancy evidence we evolutionists have! The sky looks blue because blue is different from orange by NANOmetres!!! Nice fairy tale.
I: You know we can measure light in nanometers, right? Very accurately? You know we understand this process? Here, let me show you. We’ll evaluate the atmospheric composition and predict which wavelengths should pass through and which should be scattered. Your “hypothesis” says orange should be scattered, whereas I say blue. Let’s find out what the results are. Oh, look at that: blue. Not orange. Blue.
D: Sure, there are differences in the wavelengths of light. These differences can be attributed to intelligent design as much as commonly perceived spectra.
I: But why, exactly, does your “hypothesis” predict orange, and yet we observe blue? Doesn’t that matter to you?
D: I haven’t actually looked into creationist photometry. Besides, we’re talking NANOmetres here! NANO! By the way, you still haven’t told me why YOU believe the sky is blue.
I: Read those books on absorption and scattering I referenced.
D: You keep telling me to read your books. I’ve read those books. I know what they SAY. But why do you believe it?
I: [Types a lot of text from elementary physics textbooks on the behavior of light. Types a lot more from chemistry textbook on the absorption spectra of atmospheric molecules.] See, Dave, this is how I used what we know of physics and chemistry to retrospectively “predict” that the sky should appear blue. It was a silly exercise, since millions of observations recording scattered light demonstrate that the majority of it is in the 450-500 nm range (and not the 600 nm range). Nevertheless, it shows where my theory predicts observed reality, and yours doesn’t. Why do you still say the sky is orange?
D: Oh, evolutionists want the sky to be blue – they NEED it to be blue! After all, they can’t possibly accept the fact that God made it orange! It amounts to this: 1) We look at a bunch of photons that look to be blue [never mind that if we look at them really closely, they’re actually orange]. 2) We’ve looked at the light up close [we’ve been through this – it’s whole NANOmetres closer to blue than orange]. 3) We know that there couldn’t possibly be a Creator God who made the sky orange, because, well, you know, everyone knows that’s just a Creation Myth. 4) So let’s dream up some fancy physics and chemistry and math so it sounds like we really know what we’re talking about. Even though we’re talking about NANOmetres, we can fool the public into buying our atheistic agenda!
This is why I don't argue with biblical literalists on principle. No matter what you say, if they interpret it as contradicting the Bible, you will be wrong. It doesn't matter if Einstein, Newton, and Darwin all were resurrected and agreed that whatever point you are making is glaringly obvious, you will be wrong because you contradict what they already know to be true. You can't logically argue with someone with such different starting assumptions. While any scientists considers knowledge and even "truth" conditional given the evidence, a literalist assumes they have the last word on truth and reality which cannot be changed no matter what the evidence. I respect you guys trying to hang with it and make headway but I fear it's a lost cause.
DEADMAN ILLUSTRATES THE EVO-BOT APPROACH TO TRUTH SEARCHES
Reading the last 2 or 3 pages of posts has been truly enlightening. I came here with the suspicion that most of you were closed-minded skeptics who have been telling yourselves lies for so long that you probably are incapable of arriving at any truth. After 88 pages of presenting the truth to you, this suspicion has been confirmed more clearly than ever.
A recent example of how skeptics like yourselves approach the Search for Truth is illustrative. This one is a particularly well-suited example for me because I happen to be a direct eyewitness of the truth in this case.
Here's what we have ...
Deadman heard that my dad was a missionary to a native tribe in Brazil. The first thing he thought was that I was lying and he asked me for the name of the tribe. I gave him this and he found them in his database. So immediately his mind goes to work and conjures up images of my dad as a rich plantation owner in a remote jungle, using and abusing the natives to do all his dirty work for him. He imagines that these natives were happy, prosperous, "beautiful savages" living in bliss in their native culture, at peace with nature and surrounding tribes, until the evil white man came along and disrupted the serenity. When my dad came along, he imagines, those poor natives were enslaved to haul water and pick cotton for my dad, while my dad sat on his veranda sipping tequila and enjoying the scenic views while beautiful native women fanned him. He continues his research and finds groups of Wai-wais in Guyana and Brazil. He hears me tell him that the Wai-wais would have died out had my dad not gone to them and he cannot believe this, so his mind continues to work and he invents the idea that my dad only contacted the Wai-wais at Kanashen, but that he did not contact them in Brazil. See, Deadman, says, Dave is a liar because the rest of those Wai-wais did just fine without your dad ... he didn't even contact them at all in Brazil and they did just fine. So Deadman is content in his fantasy world of "Bob Hawkins: Exploiter of the Wai-wais."
Now it is quite obvious to me that we have in Deadman a perfect illustration of how a man can want to believe something so strongly that he invents all kinds of wild ideas to support his pre-conceived notions. For the true story about "Bob Hawkins and the Wai-wais" is that in 1949, they were a tribe of 400 who were dying out by their own admission. They would ask my dad "What are you going to do when we are all gone?" My dad saw their desperate situation and volunteered to help. He learned their language, built a house to live among them, lived as they lived with a thatch roof, no running water and only an outhouse for a toilet. He gave them medical care, fixed their teeth, helped them with their farming, and taught them to love their neighbors instead of hate and kill. He helped them overcome their crippling fear of evil spirits and taught them to love their babies instead of kill them. He taught them how to live happy, productive lives full of music and laughter instead of sorrow and drunkenness. He started a school which now numbers over 800 children, is growing rapidly and goes up to the eighth grade. He taught them basic medicine and now there are several expert nurses in the tribe who can care for their own people. His work began very small at Kanashen in southern Guyana. When the Communists expelled missionaries from Guyana, he engineered a move to Brazil and helped them establish a new village. Because of my dad's work, the Wai-wais have been so successful that now there are many villages in N. Brazil and S. Guyana and the population is exploding. They numbered 3000 at the Brazilian government's last count. Now I could prove all this to anyone with an open mind with pictures, personal visits to the various villages, etc. It is a good situation to illustrate the phenomenon of "Willful Blindness" because I can prove the truth quite readily to any one who is truly interested in the truth.
Now this is very illustrative of the situation we have with "The Truth About Origins" because you all also have a pre-conceived fantasy about origins, and as I am finding out you have supporting fantasies about historical fact, about Jesus Christ, probably about everything. In short you have your mind made up in a certain way and you will do whatever is necessary to distort reality to fit your view. Just like Deadman has done with my dad.
The last two pages of commentary are very illustrative to me of just how skeptical you all are ... I really have no illusions about any of you arriving at the truth. Most of you did not even comprehend what I was telling you about Genesis, much less agree with it. Somebody came up with the wild idea that I have "thrown out all the great body of archaeological evidence" and adopted one obscure piece of archaeological evidence to support my view of Genesis. This person must be on drugs because I don't recall even saying anything about archaeology until my Genesis piece on p. 82. The exact opposite of this statement is actually true. I am a HUGE fan of archaeology because it is so supportive of the assertion of Biblical historicity. There is also apparently very little understanding of the history of Biblical criticism. One guy didn't even know who Jean Astruc and Julius Wellhausen are and yet he subscribes to the viewpoint which is the resultant of their theory!! On top of that, he says I'm the idiot because "of course writing existed at the time of Moses, you idiot, he lived during the reign of the pharoahs!" I give up. My only medicine for you, my friend, is to go back and re-read p. 82. Then buy the book if you want to know more. I doubt you will, though. You will probably just continue to wallow in your ignorance because it's more comfortable. Then we have goofballs claiming that the Bible is inaccurate because it says that PI=3 based on I Kings 7:23. This is about as nonsensical as claiming that the Bible writers were geocentrists because it talks about the sun "rising" and "setting?" Has anyone ever heard of metaphors? Has anyone ever used round numbers before? You guys are amazing! Now we have someone claiming I'm into "pyramidology" because I point out that the builders of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh knew the precise value of PI, they knew that there were 365.242 days in a solar year, they knew the polar diameter of the earth and the earth-sun distance. Pyramidology??!! Come on, guys! This is basic. Do you know how many teams of scientists have measured the Great Pyramid? Did you know there is such a thing as a "sacred cubit"? Yeah, Newton wrote about it and it's very close to the British inch X 5 X 5. You know ... a pyramid has 5 faces and 5 points. Get it? 5 x 5 = 25 inches. Pretty neat, huh? Oh, and by the way, Newton's "Sacred Cubit" is the exact measurement which Smyth discovered at the Great Pyramid. Yeah, I know. It doesn't fit in with your pre-conceived notions about early man being brutish and stupid. So Piazzi Smyth is the idiot, not you guys ... I know how it goes. We wind up doing this same thing on every topic we start, so why not this one? Come on, guys. Expand your minds. Go buy a real book like you always encourage me to do. Don't just read Deadman's bogus skeptic sites. Deadman has proven his lack of interest in the truth so you should know by now where his sources will lead you. But again. It's your life ... not mine.
ONE MORE REVIEW IN HOPES OF SOME POOR SOUL ACTUALLY UNDERSTANDING Ok. I'll give this Genesis thing one last try before I move on to the Flood.
Are you ready? Here we go. I'll try to move really slow and keep it simple ...
1) Prior to the 19th century, the majority viewpoint of Genesis was that it was literal history. 2) In the late 1700's Jean Astruc came up with the theory that Genesis was a compilation of oral tradition which was not written down until the Kingdom years of Israel. 3) This became known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory in the 19th century. Why did they believe this theory? Because they thought that writing was not invented until after Moses' time so he could not have written Genesis. 4) Where did they get the odd idea that writing was not invented until after Moses? Pure speculation. And the speculation was helped by Darwin's theory of the descent of man. 5) Most of the main Protestant denominations adopted this theory and began teaching it as settled fact. Most of you all believe this theory to this day. 6) 20th century archaeolgical finds have not only confirmed much of Bible history, but they have also thoroughly refuted the idea of writing as a late invention. Writing existed as far back as is possible to verify through archaeology - at least 3500 BC. 7) Thanks to archaeology, much is now known of ancient literary and scribal methods. This sheds light on the compostion of Genesis. 8) The key to the book of Genesis is the "colophons" denoted by the phrase "These are the generations of ..." 9) P.J. Wiseman and his son, Professor of Assyriology Donald J. Wiseman make an excellent case in their book, "Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis" for the assertion that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history, written down by the patriarchs named by Moses in each "colophon." 10) No Biblical statement has ever been contradicted by an archaeological discovery, so there is excellent reason for the history in Genesis to carry great weight.
And this, my friends, is why I pay close attention to the Genesis Record and use it as my primary source for hypotheses concerning Origins.
Now I don't expect you to agree with me. I expect you will continue to believe in your fairy tale world of apes that become human and bacteria that become jellyfish over millions and millions of years. This is far more comfortable because well ... "everyone who is anyone believes this" and "who wants to believe some goofy Jewish book written by some Bronze age tribesmen?" and "I don't want some piss-ant 'god' telling me how to run my life" and "Carbon 14 proves long ages and so does dendrochronology and it's calibrated six ways from Sunday!" and "look at radiometric dating" ... "how could anyone not agree with that??!!" blah, blah, blah, blah ...
So ... since none of you will buy into any of this good evidence no matter how long I spend on it, tomorrow we will move on to the Flood. That should be fun as well !!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh, it's a lost cause all right. But I can't imagine anyone here thinks now (if they ever thought) that we could change Dave's mind about anything. His original claim that he could be convinced of evolution if the evidence was strong enough has been shown to be, well, I guess "a lie" is the most succinct way of putting it.
I can't speak for anyone else here, but Dave is definitely giving me plenty of entertainment. Even though I'm still waiting to hear his evidence of his global flood. Or anything else, for that matter.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
He helped them overcome their crippling fear of evil spirits and taught them to love their babies instead of kill them. He taught them how to live happy, productive lives full of music and laughter instead of sorrow and drunkenness.
Shame he didn't do the same for you.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Morris said that he got a lot of his arguments from there, and it was written with the assumption that geologists had misinterpreted their data becuase otherwise they contradicted Price's religious beliefs. Price's religious beliefs were based on the 'visions' of Ellen White, one of the founders of the Seventh Day adventist church, which appeared to be hallucinations caused by partial complex seizures. So here we can trace the origin of the modern creationist movement to mental illness, which puts things nicely in perspective.
DOOOO WHAAAAT?? Where in the world did you get this from? You are going to have to explain this one to me. I didn't quite follow.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Then we have goofballs claiming that the Bible is inaccurate because it says that PI=3 based on I Kings 7:23. [...] Has anyone ever used round numbers before?
Excuse me, but the Bible doesn't even use just a "round number" for pi. If the authors knew the number to any precision at all they would have said 31 cubits, not 30.
You keep screaming that the Bible is the pinnacle of accuracy about pretty much everything. Yet here is a simple case where numbers were rounded to the nearest ten for no good reason. Besides, I don't think this passage is proof that the authors knew anything about the magic ratio of pi at all, otherwise they would have noted that it was an important number. What evidence do you that the authors knew pi, or that the builders of the pyramids knew pi? Anyone, including ancients, can make a perfect circle using a compass or a string. It doesn't mean that they had any appreciation of that golden ratio or that they had calculated it out to a even a few decimals.
Alright! My new Acme Fortress™-series Ironymeter just arrived. Lemme take it outta the box here...ooo, nice sturdy construction...lead shielding...all kinds of fuses and overload protection...let's try it out on a random post...
Quote (afdave @ June 26 2006,11:45)
Reading the last 2 or 3 pages of posts has been truly enlightening. I came here with the suspicion that most of you were closed-minded skeptics who have been telling yourselves lies for so long that you probably are incapable of arriving at any truth. After 88 pages of presenting the truth to you, this suspicion has been confirmed more clearly than ever.
Excuse me, but the Bible doesn't even use just a "round number" for pi. If the authors knew the number to any precision at all they would have said 31 cubits, not 30.
Wow, Ved. Do you really need this much help? OK. They said the diameter is 10 right? It's a round number, Ved. You know, maybe like somewhere b/t 9.5 and 10.5 OK? Similarly, imagine that the circumference could be b/t 29.5 and 30.5, OK? We are not told anything about any embellishments on the edge, etc. There quite possibly were some, so we don't know exactly which diamter he's talking about. Are you with me? You guys need to open your minds. Now go do your math. You get a figure for PI b/t 2.81 and 3.21. Covers PI pretty well, now doesn't it?
Come on, Ved. I bet you can come up with a more substantive objection to the truth of the Bible than that, can't you?
Do you really WANT to know the truth, Ved? Or do you just want to make stuff up so you will feel better about your skepticism?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AF Dave: 10) No Biblical statement has ever been contradicted by an archaeological discovery, so there is excellent reason for the history in Genesis to carry great weight. The Tyre Prophecy. Farrell Till pretty much buried it for me.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
This is about as nonsensical as claiming that the Bible writers were geocentrists because it talks about the sun "rising" and "setting?" Has anyone ever heard of metaphors?
Wait, it's a metaphor??? Gosh, your amazingly accurate inerrant book has metaphors in it? Like the 6 day creation right? Oh, it all makes sense now. Now tell me, which passages are metaphors, and which passages are not? This is important in order to figure out what the REAL TRUTH is, because apparently God wasn't content to inspire a straightforward tome that any humorless truth seeker could figure out.
Speaking of metaphors, you should tell your buddy, Ghost of Paley that the rising and setting thing is just a metaphor. On his "Finest Geocentrism" thread, he's busy explaining to us how it's not.
Tell me Dave, you've had some stick time at 30,000 feet in some pretty impressive technology, do you take at face value the claims of Neil Armstrong that he walked on the moon? Paley would have you believe not. Where do you stand on the issue, Dave? Was Apollo 11 an American Tower of Babel incident that got swept under the rug?
Now I don't expect you to agree with me. I expect you will continue to believe in your fairy tale world of apes that become human and bacteria that become jellyfish over millions and millions of years. This is far more comfortable because well ... "everyone who is anyone believes this" and "who wants to believe some goofy Jewish book written by some Bronze age tribesmen?" and "I don't want some piss-ant 'god' telling me how to run my life" and "Carbon 14 proves long ages and so does dendrochronology and it's calibrated six ways from Sunday!" and "look at radiometric dating" ... "how could anyone not agree with that??!!" blah, blah, blah, blah ...
Which is as close as dave can come to a counterargument without the copypaste support of his favorite sites.
BTW dave, I see you had nothing further to say about the question I asked you... makes sense. Just remember that I've saved your answer, and I'll bring it up again in case you decide to repeat your "universal moral law" arguments again, 'kay?
But you had a lot to say about pyramids! Woooo! Amazing stuff, too! Ancient Egyptians used inches, you say? How far advanced is that! I mean, we all know that we use this arbitrary system, and we are pretty advanced, so if they used it too (even after a little number-cooking from your 19-century prof), that means they were awesome! They were probably right about their gods, too, I guess -no wait. But do tell more! Tell us how the egyptians (no wait it wasn't them, right?) enbedded the Earth's diameter and the value of Pi in the Pyramid! I'm all ears!
Speaking of which: "metaphors", dave? "Rounding up numbers"? Do building constructors round up their results? How about cars? Does Mercedes-Benz "round up" the numbers, and make wheels with a perimeter three times their diameter? I'm really curious. We know that many ancient civilizations had a pretty good approximation of Pi for everyday use (not the exact value of course, as your goofy prof said in 1865), and they got that from plain measurement. Can you prove that your bronze-age goatherd tribesmen had even that?
Oh and, once again: In bold this time, since you seem to think this makes arguments more understandable...
NO archaeological evidence has directly disproved the Iliad yet, dave. On the contrary. Remember Troy? Mycenae? So, does this mean there's good reason to believe that Homer's epics are inerrant, and eyewittness evidence?
Should I get the sacrificial altar to Poseidon ready, dave?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
You get a figure for PI b/t 2.81 and 3.21. Covers PI pretty well, now doesn't it?
Come on, Ved.
Oh, Dave! That book of yours is sooooo acurate! I'm soooo impressed!
Poo. It doesn't even mention the existence of the ratio. Anyone with a rope can measure the diameter and circumference of an object and write it down. Feel free to explain to me that they did more than just that.
The tyre prophecy, for those who don't know, was the work of the prophet Ezekial, chapter 26, verses 3 through 14: Therefore thus says Yahweh God: "Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea causes its waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for spreading nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken," says Yahweh God; "it shall become plunder for the nations. Also her daughter villages which are in the fields shall be slain by the sword. Then they shall know that I am Yahweh."
For thus says Yahweh God: "Behold, I will bring against Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses, with chariots, and with horsemen, and an army with many people. He will slay with the sword your daughter villages in the fields; he will heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall against you, and raise a defense against you. He will direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers. Because of the abundance of his horses, their dust will cover you; your walls will shake at the noise of the horsemen, the wagons, and the chariots, when he enters your gates, as men enter a city that has been breached. With the hooves of his horses he will trample all your streets; he will slay your people by the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water. I will put an end to the sound of your songs, and the sound of your harps shall be heard no more. I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, you shall never be rebuilt, for I Yahweh have spoken," says Yahweh God The problem is, Nebucanezzar failed to take the isle of Tyre, the seat of power.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Thank you, dave, for proving without doubt that your religion, just like so many others, is in fact founded on MORAL RELATIVISM. And for once again sawing off the branch you're sitting on, of course.
Faid ... your problem is that you still have that goofy idea that the Universal Moral Code applies to God. It doesn't. It applies to Humans. Where did you get your silly idea? It wasn't me that gave that one to you. That would be like saying a sign at a restaurant that says "No pets allowed" means you, a human (or should I say, an ape relative?), cannot eat there. You are not the pet, Faid. You are the pet OWNER. You can eat there. But your pet cannot go in. Do you see? God is not a human. He is the human "owner." He makes the rules which apply to us. He is above the rules because He is in a different category entirely.
Now is that fair? How should I know? How can a measley human be in a position to judge God? I am not stupid enough to pretend that I can see the things that God sees. So how can I presume to judge God's actions? No, I cannot. Now what I can do is observe that there really is such a thing as God, judging from all the evidence available to me. And I can make a decision about whether he means business or not about wanting humans to do His will. I've decided He is, and He has. So I've decided that it's a wise thing to obey. Sorta like the military, Faid. I didn't always understand every decision that came down to me. But before I joined, I analyzed the military and decided it was overall a good thing. I made the conscious decision to join and subject myself to its authority. Similar deal with God.
Stay with me long enough and you'll get it! :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The problem is, Nebucanezzar failed to take the isle of Tyre, the seat of power.
No, 7P, the problem is with you. You don't have a clue about the history of Tyre because if you did, you would be amazed at the exactness of detail in Ezekiel's prophecy. I will not go to the trouble of typing it out for you, because you need to go out and buy this book anyway.
Go out and buy Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I have the old version. In Volume I, you will find the story of the fulfilled prophecy of Tyre laid out in stunning detail on pp. 274-281, meticulously documented with non-Christian historical sources.
This is from a former skeptic, mind you, just like you. This guy HATED Christianity. His father was a drunk ... Josh hated Christianity so much he set out to prove it was wrong.
Guess what happened? He studied prophecies about Tyre and others and He was so amazed at the Bible's accurate fulfilled prophecies and other amazing things about the Bible that he became a Christian ... a very outspoken one!!
How about you, 7P? Do you have the guts to do an honest inquiry like Josh McDowell did?
It just might change your life!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But I doubt you ever will, dave. You give me the copycat rationalisation you guys always use in questions like these: "God is my god and he knows best".
Only this time it doesn't apply (if it ever did): You see, I never said anything about your god, dave. I never questioned his motives: I'm talking about you. And it's about morality, not authority.
You are supposed to have this Supreme Moral Law, of divine origin, hard-coded into your mind and soul. It is the very breath of your god that inspired it to you. So, when your leader says "GOD SAYS KILL BABIES", something that is in such discord with it, you should at least have a moral dillema, and even question your leader's authority on this. Instead, all you think is (surprise surprise) WHO you're supposed to obey. Not WHY, but WHO. That's what it boils down to. No divine sense of morality, no nothing. Just "I must do what my Lord commands". And you're ok with it. No morality bell starts to ring, because there isn't any. You firmly believe that the only moral thing is what your god tells you (or tells your leaders) to do, and that can be anything He wants..
And that' my friend, is moral relativism. And it throws CSL's (and your) arguments down the drain.
Thanks for playing.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
So, when your leader says "GOD SAYS KILL BABIES", something that is in such discord with it, you should at least have a moral dillema, and even question your leader's authority on this.
Oh, I see. You have a problem with me, as Joshua's foot soldier, carrying out orders to kill babies? So that's what you're worried about. I see. That's easy too. Here's the deal with that. If I'm Joshua's foot soldier and he's the God-ordained leader (my duly appointed governing official, if you will), then my killing of the babies is simply an official government act for which I am merely an agent, much like the bombing of Hiroshima, which killed a lot of babies too. See? It has nothing to do with God's Universal Moral Code which he has written into the consciences of all mankind. It is a separate issue.
On the one hand, you are talking about the Moral Absolute that "Individual humans are not to kill." On the other hand you have lawfully instituted, God-ordained governments which are delegated the power by God to kill--capital punishment, war, A-bombs, etc.
See? And you'll notice that this idea of government has proven to work very well when applied to Western Civilization.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And you still babble on about authority, as I imagined.
dave, is there or isn't there a Universal moral code, carved in the minds of all men from the beginning of time? Does this divinely-inspired moral code consider killing babies an atrocity? instead of letting Joshua take the blame (how lovingly christian of you), why don't you tell me how killing those babies with your own hands would make you feel, and how would you sleep at night? Would the Universal Moral Code bell ring, or not dave?
Straight answers, please.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The problem is, Nebucanezzar failed to take the isle of Tyre, the seat of power.
No, 7P, the problem is with you. You don't have a clue about the history of Tyre because if you did, you would be amazed at the exactness of detail in Ezekiel's prophecy. I will not go to the trouble of typing it out for you, because you need to go out and buy this book anyway.
Go out and buy Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I have the old version. In Volume I, you will find the story of the fulfilled prophecy of Tyre laid out in stunning detail on pp. 274-281, meticulously documented with non-Christian historical sources.
This is from a former skeptic, mind you, just like you. This guy HATED Christianity. His father was a drunk ... Josh hated Christianity so much he set out to prove it was wrong.
Guess what happened? He studied prophecies about Tyre and others and He was so amazed at the Bible's accurate fulfilled prophecies and other amazing things about the Bible that he became a Christian ... a very outspoken one!!
How about you, 7P? Do you have the guts to do an honest inquiry like Josh McDowell did?
Therefore thus says Yahweh God: "Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea causes its waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for spreading nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken," says Yahweh God; "it shall become plunder for the nations. Also her daughter villages which are in the fields shall be slain by the sword. Then they shall know that I am Yahweh."
For thus says Yahweh God: "Behold, I will bring against Tyre from the north Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, king of kings, with horses, with chariots, and with horsemen, and an army with many people. He will slay with the sword your daughter villages in the fields; he will heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall against you, and raise a defense against you. He will direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he will break down your towers. Because of the abundance of his horses, their dust will cover you; your walls will shake at the noise of the horsemen, the wagons, and the chariots, when he enters your gates, as men enter a city that has been breached. With the hooves of his horses he will trample all your streets; he will slay your people by the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. They will plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise; they will break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses; they will lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water. I will put an end to the sound of your songs, and the sound of your harps shall be heard no more. I will make you like the top of a rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets, you shall never be rebuilt, for I Yahweh have spoken," says Yahweh God The problem is, Nebucanezzar failed to take the isle of Tyre, the seat of power.
Sorta like the military, Faid. I didn't always understand every decision that came down to me. But before I joined, I analyzed the military and decided it was overall a good thing. I made the conscious decision to join and subject myself to its authority. Similar deal with God.
The genocide of innocents is evil of the top tier and anyone engaged in it is morally bankrupt whether the order to do so came from a company first sergeant, battallion commander, President of the United States, or Jesus Fucking Christ Hisself. It's still criminal. Perhaps you missed the UCMJ.
And you are an idiot.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Come on, Ved. I bet you can come up with a more substantive objection to the truth of the Bible than that, can't you?
Do you really WANT to know the truth, Ved? Or do you just want to make stuff up so you will feel better about your skepticism?
Dave, we have shown you, over and over again, that the Bible is wrong about essentially anything it ever says that impinges on science in any way, shape, or form. It's wrong about how old the universe is, it's wrong about how old the earth is, it's wrong about the global flood, it's wrong about the origin of language, and it's wrong about the origin of species. Come to think of it, Dave, I can think of very little the Bible isn't wrong about.
The problem for you, Dave, as has become abundantly clear, is that you simply cannot see anything that contradicts your worldview. We've shown you over and over again why your worldview is wildly at odds with reality, to no discernable effect.
But that's okay. No one here really expects to be able to persuade you of anything. It's just entertainment, really.
But do you honestly think that all of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, or working scientists in virtually every branch of science over the past hundred years or more are all delusional? All of them? Because the proportion of actual scientists who believe in the literal truth of the Bible is even lower than it is in the general population. I'm willing to bet that it's way less than one percent.
But all of those hundreds of thousands of scientists were all wrong, and AF Dave is right.
Sure. I can add that to my collection of bridges I've bought all over the country.
So—are you finally ready to give us your "evidence" for your global flood, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The genocide of innocents is evil of the top tier and anyone engaged in it is morally bankrupt whether the order to do so came from a company first sergeant, battallion commander, President of the United States, or Jesus Fucking Christ Hisself. It's still criminal.
^ Now here's a man who seems to follow an actual moral code (universal or not)... Unlike you, dave.
Starting to get the picture now?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Ah yes. Another infidel site. Wouldn't you know! 7P, did you know that you can find an internet site to support most anything you want to believe? I've read your site and you are a fool if you think your internet site refutes McDowell.
Again, McDowell's case is meticulously documented and solid as a rock. And that's just ONE of the hundreds of specidically fulfilled prophecies!!!
Wow! What a book the Bible is!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Again, McDowell's case is meticulously documented and solid as a rock. And that's just ONE of the hundreds of specidically fulfilled prophecies!!!
Wow! What a book the Bible is!!
Dave, given the Bible's lamentable record when it comes to age of the universe, age of the earth, origin of language, and origin of species, it's pretty obvious its prophesies are going to take a little creative interpretation to be seen as accurate at all.
And still no flood evidence…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Man, I just watched season 1 of the muppet show this weekend. That is, IMHO, the best show that has ever been on TV.
Oh yeah, Davey, you should go on TV with your ideas, maybe Jerry Springer. Your god ideas could entice a chuckle from coast to coast.
I prefer my gods to be more, um, loving.
Enjoy your chemical imbalances. I surely did.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Ghost, is that the best a famous Google scholar such as you could come up with? Both these sites are Pathetic: Both try to mix the sequence of the verses to show that Ezekial spoke about this first, then something else entirely, than the first again, like he was drunk.. And the second one LIES by saying that there is no modern city, just some fishing villages!
Come on, you can do better than that... Remember what dave said: You can find a site that succesfully argues about anything on the Intarnets!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
On the one hand, you are talking about the Moral Absolute that "Individual humans are not to kill." On the other hand you have lawfully instituted, God-ordained governments which are delegated the power by God to kill--capital punishment, war, A-bombs, etc.
Okay, I have to admit some degree of curiousity about this? Are all governments God-ordained?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
[afdave:] How can a measley human be in a position to judge God? I am not stupid enough to pretend that I can see the things that God sees. So how can I presume to judge God's actions? No, I cannot. Now what I can do is observe that there really is such a thing as God, judging from all the evidence available to me. And I can make a decision about whether he means business or not about wanting humans to do His will. I've decided He is, and He has. So I've decided that it's a wise thing to obey.
And, to continue my theme, does this differ in any significant way from Mohammed Atta's views on 9/11/2001?
I don't know if anyone reading this is old enough to remember the Kennel Ration pet food ads on TV about 40 years ago, but they featured a little kid singing:
Quote
My dog's better than your dog, My dog's better than yours. My dog's better 'cause he gets Kennel Ration. My dog's better than yours
Now - if you can remember the tune - substitute "god" for "dog", and "Christian prayers" for "Kennel Ration", and you've got a pretty good idea how seriously I take afdave.
Ok, I thought I was done frothing at the mouth over Dave using the "but my commander (in this case God via Joshua) told me to kill all those children" excuse, but I'm not.
Suffice it to say that not only is such a lame and pathetic excuse disgusting, vile, and morally vacuous, it's also without legal merit.
The UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice - which is the U.S. Military Law) specifically deals with such orders and states that not only is a member of the military not required to follow such orders, but is obligated to disobey them. Anyone following such orders is subject to charges of murder and war crimes regardless of who gave the order. Any slick-sleeved airman (or marine, soldier, seaman, or coastie) could tell you that.
It's one of the first things all members of the military learn in basic training, and for Dave to compare Joshua or anyone else's wholesale slaughter of women, children, and other non-combatants to the ideals or actions of the U.S. military is repugnant and offensive to those of us who served with honor.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
DOOOO WHAAAAT?? Where in the world did you get this from? You are going to have to explain this one to me. I didn't quite follow.
Hehe, ok so I can't prove the mental illness thing, but that is certainly the view of a great deal of doctors. To summarise:
George Mcready Price belived in a literal reading of Gen 1-3 due to his religious beliefs. These are based on the views of the Seventh Day adventist church, which are based on the visions of their 'prophetess' Ellen White, who claimed to have a vision where she saw the creation occur in literal days, and another where she saw Nohas flood shape the world. At some point when Price was a school teacher a friend gave him a book containing geological methods used to determine the age of the earth. He assumed that the geologists had misinterpreted their data, because otherwise the conclusions contradicted his religious beliefs. Based on these assumptions he produced a book called 'the new geology', which contained the YEC flood geology arguments in virtually all detail. Price's arguments were used by William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial, and were the main influence of Henry Morris, who described the book as a life changing experience. What Morris did was bring the arguments from a mostly Seventh Day Adventist/Lutheran belief into the mainstream denominations.
I would be very interested to see your evidence regarding the belief of the majority of Christians before the 19th century because every evangelical Christian I have spoken to on the matter says the exact opposite.
Ghost, is that the best a famous Google scholar such as you could come up with? Both these sites are Pathetic: Both try to mix the sequence of the verses to show that Ezekial spoke about this first, then something else entirely, than the first again, like he was drunk..
Quote
Skeptics and believers can certainly agree that verses 7-11 are specifically about Nebuchadnezzar and his men. But, nowhere in those verses is the word "they" ever used. In fact, it almost seems that Ezekiel goes out of his way not to use the word "they." Take a look:
". . . I am going to bring against Tyre Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon . . ."
". . . He will ravage your settlements on the mainland . . ."
". . . he will set up siege works against you . . ."
". . . He will direct the blows . . ."
". . . with his weapons . . ."
". . . His horses will be so many . . ."
". . . when he enters your gates . . ."
". . . The hoofs of his horses will trample . . ."
". . . he will kill your people . . ."
Nebuchadnezzar is not the "many nations" referenced in verse 3. Instead, he is the first of the "many nations" referenced in verse 3. And the word "they" in verse 12 is not a continuation of the Nebuchadnezzar theme, but rather a continuation of the "many nations" theme of which Nebuchadnezzar is the starting point.
Only in verses 7-11 is Nebuchadnezzar specifically and unquestionably referred to. And in these verses, only the mainland of Tyre is addressed - never the island. The destruction of the island and the looting of the island, then, is the job of the "many nations" of verse 3. And many nations did attack, conquer and rule over the island.
As for the claim that Ezekiel 29:17 is an admission from Ezekiel that his prophecy about Tyre failed, because Nebuchadnezzar did not get any loot from Tyre, take a look again at verses 7-11. Those are indeed the only verses that specifically mention Nebuchadnezzar, and these verses do not refer to loot or plunder. Like the destruction of the island itself, the prophecy of plunder was to be carried out by the "many nations" of verse 3.
In verses 19-21, Ezekiel said that there would come a time when the city is "desolate," "no longer inhabited," and submerged underwater. I believe that this was fulfilled completely by Alexander when he tossed the ruins of mainland Tyre into the sea to build the land bridge that helped him to conquer the island of Tyre. Alexander's conquest brought an end - a permanent end - to the Phoenician Empire. And from that point on, the Phoenician city of Tyre ceased to exist. A city cannot be more desolate or more uninhabited than one that no longer exists. And yes, there is indeed a city called Tyre in modern-day Lebanon, and indeed it might be sitting on the exact same spot as the original Tyre. But this is Lebanon's Tyre - not the Phoenician Tyre that had taunted the Jews and had gloated over the destruction of the Holy City of Jerusalem. It was the Phoenician Tyre that Ezekiel was speaking of, and that city no longer exists:
" The principal ruins of the city today are those of buildings erected by the Crusaders. There are some Greco-Roman remains, but any left by the Phoenicians lie underneath the present town. " - Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition.
Faid:
Quote
And the second one LIES by saying that there is no modern city, just some fishing villages!
Quote
LeStrange quotes that the city was in ruins right until then, in 1321 A.D. and even to this day the ruins of Tyre can be seen.
Nothing but a small fishing village remains and the fishermen spread their nets their to dry or to fix. The once great city of Tyre is gone. Old Tyre was never rebuilt after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzar; and there are now no traces left to mark its site. Now its harbours are choked with sand, precluding all hope of future restoration. "Not one entire house is left, and only a few fishermen take shelter in the vaults" (Maundrell). The new city, when visited by Maundrell, Bruce, and other travellers, was literally "a place for fishers to dry their nets on".
Now Tyre "cannot be found" or rather that which was the ancient city is no longer there. Instead, on the island of Tyre you will find a small fishing village that bears the name Súr.
Although the earliest origins of Tyre are unknown, the testimonies of ancient historians and some archaeological evidence suggest it goes back to the start of the 3rd millennium BC. Originally a mainland settlement with an island city a short distance offshore, it came of age in the 10th century BC when King Hiram expanded the mainland and built two ports and a temple to honor Melkart, the city's god. Its flourishing maritime trade, Mediterranean colonies, its purple dye and glass industries made Tyre very powerful and wealthy. But the city's wealth attracted enemies. In the 6th century BC the Tyrians successfully defied Nebuchadnezzar for 13 years. Alexander The Great laid siege to it for 7 years, finally overwhelming the island city by constructing a great causeway from the shore to the island.
In their day the Romans built a magnificent city at Tyre. The remains of its Roman streets, arcades and public buildings, including one of the largest hippodromes of the period, are Tyre's major attractions. Occupied by the Muslim Arabs in 636, then captured in 1124 by the Crusaders, Tyre was an important fortified town of the kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1291 the Mamlukes took the city; during the 400 year Ottoman period (beginning 1516) it remained a quiet town. Now a sleepy port town, it was incorporated into the nation of Lebanon at the end of World War I. It is a charming place in which to while away vacation time. [....] What remains of Tyre, in addition to the archeological treasures described below, is a fishing town of approximately 250,000, with an old city filled with the characteristic Middle East bazaars or souks (located on the landfill connecting the original island to the mainland) and a new city, located inland. Tyre has a colorful souk (market) well worth exploring. Unfortunately, it was closed on our visit, due to the religious holiday. Near the market you'll see a busy fisherman's port, in Phoenician times referred to as the "Sidonian port" because it faced north towards Sidon. Along the port with the sea on your right is the city's Christian Quarter, a picturesque area of narrow streets, traditional architecture, and the Seat of the Maronite Bishop of Tyre and the Holy Land.
On the one hand, you are talking about the Moral Absolute that "Individual humans are not to kill." On the other hand you have lawfully instituted, God-ordained governments which are delegated the power by God to kill--capital punishment, war, A-bombs, etc.
Okay, I have to admit some degree of curiousity about this? Are all governments God-ordained?
Shoot, and here I thought that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Well, if you mean "not too bad" as in "good job, Faid, for figuring it out" then thanks!
Other than that, I mean, what does your quoting prove?
Quote
What remains of Tyre, in addition to the archeological treasures described below, is a fishing town of approximately 250,000, with an old city filled with the characteristic Middle East bazaars or souks (located on the landfill connecting the original island to the mainland) and a new city, located inland. Tyre has a colorful souk (market) well worth exploring. Unfortunately, it was closed on our visit, due to the religious holiday. Near the market you'll see a busy fisherman's port, in Phoenician times referred to as the "Sidonian port" because it faced north towards Sidon. Along the port with the sea on your right is the city's Christian Quarter, a picturesque area of narrow streets, traditional architecture, and the Seat of the Maronite Bishop of Tyre and the Holy Land.
...Seriously. "Fishing village?"
But thanks!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Source two was talking about the village on the island. As for the inland city, the ruins postdate the Phoenicians. Compare Source 1 with Source 3 again. I'm glad I quoted two sources, because Source 2 is a little misleading; thanks for spotting the error.
So immediately his mind goes to work and conjures up images of my dad as a rich plantation owner in a remote jungle, using and abusing the natives to do all his dirty work for him. [...] When my dad came along, he imagines, those poor natives were enslaved to haul water and pick cotton for my dad, while my dad sat on his veranda sipping tequila and enjoying the scenic views while beautiful native women fanned him.
Dave, whatever point you were trying to make about deadman's supposedly delusional fantasies is illustrated beautifully by this post of yours, only not the way you think it was.
I'd be willing to bet good money that thoughts such as these never crossed deadman's mind. In fact, I would bet that deadman recognizes some of the benefits that your father brought to these people. Wells are good. Schools are good. Modern medicine is good. But at what cost? Benefits of progress come at the expense of unique cultures. Oh, and dispelling belief in evil spirits is good... except that he didn't exactly do that last thing. He replaced one set of evil spirits with another. I assume your father told them they were going to "heck" if they didn't believe him, right?
Now here's a man who seems to follow an actual moral code (universal or not)... Unlike you, dave.
Thank you for the nod, Faid.
Interestingly enough, I didn't need some old collection of fairy tales about an invisible djin to arrive at that code. So much for the "but if there is no Yaweh-as-depicted-literally-in-thishere-book, then there is no morality" argument.
In fact, I dare say my "moral code" became much less fluid when I left such silliness in my past.
Quote
When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Tsk, Tsk, Dave...more b-s to pile on your lies about me? What you just posted about me said this, Dave:
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So immediately his mind goes to work and conjures up images of my dad as a rich plantation owner in a remote jungle, using and abusing the natives to do all his dirty work for him. He imagines that these natives were happy, prosperous, "beautiful savages" living in bliss in their native culture, at peace with nature and surrounding tribes, until the evil white man came along and disrupted the serenity.
No, Dave, despite your shrill screams of me defaming your "Daddy" I didn't conjure up any of the things you imagine. I didn't imagine your daddy living the rich life in Guyana, because that's not possible among a marginalized group. I didn't imagine the WaiWai as "beautiful savages" either...as I have already said, I have no illusions about how brutal ( or wonderful) any group of people can be. Please cite ANY "lie" that you can find in what I wrote, Dave. He11, I even said your Daddy seemed like a decent enough guy, but your fevered little brain ran right past that.
What I **DID** say was that you lied about me, Dave. You lied about my theistic views, you lied about my charity and social work, you lied about me "never dealing with a jungle tribe" you lied about your father contacting every WaiWai village--How do I know your Dad did NOT contact them? because they were NOT contacted until the 80's-90's, Dave-- You lied about the numbers of CIIPR researchers, you lied about him being the ONLY white person they'd seen " in the 20th century." The last point would be a surprise indeed to the American Museum of Natural History, Dave, but you chose to lie about it to create some kind of myth about your father.
What I did say was that the WaiWai that were NOT contacted by your father managed to make their way throug the 50's and 60's until they started getting help from the Guyanese and Brazilian governments in the 70's and onwards. This enabled them to overcome the diseases, alcohol, outsider-imposed cultural change and violence and land-theft that had disrupted their lives
So you say this, Dave:
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They weren't dying out because of their loss of economic base. They were dying out because they were killing each other and their own babies.
Ahem...here, you are simply skewing the facts to fit your idealized vision of your saintly father. What the WaiWai did was kill...female babies, Dave...or, in far smaller numbers, males deemed incapable of working hard enough to make it through that period of WaiWai history. This kind of infanticide is found in hundreds of cultures around the world. Solomon Islands, East and West Africa, North and South America, Europe and Asia. The Greeks and Romans practiced this form of infanticide, as do Asian Indians and Chinese to this day. In fact, The United States has one of the highest murder rate for children in the world, too. Where is that Universal Morality, when people across the world saw it as a good thing to kill off children selectively? Oh, and by the way, for the WaiWai, killing babies under the age of three was not "evil" because for them, the "human soul" is not permanently linked to the body during the first three years of life. This is similar to many, many groups who don't consider babies "human" until after a specified age. It is likely that this mechanism arises due to high natural infant mortality--to "lessen" the shock of losing a child.
They were using infanticide because they had an eroded economic base, Dave...And it was eroded because "good christians" decided to encroach on WaiWai lands. The destruction of the WaiWai economic base is well-described in A.T. Campbell's 1995 " Getting to know Waiwai: an Amazonian Ethnography." Routledge. New York, NY.
So, to summarize..despite your cartoon version of what I thought and said ( again! no, I had no such illusions as you claimed. Furthermore, you cannot find me saying a "lie" in anything I wrote. Your father did not contact every WaiWai group...he could not have. He was not the first white man there in the 20th century, you lied about the CIIPR researchers. Other WaiWai are doing fine without your daddy's help, and in fact your daddy's group would have made it through, too...probably by moving to the highlands as other groups did, from Shefarimo and Masemakari I. The only cause of disruption to their lives was due to white people bearing guns...germs and alcohol, while simultaneously stealing Indian land and taking out protein sources bigger than iguanas. Peccary sometimes manage to hold on longer because they're mean and they breed fast.
In short, once again, you're full of crap, Dave. You said that
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Deadman has proven his lack of interest in the truth so you should know by now where his sources will lead you.
So I'll challenge you for the third time in this post, Dave...show where I lied at all. Post it. Just like you couldn't post about my theistic views (after you claimed to know them) you will fail there, too. Because you're f-ed up in the head, baby boy
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
On the one hand, you are talking about the Moral Absolute that "Individual humans are not to kill." On the other hand you have lawfully instituted, God-ordained governments which are delegated the power by God to kill--capital punishment, war, A-bombs, etc.
Okay, I have to admit some degree of curiousity about this? Are all governments God-ordained?
The medieval metaphor of the Two Swords, first introduced by Pope Gelasius I (492-496), posited a unity of Christian society. It proclaimed that the two governments of sacerdotium and regnun, each with separate powers, were merely the spiritual and the temporal arms of a single Christian commonwealth. There was as yet no theory of church and state: the Church was not a State; it was the State, universal order, spiritual as well as moral. What we today know of as the state, the supreme civil authority, was merely the temporal arm, the police department if you will, of the Church. Every duality, however, is liable to be perceived as a dichotomy and it is not surprising that the later historical development of the West came to assume the character of a struggle between Church and State, a clash of the Two Swords. Ever since that fateful conflict, the modern man has lived in a binary world of antitheses and antinomies, dialectics and disputations, rifts and ruptures. Indeed, he either dreams of a Grand Theory that would restore the unity of his lost vision, or dreads this possibility!
Davey, does it hurt?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Tyre was originally on a small rocky island near the coast. In the 10th century BC, King Kiram of Tyre constructed ports, temple, and industries on the mainland sector of the city. This was where Phoenician glass and purple dyeworks were developed.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Well, here we are, almost two months and almost 100 pages into this thread (what? ya never heard o' rounding, Dave?), and I thought it would be sort of fun to see which of the elements of Dave's "Creator God Hypothesis" have managed to persuade anyone. So here, they are, in abbreviated form:
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A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans.
Anyone think Dave' proved this? No?
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B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose.
Has he proved this? Given how HUGE the universe and how TEENY the earth is, how likely does this assertion seem?
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C. All of human kind descended from two genetically rich parents, Adam and Eve, but did not diversify significantly due to minimal geographic isolation. My hypothesis proposes that there was only one large "super-continent" prior to the Great Flood of Noah, thus minimizing geographic isolation and resultant natural selection and specialization/diversification. The same applies to animals except that I make no proposal as to HOW MANY animals there were initially. Obviously, there would have to be at least one pair of each 'kind' (a term to be defined later)
Why all this is mixed up as one element is a mystery, but does anyone believe that Dave has proved that all of humanity is descended from two "genetically rich" (I assume that we losers around today are "genetically poor," or maybe "genetically working-class") humans, about 6-7,000 years ago? (Dave doesn't like to be pinned down to a particular date.)
And how about a single supercontinent, less than 10,000 years ago? Not only a single continent, but evidently with no mountain ranges—those didn't happen until 4,500 years ago or so.
Also, Dave doesn't want to talk about how many "kinds" there were back there, or even what a "kind" is.
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D. Early man was created perfectly, i.e. no deleterious genetic mutations.
Has anyone observed Dave posting actual "evidence" of this so far? No? Didn't think so.
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E. Mankind chose NOT to do God's will very early on (just as all young children choose not to do parents' will), thus prompting God to institute a system for persuading humans to admit their folly and begin doing His will, for "redeeming" humans who choose this path, and for reminding humans that the present physical world is only a "proving ground" or "training camp" for the next world which will be created at a definite point in the future.
You know, it doesn't seem like it would be terribly difficult for Dave to prove this assertion, but I can't actually remember him proving any such thing, or even providing evidence for such a thing. And we're only on his fifth element of his hypothesis (out of 16), so if Dave claims he just hasn't gotten there yet, it looks like it's going to take all year (and maybe 300 pages) to work through his entire "hypothesis."
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F. God allowed the choices of mankind to take their natural course for the most part, intervening in the affairs of men sporadically and briefly.
This one seems like it would be a little harder to prove, but in any event, I haven't seen anything even Dave claims is evidence for this assertion yet.
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G. The natural result of collective disobedience to the revealed will of God was an extremely corrupt society--i.e. rampant dishonesty, injustice, murder, theft, etc.--which was terminated by God through the agency of a global, life-destroying flood--the Flood of Noah described in Genesis.
Supposedly this is next on Dave's list of things to "prove," which has me all excited. I've been waiting for this for weeks! But Dave must be taking things a bit out of order, because he hasn't managed to prove (or even provide evidence for) any of his previous assertions.
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H. The Global Flood of Noah was an immense cataclysm of enormous tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic upheaval. It completely reshaped the ante-diluvian world and resulted in massive, worldwide sedimentation and fossilization, mountain range uplift, sea basin lowering, continent separation, and climate change.
Well, if this event was as cataclysmic as Dave says it was, there should be abundant evidence that it occurred. So what's the hold-up, Dave?
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I. Following the Global Flood, we hypothesize an Ice Age of undetermined duration brought on by the massive climate changes induced by the Flood. It was during this time that the dinosaurs and many other species died out.
Only one ice age, huh, Dave? Well, it certainly must have been less than 6,000 years long, right? Actually, since there's no written evidence of an ice age in the Bible, which goes back to before the time of the flood, and it was supposedly caused by the flood…well, it seems like you've got a little problem here, Dave.
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J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
Hmm, any "proof" of this assertion? Since there are something like 6,000 languages in the world today (1,500 on the island of New Guinea alone), that means basically more than a language a year. Or more than that, really, since a lot of languages have disappeared, just in historical times (Manx, Gothic, just to name an obvious couple). Arden?
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K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations.
Got any pictures of these "tablets," Dave? Or other evidence that they ever actually existed? No? Didn't think so.
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L. God personally dictated the events of the Creation week to the first man, Adam, but then assumed a less active role in the composition of the balance of Genesis and the balance of what is now commonly called the Christian Scriptures.
Dave? Any "evidence" for this one? Or is this just another of your assertions?
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M. Many cultures in geographically diverse locations around the world have legends which follow the general outline above.
Of course, there are lots of cultures that have completely different legends, but those ones all must be wrong. Any evidence of that, Dave? That all the other creation myths are wrong but yours is right?
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N. The Christian Scriptures, i.e. the 66 books of what is commonly called the Holy Bible, are essentially the WRITTEN record of what this Super-Intelligent, Super-Powerful Creator God wanted mankind to know about Himself, His Creation, and His Plans for the Future.
I take it you're planning on providing some evidence for this at some point, Dave? I'm trying to picture what that evidence would look like. Well, they're certainly a "written" record, but written by whom?
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O. Jesus of Nazareth is the single most influential human being to ever walk Planet Earth.
Well, except for Mohammed, who according to the one in six people in the world who is Muslim, is probably more influential, and then there's that Kung Fu Tsu guy who a billion Chinese people think is pretty influential. But in any event, where's your "evidence" for this, Dave? That there are lots of Christians? That's your "evidence"?
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P. The Christian Scriptures consisting of the Jewish Scriptures plus what is commonly called the New Testament are the most basic and foundational collection of documents for all of mankind's activities on Planet Earth--from scientific endeavor to family activities to government structure.
This is a tough one. Given that the Bible is hopeless when it comes to scientific endeavor (I present AF Dave as "Exhibit A" in my proof of that assertion). But where's your evidence of your assertion, Dave? Haven't gotten to it yet?
At the pace you're going, I don't expect you to get there by the end of the decade.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ezekiel "predicted" Tyre would be a bare rock forever...forever means forever...and it is not a bare rock, in fact, it has been continuously inhabited from 1600 BCE onwards. Habitation sites means it cannot be "bare rock"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Speaking of Ezekiel, there's another prophecy there where ol' Zeke predicts that Nebuchadrezzar will conquer all of Egypt. Ez. 29:19 "Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will give the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it; and it shall be the wages for his army."
That never happened, either. Nebuchadrezzar never made it happen. Tsk
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
H. The Global Flood of Noah was an immense cataclysm of enormous tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic upheaval. It completely reshaped the ante-diluvian world and resulted in massive, worldwide sedimentation and fossilization, mountain range uplift, sea basin lowering, continent separation, and climate change.
And yet Dave's God only told Noah about the floodey parts, and only promised not to destroy the world with water again. Was God lying to to us by not mentioning the enormous tectonic and volcanic parts of his actions? Or is Dave making stuff up.
Maybe God was just dumbing things down for us again in his book: "The Christian Scriptures Consisting of the Jewish Scriptures Plus What is Commonly Called the New Testament, the Most Basic and Foundational Collection of Documents for all of Mankind's Activities on Planet Earth--From Scientific Endeavor to Family Activities to Government Structure: FOR DUMMIES"
No, Dave, despite your shrill screams of me defaming your "Daddy" I didn't conjure up any of the things you imagine.
If it did happen, Dave, then it should be easy for you to prove. Go back and link the posts where you found what you claim deadman said and quote him directly -- then we can all check and see who is right.
I don't believe the line about picking cotton -- that's what American blacks did. Brazil had in, what, the 40s and 50s?, other argricultural products dominating export I think. Not that they didn't grow cotton, but that it's not something that would be first to pop into deadman's mind unless they were thinking of American blacks or knew something I didn't.
In Brazil the first thing that would pop into my mind would be sugar cane.
I want to know if lines like "...while my dad sat on his veranda sipping tequila and enjoying the scenic views while beautiful native women fanned him." is afdave's invention or what deadmen actually said.
One guy didn't even know who Jean Astruc and Julius Wellhausen are and yet he subscribes to the viewpoint which is the resultant of their theory!!
That was me and you've got it wrong, Dave. I am seeing your willfull blindness right here, right now. I don't know the work of Jean Astruc and Julius Wellhausen, true, but the theory you ascribe to them is not one I believe. It's an incredibly ignorant theory to assume, as you did and do claim Jean Astruc and Julius Wellhausen said, that writing didn't exist before Moses -- as I will show.
There is more too biblical archeology than you know, it's not just Jean Astruc and Julius Wellhausen.
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...he says I'm the idiot because "of course writing existed at the time of Moses, you idiot, he lived during the reign of the pharoahs!" I give up. My only medicine for you, my friend, is to go back and re-read p. 82. Then buy the book if you want to know more.
I read your bit about the Summerian tablets being Genesis. You're right, I'm not going to read the book. I don't have to. I can tell from your blindness what I'll get.
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... the Bible writers were geocentrists because it talks about the sun "rising" and "setting?" Has anyone ever heard of metaphors?
The Bible writers were worse than geocentrists, they were flat Earthers. The evidence for this is fairly good:
The picture of the world described in the Bible corresponds to Babylonian maps of the world they thought they lived in and those maps clearly shows a circular earth surrounded by a circular sea.
It's not metaphor when it is describing the assumed knowledge of the time.
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1) Prior to the 19th century, the majority viewpoint of Genesis was that it was literal history. 2) In the late 1700's Jean Astruc came up with the theory that Genesis was a compilation of oral tradition which was not written down until the Kingdom years of Israel. 3) This became known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory in the 19th century. Why did they believe this theory?
Because they thought that writing was not invented until after Moses' time so he could not have written Genesis.
They might have told that lie to ignorant Christians in the 19th century (because all those previous languages were associated with older religions which would undermine biblical belief) but no one who knew anything about archeology in the Mid-East at that time would have been that stupid. Remember, in the 19th century we are getting the Rosetta stone and hieroglyphics were translated by Francois Champollion in 1826. This translation was the beginning of modern study of Egyptology. So, not only do we know there are older languages -- we know how to read them!
The only logical conclusion is that writing predates Moses who was in Egypt. And people who don't have writing are not going to have oral traditions about writing the ten commandments.
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4) Where did they get the odd idea that writing was not invented until after Moses? Pure speculation. And the speculation was helped by Darwin's theory of the descent of man.
Nope. It was an outrageous lie told only to ignorant Christians. I know that seems insulting, but that's the facts and the wealthy priesthood had the power to continue the lie and keep believers ignorant -- they still do. You are an example of their power to blind people.
In the 19th century (and to some degree before it) the educated classes actually did figure out that the Bible was basically false, a product of synthesis of earlier religions. Not everyone who knew this became an atheist -- many became deists. Many still called themselves Christians but rejected the miracle stories of the Bible. That includes some of America's founding fathers who figured it out much earlier.
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5) Most of the main Protestant denominations adopted this theory and began teaching it as settled fact. Most of you all believe this theory to this day.
That is willful blindness. No one here believes that theory!
Remember, Dave, we're not Protestants. We're not a bunch of stupid Christians. Only ignorant Christians (and not all Christians are ignorant -- some are troubled by this knowledge) believed that -- not the educated world and that has been true for a couple hundred years!
You can't get it through your head that we don't believe either old Christian lies or your new Christian lies. The archeological evidence against them both is overwhelming.
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Writing existed as far back as is possible to verify through archaeology - at least 3500 BC. 7) Thanks to archaeology, much is now known of ancient literary and scribal methods. This sheds light on the compostion of Genesis.
That's true. It shows that those monotheist Bible writers stole much of their work from earlier polytheist Summerians. They are not exact copies. They are different and grounded in different religions.
Traces of Sumerian religion survive today and are reflected in writings of the Bible. As late as Ezekiel, there is mention of a Sumerian deity. In Ezekiel 8:14, the prophet sees women of Israel weeping for Tammuz (Dumuzi) during a drought.
The bulk of Sumerian parallels can, however be found much earlier, in the book of Genesis. As in Genesis, the Sumerians' world is formed out of the watery abyss and the heavens and earth are divinely separated from one another by a solid dome. The second chapter of Genesis introduces the paradise Eden, a place which is similar to the Sumerian Dilmun, described in the myth of "Enki and Ninhursag". Dilmun is a pure, bright, and holy land - now often identified with Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. It is blessed by Enki to have overflowing, sweet water. Enki fills it with lagoons and palm trees. He impregnates Ninhursag and causes eight new plants to grow from the earth. Eden, "in the East" (Gen. 2:8) has a river which also "rises" or overflows, to form four rivers including the Tigris and Euphrates. It too is lush and has fruit bearing trees.
(Gen. 2:9-10) In the second version of the creation of man "The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being." Enki and Ninmah (Ninhursag) use a similar method in creating man. Nammu, queen of the abyss and Enki's mother, bids Enki to "Kneed the 'heart' of the clay that is over the Abzu " and "give it form" (Kramer & Maier p. 33) From there the similarities cease as the two create several malformed humans and then the two deities get into an argument.
Returning to Enki and Ninhursag, we find a possible parallel to the creation of Eve. Enki consumed the plants that were Ninhursag's children and so was cursed by Ninhursag, receiving one wound for each plant consumed. Enlil and a fox act on Enki's behalf to call back Ninhursag in order to undo the damage. She joins with him again and bears eight new children, each of whom are the cure to one of his wounds. The one who cures his rib is named Ninti, whose name means the Queen of months, (Kramer & Maier 1989: pp. 28-30) the lady of the rib, or she who makes live. This association carries over to Eve. (Kramer, History Begins at Sumer 1981: pp. 143-144) In Genesis, Eve is fashioned from Adam's rib and her name hawwa is related to the Hebrew word hay or living. (New American Bible p. 7.) The prologue of "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld" may contain the predecessor to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This tree not only contains a crafty serpent, but also Lilith, the legendary first wife of Adam. The huluppu tree is transplanted by Inanna from the banks of the Euphrates to her garden in Uruk, where she finds that:
...a serpent who could not be charmed made its nest in the roots of the tree, The Anzu bird set his young in the branches of the tree, And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk. (Wolkstein and Kramer 1983: p. 8)
It should be noted that Kramer's interpretation that this creature is Lilith has come into quiestion of late.
Another possible Sumerian carry-over related to the Fall of man is the lack of "pangs of childbearing" for those in Dilmun. In particular, Ninhursag gives birth in nine days, not nine months, and the pass "like good princely cream" (Kramer 1981: p. 142,145) or "fine oil" (Kramer & Maier 1989: p. 25)
The quarrels between herder god and farmer deity pairs such as Lahar and Ashnan or Enten and Emesh are similar in some respects to the quarrels of Cain and Abel. In the Sumerian versions death appears to be avoided, although we do not have the complete Lahar and Ashnan story. (Kramer 1961 pp. 49-51, 53-54)
The ten patriarchs in Genesis born prior to the flood lived very long lives, most in excess of 900 years. The seventh patriarch, Enoch, lived only 365 years before he "walked with God". (Genesis 5). The account which numbers those Patriarchs as ten is attributed to the Priestly source. The Yahwist source (J), details only seven Patriarchs prior to Noah, so that with him included, there are eight antediluvian patriarchs. (Genesis 4: 17-18) The eight antediluvian kings of in the Sumerian King List also lived for hundreds of years. (Kramer 1963 p. 328) S. H. Hooke notes another version of the Sumerian King list, found in Larsa details ten antediluvian kings. (Hooke, p. 130) The clearest Biblical parallel comes from the story of the Flood. In the Sumerian version, the pious Ziusudra is informed of the gods decision to destroy mankind by listening to a wall. He too weathers the deluge aboard a huge boat. Noah's flood lasts a long time, but Ziusudra comes to rest within seven days and not the near year of the Bible. He does not receive a covenant, but is given eternal life. (Kramer 1963 pp. 163-164; Kramer 1961 pp. 97-98)
...
Dave says:
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... the assertion that Genesis is literal, eyewitness history, written down by the patriarchs named by Moses in each "colophon."
Which is the eyewitness history, the Bible version or the Summerian version? They're not exactly the same.
How could the Summerian version be a distortion of the Bible version if the Summerian version came first -- doesn't logic dictate that it is the Bible that rips-off and alters the Summerian version?
Those Summerian accounts are different from the Bible. Yet you insist it's the monotheist version that is true and not the polytheist version. They only reason to do that is because you are committed to believe the Bible before you examine the evidence and have to twist it to make it fit your beliefs.
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10) No Biblical statement has ever been contradicted by an archaeological discovery, so there is excellent reason for the history in Genesis to carry great weight.
Actually those Summerian tablets would if you understood what you were talking about. The fact that they only partially agree and the Summerian version are polytheistic with a goddess in the mix.
Now what's going on with this statement you wrote: "Because they thought that writing was not invented until after Moses' time so he could not have written Genesis"? I've shown you how in the 19th century we were not only knowledgable about the existance of other languages (and had been for hundreds of years). Of Egypt and earlier. We not only knew of them in the 19th century we could read them.
Explain, Dave, how an educated person could believe writing didn't exist until after Moses when we could read the writing Moses would have known in Egypt?
Can you not see the logical flaw in what you've written? Only an uneducated, uninformed Christian could have believed your view of the Jean Astruc theory. You could only believe that now if you are brain damaged.
Man, I just watched season 1 of the muppet show this weekend. That is, IMHO, the best show that has ever been on TV.
Oh yeah, Davey, you should go on TV with your ideas, maybe Jerry Springer. Your god ideas could entice a chuckle from coast to coast.
I prefer my gods to be more, um, loving.
Enjoy your chemical imbalances. I surely did.
BWE--
I see you changed your avatar. Did your mommy start nagging you about the last one? Now, it seems as though the Muppets are the pinnacle of cultural and aesthetic virtue among many evolutionists here. The average evolutionists' intellectual development has never extended beyond Sesame Street, but they needed some sarcastic humor to make them feel intelligent. Hence, Jim Henson rose to the challenge.
No need to be a pecker-head. If you have a problem with something he actually said, say so. You'll feel better, and we'll all laugh at you. It's really a win-win situation.
Beatin' up on the muppets, though, that's just cheap.
Butthead.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
This from a guy with a calvin & hobbes style pissing avatar.
Is that a panda watering the grave of Darwin?
(To tell the truth there's a muppet poster up in our band's studio. Don't ask me tho, I didn't put it there...)
I am unaware of the original context for this image. However, I like to think of it as Professor Steve Steve watering the live yet unconscious body of PZ Myers on the floor beside him after both men celebrated their victory in Dover with a little too much abandon.
I am unaware of the original context for this image. However, I like to think of it as Professor Steve Steve watering the live yet unconscious body of PZ Meyers on the floor beside him after both men celebrated their victory in Dover with a little too much abandon.
...Which tells a lot about the creo's pinnacle of cultural and aesthetic virtue.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Now, it seems as though the Muppets are the pinnacle of cultural and aesthetic virtue among many evolutionists here. The average evolutionists' intellectual development has never extended beyond Sesame Street, but they needed some sarcastic humor to make them feel intellegent. Hence, Jim Henson rose to the challenge.
Just out of curiosity, Bill: whom are you talking about when you say "evolutionists"? Is Teddy Kennedy an "evolutionist"? Is Noam Chomsky? Michael Moore?
I thought "evolutionists" could be used meaningfully to describe, you know, evolutionary biologists, people like Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Ernst Mayer. But you seem to use the term to describe anyone you disagree with. So, along with the above, I assume you include Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Einstein, Dirac, Gell-Mann, Hawking, Feynman, Randall, Witten, Peebles, Schmidt, Schneider, Kaku, and Smolin as "evolutionists."
Now, some of these people might be "Muppet Show" fans, but I doubt more than any representative sample of society, "evolutionists" or not.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What I said is the "No archaeological find has ever controverted a Biblical statement."
Try to be more accurate, Dave. What you really should say is, "I've never accepted the existence of an archaeological find that controverted a Biblical statement."
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
I'll bet that questions like that one just show up as "fnord" for Dave.
(Ahem)
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I just got to California and my motel has WiFi. It seems AFDave has not backed up his claims about information in the genome except for the works he referenced before I left. Having read the citations (except for the book, which is not practical at this point), I invite AFDave to read http://scienceblogs.com/goodmat....ion.php where a computer scientist actually talks about different measures of information used in the sciences and mathematics.
Tomorrow I will reply to AFDave's claims of information loss in the genome.
editing for clarity: I see from a comment that the presentation of my idea is as clear as mud. Let me clarify:
I AM NOT ACCUSING AFDAVE OF SUPPORTING Graf-Wellhausen theory -- I AM ACCUSING AFDAVE OF LYING ABOUT IT (OR REPEATING A LIE HE BELIEVES).
AFDAVE'S VERSION OF Graf-Wellhausen theory IS PROBABLY NOT THE REAL Graf-Wellhausen theory.
Quote (normdoering @ June 26 2006,16:59)
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1) Prior to the 19th century, the majority viewpoint of Genesis was that it was literal history. 2) In the late 1700's Jean Astruc came up with the theory that Genesis was a compilation of oral tradition which was not written down until the Kingdom years of Israel. 3) This became known as the Graf-Wellhausen theory in the 19th century. Why did they believe this theory?
Because they thought that writing was not invented until after Moses' time so he could not have written Genesis.
They might have told that lie to ignorant Christians in the 19th century (because all those previous languages were associated with older religions which would undermine biblical belief) but no one who knew anything about archeology in the Mid-East at that time would have been that stupid.
I made a mistake that I need to correct.
When I said "no one who knew any archeology could believe that writing was not invented until after Moses' time" I goofed. What I should have said was NO ONE WHO HAD ACTUALLY READ THE BIBLE could believe that.
Here is why:
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Exd 17:14 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this [for] a memorial in a book, and rehearse [it] in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Exd 34:1 And the LORD said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon [these] tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest. Exd 34:27 And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.
Now, how the He11 could writing not exist in the time of Moses if God is telling Moses to write things?
What are the ten commandments if not writing?
Even if Moses is a completely fictional character his time is that of when writing was existing.
the Documentary Hypothesis or Graf/Wellhausen Theory assumed erroneously that the invention of writing post-dated Moses and so the theory asserts that Genesis was composed by later authors, supposedly made up of 4 documents denoted as J, E, D, and P.
Where afdave might have screwed up is when he said writing post-dated Moses. Maybe he meant to say writing post-dated the events in Genesis, or some events in Genesis? But afdave reinforces his error by saying:
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He basically proposed that since writing was not thought to be invented until the time of David (ca. 1000 BC)...
Writing not invented till the time of David? That sounds like a bogus straw man theory, not a real theory.
The more I think about afdave having this idea of a bogus Graf-Wellhausen theory where supposedly the ancient pre-writing Hebrews have an oral tradition telling stories about writing 10 commandments when writing wasn't invented the more I realise afdave has got something drastically wrong. He seems to think there where biblical scholars who never read the Bible and were believed for many years.
I only skimmed it and nothing on that page says anything about oral tradition and writing coming after Moses.
It looks like afdave is ignorantly slamming a theory he knows absolutely nothing about.
There is an assumption of back dating, that the actual finished works generally called the Bible were edited and compiled later (from multiple sources). So the most generous assumption one could give afdave is that he means the Bible was back dated to a time before writing existed and he simply mis-worded his claim.
But no... that doesn't work either.
Well, the question is --> is the mistake just afdave's report or is it P.J. Wiseman's book?
# ARGUMENT FROM THE BIBLE (II) (1) The Bible says the Bible is true. (2) Therefore the Bible is true. (3) The Bible says God exists. (4) Therefore, God exist.
Now I don't expect you to agree with me. I expect you will continue to believe in your fairy tale world of apes that become human and bacteria that become jellyfish over millions and millions of years. This is far more comfortable because well ... "everyone who is anyone believes this" and "who wants to believe some goofy Jewish book written by some Bronze age tribesmen?" and "I don't want some piss-ant 'god' telling me how to run my life" and "Carbon 14 proves long ages and so does dendrochronology and it's calibrated six ways from Sunday!" and "look at radiometric dating" ... "how could anyone not agree with that??!!" blah, blah, blah, blah ...
So, just asserting Biblical truth didn't work, because some people here have the temerity to question your assertions. "5 minutes from death" terrrorism didn't work because because people here are so wicked that they don't believe in he11!!! That just leaves nyer nyer nyer-nyer nyer, I'm right you're wrong. Pavarotti at a teeny-bopper concert, indeed.
Oh, I see. You have a problem with me, as Joshua's foot soldier, carrying out orders to kill babies? So that's what you're worried about. I see. That's easy too. Here's the deal with that. If I'm Joshua's foot soldier and he's the God-ordained leader (my duly appointed governing official, if you will), then my killing of the babies is simply an official government act for which I am merely an agent, much like the bombing of Hiroshima, which killed a lot of babies too. See? It has nothing to do with God's Universal Moral Code which he has written into the consciences of all mankind. It is a separate issue.
On the one hand, you are talking about the Moral Absolute that "Individual humans are not to kill." On the other hand you have lawfully instituted, God-ordained governments which are delegated the power by God to kill--capital punishment, war, A-bombs, etc.
To heck with Godwin; Dave, take a trip to Auschwitz and see where this line of thinking ends up. The murder of innocents has nothing to do with "God's Universal Moral Code"? Cobblers. I'll take being a monkey's cousin descended from pond scum over this nonsense any day of the week, thanks very much.
the Documentary Hypothesis or Graf/Wellhausen Theory assumed erroneously that the invention of writing post-dated Moses and so the theory asserts that Genesis was composed by later authors, supposedly made up of 4 documents denoted as J, E, D, and P.
Where afdave might have screwed up is when he said writing post-dated Moses. Maybe he meant to say writing post-dated the events in Genesis, or some events in Genesis?
You are going to have to help me here, Norm. I'm no fan of Dave. I think he is wrong on just about everything. But, I am having trouble seeing how your comment follows from his. His comment says that the Graf/Wellhausen Theory assumed erroneously that the invention of writing post-dated Moses. Yet you seem to accuse him of holding exactly that belief. I read the previous post referenced and I don't see where he is supporting the Graf/Wellhausen Theory that you are saying he is. I haven't had any coffee yet this morning, so I may just be slow-witted. But his use of the word "erroneously" leads to a different conclusion than your comment. Can you illucidate?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Oh, I see. You have a problem with me, as Joshua's foot soldier, carrying out orders to kill babies? So that's what you're worried about. I see. That's easy too. Here's the deal with that. If I'm Joshua's foot soldier and he's the God-ordained leader (my duly appointed governing official, if you will), then my killing of the babies is simply an official government act for which I am merely an agent, much like the bombing of Hiroshima, which killed a lot of babies too. See? It has nothing to do with God's Universal Moral Code which he has written into the consciences of all mankind. It is a separate issue.
On the one hand, you are talking about the Moral Absolute that "Individual humans are not to kill." On the other hand you have lawfully instituted, God-ordained governments which are delegated the power by God to kill--capital punishment, war, A-bombs, etc.
To heck with Godwin; Dave, take a trip to Auschwitz and see where this line of thinking ends up. The murder of innocents has nothing to do with "God's Universal Moral Code"? Cobblers. I'll take being a monkey's cousin descended from pond scum over this nonsense any day of the week, thanks very much.
The Son My massacre (My Lai) was the result of a platoon of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade blindly following the orders of their leader, Lt. William Calley. He ordered the machine gunning of between 374 and 504 innocent civilians. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr, a helo pilot, put his bird between the troops and the victims, threatening to fire on the U.S. soldiers if they did not stop the murder. I wonder how the Old Testament God would have reacted if Hugh Thompson would have stopped Abraham on his way up the mountain? Or if he tried to talk Joshua out of slaughter? Would a just God reward Mr. Thompson or others for having killed Abraham to spare his son, as many fringe fundy "pro life" advocates with rifles or explosives who threaten abortion providers seem to advocate?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Holy "enola gay" mother of god. ....”Ebola Gay ...just for you dSS” and for Stanley Kubrik fans yeeeeeehaaaaaa!! (..and for those who have no idea what I'm talking about Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
AF Dave has finally blown a gasket.
Man D/2 you need the mother of all enemas.
History has bypassed you completely. 60's,70's,80's,90's,00's but you didn't get past the 50's eh?
From 5 years old when Moma?Soma told you the un-facts of life, you have been truly deluded, young boy.
I wish you worms and Dante's outer circles in perpetuity.
Kind of like now.
Now davey boy, just how masochistic are you?
You are a piece of work.
Listen up everyone.
D/2 is the very clever result of truly Goebbelian programming. (he noted that the harder that his opponents worked it made his side Martyrs and more driven.....such is the power of implementing “divine” guidance ...especially since he WAS the divine guidance.
No matter what we say, he takes our attacks on his truly crazy mind set as CONFIMATION of his beliefs.
That is not a new human mechanistic response to DEEP brain washing.
It is the very predictable pathological trajectory of "get 'em young and they are yours for life" result of a truly old testament god ordained claim on your tribal enemies land, women and domestic animals ....Genocide...Rawanda anyone?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You know half dick Goebbels was asked by an American journalist "was it hard to get a whole nation to go to war?"
His reply?
"No of course not, just create an enemy and the people will do the rest"
THAT half a dick is your dirty little secret.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I'm no fan of Dave. I think he is wrong on just about everything. But, I am having trouble seeing how your comment follows from his. His comment says that the Graf/Wellhausen Theory assumed erroneously that the invention of writing post-dated Moses. Yet you seem to accuse him of holding exactly that belief.
I'm saying that the idea is so bad that you couldn't accuse any scholars of holding it. Dave is adding something obviously bad to it so we can't agree with the real Graf/Wellhausen Theory which seems to be about the books of Moses having different authors, not about writing not existing at the time.
I don't know about the Graf/Wellhausen Theory but what afdave is saying sounds like a straw man -- kind of the way creationists distort Darwin saying it's only about chance.
I am not saying afdave is supporting the Graf/Wellhausen Theory. I'm saying he's lying about it. I'm saying a real work of Biblical scholarship would not be that bad.
The case of William Calley and W.O. Hugh Thompson is the exact case study provided to military personell to illustrate this in the UCMJ classes. Every class I took and taught on the subject at Ft. Benning, GA used this case.
In the interest of accuracy and full disclosure, it's been a while (15 years) and I had to look up some of the details of what follows. Wiki has a pretty good treatment of all this, and jives pretty well with what I recall, though it doesn't really stress the findings of responsibility by the courts which are arguably the biggest legal impact of the proceedings:
Calley maintained that his Commanding Officer, CPT Ernest Medina, gave the order to rape and murder the villagers and burn the village to the ground. Although Medina was aquitted, Calley was convicted. Whether the order was given by Medina or not was irrelevent to Calley's trial. Calley was responsible for his own actions. Likewise, so were his men.
Unfortunately, Calley was the only one convicted of over 20 officers and men alleged to have been involved in the massacre and subsequent cover-up. He was originally sentenced to life imprisonment, but intervention by then President Nixon, and further appeals based on the fairness of the trial eventually led to Calley serving only 3 1/2 years of house arrest. The other aquittals and charge dismissals were mostly based on evidence issues, not responsibility issues.
The Army courts however, made it perfectly crystal clear that soldiers are responsible for their actions, regardless of orders, or from whence those orders came. Murder is murder no matter who told you to commit it. A soldier is not only not required to obey illegal orders, but also is obligated to disobey those orders, report the illegal orders up the chain of command, and if necessary, forcibly remove the officer or NCO from command to prevent those orders from being carried out. This was absolutely one of those cases.
Now, that's a big step for a young private or corporal to take, and s/he had better be goddamned sure those orders are illegal and warrant such an action, but failure to do so when necessary is a prosecutable offence. "Cpt. Medina (Lt. Calley, the President, Yaweh, or Jesus H. Christ) told me to" is NOT - I say again - NOT an acceptable excuse.
Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson and his crew are heros. They had big balls, and common decency. Sadly, Thompson died earlier this year of cancer. His crew chief, Spec 4 Glen Andreotta was killed in action shortly after the massacre at My Lai. His door gunner, Spec 4 Lawrence Colburn lives in Atlanta. All three were later awarded the Soldier's Medal, the highest Army award for actions not under enemy fire (being engaged with the enemy is a requirement for awards such as the CMOH, the silver and bronze stars, etc.).
Last I heard (1990 or so), Calley still lived around Ft. Benning. His name is Anathema.
Calley is a disgrace, and so is Dave.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Dr. Strangelove is good, k.e., but given it’s Dave, I prefer running with the Top Gun motif. Especially after Dave bugged out from our little dogfight, blowing irrelevant inanity out his tailpipe like so much chaff.
Welcome to page 93: multiple encounters, multiple bogies. The hard deck for this hop is reason and evidence. There are no points for second place. Good luck, gentlemen…
*** Science: Good morning, gentlemen. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. AFDave: Holy sh1t, it's Science! Paley: Science's up here, great... oh sh1t... AFDave: Great, he's probably saying, "Holy sh1t, it's Paley and Dave." Paley: Yeah, I'm sure he's saying that. *** AFDave: Paley, there’s Science! Paley: Jesus is our wingman, Dave… Jesus: Don’t you leave me, Dave… AFDave: Paley, Jesus is okay. I WANT Science! Jesus, you’re lookin’ good. I’m goin’ after Science. Jesus: #### it, Dave! *** AFDave: What’s he doin’? Paley: He’s goin’ for the hard deck, Dave. Let’s drag ‘im down here first and nail him. AFDave: No way, Science. You’re mine! *** AFDave: Yeeha, Darwin's dead! …What the… Paley, check our six. Paley: Sh1t, it’s Science again. Science: Game over, gentlemen. Paley: The Department of Education regrets to inform you that your sons are dead because they were stupid. Science: Gentlemen, get your butts above the hard deck and return to base. *** Skeptic: Won this bullshit? AFDave: Didn't everybody? Thordaddy: #### no, man. We got our butts kicked. Skeptic: Thirty seconds. We went like this, he went like that. I said to Thordaddy, "Where'd he go?" Thordaddy says, "Where'd who go?" Thordaddy: Yeah, and he's laughing at us, right on the internet, he's laughing at us. Homo. Rilke: That was me laughing, dickhead. Wesley: Dave! Paley! Get your butts out of your clown gear and get upstairs to see Science. Now! *** Science: Gentlemen, the hard deck for this thread was reason and evidence. You knew it, you broke it. You flew away from reason and evidence after the entire board called, “no joy”. Why? AFDave: Sir, Captain Humphreys briefed me to fly well below the altitude of reason and evidence. Although I was unarmed and overmatched, my faulty radar convinced me geology was within my sights. I had the shot, there was no danger of learning anything, so I took it. Science: You took it – and broke a major rule of engagement! Then you broke another one with that circus-stunt flyby! Gentlemen, the rules of rational discourse are written for your enlightenment and for that of your team. They are not flexible, nor am I. Is that clear? *** Paley: Well, that’s just great, Dave. Do you have the address of that moderated board? Uncommon something I think it’s called? I might head over there. AFDave: Paley, I’m sorry. About that Portuguese thing…that was stupid. I won’t do it again. Paley: Sure, Dave. I know. Uncommon Descent, that’s it. Wonder if they’ll like my model? Goodness, gracious, great balls o’ fire. ***
AFD'S FANTASY ABOUT DEADMAN'S INDIAN FANTASY IS A BIT FANTASTIC OK. I admit it. I embellished a little. Norm correctly observed that cotton picking would have been N/A in Southern Guyana. Yes, yes, and the fans and the tequila on the veranda were my invention as well. I used a little bit of hyperbole to make the point that Deadman is off his rocker when he starts speculating about missionaries and indians ... at least the ones in North Brazil that my dad was associated with. He is an "ivory tower academic" who likes to read government reports about Indians and make wild speculation. Those Indians would have all been DEAD, Deadman, had my Dad not contacted them. Why do you think they got government help? Because of my dad. Do you think the government went traipsing through the jungle to find these people and try to help them? Absolutely not. My dad did that dirty work, then the government got involved and supplied stuff. Who do you think runs the clinics? A single missionary lady, who in turn trained locals--my dad's coworker and good friend of our family. I'm telling you ... this woman was a SAINT ... she's a legend among those people. How do you think she found out about these people? The government? Pfft. My dad, that's who. Who do you think runs the school that 800 kids now attend? Another single, missionary lady who is also an absolute SAINT. This woman has single handedly run that school, taught many classes herself, trained teachers, and played nurse, mom, grandma and midwife to hundreds of families over the 40 or so years she has been there. How did she find out about these people? The government? Your goofy anthropologist friends? No. My dad.
Deadman, you are so clueless in your speculations about Missionaries and Indians it is pathetic. Can you tell you hit a hot button with me? But it does serve as an excellent lesson in the present context of "Truth Searching About Origins." As I mentioned yesterday, when someone has pre-conceived notions about things such as you folks do about the Bible, about Origins, about America, etc., you can make up all kinds of wild fairy tales to justify your wild notions.
SORRY GUYS, BUT McDOWELL WINS ON TYRE The ancient city is GONE. Did you hear me? It's GONE, G-O-N-E, GONE. The town which is called Tyre today is a completely different animal. Go re-read McDowell, 7P, ... carefully this time. He's got it nailed.
Faid...
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What remains of Tyre, in addition to the archeological treasures described below, is a fishing town of approximately 250,000, with an old city filled with the characteristic Middle East bazaars or souks (located on the landfill connecting the original island to the mainland) and a new city, located inland.
It says right there in your own quote, Faid, it's a FISHING TOWN. And it's INLAND, not where the old city of Tyre was. The old city of Tyre is TOAST!! Just like ol' Zeke said. McDowell even has a picture in his book explaining all this.
But why the interest in Tyre? If you guys are going to get interested in Bible prophecy, I've got a lot more interesting ones than Tyre to talk about. There are over 300 specific prophecies about the Messiah -- all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. See www.messiahrevealed.org
DEADMAN WRONG AGAIN ... THIS TIME ON EZEKIEL, NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND EGYPT Subtitle: Don't believe a guy who makes up stories about Missionaries and Indians
Wikipedia...
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Nebuchadrezzar engaged in several military campaigns designed to increase Babylonian influence in Syria and Judah. An attempted invasion of Egypt in 601 BC met with setbacks, however, leading to numerous rebellions among the states of the Levant, including Judah. Nebuchadrezzar soon dealt with these rebellions, capturing Jerusalem in 597 BC, and bringing King Jehoiachin to Babylon. When Pharaoh Apries attempted an invasion of Palestine again, in 589 BC, Judah and other states of the region once again rebelled. Another siege of Jerusalem occurred in 587/586 BC, ending in the destruction of both the city and the Temple and the deportation of many prominent citizens to Babylon. These events are described in the Bible. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Nebuchadrezzar engaged in a 13 year long siege of Tyre (585-572 BC), which ended in a compromise, with the Tyrians accepting Babylonian authority.
It would appear that following the pacification of Tyre, Nebuchadrezzar turned again to Egypt. A clay tablet, now in the British Museum, bears the following inscription referring to his wars:
"In the 37th year of Nebuchadrezzar, king of the country of Babylon, he went to Mitzraim (Egypt) to make war. Amasis, king of Egypt, collected [his army], and marched and spread abroad."
Having completed the subjugation of Phoenicia, and inflicted chastisement on Egypt, Nebuchadrezzar now set himself to rebuild and adorn the city of Babylon, and constructed canals, aqueducts and reservoirs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebuchadnezzar_II_of_Babylon
Adam Clarke illuminates some of the additional details of Ezekiel's prophecy also. You guys need some good Bible software ... there's lots of it out there, but my favorite is PowerBible from http://www.powerbible.com/ -- the great thing about this one is that it has Adam Clarke's Commentary. Adam Clarke is extremely thorough, quoting many ancient historians such as Herodotus, Josephus and Newton (yes, our scientist friend Newton was a historian as well ... he also wrote extensively on Bible prophecy ... see his Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John ... a fascinating read!. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Adam Clarke on Ezekiel ...
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Ezekiel 29: 2 "Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt. Adam Clarke's Commentary: Verse 2. Set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt] This was Pharaoh-hophra or Pharaoh-apries, whom we have so frequently met with in the prophecies of Jeremiah, and much of whose history has been given in the notes.
4 But I will put hooks in your jaws, And cause the fish of your rivers to stick to your scales; I will bring you up out of the midst of your rivers, And all the fish in your rivers will stick to your scales. Adam Clarke's Commentary: Verse 4. I will put hooks in thy jaws] Amasis, one of this king's generals, being proclaimed king by an insurrection of the people, dethroned Apries, and seized upon the kingdom; and Apries was obliged to flee to Upper Egypt for safety.
I will cause the fish-to stick unto thy scales] Most fish are sorely troubled with a species of insect which bury their heads in their flesh, under their scales, and suck out the vital juices. The allusion seems to be to this. Pharaoh was the crocodile; the fish, the common people; and the sticking to his scales, the insurrection by which he was wasted and despoiled of his kingdom.
5 I will leave you in the wilderness, You and all the fish of your rivers; You shall fall on the open field; You shall not be picked up or gathered. I have given you as food To the beasts of the field And to the birds of the heavens. Adam Clarke's Commentary: Verse 5. I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness] Referring to his being obliged to take refuge in Upper Egypt. But he was afterwards taken prisoner, and strangled by Amasis. Herod. lib. ii. s. 169.
12 "I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and among the cities that are laid waste, her cities shall be desolate forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them throughout the countries." Adam Clarke's Commentary: Verse 12. Shall be desolate forty years] The country from Migdol or Magdolan, which was on the isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, was so completely ruined, that it might well be called desert; and it is probable that this desolation continued during the whole of the reign of Amasis, which was just forty years. See Herod. lib. iii. c. 10; and see Calmet.
13 'Yet, thus says the Lord GOD: "At the end of forty years I will gather the Egyptians from the peoples among whom they were scattered. Adam Clarke's Commentary: Verse 13. Will I gather the Egyptians] It is probable that Cyrus gave permission to the Egyptians brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, to return to their own country. And if we reckon from the commencement of the war against Pharaoh-hophra by Nebuchadnezzar, to the third or fourth year of Cyrus, the term will be about forty years.
The prophecies of the Bible are accurate, guys. Stay with me long enough and I will convince you of this!
POP QUIZ ON THE NOW DISCREDITED DOCUMENTARY HYPOTHESIS Question #1: Who published the original theory in modern times that writing was unknown prior to the 8th Century BC and that the early books of the OT could not have been written by Moses, but were composed by Ezra after the Exile?
Question #2: Who took this idea and ran with it in 1753 and proposed the "J" and "E" documents as sources for Genesis?
Question #3: Who still believed this theory from the mid-1800's onward and became famous for the "Documentary Hypothesis" based on the supposed JEDP documents?
ANSWERS: (1) Benedict Spinoza (2) Jean Astruc and (3) Julius Wellhausen.
Norm is correct that the Rosetta Stone was discovered early in the 19th century (or late 18th), but these examples of writing were only from the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC. It was not until the discovery of the Tel El Amarna tablets in 1888 that the myth of late invention of writing was exploded, pushing the date of known wrting back to 1400 BC. By this time, the bogus Graf-Wellhausen Theory was well established in academia, and--amazingly--is still taught as fact in liberal seminaries. This is where you come in, Norm. You believe the end result of the theory--that Genesis is Hebrew folklore--and you did not even know WHY you believe it. You just accepted it uncritically and apparently, many others here do too. Well, now you know where the theory comes from. (Your welcome! ) As the article linked above points out ...
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The main principles upon which the case for the late writing of the Old Testament is built up are five in number, to wit:
1. That writing was unknown and had not been invented before the time of the Hebrew prophets, about 700-800 B.C.
2. That the religious thought of nations without exception, started with polytheism in the earliest times and progressed to monotheism, the worship of one God, in later times, and not the other way round, as Genesis has it.
3. That the code of laws credited to Moses is too advanced for so early a date and must have been devised in the time of the kings of Israel and Moses' name attached.
4. That the Levitical ritual is too sophisticated for a people just out of Egypt and must have been the product of a priestly class after the Babylonian captivity.
5. That the historical events in Babylonia and Egypt recorded in Genesis are unhistorical and never occurred, and are a later compilation of old traditions and folk-lore, and that many of the kings and notable persons referred to never existed.
The cold hard facts of archeological discovery since 1880 have exploded all these assumptions--for assumptions they were--and demolished the theories regarding the Old Testament built up so painstakingly, and sincerely, by the critics of the 19th century.
Hmmmm ... sorta makes you wonder about other "great theories" that sprang up in the late 18th Century now, doesn't it?
How about Marxism? That one worked really well, didn't it now? It was especially fun when applied to the Soviet Union and Red China ... yes, a most beautiful theory indeed. Oh, and Cuba. Forgot about that one ... another gem of a nation based on Marxism. Oh ... and how about N. Korea and um ... er ... oh yes, N. Vietnam.
Or how about Darwin's Theory of Evolution ... perhaps??
WHICH IS OLDER? GENESIS? OR NORM'S SUMERIAN TABLET? I thought I made this clear already in my Essay on Genesis on p. 82 by quoting one of the excavators of Sumeria, but apparently not. Genesis is older, one of the proofs being the pure language and monotheism of the first tablet, 1:1-2:4. The Wellhausen theory that monotheism was a late Jewish invention is just another one of this German critic's failures. Let me give you all some good advice. If you need ANSWERS to any particular question, go to www.answersingenesis.org and do a search. You'll probably find your answer there. If not, then ask me and I'm sure I can help. Faid says AIG lies, but he does not know what he is talking about. Here's what Stephen Langdon of Oxford has to say about this issue:
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According to Stephen Langdon of Oxford, “the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits.”3
Arthur C. Custance makes explanation as follows:
When the cuneiform literature first began to reveal its message, scholars of cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics soon found themselves dealing with a tremendous number of gods and goddesses, and demons and other spiritual powers of a lesser sort, which seemed to be always at war with one another and much of the time highly destructive. As earlier and earlier tablets, however, began to be excavated and brought to light, and skill in deciphering them increased, the first picture of gross polytheism began to be replaced by something more nearly approaching a hierarchy of spiritual beings organized into a kind of court with one Supreme Being over all.4
Langdon, one of the first cuneiform scholars, believed that the oldest human culture was Sumerian. He states
The history of Sumerian religion, which was the most powerful cultural influence in the ancient world, could be traced by means of pictographic inscriptions almost to the earliest religious concepts of man. The evidence points unmistakably to an original monotheism, the inscriptions and literary remains of the oldest Semitic peoples also indicate a primitive monotheism, and the totemistic origin of Hebrew and other Semitic religions is now entirely discredited.5
Here's the deal, Norm. The most believable scenario--that is, the scenario most supported by actual evidence like archaeological finds, etc.--is that Genesis contains transcriptions of the oldest documents of mankind. It is actual, eyewitness history which was written down on clay tablets by Adam and his descendants, passed eventually to Moses, who compiled them into the present form.
IS ALL GOVERNMENT "GOD-ORDAINED"? Yes, according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 13. Note that he wrote this in spite of the fact that he disagreed vigorously with the philosophy and practices of his government (the Roman government actually executed him), nevertheless he believed in obeying it insofar as the government did not violate directs commands of Scripture (i.e. if a government forbade preaching or teaching the Bible, this was an unlawful command and should be disobeyed).
GOOFY CLAIMS ABOUT THE BIBLICAL AUTHORS BEING FLAT-EARTHERS AND SUCH I would be glad if someone C&Ped a Bible verse that supposedly show this. Here's a verse that shows that Isaiah knew that the earth was round ...
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Isa 40:22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
It's also interesting to speculate about the "heavens being stretced out." Were they in fact stretched out? It is my understanding that we do see expansion from the observed red-shift, so maybe we will discover that they in fact were "stretched out."
Also, the builders of the pyramid knew the earth was a sphere as Smyth and others has shown. They knew many things that we thought they didn't know (remember Wellhausen's little gaffe about writing?). And they knew these things a LONG time ago--at least as far back as 3500 BC. The likely situation is that Adam and his descendants knew more than any subsequent generations, Adam himself being taught directly by the Creator God--for heaven's sakes he walked in the Garden of Eden with God!!! Can you imagine that God imparted a wealth of knowledge to him? I should think so!!
ERIC, MY FRIEND, SIT BACK, RELAX, AND ENJOY THE RIDE ... No need to waste space by trying to run ahead and refute me ahead of time. I'll get to all those topics in my own good time. Are you not enjoying the ride? I am. We'll get there eventually. I'm not leaving until I run out of things to say. :-) (which could be a long time) (or if Wesley bans me) (or if Jesus comes back) (or if I get hit by a truck)
Price's arguments were used by William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial, and were the main influence of Henry Morris, who described the book as a life changing experience.
Can you supply the reference which supports the assertion that Henry Morris said this?
Lou FCD...
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The UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice - which is the U.S. Military Law) specifically deals with such orders and states that not only is a member of the military not required to follow such orders, but is obligated to disobey them.
The UCMJ was written in a different era, my friend, and is quite valid for today. But in Joshua's day, God worked in a different way as I have already explained. Also, if you love the UCMJ, how do you reconcile today's UCMJ with what we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What is your position on the women and babies that were killed there by our A-bombs?
Incorygible...
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AFD: Incorygible ... I read your extensive post which purports to show me WHY evolutionists believe in the millions of years thing for ape and human ancestry. What it appears to boil down to is this ...
1) We have some fossils that look like human ancestors [Never mind that if we look at them really closely they either look like they are fully ape or fully human] 2) We've looked at the DNA and it is close [we've been through this - chimps are 0.5% or so closer to humans than gorillas are to chimps] 3) We know there couldn't possibly be a Creator God who made humans and apes as seprate kinds because ... well ... you know ... everyone knows that Genesis is just a nice Creation Myth 4) So humans and apes had to come about by natural processes -- no Intelligent Designer involved -- to say so would be unscientific !!! 5) Hmmm ... let's dream up a way that this could be explained ... Hey guys, remember Darwin? 6) Cool! Finches can change so maybe apes can change into humans!! Yippee! We're gettin' close to a solution! So what's the mechanism? Well mutations of course. Voila! Some of them add information (I think ... I hope ... isn't there something about some Nylon-eating bacteria that added info? Yeah ... I'm sure of it ... Spetner was all wet on that debate ... sure of it) 7) How long does it take? Well, a really long time because not too many mutations [only one that we can think of ... and even that is probably a farce] add information. We'll have to tell everyone that it takes millions of years so they will believe us that it is possible. 8) OK. Now we are cookin'. Let's do some math on the DNA so that it sounds really believable that we know what we are talking about, press the 'COMPUTE' button and PRESTO!!! MAGICO!!!
Now, Incorygible, you didn't like my post ... I see that.
But my question is ... what part of it is inaccurate? It's a little folksy, I admit. But I think every piece of it is true, is it not?
How else do you come up with 8mya and 5mya for your supposed Ape Ancestor Splits?
I think I nailed it pretty close.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
ERIC, MY FRIEND, SIT BACK, RELAX, AND ENJOY THE RIDE No need to waste space by trying to run ahead and refute me ahead of time. I'll get to all those topics in my own good time. Are you not enjoying the ride? I am. We'll get there eventually. I'm not leaving until I run out of things to say. :-) (which could be a long time) (or if Wesley bans me) (or if Jesus comes back) (or if I get hit by a truck)
Actually, I can't tell you how unspeakably boring listening to supposed "proofs" of Biblical prophesies is. I can't wait until we get to the dry-as-toast string-cites of biblical passages that have supposedly been confirmed as prophesies, if you read them with your eyes squinted a bit. It's just as boring as listening to how Nostradamus supposedly got it right too (if you interpret his hallucinatory ravings in just the right way). Frankly, given how wrong the Bible is about just about everything I'm interested in, I could care less whether you think the Bible is right in its prophesies or not.
So. Another 3,000-word post from AF Dave, and not the slightest hint of any evidence for a global flood. You're really turning out to be quite the disappointment, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now, Incorygible, you didn't like my post ... I see that.
But my question is ... what part of it is inaccurate? It's a little folksy, I admit. But I think every piece of it is true, is it not?
How else do you come up with 8mya and 5mya for your supposed Ape Ancestor Splits?
I think I nailed it pretty close.
"Objection, your honor; asked and answered. Repeatedly"
Dave, how many times are you going to make the poor guy answer the same question? He's already answered you, at extreme length, at least three times. Everyone here knows exactly how he arrived at the dates he provided, except for you! Is it a reading comprehension problem, or is it really true that you simply cannot see evidence that contradicts your worldview?
I can't think of any other explanations for your obtuseness.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
IS ALL GOVERNMENT "GOD-ORDAINED"? Yes, according to the Apostle Paul in Romans 13. Note that he wrote this in spite of the fact that he disagreed vigorously with the philosophy and practices of his government (the Roman government actually executed him), nevertheless he believed in obeying it insofar as the government did not violate directs commands of Scripture (i.e. if a government forbade preaching or teaching the Bible, this was an unlawful command and should be disobeyed).
Well, now you have me thoroughly confused. So, is what you are a saying Paul believes that we should always obey the government (regardless of whether we agree or not) unless it directs us to disobey a Scriptural commandment, which would presumably include the Decalogue? And if that is correct, then doesn't it follow that Paul would have me refuse an order by my government to violate the Scriptural proscription against killing?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Also, interesting that Dave seems to believe that the Marxist atheist government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, in fact, "God-ordained." Who could have predicted that?
Granted, you'd have to disobey orders from the local kommisar to turn in your parents for listening to the BBC on the grounds that it violates one of the Ten Commandments, but if he makes you stand in line all day for a liter of borscht, I don't see where that falls afoul of Paul's dicta
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Incorygible... AFD: Incorygible ... I read your extensive post which purports to show me WHY evolutionists believe in the millions of years thing for ape and human ancestry. What it appears to boil down to is this ...
1) We have some fossils that look like human ancestors [Never mind that if we look at them really closely they either look like they are fully ape or fully human]
2) We've looked at the DNA and it is close [we've been through this - chimps are 0.5% or so closer to humans than gorillas are to chimps]
True, give or take. But STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT, which is a glaring lie of omission, considering your attempted spin.
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3) We know there couldn't possibly be a Creator God who made humans and apes as seprate kinds because ... well ... you know ... everyone knows that Genesis is just a nice Creation Myth
Irrelevant projection and unfalsifiable assertion.
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4) So humans and apes had to come about by natural processes -- no Intelligent Designer involved -- to say so would be unscientific !!!
Absent positive evidence for an Intelligent Designer (or any "non-natural" processes), the statement itself is true. In context, as a motive for scientists, it is irrelevant projection.
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5) Hmmm ... let's dream up a way that this could be explained ... Hey guys, remember Darwin?
Irrelevant, ranting, projection and false. Evolution has been invoked as an explanation for the differences between humans, chimps and gorillas for over a century, long before genetics changed our minds about who is more closely related to whom.
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6) Cool! Finches can change so maybe apes can change into humans!! Yippee! We're gettin' close to a solution! So what's the mechanism? Well mutations of course. Voila! Some of them add information (I think ... I hope ... isn't there something about some Nylon-eating bacteria that added info? Yeah ... I'm sure of it ... Spetner was all wet on that debate ... sure of it)
WTF? Nonsensical, completely irrelevant and false. Finches played no greater role in ape phylogeny than beagles. Information has no context or relevance to ape phylogeny (unless you want to point to any specific "information-adding" mutation in any of the three lines?). The (recent) ability of bacteria to digest nylon was not involved in elucidating ape phylogeny for the past century. No evolutionary biologist cares about Spetner and his debunked garbage.
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7) How long does it take? Well, a really long time because not too many mutations [only one that we can think of ... and even that is probably a farce] add information. We'll have to tell everyone that it takes millions of years so they will believe us that it is possible.
False and asinine. The earth was established as millions of years old LONG before questions of ape phylogeny. And again, wtf with the nylon?
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8) OK. Now we are cookin'. Let's do some math on the DNA so that it sounds really believable that we know what we are talking about, press the 'COMPUTE' button and PRESTO!!! MAGICO!!!
Irrelevant projection, ranting and false. Little math is required to compare similarities and differences, though "computing" is helpful.
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Now, Incorygible, you didn't like my post ... I see that.
True. That's how I respond when honesty and educational effort meets raving idiocy.
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But my question is ... what part of it is inaccurate?
I count 5 outright falsehoods, one glaring lie of omission, one unfalsifiable assertion, and one true statement projected falsely as motive. 8/8 claims are therefore inaccurate.
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It's a little folksy, I admit.
If by "folksy" you mean false, irrelevant, asinine and a complete failure to engage the actual topic at hand.
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But I think every piece of it is true, is it not?
You're kidding, right? No, you're not, but whatever: this is your brain on Creationism.
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How else do you come up with 8mya and 5mya for your supposed Ape Ancestor Splits?
Er...why not try re-reading that lengthy post you're supposedly responding to, eh?
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I think I nailed it pretty close.
Sure you did, Davey. Sure you did. Exactly how close is on display for everyone to see.
What remains of Tyre, in addition to the archeological treasures described below, is a fishing town of approximately 250,000, with an old city filled with the characteristic Middle East bazaars or souks (located on the landfill connecting the original island to the mainland) and a new city, located inland.
It says right there in your own quote, Faid, it's a FISHING TOWN. And it's INLAND, not where the old city of Tyre was. The old city of Tyre is TOAST!! Just like ol' Zeke said. McDowell even has a picture in his book explaining all this.
HHHAH!
dave, did you read the links? Of course you didn't.
Where is the bare rock, dave? Where is the city that would never be built or inhabited again, and people will look for it and not find it? Once again, reality disproves you dave.
But you just make stuff out of your a$$, or simply believe the LIES you're fed.
That's right davey boy- THERE IS NO ISLAND ANYMORE. When your (sorry, Paley's) lying christian sites talk about "just a fishing village named Sur" They talk about TYRE dave. Look at the pictures to see what your "fishing village" looks like. They lie through their teeth. And you buy it.
So,"the old city is toast"? Suuure dave. Even if that were true (which is like saying that the old city of Athens or Rome is toast) that still makes the parts of Ezekiel's "prophecy" about becoming a bare rock, never to be built or inhabited again, not even found, totally inaccurate... But still: Tyre has a continuous uninterrupted history untill today, and some of that is christian: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/lebanon/tyre.htm
Oh and, also, Ezekiel clearly mentions Nebuhadnezzar breaking down the gates of Tyre, storming in, marching its streets (and yes, he uses "he" )). Did that happen dave?
Ezekiel was wrong. Your book was wrong. Accept it, deal with it, and live with it.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
1. Tyre was not a bare rock, nor is it today. It has been continuously inhabited ( as shown by archaeology) since 1600 BCE. 2. Nebuchadrezzar did not conquer Egypt. The heart of Egypt is and always has been the fertile regions along the banks of the Nile that are subject to annual flooding and replenishment. Nebuchadrezzar never took that, nor was it laid waste for 40 years, nor were the Egyptians scattered among all nations. Calling some outlying lands near the RED SEA "Egypt " is like saying Alaska is the whole United States. 3. You have offered no credible evidence for this global flood of yours, DaveLiar. 4. Lying about my views on theology, lying about my experience in anthro/archaeo field work, lying about my emotions, lying about knowing anything about me-- hardly serves your purpose, MendaciousDave. 5. The fact remains that other villages, uncontacted by your father...survived. You may idolize your father to the point of being willing to lie and exaggerate, Dave, but that won't change the facts there. Your father was not in fact the first white man they had seen in the 20th century. The American Museum of Natural History has collections of WaiWai featherwork and weaving collected in the 1920's from that very village. I'm glad that he tried to help. I am not glad that he completed the destruction of their original belief system for that group. Fortunately, other WaiWai held on to theirs. Your father was simply misguided, as you are, Dave. I doubt that you'd show him these pages of your insane lying, though.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice - which is the U.S. Military Law) specifically deals with such orders and states that not only is a member of the military not required to follow such orders, but is obligated to disobey them.
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AFDave The UCMJ was written in a different era, my friend, and is quite valid for today. But in Joshua's day, God worked in a different way as I have already explained. Also, if you love the UCMJ, how do you reconcile today's UCMJ with what we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What is your position on the women and babies that were killed there by our A-bombs?
A few things:
1. I am not now, nor have I ever been nor will I ever be your friend. You disgust me in the same way as My Dearest Dr. ClouserBot.
2. You're Goddamned right it's valid today. The principles which it espouses in this case were valid before it was written. It is morally reprehensible to murder innocents now, and it was morally reprehensible to murder innocents 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, and 5000 years ago. The question you were originally asked on 24 June on page 87 of this very thread was from Faid:
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So, dave: If your God came to you, beyond any doubt in your mind, and told you you should kill babies in his name, because that is his will at the moment and he knows better, would you do it dave?
(emphasis in the original)
Now it might be reading too much into the question, but the last phrase was not "would you have done it", but rather "would you do it". Seems to imply the present to me. Your "what's moral now is different than what was moral then" argument is irrelevent to the question.
You have both intimated and flat out stated that your answer is "yes". That tells me you are dangerous. You are a friggin' sociopath of the worst sort.
Your moral relativity argument certainly does raise another question though, Dave. Several, in fact.
Why was it ok then but not now? What changed? As I recall, your Holy Book claims that God is unchanging. Why was it ok for Joshua to wipe out women and children for some land, but not ok for us to do it now? I don't understand how you can believe that murder and rape were ok up until the end of Malachi, but then somewhere before Matthew that all changed for some mysterious reason. Did God change his mind? Was it a boo boo?
Anyway, back to your post of today.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I knew you would ask this very question. I've asked it of myself many, many times. How do I justify it? I don't. I don't claim to know if Truman made the right call, and truth be told, I think he was wrong for exactly the reasons we've been discussing. My morals don't change according to the amount of land involved, or what the Holy Spirit whimsically whispers in my ear today.
However, let me be perfectly clear. Despite the much larger number of innocents involved, and despite the much more enormous consequences of President Truman's order, I do not equate his actions with Joshua's, or with Calley's. President Truman was faced with two horrible choices. Extinguish the lives of thousands of innocents in order to end a war we did not ask for and save the lives of thousands of soldiers on both sides OR continue fighting a conventional war which may have dragged on for years and claimed just as many or maybe more lives in the end. It is a quandry I don't envy a President in such a position. He had to make a choice between equally bad outcomes. He did what he thought was right.
On the other hand, Joshua's orders from your God were to murder innocents for no apparent reason other than a land grab from the sinners. "Them damned Jericho peeple was havin anal sex on land we wanted." That's what it boiled down to, Dave. And there is no gray area. It was a despicable slaughter of innocents. Period. And you agreed it was ok because your invisible sky daddy said it was ok. You are a sick individual.
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Well, now you have me thoroughly confused. So, is what you are a saying Paul believes that we should always obey the government (regardless of whether we agree or not) unless it directs us to disobey a Scriptural commandment, which would presumably include the Decalogue? And if that is correct, then doesn't it follow that Paul would have me refuse an order by my government to violate the Scriptural proscription against killing?
Wow, several posts while I'm piddling away here writing my diatribe.
Dave is entirely correct on the whole "Paul said obey the goverment unless it tells you to disobey God". His Holy Book really does say that. Of course, if you pick and choose which passages to believe in the first place, it's easy to to pick and choose which passages are contradicted by the goverment.
As for the proscription on killing...
Please don't ever for one minute take me for a christo facist apologist (Edit to add the truth of the matter is that I'm an EX Christo facist apologist, and I was a #### sight better at it than Dave will ever be. end Edit)
but -
A better translation of that passage might be "Thou shalt do no murder". And it is definitely a different word than kill, IIRC. (My Hebrew is quite a bit rusty so I don't recall the exact words in question, you can look it up if you care to be bothered with such ridiculous things. Or you could ask my Dearest Dr. ClouserBot, I'm sure she'd be happy to expound on the perfect JL Publications translation.) This is how christofreakazoids rationalize all sorts of things, from capital punishment, to physical gay bashing, to family planning clinic bombings. "See, them ain't murder, because them there peeple was disobeyin' God. That there is just killin'. Difrent."
Don't ever let one of these freaks claim anything about a "universal moral code" or "unbelievers use relative morality". They are liars and wouldn't refrain from genocide if they thought for one second they could get away with it.
Ok, this ain't perfect, but I don't want to wait for three or four more pages before I post it.
The gist is that Dave has the moral code of a pile of excrement from an large farm animal.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
Price's arguments were used by William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes trial, and were the main influence of Henry Morris, who described the book as a life changing experience.
Can you supply the reference which supports the assertion that Henry Morris said this?
From Henry Morris, History of Modern Creationism (San Diego: Master Book Publishers, 1984), page 79:
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The most important Creationist writer in the first half century, at least in my judgment, was a remarkable man by the name of George McCready Price (1870-1962).
and from page 80:
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I first encountered his name in one of Harry Rimmer’s books... and thereupon looked up his book The New Geology in the library at Rice Institute, where I was teaching at the time. This was in early 1943 and it was a life-changing experience for me. I eventually acquired and read most of his other books as well.
The point is that the Genesis flood is basically an updated version of Price's "the new geology" from 1923. I don't think that this was common knowledge when the book was first released because the mainstream Christian denominations would be less accepting of an idea that had its roots in Adventism.
Uhhh, Yeah. What Faid said. I only add the appropriate google map http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=....ut=html once you go, simply navigate west one click, and select the "SAT" button. DAVE, IT'S NOT A BARE ROCK. Here's the proof. You are wrong, I have the PHOTOS that PROVE IT! By the way, you avoided my question.. I wonder how the Old Testament God would have reacted if Hugh Thompson would have stopped Abraham on his way up the mountain? Or if he tried to talk Joshua out of slaughter? Would a just God reward Mr. Thompson or others for having killed Abraham to spare his son, as many fringe fundy "pro life" advocates with rifles or explosives who threaten abortion providers seem to advocate?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Man, I just watched season 1 of the muppet show this weekend. That is, IMHO, the best show that has ever been on TV.
Oh yeah, Davey, you should go on TV with your ideas, maybe Jerry Springer. Your god ideas could entice a chuckle from coast to coast.
I prefer my gods to be more, um, loving.
Enjoy your chemical imbalances. I surely did.
BWE--
I see you changed your avatar. Did your mommy start nagging you about the last one? Now, it seems as though the Muppets are the pinnacle of cultural and aesthetic virtue among many evolutionists here. The average evolutionists' intellectual development has never extended beyond Sesame Street, but they needed some sarcastic humor to make them feel intelligent. Hence, Jim Henson rose to the challenge.
Are you kidding? It seems as if? They are the pinnacle. My mommy was busy writing a book about a fungus that grows in the brains of christians.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Ezekiel tells us that Tyre will come to a dreadful end, that it will be no more forever, never to be rebuilt. Tyre will be sunk into the primeval ocean, never to be found again.
None of this ever happened. The "rock" that was Tyre is now connected to the mainland, forming an isthmus that is chock-full of rubble and debris of thousands of years
It is not underwater at all. It has been continuously inhabited since 1600 BCE. After his conquest of 322, Alexander in fact rebuilt Tyre. Thus, McDowell (Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol. I) has to claim that 1291 AD then becomes the "real" destruction of Tyre, when the Mamluks conquer it...yet it remained and remains inhabited today. Joukowsky, Martha Sharp, ed. (1992). The Heritage of Tyre: Essays on the History, Archaeology, and Preservation of Tyre. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co. Aubet, Maria Eugenia.(1997). The Phoenicians and the West : politics, colonies, and trade. New York : Cambridge University Press. Lipinski, E., ed. Phoenicia and the Bible (1991) : Proceedings of the Conference Held at the University of Leuven on the 15th and 16th of March 1990. Leuven : Departement Orientalistiek : Peeters.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I used a little bit of hyperbole to make the point that Deadman is off his rocker
The only one that's off his rocker here is you, Dave. You lied about me for no reason other than sheer hubris, as I said. You came into this thread preening about yourself, you continuously degraded others and then cried foul when people returned it. You then proceeded to lie utterly about me and others.
I challenged you to cite any place that I lied, Dave, and you rightly ignored that because you can't find any such place. You deliberately falsely claimed that you knew about me, my views on theology, my work, my life, my emotions, even --as if your belief system makes you some kind of prophet or psychic.
Your alligator ego writes checks your mosquito brain can't cash, Dave, so I advise that you get yourself some genuine professional help.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You know these threads used to be interesting, funny even. AFDave's argument of "The Bible is true because the Bible says it's true which is true because the Bible is true" was amusing if only to see how long he could keep it up without getting so dizzy he passed out.
Now, not so much.
I have to hand it to you folks who can go 90+ pages of trying to engage him with logic, facts, and reality. This thread is a huge testament to some truly epic patience.
Personally I have nothing left but venom and vitriol for him. I apologize to everyone else who has to read through my rants of disgust.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
I guess all those creationists who are forever prophesying the imminent collapse of "Darwinism" (read: "modern biology") are just continuing in the noble tradition of Ezekiel.
The point is that the Genesis flood is basically an updated version of Price's "the new geology" from 1923. I don't think that this was common knowledge when the book was first released because the mainstream Christian denominations would be less accepting of an idea that had its roots in Adventism.
It was certainly common knowledge among the "leaders" of the creationist movement. There was a lot of un-acknowledged Velikovsky in there, too. From "The Creationists", Ronald Numbers, University of California Press, 1992, pp 198-199:
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By early 1959 Morris had completed a draft of his chapters and sent them to Whitcomb for criticism. Whitcomb, still smarting from having his knuckles rapped by Morris for invoking Price and Velikovsky so much, caught Morris engaging in the same practice. "Even the references to Velikovsky should be thought through carefully, because his name. like that of G. M. Price, waves a red flag immediately before some people's eyes," advised the highly sensitized Whitcomb, who worried that his own material still contained too many allusions to Price and the Adventist tradition:
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I am becoming more and more persuaded that my chapter on "Flood Geology in the Twentieth Century" will hinder rather than help our book, at least in its present form. Here is what I mean. For many people, our position would he somewhat discredited by the fact that "Price and Seventh-Day Adventism" (the title of one of the sections in that chapter) play such a prominent role in its support. My suggestion would he to supply for the book a fairly complete annotated bibliography of twentieth-century works advocating Flood-geology, without so much as a mention of the denominational affiliation of the various authors. After all, what real difference does the denominational aspect make?
Morris, who fully shared Whitcomb's concerns, suggested going even further and discarding the Pricean tag: "The very term 'Flood Geology' seems to have unpleasant connotations to many people," he wrote, "and it might be better to use such terms as 'creationist geology,' 'Biblical geology,' and the like instead, "both in order to try to avoid the S.D.A. label and also to point up the fact that we don't try to account for all the geologic data by the Flood." But the old description proved too useful to abandon completely.
Their concern about appearances prompted Whitcomb and Morris to sanitize their manuscript by deleting all but a few incidental references to Price and any mention of his Adventist connections. When Morris sent Price a copy of his chapters for comment, he self-consciously apologized for saying so little about Price's pioneering contributions to flood geology. "This of course is not because of lack of appreciation for them," he explained awkwardly, "because I still regard them as masterpieces, but rather in order to gain perhaps a better hearing by taking a somewhat fresh start on the problem." He expressed the hope that a new approach might finally stir up some interest in the subject. Price, grateful at his age for any belated recognition, gave no indication of feeling betrayed; indeed, he praised the book and its authors effusively. Some friends of Price's, however, found the slight offensive. The Old Testament scholar Oswald T. Allis (1880-1973), who as editor of the Princeton Theological Renew in the 1920s had published three of Price's articles, chided the young men for inadequately acknowledging their intellectual debts. In response to his criticism, Whitcomb grudgingly agreed to mention Price in a footnote, so long as it did not draw attention to the old man's peculiar religious beliefs.
And, from page 202:
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And to replace what they were giving up, he offered "a new scheme of historical geology," true to God's revelation in both the Bible and nature. Actually, his scheme consisted of little more than Price's shelf-worn flood geology, neatly repackaged for the discerning evangelical of the 1960s. In the opening chapters of The Genesis Flood Whitcomb had answered Hamm; Morris now defended Price.
Although Morris had deleted all but a few direct references to Price, his section read like an updated version of The New Geology. in arguing for a worldwide flood that deposited most of the fossil-hearing rocks, he followed Price in discarding the principle of uniformity, in questioning the notion of multiple ice ages, and in rejecting the so-called geological column. The apparent order of the column he attributed to such factors as the early death of marine creatures, buried by sediments deposited during the first stages of the flood; the hydrodynamic selectivity of moving water, which sorted out particles of similar sizes and shapes; and the superior mobility of vertebrates, which allowed them to escape early destruction. In dismissing the mechanism of thrust faulting, he, too, appealed to Chief Mountain in Glacier National Park, where "old" Precambrian limestone rested in apparent conformity on "young" Cretaceous strata. .As authority, he cited the horticulturist Lammerts, who, after personally inspecting the mountain, came away convinced that Price was "even more right than he thought.
I would be glad if someone C&Ped a Bible verse that supposedly show this. Here's a verse that shows that Isaiah knew that the earth was round ...
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Isa 40:22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.
Um, Dave, that doesn't say anything about the earth being round... quite the opposite, really. Maybe it's a poor translation?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Argy: Yup. Notice that the noun used in the translation is "circle" ...a flat 2 dimensional object, rather than a sphere.
Isaiah 40:18-23 To whom then will ye liken God? ....It is he that sitteth upon the circle (chuwg or khug ) of the earth Strong's Concordance (no. 2328 & 2329), Holladay’s A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (p97) and Brown Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (p295) gives the verbal form of the word as "to draw a circle". The noun is translated as either "circle" or "vault". Young's Literal Translation Isa 40:22 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage....sion=15 also gives "He who is sitting on the circle of the earth."
Compare the Isaiah 40 verse to Isaiah 22:18 " He will surely violently turn and toss thee like a BALL (duwr) into a large country: there shalt thou die, and there the chariots of thy glory shall be the shame of thy lord's house."
If Isaiah meant to tell us the earth was a globe, he would have used another word (duwr, or possibly duwd [a round pot or basket] or maybe even gulgoleth [skull, roundish object] ). A circle is not a ball, nor is a ball a circle. Everyone knew what a "circle" was in those times; it meant the same then as it means today--a flat 2-dimensional object. This is also why Daniel and Matthew talk about seeing the Earth's farthest bounds and "all the kingdoms of the Earth" from a single vantage point...a feat that would be manifestly impossible from a point on a globe-- but possible on a flat circle.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OH, he11, I forgot to add these: Church Father Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250 -c. 325) found the notion of a round earth absolutely absurd http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07013.htm#24 " How is it with those who imagine that there are antipodes opposite to our footsteps?...is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads? or that the things ... hang in an inverted direction? that the crops and trees grow downwards? that the rains, and snow, and hail fall upwards to the earth? (Divine Institutes 3:24) As late as 548 A.D., the Egyptian Cosmas Indicopleustes http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/awiesner/cosmas.html was vigorously defending the flat earth in his book "Christian Topography." Book four is Cosmas' description of the figure of the world, and his refutation of the Pagan (hoi ekso) doctrine of the sphere.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
There are over 300 specific prophecies about the Messiah -- all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.
But see, that's using the Bible to prove itself, which is a fallacy. If you want to validate prophecy, you have to present prophecy that can be validated through observation, and not through later chapters in the same book.
Otherwise, I can say that the theories in the Da Vinci Code are true, because later chapters revisit the theories as major plot points.
AFDave's argument of "The Bible is true because the Bible says it's true which is true because the Bible is true" was amusing if only to see how long he could keep it up without getting so dizzy he passed out.
See above.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
According to afdave's link, in the year 1670 Baruch Spinoza, with pantheist leanings, supposedly:
Quote
...originated theory that writing was unknown prior to the 8th century B.C. (roughly the time of Isaiah) and that the early books of the Old Testament could not have been written by Moses and were in fact composed by Ezra after the Exile.
This statement is not supported by any evidence, is it? Is there a footnote or source or quote? It should be doubted because of what I've previously said back a page or two; even if Moses is a completely fictional character the Bible writers are putting Moses into a time when writing obviously existed and the Bible even has God instructing Moses to write. People without writing are not going to have an oral tradition that includes writing.
Though I suppose that Spinoza might have mistaken lack of evidence as evidence of a lack.
Reading further into Dave's source link we can see that even if Baruch Spinoza did have this particular little brain fart in 1670 it is still a straw man because the essential Graf-Wellhausen Theory does not depend on this fact. It is an unrelated line of evidence.
Jean Astruc, in 1753, separated passages in Genesis where the name for "God" was "Jehovah" from those in which it's "Elohim." He suggested that the compiler of Genesis had two sets of sources that he (or she) combined, and these he called the "Jehovistic" and "Elohistic," or the J. and E. sources. That there are J. and E. names in the Bible is still a fact no matter when it gets dated and it is this line of evidence afdave is trying to avoid dealing with by focusing on a straw man out of someone's possible bad dating for the origin of writing.
How do you deal with the fact that there are these two different names for God in the Bible? Worse yet, the word "Elohim" can be used in a plural or singular context, it can mean not god, but "the gods" depending on context.
The problem you are avoiding, Dave, is that this kind of purely textual criticism is going to be true even if you find an exact copy of Genesis on Mars dated 10,000 BC.
Quote
...pushing the date of known wrting back to 1400 BC. By this time, the bogus Graf-Wellhausen Theory was well established in academia, and--amazingly--is still taught as fact in liberal seminaries.
But probably not with the Spinoza brain fart attached to it. What they probably teach is that there are J. and E. names, not that writing only came after Moses. What you're saying there is probably a bald faced lie.
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This is where you come in, Norm. You believe the end result of the theory--that Genesis is Hebrew folklore--and you did not even know WHY you believe it.
When did I ever say I thought Genesis was Hebrew folklore?
I tell you what I do think, it's like I said before, we can see this mixing of religions process working today in Christians who practice Buddhist meditation and consult their astrology charts in the newspaper and who might believe Jesus was really an alien from outer space.
Religion is evolving right before our eyes and recent history has seen Christianity branching into Mormonism and Christian Science while entirely new religions, like Scientology, also absorb and explain in their own way supposed Christian teachings.
Quote
dave's link:
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The main principles upon which the case for the late writing of the Old Testament is built up are five in number, to wit:
1. That writing was unknown and had not been invented before the time of the Hebrew prophets, about 700-800 B.C.
You seem to forget that this is irrelevant and that no one here thinks writing is that young. If you'll go back to our early posts you will see that we've been showing you writing that goes back to more ancient times and you've been denying our dating methods.
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2. That the religious thought of nations without exception, started with polytheism in the earliest times and progressed to monotheism, the worship of one God, in later times, and not the other way round, as Genesis has it.
You claim to present evidence that monotheism came first but it's really a naked claim, a bald assertion, based on someone else interpreting evidence we can't give to a more skeptical Biblical scholar.
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The Wellhausen theory that monotheism was a late Jewish invention is just another one of this German critic's failures.
I use terms like "monotheism" and "polytheism" but I don't get hung up on them like you do. One problem is that "monotheism" (like polytheism) is a vague concept. For example, is Christianity really a montheistic religion? There are three gods: Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit/Ghost and the Old Testament Jehovah. And then, some Catholics like to pray to Mary and even some saints.
In 1352 BC Akhenaten took the throne and forced religious reforms that replaced the polytheism of Egypt with a monotheism centered around Aten, the Egyptian sun god. It lasted about a decade. It's doubtful that Akhenaten was merely religiously motivated and he was probably trying to undermine the political power of the priests. Pharaoh, not the priesthood, was the sole link between the people and Aten which effectively ended the power of the various temples. In all these ancient societies you cannot escape religion being tied to politics.
Some of Akhenaten's monotheism seems to echo in the Bible too.
What you've presented is not a coherent argument for an original monotheism even if it may or may not point to a Summerian version of monotheism. You've thrown too many straw-men into your argument to make a comprehensive case. You're arguing with people who died over a hundred years ago, Baruch Spinoza and Jean Astruc, not with the arguments anyone here has given you. And I doubt you've been given an honest assesment of Baruch Spinoza's and Jean Astruc's real arguments considering how your sources at AiG distort and quote mine in their arguments against evolution.
Your line of evidence, Dave, looks to have as much credibility as one of those ancient astronaught theories where aliens from outer space seed man on planet Earth and that seems to be the way most other scholars are treating your sources.
At least those ancient astronaught theorists can present pictures of their evidence with ancient drawings looking like space ships:
And what, really, does any of this have to do with Dave's "Creator God Hypothesis"? His "hypothesis" has foundered on the shoals of so many other contrary facts that worry about whether monotheism came before, or after, polytheism, or whether writing dates from the 8th century B.C.E. (couldn't resist) or the 32nd Century B.C.E. seems kind of pointless.
But, since we're discussing this crap, I'd like to point out that there's substantial evidence that the ancient Hebrews weren't monotheists anyway. They could just as easily have been monolatrists. Look at these statements from the Decalogue:
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
(Wait; I thought there were no other gods.)
"Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God"
(Jealous of whom? Those other gods from across the way?)
Sure, you can argue that God didn't want his slaves, peons, chattel, whatever they were, worshipping even imaginary gods, but again, this seems a strangely defensive posture for an omnipotent being.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Wow. I take a few days off, and I come back to this whiny batch of excuses from AirPussDave
Quote (AirPussDave June 26 2006 @ 10:45)
Now I don't expect you to agree with me. I expect you will continue to believe in your fairy tale world of apes that become human and bacteria that become jellyfish over millions and millions of years. This is far more comfortable because well ... "everyone who is anyone believes this" and "who wants to believe some goofy Jewish book written by some Bronze age tribesmen?" and "I don't want some piss-ant 'god' telling me how to run my life" and "Carbon 14 proves long ages and so does dendrochronology and it's calibrated six ways from Sunday!" and "look at radiometric dating" ... "how could anyone not agree with that??!!" blah, blah, blah, blah ...
Yeah PussDave, all that sciencey evidence stuff is just “blah, blah, blah, blah ...” to your ignorant teeny pea-brain, isn’t it? Guess I was right in predicting you wouldn’t have the balls to even attempt to answer the challenges.
It’s nice for all the lurkers to see how you deal with real evidence and technical details that refute your lies your lies, Davie. Cry like a little girl, piss your pants, then try to change the topic.
AFDave admits he has no explanation for all the various independent methods that accurately calibrate C14 dating. AFDave admits he has no explanation for all the various independent methods of dating that show an Earth much older than 10,000 years. AFDave admits he has no explanation for all the copious archaeological evidence that directly contradicts his literal Bible hypothesis.
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So ... since none of you will buy into any of this good evidence no matter how long I spend on it, tomorrow we will move on to the Flood. That should be fun as well !!
Well PussDave since the time you spent actually dealing with the contradictory evidence is exactly ZERO, what should the lurkers expect?
Looks like you’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture once again, and once again had your cowardly ass kicked up one side of the thread and down the other. Pull your pants up from around your ankles Dave, it’s embarrassing.
Intelligent, educated segment of the culture gets the win. AirPussDave gets his 937th consecutive loss
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Indeed, it might be worth exploring what behavior on AFDave's part makes him so obviously dumber than the other creationists.
I thought that was what this thread did...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I thought I made this clear already in my Essay on Genesis on p. 82 by quoting one of the excavators of Sumeria, but apparently not. Genesis is older, one of the proofs being the pure language and monotheism of the first tablet,
Big deal, we all know the Jews ripped off monotheism from the Zoroastrians.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
OK. I admit it. I embellished a little. Norm correctly observed that cotton picking would have been N/A in Southern Guyana. Yes, yes, and the fans and the tequila on the veranda were my invention as well.
Yup. A lie. A large, fat, inexcusable lie. Dave lied to make his daddy look like less of a reprehensible jerk.
Of course, this makes about a thousand lies that 2nd Lt. "I lie for Christ - no, wait, I lie sheerly for my own vanity and ego" Dave has told.
####, Dave. It's waiting for you. Sulfur, brimstone, and pitchforks. Smell it, Dave? it's your future.
I thought I made this clear already in my Essay on Genesis on p. 82 by quoting one of the excavators of Sumeria, but apparently not. Genesis is older, one of the proofs being the pure language and monotheism of the first tablet,
Big deal, we all know the Jews ripped off monotheism from the Zoroastrians.
Assuming they even were monotheists.
Worshipping only one god isn't the same thing as believing there is only one god.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Indeed, it might be worth exploring what behavior on AFDave's part makes him so obviously dumber than the other creationists.
I thought that was what this thread did...
This thread is where AFDave acts retarded, but I haven't seen people address what makes him so much dumber than the others. I'm sure there has been some discussion of it, I just missed it.
This thread is where AFDave acts retarded, but I haven't seen people address what makes him so much dumber than the others.
Personally, I think mainly a case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," combined with an ego that masks a deep underlying insecurity. Alexander Pope said ""A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." In other words, Dave's tiny brain is drunk on the commensurately small amount of information it does have, and like a lot of drunks, it tries to pick fights that it can't win, gets beat up and starts fixating again on how much *better it is* than others and how it should be kicking ass, so it gets all wasted again , goes out and gets slapped around over and over. To combat that, it excuses itself of any wrongdoing and begins to employ tactics that are flat-out dishonest so it MIGHT "win" He practices hard against the local yokels at his church group and figures he can be like the 97-lb weakling that returns to win the girl and kick the big boy's asses--he comes up and poses as a martial artist of the mind, forgetting that the guy with the most scars on his knuckles and actual *experience*is usually way more dangerous. He gets his ass handed to him again and again, but he's too deep in it, so to save face, he's pretending that his busted nose and beaten body = "victory!!!"
That's my view of the boy. Of course, he could be just a lying f-in' idiot
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
This thread is where AFDave acts retarded, but I haven't seen people address what makes him so much dumber than the others.
Personally, I think mainly a case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," combined with an ego that masks a deep underlying insecurity. Alexander Pope said ""A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." In other words, Dave's tiny brain is drunk on the commensurately small amount of information it does have, and like a lot of drunks, it tries to pick fights that it can't win, gets beat up and starts fixating again on how much *better it is* than others and how it should be kicking ass, so it gets all wasted again , goes out and gets slapped around over and over. To combat that, it excuses itself of any wrongdoing and begins to employ tactics that are flat-out dishonest so it MIGHT "win" He practices hard against the local yokels at his church group and figures he can be like the 97-lb weakling that returns to win the girl and kick the big boy's asses--he comes up and poses as a martial artist of the mind, forgetting that the guy with the most scars on his knuckles and actual *experience*is usually way more dangerous. He gets his ass handed to him again and again, but he's too deep in it, so to save face, he's pretending that his busted nose and beaten body = "victory!!!"
That's my view of the boy. Of course, he could be just a lying f-in' idiot
Superficially, he's not doing anything creationists haven't done here before. Make dumb arguments, misunderstand the very basic knowledge of the field, disagree with the evidence, imagine all the experts are deluded misinterpreters...
...yet he's the landslide winner for dumbest. What is it he does, which makes him so obviously dumber than Ghost and the rest? What's he doing differently?
This thread is where AFDave acts retarded, but I haven't seen people address what makes him so much dumber than the others.
Personally, I think mainly a case of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," combined with an ego that masks a deep underlying insecurity. Alexander Pope said ""A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again." In other words, Dave's tiny brain is drunk on the commensurately small amount of information it does have, and like a lot of drunks, it tries to pick fights that it can't win, gets beat up and starts fixating again on how much *better it is* than others and how it should be kicking ass, so it gets all wasted again , goes out and gets slapped around over and over. To combat that, it excuses itself of any wrongdoing and begins to employ tactics that are flat-out dishonest so it MIGHT "win" He practices hard against the local yokels at his church group and figures he can be like the 97-lb weakling that returns to win the girl and kick the big boy's asses--he comes up and poses as a martial artist of the mind, forgetting that the guy with the most scars on his knuckles and actual *experience*is usually way more dangerous. He gets his ass handed to him again and again, but he's too deep in it, so to save face, he's pretending that his busted nose and beaten body = "victory!!!"
That's my view of the boy. Of course, he could be just a lying f-in' idiot
Superficially, he's not doing anything creationists haven't done here before. Make dumb arguments, misunderstand the very basic knowledge of the field, disagree with the evidence, imagine all the experts are deluded misinterpreters...
...yet he's the landslide winner for dumbest. What is it he does, which makes him so obviously dumber than Ghost and the rest? What's he doing differently?
Well, Ghost is clearly just playing games; as is Skeptic. Both of them are smart enough to understand that they are simply posting nonsense (whether maliciously or with humor aforethought I don't know).
But Dave is genuinely stupid. He loses every argument he starts, but he claims otherwise. He's genuinely arrogant. He loses very argument he starts, but claims otherwise. Etc.
I think it's the combination of arrogance and genuine stupidity that's so amusing.
Chris, JonF, why are you guys doing DDTTD's homework for him?
Deadman, I can understand your rancor at Dave's (barely) covert racism, his "Deadman claims muh Daddy was settin' on the verandah, sippin' mint juleps while darky was totin' dem barge and liftin' dem bales" spiel speaks volumes about his mindset.
Makes you wonder if his Daddy had those Wai Wai sleeping on four slat beds, rising at the crack of dawn, working (and larnin' the "word") 18 hours a day and consuming an 1100 calorie a day diet with no protein till they saw the "light"?
I can just imagine his reaction if one of his kids were to commit an act of miscegenation with one of the "devolved" races.
This thread is where AFDave acts retarded, but I haven't seen people address what makes him so much dumber than the others.
For me, it's like I told Dave already, he's arguing with people who died over a hundred years ago, Baruch Spinoza and Jean Astruc, not with the arguments anyone here has given him.
Another thing that's particularly dumb is his use of fundy apologetics source material that is so obviously distorted. For example, he quotes this bit as some evidence for the Graf-Wellhausen Theory that is being argued against:
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3. That the code of laws credited to Moses is too advanced for so early a date and must have been devised in the time of the kings of Israel and Moses' name attached.
And that quote is such obvious bovine fecal matter. Before Moses we know there were Egyptians (Moses came from Egypt) and do you think their society existed without more advanced laws than Moses had?
In fact, Moses' laws are pathetically primitive compared to those of the Hammurabi and the Egyptians. Consider what's not in those ten commandments, no laws about conducting business, no set up for courts, no list of appropriate punishments, nothing to reign in overly tyranical rulers, etc..
If Moses actually had advanced laws it would be an argument in the Fundy's favor, not against it, so they slip that "Moses had advanced laws" claim into the argument they are opposing as part of the misrepresentation of the Graf-Wellhausen Theory and then they don't have to argue it.
The fact that this isn't true, that it's Moses who has more primitive laws than the society he's running from, actually speaks against the truth of this biblical religion. But the writer never argues against that point -- he just has his enemy accept this hoping you'll buy it because he put the words into the mouth of the opponent.
...yet he's the landslide winner for dumbest. What is it he does, which makes him so obviously dumber than Ghost and the rest? What's he doing differently?
It's the swagger, had he shown up in a bar I frequented when I was in the service, he would have been handed his a$$ in a hat quickly and told to find another watering hole.
That and the fact that he wants to be banned (crucifixion) without displaying too much overt insanity.
I'll second Rilke's view that it's arrogance AND stupidity. Ignorance can be cured -- willful stupidity seems to only try to justify itself. It's the kind of arrogance that builds on itself in a feedback loop, eventually bringing about people like Pat Robertson or our own C-in-C, these guys step on their own dicks all the time and stumble on, heedless of fixing the problem, if I may be so bold. And I may -- the holy insect overlords granted me permission!!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Regarding afdave's post on Baruch Spinoza, I found this on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. The references in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; the narration of his death and, particularly, of events following his death; and the fact that some places are called by names that they did not bear in the time of Moses all "make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt" that the writings commonly referred to as "the Five Books of Moses" were, in fact, written by someone who lived many generations after Moses. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch. But the Torah as we have it, as well as other books of the Hebrew Bible (such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) were written neither by the individuals whose names they bear nor by any person appearing in them. Spinoza believes that these were, in fact, all composed by a single historian living many generations after the events narrated, and that this was most likely Ezra. It was the post-exilic leader who took the many writings that had come down to him and began weaving them into a single (but not seamless) narrative. Ezra's work was later completed and supplemented by the editorial labors of others. What we now possess, then, is nothing but a compilation, and a rather mismanaged, haphazard and "mutilated" one at that." Rather different from what afdave quotes. A little further down: "Now in 1670 there was nothing novel in claiming that Moses did not write all of the Torah. Spinoza's most radical and innovative claim, in fact, was to argue that this holds great significance for how Scripture is to be read and interpreted. He was dismayed by the way in which Scripture itself was worshipped, by the reverence accorded to the words on the page rather than to the message they conveyed. If the Bible is an historical (i.e., natural) document, then it should be treated like any other work of nature. The study of Scripture, or Biblical hermeneutics, should therefore proceed as the study of nature, or natural science proceeds: by gathering and evaluating empirical data, that is, by examining the "book" itself -- along with the contextual conditions of its composition -- for its general principles." The more I read Spinoza, the more I admire the man.
-------------- Beauty is that which makes us desperate. - P Valery
Superficially, he's not doing anything creationists haven't done here before. Make dumb arguments, misunderstand the very basic knowledge of the field, disagree with the evidence, imagine all the experts are deluded misinterpreters...
...yet he's the landslide winner for dumbest. What is it he does, which makes him so obviously dumber than Ghost and the rest? What's he doing differently?
And from Rilke's GD:
Quote
But Dave is genuinely stupid. He loses every argument he starts, but he claims otherwise. He's genuinely arrogant. He loses very argument he starts, but claims otherwise. Etc.
I think it's the combination of arrogance and genuine stupidity that's so amusing.
I agree with RGD, but I'm gonna add that most of the others throw around some math, a little philosophy, and various other smoke screens to hide the insanity a little. AFDave is happy to just keep going back to "The Bible is True, because the Bible says it's True, and that's True, because the Bible is True".
He's just much more blatent.
-------------- “Why do creationists have such a hard time with commas?
You are mentally incapable of accepting such evidence. See? I'll ask you yet again: How would you discern true from false evidence that would refute your beliefs?
It's real easy. Just go find some piece of archaeological evidence that contradicts some statement of the Bible and I will accept it. Go try. You are so sure the Bible is wrong, it should be easy for you.
Se, Dave? You STILL can't answer the question. Your brain just can't handle it.
Perhaps I'll try.
Dave: Give a hypothetical example of an archaeological piece of data contradicting the Bible, and the specific methods used to generate that data.
...
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Indeed, it might be worth exploring what behavior on AFDave's part makes him so obviously dumber than the other creationists.
It’s always seemed to me that what makes AFDave unique is his use of phrases that suggest he is a “teacher” and he is somehow conducting a “class”. He’s consistently used phrases like “your reading assignment is…” and “now that we’ve covered this, we’ll move on to our next topic…” as if he’s actually imparting knowledge. He’s a good example of “unclear on the concept” of how an internet forum works.
Regarding afdave's post on Baruch Spinoza, I found this on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. The references in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; the narration of his death and, particularly, of events following his death; and the fact that some places are called by names that they did not bear in the time of Moses all "make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt" that the writings commonly referred to as "the Five Books of Moses" were, in fact, written by someone who lived many generations after Moses. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch. ...
Thank you for following up on my doubts. I don't have time to research my doubts about the honesty of afdave's sources and I need people to follow up and research those things that I only suspect are lies.
I think you've demonstrated that afdave's sources have not been honest in their reporting on Baruch Spinoza's views.
It appears that Spinoza was just doing a mostly textual criticism. As such Spinoza was even thinking that Moses did do some writing and thus existed in the time of writing, contrary to afdave's claims about what Spinoza said.
Perhaps we should put together a website documenting the lies in afdave's source material.
THE RELIABILITY OF THE GENESIS RECORD -- WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? I have made the claim that Genesis is a compilation of books, originally written on stone tablets, then compiled by Moses into its present form. Moses inserted "colophons" at the end of each section (tablet) of the form "these are the generations of ..." to signify the source of the material. This was in keeping with ancient scribal practices dating back long before Moses.
The reason this is important is because we are studying Origins here. Now everyone (well I hope you guys do at least) knows that a historical record is more reliable for determining the truth about the ancient past than some of the other methods attempted, such as Carbon 14 dating, etc. This is why every "World History" entry I read today makes the distinction between "History" and "Pre-History" and what they mean is that "History" covers written records and "Pre-History" does not.
Now as I have already mentioned, prior to the 19th century and the popularization of the Graf-Wellhausen Theory, the majority of academia pretty much believed that Genesis was a literal historical record. But with this theory, that went out the window for liberal scholars. For liberal scholars, Genesis became a nice, religious myth, just one of many myths preserved by the various cultures of the world. Gone was its lofty status as literal, eyewitness history. Norm seems to not like me to say this, but I think the majority of you here buy into this view as well.
So it is important to me to trace the roots of this theory and see if it has any credibility. If you really want to get into a study of this, Josh McDowell's second volume, "Evidence That Demands a Verdict, vol 2" is just the thing. He is a scholar par excellence with over 200 references documenting the history and development of the Documentary Hypothesis. What I have been trying to point out here is the pre-suppositions of this Hypothesis, the subsequent discrediting of those pre-suppositions, and thus the complete failure of the theory. A much better theory is found in the Wiseman book for which I did a review on p. 82 of this thread. Here are the major presuppostions of the "DH" (using McDowell's footnotes - EDV2 stands for the title of his book):
1) PRIORITY OF SOURCE ANALYSIS OVER ARCHAEOLOGY - R.K. Harrison says that "Wellhausen took almost no note whatever of the progress in the field of oriental scholarship, and once having arrived at his conclusions, he never troubled to revise his opinion in the light of subsequent research in the general field." (32/509 in EDV2) J. Pederson, a Swedish scholar and one of the pioneers of the oral tradition school made the following statement, "All the sources of the Pentateuch are both pre-Exilic and post-Exilic. When we work with them and the other sources, we have no other means than that of intrinsic appraisement; in every single case the character of the material must be examined and the supposed background be inferred from that." (77/62) Refuting this notion, W.F. Albright says, "The ultimate historicity of a given datum is never conclusively established nor disproved by the literary framework in which it is imbedded: there must always be external evidence." (3/12)
2) NATURAL (EVOLUTIONARY) VIEW OF ISRAEL'S RELIGION AND HISTORY - "Rationalistic critics hypothesized that religious development went through an evolutionary process which comenced with a belief in spirits in the days of primitive man, and then went through various stages, which included manism ... fetishism ... totemism ... mana ... magic ... Finally man conceived of clear-cut deities (polytheism) and later elevated on deity above the others, a stage called henotheism." Monotheism supposedly did not come until later than this. (166/332) Wellhausen says, speaking of the creation of the world, "in a youthful people such a theological abstraction is unheard of, and so with the Hebrew we find both the word and the notion only coming into use after the Babylonian exile." (63/305)
3) NO WRITING IN ISRAEL AT MOSES'TIME (ca. 1400 BC) - Wellhausen said, "Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in writing." (63/393) One Wellhausen School theologian stated in 1893, "Of the legendary character of the pre-Mosaic narrators, the time of which they treat is a sufficient proof. It was a time prior to all knowledge of writing, a time separated by an interval of more than four hundred years, of which there is absolutely no history, from the nearest period of which Israel had some dim historical recollection, a time when in civilised countries writing was only beginning to be used for the most important matters of State ... And even when writing had come into use, in the time, that is, between Moses and David, it would be but sparingly used, and much that happened to the people must still have been handed down simply as legend." (138/25, 26)
4) THE LEGENDARY VIEW OF PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES - Wellhausen writes, "From the patriarchal narratives it is impossible to obtain any historical information with regard to the patriarchs; we can only learn something about the time in which the stories about them were first told by the Israelite people. This later period, with all its essential and superficial characteristics, was unintentionally projected back into hoary antiquity and is reflected there like a transfigured mirage" and Wellhausen's view of Abraham is "a free creation of unconscious art." (63/320, 331).
All of these assumptions, of course have been exploded by over a century of archaeological discoveries and oriental studies, and yet, people like you still believe the end result to the theory, namely, that Genesis is just another myth of antiquity.
Yet for those interested in the truth, the evidence abounds ...
Genesis is literal, carefully copied, eyewitness history of the highest character. The accounts of activities in the Garden of Eden, the Fall, the Curse, the First Civilization, the Long-Lived Patriarchs, the Flood, the Dispersion, etc. are all to be understood as REAL HISTORY. The implications of this are enormous! Read my essay on p. 82 of this thread.
Now you understand why I am so interested in the Book of Genesis. If Genesis is literal history, then at the very least, we should consider it as a source for Scientific Hypotheses for Origins. Which is what I do.
CHRISTOFREAKAZOID -- COOL NEW WORD -- COINED BY A CONFUSED MAN? Several things, Lou FCD
1) Never say 'never' about being my friend ... Stranger things have happened! 2) You said I'm a sociopath b/c I said if I were one of Joshua's footsoldiers, I would obey orders to destroy Caananite women and children ... This is right up there with Rilke's absurdity that I'm a child molester b/c I teach children the Bible. Did you not notice that I said that things are different now? The prophets and apostles are no more, and the Scriptures are our authority for life. You know ... Martin Luther and "Sola Scriptura." Romans 13 instructs us to obey our government, so that is what I do. 3) You are making a moral judgment and saying that Truman was 'more right' than Joshua ... Hmmm ... On what basis? Your basis is that 'Kinky Canaanites' is not as bad a situation as lots more dead Allied soldiers. First, I don't think you have any idea what all those Canaanites were into ... I'll bet human sacrifice was in there somewhere ... Are you saying you're OK with that continuing for hundreds of years, but you're not OK with a few more thousand Allied soldiers dying? Let's play God and do the math ... How many babies were killed each year? How many virgins were sacrificed? How many people died from harmful sexual practices? How much slavery was going on? How about child slavery? If God lets just the killing continue, how many people die? Quite a few I'm guessing in say 500 years, wouldn't you think? So if we are just playing a numbers game, who's got the 'better' numbers? Joshua or Truman? Secondly, how can God's creations (humans) tell their Creator what's right and what's wrong? If you create a work of art, it's YOUR work of art. You can do what you want to with it. It would be absurd for that work of art to say "You can't do that with me!!" or "You can't do that with those other works of art you made!!" Of course, you don't believe there was a Creator. You just think we evolved. So you are actually the one who has inconsistencies, not me. If you really believed what you say you believe, "morality" would be a meaningless term, just as it is for the animals. Do you say lions are unjust for killing antelope? Maybe you think Venus Fly Traps are immoral for catching and poisoning bugs? Sharks? Are they immoral? If you were consistent with your own beliefs, you would say, 'Ha, Joshua was just grabbing land ... I would too if I were him.' But no, instead you say 'Joshua was immoral and Dave is too because he says he would have obeyed Joshua.' Totally inconsistent with your own stated beliefs. 4) How is flying the Enola Gay different from obeying Joshua's orders? They are both just obeying lawful orders, right? It's not up to the soldier to question a lawful order is it? Now I do understand unlawful orders, yes. Obviously those should not be obeyed. And you are correct that wackos who bomb abortion clinics are OUTSIDE the law. 5) Many people get confused about 'lawful killing' and 'murder.' The Decalogue is talking about murder, not lawful killing such as government ordered capital punishment or killing under orders in war. Again, bombing abortion clinics is murder, and outside the law.
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UNIVERSAL MORALITY Has anyone noticed in this discussion that everyone universally thinks that killing children is a bad thing? I'm not saying it's not done ... I'm just saying that everyone that I've ever met, regardless of religion or non-religion thinks it is bad. And I'll bet money that the old societies that ritually sacrificed children also thought it was bad, but there was some compelling reason that they felt they should do it anyway, i.e. the priest would sacrifice THE PARENTS if they wouldn't give up their children, or the gods would be angry and send no rain, or whatever.
I think the people that get mad at me--like Lou FCD and Deadman--on this thread also speak volumes for a Universal Moral Code. They claim there is no such thing, yet they appeal to one which I am supposed to know about and they obviously know about and they think they adhere to it much more strictly than I do. So they get mad at me when they think I'm not adhering to it. Which is really sad and funny at the same time. It's funny because they don't realize that they are confirming my theory. It's sad because they are so blind to the truth and may never accept it and come to terms with their Creator.
HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH 8mya AND 5mya FOR CHIMPS AND GORILLAS? OK, Incorygible. You and Eric are obviously miffed that you spent all that time explaining this to me, only to have me throw cold water on your effort. Well, I'm sorry, but the truth is the truth. Better to give it to you straight and have you thank me on your deathbed, than blow sunshine at you and miss the truth forever.
Here's the deal ... best I can figure, here's how you guys come up with these numbers ... Darwin decided that Genesis was a fairy tale, so he went looking for an alternate explanation. The finch thing gave him fodder to mix a little bit of truth with a little bit of speculation ... he suggested that the microevolution he saw in the finches might possibly extend to the whole animal kingdom and work for large scale changes. Meanwhile in geology, scientists were tired of the church telling them what to believe and they decided Noah and the ark was a myth. So now you have the geologists throwing Catastrophism out and preaching Uniformitarianism. No evidence, mind you, but it was a fun theory. And the biologists threw out Creation and substituted Biological Evolution. Again, no evidence of large scale change, but it was a fun theory. Enter Spinoza, Astruc and Wellhausen who claimed that Genesis was mythology and your case is helped even more. You see? It used to be Creation and the Flood to explain the natural world. Then it became Uniformitarianism and Evolution. Now Uniformitarianism required long ages to occur and so did Evolution. This was a 'match made in heaven' and when radiometric dating and fossils came on the scene, ToE seemed more sure than ever. Pretty soon all the biologists were classifying all the animals according to supposed common ancestry and naturally apes were classified close to humans because they look somewhat similar. When ape and human DNA was examined, guess what? It was very similar. Now where did the 8mya and 5 mya come from? Well sequence differences of course. The basic idea is that organisms change by mutations. How long does it take to make a substantive change? Well, there's some formula somebody came up with based on the ratio of beneficial mutations to total mutations, which is a very small number. So basically the way it works (so the fairy tale goes) is that if humans and chimps have 20,000 different nucleotides and the beneficial mutation rate is 1 per 100 years, then you need 20,000 x 100 = 2 million years to go from chimp to human. (I'm just guessing the numbers here obviously, but I think the concept is close)
How about it, Incorygible, am I close?
Now this is a beautiful theory IF (there's that big word IF IF IF), you can really get these so called "beneficial mutations" at the rate of 1 per 100 years. Problem is, you cannot. We've tried with fruit flies over many generations and all we get is mutilated and dead fruit flies, not Super-fruit flies. Mutations are incapable of producing the type of large scale change necessary to make a jellyfish from a bacteria, or a human from an ape-like ancestor.
Now there are of course many other problems with the theory, but I hope this sums up pretty well why I wanted Incorygible to explain where the 8 mya and 5 mya comes from. I was pretty sure that this was the line of reasoning because it seems to be the only line of reasoning that COULD work. But it doesn't.
Bottom line is that it's wishful thinking with no evidence to back it up.
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JOSH McDOWELL ON TYRE Subtitle: You can pretty much justify anything you want to believe.
Ezekiel 26:8 - Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the mainland city. FULFILLED in 573, although the island city (where the inhabitants moved to) remained for several hundred years.
26:3 - Many nations against Tyre. FULFILLED. In waves: Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Antigonus, and Moslems.
26:4,5 - bare and flat, like the top of a rock. Fishermen will spread their nets on the site to dry. FULFILLED. The secular historian Philip Myers said, “Alexander the Great ... Reduced it (the island city) to ruins (332 BC) ... The larger part of the site of the once great city is now bare as the top of a rock -- a place where fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.”
Hmmmm ... secular historian ... not even a 'christofreakazoid' !!
26:14, 21 - never be rebuilt or found. FULFILLED. Nina Jidejian in “Tyre through the Ages,” Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq Publishers, 1969. -- She relates that all the wealth of Tyre disappeared to Alexandria and elsewhere” and she concludes, “Tyre's stones may be found as far away as Acre and Beirut ... Looking down into the water one can see a mass of granite columns and stone blocks strewn all over the sea bottom. Until recently the ruins of Tyre above water were few.”
Now if you guys want to weasel and squirm, I'm sure you can find a way to justify your skepticism, but you cannot avoid the fact that ...
Tyre was a great, powerful, proud city ... And it got destroyed in the exactly detailed way that Ezekiel said it would. The city that is there now is not the same city. It's about as similar to ancient Tyre as Microsoft Corporation headquarters is to Feldman's Farm Supply headquarters. The ancient Tyre of world renown is GONE!
But again, why the fascination with Tyre? There are more interesting Bible prophecies than this one. Someone mentioned Nostradamus ... please, now ... How can anyone even compare Nostradamus to Bible prophecy?
Oh, and Deadman ... you are wrong about Nechadnezzar and Babylon ... and I gave you the evidence to prove it. Go back and re-read it. See also my answer to your question at the end of this post.
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SUPPOSED FLAT-EARTHER BIBLICAL AUTHORS You guys are really getting weird on me in the evidence department. Your logic is apparently, Isaiah said the earth is a flat circle, therefore the Bible is wrong and not inspired by God. First, you really cannot know (nor can I know what Isaiah knew or didn't know about the shape of the earth). It is clear that many ancients long before Isaiah knew that the earth was a sphere -- one group was the builders of the Great Pyramid. How do you know Isaiah was not speaking of the circle of the horizon and not making a statement at all about the shape of the globe? You do not know this. Second, if the Israelites had lost the knowledge previously known by earlier peoples about the spherical shape of the earth, why would God necessarily want to communicate the correct shape to Isaiah? God's purpose in Isaiah 40 was not a scientific treatise. Are you saying also that Isaiah was unscientific to refer to God "sitting" upon the circle of the earth? Is the Bible wrong because God does not "sit" on anything? Are Billy Graham and the Pope Geocentrists (supposedly God's mouthpieces like Isaiah -- that's another debate) if they say "The sun rises and sets"? Or if they say "I see all of humanity as sinful in the eyes of God," now they are flat-earthers because otherwise, how could they see all of humanity at the same time? And do they think that God has literal eyes, too? Otherwise, why did they say "eyes?" This kind of thinking is so ridiculous. I guess this is just one more confirmation that skeptics will do whatever they can to justify their skeptcisim, no matter how ridiculous it is.
The Son My massacre (My Lai) was the result of a platoon of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade blindly following the orders of their leader, Lt. William Calley. He ordered the machine gunning of between 374 and 504 innocent civilians. Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr, a helo pilot, put his bird between the troops and the victims, threatening to fire on the U.S. soldiers if they did not stop the murder. I wonder how the Old Testament God would have reacted if Hugh Thompson would have stopped Abraham on his way up the mountain? Or if he tried to talk Joshua out of slaughter? Would a just God reward Mr. Thompson or others for having killed Abraham to spare his son, as many fringe fundy "pro life" advocates with rifles or explosives who threaten abortion providers seem to advocate?
Fundy "pro-life" advocates with rifles and explosives who threaten abortionists are outside the law. Period. It is one thing to protest lawfully. It is quite another to take the law into your own hands and commit murder. As I have mentioned before, the God-ordained authority structure in the Old Testament and during Apostolic times was different than it is now that we have the completed Scriptures. In those times, the will of God was made clear to leaders through the use of miraculous signs. In our times, the will of God has been made clear in settled Scripture - Obey your government as long as that government does not violate Scripture. And if it does violate Scripture, don't violate Scripture yourself in trying to correct it. I suppose the violent abortion protesters think that the government is violating Scripture in allowing abortionists to operate. I agree with them, but the proper way to remedy this is not by murdering someone. This itself violates Scripture. We must use lawful means to remedy faulty government.
carlsonjok...
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Well, now you have me thoroughly confused. So, is what you are a saying Paul believes that we should always obey the government (regardless of whether we agree or not) unless it directs us to disobey a Scriptural commandment, which would presumably include the Decalogue? And if that is correct, then doesn't it follow that Paul would have me refuse an order by my government to violate the Scriptural proscription against killing?
See my comments on this to Lou FCD above. You do get into some interesting questions here when you consider governments like Hitler's, for example, and there were some very interesting actions people took in response to Hitler's government. "Turning people in" was a commonly disobeyed government order. My guess is that these people who disobeyed this order reasoned that it is un-Scriptural to falsely accuse someone or to participate in such activity. They must have judged "turning someone in" as aiding false accusation, thereby rendering the order unlawful in the sight of God.
Eric...
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Also, interesting that Dave seems to believe that the Marxist atheist government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was, in fact, "God-ordained." Who could have predicted that?
See? And you thought I was a predictable "Creo-bot" !!!
Chris...
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The point is that the Genesis flood is basically an updated version of Price's "the new geology" from 1923. I don't think that this was common knowledge when the book was first released because the mainstream Christian denominations would be less accepting of an idea that had its roots in Adventism.
Why does it matter WHO advocates a particular idea? If Charles Manson writes a book about how wrong murder is, should I disregard the idea that murder is wrong? I (and I'm guessing Henry Morris) could care less WHO comes up with the true picture of geology. What I care about is WHAT IS THE TRUTH? What does the EVIDENCE say? And the evidence says CREATION ... and FLOOD, not Evolution and Uniformitarianism. Who cares about Price? Or Ellen White (or whoever)
Thurdl01...
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There are over 300 specific prophecies about the Messiah -- all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.
But see, that's using the Bible to prove itself, which is a fallacy. If you want to validate prophecy, you have to present prophecy that can be validated through observation, and not through later chapters in the same book.
No. You are making a fallacy. It's NOT the same book. The Jewish Scriptures were settled long before Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene. That's what is so incredible about the prophecies. There were over 300 specific statements attributed to the Messiah. They were all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. What's the chances of that? The historical records of Jesus were written in the 1st Century AD. Different book Thurdl.
Norm...
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3. That the code of laws credited to Moses is too advanced for so early a date and must have been devised in the time of the kings of Israel and Moses' name attached.
And that quote is such obvious bovine fecal matter. Before Moses we know there were Egyptians (Moses came from Egypt) and do you think their society existed without more advanced laws than Moses had?
I agree with you that it is fecal matter. That is my point. Scholars of the late 18th century were peddling Bovine Fecal Matter to Liberal Theologians of the time and they were EATING IT !!! See my quote from McDowell above. Read his book for even more detail on how these scholars were eating fecal matter. The funny thing is ... most of you here believe the end result of this "fecal matter theory", namely, that Genesis is folklore.
Norm...
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In fact, Moses' laws are pathetically primitive compared to those of the Hammurabi and the Egyptians. Consider what's not in those ten commandments, no laws about conducting business, no set up for courts, no list of appropriate punishments, nothing to reign in overly tyranical rulers, etc..
The 10 commandments are not the entire law. Have you not read the entire Pentateuch? There were plenty of laws to handle every situation.
Deadman...
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The fact remains that other villages, uncontacted by your father...survived. You may idolize your father to the point of being willing to lie and exaggerate, Dave, but that won't change the facts there. Your father was not in fact the first white man they had seen in the 20th century. The American Museum of Natural History has collections of WaiWai featherwork and weaving collected in the 1920's from that very village. I'm glad that he tried to help. I am not glad that he completed the destruction of their original belief system for that group. Fortunately, other WaiWai held on to theirs. Your father was simply misguided, as you are, Dave. I doubt that you'd show him these pages of your insane lying, though.
OK. So 30 years before my dad, some white people conatacted them. So I was almost right. There you go calling me a liar for making a generalization. What's with you people on that? It's almost as if you guys NEED for me to be a liar, so you grasp at these little wisps to try and characterize me as one. There ARE NO villages of the Wai-wai, uncontacted by my father. You just don't get it. No Bob Hawkins = No Wai-Wai People. Period. They would have died out, Deadman. Go ask them yourself. Their elders will tell you. And I keep him informed about what I write here. He lives here with me -- I built him a house attached to my house so I can care for him when he needs it. He has the link also, though he's not much of an internet surfer. He does maintain contact with all the village leaders though to this day. He contacts them by letter, and where possible, by e-mail.
Deadman...
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2. Nebuchadrezzar did not conquer Egypt.
you cannot say that he didn't because history does not have much to say about it. But I gave you good references indicating that he did. Then Persia conquered Babylon and Egypt never again rose to world power, just as the Bible predicted.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now everyone (well I hope you guys do at least) knows that a historical record is more reliable for determining the truth about the ancient past than some of the other methods attempted, such as Carbon 14 dating, etc. This is why every "World History" entry I read today makes the distinction between "History" and "Pre-History" and what they mean is that "History" covers written records and "Pre-History" does not.
Are you joking Dave? Of course written records are not as reliable as independent corroborating evidence. This is for the same reason that eyewitness testimony is often not as reliable as physical evidence.
We don't know what the agenda of the writers of various books in the Bible were. We have no reason to believe that truth, as opposed to some sort of religious/social/political aim, was of paramount interest to those writers. Not only that, but we have no idea how many times the Bible was translated, recopied, etc. from an earlier text. Until the renaissance, there was no mechanical method of making an exact copy of a text, so who knows what kinds of transcription errors have infected the Bible over the past four millennia.
So right out of the gate your supposition is wrong, Dave. There is absolutely no reason to think that written records are more reliable than independent physical evidence. So no, we don't agree with you on that point.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Why does it matter WHO advocates a particular idea? If Charles Manson writes a book about how wrong murder is, should I disregard the idea that murder is wrong?
I agree that this does not affect whether or not the claims are true. I only brought it up because at some point the claim was made that creationism is based on a careful weighing of the evidence, which led to the conclusion that the bible was accurate. What actually happened was creationism was invented based on the assumption that science was wrong because it contradicted someones interpretation of the scripture. Subsequent creationist authors have become so called 'scientific creationists' because they have read works by previous creationists, and siezed on them as a way to combine science with their beliefs, regardless(up to a point) of the factual accuracy of the claims. At no point did someone read a geology or biology text, decide independantly that the conclusions were wrong, and then realise that they fit with the bible better. We can trace a chain of creationists, from Price to Morris to Ham to Denton to Behe and Dembski. For example Behe has claimed his revelation came after reading Dentons theory in crisis, which contains much that Denton has personally admitted was wrong. Behe spent years as a biochemist, but a religious one, and had no scientific concern with evolution until he read Denton. Here he found a way to better combine science with his religion, and so on the story goes, as the next generation of creationists see Darwins Black Box as a way to integrate their religion into science. Similarly Dembski has said that Morris spraked his interest in creationism. This does not automatically mean that the science is wrong, it does mean it should be looked at with a very critical eye.
Now several evangelical Christians and theologians I have spoken to tell me that before the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, with a few exceptions, the mainstream church believed that Genesis 1-3 was not meant as a literal scientific text. Indeed many years before Darwin people knew that the earth was much older than Genesis says. People still thought though that animals existed as created kinds, because that was the best explanation available. In the years before Darwin, several people began to comment on the similarites and geographical distribution of organisms, until eventually Darwin wrote origin. Darwin didn't want to prove Genesis wrong, because the church at the time didnt think it was a literal Document. Darwin's own writings show that it was his continued experience of the evidence that eventually led him to believe in evolution, wheras the creationist story goes 'when I read 'insert creationist text I realised evolution/geology/paleontology/astronomy/etc was wrong'.
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UNIVERSAL MORALITY
Does the fact that chimps and gorillas obey the golden rule prove you right or us right. Who cares. You could just as easily say that not killing babies makes good evolutionary sense.
HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH 8mya AND 5mya FOR CHIMPS AND GORILLAS? OK, Incorygible. You and Eric are obviously miffed that you spent all that time explaining this to me, only to have me throw cold water on your effort. Well, I'm sorry, but the truth is the truth. Better to give it to you straight and have you thank me on your deathbed, than blow sunshine at you and miss the truth forever.
Don't flatter yourself, Dave. We're not "miffed" that you "threw cold water" on Incorygible's effort. We're just astonished at your obtuseness. There are two possibilities: a) you are literally, congenitally incapable of actually seeing things that contradict your worldview; or b) you're dumb as a box of rocks. I still don't see any third possibility.
And don't worry, Dave: the chances of me having anything to thank you for on my deathbed are zero.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
3. That the code of laws credited to Moses is too advanced for so early a date and must have been devised in the time of the kings of Israel and Moses' name attached.
And that quote is such obvious bovine fecal matter. Before Moses we know there were Egyptians (Moses came from Egypt) and do you think their society existed without more advanced laws than Moses had?
I agree with you that it is fecal matter. That is my point. Scholars of the late 18th century were peddling Bovine Fecal Matter to Liberal Theologians of the time and they were EATING IT !!!
No, Dave. That is so bad it has to be a straw man, a lie. Use a little thinking -- the people you are talking about are such famous scholars they are remembered to this day for their achievments in academia. People who make that kind of mark are not going to make such basic errors.
Your sources are lying to you.
Look at the posts above, it shows your linked source lied about what Baruch Spinoza's views were. Baruch Spinoza did not think writing came later, Baruch Spinoza thought Moses wrote:
See my quote from McDowell above. Read his book for even more detail on how these scholars were eating fecal matter. The funny thing is ... most of you here believe the end result of this "fecal matter theory", namely, that Genesis is folklore.
No, Dave, this is proof people like McDowell are lying to you about what scholars have said.
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Norm...
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In fact, Moses' laws are pathetically primitive compared to those of the Hammurabi and the Egyptians. Consider what's not in those ten commandments, no laws about conducting business, no set up for courts, no list of appropriate punishments, nothing to reign in overly tyranical rulers, etc..
The 10 commandments are not the entire law. Have you not read the entire Pentateuch? There were plenty of laws to handle every situation.
Read carefully, I said Moses' laws, not Old Testament law.
I'm going by memory here, but as my memory serves me Moses pretty much only gave the Hebrews two versions of the ten commandments. Moses then died before entering the promised land and contributed little more to Old Testament law during his time.
The other Old Testament laws come after Moses has died and cannot be called Moses' laws.
HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH 8mya AND 5mya FOR CHIMPS AND GORILLAS? OK, Incorygible. You and Eric are obviously miffed that you spent all that time explaining this to me, only to have me throw cold water on your effort. Well, I'm sorry, but the truth is the truth. Better to give it to you straight and have you thank me on your deathbed, than blow sunshine at you and miss the truth forever.
Here's the deal ... best I can figure, here's how you guys come up with these numbers ... Darwin decided that Genesis was a fairy tale, so he went looking for an alternate explanation. The finch thing gave him fodder to mix a little bit of truth with a little bit of speculation ... he suggested that the microevolution he saw in the finches might possibly extend to the whole animal kingdom and work for large scale changes. Meanwhile in geology, scientists were tired of the church telling them what to believe and they decided Noah and the ark was a myth. So now you have the geologists throwing Catastrophism out and preaching Uniformitarianism. No evidence, mind you, but it was a fun theory. And the biologists threw out Creation and substituted Biological Evolution. Again, no evidence of large scale change, but it was a fun theory. Enter Spinoza, Astruc and Wellhausen who claimed that Genesis was mythology and your case is helped even more. You see? It used to be Creation and the Flood to explain the natural world. Then it became Uniformitarianism and Evolution. Now Uniformitarianism required long ages to occur and so did Evolution. This was a 'match made in heaven' and when radiometric dating and fossils came on the scene, ToE seemed more sure than ever. Pretty soon all the biologists were classifying all the animals according to supposed common ancestry and naturally apes were classified close to humans because they look somewhat similar. When ape and human DNA was examined, guess what? It was very similar. Now where did the 8mya and 5 mya come from? Well sequence differences of course. The basic idea is that organisms change by mutations. How long does it take to make a substantive change? Well, there's some formula somebody came up with based on the ratio of beneficial mutations to total mutations, which is a very small number. So basically the way it works (so the fairy tale goes) is that if humans and chimps have 20,000 different nucleotides and the beneficial mutation rate is 1 per 100 years, then you need 20,000 x 100 = 2 million years to go from chimp to human. (I'm just guessing the numbers here obviously, but I think the concept is close)
How about it, Incorygible, am I close?
Now this is a beautiful theory IF (there's that big word IF IF IF), you can really get these so called "beneficial mutations" at the rate of 1 per 100 years. Problem is, you cannot. We've tried with fruit flies over many generations and all we get is mutilated and dead fruit flies, not Super-fruit flies. Mutations are incapable of producing the type of large scale change necessary to make a jellyfish from a bacteria, or a human from an ape-like ancestor.
Now there are of course many other problems with the theory, but I hope this sums up pretty well why I wanted Incorygible to explain where the 8 mya and 5 mya comes from. I was pretty sure that this was the line of reasoning because it seems to be the only line of reasoning that COULD work. But it doesn't.
Bottom line is that it's wishful thinking with no evidence to back it up.
No, Dave. You are NOT close. You merely demonstrate that a little spoonfed knowledge is a dangerous thing.
First, you begin with an unsubstantiated argument regarding the supposed ulterior motives of hundreds of thousands of scientists for more than a century. Exactly what evidence do you have for this claim, upon which much of your 'argument' rests? A great many of these geologists and biologists that you contend were looking for ways in which to overthrow "the church" (which one?) were some of its most ardent supporters. (Aren't you always going on about how many creationists were pioneers in science? Guess what -- they were pioneers in geology and biology as well. They just followed the evidence wherever it led.)
Second, your contention of "no evidence, but it was a fun theory" is, quite simply, ludicrous. The evidence is there for all to see, Dave, unlike your projections of anti-religious motives.
Third, you make no mention of fossils (and the many various methods used to date them) and comparative morphology. Now, there is a relative paucity of fossil evidence for the early apes, so I might almost be willing to overlook the first omission (although there is no excuse for omitting comparative morphology). However, a scarcity of fossils doesn't help your argument at all. Where are the early 'ape-kind' fossils buried in the flood? We evolutionists expect such scarcity of ape fossils given the historical timeline of ape existence and environmental conditions of ape habitat, but you hypothesize a universal time in existence and universally similar conditions for fossil creation (i.e., one big flood). Furthermore, I showed (and encouraged you to read even more about) how the fossils we do have and have dated converged with comparative morhphology and new genetic evidence in dating our LCA with the (other) great apes.
In any case, you focus on molecular clocks alone, which are indeed the best evidence we have available for elucidating phylogenies. If you understood how they actually work, this might be acceptable. But of course, you don't understand how they work.
Dave, modern molecular clocks have NOTHING to do with beneficial vs. detrimental mutations. NADA. You won't find a term for "beneficial mutation rate" in any of the calculations used to compare genomes and date ancestral events. Why? Because "beneficial mutation rate" is generally impossible to calculate (despite the fact that you seem to think you are able to). To do so would require: almost omniscient knowledge of environmental conditions for the entire duration of evolutionary history; equally omniscient knowledge of all possible genotypes, phenotypes and their interactions; equally omnisicient knowledge of all selective pressures (natural, sexual, etc.) for the duration of evolutionary history; equally omnisicient knowledge of population demographies (and hence drift, founder effects, etc.); equally omniscient knowledge of all possible mutations that could occur and their frequencies; equally omnisicient knowledge of ecologies, food webs, competitive interactions and the evolution of other species with which apes interacted over the course of evolutionary history; and many other factors. Hence, calculating rates of "beneficial" mutations is a fool's game. Is that why you engage in it?
No, Dave, molecular phylogenetic research involves itself in calculating "beneficial mutation rates" about as much as it involves itself in investigating the Documentary Hypothesis: not one whit. Go take a look at that table of genetic differences between chimps, gorillas and humans that I provided you way back when. Rather than just looking at the numbers (less than 1%!, look at what regions of DNA those numbers are reffering to. Notice how they're broken up into two groups: noncoding and coding? What do those terms mean to you, especially as they relate to "beneficial" mutations? Can you guess which type we use in molecular clocks? (And never forget clocks is plural, Dave. Very plural. Thousands of potential "clocks", all reading the same time. If you're like me, you can't even get the clocks in your house to agree.) Think about it, Dave. Given the above impossibility in calculating the (always changing) rate of beneficial mutations in certain regions of DNA, how might we still employ a "clock" dependent on assuming relatively consistent rates of change? Which regions of DNA might we prefer? Why? Any guesses?
As an example, I have used microsatellite analysis to trace the family history (e.g., paternity) of individuals and the evolutionary history of certain fish populations. Go look up microsatellites, Dave, if you're actually interested in presenting an accurate picture of genetic research. Look up mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). Look up other selectively neutral regions of DNA used in phylogenetic analyses (oops, did I let the cat out of the bag? were you still parsing the above questions?).
Learning this won't help you avoid your insistent need to project anti-religious motives onto the work and arguments of everyone who disagrees with you, but it may help you learn why the second part of your little synopsis is out of touch with actual science.
So, since we don't need to get any particular rate of beneficial mutation rate (we don't need any such rate at all), I presume you will agree (by your own words) that it is, indeed, a "beautiful theory". Right?
Better to give it to you straight and have you thank me on your deathbed
It's been said before, but seriously Dave, fuck off with your deathbed crap. Take it outside. Don't confuse a fear of death any of us here may have, with a fear of anything that comes after it.
Here's how I want to go when it's my time. I'm gonna get on a boat to some deep spot in the Bermuda triangle, strap on a rebreather and follow a one way dive plan as far as I can go.
Yet another "put-up-or-shut-up" challenge for AFDave
(To go similarly unanswered, I'm sure.)
Dave, in a round-about way, you have made a relatively simple contention regarding the differences between humans and (other) apes. Simply put, you have argued we "can't get here from there", since (1) to do so would require a number of mutations that increased the "information" in the genome; and (2) such mutations do not occur (or occur so rarely as to be irrelevant as a mechanism in "ape-to-human" evolution).
So before we argue about (2), it's time for you to demonstrate (1). To do that, you need to do the following:
i. Define "information". I don't care whether you follow Shannon or Kolmogorov, Safarti or Spetner. Define it in a way that can be measured (else how do we know that it has increased?) and be consistent. ii. Pick a genetic difference or mutation (ANY difference you wish) found in humans that is not found in chimps or gorillas. (You had better be able to show that this genetic difference is unique to humans.) iii. Show that this genetic change involved an increase in information pursuant to your definition in (i).
That's it. That's all it takes to demonstrate (1). I don't think you can do it, but you had better try before we talk about (2).
Note that, despite your previous retreat, we ARE talking about MEASURABLE BIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES here. Your contention is based in measurable biological differences. So if you want to talk about advanced communication skills, religion, civilization, or any of your other favourite "non-biological differences", you had better be able to reduce these to the genetic level and show the information content required. Anything less is mere speculative hand-waving that has no bearing on YOUR contention. (By the way, if you manage to do this, there's probably a Crawford prize with your name on it, or even a Nobel if your work can be shoehorned into Alfred's categories.)
For my part, I will give you the grace of not having to demonstrate that whatever uniquely human information-increase you come up with was not HISTORICALLY present (but later lost) from the (other) apes. After all, we know A LOT of information was lost from the original kind, resulting in all these monkey-like things we see around us today, and there's no way to know if your apparently uniquely human mutation might be among it. So I'll be generously satisfied with something that is found in humans but doesn't exist in the CURRENT apes.
DaveTard2, I called you a liar because you are a liar. In the space of one week, you lied multiple times.
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1)It's no use debating theological ideas with you because you are not even to first base, i.e. you don't even believe that the God of the Bible exists. (2)DEADMAN MAKES UP LIES BECAUSE HE CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE SELFLESSNESS OF MISSIONARIES You just have no idea what you are talking about, Deadman. You make things up to try to justify your skepticism and you are obviously miserable in doing so because you blow up and shoot your mouth off a lot. THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS ACADEMIC MORALIZER (3)Deadman, I'm talking about you.....You have ZERO firsthand experience with a real jungle tribe (4)They had NO contact with white people prior to my dad, by the way, at least not in the 20th century.
You lied about every one of those things, Dave.And your best response is
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So I was almost right. There you go calling me a liar for making a generalization. What's with you people on that?
Well, for one--you didn't make a generalization...you made a specific, falsifiable claim that was shown to be a lie.
You even emphasized your words, saying the WaiWai had " NO contact with white people prior to my dad...at least not in the 20th century"
Well, that was a lie. You claimed to know something that you did not and could not know. It is not a "generalization," it is a specific claim. Now you say
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So 30 years before my dad, some white people conatacted them. So I was almost right. There you go calling me a liar for making a generalization. What's with you people on that?
Just as you specifically claimed that I had no actual experience with jungle tribes...Just as you claimed that you KNEW about my theistic views and emotions...but didn't. Just as you claimed that no one had offered you archaeological sites that contradicted the flood and thus, Genesis.
What this means is that it was not just one incident, Dave...in fact, when I went over the pages in this thread, I was counting where you use false claims, deception, lies, shifting goalposts, etc.--and I counted over 15 of those in the first 15 pages. This is a pattern of deliberate deception, Dave.
There is no doubt in my mind that you are quite aware that in order to say you "know" something, you have to show that you DO "know" that thing...and there is no way on Earth you could "know" about my experience with the Maya. Just as you could NOT know about whites contacting the WaiWai...but in both cases, you made flat assertions, claims that were based on ...what? Nothing, and you KNEW it... These are examples of knowing lies.
As far as your claims on Tyre: Tyre never vanished beneath the waves, as required. The city was rebuilt after Alexander razed it's defensive walls and sacked it. It was still Tyre. It was not a bare rock forever, as required.
As for your claims on Nebuchadrezzar: Nebuchadrezzar kept records of his conquests, and there is no mention of his conquering the valley of Egypt. The wikipedia article you mention says this:
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Having completed the subjugation of Phoenicia, and inflicted chastisement on Egypt, Nebuchadrezzar ...set himself to rebuild and adorn the city of Babylon
Note that Phoenicia is "conquered" and Egypt is "chastised" ...two different things. This was in 568-567 BCE, during the reign of Amasis II. The Babylonian empire under Nebuchadrezzar extended only to the Egyptian border. "Chastise" is not "conquer'
Ezekiel says that Egypt would become a wasteland, its cities destroyed and inhabitants killed, filling the land with the slain. This didn't happen at all, there is no 40-year break in the Egyptian records as demanded by Ezekiel.
Amasis II ruled over Egypt for another generation-- a very prosperous Egypt-- and lived to see Nebuchadrezzar die in 562 BCE. No Egyptians were scattered or dispersed. Aahmes (Amasis II) went on to conquer Cyprus and make an alliance with Cyrene, marrying Ladice. He was allies with Croesus of Lydia and his friendship with Polycrates of Samos is the subject of the well-known "story of the ring" told by Herodotus
Your own source only mentions a small outlying bit of land near the Red Sea being taken. More importantly, any conquest of the valley of Egypt would show up in the records, just as we know that the Hyksos, Persians and the Nubians actually DID take the valley at different times.
As to the flat earth of the bible, I gave references, complete with proper translations from 3 different dictionaries.
As to your claim that I support C.S. Lewis' "universal morals" nonsense. You want to claim that because I personally sympathize with children, that this means universal? Wrong. I am in favor of legalized first trimester abortion and recognize it as killing cells--I recognize that other people see that as "wrong." I also recognize that hundreds of cultures around the world do not see killing children as wrong, while others DO see it as "wrong". As I mentioned, the WaiWai don't believe children HAVE a permanent soul until they are three years old. "This kind of infanticide is found in hundreds of cultures around the world. Solomon Islands, East and West Africa, North and South America, Europe and Asia. The Greeks and Romans practiced this form of infanticide, as do Asian Indians and Chinese to this day. In fact, The United States has one of the highest murder rate for children in the world, too. Where is that Universal Morality, when people across the world saw it as a good thing to kill off children selectively?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave has demonstrated that he is incapable of discerning accurate from inaccurate sources. At no point has he been able to describe a process by which he can evaluate source information.
Based on his behavior, his only criteria seems to be whether or not the source in question agrees with his bible.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Dave, please note that deadman's use of the term "deception" doesn't mean that you've actually been successful in deceiving or convincing anyone here, except of course, yourself.
Paley's the only one here who supports you at all, and trust me, you don't want him on your side. He's so crazy, he thinks America's never been to the moon. How do you feel about that, Dave? You've never answered me.
THE RELIABILITY OF THE GENESIS RECORD -- WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? I have made the claim that Genesis is a compilation of books, originally written on stone tablets, ...
Were they originally written in Hebrew or Summerian or Egyptian, Dave?
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For liberal scholars, Genesis became a nice, religious myth, just one of many myths preserved by the various cultures of the world. Gone was its lofty status as literal, eyewitness history. Norm seems to not like me to say this, but I think the majority of you here buy into this view as well.
Yes, Dave, we all tend to think Genesis is not eyewitness history.
What I don't like is the other lies you're picking up from the fundy sources you use. Lies like Baruch Spinoza thinking writing was invented after Moses. David, go read some Spinoza and find out what he really said. That will prove your sources are lying to you:
Here again is the quote from Ra-Úl's post with my emphasis added:
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Regarding afdave's post on Baruch Spinoza, I found this on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. The references in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; the narration of his death and, particularly, of events following his death; and the fact that some places are called by names that they did not bear in the time of Moses all "make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt" that the writings commonly referred to as "the Five Books of Moses" were, in fact, written by someone who lived many generations after Moses. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch. But the Torah as we have it, as well as other books of the Hebrew Bible (such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) were written neither by the individuals whose names they bear nor by any person appearing in them. Spinoza believes that these were, in fact, all composed by a single historian living many generations after the events narrated, and that this was most likely Ezra. It was the post-exilic leader who took the many writings that had come down to him and began weaving them into a single (but not seamless) narrative. Ezra's work was later completed and supplemented by the editorial labors of others. What we now possess, then, is nothing but a compilation, and a rather mismanaged, haphazard and "mutilated" one at that." Rather different from what afdave quotes. A little further down: "Now in 1670 there was nothing novel in claiming that Moses did not write all of the Torah. Spinoza's most radical and innovative claim, in fact, was to argue that this holds great significance for how Scripture is to be read and interpreted. He was dismayed by the way in which Scripture itself was worshipped, by the reverence accorded to the words on the page rather than to the message they conveyed. If the Bible is an historical (i.e., natural) document, then it should be treated like any other work of nature. The study of Scripture, or Biblical hermeneutics, should therefore proceed as the study of nature, or natural science proceeds: by gathering and evaluating empirical data, that is, by examining the "book" itself -- along with the contextual conditions of its composition -- for its general principles."
It puts the lie to the claims made by your sources, Dave.
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3) NO WRITING IN ISRAEL AT MOSES' TIME (ca. 1400 BC) - Wellhausen said, "Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in writing." (63/393)
Moses wasn't anywhere near Israel until the end of his life. Moses grew up in Egypt and made it to the edge of the promised land before dying. Israel is "the promised land" and Moses died before he could enter. That promised land was Canaan which becomes Israel. Canaan is the early name for what is now called Israel and/or Palestine. There was writing in Canaan, and that may be something they didn't know a couple hundred years ago. Early archeologists might have failed to find any pre-history there.
However, the archeology we have today is not really supporting the Bible story.
Canaan was the land that God promised to Abraham (Gen 12:1-3). Abraham's descendants go to Egypt and were enslaved there. After their exodus from Egypt, they traveled to Canaan under Moses and Moses then dies and the Hebrews reentered the country under Joshua. The Canaanites are said in Deuteronomy 7:1 to have been one of seven nations driven out before the Israelites.
The Canaanites were partly Sumerians in their beliefs for the Sumerians had expanded to other places out of what we know of as Iraq today (supposedly where the garden of Eden was so Eden is probably a Sumerian idea). For a time the Sumerians assumed political control, and imposed their laws, legal system and religion on the place. This is why the Bible gets a bit of Sumerian religion into its mythology. The Sumerian city-states were scattered and not quite identical in their beliefs, they absorbed religious ideas from the people who's been there already too.
Basically, archeology is saying that this land was passing between Egyptian and Sumerian control. It doesn't really leave much room for a major invasion and conquest from a wondering Hebrew nation.
I want to clarify Dave's tactics on C.S. Lewis' claims of "universal morality" as he presented it originally on pages 14-16 of this thread. Basically, Dave is attempting to say " heads I win, tails you lose." If I say that I think Dave is reprehensible for terrorizing kids with threats of he11 and eternal damnation, he seizes on that as a "universal moral" precept...but when I point out that Dave himself doesn't follow that precept ( instead, he continues to terrorize kids)...he shifts the argument to claims about "killing kids" --bait and switch. Now, in the last few pages here, Dave has said that he would in fact kill children if commanded to, and this was not wrong in his eyes. I disagree and would in fact prevent this from happening if I saw it--if neccessary, by sending Dave to the bosom of his evil god. Note also that I don't believe that all Christians think as evilly as Dave, nor do I claim Dave's god is the same as the God of others. Dave's god is more a reflection of his own screwed up mind. At any rate, Dave wants to have his cake and eat it too, he wants to pretend that there is in fact a universal moral "code" concerning the treatment of children/infants, etc., while simultaneously *denying* that others simply don't practice the same treatment of children-- as I noted, there are multitudes of groups/cultures that have and do practice infanticide willingly, without viewing it as "evil." C.S. Lewis knew he was wrong in this claim and stopped making it after J.R.R. Tolkein and others pointed out the flaws in his reasoning and how he was glossing over the data contained in the work of people like Sir James Frazier. But Dave thinks he can play both sides of the net in this game. Again, symptomatic of Dave's innate dishonesty.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Think of how absurd Dave's underlying argument is in the first place. His claim is that a) there is a "universal moral code," and b) the existence of such a code is evidence for the existence of God.
There are problems with both of these assertions. Even if Dave could prove that there are certain things that are considered immoral by all people in all circumstances, that hardly proves this existence of a "universal moral code." It could be mere coincidence that some actions are considered universally to be wrong, or universally right. The fact that the words for "thank you" in Portuguese and Nipponese sound very similar is not evidence that both languages are related (although Dave presumably thinks it is).
If there were a large number of core moral precepts that were universally shared in all cultures all over the planet, that would be evidence for the existence of a "universal moral code." Not only has Dave come nowhere near proving any such thing, but as deadman and others have pointed out, there is substantial contrary evidence.
Even if there were some sort of "universal moral code," that would hardly be evidence for the existence of God. Many moral precepts, such as strictures on murder, violence, incest, etc. have obvious evolutionary advantages for those societies which subscribe to them. Given a choice between assuming societies which have learned to live together and be successful by subscribing to an evolutionarily advantageous moral code, and assuming that moral code was built into our genes (or beamed into our heads) by some sort of nebulous creator god, I'll take the former.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Regarding the Universal Moral Code, there is a more basic amusement to be had at Dave's expense. I am (very) used to Creationist doublethink, but Dave's triplethink is highly entertaining. Somehow, he manages to squeeze or segment the following three ideas, each of which directly contradicts the other two, into one brain (for want of a better term):
1. There is a Universal Moral Code, common to all humans, which establishes that, among other things, the killing of children is wrong. This is "evidence" of the truth of (Dave's) Christian doctrine.
2. Killing children is not necessarily immoral: Dave would do so himself if instructed by his God or his government.
3. The WaiWai, presumably according to their own beliefs and leadership, wickedly killed their own children until Dave's daddy provided their salvation through direct indoctrination in Christian "love".
Just trying to resolve any one of the above ideas with any other gives me a headache.
Eric, Cory: Yeah, I think in most ways, Dave's arguments and vaccillation between points reflect the cognitive dissonance brought on by Epicurus' trilemma : (1) Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot or; (2) he can, but does not want to or; (3) he cannot, and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If he neither can, nor wants to, he is both powerless and wicked. But if an *all-loving* God can abolish "evil," and God really wants to do it, Why is there "evil" in the world?
Dembski, in a PDF he posted about this "problem of evil" basically said that evil pre-existed mankind, but Man brought evil ONTO this existence by disobeying god in "the garden." He views evil as "good" because suffering is the only way to *really* show love...The only way to really let a person know you love them is be willing to suffer for them, and it brings you closer to God by showing you what not to do. I replied to Dembski, in a post that was not allowed...that a valid analogy to his argument would be : The belt preceded the birth of children, but because the first child born in a family disobeyed his Daddy -- that Daddy took out the belt and is now beating his other 6 children daily for the disobedience of the firstborn--sometimes beating them to death. But this is *good* because the daily beatings really show how much the kids love Daddy and it teaches them what not to do, even though they did no wrong in the first place. Utter insanity.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Eric, Cory: Yeah, I think in most ways, Dave's arguments and vaccillation between points reflect the cognitive dissonance brought on by Epicurus' trilemma : (1) Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot or; (2) he can, but does not want to or; (3) he cannot, and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If he neither can, nor wants to, he is both powerless and wicked. But if an *all-loving* God can abolish "evil," and God really wants to do it, Why is there "evil" in the world?
Yep, God is either evil, or incompetent, or possibly both. But definitely not neither.
But still no evidence of a flood, already!
On the other hand, Dave hasn't mentioned his flood in a while, so maybe, not being able to put up, he has instead shut up.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
On the other hand, Dave hasn't mentioned his flood in a while, so maybe, not being able to put up, he has instead shut up.
No chance of that; bet Dave can't hold himself back. Absolutely guaranteed that he's going to claim that the "Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River" proves that the Grand Canyon could have been carved quickly.
No chance of that; bet Dave can't hold himself back. Absolutely guaranteed that he's going to claim that the "Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River" proves that the Grand Canyon could have been carved quickly.
Could-a, would-a, should-a, not good enough. "Did," is the operative term. Even if it were possible for the Grand Canyon to have been carved in a few thousand years (and it ain't), that doesn't prove that it was.
Dave seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that showing something could have happened is the same as showing it did happen. That's why he keeps getting tripped up. His standards of proof are just a little lower than everyone else's, at least when it comes to his own hypotheses.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
If I EVER--and I mean EVER--again read a single word that af<unutterablemoron>dave has written... no, let's make that a single letter that afdave has written... any of the rest of you have immediate permission to shoot me and put me out of my misery. Ninety-five pages of this steaming pile of, um, non-noodly appendages!!! Y'all have got to be kidding me. Excuse me while I lose every shred of my last three meals. Please!
Click back a couple of pages and you'll see a couple more threads totally about 50 more pages. Ay Eff Dee-licious!
oh, and,
Dave, what evidence would you accept as being contradictory to genesis? Please cite both the hypothetical data and the methods used to generate the data. Please be as specific as possible
I think that's about the tenth time you've been asked, by at least 3 different people.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
For liberal scholars, Genesis became a nice, religious myth, just one of many myths preserved by the various cultures of the world. Gone was its lofty status as literal, eyewitness history.... So it is important to me to trace the roots of this theory and see if it has any credibility.
Speaking of lofty credibility—"literal, eyewitness history" is, in fact, fallible, malleable, subject to elisions and distortions. This will be news only to those who have no siblings and have never argued with a spouse or significant other.
But let's say one discounts these studies as part of some vast godless Darwinian conspiracy, and one insists that the "literal, eyewitness history" recorded in one's holy writings is accurate because it's divinely inspired. In that case, how can one dismiss the "many myths preserved by the various cultures of the world"? Is there any myth that isn't based on divinely inspired, literal, eyewitness history?
Is there a rational basis for choosing one's own literal, eyewitness history over any of the other literal, eyewitnessed histories? If so, please explain. Show work. Points off for question-begging and appeals to authority. Spelling counts.
*A shout-out to all the UD/DaveTard fans—this is a Scientific American link.
Now, in the last few pages here, Dave has said that he would in fact kill children if commanded to, and this was not wrong in his eyes.
I think you've missed a basic point, which is that Dave's morality is grounded not only in Biblical literalism, but also in the idea of "Goodies" and "Baddies". If you're fighting for the "Goodies", then it is OK to obey orders from your superiors which apparently contradict the Universal Moral Code. However, if you are fighting for the "Baddies" then it is OK to disobey orders which apparently contradict the Universal Moral Code.
Another way to look at it is that all governments are ordained by God, by the Goodies are more ordained by God than the Baddies.*
What, you want to know how you tell the Goodies from the Baddies? Well, that should be obvious to anyone not blinded by atheistic Darwinist fairy tales...
*It seems Orwell was also writing about YEC's in Animal Farm and 1984
(Slight edit to clear up badly worded first paragraph)
EVIDENCE FOR AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER We have shown that there is abundant evidence for an Intelligent Designer. This evidence falls into two categories: Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning.
BIOLOGICAL MACHINES Skeptics believe that the Biological Machine evidence is an 'Argument from Incredulity' but this is not the case. Rather, it is a Logical Inference from the observed evidence. We observe specified complexity in man-made technology every day and it is quite intuitive to conclude which items are the product of Intelligent Design and which are not. No one has to do a rigorous, mathematical proof to determine if an airplane or an automobile was designed or not. So there is no reason to believe that this same intuition would not also work well on biological machines, which--no honest molecular biologist can deny--is precisely what we find in Nature. The skeptic will say, "It's fine to use intuition on man-made machines because you can know something about the designer--man. But you do not know anything about your supposed Intelligent Designer of Nature." Well this is bogus and I showed it to be so with my example of the "Airplane and the Wai-wai Indians." The Indians didn't know anything about airplanes or airplane designers, but when they saw one for the first time, they were able to make a fairly intelligent statement about it, namely, "Look, a sky canoe! There must be an Expert Sky Canoe Builder somewhere who made this wonderful sky canoe!" Now you can laugh all you want, but this is the EXACT same situation we find ourselves in when observing the innovations in Nature. My case is strengthened even more when you consider the utter and complete failure of evolutionary-minded scientists to produce ANY evolutionary change which can in any way be considered "upward." Evolutionists like to say "Well, what do you mean by 'upward'?" But this is just game playing. They know good and well what is meant by that as ilustrated by Eric Murphy when he said that it takes millions of years to make a jellyfish from a bacteria. "Upward" simply means "more complex."
COSMIC FINE TUNING Skeptics also like to say that many things about Cosmic Fine Tuning, all of which seem quite confusing and illogical to me. One objection I heard was that Cosmic Fine Tuning may exist in THIS universe, but not in others. Well excuse me, but I live in THIS one. I'm not sure what the other objections are, but I fail to see how you can escape the fact that many, many parameters of this universe are fine tuned for the sustenance of life on Planet Earth. This to me is amazing and strongly suggests Intelligent Design.
UNIVERSAL MORAL CODE The Universal Moral Code is a fascinating idea and we have hashed that one around quite a bit. In the time since I proposed this, I have seen many confirmations that such a code exists right here on this forum!! One great example is lying. I could not disagree more with all of you about the topics we are debating, but one thing I agree with you on is the LYING IS A BAD THING. Interesting, isn't it, that you and I both agree that lying is bad? I bet there is not a culture in the world that you can find presently or in history that upheld lying as a virtuous thing in society. Ditto for traitors. Do you know anyone who has ever been honored for being a traitor? Or how about a child abuser? Know anyone who won accolades for that? No. Can you cite any culture that does not agree that it's a good idea to treat others the way you want to be treated? No, you cannot. Not saying everyone practices this. I sure don't always. But the bottom line is that C.S. Lewis is right. There are certain universal laws of morality which are agreed upon by humans everywhere and the fact is that no one lives up to them perfectly. We all have an awareness of what we OUGHT to do, but none of us DOES IT perfectly. Lewis argues that this is strongly suggestive of some Outside Influence which is 'trying' to get us to live up to this Moral Standard. Hmmmm ... could this Outside Influence be one and the same as the Intelligent Designer? Sure seems to me that it could be.
APES AND HUMANS Apes are quite different than humans. This is an obvious statement, but apparently, evolutionists feel that Chimps and Humans are more closely related than Chimps and Gorillas. This one still boggles my mind and is a classic illustration of just how blind one can become if one adamantly rejects the statement in the Book of Genesis ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
AGE OF THE EARTH In spite of the fact that Historians make a clear distinction between History and Pre-History, the distinction being Written Records vs. No Written Records, thus implying that the dates of History are more definitely known than the dates of pre-history, evolutionists feel that their methods of dating rocks and artifacts are very reliable. They universally reject the idea of a Global Flood in spite of the rocks literally screaming out the evidence for it, and they don't like to hear about how this would affect their dating assumptions. Never mind also that archaeology, which is a highly regarded method of verifying historical events, is mute on events before about 5500 BC. This should be a huge red flag for evolutionists, but apparently they disregard this. Never mind also that archaeology has confirmed the Biblical account for the birthplace of civilization as Mesopotamia, and has also confirmed the historicity of the Book of Genesis in many ways. In spite of all this evidence, evolutionists continue to speculate about man's supposed 200,000 year history and his supposed gradual transition from a brutish, pre-human to a modern human. And in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, evolutionists insist that their radiometric dating is based on good assumptions and that the earth is, in fact 4.5 billion years old. One has to wonder if maybe, just maybe they are little bit willing to close their eyes to the problems with their assumptions and the contrary evidence because of their need for millions of years to make their ToE work.
THE WONDER OF BIBLE PROPHECY I find it interesting that skeptics disregard the hundreds of amazing Biblical prophecies about the Messiah found here www.messiahrevealed.org and the prophecies of Daniel about the major world powers -- Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, and focus their skepticism instead on two prophecies which give them a little bit of ammo for their arguments. The Tyre prophecy admittedly has some points that can be construed one way or the other, and the Nebuchadnezzar in Egypt prophecy does not have much in the way of historical verification. But it should be noted that at many times in recent history, skeptics have argued that Bible prophecy is false or that some character or nation in the Bible is mythical, simply because archaeology was silent at that time. The skeptics time and again have been proven to be wrong once more information is known.
HISTORICITY OF GENESIS - WHY IT IS A GOOD SOURCE FOR SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESES We covered this on p. 82 of this thread and we found that the Documentary Hypothesis is wrong and that a better theory is the Tablet Theory of Genesis, summarized by Curt Sewell here
Basically, we are saying that there is good evidence that Genesis was literal, eyewitness history and so should be treated with great respect as such.
ONWARD TO EVIDENCE FOR THE FLOOD Having now established the reason for taking notice of the Genesis Record and justifying the use of this book as a source for scientific hypotheses regarding Origins, we now move on to Evidence for the Flood.
GONE FOR A WEEK IN JULY I only have about a week to spend on it right now, so we probably will not finish. I know you all will be very saddened to know that I will be in Mexico from July 7 - 15 and may not have access to a computer. How will you survive without your daily dose of AFDave? Maybe you can all regroup from your devastating losses and come back with renewed vigor and insights for when I return!!
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OK. SPINOZA WASN'T QUITE AS MISGUIDED AS I THOUGHT I took Norm's challenge and did some checking. Apparently my source was wrong about Spinoza publishing the idea that writing was not invented until the 8th century BC. He merely said that the present form of the Pentateuch was written by someone much later than Moses. Here is a link to his paper published in 1670.
I normally check sources more carefully than that, but in the last two centuries, there have been such major goofy theories published which have subsequently been discredited, I found it quite easy to believe that Spinoza published this. My source was a website, BTW, not McDowell.
Goofy theories do abound, though, and I do have Wellhausen right when I say he believed that writing was unknown IN ISRAEL at the time of Moses. Here is his quote ...
Quote
"Ancient Israel was certainly not without God-given bases for the ordering of human life; only they were not fixed in writing." (Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel. Translated by Black and Menzies. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1885, p.393)
And it sounds like this Wellhausen School theologian believed writing to be a late invention even in the 'civilised' countries. Here is his quote in 1893,
Quote
"Of the legendary character of the pre-Mosaic narrators, the time of which they treat is a sufficient proof. It was a time prior to all knowledge of writing, a time separated by an interval of more than four hundred years, of which there is absolutely no history, from the nearest period of which Israel had some dim historical recollection, a time when in civilised countries writing was only beginning to be used for the most important matters of State ... And even when writing had come into use, in the time, that is, between Moses and David, it would be but sparingly used, and much that happened to the people must still have been handed down simply as legend." (Hermann Schultz, Old Testament Theology, Translated from the fourth edition by H.A. Patterson, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1898, p.25, 26)
I also have it right when I say that the 4 major presuppostions of the Documentary Hypothesis ...
Quote
1) PRIORITY OF SOURCE ANALYSIS OVER ARCHAEOLOGY
2) NATURAL (EVOLUTIONARY) VIEW OF ISRAEL'S RELIGION AND HISTORY
3) NO WRITING IN ISRAEL AT MOSES'TIME (ca. 1400 BC)
4) THE LEGENDARY VIEW OF PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES
... have been thoroughly discredited. See my references for this earlier. Or of course, you can go read McDowell.
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QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Eric..
Quote
Are you joking Dave? Of course written records are not as reliable as independent corroborating evidence. This is for the same reason that eyewitness testimony is often not as reliable as physical evidence.
Fine. Go tell that to the historians. Tell them they should quit making a distinction between History and Pre-History.
Chris...
Quote
was made that creationism is based on a careful weighing of the evidence, which led to the conclusion that the bible was accurate.
Almost right. I claim that we examine as much evidence as we can for the historicity of the Bible. Leading archaeologists have done this and it is accurate in the history that can be verified by archaeology. Then we examine the prophecy and find amazing accuracy as well. Then we observe the Bible's claims about mankind and find that they also are accurate. Our eyebrows are now raised because of this amazing book, so we allow it to be a source for scientific hypotheses regarding Origins. Then we examine the evidence and see if the story (hypotheses if you will) of the Creation/Fall/Curse/Flood/Dispersion, etc. is supported.
And I really could care less who it was that introduced the Creation and Flood ideas to me. I am only interested in finding out if it is true or not.
Incorygible...
Quote
Simply put, you have argued we "can't get here from there", since (1) to do so would require a number of mutations that increased the "information" in the genome; and (2) such mutations do not occur (or occur so rarely as to be irrelevant as a mechanism in "ape-to-human" evolution).
So before we argue about (2), it's time for you to demonstrate (1). To do that, you need to do the following:
i. Define "information". I don't care whether you follow Shannon or Kolmogorov, Safarti or Spetner. Define it in a way that can be measured (else how do we know that it has increased?) and be consistent. ii. Pick a genetic difference or mutation (ANY difference you wish) found in humans that is not found in chimps or gorillas. (You had better be able to show that this genetic difference is unique to humans.) iii. Show that this genetic change involved an increase in information pursuant to your definition in (i).
That's it. That's all it takes to demonstrate (1). I don't think you can do it, but you had better try before we talk about (2).
Actually, the burden is on YOU to prove that it COULD happen. There has been no experimental data to my knowledge showing how this could be done.
Steve Story...
Quote
...yet he's the landslide winner for dumbest. What is it he does, which makes him so obviously dumber than Ghost and the rest? What's he doing differently?
I cannot tell you what I am doing differently, because I don't know what others do. But here's the question you should really be asking yourself: Who's dumber? The ones who believe Chimps and Humans are more related than Gorillas and Chimps? Or the one who does not? The ones who think that the IBM computers and Airbuses of the Natural World happen by chance? Or the one who thinks they require a designer? Hmmmm...
Norm...
Quote
THE RELIABILITY OF THE GENESIS RECORD -- WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? I have made the claim that Genesis is a compilation of books, originally written on stone tablets, ...
Were they originally written in Hebrew or Summerian or Egyptian, Dave?
We do not know. Probably an ancient pictographic script for the earliest tablets. Examples of these have been found. I am sure they were written in whatever language the patriarch making the record spoke. No doubt they were translated over time much as the Bible has been translated from its original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic into Latin, German, English and now hundreds (maybe thousands) of languages.
Incorygible...
Quote
1. There is a Universal Moral Code, common to all humans, which establishes that, among other things, the killing of children is wrong. This is "evidence" of the truth of (Dave's) Christian doctrine.
2. Killing children is not necessarily immoral: Dave would do so himself if instructed by his God or his government.
3. The WaiWai, presumably according to their own beliefs and leadership, wickedly killed their own children until Dave's daddy provided their salvation through direct indoctrination in Christian "love".
Just trying to resolve any one of the above ideas with any other gives me a headache.
Here is why your head hurts ... you are leaving out the key ingredient that makes it all make sense ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
If you would accept that, then everything would fall in place beautifully for you. The truth is, that your 'head was hurting' before you ever knew about me. No human being can go through life denying the existence of his Creator and NOT have his head hurt at times. Mankind was made to know his Creator. And those who refuse to will have many headaches of all different kinds.
You see, if you believed in a Creator you would understand that ...
1) God made the universe and everything and everyone in it, so He makes the rules 2) The rules are made for mankind, not God 3) No one can argue sensibly with the Creator. If he made everything, why can He not make any rules He wants to?
So here are the rules He made, and we have to live with, like it or not ...
* Murdering children is immoral for individuals, as is murdering any human * Governments were authorized by God at times in the OT to destroy entire people groups including children because of extreme circumstances. * Governments today are also authorized by God to destroy large numbers of people including children (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) under extreme circumstances.
Accepting this, note the following ... 1) The Wai-wai were immoral in killing their children b/c it falls under the Murder prohibition 2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not immoral b/c it falls under God-Ordained Government Killing. Ditto for Joshua and Canaanites. 3) The Universal Moral Code exists and is evident in many ways, including the fact that all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing.
No headache at all, Incorygible. But yes, BIG headache if you don't accept ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
Deadman...
Quote
Eric, Cory: Yeah, I think in most ways, Dave's arguments and vaccillation between points reflect the cognitive dissonance brought on by Epicurus' trilemma : (1) Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot or; (2) he can, but does not want to or; (3) he cannot, and does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If he neither can, nor wants to, he is both powerless and wicked. But if an *all-loving* God can abolish "evil," and God really wants to do it, Why is there "evil" in the world?
I have already explained this in detail, and it makes perfect sense as well. Do you need me to repeat it?
JonF...
Quote
Eric ... "But still no evidence of a flood, already! On the other hand, Dave hasn't mentioned his flood in a while, so maybe, not being able to put up, he has instead shut up."
JonF..."No chance of that; bet Dave can't hold himself back. Absolutely guaranteed that he's going to claim that the "Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River" proves that the Grand Canyon could have been carved quickly."
Pop Quiz time: Who's more astute? Eric or JonF?
Answer: JonF
***********************************************
AND TOMORROW ............. THE FLOOD !!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So there is no reason to believe that this same intuition would not also work well on biological machines, which--no honest molecular biologist can deny--is precisely what we find in Nature.
Yes there is.
Quote
There must be an Expert Sky Canoe Builder somewhere who made this wonderful sky canoe!" Now you can laugh all you want, but this is the EXACT same situation we find ourselves in when observing the innovations in Nature.
No it isn't. Maybe hundreds of years ago when we didnt know any better it was a good inference.
Quote
COSMIC FINE TUNING
Just provide me with evidence of the probabilities of the constants taking these values. If you are assuming that all values have an equal probability I will need evidence to support this.
Quote
UNIVERSAL MORAL CODE
Unfortuately could also be explained as a product of evolution.
Quote
And I really could care less who it was that introduced the Creation and Flood ideas to me. I am only interested in finding out if it is true or not.
Fair enough, except thats not what most creationists do, they latch onto previous ideas as a way to integrate their faith with science, and are completely biased in their examination of the evidence.
Click back a couple of pages and you'll see a couple more threads totally about 50 more pages. Ay Eff Dee-licious!
oh, and,
Dave, what evidence would you accept as being contradictory to genesis? Please cite both the hypothetical data and the methods used to generate the data. Please be as specific as possible
I think that's about the tenth time you've been asked, by at least 3 different people.
Dave's brain is still short-circuited by this simple question...
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Further evidence how deeply delusional AF Dave really is:
Quote (afdave @ June 29 2006,09:49)
EVIDENCE FOR AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER We have shown that there is abundant evidence for an Intelligent Designer. This evidence falls into two categories: Biological Machines and Cosmic Fine Tuning.
Dave, how many times do you need to be told that you have "shown" no such thing? I can't tell you how many times I've said you have done nothing but argue these two points, without presenting any evidence whatsoever for either one. Yet you still persist in claiming you have "shown" that both are true.
You haven't. Move on, will ya? Are you going to talk about the flood "evidence" sometime before we all grow old and die?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, what evidence would you accept as being contradictory to genesis? Please cite both the hypothetical data and the methods used to generate the data. Please be as specific as possible
Here's some ...
1) Written historical records back to 100,000 or so BC instead of 5500 BC 2) Lots more 'humanoid' fossils than we have now and lots less equivocal ones 3) Existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world. 4) Evidence for a Super-Homo-Sapiens race such as the one Hitler thought he had. 5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms 6) Demonstrated macroevolution in the lab -- like the creation of some Super Fruit flies or something. 7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more. 8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
There's just a few for you ...
Oh ... and I think someone was asking why I don't link my blog to this site ...
Answer: I might when I figure out how ... it doesn't seem to make sense to link to it from an article b/c articles change. And I don't know how to do it in another way. Also, I pay almost zero attention to my blog ... I have no great plans for it yet. I just use it now to deposit articles I like.
Eric...
Quote
Dave, how many times do you need to be told that you have "shown" no such thing? I can't tell you how many times I've said you have done nothing but argue these two points, without presenting any evidence whatsoever for either one.
You are right, Eric. I have not taken you to a lab and made any measurements while you watched and took notes. If that's what you are waiting for, you will be waiting a long time.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
ONLY ONE STUDENT IN TEN BELIEVES THE 'EVO-MALARKEY'
Quote
The Times
Education
Creationism taught by design
CREATIONISM is finding its way into university lecture halls, raising concerns with some academics that the biblical story of creation will be given equal weight to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Compulsory lectures in intelligent design and creationism are going to be included in second-year courses for zoology and genetics undergraduates at Leeds University, The Times Higher Education Supplement (June 23) reveals.
But there’s a twist: lecturers will present the controversial theories as being incompatible with scientific evidence. “It is essential they (students) understand the historical context and the flaws in the arguments these groups put forward,” says Michael McPherson, of Leeds University.
Despite the clear anti- creationist stance of these lecturers, the move has set warning bells ringing across the UK science community.
“It would be undesirable for universities to spend a lot of precious resources teaching students that creationism and intelligent design are not based on scientific evidence,” says David Read, the vice- president of the Royal Society.
Yet other academics are keen to see evolutionary theory challenged in university lecture halls.
“The scientific establishment prevents dissenting views,” says Professor Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. “I have a lot of respect for those who have true scientific credentials and are upfront about their views.”
Students, though, seem open to creationism. One study, carried out by Professor Roger Downie, of the University of Glasgow, found that one science student in ten did not believe in evolution.
“This gives a very poor prognosis for their understanding of what science is and their ability to be scientists,” Prof Downie says.
I don't care how they teach it as long as they teach it. Students are smart enough to decide for themselves if it's true or not. Just the exposure will go a LONG ways toward ridding the Planet of Evo-Nonsense!!!
I love it!!!!!!!!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDolt's reading comprehension seems to be just as good as his reasoning ability.
Dolt claims:
Quote
ONLY ONE STUDENT IN TEN BELIEVES THE 'EVO-MALARKEY'
Article says:
Quote
One study....found that one science student in ten did not believe in evolution.
You stupid git.
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
Are you joking Dave? Of course written records are not as reliable as independent corroborating evidence. This is for the same reason that eyewitness testimony is often not as reliable as physical evidence.
Fine. Go tell that to the historians. Tell them they should quit making a distinction between History and Pre-History.
I don't need to tell historians, Dave; they already know. When written records (yes, even "eyewitness testimony") is contradicted by physical evidence, which way do you think the historians go?
Given that most of what the Bible says is flat-out contradicted by physical evidence (pretty much all of Genesis, for one thing), the historians do the same thing everyone else does: they go with the physical evidence.
Quote
JonF...
Quote
Eric ... "But still no evidence of a flood, already! On the other hand, Dave hasn't mentioned his flood in a while, so maybe, not being able to put up, he has instead shut up."
JonF..."No chance of that; bet Dave can't hold himself back. Absolutely guaranteed that he's going to claim that the "Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River" proves that the Grand Canyon could have been carved quickly."
Pop Quiz time: Who's more astute? Eric or JonF?
Answer: JonF
***********************************************
AND TOMORROW ............. THE FLOOD !!
No, JonF isn't more "astute" than I am (well, not in this case; in other cases he clearly is). He's just more optimistic. And is probably cutting you more slack than I am.
I know you've been promising evidence for your "global flood" for weeks now, and have failed to deliver. Pure inductive reasoning indicates this trend is likely to continue. This is at least the second time you've promised your flood "evidence" "tomorrow," and so far your promises have been empty.
Further, notice JonF didn't say you'd actually be presenting evidence; he merely said you'd be presenting a "claim." Not the same thing, Dave. Not by a long shot.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, how many times do you need to be told that you have "shown" no such thing? I can't tell you how many times I've said you have done nothing but argue these two points, without presenting any evidence whatsoever for either one.
You are right, Eric. I have not taken you to a lab and made any measurements while you watched and took notes. If that's what you are waiting for, you will be waiting a long time.
No, Dave, you don't need to rent a lab coat. I want "evidence" for your claims, not "argument"—I'm not requiring that you actually go out and create the evidence. You can borrow it from someone else. Although in the matter of "cosmic fine tuning," "evidence" won't help you, because it's a crap argument. You have no idea how likely or unlikely the parameter values are, so no matter how "finely tuned" they are, they're not "evidence" for anything. For all you know, the physical parameters cannot take any other values, and therefore the probability of their having the values they have is one! If that's the case, what happens to your argument?
And your "biological machines" argument falls flat on its face because you cannot provide evidence to support it. Does a human heart look anything like any pump ever designed by humans? Does a tree look anything at all like a solar array? Does a mitochondrion look anything at all like a combustion engine, or anything ever designed by humans?
Dave, we are familiar with the designs of one type of designer: humans. We have no idea what the designs from any other kind of designer would look like, and you have no grounds for assuming that what a Creator God designed would remotely resemble anything a human would design. So what's your grounds for assuming that any biological structure is designed, when you have no idea what it should look like? There's abundant evidence of ad hoc cobbling together in the biological world, and one thing you basically never see is some structure that is not clearly derived from a simpler structure. Brand new designs do not spring forth fully formed without antecedent in the natural world. Happens all the time in human designs.
What does that tell you, Dave?
But my larger point is, beyond the fatal weakness of your arguments, you've never troubled yourself to actually provide any evidence to support them. So even if they were good arguments (and they're not), you've never taken the time and effort to support them with any evidence anyway.
But a word to the clueless: don't bother. Your arguments aren't worth the trouble. But at the same time, don't go around claiming you've "shown" something when you've done no such thing. Making such a claim is basically a lie, Dave, and I know you hate being accused of lying.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
ONLY ONE STUDENT IN TEN BELIEVES THE 'EVO-MALARKEY' Article says: Quote One study....found that one science student in ten did not believe in evolution.
Aw, bummer. Missed that little word 'not'. For a brief moment I thought we were making really fast progress in the UK. Oh well ... the exposure to the truth should help, no matter what light it's presented in.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't need to tell historians, Dave; they already know. When written records (yes, even "eyewitness testimony") is contradicted by physical evidence, which way do you think the historians go?
They go with the written records. This is why they have History which covers written records and Pre-History which is covered by your equivocal methods. It's really simple.
Eric...
Quote
No, Dave, you don't need to rent a lab coat. I want "evidence" for your claims, not "argument"—I'm not requiring that you actually go out and create the evidence. You can borrow it from someone else.
Since you don't like my evidence, tell me what you think evidence should look like and I'll see what I can do.
Eric...
Quote
Does a human heart look anything like any pump ever designed by humans? Does a tree look anything at all like a solar array?
Yes, actually, except much more sophisticated. Engineers actually study biological designs to find out how to design things better. The field is called Biomimetics, I think.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
the exposure to the truth should help, no matter what light it's presented in.
The truth is that dolts like you believe what you want to believe, then distort the evidence to fit your conclusions. The only question is whether you realize you're doing it or not. I'll take this as one of the few instances where it was an honest mistake.
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
AFDolt's article seems to reference this study, which actually looked at survey responses by medical students, not scientists. So the only errors Dolt made were embracing the conclusion of the referenced study because it seemed to fit his preconceptions, not bothering to find and read the actual study to discover that the article he quoted misrepresented it (medical students are not scientists nor are they trying to be), and failing to notice the difference between 10% of a group self-identifying as uninformed idiots (like him) and 90% of a group self-identifying as uninformed idiots (like him). Par for Dolt's course so far.
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
AFDolt's article seems to reference this study, which actually looked at survey responses by medical students, not scientists. So the only errors Dolt made were embracing the conclusion of the referenced study because it seemed to fit his preconceptions, not bothering to find and read the actual study to discover that the article he quoted misrepresented it (medical students are not scientists nor are they trying to be), and failing to notice the difference between 10% of a group self-identifying as uninformed idiots (like him) and 90% of a group self-identifying as uninformed idiots (like him). Par for Dolt's course so far.
-------------- "Molecular stuff seems to me not to be biology as much as it is a more atomic element of life" --Creo nut Robert Byers ------ "You need your arrogant ass kicked, and I would LOVE to be the guy who does it. Where do you live?" --Anger Management Problem Concern Troll "Kris"
The truth is that dolts like you believe what you want to believe, then distort the evidence to fit your conclusions. The only question is whether you realize you're doing it or not.
Now there's a great example of the pot calling the kettle black.
EVOBOT REASONING 1) The Bible is a fairy tale (never mind it's not really) 2) So we have to come up with an alternate explanation
The truth is that dolts like you believe what you want to believe, then distort the evidence to fit your conclusions. The only question is whether you realize you're doing it or not.
Now there's a great example of the pot calling the kettle black.
EVOBOT REASONING 1) The Bible is a fairy tale (never mind it's not really) 2) So we have to come up with an alternate explanation 3) Evolution works on a small scale (microevolution) 4) Let's extrapolate it to a large scale (macroevolution) 5) But we need millions of years to make it believable 6) A lawyer invents Uniformitarianism. Cool. 7) Oops. The Creos shot that one down, we need something else. 8) Ok how about Radiometric Dating 9) Well, it works great if we close our eyes, plug our ears and hold our nose.
Sorta hard to do science with my hands all occupied closing all those orifices ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, what evidence would you accept as being contradictory to genesis? Please cite both the hypothetical data and the methods used to generate the data. Please be as specific as possible
Here's some ...
5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms ... 7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more. 8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
Well, we HAVE data like this, but you keep dismissing it is misguided or fake or whatever.
The question that you keep DODGING is what criteria are you using to evaluate the data? The answer would seem to be that you simply dismiss any data that disagrees with your bible.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms ... 7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more. 8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
Well, we HAVE data like this, but you keep dismissing it is misguided or fake or whatever.
No you don't .. (5) is equivocal at best, (7) if you think man behaves like animals, nothing more, you need help, and you haven't given me anything definitive on (8)
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The question that you keep DODGING is what criteria are you using to evaluate the data? The answer would seem to be that you simply dismiss any data that disagrees with your bible.
What criteria do YOU think I should be using?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The question that you keep DODGING is what criteria are you using to evaluate the data? The answer would seem to be that you simply dismiss any data that disagrees with your bible.
What criteria do YOU think I should be using?
Sorry, Dave, you keep dodging this one. You don't get to turn it around on us. You can answer it, or just admit that you automatically dismiss anything contrary to the bible. We will, of course, take your continued dodging as the above admission.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Folks, this is why it is futile to attempt to reason with afDave -- he seriously believes that when writing and physical facts conflict, writing is always to be deemed correct. And he has his chosen writing; no facts can possibly disabuse him, because facts do not matter in the face of the written word. That's how he weasels out of the continuous occupation of Tyre, the reality of the flood in the face of the mountain of contravening evidence, and the manifold evidence that he is a liar and a lunatic. One really must wonder what species that lowlife scumbag is, as he certainly does not meet the definitional criteria for being human -- he denies he is an animal, and demonstrates that he is not rational. On his own grounds we would be justified in treating him as a rabid dog. Fortunately, not being Christian, we have some morals to prevent us.
I don't need to tell historians, Dave; they already know. When written records (yes, even "eyewitness testimony") is contradicted by physical evidence, which way do you think the historians go?
They go with the written records. This is why they have History which covers written records and Pre-History which is covered by your equivocal methods. It's really simple.
No. Wrong. They don't, Dave. When historians look at written records that are contradicted by physical evidence, they go with the physical evidence. Do a little research on the Kensington Runestone if you want to see how this works.
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Eric...
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No, Dave, you don't need to rent a lab coat. I want "evidence" for your claims, not "argument"—I'm not requiring that you actually go out and create the evidence. You can borrow it from someone else.
Since you don't like my evidence, tell me what you think evidence should look like and I'll see what I can do.
I can't not "like" your evidence, Dave, because you haven't presented any. When you present evidence that a) physical parameters are finely tuned (which you haven't), and b) that those physical parameters are unlikely to have taken those values (which you also haven't), then I can make some sort of comment on your evidence.
So now you know what kind of evidence I'm looking for. But don't bother trying to find b), because it doesn't exist, and you might as well not bother with a) either, because it's your argument that's the problem anyway. And in the meantime, don't go around claiming you've "established" something when you've done no such thing.
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Eric...
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Does a human heart look anything like any pump ever designed by humans? Does a tree look anything at all like a solar array?
Yes, actually, except much more sophisticated. Engineers actually study biological designs to find out how to design things better. The field is called Biomimetics, I think.
No, Dave, a heart doesn't look like any kind of human pump except where humans have deliberately tried to imitate a heart. And how does that get your argument anywhere? Humans have to try really hard to imitate something that should be really easy to imitate if a heart was "designed" by something even remotely similar to a human. And if it wasn't designed by anything remotely similar to a human being, then what's your justification for saying that we can extrapolate from human design to biological structures?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
All writing, Shirley ... not just the writing in the Bible. The Bible is one of many historical records.
So Shirley, should we put greater weight on Carbon 14 dating of the bones of a deceased person of history? Or on the written records about that person?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
EVOBOT REASONING 1) The Bible is a fairy tale (never mind it's not really)
Dave, do a little reading on the subject of cosmology (shouldn't take more than a year or two) and then get back to me with whether you believe the Bible is anything other than a fairy tale when it comes to the origin of the universe. I'm currently reading "Warped Passages" by Lisa Randall, one of the foremost theoretical physicists in the world today (her papers are among the most cited of any scientist currently working), and essentially the entire book is a refutation of the Genesis myth. If you think you are in any way, shape, or form intellectually capable of refuting, or even understanding, Ms. Randall's research, you're even more delusional than you think I think you are. And the same could be said of any book written by any theoretical physicist written in the past century.
You have no conception of the planet-sized ball of evidence refuting your Bible, Dave. Literally dozens of papers are published every day which completely contradict the Genesis myth. I think it's safe to say that all of science—all of it—contradicts the Bible's account of creation.
If you'd get your head out of creationist websites and actually read something—anything—about real science, you'd be forced to give up your delusions.
But I know there's no way you're ever going to do that. Your delusions are far too precious for you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
All writing, Shirley ... not just the writing in the Bible. The Bible is one of many historical records.
So Shirley, should we put greater weight on Carbon 14 dating of the bones of a deceased person of history? Or on the written records about that person?
No-brainer, Dave. People lie all the time. Without reference to external corroboration, how do you separate the lies from the truths? Faith?
(I think we know how Dave's gonna answer this one.)
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No, Dave, the Bible is NOT a historical record, any more than Gone with the Wind is. Rather less, in that GWTW has substantially more correspondance with reality as independantly confirmed than the Bible does.
And yes, Dave, as Eric pointed out, and as everyone else seems to know, if the writing and the physical evidence conflict, you discard the writing. Or you discard the putative connection between the writing and the physical specimen. Sort of like "We have a written record that these bones belong to Scarlett O'Hara" plus "We have carbon dated these bones to 2500BCE, we have dendrochronology which indicates the coffin was made from wood from a tree which died circa 4510 years ago" leads to "So we conclude that despite the written records, these are not the bones of Scarlett O'Hara". It's really simple Dave, and everyone does it. Do you look up someone's address in a phone book and then abuse the current residents because the phone says your friend lives there, so clearly the present occupants must be intruders? Of course you don't. Except when it comes to the writings you idolize. Bibliolatry is an ugly thing Dave. Almost as ugly as your lack of sense, knowlege, and goodness.
no hugs for you, but plenty for the rational animals here, Shirley Knott
Eric: Does a human heart look anything like any pump ever designed by humans? Does a tree look anything at all like a solar array?
Dave: Yes, actually, except much more sophisticated.
Eric: No, Dave, a heart doesn't look like any kind of human pump except where humans have deliberately tried to imitate a heart.
One other thing, Dave: this is the problem with argument from analogy. You clearly think a heart (or a mitochondrion, or a flagellum, or a pancreas) looks like something designed by humans, and I clearly don't. Who is right? Isn't it a matter of opinion?
If you're trying to base your argument for a Creator God on such "opinions," you're going to get exactly where you have gotten so far, i.e., nowhere.
So you can look high and low for various biological structures that you think "look designed," and I can look at the same structures and honestly hold to the opinion that they look nothing like they were designed. Then what do you do?
On the other hand, I can show you plenty of evidence for a big bang that happened 13.7 billion years ago. That evidence isn't a matter of opinion, Dave. You can't say the power spectrum of that CMB doesn't match a perfect blackbody power spectrum, because that's a matter of fact. Not opinion; fact.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I doubt you'll actually read this, Dave--anymore than you actually read the "article" that you posted, showing the exact opposite of what you claimed it said. Personally, I view that little episode as symptomatic of your entire view of the world and history and science, Dave.
Think about what it took for you to post that article -- (1) You see the article and grasp on to it in a fit of excitement, and manage to overlook what it actually says in that self-congratulatory egotistic ecstasy of yours. (2) You copy and paste it , probably onto notepad..again, not really reading it (3) You re-paste it here, complete with bold caps proclaiming " ONLY ONE STUDENT IN TEN BELIEVES THE 'EVO-MALARKEY.' " You move to the bottom of the pasted material and add a "kicker" saying : "Students are smart enough to decide for themselves if it's true or not. Just the exposure will go a LONG ways toward ridding the Planet of Evo-Nonsense!!! I love it!!!!!!!!! " (4) You hit "add reply" and sit back, preening about how this will really "get" those nasty evil people that pointed out how much you lie...And you get slapped with your own stupidity again.
This kind of willful blindness, this cognitive filtering, this aphasia...shows the depths to which you are willing to skew reality...to yourself... and it is a defensive mechanism.
Earlier, stevestory was ruminating on what made you the way you are, Dave, so I asked a friend of mine that's a psychologist (doctorate from Stanford) to look over your posts here and she's reasonably sure that you have mild dyslexia and you're likely bipolar, with deep insecurities masked by delusions of grandeur. She ran down a list of traits that you exhibit: (1) Compartmentalization--You repeatedly lie, twist, and "cheat" while posting in multiple places how religion changed you and made you a person that rises above such things. When you are shown to be a liar, you excuse yourself and wall off these things, maintaining your views while remaining unconscious of the cognitive dissonance (2) Compensation -- counterbalancing perceived weaknesses by emphasizing strength in other arenas. Your science is weak at best, so you retreat to claims of religious superiority, and when you are shown wrong (As in the case of Tyre, Nebuchadrezzar, your claims on Babel and the flood)...you jump back to other defenses like; (3) Denial-- refusing to accept reality and to act as if a painful event, idea or emotion-- did not exist. This is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms and is characteristic of early childhood disturbances. (4) Projection --attributing your undesired impulses/behaviors/ideas onto others. I could go on...Fantasy ( your fanciful claims about what I thought of your father), Rationalization (your claims about Tyre and Nebuchadrezzar aren't really wrong, they'll be proved right in the future), "Undoing" --attempting to take back behavior or thoughts that are unacceptable..such as lies or insults which you rationalize away. It goes on and on.
Personally, I don't really care if YOU get help, Dave, but I do pity your family and those people that have to directly deal with your problems. Will you take this seriously? Probably not, but eventually disaster will strike and you'll be forced to deal with yourself. Or maybe not, and you can go on to screw over a new generation of kids with claims that are demonstrably false and will retard their growth emotionally and intellectually...passing on the torch, as it were. Demon-haunted world , indeed
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
We covered this on p. 82 of this thread and we found that the Documentary Hypothesis is wrong and that a better theory is the Tablet Theory of Genesis, summarized by Curt Sewell here
OK. SPINOZA WASN'T QUITE AS MISGUIDED AS I THOUGHT I took Norm's challenge and did some checking. Apparently my source was wrong about Spinoza publishing the idea that writing was not invented until the 8th century BC. He merely said that the present form of the Pentateuch was written by someone much later than Moses. Here is a link to his paper published in 1670.
I normally check sources more carefully than that,...
No, David, that last line is a bald faced lie.
You normally DO NOT check sources at all. In fact your sources seem to be lying consistently about exactly the same things -- repeating the lie over and over just as Hitler recommended that big lies be repeated.
It's not just Spinoza, I checked out some other names your articles mentioned in connection to the Graf-Wellhausen Documentary Hypothesis.
From an idea first proposed by Jean Astruc (1684-1766) they developed the “JEDP Documentary Hypothesis” of higher criticism, which said that the early parts of the Old Testament couldn’t have been written during the times they described. They based this on the belief that writing had not evolved until about 1000 BC.
We find that he was a Catholic, not an evolutionary atheist, whose work in this regard was called "Conjectures on the original documents that Moses appears to have used in composing the Book of Genesis. With remarks that support or throw light upon these conjectures."
Again, David, a straw man used by one of your sources. Like Spinoza, Jean Astruc also believed Moses wrote it seems. Though I'm not yet certain.
Here are some quotes gathered while skimming it doing a global search for the word "writing."
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Oral folklore can very well contain round numbers, such as the twelve sons and the seventy souls of the family of Jacob, the twelve wells and the seventy palm trees at Elim, the seventy elders and the twelve spies; but a chronological system, whole lists of exact and considerable numbers, bare catalogues of personal names, none of them having any significance, dates and measurements such as those in the account of the flood in the Priestly Code, require writing even to originate, not to speak of transmitting them.
And:
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The question is, which of the two writings stands nearest to the starting-point? Is it the one which attaches most importance to elements which are foreign to the nature of oral tradition altogether and only added in literary composition? It would be a curious thing if the writing down of the tradition began with writing down what the legend did not contain. What is set before us in the Priestly Code is the quintessence not of the oral tradition, but of the tradition when already written down. And the written account of the primitive history which it employs is the Jehovistic narrative.
So, there's another quote that would seem to deny the assertions of your sources that says Spinoza, Astruc and Wellhausen believed that writing developed later. In fact, each one argues that writing might exist earlier than every one of your linked sources claims.
Why do they tell these lies over and over again, David?
I suspect it is because they are trying to deny the obvious which is that modern archeology, contrary to their claims, is in fact reinforcing the view of separate J and E authors with the Sumerian material backing up the idea that the E author/source is Sumerian and generally a polytheist.
Your only evidence against the polytheism is some old book's claim for a secret Sumerian monotheism -- but that claim is not backed up at all by checkable sources. What you give us is stuff like this:
Wiseman also notes that Dr. H.H. Frankfort reported in his Third Preliminary Report on the Excavations at Tell Asmat (Eshunna) that, "... we discover that the representation on cylinder seals, which are usually connected with various gods, can all be fitted in to form a consistent picture in which a single god worshipped in this temple forms the central figure. It seems, therefore, that at this early period his various aspects were not considered separate deities in the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon." This shows that polytheism developed after monotheism, not the other way around as is often imagined.
That is not evidence, Dave. That looks more like projection and wishful thinking by a man desperately trying to believe in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.
I have no idea what the guy is seeing when he says "cylinder seals, which are usually connected with various gods, can all be fitted in to form a consistent picture in which a single god worshipped in this temple forms the central figure." I'll I know is that he's looking at a picture and interpreting it. Well, some people see spaceships represented on Mayan temples.
It could be as legit as a picture of an Apollo astronaut on an Egyptian tomb wall, or a face seen in a cloud. (So, Dave, does your intelligent designer put faces in clouds, or does your own brain do it?)
In fact, the older writing is, the more likely there are to be separate sources for the biblical material to mix.
The idea of finding writing being older than Moses would somehow disprove Graf-Wellhausen is just an illogical assertion. Neither you nor any of you sources say why writing being older would have any effect on the Graf-Wellhausen theory.
Care to explain that, Dave? Where is the logical connection between the dating and the theory?
Ah, well, I'm sure you'll try to fob off what I wrote, Dave. You'll make what you think is a witty remark and overlook that the proof is in the pudding.
Go back 10 pages ( never mind the preceding 80+) and look at how many times you were shown to be utterly wrong, Dave. Look at your most recent claims...things that are demonstrably false like :
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Never mind also that archaeology, which is a highly regarded method of verifying historical events, is mute on events before about 5500 BC
This despite your inability to deal with the sites you were offered, sites that are not dated radiometrically, sites that are not shown false by the highly selective dendrology claims of the "expert" you posted.
Things like :
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The Tyre prophecy admittedly has some points that can be construed one way or the other, and the Nebuchadnezzar in Egypt prophecy does not have much in the way of historical verification. But it should be noted that at many times in recent history, skeptics have argued that Bible prophecy is false...simply because archaeology was silent at that time
When the reality is that nothing in archaeology will overturn the facts about Tyre *not* sinking beneath the sea and that Amasis II continued to rule Egypt when the bible said it was supposed to be a deserted wasteland for 40 years.
Things like:
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I claim that we examine as much evidence as we can for the historicity of the Bible... Then we examine the prophecy and find amazing accuracy as well
See above
Things like
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So here are the rules He made, and we have to live with, like it or not ... * Murdering children is immoral for individuals, as is murdering any human 3) The Universal Moral Code exists and is evident in many ways, including the fact that all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing
Aztec, Incan, Phoenician, Chinese, Greek, Celtic, Minoan Crete all sacrificed children. They did not view it as "evil," they saw it as good, and in fact the Aztec sacrifices were treated with reverence and often went willingly and joyfully to their deaths. I also gave you information on infanticide, particularly among those cultures that don't view children as being human until they are past a specific age...like the WaiWai, many cultures don't believe that children have souls or spirits that MAKE them human until they are two, three or more years old. Furthermore, "murder" (as opposed to mere killing) is a legal-political term referring to unlawful killing. The sheer fact that many non-christian cultures viewed killing children as murder...shows that legal systems can arise without the word of your god, it also shows that human groups don't like behaviors that fracture their own groups and leave them vulnerable.
Here, we arrive at the crux of the matter concerning C.S. Lewis' frankly ignorant claims...claims that he stopped using after his fellows pointed out how wrong and deliberately blind he was, Dave...unlike you, Lewis seems to have had some sense of honor in that respect. The fact is that IN-GROUP lying, being traitorous, random murder...cause the destruction of the social systems in a culture...thus, they disintegrate and don't ENTER into history. Lewis initially claimed that this could not arise "naturally," that it had to be supernatural...yet it is not, as the examples given show.
Let me give you one small example, Dave. The Ik tribe. Go look them up. Granted, when Colin Turnbull first described the Ik, they were undergoing famine and stress, much like the WaiWai were undergoing stress...but the fact remains that the Ik, AFTER the famine, continued to cast out their children that are three years old. This behavior also PRECEDED the famine/drought. Those children are left to fend for themselves and form age-groups for defense. Lying to OUTSIDERS is quite often a good thing within groups...consider the Khoi-San, or the dozens of Amerind tribes whose most common term for "stranger" also means "enemy." You simply don't know what you're talking about in any of the instances above, Dave, But you'll shrug that off and pretend that you're right, anyway---using one or more of the defensive mechanisms you've cultivated so carefully.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The skeptic will say, "It's fine to use intuition on man-made machines because you can know something about the designer--man. But you do not know anything about your supposed Intelligent Designer of Nature." Well this is bogus and I showed it to be so with my example of the "Airplane and the Wai-wai Indians." The Indians didn't know anything about airplanes or airplane designers, but when they saw one for the first time, they were able to make a fairly intelligent statement about it, namely, "Look, a sky canoe! There must be an Expert Sky Canoe Builder somewhere who made this wonderful sky canoe!"
So let me get this straight...you argue that the difference between yourself (or at least humans who build airplanes) and the Wai-Wai is analogous to the difference between God (sorry, the Intelligent Designer of Nature) and yourself? You don't think that the Wai-Wai have firsthand knowledge of the design abilities of humankind that they can apply to the airplane problem? That the creation of airplanes to the WaiWai is equivalent to the creation of all of nature to us? Savages, eh, Dave?
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Incorygible...
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Simply put, you have argued we "can't get here from there", since (1) to do so would require a number of mutations that increased the "information" in the genome; and (2) such mutations do not occur (or occur so rarely as to be irrelevant as a mechanism in "ape-to-human" evolution).
So before we argue about (2), it's time for you to demonstrate (1). To do that, you need to do the following:
i. Define "information". I don't care whether you follow Shannon or Kolmogorov, Safarti or Spetner. Define it in a way that can be measured (else how do we know that it has increased?) and be consistent. ii. Pick a genetic difference or mutation (ANY difference you wish) found in humans that is not found in chimps or gorillas. (You had better be able to show that this genetic difference is unique to humans.) iii. Show that this genetic change involved an increase in information pursuant to your definition in (i).
That's it. That's all it takes to demonstrate (1). I don't think you can do it, but you had better try before we talk about (2).
Actually, the burden is on YOU to prove that it COULD happen. There has been no experimental data to my knowledge showing how this could be done.
You gotta be kidding me, Dave. You made an argument. I challenged you to demonstrate that the basis of that argument is even worth investigating (i.e., by showing that your claim was valid on its face). Then you turn around and claim the burden of proof lies with me? What a joke! SHOW ME that what you contend happens at all (i.e., mutations requiring an "increase in information" are present in humans but not the other great apes), AND THEN I'll show you how it could happen. Grow a pair.
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Here is why your head hurts ... you are leaving out the key ingredient that makes it all make sense ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
If you would accept that, then everything would fall in place beautifully for you. The truth is, that your 'head was hurting' before you ever knew about me. No human being can go through life denying the existence of his Creator and NOT have his head hurt at times. Mankind was made to know his Creator. And those who refuse to will have many headaches of all different kinds.
You see, if you believed in a Creator you would understand that ...
1) God made the universe and everything and everyone in it, so He makes the rules 2) The rules are made for mankind, not God 3) No one can argue sensibly with the Creator. If he made everything, why can He not make any rules He wants to?
So here are the rules He made, and we have to live with, like it or not ...
* Murdering children is immoral for individuals, as is murdering any human * Governments were authorized by God at times in the OT to destroy entire people groups including children because of extreme circumstances. * Governments today are also authorized by God to destroy large numbers of people including children (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) under extreme circumstances.
Accepting this, note the following ... 1) The Wai-wai were immoral in killing their children b/c it falls under the Murder prohibition 2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not immoral b/c it falls under God-Ordained Government Killing. Ditto for Joshua and Canaanites. 3) The Universal Moral Code exists and is evident in many ways, including the fact that all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing.
No headache at all, Incorygible. But yes, BIG headache if you don't accept ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
Thanks for the patronizing evangelism, Dave. But you presume too much if you think I am not intimately familiar with Christianity (even your perverse breed thereof). If there was anything going on in that head of yours, such contradictory, EVIL thoughts would bring on the migraines for you as well. And I'm not about to ditch the facultative abilities that make my head hurt when I read this shit in favour of your particular God conceit. Sorry.
But tell me:
Objectively, what separates "murder" from "God-ordained killing"? Objectively, what separates Joshua from a Wai-Wai elder? Since you are emphatically willing to pull the trigger on an infant if your government, apparently a proxy for God, asks you to, please tell me you have some way of telling the difference between "murder" and "God-ordained", right? Care to let us in on what it is? How can you be sure you aren't deceived into "murder" though you believe it to be "God-ordained killing"? How do you separate yourself from the anti-abortionist murderers who believe their evil to be "God-ordained"? As you sit there with your finger on the trigger, are we supposed to simply take you at your word that you know "God-ordained" when you hear it? Should we not fear the potential evil you are apparently so easily capable of?
By the way, note that whatever lofty, God-inspired status you apply to "governments" when it comes to killing, it is ALWAYS an individual with his or her finger on the trigger. How do you resolve this with, "murdering children is immoral for individuals, as is murdering any human". Can both God and governments give moral get-out-of-jail-free cards? If so, why can't Wai-Wai elders or governments you don't support?
You state, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not immoral b/c it falls under God-Ordained Government Killing. Ditto for Joshua and Canaanites." So am I to glean that you do not question any "Government Killing" throughout history? Again, how can you know it's "God-Ordained"? It seems to me your argument is that only atheist "governments" are capable of murder -- if gott mit uns, it's just killin'. No wonder you guys are so adamant about portraying all the big baddies in history as atheists.
And again, if "all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing", do you (once again) imply that the WaiWai are less than people? Where does racism stand in your Universal Moral Code?
Given your obvious superiority complex (actually, strike that, since you've come right out with the analogy -- it's a god complex) when it comes to the heathen WaiWai, might they not qualify as one of those "existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world" that you would accept as evidence contradictory to Genesis? If not, why not, since you obviously view them as sub-human?
You are presented with a story. Written in words, printed in ink, and everything. It details how a government-sanctioned group of men from one country invaded another country and brutally massacred innocents to claim the land they believed their God had ordained to be their own.
3. Short Answer: Why? If you answer (f) to either of the above questions, explain what information is necessary to adequately distinguish the context of the story and its subsequent moral lesson.
Dave, what evidence would you accept as being contradictory to genesis? Please cite both the hypothetical data and the methods used to generate the data. Please be as specific as possible
Here's some ...
1) Written historical records back to 100,000 or so BC instead of 5500 BC 2) Lots more 'humanoid' fossils than we have now and lots less equivocal ones 3) Existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world. 4) Evidence for a Super-Homo-Sapiens race such as the one Hitler thought he had. 5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms 6) Demonstrated macroevolution in the lab -- like the creation of some Super Fruit flies or something. 7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more. 8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
There's just a few for you ...
Read the question and answer again. Especially the parts about "data" and "methods."
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
All writing, Shirley ... not just the writing in the Bible. The Bible is one of many historical records.
So Shirley, should we put greater weight on Carbon 14 dating of the bones of a deceased person of history? Or on the written records about that person?
The 14C dating. Unquestionably. Much more difficult to fake or make errors in 14C dating.
Go back 10 pages ( never mind the preceding 80+) and look at how many times you were shown to be utterly wrong, Dave...
I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that you're talking to a brick wall.
It has been said that George Washington could not tell a lie; that Richard Nixon could not tell the truth; and that Ronald Reagan could not tell the difference.
Afdave makes Reagan look like a paragon of judicious objectivity.
I also gave you information on infanticide, particularly among those cultures that don't view children as being human until they are past a specific age...like the WaiWai, many cultures don't believe that children have souls or spirits that MAKE them human until they are two, three or more years old.
IIRC, you find this in cultures with high infant mortality rates. I first heard about it in reference to...Nepal? I can't quite remember. They considered a baby to be a human being at somewhere around 90 days. If it died before that, it was considered an illusion, or a kind of menstrual phantom. No big deal.
1) Written historical records back to 100,000 or so BC instead of 5500 BC
You were given conclusive evidence that human culture dates back far older than just writing. You were shown art, and musical instruments, and settlements that date back well over 10,000 years ago; as far as 50,000 years in some cases.
You were shown how the dating methods were calibrated by six independent methods that all corroborate one another.
You're still too much of a cowardly, dishonest turd to even discuss the accuracy of the dating methods.
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2) Lots more 'humanoid' fossils than we have now and lots less equivocal ones
The fossil record is expected to be sparse, and the humanoid fossils we do have are equivocal only to an untrained ignoramus like yourself.
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3) Existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world.
Chimps, Bonobos, and Gorillas do have their own 'culture'. What you fantasize their culture 'should be' has no bearing on scientific reality.
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4) Evidence for a Super-Homo-Sapiens race such as the one Hitler thought he had.
WTF does this have to do with the ToE?
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5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms
You were given a detailed overview of the recent Tiktaalik fossil find as one of many examples, but you were too stupid and ignorant to appreciate it.
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6) Demonstrated macroevolution in the lab -- like the creation of some Super Fruit flies or something.
Speciation, which is the definition of 'macroevolution', has been demonstrated both in the lab and in the wild (cichlid fishes, various 'ring species', etc.). You have already been provided with numerous examples.
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7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more.
Humans are animals you nitwit. Of course we behave like other animals, and vice versa.
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8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
You were presented with dozens of examples of archaeological finds that contradict your literal 6000YO Genesis interpretation of the Bible. You're too intellectually dishonest to deal with them.
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There's just a few for you ...
Well, we kept our end of the bargain Dave - we fulfilled most of the requirements on your list. Are you ready to keep your word and give up your literal Genesis claims yet?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Hey Dave, here's another question for you to try to avoid: Given two written works from antiquity, how does one determine whether either, neither or both are works of fact as opposed to works of fiction?
Hey Dave, here's another question for you to try to avoid: Given two written works from antiquity, how does one determine whether either, neither or both are works of fact as opposed to works of fiction?
And what happens when you have two different written works which directly contradict each other? Do you have a method (other than just picking the one you agree with more) for determining which, if either, of them is factually accurate?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You are presented with a story. Written in words, printed in ink, and everything. It details how a government-sanctioned group of men from one country invaded another country and brutally massacred innocents to claim the land they believed their God had ordained to be their own.
3. Short Answer: Why? If you answer (f) to either of the above questions, explain what information is necessary to adequately distinguish the context of the story and its subsequent moral lesson.
Excellent post, incorygible... and totally wasted on dave, as usual.
But what is there more to say to a person who says this:
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Here is why your head hurts ... you are leaving out the key ingredient that makes it all make sense ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
If you would accept that, then everything would fall in place beautifully for you.
...Duh. Why do you think he posted all his "evidence" from day 1 again, and also posted that, too? He was getting shaky. He needed to VALIDATE himself again, by reposting his drivel, not to us, but to his imaginary audience in his head, that's listening, gaping in awe at his wisdom. He was never speaking to us- he doesn't care about us and what we say. He just likes to present his "arguments" neatly and with lotsa titles and numbers and bullets and be all like "and now that we demonstrated this, let's move to the next part, my dear children" and his imaginary audience goes "whoooooaaaa" and he feels like he's on top of the world- always for the glory of God, oh yes, ALWAYS for that of course. And no stinking 'baloney' like reality and the truth will take that feeling away from him.
Hey dave, add another question to all those you'll never have the guts to answer:
Say you're an archaeologist, and you want to find out who built Stonehenge. You can rely on the written records regarding it, or try to accumulate physical evidence.
Which will you choose, dave? Explain why, too. Just remember that I'll hold you to your answer.
...But what am I saying? You'll just chicken out and avoid answering, as usual...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder were both recovered, and an NTSB accident investigation was begun. According to the FDR, the co-pilot of the aircraft deliberately shut off the engines and put the plane into a near vertical dive which overstressed the airframe and caused the plane to break up in mid-air. The VCR showed that minutes before the dive the pilot had left the cockpit to hit the head, leaving the co-pilot alone in command. The VCR also caught the sounds of the pilot leaving, the co-pilot shutting the door from the inside and saying out loud (in Arabic) “I put my trust in God” several times before doing the -3g nose over. A possible motive for a potential suicide was also found. The co-pilot had just been told he was being removed from his normal cross-Atlantic route (with a big drop in pay) due to allegations of sexual misconduct, and the EgyptAir Exec who had demoted him was on the plane as a passenger. Every flight control system on a 767 was thoroughly gone over, and no failure mechanism for the FDR results save deliberate pilot action could be identified.
The NTSB concluded that the co-pilot had committed suicide, and took everyone on the plane with him.
The Egyptian government and Egyptian Pilots Union vehemently denied that any of their pilots would do that, as suicide is repugnant to their Islamic culture. They instead produced written, eyewitness testimony from the co-pilot’s family and friends that said he was a normal, upbeat guy with no suicidal tendencies. They also claimed a 'different interpretation' of the FDR and VCR data, but couldn't show why it was different except that it went against their religious preconceptions.
OK Dave, you’re with the NTSB. Do you accept the written history from the family over the empirical data from the FDR and VCR? Why or why not?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not immoral b/c it falls under God-Ordained Government Killing. Ditto for Joshua and Canaanites.
Here's a key difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Joshua and Canaanites, God ordained or not.
The bomber crew that dropped the bomb and the president who gave the orders, were using a (high tech, but) crude, blunt force weapon, not capable of discriminating between combatants and strategic targets, and children (other than being able to pick a general target area to destroy).
Joshua and his soldiers however, unless they employed a massively destructive weapon like fire, pretty much had to walk up to their victims and slit their throats. There would be every opportunity for every individual soldier to decide, purposefully, to kill a child.
The pilot of the Enola Gay, and the pilots of the bombers who much more destructively fire bombed Dresden and cities in Japan, had no way of preventing their weapon from killing innocents, short of aborting their entire misson.
Therefore, Joshua's soldiers' actions are reprehensible, and Truman's pilots' are not.
5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms ... 7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more. 8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
Well, we HAVE data like this, but you keep dismissing it is misguided or fake or whatever.
No you don't .. (5) is equivocal at best, (7) if you think man behaves like animals, nothing more, you need help, and you haven't given me anything definitive on (8)
Dave's got a point with (7). I can't think of any animals that justify killing their young with "God told me to do it". Only Humans do that. Man, we're one special creation...
Accepting this, note the following ... 1) The Wai-wai were immoral in killing their children b/c it falls under the Murder prohibition 2) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not immoral b/c it falls under God-Ordained Government Killing. Ditto for Joshua and Canaanites. 3) The Universal Moral Code exists and is evident in many ways, including the fact that all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing.
No headache at all, Incorygible. But yes, BIG headache if you don't accept ...
IN THE BEGINNING GOD ...
Yup, Voltaire was right. Those who can make you believe absurdities CAN make you commit atrocities.
... (7) if you think man behaves like animals, nothing more, you need help, ...
Dave's got a point with (7). I can't think of any animals that justify killing their young with "God told me to do it". Only Humans do that. Man, we're one special creation...
Be fair. There's more going on with the humans versus animal thing.
No other creature on this planet has anywhere near our level of technology and science. It does seem odd, but that science and technology evolved in a different way that's not as easy to explain. Our earliest human ancestors were not living too much differently than a monkey troop except for having a few stone tools -- and it stays that way for a long time with just these few stone tools and fire and only minor variation and improvement. Then there's this shift were some mutant brain gene started spreading and we started getting a lot more inventive. Suddenly we're having technological ages -- bronze age, iron age, computer age as this technology evolves without any more apparent genetic contributions from mutation seeming to be involved.
Yeah God (or as Frued pointed out man's God IS a projection ) is a weapon of mass destruction.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
1) Written historical records back to 100,000 or so BC instead of 5500 BC 2) Lots more 'humanoid' fossils than we have now and lots less equivocal ones 3) Existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world. 4) Evidence for a Super-Homo-Sapiens race such as the one Hitler thought he had. 5) A true transitional nature of the fossil record -- it is woefully lacking in transitional forms 6) Demonstrated macroevolution in the lab -- like the creation of some Super Fruit flies or something. 7) Observation that mankind behaves just like an animal, nothing more. 8) Archaeological finds contradicting the Bible
1) Why 10000 years? We have drawings and artworks back to 60 000 or so. 2) Why "a lot more"? we have fossils of several human species (not only H. sapiens). Each one debunks the bible. 3) Homo neanderthalensis, who BTW was the first Homo to bury his dead folks. 4) WTF? 5) Define transitional. Microraptor, Tiktaalik, Australopithecus (ape or human?), Homo erectus (transitional between H. habilis and H. sapiens)... 6) Speciation in the lab in Drosophila and butterflies (+ several plants). 7) We are animals that eat and reproduce. Do you want our behavior to be 100% identical to, say, dogs? Do you want chimps to be 100% identical to gorillas? They aren't. 8) Reading problems, AFDave?
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (Sorry, Eric ... outta time again for the Flood ... too many fun questions to answer)
Improv...[quote]The question that you keep DODGING is what criteria are you using to evaluate the data? The answer would seem to be that you simply dismiss any data that disagrees with your bible. [/quote]
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? Examples: the Bible talks about Hittites. We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are. The Bible talks about king Ahab of Israel. Let's go dig ... Voila! There he is on Shalmaneser's Stela ... and so on. There have been literally HUNDREDS (maybe thousands) of finds confirming the historicity of the Bible. And to me, some of the most spectacular ones are the finds in Mesopotamia confirming that civilization did in fact begin in Mesopotamia, and it was a very high level of civilization--neat architecture, agriculture, music, metallurgy, etc--just as my History Book (the Bible) said.
Eric...[quote]No. Wrong. They don't, Dave. When historians look at written records that are contradicted by physical evidence, they go with the physical evidence. Do a little research on the Kensington Runestone if you want to see how this works.[/quote]
Fine. Fine. Let's throw away the history books and exhume Napoleon's bones to find out when he REALLY lived. Ditto for Washington. Sure, Eric. Whatever you say.
This is almost as ludicrous as the chimp/gorilla thing! You guys are really sitting here trying to tell me that all that work by Langdon and Woolley and the rest is SUBORDINATE to you guys and your Carbon 14 dating!!?? You gotta be kidding me!!
Eric...[quote]And in the meantime, don't go around claiming you've "established" something when you've done no such thing.[/quote]
I most certainly WILL go around claiming that I have established all kinds of things since I came here. It has been a very profitable time for me to come here and see not only how empty your own arguments for evolution are, but also how some of you claw and spit and hiss like a cornered cat when I demolish your arguments. Then you say bizarre things like my evidence isn't evidence at all.
Eric..[quote]And if it wasn't designed by anything remotely similar to a human being, then what's your justification for saying that we can extrapolate from human design to biological structures?[/quote]
Eric ... I model my investing activities after Warren Buffet and I admire the man alot. He said once that there are some people who "get it" (referring to Value Investing) and some people who don't. I think it's the same with this issue. You obviously don't "get it."
Eric ...
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Literally dozens of papers are published every day which completely contradict the Genesis myth.
Let me correct your statement just a wee bit. You meant to say ...
Literally dozens of papers are published every day which attempt to contradict the Genesis myth ... but they fail.
Eric...
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No-brainer, Dave. People lie all the time. Without reference to external corroboration, how do you separate the lies from the truths? Faith?
Real simple. You read history in the Bible or some other history book. You go out and dig in the rocks to see if what you find agrees. Guess what? They've done that with the Bible and you cannot find a better history book on the Planet based on corroboration by archaeological finds.
Shirley ... no hugs for AFD! Finally! I kept wondering when you were going to stop hugging me. Let me ask you Shirley ...
When did Hammurabbi live? How did you determine that? When did Nebuchadnezzar live? How did you determine that? When did Cyrus live? How did you determine that? When did Artaxerxes live? How did you determine that? When did Alexander live? How did you determine that? When did Julius Caesar live? How did you determine that?
When you've finished that homework, get back to me and we can continue this discussion, OK?
Eric..
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One other thing, Dave: this is the problem with argument from analogy. You clearly think a heart (or a mitochondrion, or a flagellum, or a pancreas) looks like something designed by humans, and I clearly don't. Who is right? Isn't it a matter of opinion?
This is a critical point. It DOES look like something a human would design EXCEPT, and there is a big EXCEPT ... EXCEPT it is far more sophisticated. It is exactly like what you would expect if a UFO from some advanced civilization crashed on earth and there was some advanced technology on board. In that case, (if it was still functional) we would recognize design, but we would be awed by the advanced nature of the innovation. What just blows my mind about you guys is that you fail to see that this is the EXACT situation we have wih biological innovations. We have SUPER-high tech, right here under our noses!!!!!!! And our engineers are even trying to imitate it because it is so, so, so, so good!!! How can you not see that!!?? This is probably the most frustrating thing to me about being here. I want EVERYONE in the world to see what an absolutely remarkable thing these biological machines are!! As Behe said, everyone should have been opening champagne bottles and celebrating all over the world when the wonders of the cell were elucidated!!! But instead, everybody's down in the mouth. This blows my mind!!
Deadman...
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I doubt you'll actually read this, Dave--anymore than you actually read the "article" that you posted, showing the exact opposite of what you claimed it said. Personally, I view that little episode as symptomatic of your entire view of the world and history and science, Dave.
I read every word you write. Your a smart guy. As for "that little episode" ... do you realize how many times a day I get to gleefully write something in bold caps which refutes you? With as much as I write every day, it happens a lot. You do that often enough, you're going to miss a few here and there. I will continue to make mistakes in my life as long as I am breathing, but if one of you favorite techniques for refuting me is to pounce like a cat every time I misread something, then it says a lot about the vacuousness of your position. Have you so little of substance to say to support your skeptic views that you go find a psychologist to analyze me? Interesting.
Deadman...
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Demon-haunted world , indeed
I suppose you are saying that there are no real demons in the world? You would not say that if you knew what my dad knew. Demons are real alright. Again, go ask the Wai-wais. Your eyes would be opened to a lot of things if you would actually fly down there and talk to those people.
Also Deadman (and Aftershave) ... you guys need to read your dictionary more.
Webster's Dictionary lie n: an untrue statement mad with intent to deceive
The stuff you guys accuse me of lying about are not lies. No intent to deceive. Go back to your dictionary.
Oh ... and Deadman ... have you researched the difference between the spread of Islam and the spread of Christianity during the first 300 years of each religion? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.
Norm...
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So, there's another quote that would seem to deny the assertions of your sources that says Spinoza, Astruc and Wellhausen believed that writing developed later. In fact, each one argues that writing might exist earlier than every one of your linked sources claims.
I only had one source that said Spinoza published that writing was a late invention--Herald Magazine. Curt Sewell and Josh McDowell are my other sources and they both say the correct thing, which is that Astruc and wellhausen believed erroneously that writing was unknown IN ISRAEL in Moses' day. You are quibbling about a small point, though. My guess is that if you searched the works of scholars in that era before modern archaeology, you would find many that believed writing was not invented until late (maybe not as late as what the Herald Magazine article said), but late. Many scholars in the 19th century believed in an evolutionary view of man. Even the Wellhausian theologian I quoted sounds like he subscribes to the viewpoint that writing developed late ...
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"Of the legendary character of the pre-Mosaic narrators, the time of which they treat is a sufficient proof. It was a time prior to all knowledge of writing, a time separated by an interval of more than four hundred years, of which there is absolutely no history, from the nearest period of which Israel had some dim historical recollection, a time when in civilised countries writing was only beginning to be used for the most important matters of State ... And even when writing had come into use, in the time, that is, between Moses and David, it would be but sparingly used, and much that happened to the people must still have been handed down simply as legend." (Hermann Schultz, Old Testament Theology, Translated from the fourth edition by H.A. Patterson, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1898, p.25, 26)
Is he saying that there no writing in ANY country prior to 400 years before Moses? Or just in Israel? Basically, there WAS NO Israel prior to 400 years before Moses. All you had was Jacob and his sons. I'm not sure what he is saying, but I am going to try to find a World History book from the the early 18th century and see what it says about the development of writing.
We're getting off track, though. The important thing is that the Documentary Hypothesis has proven to be wrong in the light of archaeology. You need to read Josh McDowell's scholarly work if you really want to deal with this honestly. As for Original Monotheism, not only do I have the quote you mentioned, I also have Stephen Langdon of Oxford. He states ...
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...the history of the oldest civilization of man is a rapid decline from monotheism to extreme polytheism and widespread belief in evil spirits.” Stephen H. Langdon, Semitic Mythology, Mythology of All Races, Vol. V, Archaeol. Instit. Amer., p. xviii, 1931
Go check my source if you want to, but I believe it to be accurate as I have read the works of other excavators in this time period and this corroborates their testimony.
Norm...
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The idea of finding writing being older than Moses would somehow disprove Graf-Wellhausen is just an illogical assertion. Neither you nor any of you sources say why writing being older would have any effect on the Graf-Wellhausen theory.
Discovering that Israel did in fact have sophisticated forms of writing in Moses' day does huge damage to the Graf-Wellhausen theory. Again, here are the 4 major pre-suppostions of the theory:
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1) PRIORITY OF SOURCE ANALYSIS OVER ARCHAEOLOGY 2) NATURAL (EVOLUTIONARY) VIEW OF ISRAEL'S RELIGION AND HISTORY 3) NO WRITING IN ISRAEL AT MOSES'TIME (ca. 1400 BC) 4) THE LEGENDARY VIEW OF PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES
These all have been thoroughly discredited. See my references for this earlier. Or of course, you can go read McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol 2.
Deadman...
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Never mind also that archaeology, which is a highly regarded method of verifying historical events, is mute on events before about 5500 BC.
This despite your inability to deal with the sites you were offered, sites that are not dated radiometrically, sites that are not shown false by the highly selective dendrology claims of the "expert" you posted.
Deadman, you are talking about a different thing. The reason historians say that history began about 5500 years ago is because of WRITTEN RECORDS. The stuff you are talking about is NOT written records. It is dated with equivocal methods. As for Tyre and Eqypt, I gave you plenty of good evidence for believing that those prophecies were in fact fulfilled. You picked prophecies which admittedly allow for some controversy, but there is no way you can take these 2 prophecies and say, "See? Bible prophecy is wrong." Why don't you look at all the other prophecies about which there is no question at all?
Deadman...
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They did not view it as "evil," they saw it as good, and in fact the Aztec sacrifices were treated with reverence and often went willingly and joyfully to their deaths.
I have not studied this, but my guess is that when this practice was originally instituted, there were many mothers who shed tears. As time went on, it is conceivable that people would get used to the practice and become "joyful" about it, although again here, my guess is that it was a similar situation to the Christian martyrs who also went joyfully, but who would not have chosen to die if given the choice. My whole point is that while some cultures exalted the sacrifice of children, there was some overriding reason for doing so. It was not a natural thing for them. They had to be appeasing the gods or something. No human being naturally kills children without some huge, overriding reason for doing so. And it is this instinct that I am speaking of when I talk about Universal Moral Codes. Something was dreadfully wrong with those cultures for them to become so hardened that they would voluntarily kill their children.
Deadman...
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The sheer fact that many non-christian cultures viewed killing children as murder...shows that legal systems can arise without the word of your god
Yes. My point exactly. You just confirmed Lewis and you didn't even mean to. He is saying that this instinct is "inscribed upon every heart." There is no need for a Holy Book or a spoken word from a prophet to determine these basic Universal Moral Standards. Everyone knows them automatically. They are instinct. And this, in turn, is proof for an Outside Influencer of Humans.
Deadman...
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Lying to OUTSIDERS is quite often a good thing within groups...
Lying to outsiders says nothing about Lewis' theory. Our military lies to outsiders during war to gain a strategic advantage. But it is Universal Moral Standard that lying WITHIN your group is a bad thing. No one in that group wants to be labelled as a liar by members of his own group. Untrustworthiness is grounds for shunning in any group. That's why I don't care much if you guys call me a liar--I just consider the source. You are not a member of my group. Now if my business partners or other church members think I'm a liar, that would get my attention.
Incorygible...
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So let me get this straight...you argue that the difference between yourself (or at least humans who build airplanes) and the Wai-Wai is analogous to the difference between God (sorry, the Intelligent Designer of Nature) and yourself? You don't think that the Wai-Wai have firsthand knowledge of the design abilities of humankind that they can apply to the airplane problem? That the creation of airplanes to the WaiWai is equivalent to the creation of all of nature to us? Savages, eh, Dave?
Of course they do understand the design abilities of humankind. But how do they know a human designed airplanes? Many groups have seen airplanes and assumed it was the work "of the gods." The point is that the most sensible explanations we can make about phenomena are those based upon our own experience. These types of explanations can readily be called "scientific" explanations, because they are based upon OUR OWN scientific experience. If we begin speculating and saying, "well, we have never seen an eyeball design itself by chance, but we think it did anyway" now we are not being scientific because we are not basing our statements upon any prior experience we have had, but on some fairy tale experience which "might possibly be." The analogy with the Wai-wai and airplanes is a good one because they are most scientific if they say "Hmmm...let's analyze this airplane thingy ... it has features of a canoe ... people get in and out of it like a canoe ... it goes places like our canoes, it has a strange paddle on the front like our paddles ... let's call it a Sky Canoe! ... maybe an Expert Sky Canoe Builder made this." Now this type of reasoning would be a lot smarter than if they said "Hmmm...we've never seen one of these ... this is not like our canoes so no one could have designed this ... maybe it developed gradually over millions of years!" This is exactly what you guys sound like when you talk about biological machines. And yet I'm the dumb one!
Incorygible...
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You gotta be kidding me, Dave. You made an argument. I challenged you to demonstrate that the basis of that argument is even worth investigating (i.e., by showing that your claim was valid on its face). Then you turn around and claim the burden of proof lies with me? What a joke! SHOW ME that what you contend happens at all (i.e., mutations requiring an "increase in information" are present in humans but not the other great apes), AND THEN I'll show you how it could happen. Grow a pair.
This ... (i.e., mutations requiring an "increase in information" are present in humans but not the other great apes) ... is NOT my contention. My contention is that it is impossible to start with an "ape ancestor" and end up with a human by successive, small changes in the genome. This contention is supported by all experimental data that I know of and by reason, logic and intuition. I have repeatedly shown you examples of data which support my contention. I don't know what else I can do. I can lead a horse to water, but I cannot make him drink. (Not calling you a horse) (horse's rear, but not a horse ... just kidding)
Incorygible...
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Objectively, what separates "murder" from "God-ordained killing"? Objectively, what separates Joshua from a Wai-Wai elder? Since you are emphatically willing to pull the trigger on an infant if your government, apparently a proxy for God, asks you to, please tell me you have some way of telling the difference between "murder" and "God-ordained", right? Care to let us in on what it is? How can you be sure you aren't deceived into "murder" though you believe it to be "God-ordained killing"? How do you separate yourself from the anti-abortionist murderers who believe their evil to be "God-ordained"? As you sit there with your finger on the trigger, are we supposed to simply take you at your word that you know "God-ordained" when you hear it? Should we not fear the potential evil you are apparently so easily capable of?
Murder is committed by an individual acting on his own. God-ordained killing is only allowed by governments, whether they be a large sophisticated government like ours, or a small tribal government consisting of a chief and his elders. First of all, I am convinced that God made his will known to Adam right from the beginning. This should have been transmitted to all of Adam's descendants and quite possibly was, judging from the evidence. What is His will? Well we can only determine that from later writings--i.e. the Law of Moses. It is clear from this that the death penalty is God-ordained and that killing in war is also God-ordained. But due process is also God-ordained. And there are certain crimes worthy of death and certain crimes that are not. Child sacrifice was prohibited among other things. Secondly, I, personally am not willing to pull the trigger on anyone, in war time or not. I would not have signed up to be one of Joshua's foot soldiers or the Enola Gay pilot. I cannot imagine killing another human being. I don't even like to think about it. I don't even like hunting because I feel sorry for the animals. Now of course, if a mugger threatened my wife or kids, I might pull the trigger, but I have no desire to do this at all. Thirdly, your last two questions make me think you do not understand the Christian position. Under the Christian worldview, people do not individually determine "this situation is God-ordained and that situation is not." Under the Christian worldview--an example of this is America--individuals must abide by the law. Killing can only take place within the boundaries of the law. If it goes outside this, then the individual is guilty of lawlessness and can be prosecuted accordingly. Note that this can also apply to a simple culture like the Wai-wais. They have their customs--laws if you will--and probably they operate within their laws to a great extent. They are delegated the sovereignty by God--just like any other society--to determine the boundaries of lawful killing and unlawful killing.
Now one thing should be pointed out that is very important: God does delegate these issues to governments. But God also requires governments to operate responsibly and justly and in accordance with his revealed will, for which the basics are summarizd nicely in the Mosaic code. If they do not operate justly, they can properly be overthrown. An example of this is the American Revolution which began as merely a Declaration of Independence based upon the unjustness of the British Government. Americans declared their independence and then were attacked. They became a sovereign government at the time of the Declaration and so were justly authorized to lawfully kill British soldiers when they themselves were attacked. An improper way to overthrow the British government would have been for someone to sail over and try to assasinate King George or to initiate the agression and so forth. There are proper and improper ways to do everything and it all has to do with the Will of the Creator as far as this can be determined. In cultures without the Bible, the Universal Moral Code written upon the hearts of all men is all they have, but this is enough for them to deal justly and fairly as we saw in many cases of European contact with the Native Americans.
This is why this question of "Is there a Creator God" is so important. Because if there is not, then there is no basis for much of what we do in civilized society. If there is no Creator, then there is no Universal Moral Code. What is to prevent a Hitler (morally) from taking over the whole planet? Why shouldn't he if he can pull it off? Isn't it Survival of the Fittest? If he's the fittest, let him show it and see if he can do it. If there is no Creator God and He really didn't create humans in His image, then how can we get mad at Pol Pot (or whoever that dictator was that "The Killing Fields" was made about). Why not do mass exterminations of entire people groups that we don't like? We do that with ants and cockroaches? Why not with humans that we don't like. You see ... if there is no fundamental distinction between humans and the animal kingdom, then there is really no way you can say someone is evil for indiscriminately killing people he doesn't like. If there is no Creator God, then gone is the adultery prohibition. Gone is the Biblical ideal of one husband + one wife. Men can have whoever they please and stable families are destroyed. We have some very confusing family situations today precisely because a lot of people have rejected the idea of One Man + One Woman for Life = a Family. And why not reject it if there is no Creator God who has designed a family in this specific way?
Incorygible...
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So am I to glean that you do not question any "Government Killing" throughout history?
Oh no. I question a lot of it. I did not say that all governments operate justly and fairly. I said that they are God-ordained. There is a difference. God has delegated many things to governments, but with that delegation comes a responsibility to operate justly and properly. If governments do not operate justly and properly, they can be overthrown ... either by God himself (as in the case of Joshua and the Canaanites) or by new governments (American Revolution). Governments can also change. Good examples of this are the Roman Empire in the 4th century and the recent Chinese government. Constantine made a radical change in his government partly because of his observation of Christians within his empire. The same thing is happening in China today. The government was extremely unjust during the Mao years and many groups were persecuted including Christians. But persecution is lessening partly because of the stellar examples of Christian love and good works by Christians within Chinese society. There was a recent World Magazine cover story on this.
Incorygible...
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And again, if "all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing", do you (once again) imply that the WaiWai are less than people? Where does racism stand in your Universal Moral Code?
Wow. You ask a lot of good, insightful questions. No. I do not view them as less than people. I viewed them as "a people gone wrong" like the Aztecs and others who sacrificed their children. They are fully human, but they had allowed themselves to fall into degrading practices. There is a big difference between condemning people's actions and saying they are somehow less-than-human. I always try to judge people's actions.
Incorygible...
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Given your obvious superiority complex (actually, strike that, since you've come right out with the analogy -- it's a god complex) when it comes to the heathen WaiWai, might they not qualify as one of those "existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world" that you would accept as evidence contradictory to Genesis? If not, why not, since you obviously view them as sub-human?
Again, I do not view them as sub-human. And I can prove it to you with my past actions. My dad can prove that he does not view them as sub-human even better because he literally gave his whole life for these people. I played with the Wai-wai children as if they were my brothers, but my dad did far more than this. He truly loved them sacrificially (still does, by the way at 84 years old). No one can say that any of the missionaries associated with my dad in any way viewed them as sub-human. And any anthropologist that speculates that they were sub-human is flat out wrong. I was there. I know how human these people are. They have very bit as much intelligence as you or I. Less opportunity, yes. Less technology, yes. But less intelligence? No way! Give these folks the training and opportunities that you and I have had and they would be rocket scientists.
Regarding your Pop Quiz ... the bottom line here is AUTHORITY. Is there a Creator God? And did Joshua have His authority to do what he did? These are the key questions to answer in any situation, modern or ancient. The difference between modern and ancient times is, as I have mentioned before, as follows:
Prior to the "Era of Scriptural Authority" -- in other words, prior to the completion of Scripture -- God revealed his will through Prophets, Jesus Christ and then the Apostles. The question of authority was an important one and was verified by supernatural signs and wonders. With the closing of the Apostolic Age, came the "Era of Scriptural Authority" in which supernatural signs and wonders are no longer needed. We have the completed Scriptures which are sufficient to guid mankind in setting up lawful governments.
So back to your Pop Quiz, the Palestinian Government has the God-given authority to do as they please, but if they act unjustly, they may be removed or dissolved. And again, justice or injustice is directly determined with reference to the revealed Will of the Creator, whose rules are really the only ones that matter.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'll answer your question AFTER you provide a satisfactory answer to mine. See previous page of posts if you missed it.
But I do note with considerable amusement that the very first point of your 4 point rejection of the Graf-Welhausen hypothesis is based on the irrationality of taking written records over physical facts. Why is that OK here and nowhere else?
Goodness, Dave, did you think I meant you when I said 'no hugs for thugs'? Do you think I was correct in my assessment? You seem to, else why do you believe it applies to you? I'll accept your self-assessment, but I do have to wonder when you began worshiping Kali...
1) Written historical records back to 100,000 or so BC instead of 5500 BC
You were given conclusive evidence that human culture dates back far older than just writing. You were shown art, and musical instruments, and settlements that date back well over 10,000 years ago; as far as 50,000 years in some cases.
Written, OA, written. Do you see that word? WRITTEN RECORDS. Don't give me your nonsense about equivocal C14 dating methods.
Aftershave...
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The fossil record is expected to be sparse, and the humanoid fossils we do have are equivocal only to an untrained ignoramus like yourself.
Are you sure about that? Didn't Darwin himself say that if numerous transitional fossils were not found, his theory would be toast? Forget 'ignoramuses' like myself. Those fossils are equivocal to trained Creationist PhD's as well.
OA...
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3) Existing 'sub-human' cultures found in various parts of the world.
Chimps, Bonobos, and Gorillas do have their own 'culture'. What you fantasize their culture 'should be' has no bearing on scientific reality.
Well, it doesn't have any bearing on mine, but it does on your theory. If you theory was correct, there should be something living between the apes and the humans, but there is not.
OA...
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4) Evidence for a Super-Homo-Sapiens race such as the one Hitler thought he had.
WTF does this have to do with the ToE?
Everything. Why should evolution stop at humans as the most complex, most intelligent life-form? Your theory predicts increasing complexity of species. Why shouldn't there be something more complex than humans? Maybe something with 4 arms that can play a Mozart Concerto on his violin while accompanying himself on the piano ... how about a superman that can leap tall buildings in a single bound or break railroad ties with his bare hands ... or maybe winged humans ... that would be cool ... maybe you could share some insight with me on how to evolve some wings. I would be eternally indebted to you. I've always wanted to fly without these bothersome airplanes and licensing requirements! Or how about 10 foot tall humans? This would revolutionize the NBA.
OA...
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You were presented with dozens of examples of archaeological finds that contradict your literal 6000YO Genesis interpretation of the Bible. You're too intellectually dishonest to deal with them.
You're joking, right? Thought so. All your examples are based on your equivocal dating methods.
Shirley...
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Hey Dave, here's another question for you to try to avoid: Given two written works from antiquity, how does one determine whether either, neither or both are works of fact as opposed to works of fiction?
Easy. Archaeological confirmation is a great way. Go to the British Museum and others like it. You will find numerous confirmations of the historicity of the Bible. These probably confirm other historical works as well, I don't know. I'm not as familiar with other historical works because I have found none to be so accuarate or as ancient as the Bible.
Eric...
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And what happens when you have two different written works which directly contradict each other? Do you have a method (other than just picking the one you agree with more) for determining which, if either, of them is factually accurate?
Again ... archaeology is a great way to determine the truth.
Faid...
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Hey dave, add another question to all those you'll never have the guts to answer:
Say you're an archaeologist, and you want to find out who built Stonehenge. You can rely on the written records regarding it, or try to accumulate physical evidence.
Which will you choose, dave?
I am not familiar with the written records regarding Stonehenge, but I would favor the written records over C14, if there were any.
OA...
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OK Dave, you’re with the NTSB. Do you accept the written history from the family over the empirical data from the FDR and VCR? Why or why not?
Easy. Go with the FDR/VCR. Big difference between FDR/VCR vs. C14 dating, OA, in case you hadn't noticed. Come on ... ask me some sensible questions.
Ved...
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Joshua and his soldiers however, unless they employed a massively destructive weapon like fire, pretty much had to walk up to their victims and slit their throats. There would be every opportunity for every individual soldier to decide, purposefully, to kill a child.
This is very insightful. And I certainly would not have wanted to sign up for Joshua's army. I have no desire to kill anyone or anything. I do not pretend to have an explanation for why God did not order Joshua to spare the women and children ... or at least the children. If I were God, that's what I would have ordered. But again, I am not God. And I am not stupid enough to say that He does not exist because I cannot understand how He operates or because I don't like how He operates. To say that God is wrong to order the killing of Canaanite children, you must be willing to say that He was wrong to kill everyone (including many children) in the Flood. I am not willing to say that, for the same reason. The bottom line with all of this again is ...
IS THERE ... or ... ISN'T THERE ... a Creator God?
That is why I am here at ATBC arguing just that. If there is, then how can you argue with the Creator regardless of how unjust you may feel He is? If there is not, then we have no basis for arguing these points in the first place, as I have pointed out previously.
Nebo...
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Dave's got a point with (7). I can't think of any animals that justify killing their young with "God told me to do it". Only Humans do that. Man, we're one special creation...
Yes. And the only sensible explanation for mankind that I have been able to find that answers all the questions is in the Bible.
Chris...
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not immoral b/c it falls under God-Ordained Government Killing.
Dave don't make me think you're insane.
I'm no more insane in believing this was not immoral than many other people. Do you think Truman was insane? There are probably many people right here at ATBC who think it was not immoral ... Lou FCD, I think was one of them.
Jeannot...
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6) Speciation in the lab in Drosophila and butterflies (+ several plants).
I covered your others earlier. So have we created a Super-Drosophila? Describe him for me please. Tell me about the butterflies and plants. Did we evolve the ability to speak English in butterflies, perhaps? Or maybe plants that weed themselves? This would be quite useful. Can I buy some of these plants?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'll accept your self-assessment, but I do have to wonder when you began worshiping Kali...
no hugs for thugs, Shirley Knott
When did I start worshipping Kali? I should inform my wife about this so we can change churches.
Hugs, not drugs ...
AFD
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Ah, Dave, you contradict yourself so quickly. After asserting repeatedly that the written word is to be preferred over physical evidence, you now reverse course and insist that writing must be confirmed by physical evidence. You really are an idiot, aren't you? Whatever story you need to tell to advance your current position is what you will tell. No consistency, no honesty, just pure unadulterated Bullshit. I suggest you pick up the book by that title and study it.
A final two points -- archaeology does not support the bible, as we have shown you with Tyre and with Jericho and with the murder of the innocents. The list goes on far past this, but you bullshit your way past all that with your absurd belief that the bible is a historically accurate text. It is not, and honest historians and archaeologists know it.
Second, no, there is no creator god. The act of creation is always a matter of a relationship between 2 or more physically existent entities. We have no grounds for the notion of creation ex nihilo. Justify that and we can perhaps proceed to the absurdities associated with the term 'god'. But given your current track record of justifying notions, I would suggest you not bother. You don't need to rack up more embarassing failures.
Ah, Dave, you contradict yourself so quickly. After asserting repeatedly that the written word is to be preferred over physical evidence, you now reverse course and insist that writing must be confirmed by physical evidence.
Oh really? Where did I do that? You didn't quote me perhaps because you are lying? Show me how I "reversed course" or I will assume you are just another "Rilke-style" goofball. Oh ... and how am I a Kali worshipper, now?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
A final two points -- archaeology does not support the bible, as we have shown you with Tyre and with Jericho and with the murder of the innocents. The list goes on far past this, but you bullshit your way past all that with your absurd belief that the bible is a historically accurate text. It is not, and honest historians and archaeologists know it.
You gave me two equivocal examples. We have been through this. How about the hundreds of good examples. How do you refute those? The murder of the innocents I have not yet investigated. But I will.
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Second, no, there is no creator god. The act of creation is always a matter of a relationship between 2 or more physically existent entities. We have no grounds for the notion of creation ex nihilo.
So you are believer in 'Eternal Matter?' This seems to be the only other alternative.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The question that you keep DODGING is what criteria are you using to evaluate the data? The answer would seem to be that you simply dismiss any data that disagrees with your bible.
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? Examples: the Bible talks about Hittites. We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are. The Bible talks about king Ahab of Israel. Let's go dig ... Voila! There he is on Shalmaneser's Stela ... and so on. There have been literally HUNDREDS (maybe thousands) of finds confirming the historicity of the Bible. And to me, some of the most spectacular ones are the finds in Mesopotamia confirming that civilization did in fact begin in Mesopotamia, and it was a very high level of civilization--neat architecture, agriculture, music, metallurgy, etc--just as my History Book (the Bible) said.
The context of the question is what would CONTRADICT the Bible? Do I need to ask my question again, or will you just continue to not answer it?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
"Didn't Darwin himself say that if numerous transitional fossils were not found, his theory would be toast? Forget 'ignoramuses' like myself. Those fossils are equivocal to trained Creationist PhD's (oxymoron) as well."
What hard number of transitional fossils would prove to you the fact of Evolution? Or do you continue to deny and move the goalpost?
Looking forward to your Flood Dissertation. Will you reprint it with all the Disco Institute crayon charts and cartoons?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
"God-ordained killing is only allowed by governments, whether they be a large sophisticated government like ours, or a small tribal government consisting of a chief and his elders."
Is this how you rationalize Bush's fiasco??? It's ok if there is a Christian at the helm??
Do you just make this sh1t up?
It's time to thin the herd.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
IS THERE ... or ... ISN'T THERE ... a Creator God?
your interest is also in attempting to twist known science or negate it in favor of your hypothesis.
My interest, and I suspect it is true of others who do so well in showing you wrong--is to prevent you from perverting science.
As to lying. You gave a definition that includes "intent to deceive." Well, you did intend to deceive at many points, and as I stated, this pattern of deception is evident throughout this thread.
Specific examples of your intent to deceive include:
(2) Making deliberate claims with the intent to assert things that are not true -- and could not **POSSIBLY** be known to be true by you -- your claims about my religious views, work and your claim that the waiwai were not visited by Europeans in the 20th c. prior to your father.
(3) Your continued use of "prophecies" that are demonstrably false like that of Nebuchadnezzar and Egypt are also intended to deceive. The intent is to assert the infallibility of the bible, and the deception is in saying that known facts will be subverted or overturned by future possible finds. There is no way for archaeology to show that Tyre really IS under the ocean...it ISN'T....there is no way for archaeology to show that Amasis II did NOT continue to rule...when he did, and others wrote about his marriage and his alliances and his conquests and the fact that he outlived Nebuchadrezzar.
We have written records of Herodotus and others saying ..Amasis II continued to rule in Egypt, Dave...but your criteria on written records suddenly change there?
The archaeology supports only that view and none is found contradicting it, but you continue to assert this as a fulfilled prophecy. This is indeed deliberate intentional deception.
As the lawyers like to say: "Falsus in unum, falsus in omnes." I don't particularly enjoy using that one, so--
I'll settle for "once a liar, always a suspected liar."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Sorry, Dave, the examples given are not equivocal. Not in any way shape or form. And nobody here finds them equivocal, and no scholar finds them equivocal. (Josh McDowell is an embarassment to mankind and literacy, not a scholar. He is also demonstratbly an idiot and horrifyingly dishonest. No surpise you rely on him, you like being lied to, don't you dave?) But the list of inaccuracies and falsehoods in the bible is far longer than it need be -- ONE single example of the bible being errant suffices to call the entirety into question. The answer to that question is that the bible is a book of myths and tales and stories, the accuracy of none of which can be accepted or assumed absent independant confirmation.
And regarding your other silly little jab, it doesn't matter what I believe or if I believe nothing whatever about existence, matter, and time. It doesn't even matter if we don't know -- we know enough to rule out a creator god and that suffices. What matters is that you are incorrect in virtually everything you post (I give you benefit of the doubt and assume you are correct about your own name. I doubt, however, your assertions about af participation and the qualifications you claim. But I'm not very interested and don't really care. Where it's important you are wrong, and that's what matters. ) And the notion of 'creator god' is fundamentally incoherent and irrational.
Care to give me 3 good examples where the bible has been shown to be correct? It won't be the flood, it won't be the "missing day" when some prophet made the sun stand still. It won't be the life of Jesus called Christ. What shall they be? If it boils down to independant confirmation that *some* people and places named in the bible really did exist, so what? We get that from Gone with the Wind, too.
hugs for rational animals and their pets, Shirley Knott
The context of the question is what would CONTRADICT the Bible? Do I need to ask my question again, or will you just continue to not answer it?
If you want a real world example of something, Mormon archaeology is a good one. In short, there IS NO Mormon archaeology because they cannot find any of the places listed in the Book of Mormon, such as Zarahemla and Bountiful, etc. Here's what respected Mormon archaeologist Professor Dee F. Green said,
Quote
The first myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists ... If one is to study Book of Mormon archaeology, then one must have a ccorpus of data with which to deal. We do not. ... no Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know where Jerusalem and Jericho were and are, but we do not know where Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any location for that matter) were and are. ... a concentration on geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Summer 1969, pp. 77-78.
What I am saying, Argy, is that there has been plenty of opportunity for archaeologists to refute the Bible. This has has been done with the Book of Mormon and it has been proven by this and many other ways to be a fraud.
But not so with the Bible. Many an archaeologist would have loved for the Bible to be proven false, but it has been proven accurate instead.
So I am at a loss to tell you how to proceed in disproving the Bible. I am afraid you are in for a tough challenge.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But not so with the Bible. Many an archaeologist would have loved for the Bible to be proven false, but it has been proven accurate instead.
All that is needed to disprove the contention that all geese are white...is to show one black goose. Uncontrovertible examples of false claims in the bible have already been given. The flood will be another.
And by the way, why haven't you shown how YOU constructed your "5000-year-old flood" chronology, Dave? Don't tell me to look at some website...it doesn't show the method of construction. Try explaining it yourself, here.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The context of the question is what would CONTRADICT the Bible? Do I need to ask my question again, or will you just continue to not answer it?
If you want a real world example of something, Mormon archaeology is a good one. In short, there IS NO Mormon archaeology because they cannot find any of the places listed in the Book of Mormon, such as Zarahemla and Bountiful, etc. Here's what respected Mormon archaeologist Professor Dee F. Green said,
Quote
The first myth we need to eliminate is that Book of Mormon archaeology exists ... If one is to study Book of Mormon archaeology, then one must have a ccorpus of data with which to deal. We do not. ... no Book of Mormon location is known with reference to modern topography. Biblical archaeology can be studied because we do know where Jerusalem and Jericho were and are, but we do not know where Zarahemla and Bountiful (nor any location for that matter) were and are. ... a concentration on geography should be the first order of business, but we have already seen that twenty years of such an approach has left us empty-handed. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, "Mormons and Archaeology: An Outside View," Summer 1969, pp. 77-78.
What I am saying, Argy, is that there has been plenty of opportunity for archaeologists to refute the Bible. This has has been done with the Book of Mormon and it has been proven by this and many other ways to be a fraud.
But not so with the Bible. Many an archaeologist would have loved for the Bible to be proven false, but it has been proven accurate instead.
So I am at a loss to tell you how to proceed in disproving the Bible. I am afraid you are in for a tough challenge.
I see. It is conceptually impossible to refute anything in the Bible. One can only lack confirming evidence. Geez, Dave, since EVERYTHING is consistent with the Bible, why are you railing against evolution?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Here goes Dave on another one of his pedantic teaching lessons, with us as his dimwitted pupils:
Quote (afdave @ June 30 2006,11:06)
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Eric...
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No. Wrong. They don't, Dave. When historians look at written records that are contradicted by physical evidence, they go with the physical evidence. Do a little research on the Kensington Runestone if you want to see how this works.
Fine. Fine. Let's throw away the history books and exhume Napoleon's bones to find out when he REALLY lived. Ditto for Washington. Sure, Eric. Whatever you say.
This is almost as ludicrous as the chimp/gorilla thing! You guys are really sitting here trying to tell me that all that work by Langdon and Woolley and the rest is SUBORDINATE to you guys and your Carbon 14 dating!!?? You gotta be kidding me!!
Dave, like most religious fundamentalists and radical right-wingers, you have a problem viewing the world in anything but black-and-white terms. When I say "when written testimony and independent physical evidence conflict, historians go with the independent physical evidence," you respond that I think we should throw books away completely. How does one follow from the other, Dave?
If written testimony is corroborated with independent physical evidence, why would we throw the book away? Some claims the Bible makes can be corroborated by other sources and independent evidence. There is an Egypt. Pontius Pilate did exist. The Red Sea actually exists.
On other matters—the earth was created in six days, the sun was stopped in its circuit—the contrary evidence disproves the Bible's claims. Why is this so difficult to figure out? As everyone else on the planet knows, people lie in written works, and eyewitness testimony is often unreliable. The rocks don't lie, and the tests don't lie.
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Eric...
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And in the meantime, don't go around claiming you've "established" something when you've done no such thing.
I most certainly WILL go around claiming that I have established all kinds of things since I came here. It has been a very profitable time for me to come here and see not only how empty your own arguments for evolution are, but also how some of you claw and spit and hiss like a cornered cat when I demolish your arguments. Then you say bizarre things like my evidence isn't evidence at all.
Dave, hasn't it ever given you pause that you've never managed to persuade anyone here of anything? Not even the lurkers? The idea that you've demolished anything around here is hilarious. We're not saying "bizarre things" about your "evidence" not being evidence. You can't even point to any "evidence" you've provided. This has been pointed out to you time and time again, and it just doesn't get through.
The real question is, Is AF Dave simply too underpowered intellectually to understand why his arguments are unpersuasive, or is he deliberately blind to reason and logic? That's the only question we're asking ourselves about you, Dave. You certainly haven't given us anything else to think about.
And in the meantime, people will continue to refer to you as a "liar," because, well, if the shoe fits...
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Eric ...
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Literally dozens of papers are published every day which completely contradict the Genesis myth.
Let me correct your statement just a wee bit. You meant to say ...
Literally dozens of papers are published every day which attempt to contradict the Genesis myth ... but they fail.
No, let me correct your statement by a huge amount: You meant to say, "Literally dozens of papers are published every day which completely contradict the Genesis myth, but I have neither the knowledge nor the training to understand them, so I feel entitled to ignore them, especially since they contradict my worldview in a way which, if I could understand them, would cause me intolerable cognitave dissonance."
There. Much better.
Quote
Eric...
Quote
No-brainer, Dave. People lie all the time. Without reference to external corroboration, how do you separate the lies from the truths? Faith?
Real simple. You read history in the Bible or some other history book. You go out and dig in the rocks to see if what you find agrees. Guess what? They've done that with the Bible and you cannot find a better history book on the Planet based on corroboration by archaeological finds.
In your dreams, Dave. There have literally been hundreds of thousands of archaeological finds that completely contradict the Bible, if for no other reason that they're dated to long before the Bible says the world even existed. You can close your eyes, but that doesn't make them disappear. Even Leonard Shelby knows that.
If you think the Bible is confirmed by archaeologists, then why can you go to any major natural history museum in the world and see artifacts which predate the creation of the earth, if you believe the Bible?
Quote
Eric..
Quote
One other thing, Dave: this is the problem with argument from analogy. You clearly think a heart (or a mitochondrion, or a flagellum, or a pancreas) looks like something designed by humans, and I clearly don't. Who is right? Isn't it a matter of opinion?
This is a critical point. It DOES look like something a human would design EXCEPT, and there is a big EXCEPT ... EXCEPT it is far more sophisticated.
No, Dave, it doesn't. A tree doesn't even resemble anything a human would design. Neither does a trout, or a rabbit, or a euglena, nor does any other biological structure I can think of. You might think these things look like something "designed," but they sure don't to me.
Quote
It is exactly like what you would expect if a UFO from some advanced civilization crashed on earth and there was some advanced technology on board.
A fern looks like something you'd find on a UFO? I don't think so. A butterfly? Hardly. Maybe you think they do, but again, this is a completely unpersuasive matter of opinion.
Quote
What just blows my mind about you guys is that you fail to see that this is the EXACT situation we have wih biological innovations. We have SUPER-high tech, right here under our noses!!!!!!! And our engineers are even trying to imitate it because it is so, so, so, so good!!! How can you not see that!!?? This is probably the most frustrating thing to me about being here. I want EVERYONE in the world to see what an absolutely remarkable thing these biological machines are!!
Dave, have you ever, in your entire life, made the mistake of thinking some organic object was actually designed by humans? Have you ever seen a tree and mistaken it for a cellular antenna? I never have. I have absolutely no difficulty distinguishing between an organic object, be it a seashell, a tree branch, a blade of grass, an antelope skull, and a man-made object like a baseball cap, a cylinder head, a book, or a CD-ROM drive. Which is exactly why your "biological machines" argument fails.
We are familar with exactly one designer: ourselves. Human designs are never mistaken for natural, organic structures. And again, if you argue that natural structures don't look like human-designed structures because the Creator God is different from humans, then what's your justification for inferring design in the first place?
No one denies that biological structures are fantastically amazing and complex. But that doesn't mean they were designed. In fact, biological structures are consistently more complex and baroque than any intelligent designer would make them. This argues against design, Dave.
Quote
Deadman... I read every word you write. Your a smart guy. As for "that little episode" ... do you realize how many times a day I get to gleefully write something in bold caps which refutes you?
Yeah, Dave. NEVER. That's how often it happens. I can't recall a single statement you've ever made that has refuted anything Deadman, or anyone else here, has ever said.
And, Dave, were you planning on answering anyone's questions about what you would do when two written records contradict each other? How do you decide which one to believe? Do you just believe the one that confirms what you want to believe, and ignore the other one? That's what it looks like from here.
And it this rate, we're never going to get to the "Flood."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Wow. Dave, I knew you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this is really retarded even by your standards:
Quote (afdave @ June 30 2006,11:17)
Shirley...
Quote
Hey Dave, here's another question for you to try to avoid: Given two written works from antiquity, how does one determine whether either, neither or both are works of fact as opposed to works of fiction?
Easy. Archaeological confirmation is a great way. Go to the British Museum and others like it. You will find numerous confirmations of the historicity of the Bible. These probably confirm other historical works as well, I don't know. I'm not as familiar with other historical works because I have found none to be so accuarate or as ancient as the Bible.
Eric...
Quote
And what happens when you have two different written works which directly contradict each other? Do you have a method (other than just picking the one you agree with more) for determining which, if either, of them is factually accurate?
Again ... archaeology is a great way to determine the truth.
So in other words, you have just blown your own argument completely out of the water, all by yourself. You now state, in utter contradiction to what you previously claimed, that given an inconsistency between written records and independent physical evidence, you go with the independent physical evidence.
Congratulations, Dave. You're a putz.
But you still simply cannot admit that time after time after time, independent physical evidence has flat-out contradicted the Bible, hundreds of thousands if not millions of times. Nevertheless, you continue to believe your one source, and ignored the hundreds of thousands if not millions of other, contrary, sources.
And by the way, Dave, there's nothing "equivocal" about C14 dating. Which is why it gets used. You don't like it because it destroys your worldview, not because you've ever been able to find any errors in the methodology. You think you have, but as usual, you're wrong.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Of course we're not going to get to the flood. Even one as clueless as Dave must be beginning to see that he has nothing he can bring forth which will not be smashed into a billion tiny pieces here. The evidence against a worldwide flood is so overwhelming it is amazing anyone can seriously propose that there was one. It violates the facts we have, logic, and reason. It is, in short, impossible. This, of course, would be why dave so desparately wants there to be a 'creator god' who, despite not being part of the causal nexus of the real world, can influence it at will, and with nothing other than sheer will. Since dave does not understand cause or will, he's hopelessly lost.
hugs to the rational animals and their pets, Shirley Knott
Your original claim was : "The Universal Moral Code exists and is evident in many ways, including the fact that all people everywhere view the killing of children as a horrible thing" I gave you information on how the Aztec, Incan, Phoenician, Chinese, Greek, Celtic, Minoan Crete cultures all sacrificed children. They did not view it as "evil," they saw it as good, I could list hundreds that engage in infanticide of various kinds, from every continent except Antarctica. So you switched your claim to
Quote
"My whole point is that while some cultures exalted the sacrifice of children, there was some overriding reason for doing so. It was not a natural thing for them..No human being naturally kills children without some huge, overriding reason for doing so. And it is this instinct that I am speaking of when I talk about Universal Moral Codes. Something was dreadfully wrong with those cultures for them to become so hardened that they would voluntarily kill their children."
Each of those cultures I initially listed either sacrificed to the gods or they wanted better lives for their other children, or they didn't view infants as fully human. The list of other primates that engage in infanticide besides human is extensive as well...baboons, langurs, howlers, chimps, etc. etc. And humans. I see people killing children in various ways every day, Dave. Religious nuts like you help in the process, too. Harris, Marvin ( 1999) Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, and Where We Are Going. New York: Harper Collins. Barlett, TQ, Sussman RW, and Cheverud JM (1993) Infant killing in primates: A review of observed cases with specific reference to the sexual selection hypothesis. American Anthropologist, 95:958-990 Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (1999) Mother Nature A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. Pantheon, New York Hausfater, G. and S. Hrdy, eds (1984). Infanticide: Comparative and Evolutionary Perspectives. New York: Aldine Publishing Co Boone, James L. (1992) Competition, conflict, and the development of hierarchies. In Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior, ed. E. A. Smith and B. Winterhalder, pp. 301-337. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hmmm..once again Dave is gone from the user list...no doubt hoping that the page will fill up and he won't have to respond to the questions and observations posted.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The context of the question is what would CONTRADICT the Bible? Do I need to ask my question again, or will you just continue to not answer it?
If you want a real world example of something, Mormon archaeology is a good one. In short, there IS NO Mormon archaeology because they cannot find any of the places listed in the Book of Mormon, such as Zarahemla and Bountiful, etc.
What I am saying, Argy, is that there has been plenty of opportunity for archaeologists to refute the Bible. This has has been done with the Book of Mormon and it has been proven by this and many other ways to be a fraud.
But not so with the Bible. Many an archaeologist would have loved for the Bible to be proven false, but it has been proven accurate instead.
So I am at a loss to tell you how to proceed in disproving the Bible. I am afraid you are in for a tough challenge.
Dave, it's becoming clear you believe that if anything the Bible has ever said has been confirmed, the entire Bible has been confirmed.
Do you honestly think that because the Bible mentions Jerusalem, and Jerusalem actually exists, that means the entire Bible has been confirmed?
Normally I'd think this would be beneath pointing out, but the Bible is only as accurate as what it says has been confirmed by independent evidence. If the Bible asserts something which cannot be independently confirmed, there's no justification for assuming that assertion is accurate. And if the Bible asserts something that is directly contradicted by independent evidence, then that assertion must be taken as inaccurate.
Dave, you don't need to tell us how to "disprove" the Bible. It's already been done—in spades. There are plenty of things the Bible claims that are known beyond all possibility of doubt to be false. Genesis is only the most obvious example.
You can point to all kinds of things in the Bible that happen to be true, Dave. Jews exist. Tyre exists. Egypt exists. Rome exists. Sorry; that doesn't help you.
God, Dave. Sometimes talking to you is like talking to a three-year-old.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh Darn ... Shirley said the Flood is impossible ...
I guess that settles it !!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I only had one source that said Spinoza published that writing was a late invention--Herald Magazine. Curt Sewell and Josh McDowell are my other sources and they both say the correct thing, which is that Astruc and wellhausen believed erroneously that writing was unknown IN ISRAEL in Moses' day.
That makes no sense at all. What exactly are you talking about?
There is no nation of Israel in Moses' day. It was called Canaan.
If you read the Bible Israel is Jacob's new name after he fights with an angel in Genesis 32.
Quote
Gen 32:28 - And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.
And again, God repeats it in Genesis 35:
Quote
Gen 35:10 - And God said unto him, Thy name [is] Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.
And through out the rest of Genesis Israel is Jacob's new name:
Quote
Gen 35:21 - And Israel journeyed, and spread his tent beyond the tower of Edar. Gen 35:22 - And it came to pass, when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard [it]. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve: Gen 36:31 - And these [are] the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there reigned any king over the children of Israel. Gen 37:3 - Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he [was] the son of his old age: and he made him a coat of [many] colours. Gen 37:13 - And Israel said unto Joseph, Do not thy brethren feed [the flock] in Shechem? come, and I will send thee unto them. And he said to him, Here [am I]. Gen 42:5 - And the sons of Israel came to buy [corn] among those that came: for the famine was in the land of Canaan. Gen 43:6 - And Israel said, Wherefore dealt ye [so] ill with me, [as] to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother?
So, to say what you said makes you sound like a biblical illiterate, Dave. Do you actually have any idea what you're talking about?
To talk about "writing not being in Israel in Moses' day" is to talk utter nonsense. Israel was a dead man in Moses' day. Are you just saying that a dead man didn't know how to write? If so, that is probably true. However, that does not equal writing not being known to the rest of the world.
If you talk about Israel not having sophisticated forms of writing you're talking about a person, once called Jacob, not a nation until after Moses. You're not talking about the world. You're not talking about a city-state, you can't have city states without writing. There was no Israel as a nation in Moses' day. In Moses' day it was called Canaan.
Indeed, there are reasons to think that Israel's little tribe (the children of Israel) didn't know how to write. They obviously were not part of any city state at that time. They did seem to be illiterate Bedouin nomads. The word "write" doesn't occur in Genesis and Israel (the person) doesn't seem to know about writing or any deeper history.
Again, this is not the same thing as saying writing didn't exist elsewhere in the world.
Please learn what you are talking about and clear up what you are trying to assert.
Oh Darn ... Shirley said the Flood is impossible ...
I guess that settles it !!
She's not the only one, Dave. When the entire scientific community says something, yeah, that pretty much settles it. Especially when neither you, nor anyone else, who's had at least 150 years to come up with some actual evidence for a flood, has been unable to do it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, Dave, Dave. Despite your fascination with authority figures, I refuse to become one, even in your sick little fantasies. The impossibility of the flood has literally nothing to do with whether I say so or not. It has to do with those things of which you are entirely ignorant -- facts, logic, and reason.
It was an insult to 3 year olds for one of the posters here to compare you with one.
We could give you a brain transplant but that would raise you merely to the level of half-wit. That's how big your deficit is.
But go ahead, show us facts, show us logic, show us reason. After almost 100 pages of posts, we've seen nothing of the sort from you. Only lies, hypocrisy, and evil. Oh, and a towering dose of bibliolatry. Which commandment are you violating with that, again?
Hugs to the rational animals and their pets, Shirley Knott
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? Examples: the Bible talks about Hittites. We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are. The Bible talks about king Ahab of Israel. Let's go dig ... Voila! There he is on Shalmaneser's Stela ... and so on. There have been literally HUNDREDS (maybe thousands) of finds confirming the historicity of the Bible. And to me, some of the most spectacular ones are the finds in Mesopotamia confirming that civilization did in fact begin in Mesopotamia, and it was a very high level of civilization--neat architecture, agriculture, music, metallurgy, etc--just as my History Book (the Bible) said.
Excellent. Now please apply the exact same process to C.S. Lewis's more lasting legacy.
Talks about England. Check. Talks about wardrobes. Check. Talks about Turkish Delight. Check. Even talks about a world war...did that happen? Yep! Check, check, check! Good enough for me... Fantasy world in the closet. Must have been. Christ-like lion vs. cold white witch. Must have been.
Dave, it's becoming clear you believe that if anything the Bible has ever said has been confirmed, the entire Bible has been confirmed.
No, it takes a lot more than that, but when they dig up all these cities no ones ever heard of except in the Bible, you sit up and take notice ...
(Unless of course you happen to be an ATBC skeptic who has their eyes closed and ears plugged.)
norm...
Quote
That makes no sense at all. What exactly are you talking about? There is no nation of Israel in Moses' day. It was called Canaan.
Calm down, Norm. The PEOPLE Israel, Norm. The group of PEOPLE known as Israelites. Believe me. I know the history Israel. I know that there was no LAND of Israel until the Conquest of Canaan.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So in other words, you have just blown your own argument completely out of the water, all by yourself.
How so? I've been saying archaeology confirms the Bible all along. You ask me how I would determine between two competing written records. I say archaeology. How am I blowing myself up?
(Oh, never mind. I forgot ... with Evobots, YES means NO and EVIDENCE means NO EVIDENCE ... SCIENCE can include PSEUDO-SCIENCE, etc. ... yes ... silly me ... I forgot who my audience was)
Incorygible...
Quote
Excellent. Now please apply the exact same process to C.S. Lewis's more lasting legacy.
Talks about England. Check. Talks about wardrobes. Check. Talks about Turkish Delight. Check. Even talks about a world war...did that happen? Yep! Check, check, check! Good enough for me... Fantasy world in the closet. Must have been. Christ-like lion vs. cold white witch. Must have been.
Oops. Small difference, there, buddy.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
Yours were.
Details. Details.
Who cares about details when you shooting your mouth off at Creos, huh?
(Pssst ... Incorygible ... how do you think those Mesopotamian archaeologists knew that there might be some cities to dig up? Answer: The Bible)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
[quote=incorygible,June 30 2006,14:06][/quote] Here's a clue as to what's wrong with Dave's brain:
Quote
Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that?
Here's how we argue with that, Dave. You don't check to see if the data are consistent with your Bible. You check to see if the Bible is consistent with the data. Otherwise, it would be impossible, even in principle, to falsify your Bible.
Dave, you can't just throw away any evidence that isn't consistent with your Bible. That's what's called assuming what you're trying to prove. You assume your Bible is correct, and rather than checking your Bible against the available data, you just ignore anything that contradicts it. How does that get you anywhere?
And you wonder why everyone here thinks you're an idiot.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Excellent. Now please apply the exact same process to C.S. Lewis's more lasting legacy.
Talks about England. Check. Talks about wardrobes. Check. Talks about Turkish Delight. Check. Even talks about a world war...did that happen? Yep! Check, check, check! Good enough for me... Fantasy world in the closet. Must have been. Christ-like lion vs. cold white witch. Must have been.
Oops. Small difference, there, buddy.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
Yours were.
Details. Details.
Who cares about details when you shooting your mouth off at Creos, huh?
(Pssst ... Incorygible ... how do you think those Mesopotamian archaeologists knew that there might be some cities to dig up? Answer: The Bible)
Details, details, indeed.
Come back in a few millennia and tell me what you know about our current nations, furniture, wars and foodstuffs. In other words, information freely available to the author may not be to a later reader, and the text may lead to many such "discoveries"
(Pssst...Dave...how do you think those Mesopotamian archaeologists knew that one of those cities might be Troy? Answer: The Iliad PRAISE ACHILLES!!!
Faid... Quote Hey dave, add another question to all those you'll never have the guts to answer:
Say you're an archaeologist, and you want to find out who built Stonehenge. You can rely on the written records regarding it, or try to accumulate physical evidence.
Which will you choose, dave?
I am not familiar with the written records regarding Stonehenge, but I would favor the written records over C14, if there were any.
...And you would be overwhelmingly, devastatingly, WRONG. Like you always are.
Thank you dave, for 'proving' that the wizard Merlin built Stonehenge.
Of COURSE History is after the invention of writing, silly... that's what "history" means! In historical times we have many written sources that can help us or give us hints for the truth: ALL kinds of sources, mind you. I can take you up on that whole Bible/Iliad as an accurate archaeological sourse anytime, if you ever decide to stop ignoring it. However, as any REAL archaeologist would tell you, when you have conflicting physical evidence and written records, you lean towards the physical evidense dave. Oh and bear in mind that written records can be physical evidence: If some ancient historian says that empire A had conquered city B from 2000 to 1500 bc, and we find tablets in the city that declare laws and ordinance in the name of the rulers of the city at that time, and those belong to Empire B, what do you think archaeologists would follow as evidence? Look, if all this makes you dizzy, why not go and ask A REAL archaeologist, instead of your local pastor? Maybe you can get things to clear up in your head that way.
Oh and, when you say this:
Quote
Everything. Why should evolution stop at humans as the most complex, most intelligent life-form? Your theory predicts increasing complexity of species. Why shouldn't there be something more complex than humans? Maybe something with 4 arms that can play a Mozart Concerto on his violin while accompanying himself on the piano ... how about a superman that can leap tall buildings in a single bound or break railroad ties with his bare hands ... or maybe winged humans ... that would be cool ... maybe you could share some insight with me on how to evolve some wings. I would be eternally indebted to you. I've always wanted to fly without these bothersome airplanes and licensing requirements! Or how about 10 foot tall humans? This would revolutionize the NBA.
Please tell me you're joking. I can never be sure with you.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Why aren't you responding to my comments on your lying, your demonstrably false prophecies and my question on how you constructed your 5000-year-old flood chronology, Dave?
And again, don't try to point me to some website that doesn't have precise methods by which the chronology was constructed.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Why aren't you responding to my comments on your lying, your demonstrably false prophecies and my question on how you constructed your 5000-year-old flood chronology, Dave?
And again, don't try to point me to some website that doesn't have precise methods by which the chronology was constructed.
I just figured out the answer to my similar chagrin at his lack of responsiveness. Try asking him a random ethical question where he can try to demonstrate the God-ordained superiority of his moral outlook. You'll get answers in spades. (Anything science-y and, of course, ethical questions concerning lies you have unequivocally caught him telling don't seem to prompt the same level of engagement.) Personally, I prefer tying him in knots with his own little analogies -- unsurprisingly, Dave seems to have a bit of trouble navigating the murky waters between the literal and the figurative.
In the Egyptian inscriptions the Hittites, who had apparently conquered Syria, first appear in the reign of Thothmes III. (1503-1449), when they received their first decisive reverse. Mentions of the Hittites continue to the period of Ramses III. There is a gap of almost a century in the history of the Hittites after their defeat by Rameses III. About 1100, however, they became the enemies of the Assyrians. The first expedition of Tiglathpileser I. was undertaken against them. He forced his way through Kummukh, or Commagene, as far as Malatiyeh, and penetrated to Carchemish. The inscriptions of Van, dating from the ninth and eighth centuries B.C., contain several allusions to expeditions against the Hittites. In the ninth century the Vannic king Menuas plundered the Hittite cities Surisilis and Tarkhi-gamas, and later forced his way to Malatiyeh, setting up a triumphal inscription at Palu on the northern bank of the Euphrates, the eastern boundary of the Hittite territory The Hittites are mentioned by Herodotus (who speaks of them as "Syrians"), Strabo (who calls them "White Syrians" [AËĺőęüóőńďé], localizing them about Mount Taurus and the Black Sea) http://www.ancientlibrary.com/wcd/Hittites
The point being that even if the bible never existed, there would be other records for archaeologists to work from...contradicting your claim that it is only the bible that mentions Hittites as a people.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Incorygible, don't hope of ever getting a straight answer from him. I've been pressing him to address the same thing you just mentioned (the Iliad/Troy analogy) for 4 pages now and he's just acting dumb.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
That makes no sense at all. What exactly are you talking about? There is no nation of Israel in Moses' day. It was called Canaan.
Calm down, Norm. The PEOPLE Israel, Norm. The group of PEOPLE known as Israelites. Believe me. I know the history Israel. I know that there was no LAND of Israel until the Conquest of Canaan.
So, what exactly are you asserting, Dave? You didn't answer that question. Are you saying that Astruc and Wellhausen believed that writing was unknown to the whole world or just to the children of Israel before Moses?
I am saying if you have ever claimed that any competent Biblical scholar ever claimed no human being wrote before Moses then you are either a pathetic liar, or a fool who believes liars. (And I do think you are a fool who has believed liars.) You have indeed claimed that.
At best any competent scholar is going to look at the Biblical text and say that Jacob's/Israel's children prior to maybe Joseph learning some writing in Egypt were basically an illiterate tribe. No one could look at the Bible story and not realize there is a world of civilization, with writing, money, architecture and more going on outside the children of Israel's understanding. The children of Israel could very well have been illiterate while places like Egypt and Sumeria had writing.
You say:
Quote
Discovering that Israel did in fact have sophisticated forms of writing in Moses' day does huge damage to the Graf-Wellhausen theory.
No, it would not and that is also not what they have claimed to discover. They have only claimed to discover that Sumerians, Canaanites, had writing before Moses arrived.
How exactly is this supposed damage done?
Quote
Again, here are the 4 major pre-suppostions of the theory: Quote 1) PRIORITY OF SOURCE ANALYSIS OVER ARCHAEOLOGY 2) NATURAL (EVOLUTIONARY) VIEW OF ISRAEL'S RELIGION AND HISTORY 3) NO WRITING IN ISRAEL AT MOSES'TIME (ca. 1400 BC) 4) THE LEGENDARY VIEW OF PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES
These all have been thoroughly discredited. ...
How have they been discredited? There is no logic to what you are saying. You've asserted that, but you have not proved it or even offered anything that resembles evidence.
1) PRIORITY OF SOURCE ANALYSIS OVER ARCHAEOLOGY
That means reading the Bible, the source. Are you saying people shouldn't read the Bible to learn anything about the Bible or use it as a clue?
2) NATURAL (EVOLUTIONARY) VIEW OF ISRAEL'S RELIGION AND HISTORY
And what exactly do you think that is? What exactly discredits that?
3) NO WRITING IN ISRAEL AT MOSES' TIME (ca. 1400 BC)
That word "IN" is what suggests you don't know what you're talking about. Things can be in a place, but they're not exactly "in" a nomadic tribe. You have not proved that this wandering tribe that are the children of Jacob/Israel knew how to write. Just because the children of Israel seem to be illiterate doesn't mean that Sumerians and Egyptians were not writing and that's all you were talking about, Sumerian tablets, not anything found among the children of Israel.
4) THE LEGENDARY VIEW OF PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES
You claim there are Sumerian tablets with the names of the patriarchs on them (or something like that) but you have not produced these tablets. Where are these tablets? In what mueseum? What scholar, at what university, has studied them? Where are their pictures of them?
I doubt they really exist or if there are tablets that they are what you claim. Assertions are not proof.
And even if such tablets did exist, it would only prove that the Hebrews borrowed their religion in whole from the Sumerians, not that there was any reality to the religion.
What you're saying doesn't add up.
Don't tell me to read them -- you read them and tell me. I'm not here to have you change my mind. I'm here to change your mind. You present your theory in a coherent form. You have not done this.
Dave, it's becoming clear you believe that if anything the Bible has ever said has been confirmed, the entire Bible has been confirmed.
No, it takes a lot more than that, but when they dig up all these cities no ones ever heard of except in the Bible, you sit up and take notice ...
(Unless of course you happen to be an ATBC skeptic who has their eyes closed and ears plugged.)
Dave, again you fail to apprehend the point:
The fact that some things the Bible says are confirmed by independent evidence is a long, long way from establishing that EVERYTHING the Bible says has been confirmed by independent evidence.
No one is claiming that nothing the Bible says is true.
Are you familiar with the concept of historical novels, Dave? Many of these novels discuss geographical locations that actually exist: London, Paris, Rome, San Diego. Does that establish that these historical novels are literally true? If not, why not?
You're not this stupid, Dave. You're worse. You refuse to listen to stuff you don't want to hear. You're the one with your fingers in your ears, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So in other words, you have just blown your own argument completely out of the water, all by yourself.
How so? I've been saying archaeology confirms the Bible all along. You ask me how I would determine between two competing written records. I say archaeology. How am I blowing myself up?
One more time for the world, Dave: We've been saying that if written evidence is contradicted by physical evidence, you go with the physical evidence. You've denied this, and claim that if written evidence is contradicted by the physical evidence, you go with the written evidence.
Now, you come out and say that written evidence must be confirmed by physical (e.g., archaeological) evidence. The two statements contradict each other. Therefore, you've blown your own argument out of the water, all by yourself.
This is true whether the archaeological evidence confirms the Bible (false) or not (true).
Quote
Oops. Small difference, there, buddy.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
No difference, Dave. The fact that the Bible describes some locations that were unknown outside of the Bible is utterly irrelevant. The fact is, as you well know, the veracity of the Bible is entirely dependent on corroboration by independent evidence. If the Bible mentions some physical location that cannot be verified independently, then that portion of the Bible's account is falsified. That the Bible mentions other physical locations whose existence can be verified doesn't change that fact. And if the Bible makes assertions that are disproved by independent evidence, that isn't changed in the slightest by other evidence that corroborates other assertions.
It's not an all-or-nothing game, Dave. The Bible is capable of being correct about some things and incorrect about others. Dave can be correct when he says the earth revolves around the sun, and be incorrect when he says the earth is only 6,000 years old.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
* Deadman thinks I said the Bible is the only source that mentions the Hittites ...
* Norm is still trying to understand what I think about the Documentary Hypothesis ...
* Incorygible is trying to make some link between the Chronicles of Narnia and Biblical archaeology ...
* Eric thinks that if the Bible mentions a real place like Rome, that makes me think its true about everything ...
* Aftershave wants to equate FDR/VCR testimony with Carbon 14 dating ...
* Faid thinks Stonehenge has some bearing on Biblical archaeology ... and ...
* Shirley says Creation Ex Nihilo is impossible because, well ... it just is, you ninny!! Everyone knows that.
Wow! That's all I can say ... wow!
Oh well ... I am confirming for myself that skeptics really are grasping at the wind when they try to discredit the Bible. You cannot even get a straight answer. I used to think maybe there was something to the arguments and I wanted to see firsthand. Where better to come than ATBC? Now I am seeing that there is so little there, it's no wonder you hear of all these stories about skeptics converting to Christianity.
I guess we'll see how well you fare on the Flood. If anyone wants some honest discourse, I am quite willing. Deadman and I did pretty well on the Helium-zircon thing. But you guys seem to be losing touch. Maybe I've just worn you out on almost 100 pages??
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Another post from St. Dave the Clueless, proving once again that if he can read, he certainly cannot comprehend. You'll notice I did indeed explain why creation ex nihilo is impossible. If it is ex nihilo, it is not creation. I would suggest 'poof', as in 'poofery ex nihilo', but that would be redundant. Similar remarks can be made about every other point you list in your screed. You, sir, are an idiot. Sublimely arrogant in your cluelessness, you are nonetheless an idiot.
Hope everyone else has a happy holiday, I'm off until late Tuesday.
hugs for the rational animals and their pets, Shirley Knott
PS. Davey, do I need to explain that you do not qualify as the pet of a rational animal any more than you qualify as rational? And you've already denied your an animal, right? I believe the brits have a much earthier, but much more applicable term for such as you...
* Eric thinks that if the Bible mentions a real place like Rome, that makes me think its true about everything ...
Well, Dave, if this isn't the reason you believe the Bible is inerrant, then what is that reason? And don't say "because the evidence supports that belief," because we've given you abundant contrary evidence, evidence you refuse to accept because, well, because you refuse to accept it. Lots of handwaving about C14 dating being "equivocal" (with no reason given for why you think it's "equivocal"), about "half a lousy percent" (after we point out to you that half a percent equals 20 million base pairs), failed attempts to prove that all archaeological finds confirm the Bible (attempts that are pathetically feeble).
We're not confused about anything, Dave, other than how an organism capable of respiratory function could possibly be so idiotic.
Quote
I guess we'll see how well you fare on the Flood. If anyone wants some honest discourse, I am quite willing. Deadman and I did pretty well on the Helium-zircon thing. But you guys seem to be losing touch. Maybe I've just worn you out on almost 100 pages??
Dave, we're past the point of expecting honest discourse from you. Your patent dishonesty is apparent to anyone with a brainstem. Deadman (among others, such as JonF) did pretty will with the helium-zircon thing; you failed abysmally. You didn't even come close to understanding the issues, let alone persuading anyone to your point of view.
We're not losing touch, Dave. We're eviscerating your arguments, just as we always have. I cannot fail to note that you never took me up on my challenge to identify a single poster here who has been persuaded by your arguments on even a single point.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
People don't come to Panda's Thumb to find the truth, Eric. They come here to justify their skepticism. I covered that long ago.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
* Norm is still trying to understand what I think about the Documentary Hypothesis ...
Yes, Dave. Looking over your past posts you seem to have included things in your view of history that contradict the Bible that you claim to believe in. However, your presentation is so incoherent that I want to nail you down on a few things before you try to move the goal posts again and change your story.
Well, Dave, thanks for explaining why you are here. Scepticism about the real world is typically considered nihilism; imagine my surprise to find you a nihilist. Ha. But it is beyond amusing to see you pontificate about why 'people' come here. How would you know? Particularly given that you are unequipped to be a knower.
hugs to the rational animals and their pets, Shirley Knott
People don't come to Panda's Thumb to find the truth, Eric. They come here to justify their skepticism. I covered that long ago.
Well, regardless of why they come to Panda's Thumb, the reason they come to "Antievolution: The Critic's Resource" otherwise known as "After the Bar Closes," is to discover the breathtaking inanity of Creationism's claims. And I gotta tell you, Dave—you've provided that, in spades.
Another thing: it's a misnomer to talk about us being "skeptical" of biblical claims, or needing justification for our skepticism. We know 99% of what the Bible says is utter hogwash (6,000-year-old earth? Give me a break! ). You're the skeptic around here, Dave, and if you had a particle of honesty about you, you'd find absolutely nothing to bolster your skepticism here.
I don't need AtBC to justify my knowledge that the Bible is bunk when it comes to explanations of the natural world. Everything I've ever read that has anything to do with science demonstrates how pathetically primitive a literalist reading of the Bible is.
The reason I read AtBC is to laugh at the preposterous claims of creationists such as you and Bill. I hardly need people like Deadman and JonF and Arden and Louis and Incorygible and Norm (not that I don't appreciate their insights; I do) to bolster my worldview. I already have all the evidence I need from my own research to understand that idiots like you don't have a single piece of evidence to support their primitive, Second-Millennium-B.C. worldview.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
* Shirley says Creation Ex Nihilo is impossible because, well ... it just is, you ninny!! Everyone knows that.
That's right, Dave. There is no such thing as nothing. Never has been and never will. You believe this too, after all, God isn't nothing. If God always existed, then there was always something.
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? Examples: the Bible talks about Hittites.
Then you say :
Quote
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
Now you say :
Quote
Deadman thinks I said the Bible is the only source that mentions the Hittites ...
More Importantly, DaveTard2:
Quote
Why aren't you responding to my comments on your lying, your demonstrably false prophecies and my question on how you constructed your 5000-year-old flood chronology, Dave?
And again, don't try to point me to some website that doesn't have precise methods by which the chronology was constructed.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Well, Dave, thanks for explaining why you are here. Scepticism about the real world is typically considered nihilism; imagine my surprise to find you a nihilist. Ha.
Or a solipsist that has created his own little god in his own f_ed-up image. Hugs to you, Shirl
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
* Deadman thinks I said the Bible is the only source that mentions the Hittites ...
* Norm is still trying to understand what I think about the Documentary Hypothesis ...
* Incorygible is trying to make some link between the Chronicles of Narnia and Biblical archaeology ...
* Eric thinks that if the Bible mentions a real place like Rome, that makes me think its true about everything ...
* Aftershave wants to equate FDR/VCR testimony with Carbon 14 dating ...
* Faid thinks Stonehenge has some bearing on Biblical archaeology ... and ...
* Shirley says Creation Ex Nihilo is impossible because, well ... it just is, you ninny!! Everyone knows that.
Wow! That's all I can say ... wow!
Oh well ... I am confirming for myself that skeptics really are grasping at the wind when they try to discredit the Bible. You cannot even get a straight answer. I used to think maybe there was something to the arguments and I wanted to see firsthand. Where better to come than ATBC? Now I am seeing that there is so little there, it's no wonder you hear of all these stories about skeptics converting to Christianity.
I guess we'll see how well you fare on the Flood. If anyone wants some honest discourse, I am quite willing. Deadman and I did pretty well on the Helium-zircon thing. But you guys seem to be losing touch. Maybe I've just worn you out on almost 100 pages??
Translation: "Well I got cornered again, so I'll just blabber and handwave and pretend I've already answered and quickly move on to my next "argument". Man, It seems so easier when you do this with an audience of little children for some reason..."
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
* Deadman thinks I said the Bible is the only source that mentions the Hittites ...
And HonestDave the used car salesman actually said:
Quote
Examples: the Bible talks about Hittites. We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are.
dave, does your phrasing above imply that the discovery of Hettites comes as a prediction from the Bible, yes or no? Try to display some christian honesty for once and admit it.
It's way easier when you try to pull little tricks like this to indoctrinate small kids, eh dave?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Has anybody mentioned the fact that Jericho didn't have walls at the time they were supposed to have been blown down and that the town of Ai didn't exist when it was supposed to have been attacked.
Michael
ps Yes Jericho did at one time have walls and Ai existed but that screws up the bible dating (all those begats and when they were supposed to be in Egypt).
The point being that even if the bible never existed, there would be other records for archaeologists to work from...contradicting your claim that it is only the bible that mentions Hittites as a people.
You call me a liar at least once per page and Faid blindly seconds you. At least you have original thoughts however misguided they may be. And I am impressed by your ability to come up with research.
You claim that I say it is "only the bible that mentions Hittites as a people."
Again, just like with the Wai-wais, you are Dead wrong.
Here is what I said ...
Quote
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
THAT, my hard-headed friends, is what I said.
... and it is true. Until Sayce of Oxford discovered the Hittites in 1876, many critics believed they did not exist. But thanks to Sayce and others, now everyone believes the Hittites were real. Too bad they didn't believe the Bible in the first place!
Now, Deadman, I'm sure your reference that you gave about the Hittites being mentioned in some Egyptian tablets is no doubt correct.
But that misses the point entirely which you guys are very good at doing I see. The whole point is ... skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation. Sayce and his successors proved them wrong.
This has nothing to do with additional, later discovered references to the Hittites, and I never said that there were no subsequently discovered references, did I now?
Now, for once in your lives, why don't you and Faid admit you were wrong.
I do whenever I am wrong. Is it beneath you two or something to admit when you are wrong?
************************
Norm, you are a more polite individual so I won't rag on you so much ...
You mentioned that you think camels are an anachronism?
If you would go buy McDowell's books, you would not think this ...
Kenneth Kitchen says,
Quote
"...the great Mesopotamian lexical lists that originated in the Old Babylonian period show a knowledge of the camel c. 2000/1700 BC including its domestication. Furthermore, a Sumerian text from Nippur from the same early period gives clear evidence of domestication of camels by then, by its allusion to camel's milk. Camel bones were found in house ruins at Mari of the pre-Sargonic age (25th to 24th centuries BC), etc. etc." (Kitchen, K.A., The Ancient Orient and the Old Testament. Chicago:IVP. 1966.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, I don't care how many examples you come with where the Bible isn't wrong. Undoubtedly there are many instances where it isn't wrong. It certainly mentions plenty of places that—surprise!—actually exist. What difference it makes that no one knew of any earlier references to such places until after it was noted that the Bible mentioned them is anyone's guess.
The point is, for about the dozenth time, is that the Bible is wrong many, many times. We've pointed out to you over and over again that the Bible is not even close to being inerrant. You can fill a book with instances where the Bible is wrong (and I'm sure people have done so). Your claim that the Bible is inerrant has been utterly, comprehensively annihilated.
But you keep denying this. You claim that there are no archaeological finds that contradict the Bible, a claim so utterly preposterous as to beggar the imagination. We give you multiple examples of exactly such finds, but you still claim they don't exist.
I'm not sure what to make of that, Dave. I can't decide if you have some sort of psychological issue which prevents you from seeing things that contradict your worldview, or if you can see them, but simply cannot admit to anyone else that you see them.
Either way, you're wrong.
So, when can we expect to see some evidence for your flood? I think I've been asking this question for close to a month now.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
[quote=afdave,June 30 2006,22:38][/quote] Except, as usual, he's not dead wrong. You are, Dave. Imagine my surprise.
You said:
Quote
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
You don't specify by whom they were known. You made a flat statement: the Hittites were unknown outside the Bible.
Deadman points you that you are, as usual, wrong:
Quote
In the Egyptian inscriptions the Hittites, who had apparently conquered Syria, first appear in the reign of Thothmes III. (1503-1449), when they received their first decisive reverse. Mentions of the Hittites continue to the period of Ramses III.
You didn't say anything about "not previously known by Westerners," or "by moderns," or "by Europeans." You said they were "not previously known."
Later, you said:
Quote
Until Sayce of Oxford discovered the Hittites in 1876, many critics believed they did not exist. But thanks to Sayce and others, now everyone believes the Hittites were real. Too bad they didn't believe the Bible in the first place!
The cool thing about all of this being in print, where you can't edit it after the fact, is that we can catch you again and again in errors, Dave. I don't imagine that will ever change.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Aftershave wants to equate FDR/VCR testimony with Carbon 14 dating ...
You're lying again Dave. Perhaps you can show me where in the FDR/VCR post I mentioned C14 dating. Could it be you have a guilty conscience for avoiding all discussion of C14 evidence so far?
The whole point of that particular post was to show your blatant hypocrisy, and you didn’t disappoint. When it comes to the Bible, you claim written records supercede physical evidence. When it comes to anything else, you claim that physical evidence supercedes written testimony. You said you accept the FDR/VCR data over the written testimony, but you never said why.
That makes you a flaming hypocrite Dave.
But now that you brought up C14 dating again, are you ever going to be honest enough to discuss the actual techniques? Are you ready yet to discuss the many different independent ways that C14 dating is confirmed to be accurate? In many ways, C14 dating and FDR/VCR results are quite similar. Both use sophisticated scientific instruments to measure and record known physical phenomena. Accuracy in both is critical, so both have been thoroughly tested and calibrated to a high level of precision.
Give me a good reason why you accept the science and reliability of results from one but not the other.
On some level, you have to know you’re just lying to yourself Dave. Not even the biggest Fundy retard in the world can perpetually deny the never ending stream of evidence that you’ve been shown. You strut and crow here at ATBC, but you have to know when you look in the mirror that the only one you’re fooling is yourself.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The entity known as normdoering rapped upon the table and pointedly asked:
“4) THE LEGENDARY VIEW OF PATRIARCHAL NARRATIVES
You claim there are Sumerian tablets with the names of the patriarchs on them (or something like that) but you have not produced these tablets. Where are these tablets? In what mueseum? What scholar, at what university, has studied them? Where are their pictures of them?”
As with other unanswered questions, such as ‘who clove the Devil’s foot’ and ‘what was the name Achilles took when he hid among the women,’ we have the Google Oracle, who, once being duly bribed with ‘several gallons of porter’ (I was walking with my I-pod on playing Flogging Molly) and upon being asked the above question, after a round of thunder (it’s hotter than blazes in Vegas and two clashing cells of t-storms were about) promptly, in a voice from beyond the grave, gave the following http addy. Imagine my shock. Seems the AIG people have their own version of the Documentary Hypothesis, which (the standard DH, I mean), as far as I know, is still the version the Presbyterians use in Bible study classes. But they are a bunch of Masonic heterousian (sp?) Heterodox Arian preforeordestinatarian heathenish post-pagan new age heretical do gooder Bible-spinning protesters who gave rise to Alexander Hamilton. . . I digress:
The Wendell-Blundell prism is also quoted in Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God and compared to a much later king-list and the list of Patriarchs (pp 117-120 of Oriental Mythology) and their ages from Adam to the Flood. The names in the WB prism are in Sumerian: A-lulim, Alalgar, Enmenluanna, Eumengalanna, Divine Dummuzi, etc. . .
I guess instead of the names of the Patrichs it is ‘something like that:’ the only phonetic similarity in names is between #5 in the Berossos list, 280 B.C.E. and the King James translation: Megalaros, Mahalel. The AIG makes the case that the Sumerian text is based on an earlier text containing the Genesis genealogy and the huge ages given are a misreading of the Semitic decimal counting system by a Sumerian scribe accustomed to a sexagesimal system.
A close reading does not seem to indicate a strong support for afdaves postion, at least as staded on norm's question, but hey, I was curious and had to find out.
-------------- Beauty is that which makes us desperate. - P Valery
You seem to view this as some sort of game, Dave. I don't. If I am wrong, I say so. If you are wrong, as you were with so many things that I have mentioned...you fail to address it, pretend not to understand, or otherwise engage in avoidance.
I'll walk you through this slowly, Dave, since you seem to need that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part I. Dave makes a claim, repeatedly:
Quote
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
Look at what you said, Dave..."My examples were not previously known outside the Bible."
Okay, Dave, Let's see what I said in response:
Quote
The point being that even if the bible never existed, there would be other records for archaeologists to work from...contradicting your claim that it is only the bible that mentions Hittites as a people.
Now, why do you have a problem with that, Dave? The Egyptian inscriptions predate any known Old Testament Translations that were in the west or anywhere outside the Levant. Herodotus, too wrote of them as "Syrians" at the correct time frame when the Hittites ( they called them selves "Neshili" ) occupied that region. The Assyrians wrote of them prior to any wide distribution of the OT as well. So why do you say that they were unknown outside the Bible?
The only reason I can think of is that you claim "Europeans " did not know of them prior to Sayce linking together relevant data from PREVIOUS discoveries. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part II 1) The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyrian colony of Kültepe in east-central modern Turkey, containing records of trade between Assyrian merchants and a certain "land of Hatti". These Tablets were found by locals and taken to various markets to be sold to Orientalists during the mid-1800's. The mounds themselves were not excavated by archaeologists until the 1890's by Ernst Chantre. Kultepe has been shown to be a major trade center from the Bronze age on (2500-2100, Levels III-IV) BCE.
2) Next comes the discovery of an inscription at Bođazköy Turkey by a "People of Hattusas" discovered by William Wright in 1874. This was found to match inscriptions from Aleppo and Hamath in Northern Syria -- previously described as well, by Sir Richard Burton and others.
3) In 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt uncovered "letters" between two Egyptian rulers (Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton) and "The Kingdom of Kheta" that was apparently located in the same region as the "land of Hatti"
4) THEN, in 1880, Rev. Archibald "Archie" Sayce began to try to decipher the hieroglyphic scripts found at Aleppo and Hamath in northern Syria that matched the script on a monument at Boghazkoy. In 1882, in a lecture to the Society of Biblical Archaeology in London, he announced that the Hittites, far from being a small Canaanite tribe who dealt with the kings of the northern kingdom of Israel, were the people of a "lost Hittite empire," which previously known Egyptian texts were then bringing to light.
Okay...that's how the EUROPEAN timeline goes...but the fact is that Herodotus, the Egyptians and Assyrians all knew of the Hittites. So how can they be "unknown" outside the Bible?
Also, you say
Quote
This has nothing to do with additional, later discovered references to the Hittites, and I never said that there were no subsequently discovered references, did I now?
Dave, the references I gave PREDATE Sayce, both chronologically in History and in academia ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Yes, Sayce linked them together...but please name 2 scholars of that time prior to Sayce that disbelieved that the Hittites ever existed?
2) Look at what the bible says about the Hittites. They are mentioned a total of 48 times and called the "Children of Heth" in translation. They are said to dwell in the mountains in the heart of Palestine (Num. 13:29), or In Josh. 1:4 the Hittite territory stretches from Lebanon and the wilderness to the Euphrates. Despite this discrepancy between the heart of the Hittite empire in Turkey and the furthest extent of the "Neo-Hittites" (Luwians) to the BORDER of "Canaan" I know of NO 19th-century "scholars" PRIOR to Sayce's work that said they believed the "Hethians" did not exist. You said otherwise, Dave..
Quote
The whole point is ... skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation.
3) Finally, there is indeed dispute TODAY about whether the Hittites of Anatolia are the "HRY" of the OT. Some people have conjectured that the Biblical Hittites could actually be Hurrian tribes living in Palestine, and that the Hebrew word for the Hurrians (HRY in consonant-only script) became the name of the Hittites (HTY) due to a scribal error.
Quote
Biblical scholars before the age of archaeology traditionally regarded them as a smaller tribe, living in the hills of Canaan during the era of the Patriarchs. This picture was completely changed by the archaeological finds that placed the center of the Hatti/Hattusas civilization far to the north, in modern-day Turkey. Because of this perceived discrepancy and other reasons, some Biblical scholars reject Sayce's identification of the two people, and believe that the similarity in names is only a coincidence. In order to stress this distinction, E. A. Speiser called the Biblical "Hittites" Hethites in his translation of the Book of Genesis for the Anchor Bible Series.
The Hittite kingdom is conventionally divided into three periods, the Old Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1750–1500 BC), the Middle Hittite Kingdom (ca. 1500–1430 BC) and the New Hittite Kingdom (the Hittite Empire proper, ca. 1430–1180 BC).
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Now, for once in your lives, why don't you and Faid admit you were wrong.
I do whenever I am wrong. Is it beneath you two or something to admit when you are wrong?
Thank you, dave, for yet again providing this morning's entertainment.
Did you or did you not say that Hittites were not known outside the Bible, dave? Did you or did you not imply that they were discovered just by following the bible?
Man. And you of all people say you admit it when you are wrong. You have some nerve, dave; if only you had the guts to back it up...
Speaking of guts: Any chance you'll actually address all those other arguments you hand-waived in your previous post?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The only reason I can think of is that you claim "Europeans " did not know of them prior to Sayce linking together relevant data from PREVIOUS discoveries.
Very good!! I DON'T have to spell everything out for you. I CAN make general statements with certain assumptions and you DO have the ability to understand those assumptions.
Of course I meant Europeans! Haven't I said over and over that I am focusing on the last 200 years of theory making (sorry, myth making) here with all my topics? Do you think I'm such an idiot (probably you do ... you are so blinded by your own theories) that I really meant no one in history ever knew about the Hittites outside the Bible? That's absurd. Of course, nations contemporary with the Hittites heard of them, fought with them, traded with them, etc. and I'm sure their memory lasted for many centuries after they fell from greatness.
The whole point of this discussion--again, which you guys lose sight of very easily--is that modern skeptics in the last 200 years have come up with some pretty incredible FAIRY TALE THEORIES: The Theory of Evolution and the Documentary Hypothesis being two of them. Skeptics have doubted many historical details of the Bible, but archaeology has proven the skeptics wrong again and again!!
Your timeline is close to what I have ...
My source says...
Quote
A.H. Sayce, of Oxford, was the first scholar to identify the Hittite people from the monuments. In 1876 he read a paper to the Society for Biblical Archaeology wherein he attributed certain inscriptions found in Hamath at Alleppo to the Hittites. In 1879 he visited the Near East and in 1880 he read another paper to the archaeologists, asserting that the Hittites had lived in the mountainous country north of Mesopotamia and also in all of Asia Minor. Wight, Fred H., Highlights of Archaeology in Bible Lands, Chicago: Moody Press, 1955.
These scholars didn't believe him. Why do you think Sayce's two papers didn't get published?
E.A.W. Budge of the British Museum as late as 1902 rejected the identification of the Hittites 'on insufficient grounds.' (Joseph Free, Archaeology and the Bible, HIS Magazine, May 1949, Vol. 9, p. 19)
One of the most prominent archaeologists of the 20th century (according to Wikipedia), William F. Albright said ...
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In 1871 some inscriptions in a previously unknown type of hieroglyphic script were discovered at Hamath in Syria, and eight years later A.H. Sayce identified the script with that of inscriptions already known from Asia Minor. Applying the term 'Hittite' to all of the Bible was doubted by many, but it has proved to be correct. (Albright, William F., Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands, New York: Funk & Wagnall, 1955, p. 53)
So ... I named one scholar who doubted the Bible, then I quoted one of the most prominent archaeologists of the 20th century who said 'doubted by many' and I showed you the reluctance of scholars at Oxford to accept Sayce's papers. Now I'm not going to go out and find all the names and quotes of scholars who doubted Sayce. I was already convinced of it and if you are not, then too bad for you. I'm getting quite used to this routine of turning the light on for you, having you close your eyes and continue to yell at me to turn on the light. Again, I can lead a horse to water, but I cannot make him drink.
Yes, Deadman, they were as hard headed as you are. Hard-headedness is a good thing to a certain extent, but it should only go so far. Open-mindedness is a virtue as well. Why don't you show me that you have some of that!!
So my statement..
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Examples: the Bible talks about Hittites. We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are.
Is corrrect.
How did Sayce and Wright even KNOW about the Hittites to go search for them?
The BIBLE! Ding, ding, ding, ding ... you answered correctly!
And did anyone (OK, for the slow people - Europeans) know about them OUTSIDE the Bible.
NO! Ding, ding, ding, ding ... you answered correctly!
Aftershave ... slick dodge there!! But you still look like a fool ...
You completely dodged the fact that you made a complete fool of yourself by trying to equate your Carbon 14 dating situation to an aircraft mishap which uses FDRs and VCRs.
Nice work!!!
Not that making a fool of yourself is anything new ... I'm used to it by now. Every day you call me all these ridiculous names in the hope that this will somehow make you look good to all the real scientists here.
But who knows ... maybe they think you look good anyway ... they are blind to many things ... maybe they are blind to how you look also.
When you can ask a smart question, I'll answer it. Until then, don't bother asking ... you're wasting my time.
Faid-- Why do you keep riding on Deadman's coattails? Don't you have any original thoughts of your own?
*************************************************
RaUl...
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You claim there are Sumerian tablets with the names of the patriarchs on them (or something like that) but you have not produced these tablets. Where are these tablets? In what mueseum? What scholar, at what university, has studied them? Where are their pictures of them?”
No one has the tablets. But there is much evidence that Genesis is a compilation of "family records" which were originally recorded on tablets. Go read my essay on p. 82 on this thread, then get the book if you want more info.
************************************************** Eric...you sure do fill up a lot of space with rhetoric. Could we summarize all that ONCE maybe and just save the bandwidth? Maybe we could come up with a code system or something. You know, maybe a letter system like A, B, C, D, etc. Then each letter could stand for a whole particular paragraph of "anti-Dave rhetoric."
Think about it!
Eric...
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The point is, for about the dozenth time, is that the Bible is wrong many, many times. We've pointed out to you over and over again that the Bible is not even close to being inerrant.
No you have not. You are dreaming. You gave me two examples of Bible prophecies that you think did not come true ...
1) Tyre and 2) Nebuchadnezzar and Egypt. I showed you on both of them how they were in fact fulfilled, though I admitted their is some room for different interpretation. But there is no way you can say, 'Look these two prophecies never came true. The Bible is wrong. Russell gave me the 'Death of the Innocents' one and this is simply a matter of silence outside Biblical history. Again, not a positive proof the Bible is wrong.
So you have given me ZERO ... NOTHING definite to prove the Bible is wrong yet.
Keep scratching ... maybe you'll come up with something yet.
**************************************
Norm ... how about those camels, my friend?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As to their evidence, Dr. Bryant Wood, Director of the Associates for Biblical Research and one of the leading experts on the archaeology of Jericho, recently responded.
"It matters little what the Italian archaeologists did not find in their month-long dig. The evidence is already in. Three major expeditions to the site over the past 90 years uncovered abundant evidence to support the Biblical account."
As Wood went on to point out, John Garstang (1930-1936) and Kathleen Kenyon (1952-1958) both dug at Jericho for six seasons and a German excavation directed by Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger dug for three. All found abundant evidence of the city’s destruction by fire in a layer related to the Biblical date of 1400 BC.
ABR's Bryant Wood standing beside a section of the collapsed wall of Jericho.
In September 1997, Dr. Wood visited Jericho and examined the results of the Italian excavation first hand. Incredibly, he found the Italians had uncovered the stone outer revetment wall at the base of the tell with part of the mudbrick wall built on top of it still intact. In the balk of the Italian excavation, at the outer base of the revetment wall, Wood noticed the remains of the collapsed mudbrick city walls which had tumbled. Not only did the Italians find the same evidence uncovered in the earlier excavations, it fits the Biblical story perfectly!
Wood reports:
"The Italian excavation actually uncovered most of the critical evidence relating to the Biblical story. But even more exciting is the fact that all the evidence from the earlier digs has disappeared over time. We only have records, drawing and photos. But the Italians uncovered a completely new section of the wall which we did not know still existed. I had my photograph taken standing next to the wall where the mudbrick collapse had just been excavated!"
Unfortunately, the Italian archaeologists, the Palestinian Authorities, the Associated Press and most of the world doesn’t realize any of this. It is a sad commentary on the state of archaeology in the Holy Land, when the purpose of an excavation at a Biblical site is to disprove the Bible and disassociate the site with any historical Jewish connection.
********************************
What? There's more skeptics out there in the world besides the ones here at ATBC? I'm shocked!!
(I can hear Deadman coming back at me on this one ... waa, waa, waa ... your dates are wrong ... there weren't any walls when Joshua came through ... waa, waa, waa ... I don't see any evidence of walls falling down ... there was no earthquake ... those Italians are more reliable than Garstang or Kenyon ... everyone knows that ... waa, waa, waa)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As I said, they were known outside the bible. You merely choose to claim that only europeans counted, I suppose. This is not MY fault that you make silly claims, Dave..it is yours. "My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible ." is something I chose to take literally. I cannot read minds. You say "Of course, nations contemporary with the Hittites heard of them, fought with them, traded with them, etc. and I'm sure their memory lasted for many centuries after they fell from greatness." My point was other WRITTEN records existed, Dave, look at what I posted
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The point being that even if the bible never existed, there would be other records for archaeologists to work from...contradicting your claim that it is only the bible that mentions Hittites as a people.
Furthermore,Wrights work predates Sayce's and in fact HE was the first to link The Anatolian finds to the Hethians of the bible.He had discussed the inscriptions found on the Hamath stones he helped recover, in an article in the "British and Foreign Evangelical Review," published in 1874.
Sayce merely got credit for it because he had credentials in Assyriology. And you're simply wrong again when you say that Sayce "couldn't get published" He didn't TRY TO. He gave oral presentations FIRST, as was the custom. His work led to wide acceptance almost immediately. Your claim that
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These scholars didn't believe him. Why do you think Sayce's two papers didn't get published?
Is blatantly false...name ANYONE FROM THAT TIME WHO SAID THE HITTITES DID NOT EXIST AS YOU CLAIMED, DAVE.
And I cannot find ANYONE of **that*** time period OR BEFORE...that didn't "believe" the "Hittites" existed. You name people from the TWENTIETH century, not the 1800's, as you initially said:
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The whole point is ... skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation.
WELL? NAME A SCHOLAR OF THE 1880's or previous that said what you claimed, Dave.
You made several claims, Dave...one was that the Hittites were unknown outside the bible...this is false both from the point of view of non-europeans AND europeans...HERODOTUS was already translated. Your claims about scholars disputing the HIttites at the time of Sayce is also false.
There are no disputes until the turn of the century as people begin working on the LANGUAGES of the peoples involved...the Hittites in Anatolia and the Hethians of the later "Luwian" Neo-hittites.
You can try and be as smug as you wish, Dave, but the fact is that you are wrong about your claims here. The bible was NOT the only written work to mention the Hittites.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
How did Sayce and Wright even KNOW about the Hittites to go search for them?
They didn't go "search " for them...they were led to UNKNOWN inscriptions that they LATER CONNECTED to the Hethians of the Bible...not the other way around as you imply (wrongly , again)
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I showed you the reluctance of scholars at Oxford to accept Sayce's papers.
Uh, no you didn't...you just asserted it falsely. Again, name one scholar who disagreed at that time. And show that Sayce "could not" get published as you claimed. This is simply more "embellishment" on your part.
The disagreements don't arise until far later, Dave. The Initial presentations by Sayce were VERY well recieved and he had no problem publishing.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Faid-- Why do you keep riding on Deadman's coattails? Don't you have any original thoughts of your own?
Why do you care, dave? do you also want to be able to ignore my original thoughts, like everyone else's?
When are you gonna address the fact that your 'logic' would make us believe that Merlin (or, in the best case, the Druids) built Stonehenge, dave?
When are you gonna address the fact that your 'logic' can also prove that the Iliad is an inerrant text, dave? (and even more than the Bible, since we really didn't have any data save Homer's works to indicate the existence of Troy)
Why should I bother to share any more of my thoughts with you, when you disregard them without even bothering to look?
So, I'll just point to where you are wrong, as usual, and sit back and watch you try to twist your way out, posting in all caps and bolds and throwing endless paragraphs that fail absolutely to address the issues.
In this case, your mistake is more than obvious: You say Hittites were not known outside the bible. Deadman shows you how various sourses, predating the first discovery of the Hittites, indicated their existense. And that makes your claim plain False. Do you even know who Herodotus is, dave? Does your knowledge of these issues extend beyond what your apologetic sites say? Did you even bother to learn?
You know, if you had the decency to say something like "Well, maybe the Hittites were not the best example, but still others blah blah", or "OK, so Ezekiel didn't get it exactly right, but he came close..." ...Maybe then we'd have some more respect for you. But the Champion of God can never be wrong, right dave? You made the mistake of admitting to an error once, thinking it would be the only time... But you can't afford to lose more face. So it's distortion, denial, goalpost-moving, strawman-beating and even more denial from now on. Makes sence I guess.
So go ahead and post your little titles and bullets and neat paragraphs; you know you want to, and I'm sure the poor kids you'll "teach" will fall for those. Just don't expect us to aid you in your illusions:
We won't play ghost to your Hamlet.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
This is the sort of claim that shows how truly dishonest you are, Dave:
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1) Tyre and 2) Nebuchadnezzar and Egypt. I showed you on both of them how they were in fact fulfilled, though I admitted their is some room for different interpretation. But there is no way you can say, 'Look these two prophecies never came true. The Bible is wrong.
Anyone can look back on the last three pages and see me asking you to address this specifically. Tyre did not vanish beneath the sea, and it was never a bare rock. Nebuchadrezzar did not take the Nile valley. Period. It was not a wasteland for 40 years...the Egyptians just kept right on going, Dave...
See, Dave, I don't mince words and say silly crap like the Hittites were "not known outside the bible" then turn around and say " oh, I meant by EUROPEANS" while still forgetting that Herodotus was ...er...Greek...which I assume still counts as European.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OH, and on your claim about Jericho, Dave? You should know that it was KENYON who said the walls didn't exist, and by the way, you DO have the dates wrong for Kenyon's work and chronology. It wasn't " the Italians" who made the claim, idiot.
And again, just to drive home the point about Sayce's publications in the 1880's, Dave:
Monuments of the Hittites (1881) Herodotus i-ui. (1883) << pay attention to that one, stupid Ancient Empires of the East (1884) Introduction to Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (1885) Assyria (1885) Hibbert Lectures on Babylonian Religion (1887) The Hittites (1889)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
(OK ... 'proven' may be too strong ... how about 'provided extremely powerful evidence and rebutted all objections effectively.'
A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans. These scientific laws are so powerful that this Being can literally "speak" material things into existence and destroy things with a simple command. This Being lives "outside of time" and can view what we call "the future" and "the past" with equal ease.
B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose. This God created mankind with a choice of either doing his will or not doing his will, in a similar way as parents "create" babies knowing full well that their child will either do their will or not do their will. Christian Theologians commonly call the choice of NOT doing God's will "sin."
K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
L. God personally dictated the events of the Creation week to the first man, Adam, but then assumed a less active role in the composition of the balance of Genesis and the balance of what is now commonly called the Christian Scriptures. This role varied from active dictation in an audible voice to less obvious methods--we might call it "planting of thoughts" in the minds of the writers. This collective process is commonly called the "Inspiration of Scripture" by Christian Theologians.
M. Many cultures in geographically diverse locations around the world have legends which follow the general outline above. The reason for the variance we find in the legends is that many of them are simply oral traditions passed down through the generations without the benefit of scrupulous copying of written records that the Christian Scriptures have enjoyed. Since the Documentary Hypothesis (Graf-Wellhausen Theory) has now been thoroughly discredited, we have good reason to revert to the previously well established hypothesis that Genesis is NOT oral tradition, but rather it is a carefully copied written record of eye-witness accounts.
G. The natural result of collective disobedience to the revealed will of God was an extremely corrupt society--i.e. rampant dishonesty, injustice, murder, theft, etc.--which was terminated by God through the agency of a global, life-destroying flood--the Flood of Noah described in Genesis.
H. The Global Flood of Noah was an immense cataclysm of enormous tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic upheaval. It completely reshaped the ante-diluvian world and resulted in massive, worldwide sedimentation and fossilization, mountain range uplift, sea basin lowering, continent separation, and climate change. The Flood was survived in a floating ark by 8 humans (four couples) and one or more pairs of terrestrial, air-breathing, genetically rich animals and birds. The diversity we see in the living world today is the result of subsequent geographic separation and isolation of species and natural selection.
Point 1: Massive Quantities of Sedimentary (Water-laid) Rock Thousands of Feet Thick
This, my friends, is a picture of MASSIVE quantities of WATER-LAID rock! Do I have to remind everyone how WATER-LAID rock gets laid? (no pun intended)
I probably do ... so let me break it down for you into three basic rules ...
RULE #1: WATER-LAID (Sedimentary) ROCK GETS LAID DOWN BY .... (Surprise! ) ... WATER !!
RULE #2: LOTS OF WATER-LAID (Sedimentary) ROCK GETS LAID DOWN BY .... (Surprise! ) ... LOTS OF WATER !!
RULE #3: MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF WATER-LAID (Sedimentary) ROCK GETS LAID DOWN BY .... (Surprise! ) ... MASSIVE QUANTITITES OF WATER !!
Now ... I will stop there for now because--knowing you guys--you will have some objections already ...
So have at it !!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
DEADMAN CANNOT EVEN KEEP HIS MISQUOTES OF ME STRAIGHT Deadman...
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NAME ANYONE FROM THAT TIME WHO SAID THE HITTITES DID NOT EXIST AS YOU CLAIMED, DAVE.
And I cannot find ANYONE of **that*** time period OR BEFORE...that didn't "believe" the "Hittites" existed. You name people from the TWENTIETH century, not the 1800's, as you initially said: Quote The whole point is ... skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation.
You're pathetic, Deadman. You think I said scholars said the Hittites didn't exist. Where did I say that? You quoted me yourself 3 lines down!!!! There it is ... I said ...
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The whole point is ... skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation.
I said that scholars thought the Bible was in error about the Hittites ...
GUESS WHAT!! I'M CORRECT!! AND I HAVE SHOWN YOU NOW REPEATEDLY. ISN'T IT ABOUT TIME YOU ADMITTED YOU WERE WRONG FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE?
I quoted the guy in the very early 20th century, yes, to illustrate the point that scholars doubted the Bible's information in the Bible.
Are you so ignorant as to claim I'm wrong about this?
Are you so ignorant as to go against the clear word of Albright?
I'm not going to go find names of quotes for you because this is WELL-KNOWN that scholars were skeptical about the Bible's info on the Hittites.
Faid...
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When are you gonna address the fact that your 'logic' would make us believe that Merlin (or, in the best case, the Druids) built Stonehenge, dave?
When are you gonna address the fact that your 'logic' can also prove that the Iliad is an inerrant text, dave? (and even more than the Bible, since we really didn't have any data save Homer's works to indicate the existence of Troy)
If you want to explain to me what in the world these items have to do with anything I am interested in, maybe I'll address them.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Okay, Dave, what did the scholars of the 1880's believe the Bible was in error about concerning the Hittites? And yeah, I'd like at least ONE name from that period. Got one? NO
So you say I was wrong about this, Dave? What was I wrong about? BE PRECISE.
Was it that I should have read your mind to "know" that you were talking ONLY about europeans when you said that the Hittites were not known outside the Bible?
Was it that I was wrong about Scholars of the 1880's NOT disputing that the Hittites existed?
What EXACTLY was I wrong about?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, and this is just for you, on Jericho and Kathleen Kenyon, Dumbass Dave:
Kathleen Kenyon undertook the decisive work of clarifying Jericho’s history from the Neolithic age on. In several painstaking campaigns she lifted one veil after another from the city of legend and history. She was not led by any theory about the time. She noted 15 different destructive episodes in the Bronze Age remains.She disagreed with Garstang's dating, and dated the destruction he had found close on 1000 years earlier. She did find a much later destruction but concluded it was circa 1550. From 1550 to about 1200 the site was virtually a ghost town and even after 1200 it was inhabited for some time on a modest scale. Kenyon's conclusions while by no means undisputed are the current orthodoxy among archeologists. “It is a sad fact”, wrote Miss Kenyon, “that of the town walls of the Late Bronze Age, within which period the attack by the Israelites must fall by any dating, not a trace remains. . . . As concerns the date of the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites, all that can be said is that the latest Bronze Age occupation should, in my view, be dated to the third quarter of the fourteenth century B.C. This is a date which suits neither the school of scholars which would date the entry of the Israelites into Palestine to c. 1400 B.C. nor the school which prefers a date of c. 1260 B.C.” Professor Martin Noth pointed to the Jericho discrepancy as the best and most decisive proof of the unreliable character of the historical parts of the Old Testament. It became a major issue for Old Testament studies. When Professor Wright of Harvard expressed himself as trusting the historical truth of Old Testament records, he was accosted by Professor Finkelstein of Los Angeles University with reference to the walls of Jericho that were in ruins long before the Israelites reached them. Indeed some archeologists such as Bill Dever are scathing about the historicity of Joshua's capture: "...if you want a miracle, here's your miracle: Joshua destroyed a city that wasn't even there". See: Kathleen Kenyon (1957). Digging Up Jericho.
NOW I'LL ASK AGAIN, DAVE...HOW DID YOU ARRIVE AT A 5000 BCE-YEAR- OLD FLOOD DATE? BE PRECISE AND DON'T POINT ME TO ANY WEB SITE THAT DOES NOT HAVE PRECISE METHODS BY WHICH SUCH A CHRONOLOGY WAS CONSTRUCTED
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
1) How did you construct your 5000 BCE-year-old flood chronology, DumbassDave? Don't point me to a website that doesn't have precise methods showing this.
2) You put up a pretty picture of the Grand Canyon, Dave. If all the strata were layed down at once, why do we find animal tracks in the Coconino sandstone?
3) That li'l kid's painting of the Ark is hilarious. Perfectly suited to you, Dave.
4) What EXACTLY was I wrong about concerning the Hittites, Dave? You have yet to mention any one "disputing" anything about the Hittites prior to the 1880's or during that time. Your "reference" is for the 1900's.
5) You must be really mad about me proving your intentional lies here, Dave, if you have to strain so hard to try to discredit me. Seriously...claiming the hittites were unknown outside the bible,...then claiming you ONLY meant "by Europeans?" and ignoring that herodotus and strabo are greek, hence not asian or african? Will your next modification of your claim be "I meant only Europeans after 1500 years CE? "(CE= common era, stupid)
6) HOW DID you construct that flood chronology, Dave? Pulled it out of your ass, huh?
You are trying to avoid citing your methods because the reason you CHOSE that date...was to try avoid archaeology and say the only thing that counts is written records. You MADE UP that date, disregarding the Bible , Dave:)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The only reason I can think of is that you claim "Europeans " did not know of them prior to Sayce linking together relevant data from PREVIOUS discoveries.
Very good!! I DON'T have to spell everything out for you. I CAN make general statements with certain assumptions and you DO have the ability to understand those assumptions.
Of course I meant Europeans! Haven't I said over and over that I am focusing on the last 200 years of theory making (sorry, myth making) here with all my topics? Do you think I'm such an idiot (probably you do ... you are so blinded by your own theories) that I really meant no one in history ever knew about the Hittites outside the Bible?
Dave, you're an idiot. Deadman points out several errors in the Bible in one post, on a completely different topic, and you still persist in your preposterous belief in Biblical inerrancy.
You were wrong in your original post (you said nothing about "Europeans"), you were more wrong in your subsequent post (Deadman points out that Sayce pieced together his hypothesis from evidence predating the Bible), and you're still more wrong in this post.
But you say you admit when you're wrong…I can tell this is going to another one of those "Portuguese" moments when you simply cannot admit you're wrong, no matter how many times it's pointed out to you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Animal tracks in the coconino sandstone, tsk... How many layers were deposited by " the flood of 5000 BCE" Dave? How could there be animal tracks ...if it was all under water? And by the way, Dave...how DID you construct that chronology?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Another day, another batch of AirPussDave’s dishonesty
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When you can ask a smart question, I'll answer it. Until then, don't bother asking ... you're wasting my time.
OK Dave, here’s a couple of smart questions. I’ve asked them of you many times before, but you just won’t provide an answer.
In many ways, C14 dating and FDR/VCR results are quite similar. Both use sophisticated scientific instruments to measure and record known physical phenomena. Accuracy in both is critical, so both have been thoroughly tested and calibrated to a high level of precision.
Give me a good reason why you accept the science and reliability of results from the FDR/CVR but not the C14 dating.
Now given your track record, you’ll probably use your same excuse “the C14 dates are based on bad assumptions – the C14/C12 ratio was 100X higher before the FLUD”. Right?
Never mind that you have no evidence for this goofy-assed claim whatsoever. The important point is that the whatever the C14/C12 ratios were, they are accounted for in the calibration.
Did you get that retard? If the C14/C12 ratios were vastly different at some time in the past, the independent calibration methods would all show a huge spike at the same dates but they don’t.
The independent calibration curves do all show fluctuations up to +/-5% in the C14/C12 ratio at earlier times – these fluctuations have been measured and produce what are known as ‘wiggle’ in the calibration curves. Statistical ‘wiggle matching’ is then done to produce calibration curves as accurate as possible.
Here is the link again to 41 separate, independent C14 calibration curves derived from at least six completely different methods
Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other, but none of them show your claimed 100X C14/C12 ratio?
You really get irritated when you realize you’ve been lying to yourself, don’t you Dave? The rest of us can see it plain as day. Your cognitive dissonance kicks in, and you get hostile and abusive. It must really suck being you – knowing that you must keep lying to defend your position, and realizing that lying will get you a one-way ticket straight to he11. No wonder your brain short circuits.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Animal tracks in the coconino sandstone, tsk... How many layers were deposited by " the flood of 5000 BCE" Dave? How could there be animal tracks ...if it was all under water? And by the way, Dave...how DID you construct that chronology?
Question #1: Easy. Animal walks in mud. Leaves tracks. Mud layer flows over tracks. Presto! Buried tracks. Mud hardens. Voila!
(Mud defined loosely ... you get my point let's hope)
Question #2: Easy again. Ussher Chronology gives Flood ~ 2350BC, right? There may be some missing generations which would stretch the chronology. No one can be sure how many, but there is an upper limit. Bottom line? Whether it occurred in 6000 or 5000 or 4000 or 3000 BC is of no consequence to the Biblical record. One thing we can be sure of is that it was no where even close to your number of millions. Otherwise, we should have written records far older than 5500 BC.
So why do you care about getting so specific?
And why should I care?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"...the great Mesopotamian lexical lists that originated in the Old Babylonian period show a knowledge of the camel c. 2000/1700 BC including its domestication. Furthermore, a Sumerian text from Nippur from the same early period gives clear evidence of domestication of camels by then, by its allusion to camel's milk. Camel bones were found in house ruins at Mari of the pre-Sargonic age (25th to 24th centuries BC), etc. etc." (Kitchen, K.A., The Ancient Orient and the Old Testament. Chicago:IVP. 1966.)
Are you sure you want to date Abram to 2000 BC at the earliest?
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Gen 12:16 And he entreated Abram well for her sake: and he had sheep, and oxen, and he asses, and menservants, and maidservants, and she asses, and camels.
Remember a couple things, you've got 4000 years of BC history according to your beliefs. Do you want to eat up half of that history going from Adam to Abram? From Genesis 1 to Genesis 12?
And why would you agree with any archeological dating after we've shown you sites dated older than 20,000 years ago?
Because science cares about the details Dave - that's how science works. It's been proven a hundred times over - the surest way to get a creationist to run screaming from the room is to press him on the scientific details of his claims.
That's why you're too much of a chickenshit to discuss any of the tons of detailed evidence that's been presented to you. You really do seem to think "the Devil is in the details" so you avoid them like the plague - is that it?
How's your cognitive dissonance doing today? Have you thrown anything across the room in your anger and despair yet? Kicked your dog?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
It's supposed to be loaded with anachronisms, but I'm forgetting what they were.
Here's one, possibly, from Genesis:
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4:17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. 4:18 And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech. 4:19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 4:20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. 4:21 And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. 4:22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah.
Wait, did we just go from the bronze age to the iron age before Noah?
And where did Cain's wife come from? Did Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and their unknown wives make enough babies to populate a city by the time of Enoch?
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that?
Ahhhh... sweet, sweet creo candy comes pouring out of the Dave-pińata. It just doesn't get any better than that. Well, since we finally got Dave to admit that he uses the bible to filter out any data that might contradict the bible, I don't think there's much else left to do. Either he'll get it or he won't. But at least it's been an interesting exercise in exploring and exposing the mental constructs that keep creos immune to logic.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Animal tracks in the coconino sandstone, tsk... How many layers were deposited by " the flood of 5000 BCE" Dave? How could there be animal tracks ...if it was all under water? And by the way, Dave...how DID you construct that chronology?
Question #1: Easy. Animal walks in mud. Leaves tracks. Mud layer flows over tracks. Presto! Buried tracks. Mud hardens. Voila!
(Mud defined loosely ... you get my point let's hope)
Word of advice, Dave: Don't go off script. You don't do improv well. Not well at all.
Earlier, you showed a picture of the Grand Canyon and said it was a "MASSIVE quantities of WATER-LAID rock!" Your contention, of course, was that it was laid during the global flood. But, that creates a problem for you. See, the footprints were found in the coconino sandstone. Now,please look again at the image presented by deadman, which I reproduce here: You should notice that the cocino sandstone is several layers down. Now if all these layers were laid down during the single global flood, you have a bit of a problem explaining how the footprints got there when the whole area was underwater. You see Dave, you didn't answer the question. You gave a smart aleck answer about the mechanism of how footprints could be made. But, not how such footprints could be found in an area that was underwater during a Great Flood where the only animals capable of walking were cooped up an an ark.
So, back to the drawing board. How did those footprints get there while the area was underwater? Did the flood recede long enough for Noah to allow the animals to get off the ark and stretch their legs in Northern Arizona before heading back towards Mount Ararat? Maybe a transitional species that could breath and walk underwater, like a proto-Aquaman kind? Inquiring minds.....
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
There may be some missing generations which would stretch the chronology. No one can be sure how many, but there is an upper limit. Bottom line? Whether it occurred in 6000 or 5000 or 4000 or 3000 BC is of no consequence to the Biblical record.
Oh, but it is of consequence, Dave. You see, the reason you extended that "chronology" was because people pointed out that known groups lived through that. So you chose to "extend" that chronology out to 5000 BCE, dave...arbitrarily.
There is nothing in the Bible that supports your claim of missing generations, dave, certainly not on the order of DOUBLING the standard date of the flood from 2350 to 5000 BCE or more.
What this means is you're ignoring what the Bible DOES say to try and claim ..that "missing" generations count more, even though you cannot show them "missing" at all. In short, you are doing precisely what you told others not to do, Dave---you are IMPOSING your unsupported view...on the Bible itself. Hypocrite.
Beyond MERELY being a liar ( Yes, I demonstrated that you are a DELIBERATE liar) now you're playing fast and loose with the Bible itself, trying to INSERT your chronology into a bible in which it won't fit.
This is why you can't even TRY to say "HOW" you "created " your chronology...you're making it up out of thin air without support FROM the bible. This is the equivalent of someone saying "adam and eve were Martians" and when you open the bible in outrage to refute it, the person says "I don't care what's IN the bible, I know that this information was LEFT OUT."
Your weaseling and lying is hilarious, Dave. Much as is any claim you have left to honesty. Scumbag. This is a fallacy of the highest order, worthy of the lowest scum such as yourself, Dave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Again, Dave, Let me be quite clear -- I asked you this on page 11 of this thread:
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AFDave: I asked a very simple question yesterday. I will ask it again. When did this global flood described in genesis happen? What date BCE? Don't avoid this simple question, dave, just deal with it.
That was the same page that you compared yourself to Newton and Maxwell, Dave...and YOU answered on page 12:
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A good guess for the Flood of Noah is probably somewhere between 2000 and 3000 BC
It was at that point that *I* said this:
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I'm glad you said that, Dave,because that agrees with what the Bible says, when one works backwards ( or forwards) using the dates and lifespans given. But there's a problem, Dave: Your whole edifice of cards balances on this one point: that the Bible is absolutely true. Yet you admit that the Global flood, wiping out all things on the face of the Earth...happened at between 2000-3000 BCE.
And I proceeded to list civilizations...with written records...that lived through that date, Dave.
That is what caused you to alter your claim, Davey-hypocrite..
When you saw that, and other people pounded it home to you, Davey, you *invented a new chronology*...based on WHAT in the bible? ....why, NOTHING...you invent "missing generations" that have NO basis in any Biblical statements...2700 YEARS of generations, DOUBLING your original claim.
You did that SOLELY because you wanted to make this ridiculous claim about all archaeology prior to your arbitrary date being invalid, and only written works count.
So you had to push the FLOOD back to 5000 BCE and your pushed your "creation of the world" back ...to 10,000 BCE. Any honest Christian reading this knows what a scumbag you are to to this fallacy, Dave, but you don't care, because it's not about the Bible for you, really...it's about your EGO. You got STOMPED on here and you don't like it, so you avoid, lie, twist, change your claims left and right, you use ANY ploy and then try to pretend you're honest? Show this thread to your dear old daddy, Davey. let him see what a liar you are...I bet you won't Oh, and Davey...like Carlsonjok pointed out, you didn't answer ( again) what I asked. How is it that animals laid tracks during a raging flood with billions of tons of sediments being laid down...UNDERWATER? WITH SEDIMENTS ABOVE THEM? HAHAHAHAHAHA. Dance, monkey, dance!!!!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
DEADMAN CANNOT EVEN KEEP HIS MISQUOTES OF ME STRAIGHT You're pathetic, Deadman. You think I said scholars said the Hittites didn't exist. Where did I say that? You quoted me yourself 3 lines down!!!! There it is ... I said ...
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The whole point is ... skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation.
Quote (afdave @ June 30 2006,22:38)
Until Sayce of Oxford discovered the Hittites in 1876, many critics believed they did not exist. But thanks to Sayce and others, now everyone believes the Hittites were real.
You seem very delusional, Dave...you can't even remember what you wrote in the course of a day. Yes, you said what I claimed you said. See?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Carlson ... Where did you get the idea that all land animals were cooped up in the ark? Only two of every kind (7 of some) were in the ark. There were many animals outside trying to escape the rising floodwaters. It is perfectly plausible for an animal to make footprints in mud, then the footprints got covered up with a new layer of mud.
What is so unbelievable about that?
Deadman ... you got me ... I did say that now, didn't I? Well, I take it back temporarily, until I can prove it. For my case, though it's not necessary to prove that statement. Whether scholars believed they existed or not, the point again is ...
Skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation on the authority of Albright ...and they were proven wrong!!
(PS It's real easy to say you are wrong ... you should try it sometime ... like maybe with your silly statements about my dad never going to Brazil, etc.)
As for the chronology, I'm not even sure I believe that a long chronology is necessary. Your dates may be in error. What makes you think they are correct? But even if you are correct, how does this hurt the Biblical case?
Norm... I covered metallurgy on p. 82 of this thread quite thoroughly. The 20th century Mesopotamian archaeologists discovered metallurgy back to 3500 BC. Go read that page and check back with me.
We covered Cain's wife already on a different thread ... I will cover it again later on this thread.
Improv... Why do you think the Bible is not a good history book? I have found it to be far more reliable than any other history book. If all it were was a history book, it would be of great value. Of course, I believe it to be much more than that, but what is that to you? Our discussion so far has had nothing to do with my view of the Bible as a Supernatural book. I have simply been showing that it is a reliable historical record, and that as such, it is reasonable to use it as a source for hypotheses.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Improv... Why do you think the Bible is not a good history book? I have found it to be far more reliable than any other history book.
Of course you do. Because you assume it is.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
The point is, for about the dozenth time, is that the Bible is wrong many, many times. We've pointed out to you over and over again that the Bible is not even close to being inerrant.
No you have not. You are dreaming. You gave me two examples of Bible prophecies that you think did not come true ...
1) Tyre and 2) Nebuchadnezzar and Egypt. I showed you on both of them how they were in fact fulfilled, though I admitted their is some room for different interpretation. But there is no way you can say, 'Look these two prophecies never came true. The Bible is wrong. Russell gave me the 'Death of the Innocents' one and this is simply a matter of silence outside Biblical history. Again, not a positive proof the Bible is wrong.
So you have given me ZERO ... NOTHING definite to prove the Bible is wrong yet.
Dave, we've pointed out at least two archaeological finds in Europe alone that refute your Bible's 6,000 year-old age for the earth. There are hundreds of thousands of archaeological finds, including thousands in the New World, that are more than 6,000 years old. But that doesn't matter; you just refuse to admit we've even mentioned them.
Dave, it obviously make you feel better to deny that we've ever been able to disprove anything in the Bible. Actually, if you counted up all the different things people have told you that directly contradict the Biblical account of creation, it's in the dozens, if not hundreds. But it's perfectly okay for you to deny them, because everyone else who reads this thread can see them. I can't do anything about your delusions, but I can certainly do something about anyone else who wonders if there's anything to your "Biblical Inerrancy" myth.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
About your dad, dave...look at what I said...I said I doubted it. Not that I "knew" such a thing. See p. 89 ,this thread. More importantly, he didn't visit the villages in the Highlands, since they were not contacted until long after your Daddy left the area, by all accounts.
Notice how different my statement is, Dave...I used a "qualifier" ("I doubt" is not the same as "I know"). YOu might want to learn about those when you make claims about "knowing" people's religious views, charitable activites and archaeological field experience among "jungle" groups. Your record there is as dismal as your honesty earlier today, Dave.
As to your Chronology...I stated clearly why you immediately changed your "dates" for the flood, dave...to try to protect your claim about "writing" having primacy over archaeology.
You asked about why the Bible is not a good history book..and the answers were already given you ...Genesis has two different scenarios. The sun being created AFTER plants is not exactly "good history" your made-up stories about scribes following Adam around is equally stupid, reflecting the poverty of the OT as a historical guide in particulars. Again, prophecies about Tyre and Egypt failed miserably. No archaeological finds can overturn the facts that Tyre is not sunken, and The valley of egypt was never taken, nor was it an abandoned wasteland. Nor did the flood happen, as you are discovering...Awfully hard to deal with footprints laid by critters in the midst of a flood, underwater, eh?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Carlson ... Where did you get the idea that all land animals were cooped up in the ark? Only two of every kind (7 of some) were in the ark. There were many animals outside trying to escape the rising floodwaters. It is perfectly plausible for an animal to make footprints in mud, then the footprints got covered up with a new layer of mud.
What is so unbelievable about that?
Okay, I see I need to take this step-by-step. So let us start again from the beginning. You agree that you said that the Grand Canyon is made of "MASSIVE quantities of WATER-LAID rock!", correct? And you propose that this was all laid by the biblical flood, also correct?
So, for the sake of argument, let us assume that the great flood did indeed create the Grand Canyon. So, can we agree that the layers lower in the canyon were created first, in the early days of the flood, as it were? Can we also agree then that as you go higher up the canyon walls you will encounter layers that were laid down later in the flood, with the uppermost layers having been laid down last during the waning days of the flood? This is an important point here and I need you to respond specifically whether you agree with these two comments or not. If we can agree on these points, then I think we can proceed. So, do you agree?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Wow ... you're a tough one to make happy. What criteria? Let's see ... how about whether the data are consistent with what I read in my history book - the Bible? How do you argue with that? We go out and do some digging and see if we can find Hittites. Voila! There they are.
My examples were not previously known OUTSIDE the Bible and there are many, many more.
THAT, my hard-headed friends, is what I said.
Now there's some logic.
But really, Dave. I just want to be clear about something just in case you haven't actually read the book you're defending (after all you did keep talking about language being or not being in Israel before Moses, which was when Israel was a dead man and not a nation).
Genesis 11 and The Tower of Babel:
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Genesis 11:3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter. 11:4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
Okay, these guys think they can build a tower out of baked bricks, with slime for morter, that has a top that will "reach unto heaven." Just how high up do you think you can make a structure with baked brick? Did they simply neglect to mention the titanium understructure and the carbon fiber ribbon lowered from geosynchronous orbit?
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Genesis 11:5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 11:6 And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 11:7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
Where does God come down from? And isn't he omnipotent, so why does he have to do anything to see better? And who is he talking to? Himself? Who is this "us" in "let us go down" that is going downstairs with the LORD because God is scared of and intimidated by baked brick towers? Which eyewitness patriarch wrote that bit, Dave? How does he know what God said?
According to this story, the whole variety of human languages was created at that moment by God, so, does that exclude Portuguese which was later made by mixing Spanish and French? Do languages now evolve gradually over long periods of time?
Do you actually believe there was a Tower of Babel?
It seems to me if the Bible is true you should be able to find things like the remains of the Tower of Bable and the city around it with the first and original human language perhaps, and pre-flood human civilization with iron works, and that sort of stuff from Genesis -- not Hittites and Egyptians.
Skeptics of the 19th century thought the Bible was in error about the Hittite nation on the authority of Albright...and they were proven wrong
Yet you can't name one of those people, Dave. Not ONE. Why do you think that is?
It's because of a couple of things, Dave: (1) No one doubted the Hethians (Hittites) of the bible existed as a Canaanite group. I gave you a quote on that. I read extensively in the archaeology and science of that period. I like Victorian science-- this is how I know about people like Sir Richard Burton, etc, etc... You are simply wrong. (2) When the evidence FOR the Hittites of Anatolia being the same as in Syria/North Canaan was shownduring the "meetings" they had in those days...they had "rubbings" and actual artifacts showing the scripts to be essentially the same. This left no room for doubt at that time. (3) LATER, at the turn of the century, when people had begun looking at the language differences between groups, THEN doubt began to arise and it continues to this day, as I posted, with references to modern historians/theologians and archaeologists. I could provide you with a full reading list and biblio, but you'd never read it. You're too stupid.
And that, my boy, is one of the things that bother you so much, the fact that you are continually shown to be deliberately stupid here, day after day. Ignorance can be cured...deliberate, wanton, delusional stupidity such as yours...requires disaster to change, generally speaking. You're over 40 years old, Dave, and you have the emotional maturity of a pre-teen. This was shown long ago by your claims and attitude on starting this thread. Nothing's really changed since then-- except you're a lot more weasely now-- due to being spanked so often,figuratively speaking.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
(OK ... 'proven' may be too strong ... how about 'provided extremely powerful evidence and rebutted all objections effectively.' )
How about not, Dave. Let's see what you think you've "provided extremely powerful evidence and rebutted all objections effectively" for. Let's start with
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A. There is a God -- My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being -- I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans.
What makes you think you've even provided evidence for such a being, Dave? Sure, you've said it over and over, but endless, mindless repetition isn't "evidence" for anything.
Now, if you'd pointed to some sort of natural phenomenon, and shown how there is simply no way, even in principle, for such a phenomenon to exist absent a "Creator God," I'd agree you'd presented evidence. But simply saying "it couldn't have happened," or "the probabilities against it are enormous," doesn't cut it. You have to prove that for the phenomenon in question to exist without the intervention of a Creator God requires a logical contradiction, or something equally compelling. Nothing less will do, Dave, because anything less means it's just as reasonable to suppose that natural processes are at work.
So far, Dave bats zero.
On to the next claim:
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B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose. This God created mankind with a choice of either doing his will or not doing his will, in a similar way as parents "create" babies knowing full well that their child will either do their will or not do their will. Christian Theologians commonly call the choice of NOT doing God's will "sin."
Now what sort of evidence do you suppose you've presented in support of this hypothesis, Dave? Because I can tell you what you've presented: nothing. Not a scrap. Not a single piece of evidence that gives anyone here a reason to this this statement is true. The big goose egg, Dave, and if you want to prove otherwise, you're going to have to actually state what you think it is. Your hypotheses are not self-authenticating, Dave; just stating them isn't evidence of anything.
Well, maybe you think you've provided evidence of cosmic fine tuning, which you think supports this claim (it doesn't). Well, you haven't even done that yet, Dave. If you want to provide evidence that the cosmos is finely tuned for life, you're going to have to do the following:
• Point to some physical parameter, like the mass of the electron, or the strength of gravity, or the charge on the proton, or the speed of light;
• Provide the value for that parameter, in eV, KgMsec^2, km/sec, or whatever;
• Show that if that parameter were slightly different (I expect you to say how different, i.e., a range of values), then life would be impossible; and finally
• (This is the part you can't do) show how improbable the actually-existing value is. I already know you have no idea how probable or improbable any of these values are, because no one knows. All you can say for any of these parameters is that the probability of their taking the values they do is somewhere between 0 and 1.
And even if you could provide such evidence (I'd expect at least a dozen or so examples), that still wouldn't be proof of the existence of God, because the weak anthropic principle still shows that we could just be lucky. How would you go about discounting luck as a possibility, Dave?
Okay, Dave's 0 for 2 so far. What's next:
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K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
And you provided evidence for this assertion how, Dave? Other than just asserting it? You don't have the tablets, have no evidence they ever even existed, and even if you did, you'd have no way of dating them (you don't believe in any dating methods), nor could you prove authorship except by reference to the same tablets (which means you think they're self-authenticating). You've provided no evidence that the ability to carve stone even existed at the time, and you certainly can't prove that if they do exist, they're an eye-witness account. How would one go about proving anything is an eye-witness account, Dave, except by reference to independent evidence?
And besides, we already know that the Genesis myth is just that: a myth. How do we know that, Dave? Buy any textbook on geology—I don't care if it's for high school students, undergrads, or graduate students. Virtually every single sentence in that textbook is going to be a direct refutation of the biblical account of creation.
And what's this about "the ice age," Dave? You think there was only one? There have been at least a dozen ice ages, including one about 650 million years ago, that basically froze the planet solid, including all the oceans. Where does that fit into your 6,000-year-old geology?
0 for 3, Dave.
Next:
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L. God personally dictated the events of the Creation week to the first man, Adam, but then assumed a less active role in the composition of the balance of Genesis and the balance of what is now commonly called the Christian Scriptures. This role varied from active dictation in an audible voice to less obvious methods--we might call it "planting of thoughts" in the minds of the writers. This collective process is commonly called the "Inspiration of Scripture" by Christian Theologians.
Dave, when are you going to understand the difference between making a bald assertion, and actually backing up that assertion with actual evidence? You haven't provided any evidence that Adam was the first human, or that God created Adam, or given even a guess as to the method God used to create Adam. You have shown no evidence that God has ever intervened in the affairs of man, whether more in the past or less now. You've provided absolutely not a crumb evidence that Scripture is anything but a work of fiction with a few bits and pieces of historical veracity to provide a patina of credibility. You haven't shown any evidence that the Bible is less fictional than "Oliver Twist" is.
0 for 4
Quote
M. Many cultures in geographically diverse locations around the world have legends which follow the general outline above. The reason for the variance we find in the legends is that many of them are simply oral traditions passed down through the generations without the benefit of scrupulous copying of written records that the Christian Scriptures have enjoyed. Since the Documentary Hypothesis (Graf-Wellhausen Theory) has now been thoroughly discredited, we have good reason to revert to the previously well established hypothesis that Genesis is NOT oral tradition, but rather it is a carefully copied written record of eye-witness accounts.
Actually, Dave, most creation myths bear only the slightest resemblance to the myth set forth in the Bible, and given how vague the Bible's account is (even the sequence of events is open to interpretation) that's hardly surprising. It's far more likely that there are only so many orders these myths could be in (it's unlikely that man would be created before the land was, or that animals would be created before there was any plant life they could eat), so we should not be surprised that most creation myths bear at least some resemblance to each other.
You talk about the Documentary Hypothesis is the only option other than Biblical inerrancy, Dave. I have a better hypothesis. My hypothesis says that the Biblical tales are based on earlier oral traditions (care to make any guesses as to why we don't find copies of those earlier oral traditions around, Dave?), which were the best attempt pre- or semi-literate tribesman with no scientific tradition whatsoever could come up with in an attempt to explain their surroundings. All of that makes perfect sense. What makes absolutely no sense at all is that a person living in the 21st Century could subscribe to those self-same myths. That's the part that totally blows me away.
So you're 0 for 5, Dave. Far from having "provided extremely powerful evidence and rebutted all objections effectively," you haven't provided a single shred of evidence for a single one of your assertions. Meanwhile, every single one of your claims has been dynamited at its base, even claims that are a complete digression from your main theme (Portuguese springs to mind, completely unbidden).
That you persist in your delusions is testament to nothing so much as the power of religious fervor to blind men to the plain evidence of their senses. And as further evidence of that blindness, we now come to:
****DAVE'S EXTRAVAGANT "EVIDENCE" FOR HIS BIBLICAL FLOOD****
How many pages ago was it, Dave, when I said your "evidence" for a global flood had better be a bit more persuasive than jumping up and down and pointing into the Grand Canyon?
So what does Dave do? He jumps up and down and points into the Grand Canyon.
Okay, here's a little poser for you, Dave. You claim, evidently, that all of the sediment comprising the walls of the Grand Canyon was laid down all at once (clue alert! "all at once," in geological terms, means a couple thousand years, let alone a year or so).
Have you ever paused to consider how much water it would take to lay down five thousand feet of sediment?. In a year? I think you'd need something like a million feet of water to lay down that much sediment in a year. Do you think the flood involved water 200 miles deep, Dave? Or how deep do you think the water was? And why did it lay down all that sediment only in some places and not in others? My apartment is currently less than 200 feet above sea level. Do you have an explanation for where 5,000 feet of sediment went, Dave? Was it all eroded away in 4,500 years?
So, folks: here's the evidence we've been waiting for, for weeks. Massive amounts of sediment gets laid down by massive amounts of water! Who knew?
Color me convinced.
Actually, Dave will probably believe me when I say that and use it as a quote for someone he's convinced. So, let me just say:
"You've got to be !@$##ing kidding. We waited a month for that?"
Of course, imagine how surprised I am. Like when Dave says, "To me, a tree looks just like a machine. Ergo, God exists!"
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Carlson ... Where did you get the idea that all land animals were cooped up in the ark? Only two of every kind (7 of some) were in the ark. There were many animals outside trying to escape the rising floodwaters. It is perfectly plausible for an animal to make footprints in mud, then the footprints got covered up with a new layer of mud.
Fcuk this is funny. You are gonna get your @ss fried over the flood...
PROOF FOR A GLOBAL FLOOD: MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
This little phrase is worth memorizing and it has a nice rhythm to it, so you should have no trouble ...
MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
There ... got it?
I don't know about you, but everywhere I go, I see SEDIMENTARY ROCK ... especially when I am driving on a highway which is cut through a hill or mountain. Every time I drive to church we see nice neat layers of rock which were obviously depostied by LOTS of moving water. I'm sure you know what I am talking about.
Here are some good pictures which describe how the Flood might have shaped the land.
Carlson...
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Okay, I see I need to take this step-by-step. So let us start again from the beginning. You agree that you said that the Grand Canyon is made of "MASSIVE quantities of WATER-LAID rock!", correct? And you propose that this was all laid by the biblical flood, also correct?
I think that the majority of the sedimentary rock we see in the Grand Canyon was laid down by the Flood, yes.
Quote
So, for the sake of argument, let us assume that the great flood did indeed create the Grand Canyon. So, can we agree that the layers lower in the canyon were created first, in the early days of the flood, as it were? Can we also agree then that as you go higher up the canyon walls you will encounter layers that were laid down later in the flood, with the uppermost layers having been laid down last during the waning days of the flood? This is an important point here and I need you to respond specifically whether you agree with these two comments or not. If we can agree on these points, then I think we can proceed. So, do you agree?
Creationists believe that the Flood was a volcanic, tectonic, and hydraulic cataclysm of massive proportions with numerous phases including: breakup of subterranean reservoirs, massive rainfall, uplift of land masses with ensuing runoff and heavy erosion, and large episodes of sedimentation and fossilization occurring in waves. The igneous and metamorphic rocks in the lower portions of the Grand Canyon may be primeval and/or formed during the Flood year. The sedimentary layers were formed in waves of deposition during the Flood year easily allowing the possibility of mobile land animals to make prints in mud which was not underwater, then be swept away with the next mudflow while their prints were buried.
We will cover this in more detail. The first point that I wish to establish is that ...
MASSIVE SEDIMENTARY ROCK LAYERS IMPLY MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF MOVING WATER FOR THESE LAYERS TO BE LAID DOWN.
Norm ... We'll get to the Tower of Babel later.
Deadman...I'm not going to answer you more than 3 times on the same question, OK? If you have new questions about old topics, fine. Meanwhile, why don't you answer mine ...
1) On what basis do you say those nations lived through the Flood period? 2) Why does it matter if I use a long or short chronology? It seems to me to make no difference to the Biblical model.
Improv...
Quote
Of course you do. Because you assume it is.
No. The Bible has proven itself to be the best history book available because of the enormous quantities of archaeological confirmation that has been made.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You are doing a sterling job as the Fundy thought police there, proving the immense damage that American Christian Fundamentalism does, to what might otherwise be a potentially normal person.
Proof indeed, that the promoters of that insanity consider the minds of its followers just simple real estate to be owned, science is just “false memories” for them.
An independent observer (any god or devil will do, as a metaphysical equivalent) would rightly conclude that there is little difference between the state created manic social realism under the worlds last Stalinist Regime , North Korea and the decentralized manic social realism of American Christian Fundamentalism.
Complete with low grade emotionally charged propaganda prepared in the Fundy equivalent of Orwell's "Chestnut Tree Cafe" , misleading information presented as 'fact', 'cultural training' and indoctrination centers which receive their imprimatur, their raison d'ętre from an all powerful superhuman (Kim Il Yung or his imaginary 'Big Brother' Fundy equivalent)
A power structure built on total subordination to dogma and censoring dissent. Under educated and brutish mechanistic party aparachiks like D.T. who throw dissent down "memory holes".
Devoted commissars like A.F.D who uncritically and mindlessly repeat the same old tired message endlessly.
Well continue on Air Fart “falsification of the past” suits you.
Those who have read '1984' by Orwell and place more value on what really happened in the past will remember the last line, Fundamentalists have succeeded in obliterating the past in their Jihadists minds.
For Fundy children their lives were stolen. "oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clemens
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
As always,I'll answer your questions directly, AFarce. Unlike you, I don't have to use fallacies, lie, pretend "not to understand" or otherwise engage in avoidance.
Quote
2) Why does it matter if I use a long or short chronology? It seems to me to make no difference to the Biblical model.
I've already answered this three times. I'll answer again. The only reason you adopted this "long chronology" is because you were shown the cultures that lived through the 2350 BCE chronology. You changed your claim at that time. And the point is that you have no biblical basis for changing it at all--instead what you are doing is avoiding, again. By doubling the time span, you are tacitly claiming that you have some valid TEXTUAL biblical evidence for your "new chronology" and you don't. Again, showing you to be dishonest, per usual.
Quote
1) On what basis do you say those nations lived through the Flood period?
Well, dave, you've been given the answers to this , too. You were told about Catal Huyuk and the dendrochronological dating that you have not dealt with directly ( again, per usual) Additional examples can be given, but the fact remains that all I need is ONE example of a culture that lived through your flood. And there are many, dated not by radiometrics, but by other methods you haven't even TRIED to deal with. Because you're a fraud, and a demonstrated intentional liar.
Now try answering what I asked Dave. I can ask it as many times as need be. It's obvious to even the most casual reader of this thread that you're all f_ed up in the head, Dave...but ...
How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers, Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year"
I find it amusing that you have to add to the bible...like with your scribes following adam, and this chronology of yours that relies on nothing but your deep insecurities and inability to be honest
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I enjoy your childlike repetitions of phrases that you think are big winning points, dave, like
Quote
This little phrase is worth memorizing and it has a nice rhythm to it, so you should have no trouble ... MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
The interesting thing here is, by your reasoning, these layers should have the animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. there should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Silurian amphibious Eryops...yet we don't see that. Nor do we find rabbits in the Permian layers, to quote a famous phrase.
Here's a phrase for you to remember, Dave: Those millions of dead things are buried in strata reflecting their differential ages with the dead things distributed in a sequence that we find across the globe...with no evidence of the jumbling that would occur during a single year of catastrophic flooding.
Oh, and as to your "waves" of flooding...nah. water finds it's own level, and if the globe itself is covered by water as specifically described in the bible...to a height of some 22 feet above the highest mountaintops ( the himalayas didn't spring up overnight) there is no time for "drying" and the additional layers on top of them laid down in a year would not allow for trace fossil formation. Besides, Dave, isn't there supposed to be a "water canopy" in the atmosphere...and wouldn't that block the sun, preventing solar drying?
So, Dave, how did you get another 2,650 years of generations out of the bible? That'sa lot of missing generations, Dave. Got any textual evidence for that ? Or are you again pulling things out of your well-worn rectum?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
2) Why does it matter if I use a long or short chronology? It seems to me to make no difference to the Biblical model.
...and your answer about the Catal Huyuk is based the equivocal method of dendrochronological dating ...
Now you see why I say that the short chronology is probably correct or at least very close.
Now a new question ...
I based my understanding that scholars doubted the Biblical information about the Hittites on no less of an authority than W.F. Albright.
Why do you think that an archaeologist of this prominence is wrong?
Hey k.e ... I agree that your "1984" scenario may happen in the future ... but it will not be Fundies running it ... Fundies will be gone ... have you not read "Left Behind" by Tim LaHaye??
I expect someone like Nicolae Carpathia will be running your "1984" government.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Please describe exactly how you feel I was "being evasive" dave? I gave you the same reason that I have reiterated multiple times. It is a valid reason, backed by your immediate retraction of the standard Biblical chronology so that you could claim that all archaeology is invalid and only written works matter.
As to dendro being invalid, you sure haven't shown that. I demonstrated how your "expert" ( with exact references) from ICR cherry-picked his data from a new zealand study on one species of pine grown on farms in a non-seasonal environment.
You have not shown that the species used in the Catal Huyuk sequence has any problems at all, liar.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ah, and as far as your claims on Albright are concerned-- This is how the questioning went here, dave:
You made a claim that
Quote
Until Sayce of Oxford discovered the Hittites in 1876, many critics believed they did not exist. But thanks to Sayce and others, now everyone believes the Hittites were real.
And I asked you to name ONE during that period. What you then did was name two that come long after...E.A. Budge and Albright. Now, I explained to you that controversy only arose AFTER linguists began examining the Scripts/languages in depth, right about the turn of the century. This is also stated explicitly in the "Wikipedia" pages you seem to love so much. Look at the Hittite language citation on wikipedia, Davey-boy, and follow the links with Luwian and Lydian.
If you want further citations, I can definitely provide them, but the fact remains that you offered no scholars of the 1880's claiming the Hittites "never existed" --- and you can't, because they actually believed they did, as a Canaanite group. The inscriptions convinced everyone initially, then disputes arose, later, as I said. Thus you are wrong again. And by the way, notice that Albright doesn't mention what time period he is referring to at all. The only time period he *could* be referring to is the turn of the century and after, continuing to this day, in fact.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A.F.D forget about the Fundy dystopia of '1984' being sometime in the future, the North Korean regime is almost a mirror copy of Orwell's commentary on the Post World War II western government of Oceania whose slogan was;
"'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
Your parents implemented that scheme to great effect as witnessed by your 100 pages of denial of the past. Their fiction, their magical reality, their social constructivism has produced you, a man unable to determine fact from fiction.
... the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion.
Did you know that the Republican Party uses a certain Frank Luntz who uses Orwell as his post Goebellian guide to 'better government'
Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind
That language is no different in Christian Fundamentalism which really is identity politics and has very little to do with religion, other than name.
Just by way of example AFD are you a Global Melt-Down skeptic ? take a look at this
Quote
Slamming the Climate Skeptic Scam ...political consultant Frank Luntz to the U.S. Republican Party. Luntz followed the [PR] rules: he did the research; he identified the soft spots in public opinion; and he made a clever critical judgment about which way the public could be induced to move.
In a section entitled "Winning the Global Warming Debate," Luntz says this (and all the points of emphasis are his own):
"The Scientific Debate Remains Open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the field."
If you download the memo and read the whole thing, you will notice that Luntz never expressly denies the validity of the science. In fact, he says, "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed."
" ... not yet closed"? Among those who disagree with that assessment are the 2,500 scientists in the IPCC, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society of London and the Royal Society of Canada Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science magazine, says, "We're in the middle of a large uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have." And to back up his sense of certainty, he reported that Science had analysed the 928 peer-reviewed climate studies published between 1993 and 2003 and found not a single one that disagreed with the general scientific consensus.
Journalists have consistently reported the updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier - as if both are equally valid. Notwithstanding, Luntz wrote: "There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science." He recommended that his Republican Party clients do just that. He urged them to marshal their own "scientists" to contest the issue on every occasion. He urged them to plead for "sound science" a twist of language of the sort that George Orwell once said was "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind."
Luntz's goal - embraced with unnerving enthusiasm by the Bush Administration - is to manufacture uncertainty and to politicize science. Like all tragedy, it would be hilarious if you could play it for laughs.
It's an open question as to whether Luntz and company are being willfully blind or grossly negligent in the way they have ignored the science - and the potential catastrophic risks that they promote. But whichever way you cut it, their actions reflect badly on the whole public relations industry.
Conspiracy theorists will be happy to hear that I'm not suggesting that Frank Luntz or even a dubious cabal of ethics-free PR people are solely to blame for the public confusion on climate change. They have received extensive, if clumsy assistance from the media, which in a lazy and facile attempt to provide "balance" is willing to give any opinion equal time as long as it is firmly in contradiction with another.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
. . Wayyyyyyy back on page 83 of this thread, Dave, you said this about your "new chronology":
Quote
The date of the Flood comes from doing some math on the numbers in the Biblical text. I may be off a few years. I'll try to fine tune it for you when we cover the Flood in detail.
Well, the time has come, Dave. I've been asking you about this for 20 pages or more. You are presenting your "evidence" for the flood, but you have to show me how you dated it first.
There's an interesting dilemma in this for you, Dave; 1.) On one hand, you say that the bible is the best guide to history the world has seen, filled with truthiness and verifiable facts, but...
2.) On the other, even **less** honest hand, you refuse to show how the Bible supports your date of 5000 BCE for the flood. Because you can't. It doesn't.
So, the greatest history book you know of, the one you claim has never been refuted...has huge gaping holes of 2650 years in it, dave? Representing more than 25% of history since you claim the world was "created?" Dance, monkey-boy, dance.
Two can play at that game, Dave: ever read The second book of Chronicles?
2 Chronicles 9:29: "Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat? "
How about if I tell you I have learned about the "Book of Nathan," Dave? I refuse to prove it to you, but I know that it says this:
"Beware of lying scum named Dave who lie concerning the age of the Earth,for they are a boil upon the anus of mankind. Verily, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and the universe is 13.7 billions of years old "
Now, following your example, I don't have to show that I *know * this in any way, or prove it exists. I can just claim it is true.
Try doing what you said you were going to do, and demonstrate **precisely**HOW you doubled the date of the flood, Dave--cite the Bible as to your reasoning. Quit playing little kid games. Grow up.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No. The Bible has proven itself to be the best history book available because of the enormous quantities of archaeological confirmation that has been made.
Yes, Dave. And, as you've clearly admitted, you evaluate archeological data based solely on whether or not it agrees with the bible. So, of course, your methodology precludes you from finding contradictory data. Because you start by assuming the bible is correct.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
yeah there should be a disclaimer sticker on the cover of all bibles.
Now this has to the most useful snippet from AiG
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Answers in Genesis (AiG) recently learned that the ACLU isn’t the only one comparing this Utah bill to the well-known Cobb County evolutionary disclaimer stickers. An AiG supporter informed us that the following sticker was found on the inside cover of a Gideon Bible in a Salt Lake City, Utah, hotel room. As you read this blasphemous sticker, compare its phrases to those found in the evolution sticker of Cobb County reprinted at the bottom.
“This book [the Bible] contains religious stories regarding the origin of living things. The stories are theories, not facts. They are unproven, unprovable and in some cases totally impossible. This material should be approached with an open mind and a critical eye towards logic and believability.”
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
PROOF FOR A GLOBAL FLOOD: MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH Carlson...
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Okay, I see I need to take this step-by-step. So let us start again from the beginning. You agree that you said that the Grand Canyon is made of "MASSIVE quantities of WATER-LAID rock!", correct? And you propose that this was all laid by the biblical flood, also correct?
I think that the majority of the sedimentary rock we see in the Grand Canyon was laid down by the Flood, yes.
Dave, answer the question: how much water was required to lay down 5,000 feet of sediment in a year or so? It's a simple question, and it has a simple answer. Or are you simply going to ignore yet another objection, hoping it will eventually go away?
It won't.
And while you're at it, here's another one: where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains.)
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history - but still call yourself a Christian.
Just what are you AFD?
Other than a Fundy fruit loop, Christians do not bear false witness or do you sin all the way up to ecstasy, or whatever it is, and lie your way into heaven ?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Okay, I see I need to take this step-by-step. So let us start again from the beginning. You agree that you said that the Grand Canyon is made of "MASSIVE quantities of WATER-LAID rock!", correct? And you propose that this was all laid by the biblical flood, also correct?
I think that the majority of the sedimentary rock we see in the Grand Canyon was laid down by the Flood, yes.
Excellent. There is quite a few layers there, so it helps that we understand that you feel the majority were laid down by the flood. Of course, it would be better if you defined what you meant by "majority". So, can you answer which specific layers you thought were laid down by the flood and which were indigenous. Words like majority are not very precise. And since we are talking science here, precision is important. After all using words like "majority" can allow either of us to shift the goalposts and weasel out. And I am sure, now that you have me on the ropes, you don't want to give me an out.
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Quote
So, for the sake of argument, let us assume that the great flood did indeed create the Grand Canyon. So, can we agree that the layers lower in the canyon were created first, in the early days of the flood, as it were? Can we also agree then that as you go higher up the canyon walls you will encounter layers that were laid down later in the flood, with the uppermost layers having been laid down last during the waning days of the flood? This is an important point here and I need you to respond specifically whether you agree with these two comments or not. If we can agree on these points, then I think we can proceed. So, do you agree?
Creationists believe that the Flood was a volcanic, tectonic, and hydraulic cataclysm of massive proportions with numerous phases including: breakup of subterranean reservoirs, massive rainfall, uplift of land masses with ensuing runoff and heavy erosion, and large episodes of sedimentation and fossilization occurring in waves. The igneous and metamorphic rocks in the lower portions of the Grand Canyon may be primeval and/or formed during the Flood year. The sedimentary layers were formed in waves of deposition during the Flood year easily allowing the possibility of mobile land animals to make prints in mud which was not underwater, then be swept away with the next mudflow while their prints were buried.
This wasn't a direct answer, but we can come back to it once we have your answer on which layers were flood created and which weren't. Here is the picture again for reference:
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Carlson ... this is Historical Geology we are talking about here. Not the same thing as Applied Physics or something where we can arrive at precise mathematical values.
If we can qualitatively describe a Global Flood scenario and reasonably account for all phenomena then we will be quite happy.
Deadman ... I see now that I can eliminate all talk of long chronologies and stick with my hunch that the short Ussher Chronology is probably very close to the truth.
Your dating of the Catal Huyuk is wrong since it is based on your flawed Pseudo-Dendrochronology.
I will have more quotes from Albright for you tomorrow.
You are getting me very interested in getting more detailed on this topic!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Deadman ... I thought of something today that I should mention to you that will save you a lot of effort ...
It occurred to me that you seem to think that I am arrogantly asserting that I have all the answers and I don't make any mistakes. It seems very important to you to point out all my less-than-100%-accurate statements.
I will tell you right up front that I DO NOT have all the answers.
I have already had to adjust my thinking on some items as a result of being here. You will notice that I retracted my assertion that 18th century scholars thought that the Hittites didn't exist. I still think many may have written this, but I have not had time to research it. It may prove out that there is no scholar that thought this in the 18th century. But as I said before, this is fine with me.
The fact still remains that one of the foremost archaeologists of the 20th century--Albright (and others) has stated that Biblical skeptics have been proven wrong about the Hittites. This is a big deal and I ma right about this. And we will investigate this further.
My point to you, though, is that you will be wasting your time if you back and try to dredge up every little error I make.
I am right about the big things and I don't care too much about the small stuff. Of course I try not to make any errors on even small stuff, but no one can be perfect.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Excellent. There is quite a few layers there, so it helps that we understand that you feel the majority were laid down by the flood. Of course, it would be better if you defined what you meant by "majority". So, can you answer which specific layers you thought were laid down by the flood and which were indigenous. Words like majority are not very precise. And since we are talking science here, precision is important. After all using words like "majority" can allow either of us to shift the goalposts and weasel out. And I am sure, now that you have me on the ropes, you don't want to give me an out.
AFDave, Carlsonjok makes the same excellent point once again that we've been hammering you with since day one. Science deals with the precise details of the evidence, not the 'so broad as to be meaningless' claims that you make.
You say “C14 dating is wrong because of bad assumptions”, but you will never deal with the details of the precise and independent calibration procedures used to verify the accuracy.
You say “Your dating of the Catal Huyuk is wrong since it is based on your flawed Pseudo-Dendrochronology.” But you can’t give any details as to exactly where the dendrochronology record for that part of Turkey is wrong, and you can’t explain why the C14 dating and the dendrochronology dating agree with one another.
You say “It is perfectly plausible for an animal to make footprints in mud, then the footprints got covered up with a new layer of mud.’ But the details of the way that fossil footprints are made is 1) animal steps in mud or ash 2). Mud or ash dries out and hardens 3) Dried layer with footprint is later covered with additional layer of soil or ash. Now Dave, do you want to tell us how the original footprints in the coconino sandstone managed to dry out with 40 days and 40 nights of torrential falling on them?
You say ‘the FLUD created the grand canyon’ but you can’t explain at all how all that water managed to created the steep sides and meanders in the canyon like this
or this
or tell us why the whole state of Colorado is not one big canyon instead of just one section.
And how about the order of plant and animal fossils found in the layers? If all the life was killed simultaneously, why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) only found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters?
Details Dave, scientific details. They make creationists run like cockroaches when the kitchen light’s turned on. Just like you’re scurrying for cover now.
Bet that cognitive dissonance throbbing in your head keep getting worse and worse, doesn’t it Davie? Lying to yourself will do that to you, ya know. It’s not too late to start being honest – look at Glenn Morton’s example of an honest Christian.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Oh, come one, Aftershave. Why don't you read some books before you throw something at me?
Morris and Whitcomb addressed "incised meanders" way back in 1961 ...
I'll hold your hand, though, and take you through it :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Carlson ... this is Historical Geology we are talking about here. Not the same thing as Applied Physics or something where we can arrive at precise mathematical values.
Okay, fair enough. But do you think maybe you can help me narrow it down some? I count 14 layers that were laid down in a relatively orderly manner and 6 layers that were subject to some significant upheaval. When you say you believe that the majority were laid down by the flood and when you separately say that you believe there was some significant tectonic activity during the same time, I assume you mean a majority of all 20 layers shown. Have I understood you correctly? The followup question really seeks to establish some bounds on what majority means. Are you thinking a simple majority or something more along the lines of a supermajority?
Quote
If we can qualitatively describe a Global Flood scenario and reasonably account for all phenomena then we will be quite happy.
Well, you will need to indulge my obsessive-compulsiveness around this issue, because science is, ultimately, a quantitative endeavour. Qualitative descriptions are certainly adequate for starting a scientific inquiry, but they don't really get you out of the hypothesis phase. And with nothing more than a hypothesis to look at, it is real hard to separate the geniuses with great insight from the charlatans pulling stuff out of their keester.
Think of the movie "Mr. Mom." When the Michael Keaton character is asked how he is going to wire the room he was remodelling, his response was "220. 221. Whatever it takes." You know right off that the character doesn't know anything about wiring a room. Why? Because he is mimicking the language of an electrician, but isn't speaking with any degree of precision like a true electrician would. So, you see, the more precision you can provide, the better basis we have for evaluating your input here. Words like "majority" and "massive" are quite imprecise and give the impression the person weilding such words is bluffing. And when people think that, they are going to call the bluff. That is what is going on here, Dave. People are calling your bluff. You want to paint a sweeping panoramas, step back and say "There! Isn't it obvious!" But professional scientists start with the minutia and build upwards from there. Brick by laborious brick. So, you need to habla the espanol, if you catch my meaning.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
How much water, Dave? I'm going to keep asking until a) you give an answer, or b) you say you don't have a clue.
You don't have to give a "precise" answer, since precision doesn't seem to be your strong suit (to put it mildly; your figure for the age of the earth seems to be +/- 50%, whereas the accepted figure is more like +/- 2-3%).
So: was it 20 feet, Dave? 2,000 feet? 200,000 feet? Two million feet?
And where did all that sediment come from?
Here's an experiment. Take a swimming pool, and fill it with a foot-thick layer of dirt. Now fill the swimming pool all the way to the top, and then drain the pool.
How much dirt is left at the bottom of the pool, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, are you familiar with maths and meteorology?
Given that, during the Flood, most of the continents were under water (is this what the bible says?), let's assume the ocean level rose about one mile above the previous level.
So, it's about 1600 mm of rain per hour (during 40 days). It's about 50 times more than a hurricane like Katrina
Do you think that one man can build an arch and gather millions of animal species under such weather conditions?
Oh, come one, Aftershave. Why don't you read some books before you throw something at me?
Morris and Whitcomb addressed "incised meanders" way back in 1961 ...
I'll hold your hand, though, and take you through it :-)
Oh please Pavarotti, do take me through it in detail
Then, you can take me through your detailed explanation for the independent methods that calibrate C14 dating
Then, you can take me through the detailed steps of where exactly the Turkish dendrochronology studies are in error.
Then, you can take me through the detailed steps in fossilized footprint formation.
Then, you can take me through the detailed steps in how certain fossilized animals are only found in specific layers, while other fossilized animals are found only in different specific layers,
Details Dave, you just can't deal with the details. That's why you'll always look like a bumbling ignoramus
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Carlson ... this is Historical Geology we are talking about here. Not the same thing as Applied Physics or something where we can arrive at precise mathematical values.
If we can qualitatively describe a Global Flood scenario and reasonably account for all phenomena then we will be quite happy.
You think geology has nothing quantitative to say about those strata, Dave?
For the strata in the diagram Carlson provided, geologists can tell us what kind of sediment they're comprised of, where that sediment came from, in what order the strata were laid down (which isn't always the order they appear in), how many years ago they were laid down, what the local climate was like, how many years it took to lay down a particular stratum, what kinds of organisms were living at the tme, and numerous other quantitative facts about them.
What can your flood "hypothesis" tell us? That you think a "majority" of the strata (presumably somewhere between 50% and 100%) were laid down by your "global flood"? You can't even tell us anything qualitative about how those strata got there, other than your absurdly vague claim that "massive amounts of sediment were deposited by massive amounts of water."
What does that tell us, Dave? It tells us nothing. You can't explain how those layers were differentiated, you can't tell us where the sediment came from that comprises them, you can't tell us how much time it took for each layer of sediment to be deposited, and as far as I can tell, you can't even tell us why the sediments are stratified into layers in the first place. In other words, your "global flood hypothesis" explains essentially nothing at all. Nor, I should point out, have you provided a single scrap of evidence that your "flood" ever happened. You've given us exactly no reason why we should think all that sediment (over 5,000 feet of it, in the case of the Grand Canyon) was laid down in a period of a year or so, rather than over millions of years. Just on the face of it, Dave, are you really going to claim it's more likely that a mile-thick layer of sediment was deposited in one year than a few million years? What kind of gullible idiots do you take us for? You don't even have the haziest notion how much water was involved, where it came from, how deep it was, or how it all managed to disappear in the space of a year or two.
In essence, you have nothing intelligent to say about your "flood" at all.
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Deadman ... I see now that I can eliminate all talk of long chronologies and stick with my hunch that the short Ussher Chronology is probably very close to the truth.
Your dating of the Catal Huyuk is wrong since it is based on your flawed Pseudo-Dendrochronology.
I will have more quotes from Albright for you tomorrow.
You are getting me very interested in getting more detailed on this topic!
Dave, you're never going to be able to show us how dendrochronology is "flawed." You've never been able to show how radiometric dating (of any variety at all) is flawed, and you're not going to be able to show us how dendrochronology is flawed, either. You don't seem to understand that all of these various dating methods cross-correlate with each other, something Occam's Aftershave and Deadman have been after you about for weeks. You've been saying for close to two months now that these dating methods are "flawed," yet you haven't given anyone the slightest reason to think you're right.
You're all hat and no cattle, Dave. They last 100 pages have given ample evidence of that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The fact still remains that one of the foremost archaeologists of the 20th century--Albright (and others) has stated that Biblical skeptics have been proven wrong about the Hittites. This is a big deal ...
In the 1870s the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the city of Troy using Homer's Illiad. Does that mean that the Greek mythology is true? He proved every one who thought Homer's work mere fiction to be wrong.
One problem is that every new city and civilization discovered gets linked to some old myth.
In the 1920s Emil Forrer claimed that placenames found in Hittite texts — Wilusa and Taruisa — should be identified with Ilium and Troia respectively. He further noted that the name of Alaksandus, king of Wilusa, mentioned in one of the Hittite texts is quite similar to the name of Prince Alexandros or Paris of Troy.
Does that mean that Zeus and Electra were really gods? Does that mean the more fantastic parts of Homer's stories really happened?
I'm sure with your next post you will explain how a great flood depositing most of the world's sedimentary rock explains things like the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done.
P.S. If you can do this better than the geologists of today can then oil companies will pay you millions to tell them where to look for good plays.
Creationists "habla espanol" quite well, thank you ...
Jeannot ... think underground sources of water ...
No more time today ...
I'll be back on the "Golden EIB microphone" tomorrow at 5am! :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
In all fairness, I didn't provide it so much as blatantly borrow it from deadman_932.
Quote
in what order the strata were laid down (which isn't always the order they appear in),
Just for my own curiousity, I'd be interested in some discussion of how layers can be out of chronological sequence. There is an interesting logical quandry with the footprints we are moving slowly towards and I think this would be an interesting mechanism to understand before we get there. Thanks.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
My point to you, though, is that you will be wasting your time if you back and try to dredge up every little error I make...I am right about the big things and I don't care too much about the small stuff. Of course I try not to make any errors on even small stuff, but no one can be perfect.
I don't view the chronology of the flood as "small stuff." I don't view creationists providing detailed explanations of their extraordinary claims as "small stuff."
You wanted detailed responses from me and others, Dave, thus it is only fair that you provide the same. Except you can't. You were asked multiple questions regarding the flood and you failed to respond to those "small stuff" questions, yet you find time to make lengthy digressions on Albright, etc. rather than addressing the issues at hand.
You failed to address:
(1.) fossil animal tracks in the Coconino sandstone, given the claim of flood events, "water canopies" and water said to burst from the Earth at a rate that no one has ever seen or found reservoirs for. Such an environment would not allow for SANDSTONE ( or mud, for that matter) trace fossil formation.
(2) An explanation of why we don't find fossils from various species mixed together EVERYWHERE on Earth, since this was a global flood that wiped out all animals and plants. "There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Silurian amphibious Eryops...yet we don't see that. Nor do we find rabbits in the Permian layers, to quote a famous phrase." Or, as Occam's Aftershave put it:
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If all the life was killed simultaneously, why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) only found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters?
(3) Precisely how meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed -- given that there is no evidence of massive underground reservoirs of the kind you imply created these features.
(4) How many layers in the Canyon were laid down by this flood?
(5) How much water was involved in this Global Flood?
(6) Plasmasnake asked you to "explain how a great flood depositing most of the world's sedimentary rock explains things like the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done."
(7) Precisely how the Catal Huyuk Dendrochronology is wrong.
And all of that was avoided by you in just in the span of 2 pages
Ah, dammit, and Artful Argy beat me to the Spanish correction.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The fact still remains that one of the foremost archaeologists of the 20th century--Albright (and others) has stated that Biblical skeptics have been proven wrong about the Hittites. This is a big deal ...
In the 1870s the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann discovered the city of Troy using Homer's Illiad. Does that mean that the Greek mythology is true? He proved every one who thought Homer's work mere fiction to be wrong.
One problem is that every new city and civilization discovered gets linked to some old myth.
In the 1920s Emil Forrer claimed that placenames found in Hittite texts — Wilusa and Taruisa — should be identified with Ilium and Troia respectively. He further noted that the name of Alaksandus, king of Wilusa, mentioned in one of the Hittite texts is quite similar to the name of Prince Alexandros or Paris of Troy.
Does that mean that Zeus and Electra were really gods? Does that mean the more fantastic parts of Homer's stories really happened?
Norm... This is as far as dave's ego allowed him to deal with these questions:
Quote (afdave @ July 01 2006,09:01)
Faid...
Quote
When are you gonna address the fact that your 'logic' would make us believe that Merlin (or, in the best case, the Druids) built Stonehenge, dave?
When are you gonna address the fact that your 'logic' can also prove that the Iliad is an inerrant text, dave? (and even more than the Bible, since we really didn't have any data save Homer's works to indicate the existence of Troy)
If you want to explain to me what in the world these items have to do with anything I am interested in, maybe I'll address them.
dave's golden rule: If you can't answer, play dumb.
But no worries: We've moved to the flood now, and dave will have LOTS more chances to make a fool of himself...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
As anyone who follows this thread knows, Dave's posts are full of ad hoc hypotheses, explanations, and mechanisms (his claim that Adam had sex with his sister to produce Cain and Abel is a sterling example). In fact, it's probably not much of an exaggeration to say that every hypothesis Dave has proffered is ad hoc, every explanation he's offered is ad hoc, and every mechanism he has proffered is ad hoc.
I found a really good explanation for why this is a bad thing, Dave, from an article I'm reading on, of all things, creationist "explanations" for the Grand Canyon:
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Ad hoc is a Latin phrase that translates roughly as "for this purpose." In the physical sciences, it refers to a hypothesis introduced solely to explain an otherwise unexplainable datum. An ad hoc hypothesis makes no predictions; it cannot be tested; it's added simply because the hypothesizer needs an answer and can't find one within existing theories and hypotheses. The "epicycles" used to make the Ptolemaic theory of planetary motions work are a perfect example of an ad hoc hypothesis. Introducing an ad hoc hypothesis is a sign of weakness in a theory. Experience has shown over and over again that the more ad hoc hypotheses you need to make a theory work, the more likely it is that the whole theory is wrong.
And, that's basically Dave in a nutshell.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
But to be fair, one must also ask is there any explanation of what the Bible's writers had in mind that isn't ad hoc?
No. All of the explanations for natural phenomena in the Bible are necessarily ad hoc. What other kind of explanations could be in the Bible? Certainly there was no scientific method, no understanding of testable hypotheses, no methodological naturalism, no concept of reproducibility, no conception of falsifiability.
Which is all well and good, except that in the 3,000 years or so since Genesis was written, people have developed ways of figuring things out that are a bit more sophisticated that random guesswork. But Dave would rather stick with 3,000-year-old guesswork, because he's so dependent on his religion for affirmation that the mere thought that his worldview could be based on a mistaken, prescientific, simplistic attempt at understanding experience is enough to shut his brain down entirely.
In Dave's world, the last 3,000 years never happened. Amazing that someone living in an advanced technological civilization, someone who supposedly understands something of technology, can still subscribe to a 3,000-year-old worldview, a worldview that has been comprehensively discredited by essentially all of scientific endeavor over the past 500 years or more.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Just for my own curiousity, I'd be interested in some discussion of how layers can be out of chronological sequence. There is an interesting logical quandry with the footprints we are moving slowly towards and I think this would be an interesting mechanism to understand before we get there. Thanks.
Faulting that drives one layer of strata over a newer layer is one way this can happen. I'm sure there are other ways. But keep in mind that there are other ways (radiometric dating, comparison of fossils, comparison with similar strata in different locations) of reshuffling out-of-order strata into the correct order.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You are doing a great job educating everyone about the huge holes in creationist nonsense propaganda (indirectly of course thanks to the other contributors).
If anyone is reading this and agrees with him, you need counseling, you have been a victim of a psychotic cult.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
ummm, Dave? You did notice that was a drawing, a cartoon, right? It doesn't have the same evidentiary weight as a photograph. And another thing, it was made up specifically to fit with the evidence of the Bible.
So again, you start with the book, gin up evidence to fit round peg - square hole stylee, and expect us all to go along with this?
PROOF OF THE GLOBAL FLOOD THAT EVEN A HALF-WIT COULD SEE MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
POINTS COVERED ON THE FLOOD SO FAR 1) Gobs and gobs of Sedimentary Rock = Gobs and gobs of Water to lay it down. 2) Where did this "gobs and gobs" of water come from? 3) We most certainly are not seeing this kind of sedimentation today 4) So the old idea of "the present is the key to the past" doesn't work 5) Hmmm ... where did all that water come from ...? 6) Well, there's the Biblical Flood story ... naaah ... can't be ... "k.e" says you're a psycho if you believe the Bible 7) Water ... water ... gobs and gobs of it ... hmmm ... I guess we'll never know! Hee ... hee ... hee :-)
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GLOBAL FLOOD 1) Footprints in Coconino sandstone - ANSWERED. CHECK. 2) Incised Meanders 3) Fossil order 4) "Out of Order" Layers 5) Which rocks are sedimentary in the Grand Canyon?
ANSWERS NOTE: "TGF" means "The Genesis Flood" by Morris and Whitcomb, the landmark book which started the modern Creationist Revolution.
1) A little more on footprints in the Coconino sandstone ... "footprint fossils" are what geologists call "trace fossils" and require rapid burial in order to be preserved. Does anyone need me to explain why this is? Does anyone need me to explain the implications of RAPID BURIAL? (Hint: Global Flood)
2) "Much study has been devoted to the subject of the mechanics of meandering rivers, since it inbolbes engineering problems of considerable importance. In particular, extensive model tests have demonstrated that the phenomenon of meandering is associated only with non-resistant banks." [***** Did you hear that? NON-RESISTANT BANKS *****] (Joseph F. Friedkin: [i]"A Laboratory Study of the Meanderings of Alluvial Rivers," Vicksburg, U.S. Waterways Experiment Station, Mississippi River Commission, 1945.) (Quoted in TGF, p.154)
Bottom line here: DEEP CUT MEANDERS = SOFT RIVER BEDS = GLOBAL FLOOD RUNOFF. You simply don't get this type of incised meanders in solid rock eroded over millions of years. Sorry! Long Agers lose!
3) 4) and 5) hopefully later this morning ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GLOBAL FLOOD 1) Footprints in Coconino sandstone - ANSWERED. CHECK.
Actually, no. I am still a few steps away from dealing with the footprints. To recap where we are, you have shared that you believe a majority of the strata shown in the cross section of the Grand Canyon were laid down by the flood. But, we still have the open question as to how to quantify "majority" and to which layers the "majority" modifier relates to. Specifically does it relate to the 14 relatively orderly layers only, or to all 20 layers, including the 6 at the bottom showing signs of significant upheaval. Also, by majority, do you mean "one more than half" or something more along the lines of "all but one or two"?
Quote
1) A little more on footprints in the Coconino sandstone ... "footprint fossils" are what geologists call "trace fossils" and require rapid burial in order to be preserved. Does anyone need me to explain why this is? Does anyone need me to explain the implications of RAPID BURIAL? (Hint: Global Flood)
Well, that is a possibility, but it isn't the only possibility I could conjur up. So, if you would be good enough to help me see your point, I'd like to take this step-by-step. I may be a little slow, but I am educable. So, please indulge me on this. Can you help me narrow down somewhat which layers in the Grand Canyon cross section were likely created by the flood?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Yes, Bing ... I do realize Noah didn't have a camera :-) I just think it's a cool artist's impression!
And Aftershave ... I still think that Carbon 14 Dating is much different than Flight Data Recording and Videotaping. How about you?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Q5) Which rocks are sedimentary in the Grand Canyon? A5) All those above "The Great Unconformity." The ones below are metamorphic or igneous.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Q5) Which rocks are sedimentary in the Grand Canyon? A5) All those above "The Great Unconformity." The ones below are metamorphic or igneous.
Well, I see some sedimentary below the Great Unconformity, but I think we can work with this anyways. So, if I understand, everything from the Tapeats Sandstone up was laid down by the flood. Have I got that right? I hope so, because this would be a big step forward in our discussion.
If I have that right, then we can focus on upper 14 layers which were laid down in a fairly orderly manner. This would indicate to me a lack of significant tectonic activity in the area of the Grand Canyon during the flood. And given the apparent lack of any igneous rock in those upper 14 layers, it seems to indicate a lack of volcanic activity also. Does this make sense to you, Dave?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
PROOF OF THE GLOBAL FLOOD THAT EVEN A HALF-WIT COULD SEE MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
Nice haiku, dave. You didn't get the number of syllables right, but then you never get anything right, so...
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POINTS COVERED ON THE FLOOD SO FAR 1) Gobs and gobs of Sedimentary Rock = Gobs and gobs of Water to lay it down. 2) Where did this "gobs and gobs" of water come from? 3) We most certainly are not seeing this kind of sedimentation today
Think time, dave. That little thing your mind keeps blocking out. "Time, time, hear the bells chiiiiime..."
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QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GLOBAL FLOOD 1) Footprints in Coconino sandstone - ANSWERED. CHECK.
Oh really? You explained how, an animal laid tracks in the mud, those tracks dried out and hardened, and then another layer of mud covered them -in the middle of a cataclysmic rain? Can you point me to that explanation, please?
Quote
1) A little more on footprints in the Coconino sandstone ... "footprint fossils" are what geologists call "trace fossils" and require rapid burial in order to be preserved. Does anyone need me to explain why this is? Does anyone need me to explain the implications of RAPID BURIAL? (Hint: Global Flood)
No, not really... But I'd LOVE it if you explained to me how a "global flood" is the only logical explanation for any kind of local rapid burial. Does it never rain in your planet, dave?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave: The Coconino Trace fossils are filled with eolian deposits...wind-blown materials, not water-borne. This is because the region at that time was an erg...a sandy desert. DRY sand and dust is required to fill those trace fossils, Dave.
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" we should state clearly that the evidence for flooding is nonexistent. The protomammal tracks (in the Coconino formation) are often found in association with trackways of spiders, scorpions, and other desert arthropods that could not have been walking around underwater"
Lockley, M., and Hunt, A. (1996). Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States. p. 69.
If all deposition occured during a catastrophic flood, or even a "series" of floods during ONE YEAR, how were sediments ** perfectly*** sorted into discrete layers with sharp boundaries that cover thousands of square miles, and which contain distinct minerological properties and distinctive fossil content? Why, for instance, are some formations almost pure carbonate while an overlying layer might consists of almost pure quartz crystals, above which is a layer of pure salt? Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? Why are some strata composed almost entirely of fossils and fossil fragments, while others contain no fossils at all?
And about those fossils, Dave...Why don't we see them all jumbled up? Animal fossils...in the form of trilobites, sponges, and primitive molluscs, first appear in the Cambrian age Tonto Group. Tracks of small ***terrestrial*** animals appear first in the early Permian age Hermit Formation. By the time the later Paleozoic strata were deposited, trilobites and trilobite traces, conodonts, graptolites, corals, foraminifera, blastoids, acanthodians, placoderms, pelycosaurs, and other groups all vanish from the fossil record. WHY?
Dinosaurs make their first appearance in the early Mesozoic (early Triassic) Moenkopi and Chinle Formations, as do the tracks of "mammal-like" reptiles (cynodonts)...From late Triassic through Cretaceous strata, dinosaurs become increasingly abundant and diverse. Only in Jurassic-Cretaceous age strata do we find remains of the large dinosaurs, sauropods for example. The dinosaurs, like icthyosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, as well as numerous marine organisms, disappear from the geologic record after the Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary, both in the Colorado Plateau region and in the world at large. In early Tertiary and later strata, mammals diversify greatly, and it is only here that we begin to see the emergence of recognizable mammalian groups. WHY?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Q3) Fossil Order. A3) The fossil order we find is exactly what we would expect to find if they were deposited by a Global Flood.
Early Burial of Marine Creatures. The Biblical Record says that the "fountains of the great deep were broken up." If the record is correct, we would expect that marine organisms would be fossilized first and appear lowest in the geologic column. This is exactly what we do find.
Hydrodynamic Selectivity of Moving Water.
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The settling velocity of large particles in independent of fluid viscosity; it is directly proportional to the square root of particle diameter, directly proportional to the square root of particle diameter, directly proportional to particle sphericity, and directly proportional to the difference between particle and fluid density divided by fluid density. (W.C. Krumbein and L.L. Sloss: Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, San Fransisco, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1951, p. 156, quoted in TGF, p. 273)
"It is significant that the organisms found in the lowest strata, such as the trilobites, brachiopods, etc. are very "streamlined" and are quite dense ... of course, these very pronounced "sorting" powers of hydraulic action are really only valid statistically, rather than universally. Local peculiarities of turbulence, habitat, sediment composition, etc., would be expected to cause local variations in organic assemblages ... But, on the average, the sorting action is quite efficient and would definitely have separated the shells and other fossils in just such a fashion as they are found, with certain fossils predominant in certain horizons, the complexity of such "index fossils" increasing with increasing elevation in the column, in at least a general way." (TGF, p. 274)
Higher Mobility of the Vertebrates "It is reasonable also, in the light of the Flood record, to expect that vertebrates would be found higher in the geologic column than the first invertebrates. Vertebrates in general possess much greater mobility, and this factor, together with their pelagic habitats, [pelagic - Refers to living in the water of the ocean above the bottom] would normally prevent their being entrapped and deposited in the deepest sediments. The simplest vertebrates, the ostracoderms [Ostracoderms ("bone-skinned") are any of several groups of extinct, primitive, jawless fishes that were covered in an armor of bony plates.], are first found, and only sparingly then, in Ordovician strata. Fishes are found in profusion in the Devonian, often in great sedimentary "graveyards," indicating violent deposition, and often in fresh-water deposits. It is obvious that fish do not normally die and become fossilized in such conditions as these but usually are either destroyed by scavengers or float on the surface until decomposed. The whole aspect of the fossil fish beds bespeaks violent burial in rapidly moving deltaic sediments." ... In other localities, and perhaps somewhat later in the period of the rising waters of the Flood, in general, land animals and plants would be expected to be caught in the sediments and buried; and this, of course, is exactly what the strata show."(TGF, p. 275) ... "In general though, as a statistical average, beds would tend to be deposited in just the order that has been ascribed to them in terms of the standard geologic column. That is, on top of the beds of marine vertebrates would be found amphibians, then reptiles and finally birds and mammals. This is in the order: (1) of increasing mobility and therefore increasing ability to postpone inundation; (2) of decreasing density and other hydrodynamic factors tending to promote earlier and deeper sedimentation, and (3) of increasing elevation of habitat and therefore time required for the Flood to attain stages sufficient to overtake them. The order is exactly what is to be expected in light of the Flood account and, therefore, gives further circumstantial evidence of the truthfulness of that account;" (TGF, p. 276)
TGF then covers formation of coal beds, the "Mesozoic" strata and the dinosaurs, and "Tertiary" stratigraphy.
Are you getting the idea that you should go out and buy a copy of The Genesis Flood?? It would save me a lot of typing!!
Here a good ICR article on fossils and in particular the Nautiloid fossils found in the Grand Canyon.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
dave, is there a particular reason why you're still lurking around without responding?
Are you waiting for more answers to pile up, as usual, and ignore the inconvenient ones, or are you just furiously browsing your favorite sites, trying to come up with some copypasted material to make up for your lack of knowledge?
edit: whoops, sorry man. I guess your googling paid off, eh?
edit (2) um, no, I guess it didn't. Why were Pterosaurs unable to fly to higher altitudes, but birds were, dave? Why aren't the higher strata full of birds and flying reptiles, for that reason? Why did Mosasaurs and Ichtyosaurs sink faster than whales? Come to think of it, why did they even die? Why didn't fast dinosaurs like coelophysis outrun sloths and other slow mammals, dave? why don't we find trilobites and modern mollusks together, dave?
Sorry no bonus, dave. Try again.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I'd like to know how such claims are made about mammals being more "motile" than dinosaurs. Show how these conclusions are reached, Dave, and why there are NO exceptions in the Grand Canyonf formations. Wouldn't SOME bloated bodies of lizards or dinosaurs FLOAT long enough to be with the mammals? if not, why not? DETAILS, dave, not hand-waving
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Another point would be the amphibians that are "lighter" than armored fish and just as motile as mammals AND they can live IN water LONGER , Dave...why aren't there giant or SMALL mississipian amphibians mixed in with the mammals?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Local peculiarities of turbulence, habitat, sediment composition, etc., would be expected to cause local variations in organic assemblages ... But, on the average, the sorting action is quite efficient and would definitely have separated the shells and other fossils in just such a fashion as they are found
If this is "on the average" why don't we find exceptions in the Grand Canyon formations?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
PROOF OF THE GLOBAL FLOOD THAT EVEN A HALF-WIT COULD SEE MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
And yet you've still refused to offer any reasoning why they are laid down in a set order that is verifable through other means instead of appearing in a single jumble. Did animals line up to die in the correct order?
Then again, I guess you yourself said it. You have to be a half-wit to see your proof, which is why apparently only you can see it.
So, if I understand, everything from the Tapeats Sandstone up was laid down by the flood. Have I got that right?
Yes. That is my understanding of the Global Flood Theory.
Deadman...
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Dave: The Coconino Trace fossils are filled with eolian deposits...wind-blown materials, not water-borne. This is because the region at that time was an erg...a sandy desert. DRY sand and dust is required to fill those trace fossils, Dave. Quote " we should state clearly that the evidence for flooding is nonexistent. The protomammal tracks (in the Coconino formation) are often found in association with trackways of spiders, scorpions, and other desert arthropods that could not have been walking around underwater" Lockley, M., and Hunt, A. (1996). Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States. p. 69.
Deadman ... think of the following order of events ...
1) Worldwide volcanoes, which released massive quantities of ash into the atmosphere, which in turn precipitated the "waters above" (I don't know the nature of this ... I am aware of the Dillow problems) 2) Breakup of the "fountains of the deep" including undersea volcanoes 3) Massive rainfall and widespread crustal folding 4) Massive flooding, sedimentation and runoff erosion Etc. Etc.
Notice that one of the earliest events postulated by the Global Flood Theory is MASSIVE VOLCANIC ACTIVITY.
There's your possiblity for wind borne sediments PRIOR to rainfall. Notice that under this scenario, massive flooding could have easily occured due to the breakup of the "fountains of the deep."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
HEre's some other questions for you, Dave: How did the half-mile thick coral formations of the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas grow during a single flood year?
How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? This would be in violation of everything we know from hydrology, soil mechanics, and strength of materials. Some rock types, become lithified soon after deposition, but most sandstones and shales require ****major**** loss of water, compaction, and/or chemical cement to become a strong rock, processes which involve significant amounts of time. This is especially true for very fine grained mud shales in which low permeability makes complete dewatering/dessication almost impossible in any short period of time, FURTHERMORE---loading of other materials on top will not result in the required "de-watering"; trapped water in the muds would cause sudden liquifaction of the entire mass, a phenomenon known to hydraulic engineers as 'sudden draw down condition.'
HOW COULD THIS BE ACCOMPLISHED IF THE DEPOSITION LASTS ONE YEAR WITH IMMEDIATE OROGENY AND CANYON-CUTTING FOLLOWING THAT?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Uh, dave? How dull are you? I asked about the COCONINO trace fossils that are OVERLAIN by MORE SEDIMENTS, and you say :
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Deadman ... think of the following order of events ...
1) Worldwide volcanoes, which released massive quantities of ash into the atmosphere, which in turn precipitated the "waters above" (I don't know the nature of this ... I am aware of the Dillow problems) 2) Breakup of the "fountains of the deep" including undersea volcanoes 3) Massive rainfall and widespread crustal folding 4) Massive flooding, sedimentation and runoff erosion Etc. Etc.
Notice that one of the earliest events postulated by the Global Flood Theory is MASSIVE VOLCANIC ACTIVITY.
There's your possiblity for wind borne sediments PRIOR to rainfall. Notice that under this scenario, massive flooding could have easily occured due to the breakup of the "fountains of the deep."
Uh, Dave..the coconino trace fossils are not filled with volcanic ash. MOre importantly, the coconinos had to be covered in ONE year with a few thousand feet of sediments...SEDIMENTS... and in your scenario , volcanic activity FOLLOWS sediment deposits...REMEMBER? there's no way that your explanation suffices on ANY level
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So, if I understand, everything from the Tapeats Sandstone up was laid down by the flood. Have I got that right?
Yes. That is my understanding of the Global Flood Theory.
Cool! So we agree that the upper 14 layers were laid down by the flood. Do we also agree that their orderly appearance in the cross section is indicative of orderly deposit, without any tectonic or volcanic interference?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
And about those fossils, Dave...Why don't we see them all jumbled up?
Are you kidding me?
Do you not know about Geiseltal? Or Agate Springs, Nebraska? Or the La Brea Tar Pits in LA? And many, many more?
Do you need me to walk you through those?
************************************
You said the Coconino tracks were filled with "wind-blown sediments" and I supplied you with a possibility for that. Do you want to describe the sediments more precisely for me?
No ... in my scenario, SEDIMENTATION FOLLOWS VOLCANISM, not vice-versa.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Wrong, dave, you have to have MASSIVE uplift, which is ONLY accomplished in short spans of time BY vulcanism and the coconino trace fossils are filled with fine-grained quartz from DESERT environments, not ASH.
Further, if you point to isolated deposits ( the la BREA TAR PITS are TAR, not SEDIMENT) you have to show why this is not found EVERYWHERE.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I, too would like to know how you can shape your lying lips to use the La Brea Tar pits or Agate Springs as evidence of fossils of all geologic ages being jumbled up, Dave, PLEASE go through that, considering that the Agate Springs formation is all Miocene mammals/critters and La Brea is all plio-pleistocene mammals and other critters. NO SILURIAN AMPHIBIANS, NO DINOSAURS...and I just looked up the Geiseltal and those are Eocene, no jumbling of dinos there
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"More than 6000 remains of vertebrate animals and a great number of insects, molluscs, and plants ... well-preserved bits of hair, feathers and scales ... stomach contents of beetles, amphibia, fishes, birds and mammals ... bacteria of two kinds ... fungi were identified on leaves ..." (N.O Newell: "Adequacy of the Fossil Record," Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 33, May 1959, p. 496, quoted in TGF, p. 160)
Slow sedimentation over millions of years, eh?
Hmmm ......
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I was very clear in what I asked, Dave: I asked about why we don't see ANY examples of Silurian/Devonian/Mississippian/Pennsylvanian/Jurrasic/Triassic/Cretaceous fossils in the
Why didn't the Mile-high cliffs of the grand canyon collapse if they were all laid in one year and cut immediately after??
Why do we see Coral formations that are a mile thick? corals can't LIVE during sedimentation.
You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm not going to let you duck this. How much water do you think it took to lay down 5,000 feet of sediment in a year? That's almost 15 feet of sediment a day, Dave. That doesn't give time for any tracks to be laid down. How would you expect to see a single track in any sediment when it's being laid down at a rate of more than six inches an hour?
How deep was the water? Where did it come from? These are two of the most fundamental questions about a global flood, Dave, and you're not going to get to tapdance around them forever.
If you can't answer a simple question like this, it's clear you don't have a clue about your global flood. I'm guessing you'd never even considered the matter until I asked you. And I've been asking you for almost a month.
What do you think that tells me, when you can't answer?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A LONG time ago in this thread, I asked one of my favorite questions, Dave...concerning syphilis and gonorrhea, which can only survive in human carriers. I'm still curious about who you think had syphilis on the ark?
And how they managed to do so much work 24 hours a day shlepping shite to the upper deck to toss it over, feeding those carnivores that need refrigeration for their meals, or live meals ---and those tons of plant materials like eucalyptus for the koalas and bamboo for the pandas and fresh greens for the dinosaurs that need it. And don't tell me the carnivores became hay-eating herbivores. I'd love to see you try to feed a Tyrannosaur or Taipan or Boomslang or Fer-de-lance or Siberian Tiger a nice bit of hay, Dave. I suggest you volunteer in the name of creation science. Be bold and support the strength of your convictions.
Oh, and Dave,you're a real bright engineer, well-versed in mathiness, right? if Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years? ?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
PROOF OF THE GLOBAL FLOOD THAT EVEN A HALF-WIT COULD SEE MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
I always thought attorneys were dumber than engineers, Dave, but it's become clear to me that you're nowhere near smart enough to be an attorney.
"Proof" of your "global flood"? Nice try. Which makes more sense, Dave: millions of dead things dying over billions of years, or only a year? Thousands of feet of sediment deposited over billions of years, or only one year?
Your "proofs" are self-refuting.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GLOBAL FLOOD 1) Footprints in Coconino sandstone - ANSWERED. CHECK.
I love how Dave thinks if the says something—anything—about a criticism of his "hypotheses," he thinks he's "answered" it. Doesn't matter how ad hoc his response is, or even if it has anything to do with the question. So long as he makes some sort of utterance in English, he thinks he's answered the objection.
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1) A little more on footprints in the Coconino sandstone ... "footprint fossils" are what geologists call "trace fossils" and require rapid burial in order to be preserved. Does anyone need me to explain why this is? Does anyone need me to explain the implications of RAPID BURIAL? (Hint: Global Flood)
Dave, you haven't "answered" our objections to footprints in sandstone supposedly preserved in the middle of a ferocious flood that supposedly laid down a foot of sediment every two hours. In case it hasn't been explained to you yet (and I'm pretty sure it has), in order for footprints to be preserved, you need more than sudden burial. The sediment they were formed in has to dry out first. It has to have dried out before it gets buried.
Would you like to explain how that happens when a torrential flood is raging through the area, depositing sediment at a rate of an inch every ten minutes?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood at 3kBCE? When did they die out?
Why did you post this picture, Dave? To impress us about how grand an undertaking the ark was? To inspire us? To get our minds working? Well I know it's just an artist's conception (Noah didn't have a camera, I understand) but really Dave, just look how stupid it looks. The thing looks like it's made out of popsicle sticks. How much space did they waste on that open cathedral area? Don't they need every square cubit for animals, or food for a year? I guess they needed a lot of space for praying to keep the thing from breaking up. What's holding the roof on? You can't build a structure like that out of wood on land, not to mention taking it to sea. And weren't there super-earthquakes with mega-tsunamis cris-crossing the globe and volcanoes going off left and right?? How come Noah didn't notice?
How much steel, I mean iron, went into building the ark?
I just pity the poor l'il salamanders in Dave's scenario...struggling mightily during this maelstrom of water and sediments, it survives the deposition of Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, Muav limestone, Temple Butte Formation, Redwall Limestone, Surprise Canyon Formation, Watahomigi Formation, Manakacha Formation, Wescogame Formation, Esplanade Sandstone, and Hermit Shale ---thousands and thousands of feet of rock.
Then our intrepid little salamander crawls onto the (suddenly drying, despite the water canopy!!! Coconino Sandstone and marches on, leaving his delicate imprint behind, squinting bravely in the cataclysm that god hath wrought, because ...well, because of people, but God is filled with anger and kills the little salamanders, too.
Still, this noble amphibian waddles on -- only to be hit with another terrifying wave of deposition from an all-loving god that miraculously preserves it's little feetsie-prints for Dave to admire.
Of course, the salamander is then selectively deposited in a cunning arrangement of layers of fossils that miraculously doesn't mix up trilobites, groundhogs, Allosaurs and naked mole rats ( shout-out to Icthyic) God likes neatness, apparently. And lots of dead things. Lots and lots.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So, let's see: being generous here, what actual evidence has Dave supplied for his "global flood"? I know he hates it when I and others accuse him of not providing evidence, so let's see if we can provide a list of anything that can remotely be considered evidence (believable or not) for his flood (feel free to add more stuff if you think it's evidence, Dave; we'll be sure to explain to you why it's not).
Here it is:
1) lots of sediment, especially at the Grand Canyon;
2) (hmm...I'm running out of steam already...);
2) um...signs of erosion in places like the Grand Canyon and elsewhere;
3) (thinking hard...)
3) and...uh, millions of dead things.
I could be wrong, but I think that's an exhaustive list.
Dave will probably try to add lots of other things, like earthquakes, volcanoes, tectonic activity, etc., but I'm afraid I'll have to point out to him that he actually hasn't presented any evidence that any of those things accompanied the flood. He hasn't shown us evidence of volcanic activity worldwide at the time of the flood (a worldwide layer of volcanic ash dated, god knows how, to 4,500 years ago would be a start), he hasn't shown us any evidence of earthquakes dating from the time of the flood, and he sure hasn't provided any evidence of tectonic activity, especially enough to have sundered that single megacontinent and moved the continental landmasses to their current positions.
So, Dave, is that what we have so far? Lots of sediment, a little erosion, lots of dead things? And you're sure those phenomena can't be explained by any other mechanism?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Denial, Air Foot in Mouth Dave is NOT a river in Egypt.
Why do you continue to make a public fool of yourself?
Thank your brainwashers AFD, they have much done more than you realize.
BTW you are performing a wonderful service of showing just how dangerous Fundamentalism is.
You could seek professional help, do a google on cult deprogramming, if you dare.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Q3) Fossil Order. A3) The fossil order we find is exactly what we would expect to find if they were deposited by a Global Flood.
Early Burial of Marine Creatures. The Biblical Record says that the "fountains of the great deep were broken up." If the record is correct, we would expect that marine organisms would be fossilized first and appear lowest in the geologic column. This is exactly what we do find.
No it's not, Dave.
There's simply no way a torrential flood, involving turbulence, eddies, constructive and destructive interference, etc., laying down sediment at the rate of almost a foot an hour, could possibly lay down fossils the way we see them laid down all over the world.
Your model requires that this chaotic flood deposited the corpses of organisms in exactly the same order, worldwide without a single exception. We never see Cenozoic, to say nothing of eocene or holocene (and let's not forget, your flood supposedly occurred during the holocene) fossils in mesozoic or proterozoic strata. Never. Not one. Over the entire surface of the planet.
Do you honestly think we're going to believe that, Dave?
And what's with the dinosaurs on your ark, Dave? Did dinosaurs survive the flood? I thought the flood was supposed to have caused their extinction! Why does the Bible fail to mention animals that would have been pretty hard to overlook, like 50-ton apatosaurs, or 8-ton Tyrannosaurs? Or was your "ice age" after the flood? If so, why do we not see evidence of an ice age within the last 4,500 years?
Oh, and one more point, before I forget: your hypothesis of all the sediment in the Grand Canyon being deposited during the flood (aside from being at odds even with other YECs' hypotheses) is directly contradicted, and in fact is ruled out of consideration by, radiometric dating which shows that the oldest layers of sediment in the Grand Canyon are at least a billion years old.
And before you start bleating about "flawed assumptions" and "equivocal" results, I'll diffidently point out that you haven't put so much as a microscopic pinhole in the evidence supporting the accuracy of any form of radiometric dating. It's a huge problem for your flood hypothesis, Dave, and it's not going to go away.
And, of course, one more point: Where did all that water come from, how much water was there, and where did it all go?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
2) "Much study has been devoted to the subject of the mechanics of meandering rivers, since it inbolbes engineering problems of considerable importance. In particular, extensive model tests have demonstrated that the phenomenon of meandering is associated only with non-resistant banks." [***** Did you hear that? NON-RESISTANT BANKS *****] (Joseph F. Friedkin: [i]"A Laboratory Study of the Meanderings of Alluvial Rivers," Vicksburg, U.S. Waterways Experiment Station, Mississippi River Commission, 1945.) (Quoted in TGF, p.154)
Bottom line here: DEEP CUT MEANDERS = SOFT RIVER BEDS = GLOBAL FLOOD RUNOFF. You simply don't get this type of incised meanders in solid rock eroded over millions of years. Sorry! Long Agers lose!
The rivers pictured do not have soft beds or banks. They are meandering canyons in ROCK. The WES report is talking about a different situation, like the Mississippi River, which does not meander through rock, but has changed its course many times in the past couple of centuries.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
Hey k.e ... I agree that your "1984" scenario may happen in the future ... but it will not be Fundies running it ... Fundies will be gone ... have you not read "Left Behind" by Tim LaHaye??
I expect someone like Nicolae Carpathia will be running your "1984" government.
I don't know if any here have seen this, but if not it's worth a look, although it takes a long time to read...
[2) "Much study has been devoted to the subject of the mechanics of meandering rivers, since it inbolbes engineering problems of considerable importance. In particular, extensive model tests have demonstrated that the phenomenon of meandering is associated only with non-resistant banks." [***** Did you hear that? NON-RESISTANT BANKS *****] (Joseph F. Friedkin: "A Laboratory Study of the Meanderings of Alluvial Rivers," Vicksburg, U.S. Waterways Experiment Station, Mississippi River Commission, 1945.) (Quoted in TGF, p.154)
Bottom line here: DEEP CUT MEANDERS = SOFT RIVER BEDS = GLOBAL FLOOD RUNOFF. You simply don't get this type of incised meanders in solid rock eroded over millions of years. Sorry! Long Agers lose!
Oh, really, Dave? Then how do you explain that the bottom few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon is cut through very hard igneous and metamorphic rock rock that even you believe predates the flood?
If it's true that meanders only occur in soft deposits, then how does your global flood explain the fact that the Colorado river has cut through very hard igneous rock that predates the flood?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Denial, Air Foot in Mouth Dave is NOT a river in Egypt.
Why do you continue to make a public fool of yourself?
Thank your brainwashers AFD, they have much done more than you realize.
BTW you are performing a wonderful service of showing just how dangerous Fundamentalism is.
You could seek professional help, do a google on cult deprogramming, if you dare.
At first I was a bit disappointed that people continue to engage AFDave, but then I considered the effect on lurkers. AFDave makes his side look like complete idiots. So the more AFDave, the better.
AFDave is doing far more than any of *one* of us could, to debunk Creationist propaganda, including their claim to some sort of moral high ground.
The thing about people who have been trained since birth to deny reality with a small library of stock phrases (which is all that is needed) and the final caveat of "If you feel the opposition are right, you will forever be doomed to ever lasting H3LL" is a very powerful psychological tool that actually hard wires their brain's neurons for permanent denial.
They are given an enemy for life and told that no moral rules apply to the way that enemy are dealt with.
Hardly Christian.
No ,in fact it is NOT Christian but just plain old identity politics, with ethics no different to any totalitarian regime of the past.
That is why they want to move “The Law” from Rome to Jerusalem they then get to decide what “gods” laws are.
You only have to look in the old testament to see how powerful that propaganda is, the Priests made god into a dictator so they and their kings could rule with no opposition.
Every member of society becomes one of gods secret police and the whole nation a priestly gulag
Now the ironic thing is that to continue the charade actually makes its adherents technically insane, that is to say, not in connection with reality, a type of neurotic schizophrenia, like the people in the old insane asylums who thought they were Napoleon or Jesus.
Except their social group with its shared delusion creates the impression for those inside its horizons, of sanity to them, its those outside who are insane by way of the shared delusion.
In other words to be a member of the group, you must suspend belief in reality.
Every action against their delusion makes them a greater martyr for the cause, a tool that is put to good use by their leaders. Simple identity politics, no religion needed.
In fact the central precepts of morality from religion MUST be re-defined as AMORAL, they are no longer capable of determining good from evil.
I can think of no other example that would better describe H3LL, than the place where AF Dave is right now. The pressure he must feel, must be enormous.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
July 4, 2006 GREAT HEROES OF AMERICAN HISTORY WHO PROMOTED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
Everyone (except possibly k.e) knows the first verse of the American National Anthem, but how many know the 4th verse?
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Proclamation by George Washington Issued on October 3, 1789
Quote
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . . Now, therefore, I do recommend . . . that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection . . . And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . . to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
Washington, Writings (1838) Vol. XII, pp. 119-120, October 3, 1789. See also James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Published by the Authority of Congress, 1899), VOl. I, p. 64, October 3, 1789. OI-115.
Thomas Jefferson
Quote
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, p. 237. MS-176.
Benjamin Franklin
Quote
"In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir were heard, and they were graciously answered . . . I therefore beg leave to move--that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 984-986, June 28, 1787.
"We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985, June 28, 1787.
John Jay -- First Chief Justice of the United States
Quote
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p.376, to John Murray, Jr. on October 12, 1816. OI-334.
"Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation."
John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p.52, to Lindley Murray on August 22, 1794. OI-168.
(Technically insane, neurotic schizophrenics, eh? Raaaaight! This from a guy who thinks he evolved from pond scum! Go back to the pond, "k.e" ... maybe you could re-evolve with a better attitude! Or better yet ... move! Do you live in America? If so, why don't you go someplace with fewer technically insane, neurotic, schizophrenic people?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
July 4, 2006 GREAT HEROES OF AMERICAN HISTORY WHO PROMOTED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
Everyone (except possibly k.e) knows the first verse of the American National Anthem, but how many know the 4th verse?
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Proclamation by George Washington Issued on October 3, 1789
Quote
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . . Now, therefore, I do recommend . . . that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection . . . And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . . to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
Washington, Writings (1838) Vol. XII, pp. 119-120, October 3, 1789. See also James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Published by the Authority of Congress, 1899), VOl. I, p. 64, October 3, 1789. OI-115.
Thomas Jefferson
Quote
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, p. 237. MS-176.
Benjamin Franklin
Quote
"In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir were heard, and they were graciously answered . . . I therefore beg leave to move--that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 984-986, June 28, 1787.
"We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985, June 28, 1787.
John Jay -- First Chief Justice of the United States
Quote
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p.376, to John Murray, Jr. on October 12, 1816. OI-334.
"Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation."
John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p.52, to Lindley Murray on August 22, 1794. OI-168.
(Technically insane, neurotic schizophrenics, eh? Raaaaight! This from a guy who thinks he evolved from pond scum! Go back to the pond, "k.e" ... maybe you could re-evolve with a better attitude! Or better yet ... move! Do you live in America? If so, why don't you go someplace with fewer technically insane, neurotic, schizophrenic people?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
July 4, 2006 GREAT HEROES OF AMERICAN HISTORY WHO PROMOTED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
Everyone (except possibly k.e) knows the first verse of the American National Anthem, but how many know the 4th verse?
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Proclamation by George Washington Issued on October 3, 1789
Quote
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . . Now, therefore, I do recommend . . . that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection . . . And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . . to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
Washington, Writings (1838) Vol. XII, pp. 119-120, October 3, 1789. See also James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Published by the Authority of Congress, 1899), VOl. I, p. 64, October 3, 1789. OI-115.
Thomas Jefferson
Quote
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, p. 237. MS-176.
Benjamin Franklin
Quote
"In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir were heard, and they were graciously answered . . . I therefore beg leave to move--that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 984-986, June 28, 1787.
"We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985, June 28, 1787.
John Jay -- First Chief Justice of the United States
Quote
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p.376, to John Murray, Jr. on October 12, 1816. OI-334.
"Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation."
John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p.52, to Lindley Murray on August 22, 1794. OI-168.
(Technically insane, neurotic schizophrenics, eh? Raaight! This from a guy who thinks he evolved from pond scum! Go back to the pond, "k.e" ... maybe you could re-evolve with a better attitude! Or better yet ... move! Do you live in America? If so, why don't you go someplace with fewer technically insane, neurotic, schizophrenic people?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
July 4, 2006 GREAT HEROES OF AMERICAN HISTORY WHO PROMOTED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
Everyone (except possibly k.e) knows the first verse of the American National Anthem, but how many know the 4th verse?
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Proclamation by George Washington Issued on October 3, 1789
Quote
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . . Now, therefore, I do recommend . . . that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection . . . And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . . to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
Washington, Writings (1838) Vol. XII, pp. 119-120, October 3, 1789. See also James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Published by the Authority of Congress, 1899), VOl. I, p. 64, October 3, 1789. OI-115.
Thomas Jefferson
Quote
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, p. 237. MS-176.
Benjamin Franklin
Quote
"In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir were heard, and they were graciously answered . . . I therefore beg leave to move--that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 984-986, June 28, 1787.
"We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985, June 28, 1787.
John Jay -- First Chief Justice of the United States
Quote
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p.376, to John Murray, Jr. on October 12, 1816. OI-334.
"Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation."
John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p.52, to Lindley Murray on August 22, 1794. OI-168.
(Technically insane, neurotic schizophrenics, eh? Right! This from a guy who thinks he evolved from pond scum! Go back to the pond, "k.e" ... maybe you could re-evolve with a better attitude! Or better yet ... move! Do you live in America? If so, why don't you go someplace with fewer technically insane, neurotic, schizophrenic people?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Do you live in America? If so, why don't you go someplace with fewer technically insane, neurotic, schizophrenic people?
Uh, how about not? Who was talking about anyone other than you? And why should anyone leave this country because it has nutcases like you in it? Are you all filled with patriotic fervor and christian zeal, so you feel you have the right to speak for *everyone* in the country? I mean, besides annoyingly REPOSTING the same thing 4 times? This is NOT *your* country alone, jerkoff, and the fact that some "founding fathers" said anything about christianity means little in a country founded on freedom OF religion and FROM religious fanaticism that would pervert fundamental human rights.
In short, Dave, take your weird fundamentalist views and stick them right up that well-travelled rectum I mentioned not long ago. Those who live in the US don't need your advice, and those that don't are probably appalled at the prejudices you show.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Nonetheless, Just in case you didn't know, Dave--- Separation of church and state is what the founding fathers wanted for the nation, and I prefer not to allow you or anyone to distort history to make it appear otherwise. Patriotism doesn't consist of wrapping oneself in the flag and pretending that is sufficient disguise for religious fanaticism. Thomas Jefferson: "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." " Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth".... letter to William Short "Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself." -in his private journal, Feb. 1800 James Madison : "Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches Thomas Paine: "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of...Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." John Adams: "Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, "This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!" "God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there will never be any liberal science in the world." Ethan Allen said that he was generally "denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian." Benjamin Frankliin"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Daaaamn guys, I told you to go easy on dave... now you gone and broke him again...
Now he'll just switch to denial mode one more time, simply post pictures and Mantras in all BOLDCAPS -and absolutely DENY to address any of our questions. We'll miss on all the fun of him trying to be all science-y.
Oh well.
Happy July 4, everyone in the US! My best wishes to the country that was the most brilliant product of European Enlightement, and carried it's values into the future!
Yep dave, I'm talking about your country. Happy 4th to you too!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Nonetheless, Just in case you didn't know, Dave--- Separation of church and state is what the founding fathers wanted for the nation, and I prefer not to allow you or anyone to distort history to make it appear otherwise. Patriotism doesn't consist of wrapping oneself in the flag and pretending that is sufficient disguise for religious fanaticism.
This does bring to mind that Dave never did address his thoughts on the Jefferson Bible. For those who may be unfamiliar with the subject, allow me to explain.
As Faid correctly states, most of the leading Founding Fathers were influenced by the Enlightment philosophers including, but not limited to, Locke and Rousseau. Within that context, the invocation of the natural rights of man as being endowed by their Creator was a deliberate reaction and challenge to the "divine right of kings."
While there were many participants and influences, a strong case can be made that the three leading, and most influential, political theorists were John Adams, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson. Certainly all believed in God, but the similarity between their religious beliefs and Daves ends there. In short, they valued reason over revelation. All three were considered deists, although their beliefs varied. Adams attended a Congregational church, but self-identified as a unitarian. Madison was nominally Anglican, although of all the Founding Fathers he fought the hardest to keep religion and government out of each others domain.
Jefferson is special to the modern religious right and they put alot of effort into trying to claim him as one of their own. It is a tough row to hoe. Jefferson saw Jesus Christ as a great moral teacher, but specifically rejected the divinity of Christ. Which brings us around to the Jefferson Bible. Later in life, Jefferson went through the Christian Gospels and expunged all supernatural references. The resulting text was called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth."
I dare say that such an act today would be considered by the religious conservatives as an act of heresy. And, I would guess, would be a career-ender for a political leader.
EDIT:Corrected several spelling and grammatical errors.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Sorry guys! Didn't mean to post my "Independence Day" post 4 times! It kept telling me "service unavailable" so I didn't know it was posting it.
Back on topic tomorrow ... I will answer your questions then ...
AFD
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, looks like AFDave’s mouth wrote another check his YEC evidence can’t cash
Dave promised to walk us through the details of the formation of the Colorado River incised meanders. Instead, we get this
Quote
2) "Much study has been devoted to the subject of the mechanics of meandering rivers, since it inbolbes engineering problems of considerable importance. In particular, extensive model tests have demonstrated that the phenomenon of meandering is associated only with non-resistant banks." [***** Did you hear that? NON-RESISTANT BANKS *****] (Joseph F. Friedkin: [i]"A Laboratory Study of the Meanderings of Alluvial Rivers," Vicksburg, U.S. Waterways Experiment Station, Mississippi River Commission, 1945.) (Quoted in TGF, p.154)
Bottom line here: DEEP CUT MEANDERS = SOFT RIVER BEDS = GLOBAL FLOOD RUNOFF. You simply don't get this type of incised meanders in solid rock eroded over millions of years. Sorry! Long Agers lose!
Which is a paper about the original formation and migration rate of meanders on a shallow flood plane, in this case the Mississippi delta. It says nothing about incised meanders, especially mile deep ones like are found in the Grand Canyon.
You didn’t investigate the formation of incised meanders at all Dave, did you? You just mindlessly C&P’d your YEC bullshit just like always.
Quote
Incised meander. A continuous flow of water over rock, e.g., a stream or river, will erode its path into that rock. If the rock is highly sloped, the water will generally cut a fairly straight channel down the slope. However, if the rock is level, the water will snake its way around any slight bump in the terrain. This frequently leads to the water course making wide, curling loops that almost, but not quite, double back on themselves. Such a loop is called a meander. The point where the water course almost closes the loop is called the neck of the meander. If there is uplift in the area, the water will tend to erode its path into the rock to remain at a constant elevation as the rock around it rises. If the uplift is rapid, shear-walled cliffs may form along the banks of the water course. In this way, meanders can become deeply incised into rock. For many such incised meanders, the neck will become a tall, thin wall of rock. Other processes of erosion can then create an opening through the wall to form a natural arch.
Do some reading on the formation of incised meanders, Dave. There’s plenty of good geological data readily available on the web.
Then walk us through in detail
How a one year rapid run off formed a mile deep incised meander through layers of solid rock that predates even your Biblical flood “layer” model.
More importantly, tell us where all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’, water that covered every square foot of dry land surface, ran off to.
Where did the water go Dave??
If you did the slightest bit of research on the details of this stuff before shooting your big mouth off, you wouldn’t look like so much of an ignorant ass all the time, ya know?
Oh, and before I forget, you posted this Dave
Quote
And Aftershave ... I still think that Carbon 14 Dating is much different than Flight Data Recording and Videotaping. How about you?
I already told you twice, but here it is again:
In many ways, C14 dating and FDR/VCR results are quite similar. Both use sophisticated scientific instruments to measure and record known physical phenomena. Accuracy in both is critical, so both have been thoroughly tested and calibrated to a high level of precision.
Now why won't you answer these simple questions which I have asked you repeatedly?
Give me a good reason why you accept the science and reliability of results from the FDR/CVR but not the C14 dating.
Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other, but none of them show your claimed 100X C14/C12 ratio?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Happy July 4, everyone in the US! My best wishes to the country that was the most brilliant product of European Enlightement, and carried it's values into the future!
Yep dave, I'm talking about your country. Happy 4th to you too!
Thanks! I'm quite happy to live in this successful experiment of the enlightenment. The AFDaves have had limited and occasional success in rolling back our freedoms and imposing upon us the demands of the clergy, but by and large we abide as free people into our 230th year. May we prevail in our opposition to the Discovery Institutes, and the Rushdoonys, and the Robertsons, for another 230!
Okay, Dave. Now that you've demonstrated your quote-mining skills (even on topics that have fuck-all to do with your Creator God "Hypothesis"), I'll expect answers to the following questions tomorrow:
• Where did these global floodwaters come from? Specifically. Some underground "fountain" doesn't cut it.
• How much water was involved? You can use kg, m^2, liters, cubic miles, or hogsheads, for all I care. But I want at least an estimate. And "a lot," or "gobs," or "massive amounts" doesn't cut it.
• How deep were the floodwaters? A few hundred feet, a few thousand feet, a few hundred miles, a few thousand miles?
• What happened to all that water? "It evaporated," it "ran off into the oceans," or "God 'poofed' it away" doesn't cut it.
Dave, you've had at least three weeks if not more to research these questions. Given that you presented your "creator God Hypothesis" as a "hypothesis," you should have had answers to these questions before you even posted it. If you can't answer them by now, you're never going to be able to answer them, and you may as well admit you haven't a clue. And while you're at it, you may as well admit you don't have a particle of evidence that your global flood ever happened, and I have tons of evidence that it never happened.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
2) "Much study has been devoted to the subject of the mechanics of meandering rivers, since it inbolbes engineering problems of considerable importance. In particular, extensive model tests have demonstrated that the phenomenon of meandering is associated only with non-resistant banks." [***** Did you hear that? NON-RESISTANT BANKS *****] (Joseph F. Friedkin: [i]"A Laboratory Study of the Meanderings of Alluvial Rivers," Vicksburg, U.S. Waterways Experiment Station, Mississippi River Commission, 1945.) (Quoted in TGF, p.154)
Bottom line here: DEEP CUT MEANDERS = SOFT RIVER BEDS = GLOBAL FLOOD RUNOFF. You simply don't get this type of incised meanders in solid rock eroded over millions of years. Sorry! Long Agers lose!
Wow, this is EXACTLY how Dave argues his crackbrained linguistic ideas! Assemble several random ideas with no causal connection, ignore all contradictions, and declare victory!
BTW, Dave, I don't expect an honest or coherent answer, but if all those founding fathers 'promoted the Christian Religion', why is it that Christianity and Jesus are never mentioned once in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, or Constitution? If they wanted to found the US as a 'Christian Nation', wasn't that quite a colossal oversight?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
AFDave, here is a closer look at the details of various rock layers that are exposed in the Grand Canyon. Details, Dave – you know, those pesky things that make you and your fellow YECs shit your pants?
Quote
Paleozoic Strata Kaibab Limestone - This layer averages about 250 million years old and forms the surface of the Kaibab and Coconino Plateaus. It is composed primarily of a sandy limestone with a layer of sandstone below it. In some places sandstone and shale also exists as its upper layer. The color ranges from cream to a greyish-white. When viewed from the rim this layer resembles a bathtub ring and is commonly referred to as the Canyon's bathtub ring. Fossils that can be found in this layer are brachiopods, coral, mollusks, sea lilies, worms and fish teeth. Toroweap Formation - This layer averages about 255 million years old and is composed of pretty much the same material as the Kaibab Limestone above. It is darker in color, ranging from yellow to grey, and contains a similar fossil history. Coconino Sandstone - This layer averages about 260 million years old and is composed of pure quartz sand, which are basically petrified sand dunes. Wedge-shaped cross bedding can be seen where traverse-type dunes have been petrified. The color of this layer ranges from white to cream colored. No skeletal fossils have yet to be found but numerous invertebrate tracks and fossilized burrows do exist. Hermit Shale - This layer averages about 265 million years old and is composed of soft, easily eroded shales which have formed a slope. As the shales erode they undermine the layers sandstone and limestone layers above which causes huge blocks to fall off and into the lower reaches of the Canyon. Many of these blocks end up in the side drainages and down on the Tonto Platform. The color of this layer is a deep, rust-colored red. Fossils to be found in this layer consist of ferns, conifers and other plants, as well as some fossilized tracks of reptiles and amphibians. Supai Formation - This layer averages about 285 million years old and is composed primarily of shale that is intermixed with some small amounts of limestone and capped by sandstone. The limestone features become more and more prominent in the western regions of the Canyon, leading one to believe that that region was more marine. The eastern portions where probably a muddy river delta that fed into an ancient sea. The color of this layer varies from red for the shale to tan for the sandstone caps. Numerous fossils of amphibians, reptiles and terrestial plants exist in the eastern portion which are replaced by marine fossils as you move westward. Redwall Limestone - This layer averages about 335 million years old and is composed of marine limestones and dolomites. This is probably the most prominent rock layer in the Canyon as it usually forms a sheer cliff ranging from 400-500 feet in height, which has become a natural barrier between the upper and lower regions of the Canyon. The only way though this barrier is in areas where the rock has faulted and broken apart to form a slope which can be climbed upon. The deep reddish color of this layer is caused by iron oxides leaching out of the layers above it and staining its outward face. Behind the reddish face the rock is a dark brownish color. Numerous marine fossils can be found in the Redwall Limestone including brachiopods, clams, snails, corals, fish and trilobites. Many caves and arches can also be seen in the Redwall. Temple Butte Limestone - This layer averages about 350 million years old and is composed of freshwater limestone in the east and dolomite in the west. In the eastern Grand Canyon this layer occurs irregularly and only then by way of limestone lenses that fill stream beds that have been eroded into the underlaying Mauv Limestone. Apart from these channels, which are quite large in places, the Redwall Limestone sits directly atop the Mauv Limestone. The Temple Butte Limestone is quite prominent, however, in the western regions and forms massive cliffs hundreds of feet high. The color of this layer ranges from purplish in the eastern regions to grey or cream colored in the west. The only fossils to be found in the eastern region are bony plates that once belonged to freshwater fish. In the western region there are numerous marine fossils. Tonto Group - These layers average about 515 to 545 million years old. - Muav Limestone - This layer averages about 515 million years old and is composed primarily of limestone that is separated by beds of sandstone and shale. The Mauv Limestone layer is much thicker in the western areas of the Canyon than it is in the east. Its color is grey and it does not have much in the way of fossils, some trilobites and brachiopods. - Bright Angel Shale - This layer averages about 530 million years old and is composed primarily of mudstone shale. It is also interbedded with small sections of sandstone and sandy limestone. The retreat of the Canyon rim is attributed primarily to the erosion of this layer which forms the top of the Tonto Platform. The plateau is much wider in the eastern portions of the Canyon where the Bright Angel Shale contains less sand and is more easily eroded. The color of this layer varies with its compostion but it is mostly various shades of green with some grey, brown and tan thrown in here and there. Fossils to be found in this layer consist of marine animals such as trilobites and brachiopods. - Tapeats Sandstone - This layer averages about 545 million years old and is composed of medium-grained and coarse-grained sandstone. Ripple marks formed by ocean waves of an early Cambrian sea are common in the upper layer. The Tapeats is similar to the Redwall in that it forms a barrier between upper and lower reaches of the Canyon that can only be traversed where a fault has caused its collapse. The color of this layer is dark brown and it contains fossils of trilobites. brachiopods, and trilobite trails.
Great Unconformity - This non-layer indicates an age in which no sediments can be found. It is indicative of a time when an advancing sea eroded away the sediments that should be here.
Late Pre-Cambrian Rocks Chuar Group - These layers average about 825 to 1,000 million years old and is composed of the following: - Sixtymile Formation - This tan colored layer is composed primarily of sandstone with some small sections of shale. - Kwagunt Formation - This layer is composed primarily of shale and mudstone with some limestone. In the area of Carbon Butte the lower layer also contains a large section of reddish sandstone. The shales within this layer are black and the mudstones range from red to purple. Fossils to be found in this layer are those of stromatolites, the oldest fossils to be found anywhere in the Grand Canyon. - Galeros Formaton - This layer is composed of interbedded sandstone, limestone and shale. The color is primarily greenish with some of the shales ranging from red to purple. Fossil stromatolites also exist in this layer. Nankoweap Formation - This layer averages about 1,050 million years old and is composed of a coarse-grained sandstone. This layer is exposed only in the eastern section of the Canyon and belongs to neither the Chuar or Unkar groups because it is bounded on both sides by unconformities. Unkar Group - These layers average about 1,100 to 1,250 million years old. - Cardenas Lavas - This dark brown layer is composed of basaltic lava flows. - Dox Sandstone - This layer averages about 1,190 million years old, is composed of sandstone interbedded with shale, and occurs primarily in the eastern regions of the Canyon. Its color varies from red to orange and its fossil record contains stromatolites and algae. - Shinumo Quartzite - This layer averages about 1,200 million years old and is composed of sandstone. This layer is only exposed in a few sections in the Canyon. Its color can be deep red, brown, purple or white. - Hakatai Shale - This layer averages about 1,200 million years old and is composed primarily of shale with some sandstone. The color is a very bright orange-red red and is the layer that gives Red Canyon its name. - Bass Formation - This layer averages about 1,250 million years old and is composed primarily of limestone with some interbedded shale. It is greyish in color and its fossil record consists of stromatolites.
Pre-Cambrian Unconformity - This non-layer represents a time where the mountains that had grown here were gradually eroded away to form a plain. Early Pre-Cambrian Rocks Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite - This layer averages about 1,700 to 2,000 million years old and consists of mica schist. These were originally sediments of sandstone, limestone and shale that were metamorphosed and combined with metamorphosed lava flows to form the schist. This layer along with the Zoroaster Granite were once the roots of an ancient mountain range that could have been as high as todays Rocky Mountains. The mountains were eroded away over a long period of time and new sediments were they deposited over them by advancing and retreating seas. The color of this layer is dark grey or black.
Now Dave, according to you, all of the uppermost layers (up to the Great Unconformity) were laid down in the year of the FLOOD, right?
And all of the underlying layers (below the Great Unconformity) were put there in the time between CREATION and the FLOOD, a period of roughly 2000 years, right?
And according to you, the ‘Flood run off’ managed to follow its meandering path AND erode all the way down to the lowest Visnu Schist layer in roughly one year, right?
Please provide your detailed geological explanation for the following:
1) How did the waters of the flood manage to sort materials and create the upper individual layers with each having a very different physical make up – sandstone, limestone, shale, etc.? 2) How did your ‘hydrodynamic sorting’ manage to put brachiopod fossils in the upper layers (Kaibab, Toroweap) and the lower layers (Redwall, Temple Butte, Tonto) but put none in the middle layers (Coconino, Hermit)? 3) How and when did the distinct underlying layers, each with a very different physical make up, get there? 4) How did the ‘Flood run off’ (Colorado River) manage to flow slowly enough to create its many meanders, but still manage to carry the required trillions of tons of sediment away AND cut through all the layers of pre-Flood solid rock in just one year?
Thanks for sharing your understanding by walking us teeny-boppers through such detailed scientific data.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I was just perusing AiG's arguments that creationists should not use, when I came across this one:
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“There are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, so the earth may be 10,000 years old or even more.”
This is not so. The language is clear that they are strict chronologies, especially because they give the age of the father at the birth of the next name in line. So the earth is only about 6,000 years old.
So perhaps, Dave, it is time for you to set a precise date for the flood.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
AMERICA IS THE PRODUCT OF "ENLIGHTENED" (PROTESTANT) CHRISTIANITY
To say that America is the product of The Enlightenment is an oversimplification. Enlightment thinking was a product both of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, in which a key element was the reconnection of Western society with literary works of antiquity including the Bible. Religious tyranny by the Roman Catholic church dominated Europe and the Reformation broke this to a large extent. It is no wonder that many rejected religion altogether because of the corrupt and tyrannical actions of the Catholic church at the time of the Reformation.
I see two major streams coming out of the Enlightenment which began with the Renaissance and the Reformation.
1) Rationalistic Secularism - a good example was France and its Revolution - this revolution sought to remove Christianity completely from government and society 2) Enlightened Christianity - a good example was America and its Revolution - this Revolution sought to form a new, independent nation based squarely upon the principles of Christianity, but not an authoritarian, sectarian Christianity
Both revolutions were a reaction to corrupt, tyrannical, hierarchical churches with far too much authority. But the Americans were mostly Protestant Christians seeking to worship God in freedom, while the French were not.
The results of the two revolutions were quite different. What was the difference?
Quite simple ... True Christianity (American) vs. No Christianity (French)
And so today, we basically have three groups of people in Western Society (WARNING: This is a generalization, Arden and BWE and Deadman)
Most of you fall into Category 1, the Pope would fall into Category 2, I am in Category 3, although some of you mistake me for Category 2. Most of the Founders of America also fell into Category 3, although some like Paine were in Category 1. And of course there were mixtures as well.
*************************************************
MORE DISCUSSION ON "INCISED MEANDERS"
I see that there was some confusion created by my citation of the Mississippi River Commission Study and I think I understand why ...
You asked me about incised meanders IN ROCK and I gave you a study about incised meanders IN SOFT MUD.
Here's the deal ... I assumed (wrongly) that you guys understand that the Grand Canyon WAS SOFT MUD during the Flood Period ... silly me ... of course you don't understand that ... you don't believe the Flood happened.
OK, so let's try this again ...
1) Creationist theory says that the sedimentary layers of the Canyon were formed during the Inundation Phase of the Flood. 2) The canyons were cut during the Receding Phase of the Flood, upon breakage of natural dams and the subsequent release of large volumes of water 3) The canyons were cut very rapidly because the sediments were still soft 4) Sediments hardened shortly thereafter and the formation appear today much as they did 50 years after the Flood.
The reason, of course, for citing the Mississippi Study was because it involved SOFT SEDIMENTS and really provides the only viable explanation for the phenomena of INCISED MEANDERS. Uniformitarian explanations that I have read don't cut it.
A river flowing over hard rock over millions of years does NOT cut an incised meander.
Ager, Derek V., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 151 pp. Ager was Professor and Head of the Department of Geology and Oceanography, University College of Swansea. He had also served as president of the British Geological Association.
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pp 68, 69 “Uniformitarianism triumphed because it provided a general theory that was at once logical and seemingly ‘scientific.’ Catastrophism became a joke and no geologist would dare postulate anything that might be termed a ‘catastrophe’ for fear of being laughed at or (in recent years) linked with a lunatic fringe of Velikovsky and Californian fundamentalists. But I would like to suggest that, in the first half of the last century, the ‘catastrophists’ were better geologists than the ‘uniformitarians.’”
p 80 “The hurricane, the flood or the tsunami may do more in an hour or a day than the ordinary processes of nature have achieved in a thousand years. Given all the millennia we have to play with in the stratigraphical record, we can expect our periodic catastrophes to do all the work we want of them.”
Ager, Derek V., The New Catastrophism (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 231 pp.
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p xii “My thesis is that in all branches of geology there has been a return to ideas of rare violent happenings [EDIT: YES ... VERY RARE, LIKE ONE-TIME EVENTS ... LIKE NOAH'S FLOOD, PERHAPS?] and episodicity. So the past, as now interpreted by many geologists, is not what it used to be. It has certainly changed a great deal from what I learned about it in those far-off days when I was a student.” p xvi “I must emphasize that I am concerned with the whole history of the earth and its life and in particular with the dangerous doctrine of uniformitarianism."
p 180 “I am sorry if I appear to be neurotic about this, especially as Velikovsky seems to be on the side of the catastrophists, but I do not want to be associated in any way with such nonsense. This, together with the writings of the Californian ‘creationists’ are the reason for my disclaimer at the beginning of this book.[EDIT: I HAD TO PUT THIS DISCLAIMER IN THE FRONT OF THIS BOOK BECAUSE I AM BASICALLY CONFIRMING WHAT MORRIS AND CO. ARE SAYING, YET I THINK THEY ARE RELIGIOUS LOONY TUNES AND I DON'T WANT ALL MY FRIENDS TO THINK I'M BECOMING A YEC.] ”
Ager, Derek V., “The Stratigraphic Code and What It Implies,” in Catastrophes and Earth History, W. A. Berggren and John A. Van Couvering, eds. (Princeton University Press, 1984), 464 pp.
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p 93 “To me, the whole record is catastrophic, not in the old-fashioned apocalyptic sense of Baron Cuvier and the others [EDIT: I HAVE TO PUT THIS IN MY PARAGRAPH SO I WILL NOT BE SHUNNED BY MY FRIENDS], but in the sense that only the episodic events—the occasional ones—are preserved for us.”
Bak, Per, How Nature Works (New York: Springer, Verlag, 1996), 212 pp.
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pp 18-19 “Lyell’s uniformitarian view appears perfectly logical. The laws of physics are generally expressed as smooth, continuous equations. Since these laws should describe everything, it is natural to expect that the phenomena that we observe should also vary in a smooth and gradual manner. An opposing philosophy, catastrophism, claims that changes take place mostly through sudden cataclysmic events. Since catastrophism smacks of creationism, it has been largely rejected by the scientific community, despite the fact that catastrophes actually take place.”
Davies, Gordon L. H., “Bangs Replace Whimpers,” review of The New Catastrophism, by Derek Ager (Cambridge University Press, 1993, 231 pp.), Nature, vol. 365 (September 9, 1993), p. 115.
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p 115 “Now all is changed. We are rewriting geohistory. Where once we saw a smooth conveyor belt, we now see a stepped escalator. [EDIT: YEAH ... AN ESCALATOR WITH ONLY ONE, BIG STEP ... NOAH'S FLOOD] Upon that escalator the treads are long periods of relative quiescence when little happens. The risers are episodes of relatively sudden change when the landscape and its inhabitants are translated into some fresh state. Even the most staid of modern geologists are invoking sedimentary surges, explosive phases of organic evolution, volcanic blackouts, continental collisions and terrifying meteoroid impacts. We live in an age of neocatastrophism.”
Gould, Stephen Jay, “The Ediacaran Experiment,” Natural History, vol. 93 (February 1984), pp. 14-23.
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p 14 “I was in Indianapolis to attend the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. There a group of my colleagues in paleontology began to dismantle an old order of thinking about old objects—and to construct a new and striking approach to a major history of life’s history on earth: mass extinctions.”
Hsü, Kenneth J., and Judith A. McKenzie, “Rare Events in Geology Discussed at Meeting,” Geotimes, vol. 31 (March 1986), pp. 11-12.
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p 11 “Catastrophism is enjoying a renaissance in geology. For the last 180 years, geologists have applied consistently a uniformitarian approach to their studies that has stressed slow gradual changes as defined by Lamarck, Lyell, and Darwin. Now, many of us are accepting that unusual catastrophic events have occurred repeatedly during the course of Earth’s history. The events were significant, since they caused sudden drastic environmental disturbances as well as mass extinctions. “Two international projects on this theme began in 1980. Project 199 of the International Geological Correlation Program is aimed at cooperation and information exchanges among researchers of rare geologic events. Working Group 7 of the International Lithosphere Program coordinates international investigations of ocean history. The 2 groups joined forces May 20-22, 1985, at Gwatt, Switzerland, in a workshop, Rare Events in Geology and Biotic Crisis in the Oceans.”
Hsü, Kenneth J., “Darwin’s Three Mistakes,” Geology, vol. 14 (June 1986), pp. 532-534.
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p 309 “Lyell set up, however, a straw man to defeat his opponent, when he implied that Cuvier’s alternative to his substantive uniformitarianism was to invoke the supernatural. In fact, Cuvier was not a creationist and never did invoke the supernatural as a cause.” p 309 “But the working hypothesis of the last century has been turned into a dogma of today. Substantive uniformitarianism has been adopted as an article of faith, and catastrophists have been labeled fellow travelers of creationists.”
Hsü, Kenneth J., “Actualistic Catastrophism and Global Change,” Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology (Global and Planetary Change Section), vol. 89 (1990), pp. 309-313.
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p 310 “In my presidential address to the International Association of Sedimentologists, I pointed out the fallacy of the Lyellian dogma and coined the term actualistic catastrophism. Statistics have shown that frequency of occurrence of natural processes is inversely related to their magnitude.”
Lewin, Roger, “Extinctions and the History of Life,” Science, vol. 221 (September 2, 1983), pp. 935-937.
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p 935 “‘It is a great philosophical breakthrough for geologists to accept catastrophism as a normal part of Earth history.’ This comment, made by Erle Kauffman at a meeting on the dynamics of extinction held recently at Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, identifies a currently important, perhaps revolutionary, shift in collective professional perspectives among paleontologists as well as geologists.” p 935 “Each mass extinction in a sense resets the evolutionary clock and so makes the history of life strikingly spasmodic and governed by a greater element of chance than is palatable in strict uniformitarianism.” p 935 “The notorious paucity of the fossil record combines with a greatly varying sedimentation rate to make time resolution of faunal changes little short of a nightmare.”
Allmon, Warren D., “Post-Gradualism,” review of The New Catastrophism, by Derek V. Ager (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 231 pp.), Science, vol. 262 (October 1, 1993), pp. 122-123. Allmon is at the Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York. p 122
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p 122 “The volume is the summation of a lifetime of global geological work by one of the most influential stratigrapher-paleontologists of his generation, a highly eclectic compilation of the author’s geological observations from around the world in support of the general view that the geological record is dominated not by slow, gradual change but by episodic rare events causing local disasters.”
pp 122-3 “Yet by the eminence of its author and the straightforwardness of its tone this volume may mark the arrival of catastrophism as the status quo.”
SIXTEEN YEARS AGO, FOLKS! THE ARRIVAL OF CATASTROPHISM AS THE STATUS QUO!
So don't take my word for it ... I'm just a lowly engineer and amateur scientist. Take the word of ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL STRATIGRAPHER-PALEONTOLOGISTS OF HIS GENERATION.
CATASTROPHISM IS THE DEAL, FRIENDS, AND THE CREATIONISTS HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR A LONG TIME ... AGAIN, LEADING THE WAY IN THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH!!! ******************************************************
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
(No need to repost your questions. I have them copied off already.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No, dave... you are far, far less than an "amateur scientist". You don't even know what science is.
What you are, is an amateur quote-miner: you have to EDIT into your quotes to even pretend they support your point. You can't get more pathetic than that. Does your selective blindness stop you from seeing even the plural in all these quotes? "Events"? "Extinctions"? Did you also cover your eyes and ears when 'reading' (hah!-) about those "long periods of relative quiescence when little happens"? Or do you just take us for children, as usual?
Why don't you display some genuine honesty, and actually read the original sources? See what scientists (REAL scientists,who dedicated their whole lives to their work, with little or no publicity -not creo crackpots and con artists, looking for the spotlights) actually refer to when they speak of catastrophic events and mass extinctions? Come on, you already know you're right, so it can't hurt to confirm it, right?
Also: Take a look at the picture of GC that you posted, dave. A real good look. Think of its depth and its dimensions- think of how it would look if you were there to see it.
Now picture it made of MUD.
Tell me, in all honesty: for a split second there, didn't the tiny alarm bell of Logic begin to ring? You know, before all your defense mechanisms and your "DON'T THINK: BELIEVE" warning sirens overwhelmed it?
I'm genuinely curious to know.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Hey, Dave, this is what Derek Ager thinks about you:
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"For a century and a half the geological world has been dominated, one might even say brain-washed, by the gradualistic uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell. Any suggestion of 'catastrophic' events has been rejected as old-fashioned, unscientific and even laughable. This is partly due to the extremism of some of Cuvier's followers, though not of Cuvier himself.
On that side too were the obviously untenable views of bible-oriented fanatics, obsessed with myths such as Noah's flood, and of classicists thinking of Nemesis. That is why I think it necessary to include the following 'disclaimer': in view of the misuse that my words have been put to in the past, I wish to say that nothing in this book should be taken out of context and thought in any way to support the views of the 'creationists' (who I refuse to call 'scientific' )." [Ager's emphasis]
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Afdave, the article you cite contradicts your own position, even though both are BS. The article claims that the water carved it out of the mountain, and you are still stuck in the mud, remember?
Hey, Dave, this is what Derek Ager thinks about you:
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"For a century and a half the geological world has been dominated, one might even say brain-washed, by the gradualistic uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell. Any suggestion of 'catastrophic' events has been rejected as old-fashioned, unscientific and even laughable. This is partly due to the extremism of some of Cuvier's followers, though not of Cuvier himself.
On that side too were the obviously untenable views of bible-oriented fanatics, obsessed with myths such as Noah's flood, and of classicists thinking of Nemesis. That is why I think it necessary to include the following 'disclaimer': in view of the misuse that my words have been put to in the past, I wish to say that nothing in this book should be taken out of context and thought in any way to support the views of the 'creationists' (who I refuse to call 'scientific' )." [Ager's emphasis]
Derek Ager seems like a perceptive guy.
Oh dave, another thing:
You say that you have 'read' the scientific explanation, and it 'doesn't cut it'. Very well, here's an easy task for you then: describe, in your own words, this mechanism proposed for the creation of GC, and demonstrate the reasons and evidence that make it impossible to work. Bear in mind that, if you hand-wave your way out, or if you quote as much as a syllable from anywhere, I will safely assume that you are lying again and have 'read' bugger all.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
WRONG on both counts AFD is neither "Free thinking" nor "Christian".
Let me correct your "mis-statement" AFD.
Rigidly uncritical, unthinking and blind follower of a dangerous authoritarian anti-democratic politico-religious cult that hypocritically calls itself Christian
You claim to love Jesus AFD, but who do you love Jesus against?
By the way, did you know Mary wasn't the mother of god?
Yes, AFD you are free to think whatever your cult decides. Institutionalized Schizophrenia.
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Schizophrenia is “any of a group of psychotic disorders usually characterized by withdrawal from reality, illogical patterns of thinking, delusions, hallucinations, accompanied in varying degrees by other emotional, behavioral, or intellectual disturbances. A condition that results from the coexistence of disparate, antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities” (www.Dictionary.com)
AFD who said?
“How do you find a lion that has swallowed you?”
here is the answer to that question
“you can’t find or see that lion”—not as long as you are inside the beast.
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For better mental and cultural health, it's time we classified religious fundamentalism as a psychological disorder
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them?
I would guess it happened much the same way as the Toutle River canyon at Mt Saint Helens.
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Wrong, dave, you have to have MASSIVE uplift, which is ONLY accomplished in short spans of time BY vulcanism and the coconino trace fossils are filled with fine-grained quartz from DESERT environments, not ASH.
1) Why should I believe your source about this being wind-borne sand? He could be wrong about the sediment being wind borne. Why could it not be water-borne sand? 2) Let's say he's correct. Don't you think there would be lots of wind associated with all this cataclysmic action? Wind blows sand. Sand fills in footprints. Why is this not possible?
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Further, if you point to isolated deposits ( the la BREA TAR PITS are TAR, not SEDIMENT) you have to show why this is not found EVERYWHERE.
It's not possible to show they occur everywhere. No one has that much research money. But they do occur in many, many places. So much so that paleontologists are talking about Catastrophism (1800 Google Scholar results) and Mass Extinction (150,000 Google Scholar results) a lot now. How do you explain all this talk?
Faid...
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edit (2) um, no, I guess it didn't. Why were Pterosaurs unable to fly to higher altitudes, but birds were, dave? Why aren't the higher strata full of birds and flying reptiles, for that reason? Why did Mosasaurs and Ichtyosaurs sink faster than whales? Come to think of it, why did they even die? Why didn't fast dinosaurs like coelophysis outrun sloths and other slow mammals, dave? why don't we find trilobites and modern mollusks together, dave?
One at a time, please and give me specific examples. Keep in mind that Flood predictions of fossil order are necessarily STATISTICAL. You understand why, I hope?
Deadman...
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Those are all Eocene, Dave. SO?
OK. Eocene you say. Give me a plausible scenario of how this formation occurred in your view.
Deadman...
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Why do we see Coral formations that are a mile thick? corals can't LIVE during sedimentation.
You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans?
Do a Google Scholar search on Catastrophic Plate Tectonics. This is very new. I do not know how it all could have worked. But I know that Uniformitarianism is bankrupt ... Catastrophism is the new deal ... how do you research catastrophes that are postulated in the past? Very carefully and it's difficult. You model them numerically and you need massive computing power. ICR is doing just that. Maybe we will have some answers soon on how this could work. Apparently, something similar happened on Venus according to NASA.
Eric...
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The simple fact of the matter is that one cannot have any kind of a Genesis Flood without acknowledging the presence of supernatural elements.
Why is this a surprise? Remember the "Gardener Analogy?" Of course the Creator interacts with His Creation. Why in the world would he not? Do you just have kids, then let them go on their own from birth forward? Of course not. You interact with them and their environment. Why should God be any different?
Eric...
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HOW MUCH WATER, DAVE?
Lots, Eric. I'll try to draw you a picture soon to help you visualize what might have happened before, during, and after the Flood. For now, though, use your powers of imagination and imagine a large super-continent with shallow seas and gentle, rolling hills. Underneath all this are large, underground reservoirs of water which are connected to the surface by small fissures. Now imagine a catastrophic event takes place just before the Flood -- some unknown trigger that causes runaway mantle subduction, breaking up the underground reservoirs, causing massive volcanism, geysers, flooding, tectonic movement, etc. So all that underground water moves ABOVE ground in a very short time span creating vacancies underground. This causes the ocean floor to deepen, the continental surfaces to fold and uplift creating mountain ranges and the continents to separate, among other things. So the water BEFORE and AFTER the Flood is the same quantity -- it's just distributed differently BEFORE and AFTER. See this link for more on this.
Obviously, this is very new and not much is known yet, but as I have shown with all the quotes, Catastrophism is enjoying quite a renaissance and Catastrophic Plate Tectonics is the next logical step in this type of geological research.
Deadman...
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A LONG time ago in this thread, I asked one of my favorite questions, Dave...concerning syphilis and gonorrhea, which can only survive in human carriers. I'm still curious about who you think had syphilis on the ark?
Don't know. Maybe one of them had it. Or maybe animals were carriers back then, but they are not now. I really cannot say and I don't think you can either.
Deadman...And how they managed to do so much work 24 hours a day shlepping shite to the upper deck to toss it over, feeding those carnivores that need refrigeration for their meals, or live meals ---and those tons of plant materials like eucalyptus for the koalas and bamboo for the pandas and fresh greens for the dinosaurs that need it. And don't tell me the carnivores became hay-eating herbivores. I'd love to see you try to feed a Tyrannosaur or Taipan or Boomslang or Fer-de-lance or Siberian Tiger a nice bit of hay, Dave. I suggest you volunteer in the name of creation science. Be bold and support the strength of your convictions. [/quote] Dunno. But I'd rather have MY creationist problems to solve than YOUR evolutionist problems, because mine are logically solvable. Your evolutionary problems are not.
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Oh, and Dave,you're a real bright engineer, well-versed in mathiness, right? if Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years? ?
Deadman, if population has increased 1/2% annually over 4300 years, how many people do you have if you start with 2 parents? P=2*1.005^4300= a little over 4 billion people.
Morris comes up with a formula for population statistics in The Biblical Basis for Modern Science ...
P=2*[c^(n-x+1)-1]*(c^x-1)/(c-1), where c=number of boys and number of girls per family, x=average lifespan in number of generations, n=number of generations. Plug in c=1.25 (2.5 kids total per family), x=1 (1 generation = 43 years, average lifespan of 43 years), n=100 (100 X 43 = 4300 years since Flood), and you get about 10 billion people.
Rough numbers, but all very believable, which refutes your point, which is "The Bible is implausible."
Eric...
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"Proof" of your "global flood"? Nice try. Which makes more sense, Dave: millions of dead things dying over billions of years, or only a year? Thousands of feet of sediment deposited over billions of years, or only one year?
If they die over millions of years, they go away. It requires rapid burial to be fossilized.
Behrensmeyer, Anna K., “Taphonomy and the Fossil Record,” American Scientist, vol. 72 (November/December 1984), p. 558-566.
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p 560 “The chances for preservation may be enhanced by severe storms, epidemics, or changes in the temperature, availability, or chemistry of water, all of which can leave large numbers of buried and unburied dead at one time.” p 560 “Because mass mortality or instantaneous death and burial create the optimal initial conditions for fossilization, it is possible that a significant portion of our fossil record is due to such exceptional events.” p 560 “Once an organism dies, there is usually intense competition among other organisms for the nutrients stored in its body. This combined with physical weathering and the dissolution of hard parts soon leads to destruction unless the remains are quickly buried.” p 560 “These mechanisms contrast with the popular image of burial as a slow accumulation of sediment through long periods of time, a gentle fallout from air or water that gradually covers organic remains.” p 561 “For remains with simple or complex taphonomic histories, burial is still the most critical step in the process of preservation, and only permanent burial will produce lasting fossils.”
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood at 3kBCE? When did they die out?
During the Ice Age which followed the Flood.
Ved... [quote]Why did you post this picture, Dave? To impress us about how grand an undertaking the ark was? To inspire us? To get our minds working? Well I know i
Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood at 3kBCE? When did they die out?
During the Ice Age which followed the Flood.
Ved...
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Why did you post this picture, Dave? To impress us about how grand an undertaking the ark was? To inspire us? To get our minds working? Well I know it's just an artist's conception (Noah didn't have a camera, I understand) but really Dave, just look how stupid it looks. The thing looks like it's made out of popsicle sticks. How much space did they waste on that open cathedral area? Don't they need every square cubit for animals, or food for a year? I guess they needed a lot of space for praying to keep the thing from breaking up. What's holding the roof on? You can't build a structure like that out of wood on land, not to mention taking it to sea. And weren't there super-earthquakes with mega-tsunamis cris-crossing the globe and volcanoes going off left and right?? How come Noah didn't notice?
I think it's a cool picture. And those aren't popsicle sticks. They are big wood beams.
Eric...
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Your model requires that this chaotic flood deposited the corpses of organisms in exactly the same order, worldwide without a single exception. We never see Cenozoic, to say nothing of eocene or holocene (and let's not forget, your flood supposedly occurred during the holocene) fossils in mesozoic or proterozoic strata. Never. Not one. Over the entire surface of the planet.
If you think the fossil record is as orderly as you are implying here, then you are completely and hopelessly ignorant.
Tracy...
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The rivers pictured do not have soft beds or banks. They are meandering canyons in ROCK. The WES report is talking about a different situation, like the Mississippi River, which does not meander through rock, but has changed its course many times in the past couple of centuries.
See my discussion above.
Eric...
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Oh, really, Dave? Then how do you explain that the bottom few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon is cut through very hard igneous and metamorphic rock rock that even you believe predates the flood?
If it's true that meanders only occur in soft deposits, then how does your global flood explain the fact that the Colorado river has cut through very hard igneous rock that predates the flood?
Show me some pictures of what you are referring to and I will analyze it for you.
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Jefferson is special to the modern religious right and they put alot of effort into trying to claim them as one of their own. It is a tough row to hoe. Jefferson saw Jesus Christ as a great moral teacher, but specifically rejected the divinity of Christ. Which brings us around to the Jefferson Bible. Later in life, Jefferson went through the Christian Gospels and expunged all supernatural references. The resulting text was called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth."
I dare say that such an act today would be considered by the religious conservatives as an act of heresy. And, I would guess, would be a career-ender for a political leader.
No one is claiming that he would attend Jerry Falwell's church, or John MacArthur's or Tony Evans'. We are just quoting the man and pointing out that he believed in God and he was a promoter of General Christian principles and he acknowledged their source - the Holy Bible.
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Anyway, what does all this ranting about the independance of the US has to do with your hypothesis? AFAIK, the USA are not the center of the universe.
American Independence Day happened yesterday, Jeannot.
Arden...
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BTW, Dave, I don't expect an honest or coherent answer, but if all those founding fathers 'promoted the Christian Religion', why is it that Christianity and Jesus are never mentioned once in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, or Constitution? If they wanted to found the US as a 'Christian Nation', wasn't that quite a colossal oversight?
No. The Declaration does mention "the laws of nature and of nature's God" and "men are created equal ... and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" and "protection of Divine Providence." From this we see that a theistic, even creationist worldview is assumed. The constitution would not be expected to talk about Jesus or Christianity. It is a document designed to LIMIT the Federal Government. Remember, the States are supposed to be the sovereigns and the Federal governments power was to be very limited. The Constitution does, however, mention 'Our Lord.' Do you know where?
OA...
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1) How did the waters of the flood manage to sort materials and create the upper individual layers with each having a very different physical make up – sandstone, limestone, shale, etc.? 2) How did your ‘hydrodynamic sorting’ manage to put brachiopod fossils in the upper layers (Kaibab, Toroweap) and the lower layers (Redwall, Temple Butte, Tonto) but put none in the middle layers (Coconino, Hermit)? 3) How and when did the distinct underlying layers, each with a very different physical make up, get there?
It was a catastrophic event. How can one predict where layers and fossils will end up except in a general, statistical way?
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4) How did the ‘Flood run off’ (Colorado River) manage to flow slowly enough to create its many meanders, but still manage to carry the required trillions of tons of sediment away AND cut through all the layers of pre-Flood solid rock in just one year?
It didn't flow slowly. It flowed rapidly. See above.
INTELLIGENT QUOTE OF THE DAY OA...
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In many ways, C14 dating and FDR/VCR results are quite similar. Both use sophisticated scientific instruments to measure and record known physical phenomena. Accuracy in both is critical, so both have been thoroughly tested and calibrated to a high level of precision.
Yes, of course. Silly me. Carbon 14 dating is very similar to Flight Data Recording and Videotape Recording. That's what I always say.
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Now why won't you answer these simple questions which I have asked you repeatedly?
Perhaps because you are so obnoxious?
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Give me a good reason why you accept the science and reliability of results from the FDR/CVR but not the C14 dating.
Because FDR/VCR can be verified with my own eyes and ears. C14 cannot.
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Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other, but none of them show your claimed 100X C14/C12 ratio?
If you really want me to answer this, then take them one at a time and explain them each in your own words as simply as possible. This will help me understand them and it will confirm for me that YOU understand them.
Argy...
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Dave and Deadman,
I was just perusing AiG's arguments that creationists should not use, when I came across this one:
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“There are gaps in the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11, so the earth may be 10,000 years old or even more.”
This is not so. The language is clear that they are strict chronologies, especially because they give the age of the father at the birth of the next name in line. So the earth is only about 6,000 years old.
So perhaps, Dave, it is time for you to set a precise date for the flood.
I'm not sure AIG and ICR agree on this point. But the big news is that either the longer chronology or the shorter chronology work fine in the creationist framework. I am not dogmatic about either. I do not need to be. One thing I AM sure of is that Deadman's dating of the Catal Huyuk by tree rings is very questionable.
Improv...
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Hey, Dave, this is what Derek Ager thinks about you:
Quote "For a century and a half the geological world has been dominated, one might even say brain-washed, by the gradualistic uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell. Any suggestion of 'catastrophic' events has been rejected as old-fashioned, unscientific and even laughable. This is partly due to the extremism of some of Cuvier's followers, though not of Cuvier himself.
On that side too were the obviously untenable views of bible-oriented fanatics, obsessed with myths such as Noah's flood, and of classicists thinking of Nemesis. That is why I think it necessary to include the following 'disclaimer': in view of the misuse that my words have been put to in the past, I wish to say that nothing in this book should be taken out of context and thought in any way to support the views of the 'creationists' (who I refuse to call 'scientific' )." [Ager's emphasis]
Yes. Isn't it funny that he goes to great pains all through his writings to make sure the "Creo Fundies" don't take his words and use them against him!!
Now why is he so worried about this? Easy ... he knows that what he is saying supports YECs.
Faid...
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Does your selective blindness stop you from seeing even the plural in all these quotes? "Events"? "Extinctions"?
Of course I see the plurals. And they are just as wrong about the plurals as they were about uniformity of processes. They have admitted the latter. Soon, let's hope, they will admit the former.
Renier...
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Afdave, the article you cite contradicts your own position, even though both are BS. The article claims that the water carved it out of the mountain, and you are still stuck in the mud, remember?
Do WHAT??!! Can you be more specific? What are you talking about?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It's not possible to show they occur everywhere. No one has that much research money. But they do occur in many, many places. So much so that paleontologists are talking about Catastrophism (1800 Google Scholar results) and Mass Extinction (150,000 Google Scholar results) a lot now. How do you explain all this talk?
That's an easy one. Those terms don't mean what you think they mean. They do not support your position.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Just like Ager's quotes DO support YECs although he doesn't WANT them to and THINKS they don't.
But he's wrong.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, Dave, this is what Derek Ager thinks about you:
Quote "For a century and a half the geological world has been dominated, one might even say brain-washed, by the gradualistic uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell. Any suggestion of 'catastrophic' events has been rejected as old-fashioned, unscientific and even laughable. This is partly due to the extremism of some of Cuvier's followers, though not of Cuvier himself.
On that side too were the obviously untenable views of bible-oriented fanatics, obsessed with myths such as Noah's flood, and of classicists thinking of Nemesis. That is why I think it necessary to include the following 'disclaimer': in view of the misuse that my words have been put to in the past, I wish to say that nothing in this book should be taken out of context and thought in any way to support the views of the 'creationists' (who I refuse to call 'scientific' )." [Ager's emphasis]
Yes. Isn't it funny that he goes to great pains all through his writings to make sure the "Creo Fundies" don't take his words and use them against him!!
Now why is he so worried about this? Easy ... he knows that what he is saying supports YECs.
I don't even know how to address this sort of insanity. I thought others were going a bit over the top with the comparisons to schizophrenia, but Dave's comment here has convinced me otherwise. Is there a doctor in the house?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1) Why should I believe your source about this being wind-borne sand? He could be wrong about the sediment being wind borne. Why could it not be water-borne sand?
Because areas of the planet today exhibit artefacts with certain structures of particle size. These have been observed to form under windy conditions.
Or in other words, we can see similar structures of sand etc forming right now, under windy conditions and they are different from the structures that are currently formed by waterborne sand. Its to do with sorting of the particles, and ripples left behind etc etc. You can find this sort of thing in geology textbooks, but its a few years since I last looked at mine.
1) Lyell (a lawyer) comes up with Uniformitarianism 2) All the geologists buy into it ... God only knows why! 3) Now all the geologists are jumping the Uniformitarian ship 4) They have to come up with another paradigm, but they CANNOT BEAR THE THOUGHT of being associated with those "YEC Fundies" 5) So they come up with "Catastrophism" and "Episodicity" being very careful to make sure they say that they think there were MANY events like this, so as not to sound like Bible Thumpers. 6) Uniformitarianism has been rejected just as Creos predicted 7) What makes you think the MULTIPLE EVENTS will not also be rejected ??
This is what Creationists predict ... !!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Because areas of the planet today exhibit artefacts with certain structures of particle size. These have been observed to form under windy conditions.
Agreed. But I think these can also be transported by water. Why can they not?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
4) How did the ‘Flood run off’ (Colorado River) manage to flow slowly enough to create its many meanders, but still manage to carry the required trillions of tons of sediment away AND cut through all the layers of pre-Flood solid rock in just one year? It didn't flow slowly. It flowed rapidly. See above.
AFDave, please have another go at answering the above, because your first attempt was pathetic.
Keep in mind that Flood predictions of fossil order are necessarily STATISTICAL. You understand why, I hope?
Major problem right here, Dave, which has pointed out to you many times before. Fossil sorting as predicted by flood geology is "necessarily statistical," which means we should find exceptions. We do not. There are no "precambrian rabbits."
Real geology's predictions of fossil order are not statistical. It predicts that sediments of miocene age will contain only miocene fossils. It predicts that Pennsylvanian sediments will contain only Pennsylvanian fossils. It predicts that Permian deposits will contain only Permian fossils.
And guess which we find, Dave? We don't find "statistical" fossil deposition. We find no exceptions to the predicted order of fossils. Your "flood geology" is falsified by this one finding alone.
This is at least the third time this has been pointed out to you, and you've ignored it every single time. Somehow, that doesn't surprise me.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, your deliberate opacity of mind knows no bounds.
Quote (afdave @ July 05 2006,10:17)
Eric...
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"Proof" of your "global flood"? Nice try. Which makes more sense, Dave: millions of dead things dying over billions of years, or only a year? Thousands of feet of sediment deposited over billions of years, or only one year?
If they die over millions of years, they go away. It requires rapid burial to be fossilized.
How many flash floods do you suppose occur worldwide every year? Let's assume ten. That's less than one a month, worldwide.
Now: how many flash floods have appeared over the past three billion years, Dave? Thirty billion, perhaps? And that doesn't include rapid burials due to volcanism, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc.
I think a hundred or so billion burial events beats your one "global flood" hands down.
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If you think the fossil record is as orderly as you are implying here, then you are completely and hopelessly ignorant.
Go ahead, Dave. Find me a precambrian rabbit. Or a Proterozoic anteater. Or a Cretacious rhinoceros. Enough argument from assertion. Find me the exceptions.
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Oh, really, Dave? Then how do you explain that the bottom few hundred feet of the Grand Canyon is cut through very hard igneous and metamorphic rock rock that even you believe predates the flood?
If it's true that meanders only occur in soft deposits, then how does your global flood explain the fact that the Colorado river has cut through very hard igneous rock that predates the flood?
Show me some pictures of what you are referring to and I will analyze it for you.
Yeah, right, Dave. You've already demonstrated your complete inability to "analyze" any evidence. But go ahead; give this a try.
God, your arguments get weaker and weaker, Dave. They've really gotten pathetic.
Now: how much water, where did it come from, how deep was it, and where did it go. Your time has run out, Dave. Put up or shut up.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Jefferson is special to the modern religious right and they put alot of effort into trying to claim them as one of their own. It is a tough row to hoe. Jefferson saw Jesus Christ as a great moral teacher, but specifically rejected the divinity of Christ. Which brings us around to the Jefferson Bible. Later in life, Jefferson went through the Christian Gospels and expunged all supernatural references. The resulting text was called "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth."
I dare say that such an act today would be considered by the religious conservatives as an act of heresy. And, I would guess, would be a career-ender for a political leader.
No one is claiming that he would attend Jerry Falwell's church, or John MacArthur's or Tony Evans'.
I think the name you might want to look for is Joseph Priestley.
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We are just quoting the man and pointing out that he believed in God and he was a promoter of General Christian principles and he acknowledged their source - the Holy Bible.
Well, there is no question that the Bible was a source, but it hardly was the only or even the most influential. Jefferson (like most of the Founding Fathers) read widely and there are myriad influences to his political philosophy. The Enlightenment philosophers were, of course, the most influential, but other influences can be traced back to even ancient Greece, like Epicurius.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
The simple fact of the matter is that one cannot have any kind of a Genesis Flood without acknowledging the presence of supernatural elements.
Why is this a surprise? Remember the "Gardener Analogy?" Of course the Creator interacts with His Creation. Why in the world would he not? Do you just have kids, then let them go on their own from birth forward? Of course not. You interact with them and their environment. Why should God be any different?
Dave, Morris is saying that the flood could not have happened except by magic. If you allow magic, you allow everything. If you believe God used magic to create the flood, then you can believe anything, including that God created the whole universe, us, and all our memories, last Thursday.
Why do you even look at evidence, Dave, if you believe in magic? Why do you waste your time?
And what does this analogy between God, parents, humans, and children have to do with anything? I don't care what your god's motivations were. I care what the evidence supports. The evidence not only doesn't support your dadd-caused global flood; it rules it out of consideration.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
from the photo on your blog, it appears you have a daughter around 5-6 years old. Recently, a vaccine was developed which immunizes girls from HPV infection. HPV is a very common virus, which most people have, and which causes over 90% of cervical cancers (according to Wikipedia). Experts say that giving the vaccine to girls when they're around 11-12 years old will prevent them from ever getting cervical cancer, which kills thousands of women a year. So I'm just wondering, will you get your daughter the HPV vaccine when she's the appropriate age?
Real geology's predictions of fossil order are not statistical. It predicts that sediments of miocene age will contain only miocene fossils. It predicts that Pennsylvanian sediments will contain only Pennsylvanian fossils. It predicts that Permian deposits will contain only Permian fossils.
Of course it does because it uses circular reasoning like this ...
1) Evobot Warrior goes out digging 2) Evobot finds fossils 3) Evobot looks at "Handy Dandy Index Fossil Chart" 4) Fossil Chart tells Evobot that this fossil is Miocene 5) Voila! This rock layer is assigned to the Miocene era. 6) Evobot triumphantly tells the world that Long Ages are true because "Look at all these fossils we found" and "Look ... they all appear in the right layers!!"
Now ... I am generalizing a bit, but I think I am close ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Experts say that giving the vaccine to girls when they're around 11-12 years old will prevent them from ever getting cervical cancer, which kills thousands of women a year. So I'm just wondering, will you get your daughter the HPV vaccine when she's the appropriate age?
I see no reason why not, unless there are some huge risk factors that they discover before she reaches that age.
I buy into about 95% of what "experts" say. It's just the 5% or so that I don't agree with that we are debating here. And that 5% happens to be a very important piece. Origins is quite fundamental to the foundation of Law and Culture.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Is it worth pointing out at this point that the geological column and the assigning of fossils to strata was worked out before the theory of evolution?
Lots, Eric. I'll try to draw you a picture soon to help you visualize what might have happened before, during, and after the Flood. For now, though, use your powers of imagination and imagine a large super-continent with shallow seas and gentle, rolling hills. Underneath all this are large, underground reservoirs of water which are connected to the surface by small fissures. Now imagine a catastrophic event takes place just before the Flood -- some unknown trigger that causes runaway mantle subduction, breaking up the underground reservoirs, causing massive volcanism, geysers, flooding, tectonic movement, etc. So all that underground water moves ABOVE ground in a very short time span creating vacancies underground. This causes the ocean floor to deepen, the continental surfaces to fold and uplift creating mountain ranges and the continents to separate, among other things. So the water BEFORE and AFTER the Flood is the same quantity -- it's just distributed differently BEFORE and AFTER.
Dave, when are you going to get through your thick skull that science is a quantitative endeavor? I'm not interested in a "picture" of how much water you think was involved in your flood. Imagination doesn't help either. I can certainly imagine the entire planet covered in water a thousand miles deep. Is that what your hypothesis calls for?
Imagination also doesn't the utter lack of evidence for any part of your hypothesis. Where's your evidence for a "large super-continent with shallow seas and gentle, rolling hills," 4,500 years ago, Dave? You don't have any, and no amount of imagination will help you. You have no evidence of "large, underground reservoirs of water which are connected to the surface by small fissures." If you don't provide evidence for their existence, then they don't exist, Dave, and no amount of imagination will help you.
What kind of "catastrophic event," Dave? An "unknown" one? Stop dancing around and put your money where your mouth is. You have no evidence of any such "catastrophic event" happening 4,500 years ago, and no amount of imagination will help you.
In other words, Dave, you're relying on your imagination for these imaginary events. They didn't happen anywhere except in your imagination, which is why you have no evidence for them.
And, you still haven't answered my questions: how much water, where did it come from, how deep was it, and where did it go? Imaginary reservoirs of water, released by imaginary catastrophic events, to cause imaginary floods, doesn't answer my question, and you know it. "Lots" is not an answer. "Lots" of water, in the context of my kitchen sink, is a few gallons. In the context of the atlantic ocean, it's a few thousand cubic miles. How much water, Dave? Do the math and give me an answer.
So put up or shut up, Dave. Provide actual, physical evidence for your flood, or admit it didn't happen. I'll give you the rest of the day. If you cannot provide any evidence for your flood today (and so far you have provided exactly no evidence), then I will conclude that you have no such evidence.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Experts say that giving the vaccine to girls when they're around 11-12 years old will prevent them from ever getting cervical cancer, which kills thousands of women a year. So I'm just wondering, will you get your daughter the HPV vaccine when she's the appropriate age?
I see no reason why not, unless there are some huge risk factors that they discover before she reaches that age.
I'm actually surprised. I was sure you'd be on James Dobson's side on this one.
That's an easy one. Those terms don't mean what you think they mean. They do not support your position.
Actually they do.
You just don't THINK they do.
No they don't Dave. You think "catastrophism" means one big catastrophe, i.e., a flood. It doesn't. It means multiple asteroid and comet strikes, drastic climatic change, periods (i.e., tens of thousands to millions of years long) of increased volcanic activity, happening over and over again throughout geological time. It doesn't mean forty days of rain, no matter how much you might wish it does. I guarantee you, no legitimate paleontologist thinks "catastrophism" means forty days of rain.
And "Mass Extinction" doesn't mean everything drowned after forty days of rain, Dave. There have been numerous mass extinctions throughout geological time. The Permian Extinction and the K/T extinction are only the most famous, and neither of them happened 4,500 years ago, and neither of them involved forty days of rain.
Dave, until you get yourself out of the creationist ghetto, you're going to remain as pathetically ignorant of science as you are now. As long as you remain deliberately ignorant of science, you're going to keep losing argument after argument here, just as you've always done.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'm actually surprised. I was sure you'd be on James Dobson's side on this one.
To tell you the truth, I don't even know his position, and I have studied very little about the vaccine.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) How did the waters of the flood manage to sort materials and create the upper individual layers with each having a very different physical make up – sandstone, limestone, shale, etc.? 2) How did your ‘hydrodynamic sorting’ manage to put brachiopod fossils in the upper layers (Kaibab, Toroweap) and the lower layers (Redwall, Temple Butte, Tonto) but put none in the middle layers (Coconino, Hermit)? 3) How and when did the distinct underlying layers, each with a very different physical make up, get there?
It was a catastrophic event. How can one predict where layers and fossils will end up except in a general, statistical way?
This is exactly why your "flood hypothesis" is dead in the water, Dave.
Fossil deposition is not governed by statistics, as flood geology predicts. It's laid down in exactly chronological order, with no exceptions, as real geology predicts. You say I'm wrong about that, Dave. Fine. Go find the precambrian rabbits.
Your arguments by assertion are long past being tiresome. Come up with some actual evidence, or admit you don't have any.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Real geology's predictions of fossil order are not statistical. It predicts that sediments of miocene age will contain only miocene fossils. It predicts that Pennsylvanian sediments will contain only Pennsylvanian fossils. It predicts that Permian deposits will contain only Permian fossils.
Of course it does because it uses circular reasoning like this ...
Now ... I am generalizing a bit, but I think I am close ...
Wrong again, Dave. And not even close.
First, as Chris points out, the geological column predates evolution. Second, ages for fossils are determined from multiple different directions, including your worst nightmare, radiometric dating. We find the same fossils at the same levels in the same types of sedimentary deposits worldwide, Dave. How does your flood account for that? We find the same radiometric dates assigned to the same fossils, worldwide. We find the same geological column, with more primitive fossils in the lower strata and more advanced fossils in the upper strata, every time, with no exceptions. How does your "statistical" flood account for that?
Where do you suppose this "handy dandy fossil chart" came from, Dave? Do you think someone just dreamed it up? No. It's the result of tens of thousands of researchers spending millions of hours out there in the hot sun in some god-forsaken corner of the earth or other, trying to figure out what actually happened. They're not sitting in their living room, imagining some super-continent with shallow seas and low, rolling hills. They're doing actual work.
What you don't get, and never will get, about science, Dave, is that it's cumulative. Evidence piled upon evidence piled upon evidence, until there can be no rational doubt. Which is why your doubt about the geological column, paleontological evidence, etc., is not rational. It's pre-rational.
If you would actually read something about real science, instead of holing up in your creationist ghetto and quote-mining off Google, you'd know this.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I buy into about 95% of what "experts" say. It's just the 5% or so that I don't agree with that we are debating here. And that 5% happens to be a very important piece. Origins is quite fundamental to the foundation of Law and Culture.
No, Dave. You don't buy into "95%" of what the "experts" say. You buy into essentially none of it. Your biblical inerrancy beliefs require you to disagree with virtually 100% of science. You have to disagree with all of cosmology, the vast majority of astronomy, huge chunks of quantum phyics, all of geology and paleontology, most of organic chemistry, much of statistics, most of biology, the bulk of archaeology, most of anthropology.
You have to ignore almost all of science, Dave, in order to maintain your worldview. You don't understand science, you don't understand its methodology, you don't understand what scientists mean by "evidence" and you don't understand the cumulative nature of science. You have a pre-literate understanding of the world around you, and a deliberate blindness to essentially all of the science developed over the past 500 years.
As far as science goes, Dave, you understand it no more than some tribesman from the highlands of New Guinea who's never met a westerner.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Sure Air Fog Dave, I'll give you a break. Look up "Fundamentalist Schizophrenia"; your sickness, and make no mistake that is what it is, is a well documented illness.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
And what does this analogy between God, parents, humans, and children have to do with anything? I don't care what your god's motivations were. I care what the evidence supports. The evidence not only doesn't support your dadd-caused global flood; it rules it out of consideration.
This reminds me of something I read not to long ago in "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin.
Apparently, there was some sense of guilt running through the scientific community after the successful use of the atomic bomb on Japan for having unleashed such a destructive force.
When asked about this, apparently for a 1948 Time magazine article, Harvard professor Percy Bainbridge was quoted as saying "Scientists aren't responsible for the facts that are in nature.....If anyone should have a sense of sin, it's God. He put the facts there."
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them?
I would guess it happened much the same way as the Toutle River canyon at Mt Saint Helens.
Dave, have you ever looked at the canyons created around Mt. St. Helens? They don't look anything like the Grand Canyon. They look like what they are: canyons eroded through soft sediment:
Compare to the Grand Canyon:
They basically look nothing alike, Dave. That's because one of them was eroded through soft sediments in a matter of years, and the other was eroded through hard sediments and igneous rock over millions of years.
Once again, Dave's argument by analogy falls apart like wet tissue paper. When are you going to learn, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
If you think the fossil record is as orderly as you are implying here, then you are completely and hopelessly ignorant.
Pretty bold statement, dave, especially coming from you. Can you please back it up, or kindly STFU?
Show me fossils of Brontosaurs and Elephants that died at the same time. Or Velociraptors and tigers. Or trilobites, ammonites and modern clams. Show me ONE. Hand-waiving and ignoring and twisting arguments won't help you.
What part of my questions was so complicated that you had to take it "one at a time", dave? where is your "statistical" distribution of fossils, dave? Or do you just throw words hoping noone will understand you don't have a clue, "amateur scientist"?
Show me ONE piece of evidence that dinosaurs and modern mammals coexisted. ONE. And don't try the fake ones we all know, because your ridicule will be even more complete.
Oh and btw, about your silly quoting: It's like posting a bunch of quotes saying "Man has finally managed to fly" and "Humanity has conquered the skies" and "thousands of people are on the air each day" and "We have mastered the art of flight" and such, and say: "See? I always said that human beings could fly if they flapped their arms hard enough! And now science agrees with me!" And when people point out to you that all these quotes refer to airplanes and technology, you say: "Well they once thought THAT was not possible, either! and look at them now! Pretty soon, they'll give in to my view too!"
Yeah, good luck with that, dave.
PS. Oh yeah, and when you're ready to describe the explantion for the forming of GC that you say you 'read' -I'd love to hear it, and hear why it's wrong. Precicely.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
So, here we are: another day, another complete lack of evidence from Dave to support any of his contentions.
Dave claims that there was "lots" of water in underground reservoirs, connected to the surface by many small fissures. Does he provide any evidence for this assertion? No. Does he say where, geographically, any of these "reservoirs" were? No. Does he say how large they were (other than saying they were "large"?). No. Does he provide us any evidence that they once existed? No. Were they freshwater, or saltwater, or brackish? Were they "magical" water? Dave has no idea.
Dave then says this water was released from some "catastrophic" event. Does he know what kind of event? No. Does he have any evidence that it ever happened? No. Does he even predict what such evidence would look like? No. He wants us to use our "imagination."
Dave asserts that this "event" caused the water to rise up and inundate the world. Does he have any evidence of this inundation? No. Does he have an estimate of how much water was involved? No. Does he have any idea of how deep the water was? No. Does he have any idea of where the water went? No. Does he have any idea of where his thousands of feet of sediment came from? No. (Hint: it didn't wash down from mountains he claims didn't exist.) Does he have any accounting for differing depths of sediment in different places? No. Does he have an accounting for the ages for those sediments as given by radiometric dating, or any reasons to doubt those dates? No. Does he have an accounting for the ordering of fossils in all sediments worldwide? No.
Dave asserts that before the flood, the land mass of the planet was comprised of one super-continent, with low, rolling hills and shallow seas. Does Dave have any evidence for this "super-continent" within the last 6,000 years? No. Does he have any evidence of its breakup? No. Does he have any evidence that all mountain ranges worldwide are of recent (i.e., less than 6,000 years) provenance? No. Does he have an explanation for why different mountain ranges are differentially eroded? No. Does he have an explanation for how some mountain ranges, e.g., the Sierra Nevadas and the Himalayas, are still rising? No.
In other words, does Dave have a single scrap of evidence for any of his assertions? No. He has wild-ass guesses, ad hoc explanations, special pleading, reference to dubious biblical sources. Has he given anyone here the slightest reason to credit his global flood hypothesis? No. Has he given anyone here the slightest reason to credit his more general Creator God Hypothesis? No.
Dave is a great advertisement for a belief in an old earth, and little else.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No. He has wild-ass guesses, ad hoc explanations, special pleading, reference to dubious biblical sources. Has he given anyone here the slightest reason to credit his global flood hypothesis? No. Has he given anyone here the slightest reason to credit his more general Creator God Hypothesis? No.
When reality battles faith, reality has no chance. Not a prayer!
Well put eric. Also, if I may add, does dave have any idea about how the underground water stayed in place, what was its temperature (a real hot issue, that-heh) and, since it was enough to cover the entire planet, where it subsided to eventually? (edit: whoops, ypu already covered that )
Dave, the simple truth is this: Your "theory" needs so many miracles and unexplained wonders to work (from the origin and mechanism of emerging and fate of all the water, to the construction of the ark and keeping it afloat and poor Noah alive in the middle of it all, and drowning the poor animals (AND plants! ) in specific patterns to fool future scientists -and of course eradicating all the evidence) That it seems like nothing more than a cruel supernatural joke god played on humanity to spend a boring afternoon. I bet he's still laughing. Not to mention that the rainbow was not supposed to have existed before that, or whatever kind of *poof* food the poor couples of carnivores ate later...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Your "theory" needs so many miracles and unexplained wonders to work...
Close your eyes. Spin around a few times. Point in any direction. You will be pointing at something that refutes the genesis flood. Probably in more than one way. What you're pointing at is called evidence. It cannot be permitted.
A LONG time ago in this thread, I asked one of my favorite questions, Dave...concerning syphilis and gonorrhea, which can only survive in human carriers. I'm still curious about who you think had syphilis on the ark?
Don't know. Maybe one of them had it. Or maybe animals were carriers back then, but they are not now. I really cannot say and I don't think you can either.
Then how did it pass from your hypothesized animal carriers and back to humans? You do know that STD's (sexually transmitted disease) are not airborne, or caught from toilet seats or doorknobs, right? Someone has to do the humpy-humpy with the infected individual.
Or are you suggesting that Noah's family were into sex with farm animals?
1) How did the waters of the flood manage to sort materials and create the upper individual layers with each having a very different physical make up – sandstone, limestone, shale, etc.? 2) How did your ‘hydrodynamic sorting’ manage to put brachiopod fossils in the upper layers (Kaibab, Toroweap) and the lower layers (Redwall, Temple Butte, Tonto) but put none in the middle layers (Coconino, Hermit)? 3) How and when did the distinct underlying layers, each with a very different physical make up, get there?
It was a catastrophic event. How can one predict where layers and fossils will end up except in a general, statistical way?
No one asked you to predict anything Dave. You were asked for your YEC explanation for the actual data seen.
What is the YEC proposed mechanism that allows violent swirling flood waters to sort sediment into distinctly different layers?
You posted this on hydrodynamic sorting, and it mentions brachiopods by name:
Quote
"It is significant that the organisms found in the lowest strata, such as the trilobites, brachiopods, etc. are very "streamlined" and are quite dense ... of course, these very pronounced "sorting" powers of hydraulic action are really only valid statistically, rather than universally. Local peculiarities of turbulence, habitat, sediment composition, etc., would be expected to cause local variations in organic assemblages ... But, on the average, the sorting action is quite efficient and would definitely have separated the shells and other fossils in just such a fashion as they are found, with certain fossils predominant in certain horizons, the complexity of such "index fossils" increasing with increasing elevation in the column, in at least a general way." (TGF, p. 274)
What is the YEC explanation for why the hydrodynamic sorting of brachiopods skipped entirely the middle layers of the Grand Canyon?
You also avoided the question entirely about how the many lower level layers were formed. Typical behavior from you when you have no YEC C&P answer handy but have to think for yourself.
Quote
OA:4) How did the ‘Flood run off’ (Colorado River) manage to flow slowly enough to create its many meanders,but still manage to carry the required trillions of tons of sediment away AND cut through all the layers of pre-Flood solid rock in just one year? AFDave: It didn't flow slowly. It flowed rapidly. See above.
How rapidly Dave? The mechanics of meanders is well researched, and the bend radius of the meanders is directly related to the velocity of the flowing water. Water that is running too fast doesn't create meanders, it creates straight cut channels. For the Colorado river, the meander bend radius gives a flow rate of <10mph maximum during the early stages of the meander creation.
And what about the time to erode all that soil? Here is a detailed analysis of the process from your favorite ex-YEC geologist Glenn Morton
Quote
Steve Austin presents an argument for the age of the earth in his 1994 book "Grand Canyon: A Monument to Catastrophe" on pages 87-89. Starting with an observed sediments carried by the Colorado River of 168 million tons per year, he shows, (correctly) that this represents the erosion .015 cubic miles per year. He then correctly notes that the volume eroded out of the Grand Canyon is approximately 1000 cubic miles. Dividing the two numbers he incorrectly obtains an age of 67,000 years for the time it would take to erode the Grand Canyon. Beyond the fact that this is ten times too old to fit into his young-earth scenario, Austin argues that the evolutionists are wrong to believe in millions of years for the canyon to form.
Where does Steve go wrong? Well, it is in assuming that ALL the sediment carried by the Colorado River comes from the Canyon itself. Without his reader's knowing it, Steve is saying that absolutely no erosion is occurring in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, which, of course, is a bizarre claim to make if one were to make it explicitly. But by not mentioning this implicit assumption in his calculation, those unfamiliar with the geologic facts will be fooled into thinking Steve has proven a short erosion time for the Grand Canyon.
The Colorado River extends 1450 miles from the mouth to the source in Colorado. Only 500 miles of this length are to be found in the Grand Canyon. The drainage area of the Colorado River is 640,000 square kilometers but the Canyon has an area of only 13,000 square kilometers. Scott Mclennan (reference below) reports that the Colorado River, prior to the building of the Glen Canyon Dam, carried 121 million tons of sediment each year. This is slightly less than the study cited by Austin so we will use his larger value of 168 million tons per year so that no one can claim we are shopping for values favorable to us.
The drainage area of the Colorado is 640,000 sq. km. and the area of the canyon is only 13,000 sq km. 800 km x 16 km wide = 12,800 sq. km. Thus, on a linear weighting, one can expect that only 2 percent of the sediment actually comes from the canyon, the rest comes from the rest of the area. But let's be fair to Steve and say that 30 percent of the sediment comes from the canyon. That means that 168,000,000*.3 =50,400,000 tons per year are moved by the river OUT OF THE CANYON AREA with the rest coming from the rest of the drainage basin. To a first approximation there are 1000 kg/ton which means that 50.4 billion kg of material is moved down the river, or given a density of 2500 kg/m, we have 20.1 million cubic meters moving down the river each year. Dividing by the area of the Canyon ( which is 13,000,000,000 square meters) we have a lowering of the Canyon surface by 20.1 x 10^6/1.3 x 10^10= 1.5 x 10^-3 m per year--hardly indicating a young earth. This is about 1.5 mm per year of excavation out of the Canyon.
So how long will it take the canyon to be excavated at this rate?
20.1 million cubic meters sediment per year = .0048 cubic mile sediment/year
1000 cubic miles/ .0048 cubic mile sediment/year = 207,000 years
Only 207,000 years? Yes, but remember, we have favored Steve greatly by allowing 30% of all erosion to occur in 2% of the area and there is NO evidence that this is the case. If one scales the determines the canyon erosion by its proportional area it would take three million years to erode the canyon, a value much more aligned with the geologic evidence.
But one question arises here. Why do young-earth creationists think that a 67,000 year age (or a 207,000 year age) for the Grand Canyon indicate a young earth? I have been on this earth less than 100 years. Does my age indicate that the earth is really only 100 years old? Does the silting up of the Colorado River behind the Glen Canyon Dam (a process which has been going on since the dam was close less than 100 years ago) indicate that the earth is only 100 years old or less? Of course, this is a silly line of logic and would be roundly condemned if stated explicitly. But that is what Steve is doing with his calculation. He is claiming that something which began long after the earth was formed, limits the age of the earth.
And what he doesn't tell people is that there are conclusive evidence of long ages prior to the Canyon's erosion in the sediments of the canyon. This evidence consists of burrows in the sediment (http://www.psiaz.com/Schur/azpaleo/nacofm.html http://www.geocities.com/earthhistory/grand2.htm, footprints on sedimentary layer after layer (Lockley and Hunt,1995, p. 57), and cave erosion and collapse all occurring prior to the beginning of the canyon erosion. This last evidence is particularly interesting.
The Red-wall limestone contains collapsed caves which collapsed at a time when the entire Grand Canyon area was covered with an additional couple of hundred feet of sediment. When the cave collapsed the sediment above it fell into the cave void, filling it. This is what happens in Florida with a sink hole--a cave below the surface collapsed and whatever was above the collapse falls into the hole. At the Grand Canyon Wenrich and Huntoon (1989, p. 212) write of these pipes which occur at a rate of 6 per square mile:
"The breccia pipes formed as sedimentary strata collapsed into dissolution caverns in the underlying Mississippian Redwall Limestone. Upward stoping through the upper Paleozoic and lower Mesozoic strata, involving units as high as the Triassic Chinle Formation."
The Chinle is a Triassic bed which lies above the Moenkopi which in turn lies above the Triassic Shinarump. Just north of the Canyon the Shinarump and Moenkopi are 1900 feet thick. Thus it is possible that when the caves collapsed, the Grand Canyon was covered with as much as an additional 2000 feet of sediment which was nearly totally removed. There is a small remnant of it on the SE side of the Canyon at Cedar Mountain. Assuming that we removed this covering layer at the same rate as the Colorado River today removes sediment how long would it take? The Triassic strata has been removed over at least 20,000 square kilometers and was at least 2000 feet thick. This means that nearly 3000 cubic miles of sediment have been removed BEFORE THE CANYON EROSION BEGAN. Using the 2 percent rule we last used above, 3000/.0048 = at least 625,000 years of erosion. Of course, Steve never tells anyone about that erosional event.
It takes time for the sediment to be deposited, burrows be dug, more sediment be deposited more burrows and animal tracks to be made and then for caves to erode in solid rock and then to collapse and then for the Triassic strata to be almost completely eroded from the Canyon area AND ONLY THEN does the Canyon erosion begin.
One general comment, if Steve admits that it takes several tens of thousands of years to dig out the canyon (by his own calculation) he must then allow for other buried canyons which are found on seismic data.
Thus the age of the entire canyon sequence must be older than the length of time it takes to erode the canyon. Of course, the young-earthers can't accept this evidence. It is a shame that Christian apologetics relies on such sloppy logic to support a young-earth.
References
Steven A. Austin, editor, Grand Canyon: A Monument to Catastrophe, (Santee: Inst. for Creation Research, 1994)
M. Lockley and Adrian P. Hunt, Dinosaur Tracks, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995),
Scott M. Mclennan "Weathering and Global Denudation", Journal of Geology , 101:2, p. 296
Karen J. Wenrich and Peter W. Huntoon, "Breccia Pipes and Associated mineralization in the Grand Canyon Region, Northern Arizona," Geology of the Grand Canyon, Northern Arizona, 28th Int. Geol. Congress, Field Trip Guide Book, (Washington: AGU, 1989), p. 212
So you're f*cked once again Dave. A flow fast enough to remove all that sediment doesn't create meanders. Too slow of a flow, you can't remove near enough sediment in your YEC time frame. And a varying flow doesn't work either. If the whole mile high area was all soft mud as you claim, increasing the flow rate after the meander was started would just blast through the mud and remove the meanders.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I predict that Dave will respond to this post by saying something extraordinarily vague, like, "your assumptions are flawed," and then come back with a lot of hand-waving, unsupported assertions, and ad hoc hypothesizing without reference to any actual evidence, and then claiming victory.
Dave seems to be of the misapprehension that any response to your post, no matter how surreal and fantastic, no matter how unsupported by evidence, is "good enough." Well, it probably is good enough for his fellow churchgoers, who have the same "need to believe" that he has. But out here in the cold light of day, where assertions need actual evidence, he's not doing so well.
So, once again, Dave: how much water ("lots" doesn't cut it), where did it come from, how deep was the water, where did it all drain to, and where did five thousand feet of sediment come from?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
. . Currently Unanswered Questions from the last 3 "Pages"
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the Canyon stratigraphy? (13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist & granite (obviously , that is not "soft ") (15) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (16) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out?
IN regard to your "explanation" of the Grand Canyon meanders and comparing the mile-high cliffs of the Grand Canyon to the Toutle River, Dave. This is a contour map of the Toutle River :
In this image the countour lines represent 50 feet.
The image is at an angle of 33 degrees from horizontal, looking southeast toward Mt. Saint Helens, which is at the top right-center.
The Coldwater and Spirit lakes are at Top left-center
Volcanic ash, mudflows, and misc. debris associated with and following the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption have partially filled the valley of the North Toutle River.
The Toutle River runs from the left side of Mt. St. Helens (in the image) to the lower-center of the image. It is the Blue Line you see at the LOWER CENTER
If you look closely along and near the river, you will see a series of small "indentations" in the contour lines that represent more recent gully erosion in the ash/mudflows that have partially filled the valley of the North Toutle River. Creationists calll these "indentations" the "Grand Canyon of the Toutle River". Is a current photo of the "Grand Canyon of the Toutle River." THE RIVER HAS INCISED ABOUT 30 METERS OF SEDIMENT SINCE 1980 Note that the Valley sides were NOT cut by any recent erosion, only the areas near the river itself. Those areas SLOPE at 45 degrees, except at the banks of the river, where they have a vertical height of several meters (depending on where you're at). The sediments on Mount St. Helens were unconsolidated volcanic ash, and mudflow (lahar) which is easily eroded.
The Grand Canyon was carved into harder materials, including well-consolidated sandstone and limestone, hard metamorphosed Vishnu schist, plus a touch of basalt.
The Grand Canyon is near or at vertical for thousands of feet. Not mere meters. Kilometers.
Oh, and Dave, in regard to your "calculations" concerning how many kids an average woman has to have to explain the current population from a starting point at 4356 years ago...I noticed you left out infant mortality rates, mortality rates in general from war, disease, famine, etc. You assumed a perfect model without any deaths prior to reproduction? How cute. Try again. This time using standard demographic methods, not fake crap from Morris, kid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I see that there was some confusion created by my citation of the Mississippi River Commission Study and I think I understand why ...
You asked me about incised meanders IN ROCK and I gave you a study about incised meanders IN SOFT MUD.
Here's the deal ... I assumed (wrongly) that you guys understand that the Grand Canyon WAS SOFT MUD during the Flood Period ... silly me ... of course you don't understand that ... you don't believe the Flood happened.
OK, so let's try this again ...
1) Creationist theory says that the sedimentary layers of the Canyon were formed during the Inundation Phase of the Flood. 2) The canyons were cut during the Receding Phase of the Flood, upon breakage of natural dams and the subsequent release of large volumes of water
BZZZT! Large volumes of water through soft sediments do not meander! They barrel straight through and over any obstacles.
Quote
3) The canyons were cut very rapidly because the sediments were still soft 4) Sediments hardened shortly thereafter and the formation appear today much as they did 50 years after the Flood.
By what process did these sediments harden so quickly? And what was the shape when they solidified? Were these steep walls of soft mud - ever try to dig a hole in soft dirt with vertical sides?
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The reason, of course, for citing the Mississippi Study was because it involved SOFT SEDIMENTS and really provides the only viable explanation for the phenomena of INCISED MEANDERS. Uniformitarian explanations that I have read don't cut it.
Your explanation does not cut it. The main reason: the river does not follow the lowest, easiest path with the landscape as you have described it being formed. Uplift at a pace slower than erosion is the only way it could have happened.
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A river flowing over hard rock over millions of years does NOT cut an incised meander.
A river flowing over hard rock over millions of years does NOT cut an incised meander.
I suppose you have a reference to back this up?
But Tracy, this is the beauty of argument from assertion: you don't need references, or even evidence, to back you up. You merely make a statement. The flood happened. Radiometric dating is based on flawed assumptions. Adam had sex with his sister. The Tyrannosaurs on the ark didn't eat the sheep. The flood involved "lots" of water. God "poofed" the flood into existence. The Grand Canyon sediments hardened to the consistency of rock in less than a year.
See? It's easy.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Every one of the creationist claims on coral.... rely directly or indirectly, on two papers, one by Arthur Chadwick, and an Origins paper by A. A. Roth. These papers list various estimates of reef growth rates from a variety of methods. Most of the estimates cited by Chadwick and Roth give long ages for the growth of a 1,400m coral reef. However, both authors include a single anamalously high estimate rate of 414mm(!/yr. These estimates were based on "soundings" done in the early 1930's. They cite only a single source for this astounding rate, a 1932 paper by J. Verstelle, 'The Growth Rate at Various Depths of Coral Reefs in the Dutch East-Indian Archipelago', Treubia 14:117-126, 1932. [NINETEEN THIRTY TWO?!?!?!?] Virtually all of the other estimates in Chadwick's paper yielded rates of reef growth of 0.8-30mm or so, requiring many thousands or even millions of years to form a reef 1400m thick. For instance, Hubbard et al. (1990), estimated growth rates of 0.7 tp 3.3mm per year. Davies and Hopley (1983) estimated a *maximum* of 20mm/yr. Smith and Kinsey (1976) listed rates of 2-5mm/yr. Smith and Harrison (1977) listed rates of 0.8-1.1mm/yr, and so on. Many additional studies indicate Holocene reef growth histories on the order of 1-15mm/yr, with the upper range only being attained in reefs dominated by the fast-growing Acropora corals (e.g. Aronson et al., 1998; Hubbard, 2001). While Chadwick's paper included many reasonable estimates, his readers predictably siezed upon the one rate reported by Verstelle over 60(! years ago, ignoring a massive body of more recent research on the subject. Another odd thing is that both Roth and Chadwick's papers also included estimates of the growth rates of *individual corals,* and they showed that even most individual corals cannot grow nearly that fast (i.e. ~400mm/yr)! Most studies document maximum *coral* growth rates of only 10-50mm per year.
Because areas of the planet today exhibit artefacts with certain structures of particle size. These have been observed to form under windy conditions.
Agreed. But I think these can also be transported by water. Why can they not?
You think they can? have you observed them? Certainly water carries sediment, it also sorts out rocks and sand etc etc, producing certain structures, which differ somewhat from those you see on land. SO your challenge is to find pictures and diagrams of both kinds of structure, then compare them to those found in the grand canyon and elsewhere.
It's like one of those old puzzlers... "If Cain had sex with his father's siamese twin sister who's also his mother, how would their children call each other?"
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
1) Why should I believe your source about this being wind-borne sand? He could be wrong about the sediment being wind borne. Why could it not be water-borne sand? 2) Let's say he's correct. Don't you think there would be lots of wind associated with all this cataclysmic action? Wind blows sand. Sand fills in footprints. Why is this not possible?
The Coconino sandstone reaches 315 feet in thickness, and covers an area of some 200,000 square miles. Footprints of small animals , including INSECTS are found in that sandstone. The sheer size and volume of quartz Coconino sands require an extensive amount of weathering, mechanical breakdown and transport of prexisting rock, which would require far more time than the flood model allows. Now, on the fossil tracks themselves. The ***best*** argument offered by the creationists for the formation of the tracks is in Brand, Leonard R., 1996. Variations in salamander trackways resulting from substrate differences. Journal of Paleontology 70(6): 1004-1011. Note that in Brand's paper, he concludes : "The data do suggest that the Coconino Sandstone fossil trackways may have been produced in either subaqueous sand or ***subaerial damp sand****" more importantly, his conclusions are for AMPHIBIANS... Now, the question remains, how could INSECT tracks be found in submerged or damp sand, including those of lightweight spiders? Answer: They can't be explained by submerged sand or damp sand, which would not allow for these trace fossils. they can only be produced in dry sand that is then dampened by long diurnal successions of condensation. DUST that is carried by mild winds aids in the cementation, and the prints are then covered AFTER cementation by fine-grained eolian quartz that is frosted and pitted, just as we see only in desert sands. Water in a "flood" cannot do this. Even if we assume that the Coconino sands were transported by a succession of discrete current pulses, and that vertebrate trackways were made between pulses, it seems likely that each new set of tracks would be destroyed by each new pulse, with little or no net preservation, yet there are thousands upon thousands of such fossils in the Coconino sandstone.
See: Lockley, M. G., 1992. Comment and reply on "Fossil vertebrate footprints in the Coconino Sandstone (Permian) of northern Arizona: Evidence for underwater origin" Geology 20(7): 666-667. Lockley notes that "a gentle and subtle mechanism is required, for heavy rains or catastrophic biblical floods would simply wash away delicate tracks of spiders and scorpions. One possibility is dew and the condensing of fog and mist onto track surfaces, as is common in coastal dunes in the present day Namib desert" Lockley, M., and Hunt, A. (1996). Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States (p.76).
For YOU , Dave, to explain this by "wind" you have to show how it was possible to lay down the sand by water, then dry it (under your water canopy), then have spiders, millipedes, centipedes and scorpions appear..after a flood that deposits billions of tons of sediments neatly, in layers, then a "wind" blows in sand to fill the insect footprints, then it hardens fast enough not to be squashed by another set of layers weighing millions of of tons ALL IN ONE YEAR
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Cain had sex with his, i.e., Cain's, sister, or with Adam's sister? That would be hot. :-)
Adam didn't have a sister (or a belly button), so Cain obviously didn't have sex with her. The only females available to him where his mother, and possibly unnamed sisters. Given that it was common during this time for women to be well into their 100's before giving birth, and Eve was created as an adult, by the time Cain needed to get married she looked at least 150. Because of this I'd say it was his sister he was spawning with. But keep two things in mind.
1) Abel probably did it too, and Seth definately did it. 2) Cain was the bad boy of the family. Even though god liked the smell of burnt flesh Cain became a farmer (it is a well established fact that god hates hippies). He also beat his brother to death with a rock.
Adam didn't have a sister (or a belly button), so Cain obviously didn't have sex with her.
Well, wait—how do we know Adam didn't have a sister? Sure, the Bible doesn't say anything about Adam having a sister, but it doesn't say anything about Cain or Abel having a sister either, and yet Dave insists they both existed.
So. Which is it? The Bible was lying when it didn't mention Adam's sister, or the Bible was lying when it didn't mention Cain's or Abel's sister? Either one appears equally likely—or unlikely— to me.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A LONG time ago in this thread, I asked one of my favorite questions, Dave...concerning syphilis and gonorrhea, which can only survive in human carriers. I'm still curious about who you think had syphilis on the ark?
Don't know. Maybe one of them had it. Or maybe animals were carriers back then, but they are not now. I really cannot say and I don't think you can either.
Then how did it pass from your hypothesized animal carriers and back to humans? You do know that STD's (sexually transmitted disease) are not airborne, or caught from toilet seats or doorknobs, right? Someone has to do the humpy-humpy with the infected individual.
Or are you suggesting that Noah's family were into sex with farm animals?
* Cytomegalovirus * Hepatitis (Hepatitis A and Hepatitis E are transmitted via the fćcal-oral route, not sexually; Hepatitis C is sexually transmittable) o Hepatitis B o Hepatitis D * Herpes /HSV (Herpes simplex virus) * Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV/AIDS) * Human papillomavirus (HPV) o Certain strains of HPV cause genital warts o Certain strains of HPV cause cervical dysphasias which can lead to cervical cancer * Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
Noah: "Shem, you get the liver flukes, me, I'll take the intestinal parasites." Japeth: " but Dad, what about my wife? she can handle some clap" Ham: " Yeah, and my ol' lady already HAS gonorrhea, pops!!" ------------------------------------------------------------- And since you used Baumgardner, Davey-dolt, you should know this: Baumgardner HAS to invoke miracles for his "runaway subduction model", because he estimates a release of 10^28 joules from the subduction process. This is more than enough to boil off all the oceans. In addition, Baumgardner says that the mantle was much hotter before the Flood and *that* heat would have to go somewhere. Since steam and air have a lower heat capacity than water, the steam released will quickly raise the temperature of the atmosphere over 1000 C. At these temperatures, much of the atmosphere would boil off the Earth, too, so...you basically have no water and no air. Baumgardner has to invoke miracles, just like your miracle explanation of god creating the stars with built-in age, dave. Baumgardener calls it "non-stationary natural law" also known as "leaping/jumping/lurching, dancing on air physical constants" In short, it's about as credible as your explanations of "godiddit" Baumgardner, John R., 1990b. The imperative of non-stationary natural law in relation to Noah's Flood. Creation Research Society Quarterly 27(3): 98-100.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OA: Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other,but none of them show your claimed 100X C14/C12 ratio?
If you really want me to answer this, then take them one at a time and explain them each in your own words as simply as possible. This will help me understand them and it will confirm for me that YOU understand them.
Well Dave aren’t you special. I and others have presented this data to you at least half a dozen times already, and each time you denied the results were valid. Now you finally admit the truth that you didn’t understand the data. If you didn’t understand them, why did you claim the results were invalid? Was it your big fat bloated ego?
OK, since the AF made you fly on this plane
let’s hold little Davie’s hand and walk through the evidence again.
1. Natural processes in the biosphere produce small amounts of radioactive carbon C14 to go along with natural C12 2. Living things ingest carbon with the current C14/C12 ration 3. When things die, the C14 begins to decay and the ration of C14/C12 in the sample decreases. 4. C14 decays with a half life of 5730 years. You, AFDave, have already agreed that this is true. 5. By measuring the C14/C12 ration in the sample, we can estimate when the living thing died if we know the original C14/C12 ratio. 6. The C14/C12 ratio is known to have varied at times in the past, so we must independently calibrate the C14 dating results.
One way to calibrate is by lake varves. A varve is a seasonal layer put down in a lake due to biological activity (pollen, etc.) that can be accurately counted to give a yearly date. Samples of dead biological material (twigs, leaves) that rest in the layers can be accurately dated by layer count. C14 readings on the same material are then taken and a calibration curve can be drawn. This has been done for many different varve sources. The most famous is lake Suigetsu in Japan, with an annual varve count going back over 29,000 YBP
Another way to calibrate is by dendrochronology – tree ring counting. Tree rings are seasonal growths, and by matching overlapping tree ring patterns dates can be accurately measured back to 11,000 YBP. C14 readings on the same tree samples are then taken and a calibration curve can be drawn. Many forests have been subject to dendrochronology studies. Trees from the Black forest in Germany have extended the dates back over 11,800 YBP
Another way to calibrate is by ice core samples. Ice cores show regular seasonal patterns that can be counted to show yearly dates. Samples of dead biological material (twigs, leaves) that rest in the core layers can be accurately dated by layer count. C14 readings on the same material are then taken and a calibration curve can be drawn. Ice core samples from glaciers in Greenland have extended dates back over 50,000 YBP
There are other similar, equally independent ways of calibrating C14/C12 ratios using speleotherms (cave stalactite growths), coral growths, marine core samples, etc. When all are taken together, they provide an accurate calibration of C14 dating looking like this
Why do all these independent calibration curves agree with each other to within a few percent?
Why do the all these independent calibration curves extend back well over your 6000 YBP creation date, and as far as 50,000 YBP?
Why do none of these independent calibration curves show the 100X C14/C12 ratio spike you claimed was caused by the FLOOD?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Baumgardner has to invoke miracles, just like your miracle explanation of god creating the stars with built-in age, dave. Baumgardener calls it "non-stationary natural law" also known as "leaping/jumping/lurching, dancing on air physical constants" In short, it's about as credible as your explanations of "godiddit."
But Deadman, surely miraculous floods don't surprise you. After all, when you have kids, you're not going to just let them go on from birth forward, are you? Of course God performed miracles in creating the flood. Why would he not? That's how He interacted with people and their environment! Why can't you see this?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OOOOOPS!!! YOU GUYS FORGOT TO TELL ME ABOUT DR. BRAND AND HIS 'FRIENDS' !!
I'll tell you guys something funny ... when I first started in on the Flood topic I didn't have the faintest idea what the Coconino Sandstone was, but now I am getting real interested.
Why am I getting so interested you may ask? Because once again, just like every other topic, once I get into it I see that the evidence for Long Ages and Evolution is FLIMSY, and the evidence for YEC is very strong.
For example, before you guys challenged me to study this, I did not know that ...
1) The layers above and below the Coconino--the Toroweap and the Hermit--are made up of sediments deposited by and/or in water, according to Blakey and Turner (non-YECs). So you guys are trying to tell me that water laid down the layer above and below, but the Coconino was a desert??!! Come on ... you guys really do think I am stupid, don't you??!!
2) Dr. Brand (non-YEC) of Loma Linda University showed with detailed studies on amphibians walking in sediments in water in the lab that the tracks in the Coconino more closely resemble these than tracks formed in dry sand. His study also showed that the animals were moving in one direction while their feet were pointing in a different direction. Deadman, why didn't you tell me about this study??!! Come on, man ... I thought you were the expert on this stuff! You're supposed to be teaching me, the layman.
3) Visher (non-YEC) at the Univ of Tulsa in Oklahoma showed many evidences for accumulation of the Coconino Sandstone in water, including sand waves, 'parting lineation,' and grain size analysis.
Come on, Eric ... get your head out that Evo Ghetto and read do some real science!
Of course, you can read about this and other fun details which blow your theory at
All the references for the original studies are there. I'm not going to paste them here because I know you guys don't want to read them anyway.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Steve ... You guys have one-track minds ... Are you unfulfilled or something?
OA ... I only refuted the dendrochronology ... I didn't address the other 5 ... the other ones are probably the same story though ... more made up stuff to support your theory no matter what the evidence says.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I only refuted the dendrochronology ... I didn't address the other 5 ... the other ones are probably the same story though ... more made up stuff to support your theory no matter what the evidence says.
You didn't REFUTE a #### thing, liar. You brought up a guy named Don Batten who made **three** HIGHLY selective claims:
Let's review "Dr." Don's claims
1. He claims that specific species of pine, like Pinus radiata...produce multiple rings per year. But the interesting thing is that your expert offers no citations at all...I looked it up and found the "data" is from FARMED trees in an artificial setting and a non-seasonal environment.
2. He claimed that dendro and 14C are used in a "circular " way to confirm each other. False. Multiple non-radiometric methods are used to check dendro records. They include the dating methods I have listed previously
3. In all the hundreds of thousands of tree ring studies ever performed, Don Batten finds a total of TWO that were questioned : one was re-measured, the other was withdrawn due to procedural/methodological problems.
That was the TOTAL of Don Batten's claims and YOU didn't "refute" squat, AirHead, you just copy-pasted his crap. TRY AGAIN
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dr. Brand (non-YEC) of Loma Linda University showed with detailed studies on amphibians walking in sediments in water in the lab that the tracks in the Coconino more closely resemble these than tracks formed in dry sand.
published by the Seventh-day Adventists in their "Geoscience Research Institute - Integrating Science and Faith" non-peer reviewed, pro-Creation newsletter Origins
Here is a quote from Dr Brand
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The implications of this work must be considered as we develop geologic flood models, and on the other hand perhaps our flood models can suggest new ways of looking at the Coconino Sandstone. A model or an idea is useful to science if it can suggest new lines of research that can be done successfully, and that improve our understanding of the subject we are investigating. Perhaps our flood model can suggest useful, new types of research that need to be done and that might not have been thought of by someone who did not believe in a flood of worldwide geologic significance.
The Coconino Sandstone is classified as a Permian deposit in the upper Paleozoic (Figure 1). As was mentioned earlier, the Paleozoic strata above and below the Coconino Sandstone are believed to have been deposited by water. Some of the flood models that are being developed propose that much of the Paleozoic sequence was deposited in the early part of the flood activities, and in these models the Coconino Sandstone would be a deposit laid down during the main part of the flood. Could there be a large-scale deposit of wind-blown sand in the middle of predominantly flood water-deposited strata?
The geologic data tell us that even though the flood was a rapid geologic event, it was nevertheless a very complex geologic event. We cannot arbitrarily rule out the possibility of a deposit of wind-blown sand forming during an interval of lowered water level, but our flood models do suggest that it may be very profitable to reinvestigate the Coconino Sandstone to see if there might be another explanation of its origin.
...a flood of worldwide geologic significance? ...deposited in the early part of the flood activities? ...the flood was a rapid geologic event?
No YEC Biblical spin here Dave, no siree!
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Come on ... you guys really do think I am stupid, don't you??!!
Damm Dave, you do have an amazing grasp of the obvious, don't you?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Wow guys, I've learnt a lot over the last couple of pages. Keep the science coming.
I don't expect anything meaningful from Davie boy because he has too much ego tied up in his position now but hopefully there are a few lurkers starting to slowly see that the YEC position is untenable.
It might also be dawning on Davie as well but I don't think he will ever admit it.
OA ... I only refuted the dendrochronology ... I didn't address the other 5 ... the other ones are probably the same story though ... more made up stuff to support your theory no matter what the evidence says.
You didn't refute a damm thing about dendrochronology Dave. You C&P'd some worthless AIG article that didn't come close to addressing the presented evidence. And you didn't address at all your claim that you could show the dendro results used at Catal Huyuk were in error.
As for the other independent methods for C14 calibration - you requested this
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If you really want me to answer this, then take them one at a time and explain them each in your own words as simply as possible. This will help me understand them and it will confirm for me that YOU understand them.
And I responded by reposting the explanations and data from the results that you asked for. I held up my part of the bargain Dave, but it looks like AFDave will renege on his word again.
You know what Dave? I'm actually happy when you lie and squirm to get out of answering questions. Every time you are too much of a lying chickenshit to answer them as you said you would, your dishonesty and ignorance are on parade display all the regulars and all the lurkers.
You're a regular poster-boy for just how slimy and dishonest a YEC can be. Does that make you feel good Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Deadman, why didn't you tell me about this study??!! Come on, man ... I thought you were the expert on this stuff! You're supposed to be teaching me, the layman
1. Wrong, jackass, this is YOUR HYPOTHESIS thread, YOU are supposed to KNOW this material.
2. YOU IDIOT, I QUOTED brand, thus I DID "tell you" you slimy liar.
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The ***best*** argument offered by the creationists for the formation of the tracks is in Brand, Leonard R., 1996. Variations in salamander trackways resulting from substrate differences. Journal of Paleontology 70(6): 1004-1011. Note that in Brand's paper, he concludes : "The data do suggest that the Coconino Sandstone fossil trackways may have been produced in either subaqueous sand or ***subaerial damp sand****" more importantly, his conclusions are for AMPHIBIANS...
3. His conclusions are shown FALSE by [A] the INSECT tracks THAT CANNOT FORM UNDERWATER, [B]the fact that the "amphibian" ( they are actually reptile) tracks show berms of sand ONLY on ONE side (and not the opposite of the forward thrust) , thus they cannot be made UNDERWATER...they were made on small dry INCLINES. [C] Brand admits above that , taken at face value, his "study" does not necessarily indicate that the footprints were made underwater.
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Careful examination of modern dunes indicates that climbing translatent strata, with coarsening-up laminae and rare foreset laminae, form only by the migration and accretion of low amplitude wind ripples in eolian environments (Hunter, 1977; Kocurek & Dott, 1981). Such strata and ripples are ubiquitous in the Navajo, Entrada, and similar sandstones (Kocurek & Dott, 1981), contradicting a subaqueous origin. Modern eolian sand dunes exhibit internal cross-bedding that is remarkably similar to that in the Colorado Plateau sandstones (Ahlbrandt & Fryberger, 1982, p. 19; McKee & Ward, 1983, p. 147; Collinson, 1986b, p. 104). Furthermore, we can observe the process of leeside grainfall forming eolian sand dunes in places like the Great Sand Dunes, White Sands (Collinson, 1986b), Monahans Sand Hills, Nebraska Sand Hills (Ahl brandt & Fryberger, 1982), or on Padre Island (Brookfield, 1984)."
Additionally, though these formations preserve the trackways of obviously terrestrial animals (spiders, various reptiles in the Coconino, dinosaurs, mammal-like reptiles, etc., in the Navajo), they are entirely lacking in marine fossils of any kind, even though each is bounded at top and bottom by densely fossiliferous, obviously marine strata. These formations are strong evidence against the theory that the strata of the Colorado Plateau were deposited by a single, year-long global flood. The most frequently cited "evidence" for the subaqeous origin of the Coconino, Brand et al.'s trackway morphology, is shown to be false.
YOUR source says that WATER created the ripples and waves in the sandstone, and cross laminae, by a rush of water that moved at 3.75 MPH. Guess what? such a force of water could not create layers over 300 feet thick in the required time, covering the 200,000 square miles of Coconino sandstone. AND if the force was greater, it would lay flat beds. AND if it was 3.75 MPH where are the other materials water would carry? AND it would contradict Brand's "walking salamanders underwater" story, because that would cover UP any tracks found in the MIDDLE OF WET SAND LAYERS. Your source says :
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a tsunami provides the best modern analogy for understanding how large-scale cross beds such as those in the Coconino Sandstone could form.
Uh, look at any tsunami data and tell me how fast the water moves and what it carries with it. Tell me HOW anything is going to live in that to make tracks in the middle of sandstone layers, while a "TSUNAMI" is going on that makes a layers of sand 300 feet thick? to say it ONLY "selectively " carries sand is beyond stupid, as are you, Dave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
IN addition to the 16 UNANSWERED questions and comments on this "flood" that were posted earlier, let me add 4 more... 1. Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR. 2. Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? 3. Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? 4. Why don't we see disruption of the varves?
That's twenty unanswered questions so far, Dave. In just 4 pages. Anyone here could easily add 20 more that you couldn't answer, either.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Because once again, just like every other topic, once I get into it I see that the evidence for Long Ages and Evolution is FLIMSY, and the evidence for YEC is very strong.
Dave, you don't have any evidence—as in none, not any, nada—for your global flood. You can't answer any of the questions I posted earlier. Not one.
Dave, you have a very dysfunctional idea of what "evidence" is. If you think your evidence for a global flood is "very strong," do you think you can be bothered to present us with any of it?
I know from experience that every time you try to refute evidence for an old earth, you're wrong, wrong, wrong. You've been wrong every single time, and I have absolutely no reason to think that trend will ever change.
You may have trouble with the idea that desert sediments can be between water-laid sediments, but can you even begin to explain why it should be problematic? No? Didn't think so. And you still can't explain how any tracks, let alone those from small arthropods, could possibly be preserved while surrounded by onrushing floodwaters that are depositing fifteen feet of sediment every 24 hours.
So, where's your evidence, Dave? Where's your evidence for massive underground reservoirs? Where's your evidence of a massive catastrophe that released those waters? Where's your estimate of how much water was involved, and how deep it was? Where do you think all that water went? Where do you think all that sediment—miles of it—came from? No idea? Didn't think so. Where's your evidence of a super-continent 4,500 years ago? Where's your evidence that it broke up within historical times? What's your estimate of how fast the Atlantic opened up? How many inches per hour, and when did the Atlantic stop widening? Where's your evidence of an ice age within the past 4,500 years? Where's your evidence that the Alps, the Andes, the Appalachians, the Himalayas, all formed within the past 4,500 years? What's your explanation for the fact that different mountain ranges have eroded by different amounts? What's your explanation for the fact that both the Sierra Nevadas and the Himalayas are still getting higher? Where's your refutation of radiometric dating?
I've given you weeks to come up with evidence to support a single one of these contentions, Dave. You've come up with nothing. I told you earlier today that if you couldn't come up with any evidence to support any of your contentions regarding your "global flood," I would know for a certainty that you have no such evidence. And you don't.
The truth is, you don't have any evidence for a single one of your assertions, Dave, and you never will. Because such evidence does not exist. You haven't been able to give any sort of answer to any of the questions I've asked you about your flood—not one. This is what happens when you rely on your imagination for your worldview, Dave. There is an external reality out there, and that external reality is utterly at odds with what you think happened.
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Come on, Eric ... get your head out that Evo Ghetto and read do some real science!
I'm out of the ghetto, Dave, out in the bright warm sunshine that banishes the darkness. You're the one trapped in it, trapped in a preliterate worldview from 5,000 years ago. But you like it there. Glenn Morton's got your number; he's got you down to a science.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Compared to Dave's "theory," "my" theory has a big honkin' wang the size of a redwood.
Not that size matters or anything. But Dave's theory is under-endowed by any conceivable measure.
You know, the funny thing is, Dave thinks his "Creator God Hypothesis" has a prayer of being right. Of course, it's entirely possible that there's a Creator God out there somewhere, but the rest of his "hypothesis"—a young earth, biblical inerrancy, the flood, Noah and his bestiality club-med cruise—have been so utterly, comprehensively discredited that it's amazing a being with respiratory function could believe any of that crap.
But what's really hilarious is Dave's notion that his YEC "science" is somehow, "new," "cutting-edge," or "advanced." YEC was old, dead, and buried 150 years ago. I guess Dave didn't get the memo.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And, you know, the funny thing about Dave's posts is, when I read them, I get all ready to do some research to find out exactly where his AiG and ICR buddies have lied to him. But living on the west coast, I usually get to them after everyone else has already torn him to shreds. Which saves me a lot of work. I can just read Occam's and Deadman's utterly devastating eviscerations of his "arguments," follow the links provided, and find out that once again, Dave's got his head stuck in the milkpail and is staggering around the barnyard, only to once again end up head-down in the watering trough.
You can't write comedy like this.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I never really realised how advanced Creation science was. It beats ID hands down. That they have already identified areas like the Coconino sandstones and devoted time and effort to distorting them to fit their agenda shows some devotion. I'm quite impressed.
Bwahahahaha ... Brand is a YEC and Dave didn't know it ...
(Never mind the fact that he was published in non-YEC pubs--Paleoecology, Geology, and Journal of Paleontology)
Bwahahahaha ... Deadman even mentioned Brand and Dave didn't catch it ...
(Never mind that it's completely idiotic to say there was a DESERT sandwiched between two water laid sediments)
(Never mind that Derek Ager has been talking about Catastrophism now for at least 15 years, but ATBCers still think Uniformitarianism is valid and that the Colorado river carved the GC over millions of years)
It's interesting how big a deal you guys make of your little victories like "Dave thought Brand was a non-YEC" and "Dave mis-analyzed a study in the UK" etc. ... I guess it's understandable ...
When you are trying to defend something so obviously false -- the Grand Canyon was formed by the Colorado River over millions of years -- you need every little shred you can get ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Posted: June 26 2006,10:45 10) No Biblical statement has ever been contradicted by an archaeological discovery, so there is excellent reason for the history in Genesis to carry great weight.
Posted: June 26 2006,12:25 No, 7P, the problem is with you. You don't have a clue about the history of Tyre because if you did, you would be amazed at the exactness of detail in Ezekiel's prophecy. I will not go to the trouble of typing it out for you, because you need to go out and buy this book anyway.
Go out and buy Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I have the old version. In Volume I, you will find the story of the fulfilled prophecy of Tyre laid out in stunning detail on pp. 274-281, meticulously documented with non-Christian historical sources.
This is from a former skeptic, mind you, just like you. This guy HATED Christianity. His father was a drunk ... Josh hated Christianity so much he set out to prove it was wrong.
Guess what happened? He studied prophecies about Tyre and others and He was so amazed at the Bible's accurate fulfilled prophecies and other amazing things about the Bible that he became a Christian ... a very outspoken one!!
How about you, 7P? Do you have the guts to do an honest inquiry like Josh McDowell did?
It just might change your life!!
Posted: June 26 2006,13:44 7P... Quote Actually, you are wrong. I do know. and I did read Mr. McDowell's work. Anyone wishing to be spared the drivel can look at a synopsis (and refutation) of his failed argument here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_carr/non-messianic.html AF Dave, You were wrong.
Ah yes. Another infidel site. Wouldn't you know! 7P, did you know that you can find an internet site to support most anything you want to believe? I've read your site and you are a fool if you think your internet site refutes McDowell.
Again, McDowell's case is meticulously documented and solid as a rock. And that's just ONE of the hundreds of specidically fulfilled prophecies!!!.
Posted: June 29 2006,09:49 WHERE WE HAVE COME FROM, WHERE WE ARE GOING THE WONDER OF BIBLE PROPHECY I find it interesting that skeptics disregard the hundreds of amazing Biblical prophecies about the Messiah found here www.messiahrevealed.org and the prophecies of Daniel about the major world powers -- Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, and focus their skepticism instead on two prophecies which give them a little bit of ammo for their arguments. The Tyre prophecy admittedly has some points that can be construed one way or the other, and the Nebuchadnezzar in Egypt prophecy does not have much in the way of historical verification. But it should be noted that at many times in recent history, skeptics have argued that Bible prophecy is false or that some character or nation in the Bible is mythical, simply because archaeology was silent at that time. The skeptics time and again have been proven to be wrong once more information is known.
Well, I think that the Tyre prophecy is disproven. Ezekial was clear that Tyre would remain a bare rock forever, and I think that we can all agree that it is not, and has not been so. In fact, it has been occupied since Ezekial made his prophecy. The prophecy failed. AF Dave, admit that the bible made a mistake, or explain how this part of the prophecy came true. Be honest, and to be fair, if you chose to ignore this post as you have so many others, you are tacitly admitting the bible was in error.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
But what's really hilarious is Dave's notion that his YEC "science" is somehow, "new," "cutting-edge," or "advanced." YEC was old, dead, and buried 150 years ago. I guess Dave didn't get the memo.
Dead and buried, huh? Is that why Ager and all the rest I quoted finally succumbed to the truth that YECs have been talking about for those same 150 years?
CATASTROPHISM
I noticed you've been pretty quiet about that, Eric.
But go ahead ... revel in you tiny little victories if it makes you feel better ...
***************************
Hey Seven Popes ... if you think the Bible is disproven because of the Tyre Prophecy, then you are too far gone to have any hope ... Bon Voyage!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But what's really hilarious is Dave's notion that his YEC "science" is somehow, "new," "cutting-edge," or "advanced." YEC was old, dead, and buried 150 years ago. I guess Dave didn't get the memo.
Dead and buried, huh? Is that why Ager and all the rest I quoted finally succumbed to the truth that YECs have been talking about for those same 150 years?
CATASTROPHISM
I noticed you've been pretty quiet about that, Eric.
But go ahead ... revel in you tiny little victories if it makes you feel better ...
***************************
Hey Seven Popes ... if you think the Bible is disproven because of the Tyre Prophecy, then you are too far gone to have any hope ... Bon Voyage!
And with that, Ladies and Gents, Dave admits the bible has errors!
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
But what's really hilarious is Dave's notion that his YEC "science" is somehow, "new," "cutting-edge," or "advanced." YEC was old, dead, and buried 150 years ago. I guess Dave didn't get the memo.
Dead and buried, huh? Is that why Ager and all the rest I quoted finally succumbed to the truth that YECs have been talking about for those same 150 years?
CATASTROPHISM
I noticed you've been pretty quiet about that, Eric.
That's because it has already been made crystal clear that you completely misunderstand the the term as it is used by Ager (who, by the way, thinks you're a "bible-obsessed fanatic").
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Most conventional (long-age) geologists think that the two layers ABOVE and BELOW the Coconino Sandstone were laid by water.
And yet they think the Coconino was a desert!! Bwahahahahaha .... (to repeat a well-loved ATBC line)
Here's some teensy weensy problems with that idea ...
1) Evos say the Hermit was an ocean bottom, right? So the Coconino had to be elevated WAY, WAY, WAY up high, see? How deep was the "Hermit Shale Ocean Bottom"? Oh, I don't know ... 1000 ft? 2000 ft? Deeper? In any case, there had to be ONE HUMUNGUS UPLIFT to raise it up high enough to be a desert ...
2) Oh and while you are lifting it up, be careful not to bend it or break it ... we need that "Hermit Shale Ocean Bottom" top surface to be perfectly flat ... see that picture there? It's an almost perfect knife-edge surface. Lifted up from the ocean bottom, huh? No bending or breaking ... Bwahahahaha!
3) Oh, one more thing ... how come there's no erosion in the top layer of the Hermit? 10 million years, right? Seems like long enough to allow for some pretty big erosion, dontcha think?
4) Oh, I keep thinking of things ... the Hermit Shale is dated at 280 million years by "index fossils" and the Coconino at 270 my, presumably by the same method. Has anyone dated this radiometrically? Does it agree? ... Bwahahahaha!
5) Now keep in mind that studies have shown that the sand waves indicate that they were UNDERWATER, and you've got the Brand studies on amphibians WALKING IN WATER.
Now ... if you really want to believe that the Coconino was a desert after all of this, my friend, then there's no hope for you ... your mind is closed ...
Seven Popes ... go ahead and put words in my mouth if you like ... if that's the only way you can prop up your theory then you are more hopeless than i thought.
Deadman ... if you want me to analyze your spider tracks, give me some pictures and some papers ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Boy, you must really be getting desperate, dave...
You find the idea that a place would have been flooded, then gone completely dry, then flooded again, in a timespan of hundreds maybe or thousands of years, silly and stupid... And yet, you have no trouble believing that the same thing could have happened practically simultaneously, in the middle of your precious FLUD, in order for all them tracks to form!
And what's all this about Brand? Deadman tells you about him, while at the same time destroying his "arguments", and you accuse him of -what? not telling you about him before? dave, have you totally lost it? Or are you so desperate to find something dishonest and devious to accuse us atheist evolutionists for (the way it should be, in your mind), that you're throwing all pretense of logic away?
And you insist on your quoting Ager as supporting your fairy tales, even though we already showed you what he himself says about your kind?
Boy, you are getting desperate.
But anyway... you were supposed to be answering questions today, dave, not blabbering and hand-waving, remember? That is what you promised.
Well?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
But Faid, hand-waving and blabbering is *how* Dave answers questions. The tragedy is that he "thinks" that such suffices -- indeed, he "thinks" that blabbering and handwaving are answers.
1) Evos say the Hermit was an ocean bottom, right? So the Coconino had to be elevated WAY, WAY, WAY up high, see? How deep was the "Hermit Shale Ocean Bottom"? Oh, I don't know ... 1000 ft? 2000 ft? Deeper? In any case, there had to be ONE HUMUNGUS UPLIFT to raise it up high enough to be a desert ...
This, coming from a guy who thinks the Himalayas were created in a couple thousand years.
Let's see, how did that go... Oh yes, "Buahahahahahahaha!"
Keep 'em coming dave.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Add these to the list of questions that AFDave the Coward ran crying from and refused to address.
1. What was the flow rate of the ‘flood run off’ that was slow enough to allow the Colorado River meanders to form AND was fast enough to carry away trillions of tons of soil in one year?
2. What is the YEC proposed mechanism that allows violent swirling flood waters to sort sediment into distinctly different layers?
3. What is the YEC explanation for why the hydrodynamic sorting of brachiopods skipped entirely the middle layers of the Grand Canyon?
4. How and when did the distinct underlying lower layers of the Canyon, each with a very different physical make up, get there?
5. Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other to within a few percent?
6. Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves extend back well over your 6000 YBP creation date, and as far as 50,000 YBP?
7. Why do none of the independent C14 calibration curves show the 100X C14/C12 ratio spike you claimed was caused by the FLOOD?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
My scenario of the Himalaya uplift is BELIEVEABLE and agrees with the evidence ...
Your scenario of the Hermit Shale uplift is LUDICROUS ... PREPOSTEROUS ... for all the reasons I mentioned .......
Bwahahahaha ....
****************************
Quote
1. What was the flow rate of the ‘flood run off’ that was slow enough to allow the Colorado River meanders to form AND was fast enough to carry away trillions of tons of soil in one year?
2. What is the YEC proposed mechanism that allows violent swirling flood waters to sort sediment into distinctly different layers?
3. What is the YEC explanation for why the hydrodynamic sorting of brachiopods skipped entirely the middle layers of the Grand Canyon?
4. How and when did the distinct underlying lower layers of the Canyon, each with a very different physical make up, get there?
5. Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other to within a few percent?
6. Why do the all the independent C14 calibration curves extend back well over your 6000 YBP creation date, and as far as 50,000 YBP?
7. Why do none of the independent C14 calibration curves show the 100X C14/C12 ratio spike you claimed was caused by the FLOOD?
ANSWERS:
1) My definition of 'FAST' = 'Less than a year' (as opposed to millions of years). My definition of 'SLOW' means slow enough to cause the Incised Meanders in soft sediments. This is not that difficult, OA.
2) Already covered. You missed it. Go back and do your homework. Better yet, buy a copy of TGF.
3) You'll have to show me some pictures of specifically what you are talking about.
4) The Sedimentary layers were laid during the Flood. The others were formed either during Creation Week or also during the Flood.
5) You lie and fudge and twist and stretch and swallow elephants because you guys need support your bogus 200,000 year history of mankind
6) Already covered and refuted many times
7) Because Evos are too blind to recognize the Global Flood
*************************
Any more questions?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dead and buried, huh? Is that why Ager and all the rest I quoted finally succumbed to the truth that YECs have been talking about for those same 150 years?
CATASTROPHISM
I noticed you've been pretty quiet about that, Eric.
But go ahead ... revel in you tiny little victories if it makes you feel better
Dave, I already explained to you, two days ago, that catastrophism doesn't mean what you think it means. It doesn't mean 40 days of rain, nor does it mean the entire Grand Canyon was carved in a year or so. I notice that you never responded to my post about catastrophism, nor did have you anything to say when I pointed out that a few billion flash floods over the past three billion years were a lot more believable for rapid interment than one giant flash flood over less than a year.
In the meantime, I note that you still have not been able to come up with a single answer to a single one of the more than 20 questions I've asked you about your global flood. That's not a "tiny victory," Dave. It's an annihilation. There's nothing left of your "global flood hypothesis," just as there's nothing left of your "creator god hypothesis."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yes, Dave. Every single one I've asked about your flood. You've failed to answer a single one of them.
Not that you've answered any of the others, either. Mr. Aftershave already showed you how it's impossible for the flood runoff to have moved slowly enough to have carved the GC meanders yet quickly enough to have removed all that sediment. It cannot have done both. So in what way have you answered that question, either?
And your uplift problem is hilariously pathetic, Dave. How tall is Everest? 29,000 feet, last time I checked. And there are seashell fossils at the peak. What does that tell you about uplift, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
My scenario of the Himalaya uplift is BELIEVEABLE and agrees with the evidence ...
Dave, you don't have a scenario for the Himalaya uplift. You've proposed no mechanism for how a mountain range covering hundreds of thousands of square miles, the highest in the world, could have been created in a matter of years. In what way is your non-existent "scenario" believable? You haven't even proposed a scenario!
God, Dave, your patheticness reaches pathetic new depths of pathos every day.
So—are you ever going to come up with answers to any of my questions? Or are you going to continue to pretend you already have? Because it's not like we can't go back and check…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
This, coming from a guy who thinks the Himalayas were created in a couple thousand years.
This, coming from a guy who thinks the diversity of live on earth was magically created in a couple days.
Quote
Let's see, how did that go... Oh yes, "Buahahahahahahaha!"
Keep 'em coming dave.
Hair Fool Dave, when is your god comming to take you on your rapture cruise?
Do you get to take your computer with you?
Has anyone come back to tell you what it will be like?
What is your evidence for your postponed hope of rapture after death?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, those aren't answers. That's just you putting your hands over your ears and crying, "na na na I can't heeeaaarrr you!"
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
My scenario of the Himalaya uplift is BELIEVEABLE and agrees with the evidence ...
Your scenario of the Hermit Shale uplift is LUDICROUS ... PREPOSTEROUS ... for all the reasons I mentioned .......
So a 29,000 ft. uplift in 4500 years over half a continent is believable, but a 5000 ft. uplift over millions of years in a much smaller area is ludicrous and preposterous.
Dave, you get funnier every day!
OA Questions
Quote
1. What was the flow rate of the ‘flood run off’ that was slow enough to allow the Colorado River meanders to form AND was fast enough to carry away trillions of tons of soil in one year?
2. What is the YEC proposed mechanism that allows violent swirling flood waters to sort sediment into distinctly different layers?
3. What is the YEC explanation for why the hydrodynamic sorting of brachiopods skipped entirely the middle layers of the Grand Canyon?
4. How and when did the distinct underlying lower layers of the Canyon, each with a very different physical make up, get there?
5. Why do all the independent C14 calibration curves agree with each other to within a few percent?
6. Why do the all the independent C14 calibration curves extend back well over your 6000 YBP creation date, and as far as 50,000 YBP?
7. Why do none of the independent C14 calibration curves show the 100X C14/C12 ratio spike you claimed was caused by the FLOOD?
AFDave NON-ANSWERS, LIES, AND EVASIONS:
Quote
1) My definition of 'FAST' = 'Less than a year' (as opposed to millions of years). My definition of 'SLOW' means slow enough to cause the Incised Meanders in soft sediments. This is not that difficult, OA.
You were asked for the flow rate, moron, the flow rate that allows two mutually exclusive events to happen at the same time. This is not that difficult, Davie.
Quote
2) Already covered. You missed it. Go back and do your homework. Better yet, buy a copy of TGF.
Another lie from Dave. Show me where you covered it Dave. Link to the post.
Quote
3) You'll have to show me some pictures of specifically what you are talking about.
Already described in detail in my previous posts on Grand Canyon layering. You’re evading again.
Quote
4) The Sedimentary layers were laid during the Flood. The others were formed either during Creation Week or also during the Flood.
Another non-answer. The question was how did each individual layer form.
Quote
5) You lie and fudge and twist and stretch and swallow elephants because you guys need support your bogus 200,000 year history of mankind
More lies and evasion to cover the fact that you can’t deal with the detailed scientific data presented.
Quote
6) Already covered and refuted many times
Another lie. Show me where you covered it Dave. Link to the post.
Quote
7) Because Evos are too blind to recognize the Global Flood
More lies and evasion to cover the fact that you can’t deal with the evidence presented. Evidence that independently confirms the accuracy of C14 dating, and totally trashes your ridiculous 100X C14/C12 ratio claim.
You’re pegging the Clown-O-Meter today Davie! Keep up the good work!
Quote
Any more questions?
Does the fact that you know you’re telling such blatant lies in front of God cause you to lose sleep?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
No Improvius ... the Grand Canyon is literally screaming at you "Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe!" ...
... and you guys are plugging YOUR ears.
I do not have to be able to explain every detail for my theory to be believable ... all I have to do is show (for my own benefit mainly) the HUGE BEAMS in the eye of your theory while also showing several plausible alternatives for my theory to work.
I've been doing this successfully now for several months and I'm having a ball !!!
Thanks for your participation so far :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It's been a fascinating exercise in examining strange loops. We all have seen how Dave has built a mental filter that prevents him from acknowledging any information that could possibly contradict his interpretation of the bible. He is simply incapable of accepting such data - for him it is not a matter of evaluating whether or not it is accurate, but of determining which "out bin" he should toss it into. I find it especially interesting that, if he can't figure out what else to do with it, he simply files it under "lies".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
No Improvius ... the Grand Canyon is literally screaming at you "Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe!"
The Grand Canyon doesn't scream "Catastrophe" to anyone but you, Dave. Any idiot can look at the meanders in the Grand Canyon and figure out that it wasn't cubic miles of floodwaters, sufficient to carry trillions of tons of sediment out to sea in a year or less.
Quote
I do not have to be able to explain every detail for my theory to be believable ... all I have to do is show (for my own benefit mainly) the HUGE BEAMS in the eye of your theory while also showing several plausible alternatives for my theory to work.
Wrong, Dave. You do need to explain every last detail, because current theories, the ones you deride as "preposterous," do explain every last detail. Your "hypothesis," on the other hand, explains nothing. You can't even tell us where all the water for your flood came from (and no, saying it "came from underground reservoirs" doesn't count as an answer).
Dave, you don't even have a theory to be "believable." You haven't even presented any "plausible alternatives" for your "theory" to work. You've said:
There was a lot of water that came from underground; It covered the land (but I can't say how deep it was); Then it drained away (but I don't know where it drained to); Depositing thousands of feet of sediment (but I can't say where the sediment came from); Somehow the one big continent split into many smaller ones (through some mechanism I haven't the faintest accounting for or understanding of); and A bunch of mountains were plowed up in a few hundred years (through some other mechanism I haven't the first clue about).
That's your "theory," Dave? Give me a break.
Quote
I've been doing this successfully now for several months and I'm having a ball !!!
You have a strange idea of "success," Dave. So far, over the span of more than 3,000 posts, you've managed to convince no one of anything here, other than your own inability to understand the first thing about how science works, what evidence is, or even how to think logically. If that's "success," Dave, I'd hate to see your idea of "failure."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I have a bible question. I don't think you want to make any part of your hypothesis (heh) conflict with your great book.
You say there was nothing but small rolling hills prior to your singular flood event. The bible seems to not have much to say at all about the landscape of the earth until the passage about Noah, where it mentions:
1) high hills, and
2) mountains:
Quote
7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
Now this is a little confusing. It does indeed mention high hills and mountains that were already there before the flood, but it seems to imply that the mountains were 15 cubits (20 feet?) higher than the high hills.
Now maybe you can help me out. Your super accurate foundation for all knowledge either calls things mountains that really weren't mountains, or it gives a rediculously small measurement for the height of those mountains. I assume you have an explanation?
Well, the Tyre prophecy is disproven. Ezekial was clear that Tyre would remain a bare rock forever, and I think that we can all agree that it is not, and has not been so. In fact, it has been occupied since Ezekial made his prophecy. The prophecy failed. AF Dave, admit that the bible made a mistake, or explain how this part of the prophecy came true. Be honest, and to be fair, if you chose to ignore this post as you have so many others, you are tacitly admitting the bible was in error. If there is a SINGLE ERROR, how can it be infallible! By your standard of proof, the house of cards your hypothesis is built on collapses. No need to go on there, AFD. Nothing personal, Dave. You just lost.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
You know, Dave's so-called "responses" to the questions posed to him reminds me of a cross-examination of a witness in a trial I worked on a few years ago involving allegations of non-conformity to FAA regulations of a commercial helicopter:
Q: In your inspection of the helicopter, did you note any unapproved parts installed on the helicopter?
A: I wasn't looking for unapproved parts. I was looking for evidence that the helicopter was actually a modified military helicopter.
Q: I understand. But did your inspection uncover any unapproved parts?
A: That wasn't the purpose of my inspection.
Q: Yes, I get that. But in the course of your inspection, did you notice any unapproved parts?
A: I wasn't looking for unapproved parts.
Q: Yes. But while looking for evidence of a military origin, did you notice any unapproved parts?
A: That wasn't the intent of my inspection.
This went on and on for about 20 minutes.
We ask Dave, "What's your explantion for the fact that C14 curves correlate exactly with evidence derived from six other, non-radiometric methods?"
He says, "I already refuted radiocarbon dating."
We say, "Where did you do that? You haven't even discussed those correlations."
He says, "I refuted dendrochronology."
We say, "How did you do that? You pointed to two, already-understood, anomalies. How do you refute the other hundreds of thousands of verified results?"
He says, "I already did that."
And on and on.
And in the meantime, he still hasn't provided a single scrap of evidence for his flood. And no, Dave, shouting, "It's obvious!" doesn't count as evidence.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I do not have to be able to explain every detail for my theory to be believable ... all I have to do is show (for my own benefit mainly) the HUGE BEAMS in the eye of your theory while also showing several plausible alternatives for my theory to work.
You're right in one respect Dave. You only have to explain all the scientific details if you expect your codswallop to be believable to anyone else besides yourself. Since you haven't been able to begin to deal with the tons of evidence that contradict your mental masturbations, everyone else remains unconvinced. Your cheese stands alone there Davie-poo.
Do keep lying to yourself about your 'victories' here though. It's hugely entertaining, and we're having a ball!!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
A river flowing over hard rock over millions of years does NOT cut an incised meander.
I suppose you have a reference to back this up?
But Tracy, this is the beauty of argument from assertion: you don't need references, or even evidence, to back you up. You merely make a statement. The flood happened. Radiometric dating is based on flawed assumptions. Adam had sex with his sister. The Tyrannosaurs on the ark didn't eat the sheep. The flood involved "lots" of water. God "poofed" the flood into existence. The Grand Canyon sediments hardened to the consistency of rock in less than a year.
See? It's easy.
What is amazing is all of the "adding" to the Bible they have to do to support a foolish literal interpretation. For example, the Bible says the animals that went into the ark were mates, not juveniles. The Flood story also says nothing about earthquakes and mountains forming.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
No Improvius ... the Grand Canyon is literally screaming at you "Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe! Water Catastrophe!" ...
... and you guys are plugging YOUR ears.
I do not have to be able to explain every detail for my theory to be believable ... all I have to do is show (for my own benefit mainly) the HUGE BEAMS in the eye of your theory while also showing several plausible alternatives for my theory to work.
I've been doing this successfully now for several months and I'm having a ball !!!
Thanks for your participation so far :-)
Hee hee... Stings, don't it dave? Well, let's see:
Extra hand-waving - check Continuous ignoring - check Repeated lying about questions "answered already" - check Zero context - double check
...Congrats dave, you haven't lost your touch yet.
And it's great that you're having a ball... A good entertainer has to love his work; otherwise he's no fun anymore, and none of us would want that, right?
Now try to really answer some questions. Come on, your audience is waiting!
Oh, I almost forgot: "Bwahahahahahahahahaha!"
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Since you haven't been able to begin to deal with the tons of evidence that contradict your mental masturbations, everyone else remains unconvinced.
Everyone, that is, except for half the population of the US and a growing % overseas ...
Bwahahahaha .....
But of course they don't matter ...
Only REAL scientists like yourselves matter ...
Oh my ... what will I do now??!! No one at ATBC finds me convincing!! I'm so surprised and shocked and disappointed !!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh my ... what will I do now??!! No one at ATBC finds me convincing!! I'm so surprised and shocked and disappointed !!!
You shouldn't be shocked or suprised that we don't find you convincing, Dave, because you haven't given us anything to be convinced of.
You've merely made a few unsupported assertions, based on ideas you've evidently pulled out of your ass (they're not even consistent with your "inerrant" Bible), without the tiniest scrap of supporting evidence (you've made it pretty clear you don't even understand what evidence is), and then you express a lack of surprise that we would be unconvinced.
Well, at least you're honest about your prospects of convincing us.
And one other thing, Dave: in my experience, the less someone understands of the Theory of Evolution, the less likely one is to believe it's true. Given your abysmal lack of understanding of the Theory of Evolution or any of its supporting evidence, your failure to believe that it's an accurate reflection of reality is only right and proper.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Aaaand finally, after 100+ pages of constant beating, dave has to get back to the very first "argument" he made when he came here... and the one that represents the extent of his argumentative abilities that don't rely on AiG and CRI copypasting.
Say it ain't so, dave... We'd hate to lose your brilliant logic...
Bwahahahahhahaha..... (that was crying this time, btw)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Since you haven't been able to begin to deal with the tons of evidence that contradict your mental masturbations, everyone else remains unconvinced.
Everyone, that is, except for half the population of the US and a growing % overseas ...
Bwahahahaha .....
But of course they don't matter ...
Only REAL scientists like yourselves matter ...
Oh my ... what will I do now??!! No one at ATBC finds me convincing!! I'm so surprised and shocked and disappointed !!!
Yikes. Spooky flameout. AF Dave, are you still showing all of this to your kids?
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Hey Seven Popes ... if you think the Bible is disproven because of the Tyre Prophecy, then you are too far gone to have any hope ... Bon Voyage!
That's not what I said. You know that that's not what I said, and that makes you a Liar. I said that the bible is not inerrant. You know it's not. I proved it. Ezekial dropped the ball when he said tyre would remain bare. It's been inhabited before Ezekial, and is today.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
. . Currently Unanswered Questions from the last 5 "Pages"
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? Include infant mortality and other standard factors, Dave. People **DiD** die back then, didn't they? (4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous/metamorphic base schist,granite & basalt? (obviously , that is not "soft ") (15) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (16) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (17)Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR (18)Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (19)Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (20)Why don't we see disruption of the varves?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
So, Dave: are you now starting to understand how science works? If you're going to make a claim in a scientific forum, you need to provide a couple of things:
1) You need to describe a phenomenon you're trying to explain (in this limited case, we're talking about the Grand Canyon). You pretty much have this part nailed, except for a number of glaring inaccuracies and misapprehensions as to the physical structure of the canyon.
2) You need come up with a hypothesis that accounts for this phenomenon. Your "global flood" accomplishes this, more or less, although it's a pretty extreme hypothesis to explain a relatively mundane phenomenon
3) You need to come up with some observations or experiments—predictions, if you will—that you think will support your hypothesis. You've pretty much skipped over this step. Instead you've made a bunch of wild-ass subsidiary claims that neither support nor falsify your hypothesis (e.g., global supercontinent and breakup thereof, Noah's ark, post-flood ice-age, etc), which have the added disadvantage of requiring further additional proof, which even if you could substantiate them, wouldn't support your claim that the Grand Canyon was caused by a global flood that created the whole thing in less than a year.
4) and the final step in establishing your claim is to provide evidence supporting it, and this is where you have failed most catastrophically. You haven't presented the most miniscule particle of evidence to support your claims of:
1) large underground aqueous reservoirs; 2) a catastrophe that somehow ejected those reservoirs and inundated all landmasses; 3) immense amounts of water (you can't even tell us how much water, or even the crudest estimates of the depth of that water); 4) tremendous amounts of sediment deposited by that water, at rates exceeding 15 feet/day; 5) the existence of a single supercontinent within the last 6,000 years; 6) the subsequent breakup of that continent within historical time (you did claim the Bible was a written eye-witness account of the flood, didn't you?); 7) the subsequent formation of mountain ranges in historical times, including the Alps, Andes, Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and Himalyas; and 8) a subsequent ice age, also during historical times.
6) through 8) are probably your most astonishing claims, Dave, since all three must have happened during historical times (given that all three are post-flood, and you claim that there are written accounts of the flood), and yet there is no record anywhere, in any literate civilization, of any ice age, continental breakup, or mountain range formation. It's hard to imagine that dwellers of the Indian subcontinent, who were certainly literate during the time period in question, would not have noted the formation of an 8,000-meter-high wall of mountains forming in their back yard, don't you think?
Or, maybe, you aren't beginning to see how science works. That would be my guess, given that we've been pounding on your failure to provide evidence for your assertions for going on a hundred pages now. You never seem to have gotten past the stumbling block of providing evidence for your wild-ass claims, and don't even seem to understand what we're talking about when we say you haven't substantiated them. Apparently you think merely stating that something could possibly have happened (even if doing so would require the suspension of natural law, i.e., "magic") is sufficient proof of your claims.
Well, maybe it is with your Sunday School pupils or your fellow parishioners (or the 50% of Americans who have only the haziest understanding of the scientific method and who, if they think of science at all, think of it as a way to get DVD players and cellphones), but it sure isn't here.
So, what's next on your list of unsupported claims, Dave? I think we've beaten your "flood" claims to death with a shovel for long enough. What's next on the menu?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Beginning with the Laramide Orogeny 70 million years ago ( the Fallaron Plate subduction) to Mid Cenozoic 20 million years ago (uneven uplift and slight tilt of the Colorado Plateau region to the southwest ) and continuing down to 5 million years ago the entire Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau were uplifted 4,000 to 6,000 feet. This type of uplift which does not involve deformation and affects a large area is termed epeirogenic uplift. We see this in the Colorado Plateau, Britain, India, Central America, Florida, South Africa and many other regions. King, P. B., 1977, The Evolution of North America: Princeton University Press. Rigby, J. K., 1977, Southern Colorado Plateau: K/H Geology Field Guide Series, Kendal Hunt Pub. Co., Dubuque IA Foos, Annabelle: The Geology of the Colorado Plateau [URL=http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs....ml]http http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/coloradoplateau/photo/hermit.jpg The Hermit Formation is composed of siltstone or mudstone mixed with fine grained sandstone. Hermit Formation fossils include invertebrate tracks and trails, insect impressions including a large dragonfly, and many types of worm burrows. There are also plant fossils in abundance, especially ferns and conifers. All these fossils and sediments paint a picture of a semi-arid region where meandering rivers ran between forested banks. The very top of the Hermit contains narrow desiccation mudcracks up to 20 feet deep. If these cracks had been openly exposed to the weather they would have filled with mud, ***but they are filled with Coconino Sandstone.*** This shows the cracks opened after the Coconino sands blew over the muds. Under the dry sands, the cracks in the Hermit Formation widened and admitted the sifting sand. Note to AirHead: If Water transported the Coconinos, why would there be dessication cracks in the Hermit? Would this be another drying episode in your "Year Long Flood?" How many were there in your model? Do you have any idea? The Hermit Formation is a thick layer of sandy siltstones and silty sandstones that were most likely deposited by stream activity in an otherwise dry coastal-plain environment. Thus, the Supai and Hermit together record a slow sea regression, which left arid, desert landscape behind it. There's not much doubt in geologists' minds about the nature of the Coconino Sandstone: it's a massive layer of lithified sand dunes, deposited in an arid desert environment. The Coconino records a time when the Colorado Plateau region was the southern edge of a vast dune sea, (similar to the modern Rub' al Khali in Saudi Arabia), which reached as far north as Montana. http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/coloradoplateau/lexicon/coconino.htm A basic aspect of geology is that water depth can be roughly estimated by the type of rock being formed: sandstone forms on land (ergs, deserts) or close to shore -- siltstone and mudstone farther out, and deep water is marked by organic limestone. Very deep water produces inorganic limestone. Thus, if you see sandstone, then siltstone atop it, then limestone atop the siltstone, you know that the water was getting deeper as time went on. If the rock sequence is reversed, from limestone to shales/siltstone to sandstone, as with the Supai to Hermit to Coconino, you know the water was getting shallower. Beus, Stanley S., and Michael Morales, Eds. Grand Canyon Geology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990 Blakey, R.C., 1990, Stratigraphy and geologic history of Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks, Mogollon Rim region, central Arizona and vicinity: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 102, no. 9, p. 1189-1217. Billingsley, G.H., 1997, The Permian clastic sedimentary rocks of northwestern Arizona, IN Maldonado, Florian, and Nealey, L.D., eds., Geologic studies in the Basin and Range-Colorado Plateau transition in southeastern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and northwestern Arizona, 1995: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 2153, p. 106-124
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Oh, one more thing ... how come there's no erosion in the top layer of the Hermit? 10 million years, right? Seems like long enough to allow for some pretty big erosion, dontcha think?
Who said there's not? How would you tell if there were? If it's a shallow coastal wetlands/forest?
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Oh, I keep thinking of things ... the Hermit Shale is dated at 280 million years by "index fossils" and the Coconino at 270 my, presumably by the same method. Has anyone dated this radiometrically? Does it agree? ... Bwahahahaha!
How would you radiometrically date the siltstone of the Hermit and the fine, rounded, pitted, frosted Quartz grains of the Coconino?
The difference between you and me, Dave, is that I don't have any problem in answering in detail. None. If there is not detail to be had, fine, I'll say ...much of the geology of the grand canyon is a mess and disputed.
However, you have not answered my questions to any depth at all.
Here's a photo of some spider tracks, showing also the fine-grained nature of the quartz (notice 4 impressions on one side, 4 on the other):
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Here's an experiment you can do, Dave, for the good of "Creation Science" (snort). Let's make spider tracks!
1) Go out and get yourself a big-ass bag of quartz sand. Make sure it's as fine of sand as possible. Grind it up a bit if you have to 2) you could buy or make a nice container for sand to lay in, perfectly flat. You could get all fancy and make a wood one, or just dig out an area in your backyard, say 4 feet wide x4 long x3 deep. make sure it's level. Feel free to include any other nice touches, like laying down mud/siltstone first to imitate the Hermit Formation, and covering the sides with (removable) perforated plastic so your spider doesn't get out so easy 3) Buy a nice tarantula, or find a nice fat spider somewhere. Now, keeping in mind that your flood takes place in one year, let's see if we can make wet sand preserve spider tracks!!!!
Wet the sand, pour it in the test area. Let it sit for a while ( time it!! this is science!! when you figure it's dry enough to resemble your "flood" material, let the spider run around on it. make sure you have nice impressions ( in this experiment, EVERYTHING is "nice"). Okay, now retrieve your spider, remembering that tarantulas have irritating hairs on them and they DO bite sometimes.
Okay, now let the sand dry as long as you want, so long as it's under a year. Here, you might want to try different "sprays" of mineral dusts to see if that helps. TRY LIMESTONE!!!CALCIUM!!!!( no cheating with actual CEMENT, though, Dave!!! GOD is watching you!! )
Now, the real test, Dave. **Wet a bunch MORE sand**(make sure it's REALLY WET, Dave--remember, this is the FLOOD! ), say TWO-THREE FEET of sand...and lay it on the dry spider tracks. Wait again, maybe another year...let's see if we've made FOSSIL SPIDER TRACKS IN A YEAR ..K? MY hypothesis is you're going to get zilch, Dave, but hey, maybe God will answer your prayers and you can be a BIG NAME in creation science!!!! GOOD LUCK!!! (snort)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh and dave? What was all that about radiometric dating and GC? maybe you should expand on that a bit further... *snort*
Oh and btw, as I was looking round the web for more info on Steve Austin (guess why, heh) I found an article of your all-time favorite guy, GLEN MORTON (aka: The One Who Must Never Be Named) where he shows how your beloved Crusaders of the Truth LIE to you:
I was reading posts on this thread from about a month ago, just for some additional belly-laughs, and I came across this post I did back on June 17th:
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In Dave's universe, points that contradict his points simply don't exist. He doesn't hear them. How many times has it been pointed out to him that the evidence for an old earth is derived from multiple, independent, mutually-reinforcing lines of inquiry? What he responded with? A few microscopic grains of zircon, a few crumbs of coal, some wild-ass speculations about a global flood for which he hasn't provided a particle of evidence, some completely unsupported claims that radioactive decay rates were high enough in the past to melt the planet, and some complete craziness about how 4,500 years is plenty of time for a "founder" species of monkey to radiate into hundreds of species of monkeys today.
Wow. Here we are, almost another month later, and Dave still hasn't presented a particle of evidence for his "global flood." Of course, by now it's blindingly obvious that he'll never present any evidence for his flood, because if Google can't find it for him in three weeks, it can't find it for him in three hundred years. Usually, Dave, it's more productive to look for evidence that actually exists.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
GRAND CANYON ROCK FORMATION IDENTIFICATION TEST The two pictures below were taken from different angles in the canyon. Can you identify the name of the formation? What is your explanation for how it formed? How many years did it take to form? What is the composition? Did it form at the bottom of an ocean or was it eolian? How did the diagonal "skirt" at the base form? etc, etc.
AFDAVE'S LAST POST FOR ABOUT 10 DAYS (sniff, sniff) I know this comes as a supreme disappointment to all of you AFDAVE Fans, but I'm afraid that unless I figure out how to post from Mexico, it will in fact become a sad reality. My problems are 1) I don't know if I will have access to a computer (we're doing some remote work) and 2) even if I did have access, I've never been able to post from anywhere except my desktop computer - I guess the system checks your IP address or something ... maybe since you guys are REAL scientists, you could tell me how to post remotely :-) (but then you probably won't tell me even if you know because then you wouldn't get a much needed break from defending yourselves from all the heavy bombardment you've been receiving for the last several months)
Well, in any case, I'm taking all my YEC books with me and will return on the 16th armed with even more bombs to throw at you ...
BTW ... did you know they have lots of YEC books in Spanish now? We're taking over the world one country at a time!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDAVE'S LAST POST FOR ABOUT 10 DAYS (sniff, sniff) I know this comes as a supreme disappointment to all of you AFDAVE Fans, but I'm afraid that unless I figure out how to post from Mexico, it will in fact become a sad reality. My problems are 1) I don't know if I will have access to a computer (we're doing some remote work) and 2) even if I did have access, I've never been able to post from anywhere except my desktop computer - I guess the system checks your IP address or something ... maybe since you guys are REAL scientists, you could tell me how to post remotely :-) (but then you probably won't tell me even if you know because then you wouldn't get a much needed break from defending yourselves from all the heavy bombardment you've been receiving for the last several months)
OK, have a safe trip. Your ass-whupping will resume when you return
- Occam
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
My problems are 1) I don't know if I will have access to a computer (we're doing some remote work) and 2) even if I did have access, I've never been able to post from anywhere except my desktop computer - I guess the system checks your IP address or something ... maybe since you guys are REAL scientists, you could tell me how to post remotely :-)
Hmm…I've posted to this site using at least three different computers (including a laptop) on at least three different subnets and at least four different IP addresses, so I don't think that's your problem. Could be a matter of cookies.
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(but then you probably won't tell me even if you know because then you wouldn't get a much needed break from defending yourselves from all the heavy bombardment you've been receiving for the last several months)
You're kidding, right, Dave? Actually, I'm sure you're not. But it looks like you've pretty much run out of ammunition (which has mostly amounted to sopping-wet rolls of toilet paper anyway), but believe me, I haven't even started. I can keep tossing bombs into the heart of your "hypotheses" from now 'til doomsday. As I said before, Dave, I'll never run out of evidence that you're wrong.
In the meantime, have a safe trip, and try not to annoy the natives too much with your wacky theories…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Shame he isn't taking real textbooks along. In 10 days he could learn something. Actually, scratch that. If AFDave has demonstrated one thing here, it's that he can't learn anything.
Are you kidding? The natives will all be converted to YECism and I have TONS more ammo for you guys when I get back ...
Also, I'm not done with the Coconino Sandstone ... I'm going to get a few more miles out of that topic ...
But I am very curious to hear Deadman's analysis of the formation in today's post ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The barrage of laughs accompanying your posts is all I've noticed, and while it causes me to occasionally snort out my coffee in amusement, that's no real danger.
The layer looks like the Moenkopi (Triassic) sand and silt, near the top of the GC sequences. You also find it in Zion National park, overlain by the Chinle, Wingate, and Kayenta, etc. The problem is at least ten thousand feet of younger rocks were deposited above the Kaibab in the Mesozoic, and you find the differentially-eroded remnants of these layers scattered around. You might want to look at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/paleogeogwus.html "Paleogeography of the Southwestern US" IN the meantime, here's a pretty picture of the geologic reconstruction of the coconino erg:
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Are you kidding? The natives will all be converted to YECism and I have TONS more ammo for you guys when I get back ...
What do you mean, "tons more ammo," Dave? You haven't managed to get off a single round yet. Yeah, a few blanks here and there, but mainly a lot of noise and much ado about nothing.
So you've got ten days to try to come up with answers to my questions, Dave. The smart money says you can't come up with an answer to even one of them.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have an hypothesis about what makes AFDave seem so obviously dumber than his creationist pals. First off, he's a YEC. Even some ID supporters are embarrassed by their YEC peers. Most importantly, he has a relentlessly cheery tone. Many ID supporters do not. Davetard, Donald M, Dembksi, Larry, these guys are very clearly bitter and upset. We evolutionists ascribe this anger and bitterness to an awareness on the part of the creationist to how harrassed and bedeviled they are by the evidence and by scientists. In doing so, we credit them with an awareness of the situation. When AFDave comes along and lacks this bad attitude, we say, 'Wow, this guy doesn't even know enough, to know how boned he is'.
'Wow, this guy doesn't even know enough, to know how boned he is'.
Man, even the Black Knight seemed to be kind of, you know, cranky. There's something a little creepy about a guy like AFDave, lying there in a pool of his own blood, entrails spilling onto the ground, with a grin on his face saying, "Wow! YeeHAH! I'm having a blast beating you guys up!"
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since dave will be away on vacation I thought I'd take a crack at the open question list:
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Currently Unanswered Questions from the last 5 "Pages"
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong?
Have you ever been to Catal Huyuk? Are there even trees around Catal Huyuk? Even if their are you weren't there when they were planted, this proves nothing.
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(2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark?
Noah was a drunk, and Ham apparently thinks drunk people are funny, so both seem like likely candidated, but it's apparent from the bible that women are the root of evil, so my theory is it was one of the wives. Given that Ham ends up being cursed by god i'm going to go with Ham's wife as the likely culprit.
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(3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? Include infant mortality and other standard factors, Dave. People **DiD** die back then, didn't they?
If we assume roughly 20 years between generations, and a flood date 4500 years ago we end up with 225 generations to go from 4 mated pairs to 6 billion people (we'll ignore the nephillim for now, since I don't count half-angels as people). If we take the 225th root of 6 billion we end up with 1.10524472, which means...something important I'm sure. If we assume 25% of those born don't live long enough to spawn, and each pair has 4 children born (or attempted to be born), then each generation increases the population by 50%. 1.5 ^ 225 = 4.17381588 × 10^39. Throw in some war, famine, and pestilence and 6 billion sounds about right.
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(4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs?
According to wikipedia Mt. Ararat is 5,137 meters above sea level, and the bible says it was covered in water. The mean radius of the earth is 6,372,797 meters. So the volume of water needed to cover the mountain should be (4/3 * pi * (6,372,797+5,137)^3) - (4/3 * pi * 6,372,797^3). This is 2.62375 x 10^18 cubic meters of water.
The floodgates of heaven were opened as well as the springs of the deep. The single city of New Jerusalem in heaven is 2.7 billion cubic miles in size, so I would guess there's more water in heaven than under the earth, so this whole line of questioning is moot.
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(5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year"
LOL
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(6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters?
Earthquakes and volcanoes moved everything around.
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(7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go?
Why not? The sediment probably came from where it always comes....somewhere else.
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(8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to?
The oceans, before that they were empty as it didn't rain before the flood (which is why there were no rainbows).
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(9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done.
I don't think that's even english, you're just making stuff up now.
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(10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized?
Because God likes many colors.
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(11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them?
A miracle! More proof of God's tremendous power.
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(12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it?
Probably alot of tornadoes and hurricanes as well, the layers got spread out all over the place.
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(13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous/metamorphic base schist,granite & basalt? (obviously , that is not "soft ")
Uh....Dave....little help here.....
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(15) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans?
What happened to question 14?
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(16) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out?
Everyone likes dinosaurs. Plus there had to be something for all the single pair of animals to eat otherwise all the good ones that God really loved would have starved. I'm sure Noah was nice and chopped up some of the larger dinosaurs for things like lions that wouldn't really have had a chance of taking down a t-rex.
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(17)Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR
This is really just a rephrasing of question 15. Already answered.
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(18)Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores?
More lies, how do these mythical deep-sea cores tell us anything about tsunamis.
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(19)Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores?
Evidence of heat in the ice cores? Heat...in ice cores....you're obviously smoking crack if you think you can learn anything about carbon dioxide or heat from ice.
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(20)Why don't we see disruption of the varves?
What the #### is a varve? Well if I don't understand something it obviously isn't very good evidence.
Having thus refruted your pathetic list of questions I expect all of y'all to convert and come to church on sunday (and I mean a christian church, not one of those that worship weird gods with 6 arms and stuff).
Diogenes, you are hereby awarded the Distinguished Medal of Somethingorother, for work in the field of creationist impersonation. You totally nailed it with that pseudoAFDave comment.
Hey, does anyone still have dave's pic? It's down for some reason, and I can't remember exactly, but I think that the two angles looked different somehow. Were they actually from the same formation?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
By my brief reading, AFDave scores on 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, and 23.
Also 3, 5, 11, 13 ("one half of a lousy percent?"), 14 (with 11, the whole 'flud' argument), 15 ("did you buy the books already?"), 24, 25 and 26 (oh I know he doesn't say it, but boy does he think it... remember that gross "truck jumping the lane and crashing your skull" attempt of a 'joke'?)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Hey DM, since you seem to be the most knowledgeable here on Native American anthropology - what's the latest inside dope on Kennewick man?
Last I read, in 2004 the scientific community was granted the legal right to study the remains. I see where the East Benton County Museum in Kennewick, Wash., opened a Kennewick Man exhibit in Jan. of this year.
Are any of the Northwest tribe still fighting legal battles, or (hopefully) was a good compromise reached for all? Has anyone done a facial reconstruction of the skull? Any further results from any DNA testing?
Thanks for any info you might have.
- OA
ETA: Scratch the facial reconstruction question. I just found the Tom McClelland site here. Cool stuff!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The DNA...well, it was agreed that Yale, UC Davis and Michigan would try to see if they could get any DNA from the bones, but no samples were found that could be amplified or otherwise analyzed. http://www.cr.nps.gov/archeology/kennewick/tuross_kolman.htm
The remains are still at the Burke Museum in Washington, the Umatilla still want to press for reburial, but they're not exactly rich -- so the 4 tribes involved declined a SCOTUS appeal.... and so far, I don't think anyone's tried to get DNA from the dental material. It's as bad as the Floresensis stuff
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"Much study has been devoted to the subject of the mechanics of meandering rivers, since it inbolbes engineering problems of considerable importance. In particular, extensive model tests have demonstrated that the phenomenon of meandering is associated only with non-resistant banks." [***** Did you hear that? NON-RESISTANT BANKS *****] (Joseph F. Friedkin: [i]"A Laboratory Study of the Meanderings of Alluvial Rivers," Vicksburg, U.S. Waterways Experiment Station, Mississippi River Commission, 1945.) (Quoted in TGF, p.154)
Bottom line here: DEEP CUT MEANDERS = SOFT RIVER BEDS = GLOBAL FLOOD RUNOFF. You simply don't get this type of incised meanders in solid rock eroded over millions of years. Sorry! Long Agers lose!
"Meanders", Davie-doodles. Not "incised meanders". Whiffed agin. Deep cut meanders with steep sides = erosion of hard rock = long age.
You asked me about incised meanders IN ROCK and I gave you a study about incised meanders IN SOFT MUD.
Here's the deal ... I assumed (wrongly) that you guys understand that the Grand Canyon WAS SOFT MUD during the Flood Period ... silly me ... of course you don't understand that ... you don't believe the Flood happened.
OK, so let's try this again ...
1) Creationist theory says that the sedimentary layers of the Canyon were formed during the Inundation Phase of the Flood. 2) The canyons were cut during the Receding Phase of the Flood, upon breakage of natural dams and the subsequent release of large volumes of water 3) The canyons were cut very rapidly because the sediments were still soft
Nope, Davie-pie. The walls are too steep. Erosion of soft rock yields approximately 45 degree wals. Erosion of hard rock yields 80-90 degree walls. The Grand Canyon walls are 80-90 degrees. The Grand Canyon and its meanders were not cut in soft sediments
1) Lyell (a lawyer) comes up with Uniformitarianism 2) All the geologists buy into it ... God only knows why! 3) Now all the geologists are jumping the Uniformitarian ship 4) They have to come up with another paradigm, but they CANNOT BEAR THE THOUGHT of being associated with those "YEC Fundies" 5) So they come up with "Catastrophism" and "Episodicity" being very careful to make sure they say that they think there were MANY events like this, so as not to sound like Bible Thumpers. 6) Uniformitarianism has been rejected just as Creos predicted 7) What makes you think the MULTIPLE EVENTS will not also be rejected ??
As a matter of fact, uniformitarianism as defined by Lyell is no longer practiced by geologists and other scientists and, in reality, ***not*** what is being taught in textbooks. Uniformitarianism, as defined by Lyell, consists of four principles:
1. uniformity of law
2. uniformity of process (actualism)
3. uniformity of rate (gradualism)
4. uniformity of state (steady-statism)
Darwin's theory of evolution directly contradicts Charles Lyell's principle 4. In the Tenth edition of his "Principles" in 1866, Lyell began to waver in his support of principle number 4 and by 1872, in the 11th edition of "Principles", Lyell had completely abandoned it. Thus, by 1872, Lyell had ceased to be a strict " uniformitarianist" as he originally defined it and conceded that uniformitarianism, as originally defined by all 4 principles wasn't a workable concept.
Since then, the major fight has been over whether principle number 3, "uniformity of rate" (gradualism), as a valid principle. This discussion was and continues to be muddied by many people, including geologists, who have repeatedly confuse gradualism with uniformitarianism as originally defined by Lyell and also confuse actualism with gradualism. Episodic geologic processes, such as meteorite impacts, eruptions of flood basalts, periods of rapid sea floor spreading as during the Cretaceous, and so forth have shown principle of gradualism to be invalid. In fact, the recognition of mass extinctions within the geologic record refuted the application of principle no. 3, gradualism, to evolutionary processes, even before Lyell died. Charles Darwin didn't accept uniformitarianism, as strictly defined by Lyell, because Darwin disputed both uniformity of rate (no. 3) and uniformity of state (no. 4) as it applied to evolution. At this point in time, the vast majority of geologists only accept 1.) uniformity of law and 2.) uniformity of process (actualism) out of Lyell's four original principles of uniformitarianism. Given that conventional geologists have currently abandoned half of the principles of uniformitarianism as propose by Lyell, it is unscientific to claim that conventional geologists of being dogmatic supporters of uniformitarianism as originally defined by Lyell. (A fun book on this topic to read is "Catastrophism" by Richard Huggett.)
Trust half a D*** to come up with a 130 year old discredited piece of wishful thinking.
Now 1/2 a D makes the plainly false rhetorical and therefore an an appeal to the truly stupid, claim by Biblical literalistists that the genealogy of the "One true word of FOG" proves (in a totally scienti-fickle sense u understand) that the age of DOF's world is around 6000 somethings, give or take, but if D divided by 2 actually did a genealogy on every human on DOG's green rock he would find that the time line traces back to well over a 100,000 years otherwise Kane and Able would have to have had something like 500,000 children each.
Now I know in fractional D's world that is not an impossibility, but everyone should know that even though each man could theoretically impregnate every single women on earth with each ejaculation the reality is there are not enough boxes of chocolate and bottles of cheap wine that one man could accumulate in his short pre Christian life time to make that a certainty.
On the other hand (no pun intended..oh OK pun intended) if Kane was a Gene Simmonds look alike and he had a rock band and didn't wear condoms he may have been able to get it up, with a respectable frequency, producing a vast Asiatic and African offspring, but the returned rings and letters by village scribes may have shortened his romantic and thus procreatic career.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Trust half a D*** to come up with a 130 year old discredited piece of wishful thinking.
Now 1/2 a D makes the plainly false rhetorical and therefore an an appeal to the truly stupid, claim by Biblical literalistists that the genealogy of the "One true word of FOG" proves (in a totally scienti-fickle sense u understand) that the age of DOF's world is around 6000 somethings, give or take, but if D divided by 2 actually did a genealogy on every human on DOG's green rock he would find that the time line traces back to well over a 100,000 years otherwise Kane and Able would have to have had something like 500,000 children each.
Now I know in fractional D's world that is not an impossibility, but everyone should know that even though each man could theoretically impregnate every single women on earth with each ejaculation the reality is there are not enough boxes of chocolate and bottles of cheap wine that one man could accumulate in his short pre Christian life time to make that a certainty.
On the other hand (no pun intended..oh OK pun intended) if Kane was a Gene Simmonds look alike and he had a rock band and didn't wear condoms he may have been able to get it up, with a respectable frequency, producing a vast Asiatic and African offspring, but the returned rings and letters by village scribes may have shortened his romantic and thus procreatic career.
<OA slips into loony AFDave mode>
Ha! Just look at Wilt Chamberlain. He claims to have slept with over 10,000 women in his day, and he didn't even live to be 900 years old like many of the patriarchs! How many chicks do you think those old guys could have scored in 900 years?!?! Therefore it would be possible for my Biblical population model to be correct!! You Evos can't disprove it, so it must be true!!
</loony AFDave mode>
Wow, it hurts to type stupidity like that. Wonder how Davie manages?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Obviously these animals are only a couple thousand years old rather than the 10-20 million years that the Atheist Liberal Scientists say they are, but I wonder whether the fanged kangaroos were on Noah's ark or whether they drowned in the Flood.
Oh Dave, come back from vacation and clear it all up for us!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
He's got the time and Lordee knows he needs wounding.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Can't wait till he gets back so I can ask him if he visited any of the core drill locations for investigation of the Chicxulub crater or any of the many K/T layer research sites.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Can't wait till he gets back so I can ask him if he visited any of the core drill locations for investigation of the Chicxulub crater or any of the many K/T layer research sites.
Mexico? Ugh, probably down in Chiapas or Oaxaca trying to strongarm the Indians into converting from being Catholics to being Southern Baptists. Poor guys.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
GRAND CANYON ROCK FORMATION IDENTIFICATION TEST The two pictures below were taken from different angles in the canyon. Can you identify the name of the formation? What is your explanation for how it formed? How many years, what the composition is, did it form at the bottom of an ocean, etc.
Not too many people had comment on this rock formation while I was gone and I'm very interested in finding out your analysis of it.
CLASSIC QUOTES WORTH NOTING Welles, Samuel Paul, “Fossils,” World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (1978), p. 364. Welles was Research Associate, Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley.
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“Scientists determine when fossils were formed by finding out the age of the rocks in which they lie.”
[NOTE: I have the 1993 version of World Book and it says essentially the same thing but adds the method for dating ... "Paleontologists determine how old a fossil is by measuring the radioactive isotopes in the rocks that contain the fossil."]
Welles, Samuel Paul, “Paleontology,” World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 15 (1978), p. 85.
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“Paleontology (the study of fossils) is important in the study of geology. The age of rocks may be determined by the fossils found in them.”
[NOTE: My 1993 version of World Book says exactly the same thing.]
OK, guys ... two HUGE things to note here ...
1) First, we have Circular Reasoning ... i.e. Fossil Age = Age of Rock in the "Fossil" article, and Age of Rock = Age of Fossil in the "Paleontology" article.
2) I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically. What's up with that?
*********************************
Q & A I have noted many of the questions from Deadman, JonF and others from the last few pages and will address them when I have more time on Monday ... I just got back from Mexico last night and I don't have long this morning ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Walt Brown received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow. He has taught college courses in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Brown is a retired full colonel (Air Force), West Point graduate, and former Army ranger and paratrooper. Assignments during his 21 years in the military included: Director of Benet Research, Development, and Engineering Laboratories in Albany, New York; tenured associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College. For much of his life, Walt Brown was an evolutionist, but after many years of study, he became convinced of the scientific validity of creation and a global flood. Since retiring from the military in 1980, Dr. Brown has been the Director of the Center for Scientific Creation and has worked full time in research, writing, and speaking on origins.
So now you have an overview of what I believed occurred during the Flood ...
Now our discussion of the Grand Canyon and other phenomena will make more sense within this framework ...
More on Tuesday (I'm gone again Monday) ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Also Known as: Circular Reasoning, Reasoning in a Circle, Petitio Principii.
Description of Begging the Question Begging the Question is a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. This sort of "reasoning" typically has the following form.
Premises in which the truth of the conclusion is claimed or the truth of the conclusion is assumed (either directly or indirectly). Claim C (the conclusion) is true. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because simply assuming that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly) in the premises does not constitute evidence for that conclusion. Obviously, simply assuming a claim is true does not serve as evidence for that claim. This is especially clear in particularly blatant cases: "X is true. The evidence for this claim is that X is true."
Some cases of question begging are fairly blatant, while others can be extremely subtle.
Examples of Begging the Question
Bill: "God must exist." Jill: "How do you know." Bill: "Because the Bible says so." Jill: "Why should I believe the Bible?" Bill: "Because the Bible was written by God."
You seem to forget d/2 the geological record is one of the best studied areas of science due to the HUGE body of data collected by ...wait for it...Fossil Fuel companies, through drill cores and seismic exploration. That is what they call evidence which proves the model for the age of the earth and guess what R1d/2? it's a lot older than what some god crazy yanks think it is.
You will note they do not pay for:
FAKES, CHARLETONS, LIARS, HUCKSTERS, SNAKE OIL SALESMEN, CON ARTISTS, DIVINERS, MIND READERS, NEW AGE DINGBATS, and UNEDUCATED RUBES.
oh
and "FLUD" pseudo science trash.
Try driving around if they did make the mistake of using stupid colour diagrams designed to separte fools (That's you AFDim Bulb) from their money. In fact they wouldn't even get that far.
Any company that tried would be hauled up by their shareholders and the stockexchange for fraud quicker than you could say "Enron".
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Oh and by the way diminutive D, if your suposition is right why do we need pastors?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
1) First, we have Circular Reasoning ... i.e. Fossil Age = Age of Rock in the "Fossil" article, and Age of Rock = Age of Fossil in the "Paleontology" article.
2) I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically. What's up with that?[/b]
Circular reasoning ---?-?bwahahahahahahahahaha ... I just love it when Fundies open their mouths and put their foot in it.
Bill: "God must exist." Jill: "How do you know." Bill: "Because the Bible says so." Jill: "Why should I believe the Bible?" Bill: "Because the Bible was written by God."
You WOULD HAVE had me, K.E, if this was my line of reasoning ...
BUT ...
It's NOT ... bwahahahaha ...
Go read the 100+ pages on this thread and you will see that it is not ... Now ... are you going to dodge my question about YOUR circular reasoning with Fossils?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFD the evidence is in, your pathetic colour chart put out by a crank is NOT EVIDENCE.
How are fossils created AFD?
or were they 'put there' (giggle)
And why the appeal to false logic all of a sudden?
A sense of guilt, perhaps?
You do not even know what circular reasoning is, you are playing beyond your logical capabilities.
It would be much safer to stick to crackpot pseudo science and give up trying to be all intellectual and such, that way you won't get hurt.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I KNEW THERE HAD TO BE SOMEBODY OUT THERE WHO HAD A NICE FLOOD MODEL ...
HERE HE IS -- DR. WALT BROWN
Incredible as it may seem, Davie-diddles, Waltie Brown has less credibility than you, only 'cause he's been denying the truth for much longer. His calculations of the temperature and velocity of the "fountains of the deep" are inexcusably and trivially fallacious, given his educational background.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFD you quiet plainly do not understand that inexcusable means professional misconduct and fallacious means deliberately lying.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Well AFDave, looks like you made it back from Mexico just as dumb and evasive as ever. You are probably hoping we’d forget all the questions you left unanswered, like ‘how did a continent-wrenching global flood manage to sort strata of so many different materials into so many distinct layers?’ – but we won’t. You’ll still be pounded with questions about the details of your claims, and you’ll still look like an idiot trying to tap-dance and avoid answering.
Since you insist on remaining a scientifically illiterate goober, expecting you to answer technical scientific questions is like expecting differential equations from a banana slug. That being the case, I’ve decide to try a different approach. You claim to be an astute businessman, right? I’ve got a business question for you.
Oil and Gas companies hire thousands of professional geologists all over the world to help in locating new deposits. There are many examples of YEC geologists who converted to OEC after actually working in the field and seeing the evidence, a la Glenn Morton (the ex-YEC you love to hate). But there aren’t any professional geologists anywhere who started off OEC but became YEC after working in the field. Without exception, every single Oil and Gas exploration company used the Old Earth model to help know where to search.
There are thousands of successful laboratories all over the world that offer radiometric dating as a professional service. Without exception, every single radiometric dating lab uses the physics that support the Old Earth model.
My latest questions for you are –
Why are there so many profitable companies that use the Old Earth paradigm as the basis for a successful business case?
Why is there not a single company anywhere in the world that uses your 6000 year old Young Earth paradigm as the basis for a business case?
If the YE model is the ‘truth’ and is so superior to the OE model, why has no YEC figured out a way to make money from it? Why aren’t you, the super-duper businessman, making money from it? Looks like you would have no competition IF you could figure out a good business case. AFAICT, the only way to make money from YE is to sell pseudo-scientific books and videos to boobs like yourself who are desperate to have their delusions reinforced.
Show me the YEC business case Dave.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Did anybody here see that report quietly released by the government a few days ago, which said that conservative christian private school students are behind public school students in math?
Did anybody here see that report quietly released by the government a few days ago, which said that conservative christian private school students are behind public school students in math?
The current study found that self-described conservative Christian schools, the fastest-growing sector of private schools, fared poorest, with their students falling as much as one year behind their counterparts in public schools, once socioeconomic factors like income, ethnicity and access to books and computers at home were considered.
Study Finds Worst Performance in Conservative Christian Schools
The federal Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or better than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private-school children did better.
The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools in 2003, also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools when it came to eighth-grade math.
The study, carrying the imprimatur of the National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Education Department, was contracted to the Educational Testing Service and delivered to the department last year.
It went through a lengthy peer review and includes an extended section of caveats about its limitations, calling such a comparison of public and private schools "of modest utility."
Its release, on a summer Friday, was made without a news conference or comment from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
I notice you have no substantive comment. Walt's failure to apply the incredibly well-known thermodynamic properties of water is indeed inexcusable (nobody gets any kind of ME degree from MIT without passing thermo) and trivially fallacious. No hilarity involved. The calculations are at http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/hydro.html.
Walt Brown received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
So now you have an overview of what I believed occurred during the Flood ...
First of all, what is it with engineers and YEC? Has it ever occurred to you to wonder, Dave, why so many engineers believe in creationism and so few biologists, geologists, paleontologists, and astronomers do? Could it be that the area of study in engineering just doesn't qualify you to have an opinion? Could that be it?
Anyway.
Let's have a look at this flood "model." Why is it completely bogus, and why does it have essentially nothing to do with science? Well, let's see. "Comets, asteroids, and meteoroids launched." Does Brown, or anyone else, have any evidence of multiple large comet, asteroid, etc. impact craters within the last 5,000 years? No. Why? Because there weren't any, Dave. Brown just dreams up a bunch of impacts, for which he has not the teeniest scrap of evidence, why? Because he wants to believe.
Next: mammoths frozen. In the past 5,000 years? No. But let's give the guy credit and say that yes, there have been a few frosty mammoths discovered, probably frozen within the last 20,000 years. Do these mammoth TV dinners in any way support Brown's flood model? Of course not. They certainly support the notion of an ice age within the past 20,000 years, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with any global flood. Strike two, Dr. Brown.
"Fountains of the great deep." Where, exactly, were these fountains located, Mr. Brown? How big were they? How deep were they? What caused them to, well, whatever it is they supposedly did? Was it those mythical, ephemeral, ethereal comet strikes? What did they accomplish? How much water was involved? Did those fountains have multi-colored lights at night, or did they go for the more classy white-light look?
Strike three, Dr. Brown. If this were baseball, you'd be headed for the dugout. But it isn't, so let's continue.
"continental shelves and slopes form." Oh, really? And where's your evidence for that, Dr. Brown? What method did you use to determine the time of their formation? Did you use, perchance, radiometric dating? Or did you just make it up completely out of your head? Because you sure don't have any evidence for their formation during historical time.
We've already beaten the "sediments and fossils sorted and layered by liquefaction" to death half a dozen times over, so I'll just put another checkmark in the "Wrong!" column, along with the "most fossils and limestone form."
Same with coal, oil, and limestone. But again, Dr. Brown, what actual evidence do you have supporting such a young date for these formations? Would you care to share that evidence with the rest of us? What's that? You don't actually have any such evidence? Well, imagine my shock and surprise.
"Compression event." Gee, I hate to sound repetitive, but do you have any actual evidence that this "event" ever happened? Would you care to divulge your proposed mechanism for this "event"? Did God just squeeze really hard on the edges of the continents? Are the Appalachians and the Himalayas the same age? Oh, really, Dr. Brown. And how did you determine that age? By consulting your Bible?
I could keep going, Dave, but I think by now you should be able to see where I'm headed. Or maybe you can't, so I'll spell it out for you: what actual "evidence" does Dr. Brown have to support a single, solitary event set out in his "model"? It's really getting tiresome seeing you post these wild-ass, utterly unsupported claims, and then wait, and wait, and wait some more, and ask, beg, cajole, and beg some more for the itsiest, bitsiest little scrap of evidence supporting any of it. And then you claim you've already presented your evidence! We ask you to point to us where in your post you've presented the evidence, and you change the subject.
Quote
Now our discussion of the Grand Canyon and other phenomena will make more sense within this framework ...
No, Dave. It doesn't even make the tiniest bit more sense. Dr. Brown's model, that you seem so taken with, is utter, complete, and total hogwash, without the merest scrap of evidence to support it. He may as well have (and probably did) make the whole thing up out of his head without doing a single bit of research let alone actually going out and doing any field work. It doesn't look like he even cracked a geology text to make sure he even knew what the standard geological model claimed, before he tried to "refute" it.
In short, Dave, the guy's a bozo. I don't care what kind of degree he has in engineering; he clearly knows exactly nothing about geology, paleontology, or any relevant field. It looks to me like his level of knowledge on the subject approximates Ann Coulter's, and I guess on some level that's something of an accomplishment.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Whoa! Did I read that right? One day of continental drift? VROOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Yup. And no consideration of the heat released by inefficiency in the magical power source that set 'em moving, nor the heat released by the whatever magic stopped 'em. Proof that Waltie's one of a very few dishonest morons to have walked the infinite corridor. It's incredible that he graduated.
Well dave, I had this to say about your pics on July 8:
Quote
Hey, does anyone still have dave's pic? It's down for some reason, and I can't remember exactly, but I think that the two angles looked different somehow. Were they actually from the same formation?
But I still can't see your pictures anymore, so I can't be sure. Anyway.
Also, I hope you had a relaxing trip- you needed it. did you convert any natives to YECism, as you hoped?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically. What's up with that?
AirHead, you're an adult, allegedly. Your claim above implies I said you couldn't date *any* sedimentary layers. The context of my statement was on the Coconino quartz and the Hermit mudstones/shale. You asked on p.106 of this thread:
Quote
the Hermit Shale is dated at 280 million years by "index fossils" and the Coconino at 270 my, presumably by the same method. Has anyone dated this radiometrically? Does it agree? ... Bwahahahaha!
And I responded by asking (p.107) you how you would radiometrically date the Hermit and Coconino layers : " How would you radiometrically date the siltstone of the Hermit and the fine, rounded, pitted, frosted Quartz grains of the Coconino?" If a layer of shale/mudstone contains ilite, or bentonite or other minerals, it's possible to date it. If it has feldspars, great. I specifically asked YOU how you would date the layers mentioned, idiot---I didn't say you could *never* date sediments. Get your lies straight.
Oh and as to Walt Brown's nonsense. On p. 108, you say:
Quote
I KNEW THERE HAD TO BE SOMEBODY OUT THERE WHO HAD A NICE FLOOD MODEL ...HERE HE IS -- DR. WALT BROWN
THEN you go on to say... "So now you have an overview of what I believed occurred during the Flood "
So, Dave...you didn't know about Walt Brown, but you had a general belief that the flood *must* have occurred, so as soon as you find his crap, it is now "what you believe?" In other words, you leap on a crappy theory merely because it coincides with your presuppositions ...WITHOUT SEEING IF THE MODEL IS VALID?!?!?! And you *call* yourself "skeptical" and "scientific?"
You're older than I am, AirHead, but you're a joke in terms of any kind of emotional or cognitive maturity.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Circular reasoning ---?-?bwahahahahahahahahaha ... I just love it when Fundies open their mouths and put their foot in it.
Bill: "God must exist." Jill: "How do you know." Bill: "Because the Bible says so." Jill: "Why should I believe the Bible?" Bill: "Because the Bible was written by God."
You WOULD HAVE had me, K.E, if this was my line of reasoning ...
BUT ...
It's NOT ... bwahahahaha ...
Go read the 100+ pages on this thread and you will see that it is not ... Now ... are you going to dodge my question about YOUR circular reasoning with Fossils?
Actually, Dave, he's pretty accurate about your line of reasoning. You methodology for testing biblical accuracy consists of discarding data which disagrees with the bible. A more detailed model would go something like this:
dave: The Bible is scientifically accurate. k.e.: How do you know? dave: All reliable data supports it. k.e.: How do you determine if the data is reliable? dave: I compare it to what the Bible says.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Hello Dave, If your reading list is not already a bit overwhelming, have a look at the thread titled Creationism and Finding Oil from the ARN discussion board. I anticipate you will find that the thread addresses many of the points you are likely to raise in support of your flood geology model and presages many of the objections you are likely to encounter here.
Thought I'd answer a few questions. Not that Davie's gonna pay any attention, but others may be interested.
Quote (afdave @ July 16 2006,07:16)
1) First, we have Circular Reasoning ... i.e. Fossil Age = Age of Rock in the "Fossil" article, and Age of Rock = Age of Fossil in the "Paleontology" article.
This is a common canard, and is totally false. Relative dates of many rocks were worked out from fossils and stratigraphy long before radioactivity was discovered. The relationships discovered in that effort are still useful and used, e.g. in exploring potential new oilfields.
The discovery of radioactivity led to the ability to derive absolute dates for many formations for which we only had relative dates before, and to date many formations for which relative dates could not be derived.
The date of a formation can often be derived in two ways, radiometrically or from stratigraphy or index fossils. These are independent determinations. They often agree. When they do not agree, scientists investigate until they figure out the source of the disagreement.
2) I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically. What's up with that?
Yes and no.
Most sedimentary layers cannot be dated radiometrically today, but stay tuned. Typical sedimentary layers consist of accretions of the remains of rocks that are much older than the sedimentary formation. If you blindly take a large chunk of sedimentary rock and date it, you are going to get an age that is pretty close to the average age of the rocks (weighted by percentage composition) that eroded to form the sediment which then lithified to form the sedimentary rock. IOW, not a particularly useful or meaningful result.
However, advances have been made in reducing sample size (SHRIMP systems regularly sample a disk about 10 micrometers diameter and 1 micrometer thick: ) and in studying the materials that form between grains when the rock lithifies. If we can reliably date the material that formed between grains when the rock became rock, we can date the rock. One very promising such material is xenotime, which can be dated by U-PB concordia-discordia analysis in SHRIMP instrumentation. See SHRIMP Uranium-Lead Dating of Diagenetic Xenotime in Siliciclastic Sedimentary Rocks (requires free subscription, or see BugMeNot).
There are other techniques of dating sedimentary rocks, such as K-Ar dating of glauconite (which forms as part ot the "cement" in some environments) and fission track dating of any of several other minerals found in the "cement" such as apatite. These are difficult to apply to tiny samples and are constrained by some other technical issues, and are not widely used.
This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist." Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist." Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool.
Read it from end to end. Brilliant, hilarious and very, very frightening
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
Because I was bored, I actually attempted to read through all of the YEC Walt Brown's Creationscience web site, the one that AllFoolDave is now championing
I knew a bit about Brown and his hydroplate theory from before, and I'd read about his bogus debate "challenge" that he keeps running from (a la Hovind). What I didn't realize is just how BATSHIT INSANE that old reefer fiend is!
Reading through page after page of his "make it up as you go, no evidence required" fantasy almost shorted out my brain. Got an issue with plate tectonics? No problem - Walt makes the continents accelerate from 0 to 100 MPH for a day, then have them come to a screeching halt without dissipating any heat energy that would have vaporized Noah, or creating giant tsunamis that would have pulverized a 450' wooden boat. Frozen mammoths? No problem - Walt makes the superheated steam from the 'fountains of the deep' shoot into space and freeze into ice, which then falls as snow and deep freezes the wooly beasties.
L. Ron Hubbard has nothing on this tard when it comes to poorly written science fiction. My jaw was getting sore from falling open and hitting the keyboard.
(Shakes head and laughs heartily)
all I can say is ...wow, just...wow.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
GRAND CANYON ROCK FORMATION IDENTIFICATION TEST The two pictures below were taken from different angles in the canyon. Can you identify the name of the formation? What is your explanation for how it formed? How many years, what the composition is, did it form at the bottom of an ocean, etc.
There was only one person who had any comment ...
Deadman ...
Quote
The layer looks like the Moenkopi (Triassic) sand and silt, near the top of the GC sequences. You also find it in Zion National park, overlain by the Chinle, Wingate, and Kayenta, etc. The problem is at least ten thousand feet of younger rocks were deposited above the Kaibab in the Mesozoic, and you find the differentially-eroded remnants of these layers scattered around.
Faid couldn't see the picture for some reason or he might have had a comment ... dunno ...
Anyway, I'll give you the scoop on these pictures ...
The picture on the RIGHT is from the Grand Canyon ... YOU say it's a rock formation formed over MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of years.
The picture on the LEFT is ... (drum roll) ... from MT. SAINT HELENS ... formed in under THREE HOURS !!!
*********************************************
Now, I ask you ... why did the one on the RIGHT take millions of years whle the one on the LEFT took only three hours??!!
Hmmmmmm ... could it be (gasp, gasp) that geologists are WRONG about the formation on the right? (Heavens no! Say it cannot be! (Quick! Deadman ... come to the rescue! JonF ... help us if you can!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The picture on the RIGHT is from the Grand Canyon ... YOU say it's a rock formation formed over MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of years.
The picture on the LEFT is ... (drum roll) ... from MT. SAINT HELENS ... formed in under THREE HOURS !!!
Dave:
And look at that old man over there! He took EIGHTY YEARS to form!
Which proves, precisely... what? Nothing. Like your comparison.
Name a canyon formed in three hours.
If you can't do this, we have no choice but to conclude you're a total hopeless idiot.
BTW, what do you think of Morton's essays?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Well dave, I had this to say about your pics on July 8:
Quote
Hey, does anyone still have dave's pic? It's down for some reason, and I can't remember exactly, but I think that the two angles looked different somehow. Were they actually from the same formation?
But I still can't see your pictures anymore, so I can't be sure. Anyway.
Also, I hope you had a relaxing trip- you needed it. did you convert any natives to YECism, as you hoped?
...And all this time I was saying to myself "Could he have posted two different pictures and LIE saying it's from the same formation, to try and deceive us? Nah, he can't be that stupid and that dishonest... The left one might look so small and muddy because of the lighting and the angle..." ..But something told me that was not the case.
So I DID make a comment, dave, a comment I repeated again, to make sure you read it, and waited for your wisdom...
And there it is.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
They both are the SAME COLOR They both are the SAME SHAPE Heck, they even both have the SAME MARKINGS!
Because they look so much alike they must both be made the SAME WAY, from the SAME MATERIALS, with the SAME COST, in the SAME AMOUNT OF TIME, and with the SAME LEVEL OF EFFORT. Right?
Holy f*ckin Christ-on-a-stick Dave, will you ever stop being such an ignorant dumbass retard??.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
hi guys. i am what you call a "lurker" and am posting from a third world muslim nation somewhere in seasia. i have been following this discussion for some time now and find it very interesting. inadvertently, have increased my knowledge in a great many things (thanks people). ever since kvd, i have tried to read up on a lot of things related to creationism, yes, i am a christian. i went thru the local public education system up till university, studied geology and physics, so i do understand almost all your arguments. i find it rather interesting that dave does not seem to be able to provide evidence, or proof. he doesn't seem to back up his arguments with data that is statistically significant. could it be he doesn't know why "statistical significance" is important in a scientific discourse? i also find it strange that kvd had to happen to protect science! even here, in a muslim country, i was never asked to believe anything but what the scientific data said. sure there was religion, but it was confined to religious/ philosophy classes, which were optional. there didn't seem to be the conflict that you seem to be facing there, "in the most scientifically advanced nation in the world" (i assume you're all in the USA). sure we have the religious nuts, but they do tend to stay away from science and education. Anyway, that is my 2cents worth. Again thank you all for the links and the explanations you have provided. It's almost like getting a free education . Ps. please excuse my lack of fluency in the english language.
Now, I ask you ... why did the one on the RIGHT take millions of years whle the one on the LEFT took only three hours??!!
Hmmmmmm ... could it be (gasp, gasp) that geologists are WRONG about the formation on the right? (Heavens no! Say it cannot be! (Quick! Deadman ... come to the rescue! JonF ... help us if you can!!
Gee, Dave, do you think it could have had something to do with the fact that the Mt. St. Helens sediment is loose, unlithified volcanic ash only a few weeks old, and the Grand Canyon is a few thousand feet of sediment laid down over a few million years?
Is it just barely possible that might have something to do with it?
Dammit, Dave, buy a geology textbook so you have some clue what you're talking about.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And more generally, Dave, this is more of your stupid argument by analogy. Chimps superficially look more like gorillas than they look like humans; therefore they must actually be more closely related to gorillas than humans.
This is the kind of argument I'd expect from a five-year-old, Dave. This is the same thing that made you get my 737/A320/CH47 example wrong.
There's a word for your particular brand of stupidity, Dave. It's called "superficiality," the inability to look below the surface of things. It's the dead-give-away sign of an intellectual lightweight.
I keep explaining this to you, and you keep not getting it. It's making it harder and harder to extend you any respect whatsoever.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
hi guys. i am what you call a "lurker" and am posting from a third world muslim nation somewhere in seasia. i have been following this discussion for some time now and find it very interesting. inadvertently, have increased my knowledge in a great many things (thanks people). ever since kvd, i have tried to read up on a lot of things related to creationism, yes, i am a christian. i went thru the local public education system up till university, studied geology and physics, so i do understand almost all your arguments.
Hi lawman, and welcome!
Please feel free to join in with a comment or question any time. Science boards like this are a great way to learn many new things -I learn something with almost every new topic that comes up. And don't worry about your English - it seems to be fine, and if there is any confusion I'm sure between everyone we can figure out what was meant.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
GRAND CANYON ROCK FORMATION IDENTIFICATION TEST The two pictures below were taken from different angles in the canyon. Can you identify the name of the formation? What is your explanation for how it formed? How many years, what the composition is, did it form at the bottom of an ocean, etc.
I'm actually surprised it's taken Dave this long to get to this canard with all the talk of flood geology.
The reason no one really responded, IMO, is the relatively little knowledge of geology required to analyze the Grand Canyon/Toutle River . I would expect anyone who ever took Geology 101 (lovingly named Rocks for Jocks at the University of Washington, but I'm sure this is not uncommon) anywhere to answer this question. Not to sound condescending, but perhaps Dave could enlighten us on which geologic principles he chooses to use and which he ignores, and why. Certainly, if you look at the two cases using liberal amounts of geological data, you could immidiately come to the conclusion which best fits the data (and supported by ALL empirical evidence). I don't think this needs to be an exercise for the entire forum to complete, but perhaps something for Dave to show us how you can draw such a conclusion logically.
I'm an optimist, I know Dave's history of selectively choosing data, but I would rather hear how HE justifies it logically. So far the only similarity between these cases that I've heard is that they are both canyons.
So Dave here's [I]your[i] chance, how do you compare these sites geologically?
I'm an optimist, I know Dave's history of selectively choosing data, but I would rather hear how HE justifies it logically. So far the only similarity between these cases that I've heard is that they are both canyons.
So Dave here's your chance, how do you compare these sites geologically?
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one! Pick me! Pick me!!
Okay, it's really simple. They both look the same; therefore they are the same! That's really all there is to it! I can't believe that all these smart people here can't see that! It's really quite amazing how strong the evidence is for a young earth, and how flimsy the evidence is for an old earth.
I mean, isn't it obvious?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Only in this case, they didn't even look the same; And the only reason to disregard that would be to mistake dave for an honest person, asking an honest question.
Congrats, dave... You suuuure showed us- again.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
CLASSIC LONG-AGER BLINDNESS SUMMED UP IN A SINGLE PARAGRAPH
Quote
Gee, Dave, do you think it could have had something to do with the fact that the Mt. St. Helens sediment is loose, unlithified volcanic ash only a few weeks old, and the Grand Canyon is a few thousand feet of sediment laid down over a few million years?
This is an excellent example of a typical response of a Blind Long Ager ...
Let's analyze this statement ...
Gee, Dave, do you think it could have had something to do with the fact that the Mt. St. Helens sediment is loose, unlithified volcanic ash only a few weeks old
Yes ... DING DING DING ... Eric wins the Gold ... Lesson learned? Horizontal strata is laid down RAPIDLY. Canyons form RAPIDLY.
and the Grand Canyon is a few thousand feet of sediment laid down over a few million years?
Eeeerrrrr! Crash and burn!! Er ... uh ... horizontal strata and canyons form rapidly EXCEPT in the case of the Grand Canyon ... everyone knows that it took millions of years ... all the geology books say so!! Never mind that Derek Ager and Co. have thrown Lyell out the window and that the Creationists were right after all about Catastrophism. Never mind that NO ONE has ever seen a little river carve a huge canyon like the Grand Canyon ... never mind all that ...
WE WORSHIP THE 'MILLIONS OF YEARS GOD' AND AFDAVE HAS DARED TO SPEAK AGAINST HIM!!! HE MUST BE SILENCED!!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
...and there's no difference between ash sediments and hardened sandstone or granite, right Dave?
have you even been to the grand canyon? what are the walls made of?
here, try this one:
take a geology pick (or heck, even a regular pick), break off a decent sized chunk of hardened sandstone or granite from any canyon wall you can find, and see how long it takes you to create a mini-canyon in the rock by pouring water on it.
Is it my imagination, or is Dave actually getting dumber the longer he posts here?
quite remarkable.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Only in this case, they didn't even look the same;
Didn't look the same, huh?
This from a guy who thinks Apes and Humans DO look similar ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Why are there so many profitable companies that use the Old Earth paradigm as the basis for a successful business case?
Why is there not a single company anywhere in the world that uses your 6000 year old Young Earth paradigm as the basis for a business case?
How's that YEC business case coming Dave? You ready to show us your business acumen yet? Or were you just 'embellishing' your abilities like you did when you claimed to be a sh*t hot fighter pilot?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Why is there not a single company anywhere in the world that uses your 6000 year old Young Earth paradigm as the basis for a business case?
Ahem:
For starters, Ken Ham and Kent Hovind have done exactly that. Though the latter is currently going through some rough times, he's certainly made a lot of money from the YEC "paradigm".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
For starters, Ken Ham and Kent Hovind have done exactly that. Though the latter is currently going through some rough times, he's certainly made a lot of money from the YEC "paradigm".
My original questions to AFDave last Sunday pointed that out
"If the YE model is the ‘truth’ and is so superior to the OE model, why has no YEC figured out a way to make money from it? Why aren’t you, the super-duper businessman, making money from it? Looks like you would have no competition IF you could figure out a good business case. AFAICT, the only way to make money from YE is to sell pseudo-scientific books and videos to boobs like yourself who are desperate to have their delusions reinforced."
Quote
Off topic, but where did that come from
AFDave has been caught 'padding his resume' before, so to speak. He wanted us to believe he was a sh*t hot fighter jock when all he ever flew were unarmed trainers. Turned out he *hung around* with real fighter pilots, so in his mind that made *him* one too. Kinda like the towel boy for the Steelers claiming to be a professional football player.
AFDave has also bragged about what a great businessman he is too. I just want to see some of those business skills applied to the YEC case, that's all.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Nope, Davie-pie. The walls are too steep. Erosion of soft rock yields approximately 45 degree wals. Erosion of hard rock yields 80-90 degree walls. The Grand Canyon walls are 80-90 degrees. The Grand Canyon and its meanders were not cut in soft sediments
But, JonF ... those sure look like 45 degree walls to me ...
There you have it folks ... the MIT Expert has spoken ...
Erosion of SOFT ROCK yields 45 degree walls ...
The Grand Canyon has LOTS of 45 degree walls (see picture above) ...
CONCLUSION: The Grand Canyon was formed by erosion of SOFT SEDIMENTS
Thankyou, ladies and gentlemen, for playing ...
The score is now ...
CREOS: 30? 40? 50? I've lost count ... EVOS/LONG AGERS: 1? 2? 3? Certainly no more than 3
**********************************
OA...
Quote
Why are there so many profitable companies that use the Old Earth paradigm as the basis for a successful business case? Why is there not a single company anywhere in the world that uses your 6000 year old Young Earth paradigm as the basis for a business case?
Give me an example, please.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDave has been caught 'padding his resume' before, so to speak. He wanted us to believe he was a sh*t hot fighter jock when all he ever flew were unarmed trainers. Turned out he *hung around* with real fighter pilots, so in his mind that made *him* one too. Kinda like the towel boy for the Steelers claiming to be a professional football player.
If that is true then it would destroy any credibility. I can believe a person could be honestly misstaken about science, but the same is hard to believe about personal history.
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Successful Oil and Gas exploration companies that use OE models
Quote
ADNOC - Abu Dhabi National Oil Company - state owned oil gas exploration company Amerada Hess - independent oil gas exploration services and processing company ConocoPhillips - an international, integrated oil gas exploration and production company Exxon Mobil Corporation - world's premier oil, natural gas, LNG and petroleum products company Gazprom - is the world's biggest gas exploration and production company Kerr-McGee - is one of the largest U.S.-based independent crude oil exploration and production companies ONGC - Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd - leading National Oil GAS exploration Company of India Petrobras - brazilian integrated corporation whose business is oil and natural gas exploration, production PetroCanada - is a Canadian integrated oil and gas exploration and production company Sinopec - China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation SNEPCO - nigerian oil gas exploration and production activities Sonangol - angola oil gas exploration and production company Statoil - one of the world's largest net sellers of crude oil. operator of fields, exploration Aminex plc - experienced, independent, oil and gas company London, UK, Europe(North) Anadarko Petroleum - one of the largest independent crude oil and natural gas exploration and production companies Houston, USA, America(North) ATP Oil and Gas Corporation - develop already-discovered offshore petroleum reserves Houston, USA, America(North) BG Group plc - exploration and production, liquefied natural gas, transmission and distribution Berkshire, UK, Europe(North) BHP Billiton - an international oil and gas exploration and production company in australia Melbourne, AUSTRALIA, Australia Blue Dolphin Energy Company - pipeline and oil gas exploration services Houston, USA, America(North) BP Amoco Corporation - a leading provider of oil and natural gas exploration and production Aberdeen, SCOTLAND, Europe(North) Burlington Resources Inc - oil and natural gas exploration and production Houston, USA, America(North) Cabot Oil and Gas - natural gas producer and marketer Houston, USA, America(North) Cairn Energy PLC - oil and gas exploration and production company based in Edinburgh, Scotland Edinburgh, SCOTLAND, Europe(North) Canadian Natural Resources - oil and natural gas production canada Calgary, CANADA, America(North) ChevronTexaco - among the world's largest global energy companies San Francisco, USA, America(North) CNOOC - China National Offshore Oil Corporation - China National Offshore Oil Corporation - CNOOC Beijing, CHINA, Asia CNPC - The China National Petroleum Corporation Beijing, CHINA, Asia Conoco Inc - integrated oil company explores for oil and gas production Houston, USA, America(North) Dana Petroleum - ten North Sea fields in production Aberdeen, SCOTLAND, Europe(North) Devon Energy - independent oil and gas exploration services and producer Oklahoma City, USA, America(North) DNO - development of smaller petroleum fields Oslo, NORWAY, Europe(North) DONG - danish oil and gas exploration services company Hřrsholm, DENMARK, Europe(North) Encana - one of North America's largest independent gas and oil exploration producers Calgary, CANADA, America(North) Eni SpA - integrated energy production company Rome, ITALY, Europe(South) Enterprise Oil plc - a crude oil and natural gas exploration and production operator company London, UK, Europe(North) Galp Energia, SGPS, S.A. - Oil Petroleum, Natural Gas Supply, Regasification, Transport, Storage and Distribution portugal Lisboa , PORTUGAL, Europe(South) Gas de France - one of the leading European gas groups Paris, FRANCE, Europe(North) Gazflot - russian exploration and ship owning company Moscow, RUSSIA, Europe(North) Iceland Oil - oil gas exploration company in Iceland Reykjavik, ICELAND, Europe(North) Inpex Corporation - oil gas exploration in japan Tokyo, JAPAN, Asia Lukoil - is Russia's leading oil company Moscow, RUSSIA, Europe(North) Lundin Petroleum - independent oil and gas exploration and production company Stockholm, SWEDEN, Europe(North) Marathon Oil Company - worldwide exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas Houston, USA, America(North) Murphy Oil Corporation - oil and gas exploration and production El Dorado, USA, America(North) Nexen - is a Canadian-based, global oil gas petroleum company Alberta, CANADA, America(North) Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG) - joint venture LNG company, largest shareholder is Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Lagos, NIGERIA, Africa Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation NNOC - commercial international corporation Garki, NIGERIA, Africa Norsk Hydro - an industrial company based on the use of oil, natural gas, LNG resources Oslo, NORWAY, Europe(North) Occidental Petroleum Corporation - oil and natural gas exploration and production Los Angeles, USA, America(North) Oilexco Inc - exploration and production company Calgary, CANADA, America(North) OMV Exploration & Production GmbH - austrian oil gas exploration companies Wien, AUSTRIA, Europe(North) Pertamina - state-owned oil and gas company Jakarta, INDONESIA, Asia Petronas - is Malaysia's national petroleum Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA, Asia Phillips Petroleum Company - exploration and production; gas gathering, processing and marketing Bartlesville, USA, America(North) Pioneer Natural Resources Company - independent oil and natural gas exploration and production company Irving, USA, America(North) Premier Oil plc - independent oil and gas company London, UK, Europe(North) Repsol YPF SA - integrated international oil and gas exploration and production company Madrid, SPAIN, Europe(South) Rocksource ASA - oil and gas exploration services Oslo, NORWAY, Europe(North) Rosneft - russian oil and gas exploration company Moscow, RUSSIA, Europe(North) Shell Oil Company - is one of the largest major oil and natural gas companies Houston, USA, America(North) Sibneft - petroleum exploration, production, refining, and marketing Moscow, RUSSIA, Europe(North) Spinnaker Exploration Company - independent energy production company Houston, USA, America(North) Sunoco - gas stations, crude oil production and petroleum products Philadelphia, USA, America(North) Teikoku Oil - japan oil and gas exploration, production and pipeline Tokyo, JAPAN, Asia Texaco - finds and produces LNG, crude oil and natural gas San Francisco, USA, America(North) TotalFinaElf - major integrated oil and gas exploration corporation Courbevoie, FRANCE, Europe(South) Tullow Oil - independant oil and gas production London, UK, Europe(North) Unocal Corporation - oil and natural gas production and exploration development company El Segundo, USA, America(North) Woodside Petroleum - is involved in the exploration, development and production of hydrocarbons Perth, AUSTRALIA, Australia Antrim Energy inc Calgary, CANADA, America(North) Apache Corporation Houston, USA, America(North) Black Rock Petroleum NL Perth, AUSTRALIA, Australia Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Ltd, CABGOC Luanda, ANGOLA, Africa Callon Petroleum Company Houston, USA, America(North) Chevron Corporation San Francisco, USA, America(North) Dragon Oil Dubai, UAE, Middle East EGAS - Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company Cairo, EGYPT, Middle East Huskey Oil Limited Calgary, CANADA, America(North) Paladin Resources plc London, UK, Europe(North) PetroChina Beijing, CHINA, Asia Petsec Energy Sydney, AUSTRALIA, Australia Pogo Producing Company Houston, USA, America(North) Ramco Energy plc Aberdeen, SCOTLAND, Europe(North) Roc Oil Company Limited Sydney, AUSTRALIA, Australia Talisman Energy Inc. Calgary, CANADA, America(North) Venture Production plc Aberdeen, SCOTLAND, Europe(North) Yukos Oil Corporation Moscow, RUSSIA, Europe(North)
Successful Radiocarbon dating labs that use OE models
Quote
Austria VERA: Vienna Environmental Research Accelerator Absolute Chronology for Early Civilisations in Austria and Central Europe using 14C Dating with AMS (University of Vienna) Australia Australian National University - Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Explanations and applications lists of several varieties of radiosotope dating. ANSTO The Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Group operates the AMS resources at ANSTO, including the measurement capabilities at the Australian National Tandem for Applied Research (ANTARES) and sample processing and target preparation in the AMS chemistry laboratories. Canada Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) - Radiocarbon Dating IsoTrace - The Canadian Centre for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Brock University (LSC), sample submission forms, prices, etc. Denmark University of Aarhus - AMS Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory France Centre de datation par le RadioCarbone - Université Claude Bernard I, Lyon, France Information in French and English: measurement techniques, sample submission forms, etc. Germany Deutsches Archäologisches Institut - Berlin. Website in German, with English version in preparation. Erlangen-Nürnberg University AMS Group; same site auf Deutsch Institut für Bodenkunde - Isotopendatierungslabor - University of Hamburg (in German) University of Heidelberg Institute for Environmental Physics Leibniz Labor for Radiometric Dating and Isotope Research - Christian Albrechts University, Kiel; same site auf Deutsch List of services, pricelists, sample data sheets Köln Radiocarbon Laboratory - Cologne University - Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology, Köln-Lindenthal, Germany Greece Laboratory of Archaeometry, National Center for Scientific Research Demokritos - Information in English and Greek Ireland Radiation Physics Research Laboratory, University College, Dublin - Sample submission forms, prices Italy CEDAD, AMS Radiocarbon Dating Facility, University of Lecce ENEA Bologna Research Center, Bologna Korea Inter-University Center for Natural Science Research Facility, Seoul National University Netherlands Centre for Isotope Research, Groningen Utrecht University AMS Facility New Zealand Rafter Radiocarbon Laboratory (AMS) Price lists for dating, illustrations of pretreatment and measurement equipment. University of Waikato Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory (AMS) including: New Zealand Archaeological Date List WebInfo - Radiocarbon Dating Poland Gliwice Radiocarbon Laboratory Information in Polish and English about the lab's operations, staff, publications, and upcoming conferences. Poznan Radiocarbon Laboratory Information about the lab's 1.5SDH-1 spectrometer "Compact Carbon AMS" produced by NEC. Senegal Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) South Africa Quaternary Dating Research Unit (QUADRU) Pretoria Dating Laboratory, South Africa. Proportional gas counting for radiocarbon, and several other dating techniques. Sweden University of Lund Department of Quaternary Geology Switzerland University of Zurich Dep't of Geography Radiocarbon Laboratory Includes downloadable sample forms ETH/PSI AMS facility, Zurich Switzerland Information about dating services and AMS equipment United Kingdom NERC Radiocarbon Laboratory, East Kilbride, Scotland Information about dating services and grant funding for analysis Oxford University - Research Lab for Archaeology and Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit Information about dating services and OxCal calibration program Queen's University of Belfast - Radiocarbon Laboratory Information on dating options, sample size requirements SURRC Radiocarbon Laboratory, Glasgow, Scotland Commercial service, quality assurance, submission forms, prices. United States Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Dating -Radiometric, AMS, Stable Isotopes and SEM Beta Analytic is the largest radiocarbon dating facility in the world, currently analyzing 10,000 samples each year for researchers worldwide. Center for Applied Isotope Studies - University of Georgia Radiometric and stable isotope dating and other services Geochron Laboratories - Cambridge, Massachussets Isotope analyses for researchers in the fields of geology, economic geology, geochronology, archaeology, anthropology, and hydrology; environmental, metabolic, and food adulteration studies. Keck-Carbon Cycle AMS facility (KCCAMS) - University of California, Irvine A compact AMS particle accelerator, a dedicated companion instrument for measuring carbon stable isotope ratios, A new sample preparation laboratory to supplement existing UCI preparation labs to pre-treat, combust, hydrolyze and graphitize radiocarbon samples. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) Measurements of eight anthropogenic and cosmogenic isotopes. NOSAMS, National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometer Facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Information on AMS dating, World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) Purdue Rare Isotope Measurement Laboratory (PRIME Lab) AMS dating of C14 and other radionuclides, chemical sample preparation; newsletter "What's new at PRIME Lab" T.M.B.Group Inc, Stable Isotope Ratio Laboratory - Miami, Florida Stable isotope ratio measurement of 13C/12C, 13C/12C, and 18O/16O NSF - University of Arizona AMS Facility Information on dating, fees, sample submission form University of Arizona - Department of Geosciences, Laboratory of Isotope Geochemistry Stable isotope and C14 measurements. Price list, downloadable sample information form University of Colorado-INSTAAR Laboratory for AMS Radiocarbon Research Information on services, projects, sample submission. University of Minnesota, Limnological Research Center AMS C-14 Target Preparation Unit, with downloadable sample forms University of Washington Quaternary Isotope Lab Includes download access to CALIB calibration program.
OK Dave, now you please give me an example of a successful business that is based on the scientific evidence for a 6000 year old Earth.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
ANOTHER QUESTION ABOUT THE PICTURE ABOVE -- WHERE DID ALL THAT DIRT GO?
The standard answer for how the Grand Canyon was formed for over a century has been that primarily the Colorado River and side streams carved out the Grand Canyon over millions of years. If that happened, wouldn’t you expect to find a gigantic river delta where the Colorado River enters the Gulf of California? It’s not there. Nor can geologists find it anywhere else. Where did all the dirt—1,000 cubic miles of it—go?
MAYBE JonF CAN TELL US WHERE THE GIGANTIC RIVER DELTA IS ...
******************************
OA ...
Quote
He wanted us to believe he was a sh*t hot fighter jock when all he ever flew were unarmed trainers.
Oh really? Where did I ever try to "get you to believe I was a sh*t hot fighter jock" ?? Wanna try to back that one up there, Mr. OA?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Thankyou for the gigantic list of successful Oil and Gas Exploration companies ...
That wasn't exactly what I meant by an example ...
I forget that I have to be very specific with you all because you get confused easily ...
Let's try again ...
Please take ONE company and show me how the "Long Age Interpretation" of geology helped them turn a profit.
Is that simple enough for you?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Thankyou for the gigantic list of successful Oil and Gas Exploration companies ...
That wasn't exactly what I meant by an example ...
I forget that I have to be very specific with you all because you get confused easily ...
Let's try again ...
Please take ONE company and show me how the "Long Age Interpretation" of geology helped them turn a profit.
Is that simple enough for you?
Here's a link for BP, in addition to the one for Shell that you apparently missed.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
MAYBE JonF CAN TELL US WHERE THE GIGANTIC RIVER DELTA IS ...
Um, Baja, California?
What do I win?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
ANOTHER QUESTION ABOUT THE PICTURE ABOVE -- WHERE DID ALL THAT DIRT GO?
The standard answer for how the Grand Canyon was formed for over a century has been that primarily the Colorado River and side streams carved out the Grand Canyon over millions of years. If that happened, wouldn’t you expect to find a gigantic river delta where the Colorado River enters the Gulf of California? It’s not there. Nor can geologists find it anywhere else. Where did all the dirt—1,000 cubic miles of it—go?
MAYBE JonF CAN TELL US WHERE THE GIGANTIC RIVER DELTA IS ...
Much of the sediment IS in the Pacific, more of it is scattered around other older outlets for the Colorado River
Quote
The reason that it looks the way does is due to the sequence in which the events that help to create it happened. We already know that there was once a very tall chain of mountains in the area that occupied the Grand Canyon. These mountains were, over many millions of years, eventually eroded away to form a level plain. Fluctuations in climate then caused the oceans to move in over successive periods and each time a new rock layer was deposited. The rock layers were deposited one on top of the other and sometimes there were long periods in between in which some of the upper layers were eroded away, sometimes completely.
And now the Colorado River comes into play. The ancestral "Colorado River" came into being when the Rocky Mountains to the east of the Grand Canyon were formed, at sometime around 60-70 million years ago, as the primary western drainage for these mountains. Over millions of years the course of this ancestral river changed its course a number of times as the terrain around it was altered. The course of the ancestral Colorado River probably started in Colorado and at one point it entered the region of Marble Canyon, but that is about all that can be agreed upon at this point.
Some geologists believe that very young rock layers to the west of the Grand Canyon, dated at only 5 and 10 million years old, and through which the Colorado now flows, indicate that the river could not have been flowing there prior to that time. The river had to cut through these layers after they were deposited. The search for another exit for the Colorado River from the Grand Canyon has been a hotly debated issue. Some geologists believe that it flowed out of Marble Canyon where the Little Colorado now enters, others believe that it exited near present day Diamond Creek and still others believe that it exited through massive caves in the Redwall Limestone. The most likely exit at this point seems to be up through Kanab Creek which would have had the ancestral river flowing back up into Utah and then across Nevada and California to the Pacific.
At around 17 million years ago, while the river was flowing across this ancient landscape, the land mass know as todays Colorado Plateau began to uplift. The uplift was caused by pressures deep with the Earth and may have been caused by additional conflict between the North American Plates and the Pacific Plates. This process continued until around 5 million years ago which interestingly enough is the date of the sedimentary layers just west of the plateau. At its greatest hieght the Colorado Plateau was once about three miles above sea level. The rise of the plateau probably prevented the seas from submerging it again and instead the topmost layers were eroded away and carried into the sea. The most favorable currently accepted theory is that the Colorado River continued to cut through the Colorado Plateau while the land rose around it.
At some point around 5 million years ago something happened to cause the Colorado to change its course and exit via its present route down to the Gulf of California. The most likely cause for the change in its course was probably due to it being captured by another river, which was draining the western portion of the Colorado Plateau. This other river eroded northward along the San Andreas fault, then eastward and eventually entered the Grand Canyon and joined with the Colorado near present day Kanab Creek. The Colorado would then have abruptly changed its course and flowed out this newly formed exit.
Much of the eastern Grand Canyon was already formed by the time the river changed its course. Side canyons had formed along fault lines in the rock and these were eroded away and the rock within them carried down to the Colorado. The Colorado River took all of the rock that was put into it and carried it off to the Pacific Ocean. Over many more millions of years the erosion along the course of the Colorado continued to widen the Canyon to present the vistas that you see today. Before the Glen Canyon Dam was built the Colorado River used to carry three cubic miles of sediment into the Pacific Ocean every hundred years.
Hey numbnuts, where did all the soil in YOUR dumbass model go, huh? Or better yet,
Where did all the flood water go?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Why are you ignoring the questions that were posted for you, Dave? Oh, and by the way, the Baja outlet for the Colorado River in fact has just the right amount of sediment to explain where the material went.
The walls of the Grand Canyon still are vertical or near-vertical Dave. There is no place on the Toutle that is vertical. Some areas on the GC simly eroded after formation, others didn't. Big deal. Now show me a vertical wall on the Toutle
As for your "test" on layered material...is that supposed to mean something special to you? The layer in the GC is not the same as that of Mt. St. Helens geologically...but things in photos can look alike...so? How is that supposed to help you when such layers can be differentiated by anyone not using a photograph to "analyze" them?
Now try answering the questions that were asked of you, Dave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Please take ONE company and show me how the "Long Age Interpretation" of geology helped them turn a profit.
How about Geochron Labs ?
Quote
Geochron Laboratories has been providing high quality isotopic analyses to geological and archaeological communities for more than thirty years. Established in 1960 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Geochron was the first laboratory to provide both potassium-argon age determinations and stable isotope ratio analyses on a commercial basis. Our analytical services also include radiocarbon age determinations as well as other radiometric analyses and we remain a world leader in these and all our services. Geochron's facilities are housed in a single building with an area of 11,000 square feet and include:
Radiocarbon laboratory with preparation equipment for the conversion of carbon in various types of samples to an appropriate counting medium, and both gas proportional counters and a Quantulus liquid scintillation counter for precise 14C activity measurement. We also can arrange for 14C analysis by accelerator mass spectrometry.
Stable isotope laboratory with various preparation lines and two VG Micromass gas source stable isotope ratio mass spectrometers for analyzing nitrogen, sulfur, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopes on a variety of materials.
Tritium laboratory with distillation equipment and a Quantulus liquid scintillation counter for determining tritium activity in water samples by direct counting. A staff directory and list of analytical services are provided on this site. Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss in more detail the nature of your research and samples. We will help you decide which analyses are most appropriate for your research and advise you on sample selection, sample size, and shipping guidelines.
For more detailed information on the topics in this web site, we recommend the book Principles of Isotope Geology, 2nd edition, by Gunter Faure, published by John Wiley & Sons, 1986.
There ya go Davie, plenty of detail for your pea brain to choke on.
Also, read the PDF file from BP that improvius provided. It has LOTS of detail about oil and gas exploration using old Earth geological models.
Now how about you quit stalling your lazy ass and give me an example of a successful business that is based on the scientific evidence for a 6000 year old Earth.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Gee, Dave, do you think it could have had something to do with the fact that the Mt. St. Helens sediment is loose, unlithified volcanic ash only a few weeks old
Yes ... DING DING DING ... Eric wins the Gold ... Lesson learned? Horizontal strata is laid down RAPIDLY. Canyons form RAPIDLY.
and the Grand Canyon is a few thousand feet of sediment laid down over a few million years?
Eeeerrrrr! Crash and burn!! Er ... uh ... horizontal strata and canyons form rapidly EXCEPT in the case of the Grand Canyon ... everyone knows that it took millions of years ... all the geology books say so!! Never mind that Derek Ager and Co. have thrown Lyell out the window and that the Creationists were right after all about Catastrophism. Never mind that NO ONE has ever seen a little river carve a huge canyon like the Grand Canyon ... never mind all that ...
No, Dave. Wrong again. The Toutle River canyon has a very different profile from the Grand Canyon, I've already pointed this out to you, and shown you not only how it's different, but why. Did you listen? Did you pay attention? Of course not. Because in your world, anything that contradicts your worldview simply doesn't exist.
Are the sediments in the Toutle River Canyon of volcanic origin? Yes. Were they laid down rapidly? Yes. What's the angle of repose of the canyon walls? Around 45 degrees.
Now, what about the Grand Canyon? Are the sediments volcanic? No. Were they laid down rapidly, all at the same time? No. What's the angle of repose? Almost 90 degrees.
No, Dave. Sediments don't form rapidly everywhere except the Grand Canyon. They form slowly except during volcanic eruptions! Could you be any more ignorant?
No one's seen a river carve a canyon like the Grand Canyon, Dave, because you can't just stand there and watch a canyon being carved unless you're going to stand there for a few million years! Could you be any more idiotic?
The only one here crashing and burning, Dave, is you. It's happened so many times you're nothing but a mass of burn scars.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
. . Currently Unanswered Questions from the last 5 "Pages"
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist & granite (obviously , that is not "soft ") (14) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (15) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (16)Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR (17)Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (18)Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (19)Why don't we see disruption of the varves? (20) Why are mountains near each other differentially eroded if they were all formed at the same time in your "theory?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The standard answer for how the Grand Canyon was formed for over a century has been that primarily the Colorado River and side streams carved out the Grand Canyon over millions of years. If that happened, wouldn’t you expect to find a gigantic river delta where the Colorado River enters the Gulf of California? It’s not there. Nor can geologists find it anywhere else. Where did all the dirt—1,000 cubic miles of it—go?
Dave, you moron—how does this question help you? If a giant flood formed the Grand Canyon, where do you think all the sediment went? If it all happened less than five thousand years ago, where is it now?
Do you even fire up your brain before you start typing?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OK ... LET'S SLOW DOWN A LITTLE ... I CAN SEE I'M GOING TOO FAST
RULE 1: When we see similar phenomena, we can often correctly assume that they were formed in the same way. STEP 1: Observe two similar phenomena STEP 2: Apply RULE 1 and draw conclusion CONCLUSION: The full scale Piper Cub in the top image was probably formed in much the same way as the model in the bottom image.
Now ... apply the same logic to the following pictures ...
STEP 1 & 2
CONCLUSION: The feature on the left was observed to form RAPIDLY. No one observed the formation of the feature on the right, but it looks very similar to the feature on the left. Therefore, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the feature on the right formed RAPIDLY!
See ... it's easy ...
Now I know you guys will get all tripped up on the details of mud vs. sandstone, etc. etc. and you will miss the main point that ...
Sedimentary layers and Canyons DO NOT take Millions of Years to form ... this is simply an assumption by Long Agers.
Let's repeat that several times so you will not miss it ...
Sedimentary layers and Canyons DO NOT take Millions of Years to form ... this is simply an assumption by Long Agers.
Sedimentary layers and Canyons DO NOT take Millions of Years to form ... this is simply an assumption by Long Agers.
Sedimentary layers and Canyons DO NOT take Millions of Years to form ... this is simply an assumption by Long Agers.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"looking alike" in a photograph doesn't mean geologically alike in analysis, Dave. I realize that may be too difficult for your tiny brain to grasp, but it remains a fact.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
CONCLUSION: The full scale Piper Cub in the top image was probably formed in much the same way as the model in the bottom image.
How does that even begin to make sense to you?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
RULE 1: When we see similar phenomena, we can often correctly assume that they were formed in the same way. STEP 1: Observe two similar phenomena STEP 2: Apply RULE 1 and draw conclusion CONCLUSION: The full scale Piper Cub in the top image was probably formed in much the same way as the model in the bottom image.
Now ... apply the same logic to the following pictures ...
CONCLUSION: The feature on the left was observed to form RAPIDLY. No one observed the formation of the feature on the right, but it looks very similar to the feature on the left. Therefore, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the feature on the right formed RAPIDLY!
See ... it's easy ...
No, Dave. Wrong again. I just pointed this out to you last night. Just because two objects look alike doesn't mean they are alike. How many times am I going to have to say this?
And in the case of the Grand Canyon and the Toutle River Canyon, they don't even look alike! They look alike to you because you see what you want to see, and nothing else.
Imagine my surprise.
I wish you would get over this stupidity and come up with some new arguments, Dave. Saying, gee, they look similar, therefore they must be the same, is an argument fit for a five-year-old child.
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Now I know you guys will get all tripped up on the details of mud vs. sandstone, etc. etc. and you will miss the main point that ...
No, we're not getting tripped up on the "details," Dave, because it's the details that are important.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How about that YEC business case Dave? We're waiting, Mr. sh*t hot businessman....
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
OA you missed 3 exploration companies I have worked for in the Oil game I'll not name, but one was from Q8 the other Austria and the last Norway.
A Geophysisicist in one of them was a YEC, who was given the task of peeling back the horizons on seismic data to explore a green fields acreage serveral hundred miles from the nearest producing well. He used all the models currently accepted of old earth but when asked how 'old' the earth was his reference was Fundy Biblical lteralism.
Lucky for him he didn't let it interfere with his professionalism otherwise he would have been out of a job before you could say "$40,000,000 deepwater wildcat". Talk about dichotomy.
He did have sexual repression problems tho' ...and 5 kids go figure.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
In regard to the Colorado River Delta, DaveTard2, you might want to do a little reading on it. The delta was once 1,930,000 acres (7,810 km˛), 2.3 kilometers thick and extended an estimated 40 km into the northern Gulf of California. More than enough debris there, baboo.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Again, thank you oh so much for the nice link to BP that explains how they drill for oil and gas and for the nice snippet from Geochron labs ...
All quite interesting ...
And all TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to what you were trying to prove to me ...
That somehow Oil and Gas companies us "Long Age Geology" to turn a profit
Please try again, and thankyou for playing!
Deadman ... I know you have a lot of questions ... the Creation/Flood Model does not answer every question, but the main point is that it answers THE BIG QUESTIONS in a much more satisfactory manner than the Long Age Model.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Deadman ... I know you have a lot of questions ... the Creation/Flood Model does not answer every question, but the main point is that it answers THE BIG QUESTIONS in a much more satisfactory manner than the Long Age Model.
No, it doesn't, AirHead. And in fact, you have not answered one of the major questions posed.
As for oil and gas companies...ever hear of conodonts? Or are they like your imaginary dinos on the ark? And why didn't you answer the question about YEC-oriented oil companies?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
If you ask me a question, AirHead, you get a direct response. I don't run away from your blithering. So...if your model is more robust in the "big questions", why can't you answer what is asked of you?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
...and by "much more satisfactory manner", Dave really means, "in a way that agrees with my interpretation of the Bible."
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Deadman ... I know you have a lot of questions ... the Creation/Flood Model does not answer every question, but the main point is that it answers THE BIG QUESTIONS in a much more satisfactory manner than the Long Age Model.
Dave, it doesn't answer one, single question about anything. Not only have you not answered a single question anyone's asked you here about your flood; you haven't presented a single particle of evidence that your flood ever even happened. As I said a month ago, jumping up and down and pointing into the Grand Canyon is not "evidence" of a global flood, Dave.
Maybe your "flood" answers some sort of religious and spiritual questions for you, Dave, but out here in the real world, where actual evidence counts for something, your "flood" never happened.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I asked you several questions, AirHead. Deal with mine and I will answer yours. Or you might decide to utilize whatever little brain you have functioning to do some actual work on your own. Not that I hold much hope for that.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So much for Aftershave's fancy assertion that "Long Age Philosophy" helps Oil and Gas Co's make money ...
I was pretty sure that was a farce ...
Ho ho ho !!
Meanwhile, there sure is a strange silence about my picture that shows 45 degree sloped walls all through the Grand Canyon ...
Hmmmm ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
God gave you another cheek to turn, so really, shouting is for those in the ditch....where the blind have been led...... by people such as your parents.
Don't blame them they were uneducated.... as you are.
You should consider an education before its too late.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Meanwhile, there sure is a strange silence about my picture that shows 45 degree sloped walls all through the Grand Canyon ...
.... So you're saying there are no 90-degree walls on the canyon, Dave? I mean you said "all through"... please back your claims.
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So much for Aftershave's fancy assertion that "Long Age Philosophy" helps Oil and Gas Co's make money ...I was pretty sure that was a farce ...
The only joke here is you, AirFarceDave. I just mentioned conodonts. I could have cited microfossils of many sorts that are used in oil and gas exploration. The remains of microfossils in petroleum-bearing rocks undergo changes in color due to heat and pressure. When these fossilised microorganisms are pale or orange the sediment is "immature," when they are brown the rocks are mature, indicating oil, and when the fossils are black, they indicate gas.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Did I mention that I'm soooo glad to be back from Mexico??!!
I really missed hammering you guys with the TRUTH about the Global Flood !! Thanks for being so attentive!!
More to come ... stay tuned!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
[snip]...Or are they like your imaginary dinos on the ark?...[snip]
Woah there cowboy. Are you saying their were dinosaurs on the ark in dave's geologic cataclysm theory? I distinctly remember being taught in sunday school that the dinosaurs died in the flood. This leads me to the very scary conclusion that either the people that taught me, or the people that taught dave, we're not wholey honest in their characterizations of the flood.
Just going with my gut, i've got to think that dinosaurs weren't on the ark. T-Rex, Velociraptor, and Stegosaurus (ok, admittedly not a carnivore, but they are still wicked cool and will be in any dinosaur movie I ever make) chasing around 8 people who are stuck on a boat for at least a year sounds more like the plot to Jurassic Park 4 than a morally rich biblical tale.
What happened to the dinosaurs after the got off the ark? I guess they died out pretty fast. Probably something to do with limited food supplies or something. I guess it helps if it's the Genesis 6 account that's wrong, and you get 7 of alot of animals instead of 2, then at least they can snack on birds and clean animals. Uh oh, I just had a thought. Does T-rex count as a clean or unclean animal? I tried to find information on the clean/unclean distinction but all I found were rabbinic traditions about sentient arks and animals bowing before noah (T-rex doesn't strike me as the kind of creature that would bow, both because it's not in their nature, and because they always looked a bit top heavy to me). I did learn that apparently the giant Og king of Bashan also survived the flood because Noah feed him out a porthole (that's my one new fact for the day). Also, the NIV says that 7 may be 7 pairs, so we could be talking about 14 T-Rex's on the ark, and rampaging around afterwards. That's just too much, I'm sticking with my dinosaurs died in the flood theory.
I could have cited microfossils of many sorts that are used in oil and gas exploration. The remains of microfossils in petroleum-bearing rocks undergo changes in color due to heat and pressure. When these fossilised microorganisms are pale or orange the sediment is "immature," when they are brown the rocks are mature, indicating oil, and when the fossils are black, they indicate gas.
So what does this have to do with "Long Age Philosophy" ??
Deadman ...
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So you're saying there are no 90-degree walls on the canyon, Dave?
Didn't say there are no 90 degree walls, now, did I? Just look at the picture again and you will understand perfectly.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh AirFartDave; Osama has more thruth than you and he appeals to the same father of Abraham.
Except he is not depending on China-- not to call in all the money owed to it-- that is in fact funding your temperary excusion into Iraq.
When you have been thrown out of the middle east and Oil which is the result of organic matter laid down mostly from 135 million years ago reaches $135.oo a barrel you can make squillions by REPEATING the 'flud' science you love---go to it boy.... oil in 3 days...billions of barrels.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Hard to get more vertical than this: that's the Vishnu Schist.
Talus slopes on the base of 90-degree walls are not found on the Toutle, dave. Nor have you shown any 90-degree walls of any significance at all on the Toutle. why?
Selective culling of photographs isn't impressive AirHead ...and as i mentioned long ago...all that is needed to show that you are wrong is to show the exceptions to your absolutist claims. the Grand Canyon has vertical cliffs that are many thousands of meters in height. The Toutle has? That's right, none of those.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
This one is about as UN-selective as you can get ... notice the very wide angle of the photo
Lots of 45 degree slopes there, buddy boy!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So much for Aftershave's fancy assertion that "Long Age Philosophy" helps Oil and Gas Co's make money ...
I was pretty sure that was a farce ...
Ho ho ho !!
OK Dave, we'll take your blustering, farting evasion as your standard admission that you can't explain how all those companies use the Old Earth paradigm to produce results that make money.
You can't explain how the specific example you requested and were given (i.e Geochron Labs) managed to be a successful business for over 30 years based on a 'faulty' OE assumptions.
You can't come up with a single example of a company using a 6000 year old Earth model to produce a viable business plan. The only way YECs make money from YE is by selling books to delusional morons like you Dave.
Looks like all that bragging you did about you being such an astute businessman was just more empty boasting. Your big mouth sure gets you into trouble, ya know? It makes you look so stupid and dishonest when you can't back up the talk.
AFDave waddles away with his pants around his ankles again. Why is no one surprised?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
So? Erosion happens, stupid. Talus builds up. More importantly, even in that photo, there are verticals that, judging by the scale, measure hundreds of meters in height...so show me one of those on the Toutle, AirHead.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
hair fool day says: Lots of 45 degree slopes there, buddy boy!!
Go back and have a look at those slopes air (ass kicked out of Vietnam) fool dud.
I see plenty of 90 degree slopes.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Only in this case, they didn't even look the same;
Didn't look the same, huh?
This from a guy who thinks Apes and Humans DO look similar ...
Is that the best you can do dave? Or are you just mad that I saw through your little charade, and that's why you said I had no comment, when I did? That's how you wanted it to be, therefore how it should be, therefore how it is, right?
The truth is, I called your little prank, and you just can't stand that.
Why don't you post the pics again so we can all see how they look alike? I'm sure that humans and chimps are a million times more simillar- after all, and unlike your 'canyon' and GC, they're more or less the same size, and made of the same stuff.
If that is the extent of your argumentative logic... I'm really, really sorry for you.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist & granite (obviously , that is not "soft ") (14) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (15) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (16)Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR. (17)Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (18)Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (19)Why don't we see disruption of the varves? (20) Why are mountains near each other differentially eroded if they were all formed at the same time in your "theory?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So much for Aftershave's fancy assertion that "Long Age Philosophy" helps Oil and Gas Co's make money ...
I was pretty sure that was a farce ...
Ho ho ho !!
Meanwhile, there sure is a strange silence about my picture that shows 45 degree sloped walls all through the Grand Canyon ...
Hmmmm ...
Here dave, let me do the honours...
(let's see... first bolds, then AllCaps... right)
IT DOESN'T, DAVE.
Look at your pretty picture again. See the VERTICAL parts of the slopes? Do you know how BIG they are?
And there are a hundred other parts in GC where the slopes are ENTIRELY vertical... Heck, YOU even posted some of them.
What on Earth is your point? That if one part of one slope of the GC has a 45 degree angle, then all of it should be that way? Well sorry but, once again, reality disproves you.
Quote
CREOS: 30? 40? 50? I've lost count ... EVOS/LONG AGERS: 1? 2? 3? Certainly no more than 3
You know dave, everyone can tell you're getting desperate. you don't have to remind us.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
add Speed (distance divided by history) of continental drift. Speed of mountain formation. Speed to produce fossil fuels. Speed to erode kilometers of topsoil over continents. Speed to produce several ice ages. Speed to produce fossils.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
The VAST majority of them are 45 degree slopes ...
(Heh, heh, heh!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Anyone can perform the experiment pour water over a rock and see how much is eroded then repeat the experiment with ash.
AFDave you are a childish liar I feel sorry for you and even more for your children. Your father lied to you and that is not forgivable.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
DEADMAN ASKS FOR A STEEP CANYON WALL IN THE TOUTLE RIVER CANYON
Matthew 7:7 ¶ "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
DEADMAN RECEIVES A STEEP CANYON WALL IN THE TOUTLE RIVER CANYON
Looks like about 80 degrees to me ... whaddya think??!!
(Can you guys see this picture?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dealing with you is a bit like dealing with a weird little hydrocephalic chihuahua, AirHead. You're being hand-fed information but you keep yipping and shaking and pissing all over yourself. The point is that you can't show ONE comparable vertical on the Toutle, can you, AirHead?
How would any verticals form that were hundreds of meters high if the Grand Canyon were deposited, then cut in one year, Dave? You're violating the very laws of physics, geology and hydraulic engineering by suggesting this, stupid.
Or how about the The Redwall Limestone? It's 500-800ft thick, and is chemically near-pure CaCo3, with almost no other types of sediment mixed in , except in miniscule amounts. ( less than 1% ) How do you rapidly deposit a chemically pure limestone, over an area of thousands of square kilometers, in the middle of a turbulent global flood, in a period of a year? Magic? Miracles? And you're claiming your theory "explains the big things better?" Or that you're a "skeptical science" type? Why can't you answer direct questions, AirHead?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No, Dave, I sure can't see that photo and it better be one that is actually IN the Mt. St. Helens material, and not in the older surrounding valley materials, because that would sure screw up your claim, wouldn't it?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So you're saying there are no 90-degree walls on the canyon, Dave?
Didn't say there are no 90 degree walls, now, did I? Just look at the picture again and you will understand perfectly.
Dave, you're missing the point entirely (as usual). There are no 90-degree walls in the Toutle River Canyon because the sediment was too soft for an angle of repose that steep. There are plenty of 90-degree walls in the Grand Canyon because those walls were hard enough to support extreme angles of repose.
Do have any idea at all what anyone here is talking about? Because you sure as shit don't know what you're talking about.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No kiddin dave... the VAST majority? Well, color me impressed. So, any ideas on how those "rare" slopes were formed? And please don't respond by posting a picture of a two-meter tall "vertical" slope from Mt Helens (which is what most YECs do at that point).
Oh wait, maybe you did post it already... I can't see most of your pics anymore, remember?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
If you copy and paste the source URLs of his pics into a new browser window, they should show up.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Matthew 7:7 ¶ "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
I was knocking on your pointy little skull and all I got was a dull hollow thud, AirHead
Hah, I went ahead and pasted it in my browser and it's not even close to 80, from what I can see, although the angle is deceiving. And it sure isn't "comparable" to hundreds of meters. ####, I have no real idea of where that is, anyway...it looks oddly tampered with if you look at the right side of the photo : http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4692/1143/1600/toutle_90deg.jpg
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
(This is a question for some real scientists like yourselves)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Probably a bandwidth limitation where the pics are hosted. The pics come up intermittently for me.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
No, Dave, I sure can't see that photo and it better be one that is actually IN the Mt. St. Helens material, and not in the older surrounding valley materials, because that would sure screw up your claim, wouldn't it?
I'm certainly not an expert, but that would be my first guess, based simply on the obvious change in shape and coloration of the layer at the top of the wall. To a layman like me, it looks like a soft layer dumped on top of a harder layer.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
That's about a 60-degree slope at its sharpest, and if you look at the base of the area where the woman is standing, part of that has already slumped off and the rest of it is going to slide away, thereby creating a 45, which it probably already is by now. Unless that was taken a week or two ago. And why is the right side of the photo overlain by another shot?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm normally a nice, polite person, unless insulted first. I grew up in an area of L.A. where shootings were common and minding your manners might be enforced by a 13-year-old with a shotgun. But this simply irritates me when a photo is labelled "90-degrees" and it's obviously not near that, nor could unconsolidated ash/mud layers BE 90-degrees for more than a mere couple of meters. It's plainly deceptive and dishonest.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No, Dave. Wrong again. I just pointed this out to you last night. Just because two objects look alike doesn't mean they are alike. How many times am I going to have to say this?
one might ask:
"Are a panda's thumb and a human's thumb formed the same way, Dave?"
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I'm normally a nice, polite person, unless insulted first. I grew up in an area of L.A. where shootings were common and minding your manners might be enforced by a 13-year-old with a shotgun. But this simply irritates me when a photo is labelled "90-degrees" and it's obviously not near that, nor could unconsolidated ash/mud layers BE 90-degrees for more than a mere couple of meters. It's plainly deceptive and dishonest.
You have to understand that AFDave is both mathematically and dimensionally "challenged". After all, he's been telling his wife for years that this is six inches
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I wonder how much time Dave is going to waste trying to show that the Toutle River Canyon looks "just like" the Grand Canyon, which even if true would prove exactly nothing, since we know the Toutle River Canyon was produced by processes not bearing the slightest resemblance to the processes that produced the Grand Canyon. This is the whole human/chimp/gorilla stupidity all over again, writ large.
In the meantime, Dave has not bothered to produce the tiniest flyspeck of evidence for:
Massive comet, asteroid, and meteor strikes within historical times;
Huge underground "fountains";
Immense amounts of water (20 feet? 20,000 feet? 2 million feet?) covering the entire planet;
The ability for such amounts of water to lay down thousands of feet of sediment in less than a year, which could evidently lithify while still wet;
A process that could sunder one huge continent into the various currently-existing continents in less than 500 years, at velocities of more than a meter a day, using a mechanism that didn't create enough heat to vaporize the oceans;
A process that could produce mountain ranges like the Andes, Sierra Nevadas, Appalachians, and Himalayas, some of which are as much as 8,000 meters high, and then differentially erode them at wildly different rates;
And explain how every single land animal and plant now existing could be descended from one or a small number of mating pairs less than 5,000 years ago.
Of course, this is hardly surprising, given that AF Dave has yet to produce a single atom of evidence for any assertion he's ever made.
I doubt anyone here is holding their breath waiting for him to produce any.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I wonder how much time Dave is going to waste trying to show that the Toutle River Canyon looks "just like" the Grand Canyon, which even if true would prove exactly nothing, since we know the Toutle River Canyon was produced by processes not bearing the slightest resemblance to the processes that produced the Grand Canyon. This is the whole human/chimp/gorilla stupidity all over again, writ large.
In the meantime, Dave has not bothered to produce the tiniest flyspeck of evidence for:
Massive comet, asteroid, and meteor strikes within historical times;
Huge underground "fountains";
Immense amounts of water (20 feet? 20,000 feet? 2 million feet?) covering the entire planet;
The ability for such amounts of water to lay down thousands of feet of sediment in less than a year, which could evidently lithify while still wet;
A process that could sunder one huge continent into the various currently-existing continents in less than 500 years, at velocities of more than a meter a day, using a mechanism that didn't create enough heat to vaporize the oceans;
A process that could produce mountain ranges like the Andes, Sierra Nevadas, Appalachians, and Himalayas, some of which are as much as 8,000 meters high, and then differentially erode them at wildly different rates;
And explain how every single land animal and plant now existing could be descended from one or a small number of mating pairs less than 5,000 years ago.
Of course, this is hardly surprising, given that AF Dave has yet to produce a single atom of evidence for any assertion he's ever made.
I doubt anyone here is holding their breath waiting for him to produce any.
Has AFD ever offered a suggestion as to how exactly a global flood would produce huge mountain ranges, like the Himalayas?
Last I heard, floods didn't exactly make mountains taller...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Re "Massive comet, asteroid, and meteor strikes within historical times;"
Wasn't there a big meteor strike in Siberia in early 1900's?
Henry
Tunguska, and it wasn't that big- airburst, not ground impact. Knocked a lot of trees down. I think in the paleontological sense we think of "massive" as e.g. K-T impact scale (craters miles wide). That weird creationist with his little coloured diagram seems to want ALL impacts in a few hours. Duck!
Edited for clarity: ducking will not help you survive the impact, but you may be able to kiss your a** goodbye.
A process that could sunder one huge continent into the various currently-existing continents in less than 500 years, at velocities of more than a meter a day, using a mechanism that didn't create enough heat to vaporize the oceans;
500 years? AFDave's latest infatuation is with Walt Brown's 'hydroplate' theory, which has all continental tectonic movement and mountain formation happening in 1 day.
That's right boys and girls - Pangaea broke up and the continents moved thousands of miles in one 24 hour day, or over 100 miles per hour!
Mt Everest rose 29000 ft. and all the Andes, Alps, Rockies, Himalayas formed in one 24 hour day, or over 1000' per hour!
Noah must have shit himself when he saw all the mass of Asia coming towards him at 100 MPH and growing at 1000' per hour! Maybe God put a force field around the Ark to protect it from getting vaporized or being smashed into toothpicks.
Is that how it happened AFDaveTard?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Noah must have shit himself when he saw all the mass of Asia coming towards him at 100 MPH and growing at 1000' per hour! Maybe God put a force field around the Ark to protect it from getting vaporized or being smashed into toothpicks.
Ok, so how the #### do I get that image out of my head
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
500 years? AFDave's latest infatuation is with Walt Brown's 'hydroplate' theory, which has all continental tectonic movement and mountain formation happening in 1 day.
Given Dave's squishiness on dates (he has no problem with 50% error bars in his (much more recent) dates, but derides 2-4% error bars on the real dates), I cut him a great deal of slack on how long these processes allegedly took. If Dr. Brown really thinks this all took place in a week or less—or in a day, Dave's numbers look much, much worse.
Of course, they were hilariously bad to begin with, even if we give him half a millennium to move all his continents around.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Nope, Davie-pie. The walls are too steep. Erosion of soft rock yields approximately 45 degree wals. Erosion of hard rock yields 80-90 degree walls. The Grand Canyon walls are 80-90 degrees. The Grand Canyon and its meanders were not cut in soft sediments
But, JonF ... those sure look like 45 degree walls to me ...
Well, Davie-poodles, you are mistaken. They ain't 45-degree walls. There are some 45-degree rubble piles from the collapse of the steep eroded walls, but those are easily discerned from eroded walls. Try this one:
Quote
There you have it folks ... the MIT Expert has spoken ...
Quote
[b]Erosion of SOFT ROCK yields 45 degree walls ...
The Grand Canyon has LOTS of 45 degree walls (see picture above) ...
Sorry, Davie-fiddle, the GC does not have lots of 45 degree walls. It has some 45 degree rubble piles:
Quote
CONCLUSION: The Grand Canyon was formed by erosion of SOFT SEDIMENTS
Wrong conclusion, Davie-poo. The steep walls of the GC demonstrate conclusively that it was carved from hard rock.
DEADMAN ASKS FOR A STEEP CANYON WALL IN THE TOUTLE RIVER CANYON
Matthew 7:7 ¶ "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
DEADMAN RECEIVES A STEEP CANYON WALL IN THE TOUTLE RIVER CANYON
Looks like about 80 degrees to me ... whaddya think??!!
(Can you guys see this picture?)
Nope. Not even if I copy the address and past it into a new window. Try photobucket.com.
ABE: Oh, and one steep wall wouldn't prove a lot, even if it does exist (which I doubt). Plenty of photographs such as establish the character of the walls of the Toutle "canyon"
GRAND CANYON PICTURE ANNOTATED TO DENOTE ANGLES >= 45 DEGREES
(For those with poor eyesight, small minds, faulty wordviews, and other such limitations)
Note that there are many more 45's in the background ... I just marked the foreground examples ...
(Thanks, JonF, for the referral to Photobucket.com)
(You are a productive world citizen after all :-) )
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, of course. Why should they not be? Do you have something against a free speech and free press? Non-YECs sell their books there, do they not?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So Davie-doo, since you are so good at photoshopping in lines - why don't you photoshop in lines that show the many 1000'+ vertical surfaces cut through at least 14 different layers, including granite? Then you can explain how a river was slow enough to meander but fast enough to carry away all that soil in a vertical cut.
You can't explain any of that of course, because 1) you're a cowardly idiot and 2) the Grand Canyon wasn't formed by DA FLUD only 4500 years ago.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
As usual, Dave goes off on one of his aggressively stupid tangents. He's now going to spend the next couple of days trying to prove that there are canyon walls on the Toutle river that are just as steep as the walls of the Grand Canyon, which even if he could find them, provide absolutely no evidence of a global flood, nor would they answer any of the two dozen "big picture" questions about his mythical flood that he claims we're all missing because we're lost in the details of mud vs. hard rock.
It's the same thing as all his other arguments. C14 dating doesn't work because it provides erroneous dates under circumstances it's already known not to be accurate. Radiometric dating in general doesn't work because a guy once found a couple of anomalous results using a method that's been discredited for decades. Dendrochronology doesn't work because, well, because it doesn't. Portuguese = French + Spanish because some French knights moved to Portugal in the 15th century. Chimps are more closely related to Gorillas than they are to humans because, well, isn't it obvious that they look more like gorillas?
Many people get lost in the trees looking for the forest, Dave. You can't see the forest or the trees.
So stop wasting our time on the Toutle River, Dave. Let's hear some answers on where the millions of cubic kilometers of the water your flood needs came from, and where they went. Let's hear where the thousands of feet of sediment came from (hint: they didn't erode from the mountains), and how they all managed to sort themselves into layers worldwide while being laid down at rates approaching a meter an hour. Let's hear your theory on how the continents separated from each other at hundreds of miles an hour without melting themselves and boiling off the earth's oceans. Let's hear about how the Himalayas were formed in an afternoon. Let's hear how the Appalachians formed and eroded in an afternoon. Let's hear about how every ant on the planet today is descended from a single pair of ants 4,500 years ago. Let's hear about how the redwoods I see every weekend on my bike rides in Marin, some of which are thousands of years old, either a) managed to survive the flood, or b) are descended from—what?—some seedlings?—some seeds?—Noah kept on the ark. And where did those seeds come from, Dave? Redwoods live on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America and nowhere else. Even if you could walk from downtown Jerusalem to Muir Valley in 2,500 B.C., how much warning did Noah have about the flood that gave him time to get there and back, while he was overseeing the construction of his ark? Or did he book a first-class ticket on the Concorde?
What about that ice age, Dave? Humans have been literate since your flood. How come none of them had anything to say about a winter that froze most of the planet solid? How come there's no independent evidence of it from any source? Not even a written source?
I could go on and on, Dave. I could fill five pages of 5,000-word posts on things your global flood doesn't have a prayer of explaining. You say your flood gives a "more satisfactory" explanation for the "big questions." Actually, it doesn't give any kind of explanation for any of the questions, big or small. For every "explanation" you can come up with, I can come with a hundred questions it has no answer for at all.
I told you a long time ago, Dave, that for your "Creator God Hypothesis" to have any legs, you were going to have to disprove 90 to 95% of all scientific knowledge gathered over the last 500 years, because the remaining 5 or 10% would be more than enough to totally annihilate your "hypothesis." Well, here we are, more than 3,000 posts later, and you haven't managed to poke so much as a pin-prick in a single piece of scientific evidence for an old earth and for the Theory of Evolution. You haven't managed to support a single claim you've made on any subject, no matter how closely or distantly related to your "Creator God Hypothesis."
You missed "hammering" us with the "truth" about your "Global Flood"? That's pathetic, Dave. Your "arguments" have been beaten to death, eviscerated, burned to ash and blown out of a cannon. But the truly comical, hilarious part about it is you don't even realize how thoroughly they've been annihilated. You actually think you're winning!
Glad to have you back, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ok guys, I still can't see any pics but, from your description, I am now pretty sure that dave posted THE one picture of a couple meters-tall "vertical slope" ALL YECs use.
So, davey... What else is new? Care maybe to answer some questions, now that we called your little bluff? Or are you gonna maintain your dishonest charade?
Your call.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
ummm, so while you selectively gander at your own provided pic, dumbshit, did you happen to notice all the vertical and near vertical faces as well? Or does your simple little mind block these features out for you?
I marked them for you in easy to see blue, to contrast to your white squiggles.
who has the poor eyesight, again?
ever thought maybe that erosion rates and patterns might differ depending on the composition of the material involved, and the method?
of course not. else why would you have referenced the St. Helens incident to begin with.
I swear, this is the dumbest shit you've pulled yet. It may in fact be the dumbest thing I have seen ANYBODY post so far this year, and that's saying a lot.
er, congratulations if that's what you were going for.
otherwise, might i suggest brain surgery?
btw:
Quote
GRAND CANYON PICTURE ANNOTATED TO DENOTE ANGLES >= 45 DEGREES
I think you meant to say LESS than (it's THIS symbol: < )
must be that home schoolin' yer papa gave ya.
or maybe a freudian slip?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
The Gut is the basis for the Great Premises of Idiot America. We hold these truths to be self-evident: Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. Anything can be true if somebody says it on television. Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. How does it work? This is how it works. On August 21, a newspaper account of the "intelligent design" movement contained this remarkable sentence: "They have mounted a politically savvy challenge to evolution as the bedrock of modern biology, propelling a fringe academic movement onto the front pages and putting Darwin's defenders firmly on the defensive." A "politically savvy challenge to evolution" is as self-evidently ridiculous as an agriculturally savvy challenge to euclidean geometry would be. It makes as much sense as conducting a Gallup poll on gravity or running someone for president on the Alchemy Party ticket. It doesn't matter what percentage of people believe they ought to be able to flap their arms and fly, none of them can. It doesn't matter how many votes your candidate got, he's not going to turn lead into gold. The sentence is so arrantly foolish that the only real news in it is where it appeared. On the front page. Of The New York Times.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Last I checked, most ladies are a little under 2 meters or so ...
Oh and Deadman ... this was scanned from a book ... you know ... one of those things you guys tell me I never read? That explains the funny reflection on the right ...
But you can go ahead and think it's fraud if you like :-)
Just file that with all your other erroneous thinking!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I wonder if Panda’s Thumb continued their decline? Maybe our loyal opposition will give us an answer at ATBC.
Does anyone have the answer? I would like to know this also ...
PREDICTION: k.e will chime and say "Look at that massive decline in July!!"
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Afdave. I don't know about "PT's decline". However, I do find it amusing that you are standing up for DaveScot. In fact, DaveScot thinks your YEC position is full of sh*t... why don't you take it up with him at UD and we can all have a nice laugh on this side.
Ladies and gentleman, we are pleased to announce the coming match. I this corner we have Afdave with his YEC "rapid flood major f-up theory" gloves. In the opposite corner we have DaveScot with his... uh... Intelligent Corrosion theory. Ding ding.
Good, Dave is back. I see he's "bombing" again... Could you answer my question, Dave? I want to know why your theory conflicts with your bible!
Quote (Ved @ July 06 2006,14:05)
Dave, I have a bible question. I don't think you want to make any part of your hypothesis (heh) conflict with your great book.
You say there was nothing but small rolling hills prior to your singular flood event. The bible seems to not have much to say at all about the landscape of the earth until the passage about Noah, where it mentions:
1) high hills, and
2) mountains:
Quote
7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
Now this is a little confusing. It does indeed mention high hills and mountains that were already there before the flood, but it seems to imply that the mountains were 15 cubits (20 feet?) higher than the high hills.
Now maybe you can help me out. Your super accurate foundation for all knowledge either calls things mountains that really weren't mountains, or it gives a rediculously small measurement for the height of those mountains. I assume you have an explanation?
I see some significant layering in that picture. Let's see a formal geological description on the formations shown and a specification of exactly where that picture was taken. I really doubt all or even much of that is the Mt. St. Helens lahar; at best, maybe the top layer (a few meters tall) is. Maybe none of it is
Oh and Deadman ... this was scanned from a book ... you know ... one of those things you guys tell me I never read? That explains the funny reflection on the right ...But you can go ahead and think it's fraud if you like :-)Just file that with all your other erroneous thinking!
I have answered each and every question you have asked of me directly, AirHead. You run from my questions.
The photograph shows 90-degree angles where, Air head? The woman is perpendicular to the ground, this much is obvious...so show me where the photo, labelled "90-degrees"...shows any appreciable angles of that nature in the layers. The problem with even that claim is that the photo you have LABELLED "90-degrees" doesn't even show that it has a single 90-degree angle in the layers. you'd think that the photographer could have found ONE 10-foot span showing a vertical of 90-degrees,dave, but ...nah. Why would that be? Because ash simply can't do that, that's why. Which is why the photographer took a near-frontal and not a side view. he DID have the WOMAN TURN away to give the IMPRESSION of a side view, though.
The BEST you can do is try to say this photo shows what, Dave? ASH can be cut by water?
Unconsolidated Ash and mud in the Toutle is not the basalt, schist, limestone, sandstone, gneiss, slate, shale,dolomite of the Grand Canyon. You can't cut 30 meters of ANY of those materials in the time the Toutle cut through ash and mud...
What you are doing is essentially analogous to saying that a cut-glass diamond is *just the same* as a carbon diamond, dave...you're saying photographs can make layers of gray material look like gray material in layers...but ...on in-person inspection, they are NOT in fact alike...so how does this make your case stronger?
If your "theory" is *better* than any other, why can't you answer the simple questions others ask you?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Does anyone have the answer? I would like to know this also ...
PREDICTION: k.e will chime and say "Look at that massive decline in July!!"
check alexa.com for general statistics.
note though, that the only thing that really matters is the number of unique visitors per time period.
Davetard didn't ever get that (not surprising, really). If you gander at that number, it hasn't changed significantly on UD since the Dover trial impact faded.
IOW, the only folks increasing traffic at UD are right here.
In fact, antievolution.org and pandasthumb.org make up about 40% of the total referals (of those that were tracked), IIRC.
Meantime, if you check alexa, you will see pandasthumb has a far better penetration and unique visitor stat than UD ever did or will.
Davetard was jealous, that's all. he still doesn't have a clue what the numbers even mean.
nor do you. so don't bother to ask again.
what about my modification to your canyon pic, Dave?
selectively choose to ignore it did you? too many inconvenient aspects to it?
frackin idjut.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Well, the Tyre prophecy is disproven. Ezekial was clear that Tyre would remain a bare rock forever, and I think that we can all agree that it is not, and has not been so. In fact, it has been occupied since Ezekial made his prophecy. The prophecy failed. AF Dave, admit that the bible made a mistake, or explain how this part of the prophecy came true. Be honest, and to be fair, if you chose to ignore this post as you have so many others, you are tacitly admitting the bible was in error. If there is a SINGLE ERROR, how can it be infallible! By your standard of proof, the house of cards your hypothesis is built on collapses. No need to go on there, AFD. Nothing personal, Dave. You just lost.
Dave, Why do you ignore posts? How do you explain this one to your kids? BE HONEST.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Pretty steep canyon walls, there, Deadman ... not 90 degrees, but pretty steep ...
Certainly steep enough to show that a volcanic, hydraulic catastrophe can produce features that look like the Grand Canyon ... which of course is the point.
What I have been telling you for the last few weeks is simply that the Grand Canyon is screaming CATASTROPHE.
It is utterly absurd to think that the Grand Canyon was formed by slow, gentle processes over millions of years.
What kind of catastrophe? Not sure exactly ... don't know all the details, obviously, but did it involve massive quantities of water? Absolutely!
Could it have happened in a very short time period? <3 years? Definitely!
(Yes, Ichthy, I do know that "<" means "less than" ... you can mark that down as my 5th mistake ... or is it my 6th?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
GoP ... there are tools available to reduce picture size ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I remember building a model of the battleship Missouri when I was a kid. So I guess in Dave's world, a child with some glue, a pair of tweezers, and some appropriately-shaped plastic pieces can produce a full-scale, functioning WWII battleship in just a couple of days.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
What I have been telling you for the last few weeks is simply that the Grand Canyon is screaming CATASTROPHE.
It is utterly absurd to think that the Grand Canyon was formed by slow, gentle processes over millions of years.
What kind of catastrophe? Not sure exactly ... don't know all the details, obviously, but did it involve massive quantities of water? Absolutely!
Could it have happened in a very short time period? <3 years? Definitely!
No, Dave, that "screaming" you hear is just the voices in your head. What the Grand Canyon is really screaming is "slow erosion working over millions of years." That's what it says to anyone who has even a junior-high-schooler's appreciation of geology and geologic time.
My advice, Dave? Same as it always is: drop it. You're going nowhere with either the Toutle River Canyon or the Grand Canyon, and your baseless, unsupported assertions that similar processes created both is belied by the very pictures you yourself have posted. It's time to move on to your next completely irrational, baseless, unsupportable and directly-contradicted-by-observation assertion about how God "poofed" the world into existence in a week.
Quote
(Yes, Ichthy, I do know that "<" means "less than" ... you can mark that down as my 5th mistake ... or is it my 6th?)
Fifth or sixth mistake, Dave? Every single post of yours is peppered with mistakes in logic, inference, and/or basic facts, and given your almost-600 posts so far, I'm going to estimate you've made more than a thousand mistakes of one sort or another.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I remember building a model of the battleship Missouri when I was a kid. So I guess in Dave's world, a child with some glue, a pair of tweezers, and some appropriately-shaped plastic pieces can produce a full-scale, functioning WWII battleship in just a couple of days.
No, this analogy is wrong. A GIANT child with an assload of glue, monstrous tweezers, and big ole plastic pieces DID produce WWII battle ships.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Hey GoP you should have put your pic up with missy.
Then you wouldn't need to compare her to a chimp...you and her in the same pic. would be proof positive you were descended from long line of knuckle scrapers.
Oh BTW hair fart dave just how much of the Grand Canyon's floor been eroded in the time since white men collected records
IF YOU are right then the canyon should be eroding at more than 1 meter per year at least and in 1776 the river would have been more than 123 meters higher RIGHT?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Ghosty's posting piccies of hot girlies now to distract from his former postings of muscley men and his self confessed adoration of Eric.
You work that denial Ghosty! Every post is a data point.
Louis
P.S. I would have a serious point to make, apart from mocking the assorted kookery, but let's be honest, both Dave and GoP have descended so far into farcical drivel and chocolate starfish gazing (like navel gazing but lower, requires contortion abilities) that mockery is the only possible gambit. Oh I'm well aware they will decide that resorting to mockery=persecution=them being right, but we know better. Ahhhhh long may Dave and GoP live, I wish them nothing but health and happiness. After all, after a frustrating day spent in the lab and scouring the lit, what better way to relax than with a beverage of choice and a fresh kook to laugh at.
By the way, Dave, since no one else has mentioned it: you do understand the difference between "way more than a couple meters tall, Faid" (i.e., looks like maybe 12 meters?), and "more like fifteen hundred meters tall"?
You do also understand the difference between "eroded through a few meters of soft, unlithified volcanic ash (kind of the consistency of what charcoal briquets turn into after the barbecue)" and "eroded through thousands of meters of fully lithified sandstone, limestone, schist, gneiss, and occasional granite," don't you?
Or maybe you don't. Based on your last dozen posts alone, I'd guess not.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Could it have happened in a very short time period? <3 years? Definitely!
Prove it AirTard. Seriously, I'd like you to show your willingness to prove what you think is true. Get a hold of some coconino sandstone. Turn your water hose on it full blast, use a high-pressure garden nozzle. Wait three years. Tell me how much is eroded off that sandstone slab. You have no idea of what that material even looks like, do you? You operate off of sheer ignorance, DaveTard, and it's evident in virtually every post you make. You claim that 60-degree slopes are 90, you think schist and sandstone and any other material can be cut by water in 3 years, to the tune of thousands of feet. You're beyond stupid, Dave. Even the photos you post don't back your stupid-ass claims. Did you ever try doing that test to MAKE spider track trace fossils? No. Why not? because you know #### well you can't do it.
This is why all you're left with is avoiding direct questions put to you, DaveTard2, along with claiming that photos of objects that appear alike -- mean that the subjects are the same. ASH is NOT schist, stupid. Cutting powdered concrete mix with a garden hose is easy. Now try it with basalt. Dumb shit. Before you left, you said you were going to be answering the questions I asked, Stupid. I guess your personal knowledge of this "theory that is better than any other" renders you incapable of even **trying** to respond to simple questions, eh?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
From Glenn Morton, the ex-YEC geologist AFDave can't stand:
Quote
Erosion much slower than YECs think
Creationists are always claiming that erosion occurs very rapidly. In their model, it has to because long times taken to erode something will blow their time scheme out of the water. Austin writes:
"Regional unconformities do exist between some strata in Grand Canyon, but the evidence favors rapid erosion." ~ Steven A. Austin, "Interpreting Strata of Grand Canyon," in Steven A. Austin, editor, Grand Canyon: A Monument to Catastrophe, (Santee: Inst. for Creation Research, 1994), p. 52
So, lets look just a bit north of the Grand Canyon, where similar rocks were deposited and see how much erosion has taken place in 100 years.
One can see that very very little erosion has taken place at Bowknot Bend in Utah. A close examination of the original photo shows that some of the rocks in the foreground are identical today as to shape as they were 100 years earlier. Clearly erosion, even with a major river going through these channels, doesn't do much eroding in 100 years. Even in a thousand years (ten times what you see here), it doesn't look like much geologic work would be done to these rocks.
Given the tiny tiny difference between these two photos, one must wonder how long it would take to have eroded away the cliff material seen in the background. That rock, you must realize, used to cover the area and it was eroded away by this slow eroding river.
Think about this when you consider the erosion of 10s of thousands of feet of sediment like we see in the Appalachians and the North Sea.
I predict AFDave will give his usual moronic reply "BUT SEE, IT HAS A 45 DEG. ANGLE!!!!"
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Thanks OA I knew someone would PROVE that the erosion YEC's claim IS IMPOSSIBLE.
While at the same time showing that YEC's are TOTAL LIARS.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
and look at those 90 degree walls ...boy that must be some HARD rock.
I predict DAFT will change the subject and try to declare victory.
Just another hard day of lying for AFD.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Pretty steep canyon walls, there, Deadman ... not 90 degrees, but pretty steep ...
Nowhere near as steep as the GC walls.
Quote
Certainly steep enough to show that a volcanic, hydraulic catastrophe can produce features that look like the Grand Canyon ...
The Big Lie doesn't go over well when your audience knows more than you. The angles of the walls are certainly so shallow as to show that their formation is in no way comparable to the Grand Canyon. The steep walls of the GC demonstrate that it was cut through hard rock, and took hundreds of thousands of years to cut. Your flood is, once again, a non-starter.
Sandstone from the Kaibab and Coconino were used as building materials for thousands of years in the area, AirHead. It was used because it is durable and resistant to wear. We find such sandstone being used by the the Anasazi, the Hopi and the Paiute in Utah. it is used to form walls, floors and benches in Kivas and as roof covering. You are truly stupid if you think a river is going to cut through those layers in 3 years. You can buy it:
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Yeah, these two had a common ancestor. Suuuuuure, Darwinists.
Yes, Ghost, those two do indeed have a common ancestor. About 6 million years ago. I realise you don't grasp the depth of time, but that is not our problem. I refer you to Nature volume 441, page 1103, "Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees", Patterson et al., and references therein.
Particularly amusing is that you post pictures of two primates with multiple obvious similarities, and act like it's evidence AGAINST common descent. Were we all supposed to be blinded by lust?
Next up: Ghosty posts pictures of Britney Spears, Ghandi, Karl Marx and Danny Glover
, and says: Yeah, suuuure, these all had a common ancestor.
One can see that very very little erosion has taken place at Bowknot Bend in Utah. A close examination of the original photo shows that some of the rocks in the foreground are identical today as to shape as they were 100 years earlier. Clearly erosion, even with a major river going through these channels, doesn't do much eroding in 100 years. Even in a thousand years (ten times what you see here), it doesn't look like much geologic work would be done to these rocks.
Given the tiny tiny difference between these two photos, one must wonder how long it would take to have eroded away the cliff material seen in the background. That rock, you must realize, used to cover the area and it was eroded away by this slow eroding river.
Think about this when you consider the erosion of 10s of thousands of feet of sediment like we see in the Appalachians and the North Sea.
Well of course you don't see very much erosion -- you're comparing a river to a Global Flood ... what's your point?
My point is twofold ...
1) A rinky dink river (the Colorado River) cannot form the features of the Grand Canyon even if given millions of years (kinda like a bacteria cannot turn into a jellyfish even if it has millions of years to do so)
2) But a Global , Volcanic, Tectonic, Hydraulic Cataclysm could ...
END OF STORY
Deadman...
Quote
Prove it AirTard. Seriously, I'd like you to show your willingness to prove what you think is true. Get a hold of some coconino sandstone. Turn your water hose on it full blast, use a high-pressure garden nozzle. Wait three years. Tell me how much is eroded off that sandstone slab.
Probably got eroded when it was still soft ... or maybe there were other cataclysmic things going on ... I'm not sure of the precise erosion mechanism ...
But I'm sure of this ...
A rinky dink river (the Colorado River) cannot form the features of the Grand Canyon even if given millions of years
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
A rinky dink river (the Colorado River) cannot form the features of the Grand Canyon even if given millions of years
Again, you're operating directly from ignorance, DaveStupid. What is the flow of the river? What amount of particulates does it carry? Why does the material from the Delta region of the Colorado match the debris from the Grand Canyon? Why do we find the same chemical and lithic compositions in both? Why can't you say how sandstone forms FOSSIL TRACKS AND IS STILL SOFT ENOUGH TO BE ERODED IN A YEAR? OR THREE? OR TEN THOUSAND? You're both stupid and dishonest and you have to rely on crap speculation in your "theory that is better than any other" I have not relied on that ONCE. You can't offer up anything BUT that, scumbag.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Probably got eroded when it was still soft ... or maybe there were other cataclysmic things going on ... I'm not sure of the precise erosion mechanism ...
But I'm sure of this ...
A rinky dink river (the Colorado River) cannot form the features of the Grand Canyon even if given millions of years
Classic Dave: repeating a statement in bold is worth more than, oh, presenting any evidence at all. And the usual plausibility gap: he finds ordinary erosive processes impossible, and he finds impossible floods plausible.
You know, a few months ago I visited the Grand Canyon for the first time. It was absolutely awe-inspiring. I found the experience particularly moving because many, many things which I'd known in theory suddenly became concrete and real to me. Earlier on the same day I'd visited Sunset Crater (volcanic eruption circa 1000 AD) and walked through a lava field there, so it was a day of major geological experiences for me. Phenomena which I'd seen in textbooks as a child suddenly became part of my immediate experience, and that sensation of meshing between my abstract and concrete knowledge was mind-expanding.
I feel profound pity for people like Dave, who can see something like the Grand Canyon and, instead of recognising it for what it is, feel compelled to shoehorn it into their incredibly limited view of the range of time and space.
We know that significant vertical walls are possible in soft sediments, at least for a short while. This is especially true when rivers continue to undercut clay riverbanks.
So I'm not sure that verticality is the more crucial issue, even though you're not going to get the verticality of the Grand Canyon by cutting through soft sediments. The meanders in various canyons are a better indication that the rivers started out relatively placid, only later cutting deeply into the rock. AirFuc' Dave has never answered how the meanders got there. Amusingly, he selectively notes all of the 45 slopes (ignoring the many near-verticals) on a photo having exactly the sorts of bends that would not be produced by raging torrents in soft sediments.
Then too, the Colorado manages to cut through a dome of rock. How would it do this, except via relatively slow uplift of the rocks of the Grand Canyon? Did water flow uphill during, or shortly after, the flood?
Btw, Airhead Dave, how did the river cut rapidly into the Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Canyon? It isn't all sedimentary rocks, you know.
We need a reasonable explanation for the tilting and the unconformity below the Tapeats Sandstone Layer, as well. How could masses of rock be laid down, tilted, eroded down to a flat surface, and then have limestones, sandstones, and shales all deposited on top? How could the limestones and shales (clays) even precipitate out of the "flood waters"?
When and how did the sediments harden? How can there be footprints of animals within some of the sediments which purportedly were produced by the flood? Where, for God's sake, did all of the huge numbers of organisms come from in the limestone layers, in the Grand Canyon, and all over the world? Did the pre-Flood world have hundreds to thousands of times more plankton than we have today?
It should be noted as well, though, that gorges can be carved in basalt in a relatively short time. In the channeled scabland area exist gorges that are said to have been made within a few hours, to at most a few days, in basalt, a hard volcanic rock. It's not an explanation for the Grand Canyon cutting into the Vishnu Schist, however, since any flood on the order of the Missoula Flood coursing through the Grand Canyon would cut severely into the sides of the gorge. The Vishnu Schist is cut like the rest of the canyon, into a V-shape.
Of course this isn't really for Aardvark Dave, since he only 'understands' what supports the Bible (well, the fundy interpretation of that work). But I thought I'd add to the strikes against his inane claims.
A rinky dink river (the Colorado River) cannot form the features of the Grand Canyon even if given millions of years
If you say so Davie-doo. We're sure of many things too...
We're sure you're a raving Fundy nutter without the slightest understanding of geology, or chemistry, or physics, or biology (or good business cases either it now seems).
We're sure your bloated ego makes you lie and squirm and avoid actual scientific details like the plague.
We're sure your continued tard-isms will create great peals of laughter! Keep up the good work Davie! Don't forget to put those stunning rebuttals in CAPITALS and bold and repeat them at least three times to make them true!
AirheadFoolDave's A LOSER!! AirheadFoolDave's A LOSER!! AirheadFoolDave's A LOSER!!
See how that works?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
A rinky dink river (the Colorado River) cannot form the features of the Grand Canyon even if given millions of years.
And you base this claim on what, Dave? Your personal incredulity?
Creationists are great at making claims of impossibility, and absolutely pathetic at finding evidence to support those claims. AF Dave, an electrical engineer, for crying out loud, knows more about geology than people who have spent decades studying the subject.
Welcome to Idiot America, folks. Where the more you know, the less you know, you know?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In the channeled scabland area exist gorges that are said to have been made within a few hours, to at most a few days, in basalt, a hard volcanic rock.
Columnar basalt like in Oregon and Ireland ( giant's causeway) would have to be stripped away by torrents moving at 45-50 miles an hour. For the most part, what happens is the underlying materials that the basalt sits on becomes eroded, taking the "jointed" layers of basalt with it, rather than the basalts being worn away of themselves. You find huge sections of basalt that are carried away by the torrent , but not "eroded." in the sense of having a river cut THROUGH the actual basalt columns, but at the joints. The currents were so so powerful that they were able to pluck out and transport blocks of basalt, some measuring more than thirty feet across. When ancient Lake Missoula let go, that's what happened.
In the case of the Grand Canyon, the basalt I was thinking of is more like the thicker pahoehoe of Hawaii.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A--F---Dave may be a narcissist of the first order. This is one thing that occurs to me again and again, since he is amazingly blithe while writing the worst balderdash that we've seen for a long time.
Evidence, facts, reason, and a considerable barrage of put-downs (not undeserved) don't affect him all that much, as far as I can tell. Presumably he could be extremely repressed ("disciplined") instead of being a colossal narcissist, but most people couldn't take the criticisms and being so completely wrong so many times for so long.
There really are people like that, you know, who just find themselves to be right no matter what. They might note a peccadillo or two in their claims, just this or that tiny mote in the vast sea of their rightness and righteousness. Nevertheless, they can be 180 deg. wrong without end and never notice anything more than that they have ever been slightly wrong about inconsequential details.
Naturally, these true narcissists are not very amenable to learning. Why should they, when they're right, and interestingly enough, have always been right?
It's a world that most of us have never experienced. It produces a self-assurance that spooks the more superstitious folk, who find them to be "people of faith". And because self-confidence gets criminals off in court cases, we can see how "jurors" in these "debates" might also suppose that the self-assured one is right. We do not evince such self-confidence, for indeed, narcissism is deleterious to the scientific spirit. However, in the psyches of the many gullible ones, serene security while making absolutely false claims regarding the evidence is much more convincing than are careful, cautious, and skeptical comments by competent scientists.
This is why DaveTard had to go from UD. He tries for self-confidence in his incompetence, but he really ends up blustering, even more insistent on his absolute rightness down to the very detail than is As-Fu--Dave. He's more on the order of angry, impatient, and unhappy that his genius isn't recognized. Tard #2 really seems to be far more confident in relating the most blatantly wrong stuff ever conjured up.
Tard2, however, does not get used like Tard1 was, because he isn't as prone to unfair personal attacks like Tard1 is, and because he is too certain that pseudoscience is right even to learn how to back it up in a manner that would convince anyone with one skeptical neuron in his brain.
Thus Tard1 has a kind of thuggish and stupid competence among the UD tards, while Tard2 is smiling too radiantly at the wonderfulness of the Bible and the Flood even to notice that the Flood explains nothing at all, even while a great many facts weigh against it. He's in a kind of stupid heaven where he and his are wonderfully correct, and completely untouchable by the materialists and skeptics below.
This isn't the only explanation possible for As-Fu--Dave, but it is one worth considering. It certainly explains why he has learned nothing at all in his whole time here, and how he is an amusement in about the same way that a circus freak is.
Oh, and Dave: the Precambrian Cardenas basalt in the east grand canyon is dated at about 780 to 810 million years: E.H. McKee and D.C. Noble, "Age of the Cardenas Lavas, Grand Canyon, Arizona," Geological Society of America Bulletin, 87 (Aug. 1976): 1188-1190. which agrees with paleomagnetic data presented by: Elston, D.P., 1989, Grand Canyon Supergroup, northern Arizona; stratigraphic summary and preliminary paleomagnetic correlations with parts of other North American Proterozoic successions, IN Jenney, J.P., and Reynolds, S.J., eds., Geologic evolution of Arizona: Arizona Geological Society Digest, v. 17, p. 259-272. See also: Elston, D.P. and Scott, G.R., 1976, Unconformity at the Cardenas-Nankoweap contact (Precambrian), Grand Canyon Supergroup, northern Arizona: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 87, no. 12, p. 1763-1772. Radiometric dating of the underlying Vishnu Group places its metamorphosis at about 1750 million years ago. GSA Bulletin: Vol. 108, No. 9, (pp. 1167–1181).
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I was just thinking that the paleomag sequence would have to be disrupted worldwide by heat-filled cataclysmic events like you claimed, DaveStupid...why don't we see that? Or in the deep sea cores? Or in the ice cores? Or in the varves? Or in the dendrochonology? Or in the obsidian dating? Or in the Thermoluminescence dates? Or the Radioluminescence dates?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Columnar basalt like in Oregon and Ireland ( giant's causeway) would have to be stripped away by torrents moving at 45-50 miles an hour. For the most part, what happens is the underlying materials that the basalt sits on becomes eroded, taking the "jointed" layers of basalt with it, rather than the basalts being worn away of themselves. You find huge sections of basalt that are carried away by the torrent , but not "eroded." in the sense of having a river cut THROUGH the actual basalt columns, but at the joints. The currents were so so powerful that they were able to pluck out and transport blocks of basalt, some measuring more than thirty feet across. When ancient Lake Missoula let go, that's what happened.
I don't know, it appears to me that the gorge below Palouse Falls is cut through basalts which in the lower levels lack the columnar joints that are sometimes found:
There may be more joints than I've noticed at Palouse Falls and than are visible in the pictures at the link above, but I'm just going by what I've seen.
The basalts in that area are only sometimes jointed. Many jointed columns may be found in eastern Washington and Oregon, but they're not really typical.
I don't doubt that rocks being carried by the Missoula Flood were instrumental in breaking up the basalts, and no doubt any number of faults and perhaps joints allowed the flood to gouge into the basalt. But at least some faults and joints could be found in most rocks.
It could be that more joints existed in the top layer that the flood first encountered than in the layers below, facilitating the break-up of the rock beneath. When I look at the pictures at the link, the highest layer in the gorge does appear to have a number of joints.
Anyhow, as I noted before, the igneous rock at the bottom of the Grand Canyon was eroded in the usual way, which is why it is V-shaped (steep V, granted) there as well as in the other layers. The igneous rocks eroded in sensibly the same manner as the sedimentary rocks did, and no enormous flood cut a U-shaped channel like we see below Palouse Falls. The Grand Canyon is a steep V-shaped "valley", just as any rapidly-cut canyon would be expected to be.
Glen: I was thinking only of the Cardenas basalt, which is about 300 meters thick max, in the GC. I'm not sure what basalts other than columns were eroded up there (in the NW), even though i lived on the Willamette for a while. There's lots of different kinds of "basalt" flows, some are airy and easily eroded, others are pretty tough.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I could add, too, that it is not so certain that only one flood is actually responsible for the gorge below Palouse Falls. A number of floods have been proposed, so that even if a huge flood like the Missoula cataract can do a lot, we're not completely sure how much it can do.
Perhaps more important is the fact that truly huge floods like the Missoula Flood produce scablands, stripping the sediment off of rather large areas, and creating enormous ripple marks in the areas of deposition. Nor do they cut the bends that are found in some of the areas of the Grand Canyon.
That is to say, apparent narcissists like Dave never trouble to find out what evidence floods really leave behind. Instead they insist that everything is compatible with Noah's Flood, and work everything out from that infallible "god-given" statement.
Why study what actual massive floods do? Doesn't that simply indicate a lack of faith?
Still pissed that I saw right through your little tricks, dave? How big is the first, and how big is the other? And what's each made of? At least humans and chimps are made of the same material...
And I must say I'm surprised... You didn't use the all-famous pic all YECs use. But tell me: Which part is rock there, and which is MUD? Or is it all mud? Do you even know?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
apparent narcissists like Dave never trouble to find out what evidence floods really leave behind. Instead they insist that everything is compatible with Noah's Flood, and work everything out from that infallible "god-given" statement
While ignoring and failing to deal with any other data that is incompatible. Which amounts to the greatest measure of data. How one can say they have the "best" theory-- while it fails to explain the preponderance of data is beyond me, literally. I am baffled by this need to force-fit/retrofit/ignore the data/. I fail to see how falsehoods --that can be easily discerned -- serve any religious view while they make god smaller.
When geocentrism was refuted, it led to the reduction of "god"...when similar lies are shown false, it will be the same. It's stupid for any theist to engage in demonstrable lies, but Dave is a bit more than stupid, it seems.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
That is to say, apparent narcissists like Dave never trouble to find out what evidence floods really leave behind. Instead they insist that everything is compatible with Noah's Flood, and work everything out from that infallible "god-given" statement.
No ... actually, I would love to know more about the Missoula Flood ... remember, I am not a geologist ... I have not studied this Flood, but now I will.
All I have asserted so far is the following ...
1) The Grand Canyon appears to be a product of a global tectonic, volcanic, and hydraulic catastrophe formed relatively quickly, not by slow processes over millions of years
2) Noah's Flood recorded in the Bible is a good starting point for a Flood Hypothesis because the Book of Genesis has proven itself to be true in so many other historical details ... we are not making a statement about infallibility here ... we are merely using the historical portions as we might use ANY history book to search for clues
3) There are many features in the Grand Canyon which I cannot explain at present, but the Walt Brown Hydroplate Theory or the Baumgardner Plate Tectonics Theory has far more promise to me than any Uniformitarian theory I have seen to date.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Clearly Glen just got done talking about rapidly forming channels being U shaped. I'm pretty sure "rapid = V shaped" is either a typo (remember <,> dave?) or he means rapid in terms of real geologic time, of which you clearly don't have the slightest grasp, in other words thousands of years, as opposed to billions. Not one year or less.
PALOUSE RIVER CANYONS -- FORMED RAPIDLY (2 DAYS OR SO) BY THE MISSOULA FLOOD
See all those 90 degree faces, Deadman and JonF? Am I to assume you guys didn't know about these?
And from our trusty friends at ICR ...
Quote
Washington Scablands and the Lake Missoula Flood Oct 10, 2005 By Steve A. Austin, Ph.D.
More than one hundred years ago, geologists began to ponder the landforms in eastern Washington State. They noticed that the land surface is essentially flat and underlain by thick and extensive basalt flows, with only a thin soil cover. They called this area a scabland. Geologists also observed a braided pattern of deep channels appearing as severely scrubbed bare rock surfaces eroded through the soil cover into the basalt bedrock. Most of these channels now dry and are called “coulees.” This 16,000-square-mile area of eastern Washington became known as the “Channeled Scabland.”
Geologists of the late nineteenth century assumed the Channeled Scabland formed during the time of great glaciers. Geologists thought that today’s large dry channels in eastern Washington were eroded by streams during the “ice age.” The thinking pattern of these early geologists was distinctly uniformitarian. They imagined very slow processes during immense periods of time causing erosion and sedimentation in the scabland’s channels. The Channeled Scabland was believed to be the product of geological evolution.
In 1885 T. C. Chamberlin asserted that an enormous lake had formerly occupied northwestern Montana and that the lake was impounded by glacier ice. Later, in 1910, J. T. Pardee made a significant study of the evidence of the great lake around Missoula, Montana; this lake, which was the size of one of the Great Lakes, became known as Lake Missoula.
Geologists did not associate the channels of eastern Washington and the evidences for Lake Missoula in western Montana until fifty years later. During the earliest years of the twentieth century, geologists continued to tell the story of gradual erosion of the channels in the scablands. Uniformitarian dogma was well entrenched in the explanation of the “ice age” landscape.
In 1923, J. Harlen Bretz, a geologist trained in Washington, suggested an outrageous theory for the origin of the Channeled Scabland. Bretz proposed a catastrophic flood hypothesis for the erosion of channels in the scabland, particularly the most spectacular channel, Grand Coulee. Water hundreds of feet deep was assumed by Bretz to have eroded the complex network of channels rapidly! He later came to believe that catastrophic drainage of Lake Missoula in Montana caused the flood.
Normally, when a catastrophist theory is presented to the uniformitarian orthodoxy, it is summarily ignored. However, Bretz was very persistent. He published a series of articles between 1923 and 1969, which staunchly defended his flood hypothesis. Bretz noted dry waterfalls, high elevations of erosion in canyons, and gravel deposits of extraordinary size and surprising locations. He persisted in advancing the theory of flood erosion and explained how “approved” geological concepts fail to account for the size, position, and very existence of the unusual features of the scabland.
The uniformitarian orthodoxy could not ignore the work of J Harlen Bretz, so a series of rebuttal papers were issued by some of the world’s foremost glacial geologists. A bitter debate among geologists occurred, spanning four decades. Bretz was the solitary champion of the flood hypothesis.
The persistence of Bretz throughout the decades of debate paid off. Geologists did begin to see that the “approved” uniformitarian agents were incapable of accounting for the size, position, and actual existence of landforms of eastern Washington. A turning point in the debate came in the 1960s, when the International Association for Quaternary Research did an extensive tour of the Channeled Scabland and Lake Missoula. In 1965, a busload of geologists sent J Harlen Bretz a telegram: “Greetings and salutations….We are now all catastrophists.”
Not only had Bretz correctly understood the origin of Grand Coulee and the scablands, but he predicted how uniformitarian geologists would respond. The geologic establishment, for forty years, considered the catastrophic flood model for the scablands to be “unthinkable heresy.” By 1960, however, Bretz’s theory was generally acknowledged to be supported by the weight of the evidence.
What do we learn from the scablands of eastern Washington? We learn that catastrophist interpretations need to be brought back into geology so that we can understand correctly the formation of the Earth’s landscape. Uniformitarians were theoreticians who, because of stubborn adherence to dogma, thwarted the understanding of Washington’s scabland. Catastrophists were empiricists who, doing good scientific studies, were able to contribute significantly to our understanding of Earth history.
Further reading: Allen, John, Marjorie Burns, and Sam Sargent. Cataclysms on the Columbia. Portland, OR: Timber Press, 1986. 213
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Clearly Glen just got done talking about rapidly forming channels being U shaped. I'm pretty sure "rapid = V shaped" is either a typo (remember <,> dave?)
So in the Denial World of Evos, "U" is next to "V" on a keyboard?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You Dembski, Hovind and all the other snake stranglers exhibit one and the same.
Now, in recent history the dead have suffered from what used to called MEGOLAMANIA. In fact they still suffer now.
The rest of the board probably does not need much prompting to name those misanthropes
Reasons to be cheerful for Lost Souls: Dementia, Schizophrenia, Megalomania, and Love for the Death of the World .
AFD will voted out and his ass handed to him by those who have a closer connection to god ...Osama and friends.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
k.e ... maybe more oxygen to the brain would help clarify your thoughts ... I think you can rent portable units ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Comming from the SFB grand miester of Idiot America you have the nerve to say that?
Look fella if I ever run into you in real life I'll gut and skin you faster than road kill.
And while I roast you on a spit in front of your slimy spawn I'll call god to tell him how much of a lying scumbag you are.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
So Dave, explain why you believe today's geologists when they say the Palouse scablands were formed rapidly, but you don't believe them when they say the most recent flood was 13,000 years ago. Or that the source of the flooding was Lake Missoula, and not a global flood. Or that the flooding occurred multiple times.
Hmm... could it be because you ignore any data that might conflict with your interpretation of the Bible?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
So Dave, explain why you believe today's geologists when they say the Palouse scablands were formed rapidly, but you don't believe them when they say the most recent flood was 13,000 years ago. Or that the source of the flooding was Lake Missoula, and not a global flood. Or that the flooding occurred multiple times.
Hmm... could it be because you ignore any data that might conflict with your interpretation of the Bible?
I try very hard not to ignore DATA ... I do not have comprehensive explanations for all data, but I think the Catastrophic Models explain the data better than the Uniformitarian Model. I do ignore INTERPRETATIONS OF DATA which seem outlandish and unsupported by the evidence ... the 13,000 year time frame you refer to above seems far too large when considering all evidence, including Biblical history.
It is true that I have a very high regard for the Biblical Record. But I do not feel that this is a blind committment. I feel that the Bible has earned the right to be considered as a valuable source of accurate historical records due to its excellent track record. To me, this is a separate issue from its value as a religious book or as "the inspired Word of God."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
To me, this is a separate issue from its value as a religious book or as "the inspired Word of God."
Ooooh, a small chink there Turkey NecK? (Goebble, Goebble)
Wait a minute, did you just say the bible is not the trvth?
Back up a minute, Idiot America, you are on a very slippery slope there.
You are cutting adrift the great unwashed Cletus' of the trailer parks there, AFD....are YOU THAT brave?
I think not.
Nice try though....snicker
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Look fella if I ever run into you in real life I'll gut and skin you faster than road kill.
Could you provide a picture of yourself on this thread? I've never observed a live human being that ...
1) routinely skins roadkill and
2) would like to gut me and skin me in the same manner
I suppose you are aware of the laws against gutting and skinning humans? Or do you not consider me a human?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
That's Grade A 100% bullshit Dave. You've done nothing but ignore all the pages and pages of data that people have spoon fed you since you started preaching here.
You ignored all the data on C14 calibration. You ignored all the data on human/chimp genetic similarities. You ignored all the data on the formation of river meanders. You ignored all the data on the different layering found in the CG. You ignored all the data on sedimentation removal rates from the GC. You ignored all the data about the impossibility of soft mud having the mechanical strength to maintain a mile high vertical cut. You ignored all the data that there are no successful businesses anywhere in the world based on YE 'science'.
You may have a teeny excuse for ignoring all the physical data since you're so ignorant about almost every scientific topic. You have no excuse for ignoring the 'no YEC business case' data presented, unless you are lying about your business background too. Is that it?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
You have no excuse for ignoring the 'no YEC business case' data presented, unless you are lying about your business background too. Is that it?
Well that's the age old answer. ..isn't it.
If you can't blind them with Science ......baffle them with B*ullshit.
The Dembski's et al find no end of means to separate fools from their money....except AFD he has failed on both counts.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Glen ... Quote That is to say, apparent narcissists like Dave never trouble to find out what evidence floods really leave behind. Instead they insist that everything is compatible with Noah's Flood, and work everything out from that infallible "god-given" statement.
No ... actually, I would love to know more about the Missoula Flood ... remember, I am not a geologist ... I have not studied this Flood, but now I will.
Has it ever occurred to you to study deeply into issues prior to making unsupported assertions?
Quote
All I have asserted so far is the following ...
1) The Grand Canyon appears to be a product of a global tectonic, volcanic, and hydraulic catastrophe formed relatively quickly, not by slow processes over millions of years
You didn't explain the limestone. You can't explain the carbon budget at all using a young earth, since there is far more "carbon dioxide" stored away (actually as carbonates) than all of the gases in our current atmosphere. Additionally, all of the oxygen in our atmosphere could react with the reduced carbon stored in the earth many times over. If you really think that all of it was produced prior to the flood you're going to have to deal with a precipitous drop in CO2 levels during that period, along with soaring oxygen levels. Plus you need to explain how photosynthesis proceeded to fix carbon at rates thousands, if not millions, of times faster than it does today.
You have made assertions, but you haven't shown how a steep v-shaped canyon could be produced in hardened sediments, soft sediments, or in the Vishnu Schist (I implied that it is igneous, but I'm pretty sure it's metamorphic--quite hard in any event) within a short period of time.
I'm especially waiting to hear how the river managed to cut through a dome of rock, how it went up to higher elevations. And no, I really don't want to hear any just-so story about how the sediments uplifted just after the river got started. I want details, something that would allow us to do geology, and not something cobbled together only to preserve your belief in some faulty ancient text.
Does it ever occur to you that we really do want to do geology, in order to understand earthquakes, find minerals, and to build structures? And that the Bible does not help us to do so, indeed that we had to jettison its claims in order to engineer structures, find oil, and to come up with a reasonable timescale for seismic activity and vulcanism?
Quote
2) Noah's Flood recorded in the Bible is a good starting point for a Flood Hypothesis because the Book of Genesis has proven itself to be true in so many other historical details ... we are not making a statement about infallibility here ... we are merely using the historical portions as we might use ANY history book to search for clues
And that is all well and good. However, we do not use the earlier flood tales found in Babylonian sources in order to understand geology, at least not outside of the region of the Persian gulf. Nor do you, for that matter. Why do you suppose it is that you prefer the later source for flood stories, and not the earliest ones? Typically we use the earliest sources for a purported "historical event", not the later, apparently derived ones.
So of course you are once again making inaccurate statements.
Quote
3) There are many features in the Grand Canyon which I cannot explain at present, but the Walt Brown Hydroplate Theory or the Baumgardner Plate Tectonics Theory has far more promise to me than any Uniformitarian theory I have seen to date.
Considering that you, as you admitted in the general sense, do not understand the so-called "uniformitarian theory", your statement is as meaningless as your claims about Bible accuracy.
Here's a thought question: How did the "iridium layer" between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary appear within flood waters. I could ask that about almost any other layer as well, but the iridium layer is especially interesting, since it is global. How could iridium segregate markedly into a single thin layer just above the dinosaurs (or close to it, depending upon who you listen to in the controversy)?
Oh, and why does the iridium layer "just happen" to date to the same time as the Chicxulub (sp?) crater? Come on, science often depends upon the correlation of independent lines of evidence. We have it. You need to produce some.
You could start by producing any evidence at all for a recent global flood. Then try to explain how it is that the dates of the Chicxulub crater and the iridium layer correlate so closely. You must be able to do so, if you think you really have any basis at all for declaring against the "uniformitarian theory".
I try very hard not to ignore DATA ... I do not have comprehensive explanations for all data, but I think the Catastrophic Models explain the data better than the Uniformitarian Model.
You "try very hard not to ignore DATA," Dave? That's hilarious! You've ignored all the data pointing to an old earth—millions upon millions upon millions of words of data. All of the data points to an earth billions of years old, and none of it points to an earth thousands of years old.
You have yet to present a single particle of actual evidence for a world thousands of years old, in general, or for your global flood in particular. Your idea of "evidence" is saying, over and over, "the Grand Canyon didn't take millions of years to form." That's your evidence?
What a goober.
Your "hypothesis" is dead in the water, floating belly-up, Dave. You've had well over a hundred pages to present any evidence—any evidence at all—for your hypothesis, and you've failed abjectly. It's not that your evidence isn't compelling; it's that it doesn't exist. Flat assertion after unsupported allegation after bogus claim after wild-ass guess isn't evidence of anything, other than your comprehensive cluelessness when it comes not only to science, but just to looking around the world and seeing it for what it is.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I do ignore INTERPRETATIONS OF DATA which seem outlandish and unsupported by the evidence ... the 13,000 year time frame you refer to above seems far too large when considering all evidence, including Biblical history.
Why do you think they're outlandish, Dave? For one reason, and one reason only: they conflict with your precious Bible.
"Unsupported by the evidence"? How would you know that, Dave? How would you have any idea whether they're supported by the evidence? First, you're so ignorant of even the most basic scientific facts, you have no idea what the evidence supporting any old-earth claim actually is, and more generally, you wouldn't recognize "evidence" if it bit you in the ass. You've demonstrated over and over and over again that you haven't the first idea what evidence even looks like. How would you even recognize "evidence" for any theory as to the age of the earth? If you can't recognize evidence, you have no method or basis for evaluating it, and therefore, when you say "interpretations of data which seem outlandish or unsupported by the evidence," the only thing you can possibly mean is that those interpretations "seem outlandish," because you have no idea what the evidence is or what evidence in general is, and the only reason those interpretations seem outlandish to you is because—guess what?—they conflict with your Bible.
Color me unimpressed by your "skepticism."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I color you WINDY ... meaning you (and OA and Faid with you) fill up a lot of space saying how stupid I am and very little space giving any scientific info ... maybe you should take some lessons from Deadman and Glen D and JonF ... I disagree with their interpretations of data, but at least they have something substantive to say ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Whoa! Did I read that right? One day of continental drift? VROOOOOOOOOOOOM!
There is a Biblically sound explanation for this. God allowed Satan to take a massive dump in the ocean which absorbed the excess heat. Many centuries later the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a wall dividing it.
I try very hard not to ignore DATA ... I do not have comprehensive explanations for all data, but I think the Catastrophic Models explain the data better than the Uniformitarian Model.
You say the "catastrophic" model supports and explains the data better...but you can't answer a single question posed on it?
When you have the ability to respond to questions, let me know, AirHead. In the meantime, I'll simply continue to point out where you are wrong.
There are hundreds of steep-sided canyons in the world. There are hundreds of u-shaped canyons in the world. There are hundreds of river cuts in alluvial plains in the world. What do the categories above tell us, AirHead? Not all valleys are created equally, not all valleys are explained the same way, because they are composed of different materials formed by different forces at different times. Your model proposes that they were all shaped by the same forces at the same time, but you can't even say what those forces were. It would be funny if it weren't so childish in an adult. Magical thinking has never impressed me.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I color you WINDY ... meaning you (and OA and Faid with you) fill up a lot of space saying how stupid I am and very little space giving any scientific info ... maybe you should take some lessons from Deadman and Glen D and JonF ... I disagree with their interpretations of data, but at least they have something substantive to say ...
No, Dave, we're getting to the heart of the matter by calling out your game. Your game consists of grasping at anything that might possibly help support your interpretation of the Bible, and rejecting anything that might contradict it. In your case, data is indistinguishable from interpretation. You have no capacity to tell the two apart. Your sole basis for evaluating ANYTHING consists of comparing it to the Bible.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
No, Dave, we're getting to the heart of the matter by calling out your game. Your game consists of grasping at anything that might possibly help support your interpretation of the Bible, and rejecting anything that might contradict it.
Which is why, a long time ago (p.14 on this thread! I wanted to simply get to his flood dates. The flood dates that he moved from the Biblically-derived 2300-2500 BC to 5000+ BC, then back, because he realized he couldn't support it in the bible. But Dave says
Quote
My discussion has nothing to do with religion and I do not consider myself to be religious. I am trying to explain the phenomena in the universe by the most sensible explanations (p.6)
Quote
I do not engage in wild speculation. I have the mind of an engineer and a scientist. I, like you, am a healthy skeptic." (p.3)
While he still can't answer a single question posed about the flood or the Grand Canyon. It's pretty sad, really.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OK, that last part was a little crude. Just a little satire that evos could appreciate. On a more serious note, good work, Dave on trapping the evos on their "catastrophically-formed canyons don't have 90 degree faces" angle. That obviously caught them by surprise. I can predict their response: "Geologists didn't take Bretz seriously because initially he had no source for the waters .....<sputter sputter>.......the basaltic lava rock was way softer than the Vishnu schist....<sputter sputter>.....Missoula Lake Basin varve evidence shows evidence of multiple flood episodes.....<sputter sputter>.....quotemining $%#@.....stupid DaveTard!" Here are some references: Background Evo argument Evo pratfall.
good work, Dave on trapping the evos on their "catastrophically-formed canyons don't have 90 degree faces" angle.
Yet I had already shown why that area DOES have steep sides and you can see the basaltic columns in the photos posted. You are no more informed in this than you are on physics, epistemology, history or biology, GoP. Not all valleys are the same, not all cuts by floods or rivers are the same. The Grand Canyon doesn't match the palouse in the least. Nor do either of those match the Toutle, stupid. Different materials, different conditions, different times.
Oh, and you'll also notice that no one, to my knowledge, made the claim you posted, GoP.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I color you WINDY ... meaning you (and OA and Faid with you) fill up a lot of space saying how stupid I am and very little space giving any scientific info ... maybe you should take some lessons from Deadman and Glen D and JonF ... I disagree with their interpretations of data, but at least they have something substantive to say ...
Dave, would you like me to repost the scientific info on C14 calibration again? It frightened you off last time - have you finally decided to address it?
How about the scientific info on river meander formation I showed you? I can repost that too if you've finally grown a pair.
Or the scientific info on the different layering found in the Grand Canyon I provided? That's another one you hitched up your skirt and ran from. You ready to talk about it now?
I know - how about we review the data on all the successful businesses based on OE models, and the zero businesses based on YE models. You game?
Naaah....not Dave Hawkins the Cowardly Lyin'. Discussing scientific details just isn't your thing, right Davie? It's easier to lie and say the information wasn't presented than to actually deal with the reality.
What does the Bible say about bearing false witness Dave?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What are you blithering about, GoP? At least get the facts straight, dumbass. I brought up the Missoula floods, knowing that IDiots like you might try to stupidly use it sans context, scientific analysis, or any kind of comprehension about how we know things about the Missoula flood. It's worth doing, though, because for non-geocentrists and non-creationists, the evidence is all very interesting and it shows how different a real catastrophic flood is from an erosional feature carved by a river.
I see that you haven't attempted to explain the differences. Could be because you're stupid/ignorant/geocentrist, not to mention as uninterested in the evidentiary details as all believers in magic are.
So anyway, why don't you explain the temporal correlations between the Cretaceous/Tertiary iridium layer and the Chicxulub crater? And all of the correlations between relative dating and absolute dating. Oh, that's right, it's because you can't.
Hmm..on a total aside here, the reason GoP has even posted is because Louis and creekybelly have essentially dismantled his bullshite "geocentric" model. In a word, he matches what I said in the thread here "I have ethics enough and morals enough not to make the sort of stupid claims you do. While you fail in every area you attempt..philosophy, physics, history, biology, political commentary etc....others manage to not take the easy way out by lying and instead absorb and organize the actual data into coherent and supportable wholes. You, however, are merely a slightly more glib version of AFDave...you are, in short, unskilled and unaware Your biggest issue appears to be that you don't have the mettle or brains to complete the kind of educational goals that would gain you entrance to academia, so instead you prefer to troll your betters. Awfully sad for one who pretends towards so much, but utterly typical, as shown in DaveTard1 and 2, and far too many others."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What does the Bible say about bearing false witness Dave?
Bearing false witness deals with lying under oath in a legal case, not lying in general. For lying in general you need to go to Leviticus 19:11 -
11 " 'Do not steal. " 'Do not lie. " 'Do not deceive one another.
Of course Leviticus 19 also says not to wear clothing made from more than one type of material, not to ever cut your beards, and to treat aliens as if they were native born, none of which are thought important by modern christians. We can therefore safely write off the whole chapter as part of the old convenant, written specifically for the jews at the time, not for us today.
This doesn't mean Christians can lie when they want though. The story of Ananias and Sapphira of Acts 5 makes this clear. They lied about how much money they gave to the church and were struck dead on the spot, so at the very least don't like to the preacher about how much money you put in the plate. It's probably better to avoid lying alltogether (unless it helps converts an unbeliever, you can always atone afterwords for that).
It's probably better to avoid lying alltogether (unless it helps converts an unbeliever, you can always atone afterwords for that).
Yeah, Martin Luther :
Quote
"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church...a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." ...Martin Luther cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmuthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol.1
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Is it my imagination, Dave, or have the evos been particularly nasty lately? Even Faid and Number Nine have lost their good humour. Strange attitude to take with such unskilled morons such as ourselves.
Is it my imagination, Dave, or have the evos been particularly nasty lately? Even Faid and Number Nine have lost their good humour. Strange attitude to take with such unskilled morons such as ourselves.
So, rather than address the issues at hand,now you're stuck with " they can't take a joke?" Despite the fact that I find your inanity cosmically amusing?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Is it my imagination, Dave, or have the evos been particularly nasty lately? Even Faid and Number Nine have lost their good humour. Strange attitude to take with such unskilled morons like us.
Yeah GoP, dealing with intellectually dishonest repeated liars like AFDave and shit-stirring morons with nothing to add like yourself will do that to even the most patient people.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I color you WINDY ... meaning you (and OA and Faid with you) fill up a lot of space saying how stupid I am and very little space giving any scientific info ... maybe you should take some lessons from Deadman and Glen D and JonF ... I disagree with their interpretations of data, but at least they have something substantive to say ...
I don't think you're stupid, Dave. I think you're deluded. I also think you don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about.
And lest it be forgotten, Dave—this is your hypothesis. It's your obligation to provide empirical evidence to support it. I will continue to point out your utter, abject failure to provide any evidence whatsoever in support of your hypothesis until you do so.
I'm not the one presenting a hypothesis, Dave. You are. You're exactly the same as every creationist, "scientific" creationist, and IDiot who's come before you: you can't come up with a single molecule of evidence to support your hypothesis, your "creator god hypothesis," and instead are reduced to trying to chisel away at others' theories of evolution, geology, paleontology, plate tectonics, etc—something you have comprehensively failed to do. I haven't needed to present any evidence to rebut your "evidence," because you haven't supplied any.
So one more time, Dave, in case you've forgotten:
Where's your evidence for massive, multiple comet/asteroid/meteor strikes within the last six thousand years?
Where's your evidence for underground "fountains"? Where were they located? How deep were they? How much water did they contain? How did they support the weight of the continents above them? How did they inundate the planet with water, and for how long, and to what depth? Where did all that water run off to, and where did it go? Where is it now?
Where did all this sediment you claim was carved away in the Grand Canyon come from? (hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) How was the sediment deposited at rates approaching a meter per hour? How was this sediment sorted neatly into layers that can be detected worldwide? How did these sediments lithify while still being inundated with floodwaters?
How did all the fossils we see get sorted exactly into the order evolutionary theory predicts, with no exceptions, worldwide?
Where's the evidence that a global supercontinent broke up and separated within 24 hours, at speeds of hundreds of miles an hour, without melting themselves and boiling the oceans? What mechanism do you propose for these impossible phenomena? Magic? Miracles?
What's the evidence that all the existing mountain chains worldwide were created in a day or so? What mechanism do you propose for raising mountains thousands of meters in 24 hours? What mechanism do you propose for differential erosion of different mountain chains, or erosion at all, given that no mountain ranges have been observed to erode appreciably in the last several thousand years?
Where's your evidence that the tens of millions of species of living organisms are all descended from organisms that survived the flood on Noah's ark? Where's your evidence that those tens of millions of species radiated from the several hundred species of organisms that could possibly have fit on the ark, all in the space of a few thousand years? Something we might call ultra-mega-hyper-macroevolution, at rates millions of times faster than proposed by the Theory of Evolution?
Where's your evidence for an ice age during historical times? When did it start, how long did it last, and when did it end? What portion of the planet was glaciated? What happened to world sea levels during this glaciation period? Why is there no written record anywhere of a worldwide event that happened during historical times?
Dave, your "hypothesis" cannot account for any of these observations. Not one. Not only can you not present the merest smidgen of evidence to support any of your claims; you cannot even account for observations that can be made by anyone with two eyes.
And you complain that I don't have anything substantive to say?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Is it my imagination, Dave, or have the evos been particularly nasty lately? Even Faid and Number Nine have lost their good humour. Strange attitude to take with such unskilled morons such as ourselves.
No, Bill, it's because dealing with someone as obtuse as Dave is gets tiresome after a while. If you think it's because Dave's scoring some telling points, you're even more ignorant than I already think you are.
It's hard to remain in a good humor when you have to keep saying the same things over and over, pointing the same flaws in "reasoning" over and over, and ask the same pointed questions over and over, only to have them ignored.
If AF Dave had the slightest intellectual integrity, he would long since have admitted that his "creator god hypothesis" is utterly untenable. He has certainly seen vastly more evidence than he ever could have needed to persuade him that the earth is billions of years old, that the theory of evolution is an accurate reflection of reality, and that the majority of the information in his Bible cannot possibly be true.
The fact that he has learned none of that is conclusive evidence that Dave was lying through his teeth when he claimed he was ready to be convinced of the truth of science's claims.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
We know that significant vertical walls are possible in soft sediments, at least for a short while. This is especially true when rivers continue to undercut clay riverbanks.
So I'm not sure that verticality is the more crucial issue, even though you're not going to get the verticality of the Grand Canyon by cutting through soft sediments. The meanders in various canyons are a better indication that the rivers started out relatively placid, only later cutting deeply into the rock. AirFuc' Dave has never answered how the meanders got there. Amusingly, he selectively notes all of the 45 slopes (ignoring the many near-verticals) on a photo having exactly the sorts of bends that would not be produced by raging torrents in soft sediments.
Then too, the Colorado manages to cut through a dome of rock. How would it do this, except via relatively slow uplift of the rocks of the Grand Canyon? Did water flow uphill during, or shortly after, the flood?
Btw, Airhead Dave, how did the river cut rapidly into the Vishnu Schist at the bottom of the Canyon? It isn't all sedimentary rocks, you know.
We need a reasonable explanation for the tilting and the unconformity below the Tapeats Sandstone Layer, as well. How could masses of rock be laid down, tilted, eroded down to a flat surface, and then have limestones, sandstones, and shales all deposited on top? How could the limestones and shales (clays) even precipitate out of the "flood waters"?
When and how did the sediments harden? How can there be footprints of animals within some of the sediments which purportedly were produced by the flood? Where, for God's sake, did all of the huge numbers of organisms come from in the limestone layers, in the Grand Canyon, and all over the world? Did the pre-Flood world have hundreds to thousands of times more plankton than we have today?
It should be noted as well, though, that gorges can be carved in basalt in a relatively short time. In the channeled scabland area exist gorges that are said to have been made within a few hours, to at most a few days, in basalt, a hard volcanic rock. It's not an explanation for the Grand Canyon cutting into the Vishnu Schist, however, since any flood on the order of the Missoula Flood coursing through the Grand Canyon would cut severely into the sides of the gorge. The Vishnu Schist is cut like the rest of the canyon, into a V-shape.
Of course this isn't really for Aardvark Dave, since he only 'understands' what supports the Bible (well, the fundy interpretation of that work). But I thought I'd add to the strikes against his inane claims.
Glen D
You're both right and wrong. All those questions and more must be answered by any reasonable explanation of the formation of the GC. But Davie's not offering a reasonable explanation of anything. He's offering a yarn that he tells himself so he can believe that his peculiar interpretation of the Bible is all scientifickal-like. Any such yarn obviously has to rely on ignoring 99.9% of the evidence. That's why Davie won't even address the vitally important questons you and others have raised.
Davie-poo, you should be looking up information rather than pretty pictures. From THE MISSOULA FLOOD (PDF), page 6:
Quote
FLOOD EROSION
The geology of the flood area is usefully very simple. Lake Missoula lies primarily in Precambrian Belt Series metasedimentary rocks with minor outcrops of Mesozoic granitic rocks. Miocene Columbia River Basalt is the primary bedrock throughout the flooded area. Wisconsin Bull Lake Palouse Loess forms a 160-ft thick [50 m] blanket over the basalt [this is an ideal medium for mollisol development and grain cultivation, so the extent of loess is readily apparent as large wheat fields]. Floodwaters pouring over Palouse Loess sculpted it in places and completely removed it in others. Loess islands -- streamlined hills with upstream prows and downstream tails -- are surrounded by scablands. Much of the loessal soil was carried to the Willamette Valley south of Portland, where it created that valley's fertile farmland.
Scablands refer to those areas of denuded basalt, so named by early farmers because they lack tillable soil. Kolks were the dominant agents that eroded the scablands, so these basalt areas show extensive evidence of plucking and very little evidence of abrasion. The dark basalt contrasts strongly with the light Palouse Loess, so scablands stand out clearly on space images [Fig. 16], and the extent of anastomosing channels across the plateau demonstrates to any casual observer the full scale of the Missoula flood.
Loess grains are angular, with little polishing or rounding, composed of crystals of quartz, feldspar, mica and other minerals. Because the grains are angular, loess will often stand in banks for many years without slumping. This soil has a characteristic called "vertical cleavage", which makes it easily excavated to form cave dwellings; this is still a popular method of making human habitations in some parts of China.
But it is also highly erodible by water or wind, and soils underlain by loess tend to be excessively drained (droughty). ...
Though in geological time loess has an incredible rate of erosion, in a more human time scale loess is very durable and resistant to maltreatment.
You have made assertions, but you haven't shown how a steep v-shaped canyon could be produced in hardened sediments, soft sediments, or in the Vishnu Schist (I implied that it is igneous, but I'm pretty sure it's metamorphic--quite hard in any event) within a short period of time.
I'm sure you firmly believe this to be so. The problem is, you obviously haven't the first clue of what actually constitutes data, as opposed to ignorant opinion.
It's of course the main reason why it's a waste of time to attempt a substantive argument with you. Instead, what we see is a very large game of whack a mole, with you and Gawp playing the role of mole (or perhaps Gawp is simply rooting for the mole?)
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
This will, no doubt, leave Dave underwhelmed. After all, his favorite "hydroplate" theory has the Pacific ocean forming in an afternoon.
But pay attention, Dave. This is what geologists mean by something happening "rapidly." "Rapidly," in this context, means like in a million years or something.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
If the crack does represent the birth of a new ocean (and it may not - it could all just settle down again), it will be about a million years before it is wet enough.
Which should give any local Noahs plenty of time to build their Arks.
phhht. screw that! any rational person would build a fishing boat.
er, assuming there are actually any fish left in a million years, or even in a hundred the way things are progressing with our current fish stocks (yeah, it's that bad).
in fact, scuttle the whole fishing boat idea. set up some aquaculture farms instead.
yeah, that's the ticket.
BTW, did DaveyDumbass ever tell us where all the supposed water for the supposed catastrophic whole-earth flood supposedly went?
I had a notion of how he would answer it, but I missed it if he ever did.
If he doesn't answer it by the end of the week, I might just have to throw out a wild and crazy idea I saw posted a couple of years back that you all will find amusing, and I'm sure Dumbass will find compelling.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
If you want real science, browse Georef, and you can reference and argue methods all you want.
You don't need any more lecturing Dave, but I suggest you move to a different topic, something more obscure where you might have an advantage.
There is no ambiguity in this discussion, and as Walter Sobchak would say, "Forget it, Dave, you're out of your element." "You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie"
Dave is still trying to figure out what it means when things look similar, but really aren't, and vice versa.
I seem to recall those lessons came around 1st or 2nd grade (maybe as early as kindergarten?)
more evidence that he was home-schooled by his missionary papa; he seems to be lacking in some basic skill sets even a pre-teen usually has.
No, this is not an educational adventure for Davey; this is, like i said, a big game of whack-a-mole.
...
I tried to go back to figure out exactly when object similarity lessons are taught. I'm still pretty sure it's before the second grade.
however, it's readily clear that Davey is missing some serious skillsets that should be readily available to someone of even middle-school age.
How descriptive is this quote:
Quote
Teachers of science for middle-school students should note that students tend to center on evidence that confirms their current beliefs and concepts (i.e., personal explanations), and ignore or fail to perceive evidence that does not agree with their current concepts. It is important for teachers of science to challenge current beliefs and concepts and provide scientific explanations as alternatives.
This is from the National Science Education Standards.
with that in mind, it seems pretty clear to me that poor Dave's education stopped at the elementary school level.
What we are seeing is a middle-aged elementary school dropout who's only education came by way of missionary papa and our vaunted military.
I do hope his kids get somewhat of a better chance at an education than he did, but somehow, based on the bible camps he is sending them too, i rather doubt it.
I wonder if he has taught them that apples and oranges, though both round, are not the same thing?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I know about the channeled scablands, which look nothing like the GC, and have no meanders:
I'll take your word for it that there are no meanders in the Missoula area. The probable explanation for this is that with the Missoula Flood, the water was flowing through already hardened sediments. Remember, the Missoula Flood was an Ice Age event, which post dates the Flood by as much as several hundred years. The Grand Canyon was formed PRIOR to the Ice Age during the Receding Phase of the Flood. This means that there would still be much SOFT SEDIMENT in which the incised meanders could be cut.
Remember, class ... INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS
Quote
FLOOD EROSION
The geology of the flood area is usefully very simple. Lake Missoula lies primarily in Precambrian Belt Series metasedimentary rocks with minor outcrops of Mesozoic granitic rocks. Miocene Columbia River Basalt is the primary bedrock throughout the flooded area. Wisconsin Bull Lake Palouse Loess forms a 160-ft thick [50 m] blanket over the basalt
True, the loess was eroded and it was 160 feet thick, but the Grand Coulee canyon is 900 feet thick. Are you telling me it is 900 feet of loess? I don't think so. The Missoula Flood carved hard basalt and made vertical canyon walls.
Glen D ...
Quote
THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS ... THE AUTHORITY HAS SPOKEN
Glen Davidson ...
Quote
The Grand Canyon is a steep V-shaped "valley", just as any rapidly-cut canyon would be expected to be.
Did you catch it? THE GRAND CANYON IS A RAPIDLY-CUT CANYON
Quote
Yes it is. Why don't you learn what that means?
I know what it means ... In the case of the Missoula Flood it was 2 DAYS!
Glen ...
Quote
Has it ever occurred to you to study deeply into issues prior to making unsupported assertions?
I made the initial assertion that the Grand Canyon was formed catastrophically and involved massive amounts of water. The "water" part of this assertion is supported by the nature of the layers -- there is a lot of SEDIMENTARY ROCK. The "catastrophically" portion of my assertion is supported by similar (not identical, I understand) phenomena at Mt. Saint Helens and Missoula. It is also supported by the fact that many "pure uniformitarians" have now become Catastrophists (Derek Ager, etc.) (Yes, I realize that they are not Biblical catastrophists, but we are working on them ... we have patience ... it took Harlan Bretz 40 years to earn respect for his theory)
Glen ...
Quote
And that is all well and good. However, we do not use the earlier flood tales found in Babylonian sources in order to understand geology, at least not outside of the region of the Persian gulf. Nor do you, for that matter. Why do you suppose it is that you prefer the later source for flood stories, and not the earliest ones? Typically we use the earliest sources for a purported "historical event", not the later, apparently derived ones.
The Genesis Record is not a later source. It is the EARLIEST source as is evident from multiple lines of evidence ... see p. 82 of this thread. Or click here http://www.trueorigin.org/tablet.asp
Glen ...
Quote
Considering that you, as you admitted in the general sense, do not understand the so-called "uniformitarian theory", your statement is as meaningless as your claims about Bible accuracy.
I do understand "uniformitarian theory" and I understand how geologists have abandoned major parts of it as JonF explained. This was a major victory in the 20th century for catastrophists.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Paleozoic Strata Kaibab Limestone - This layer averages about 250 million years old and forms the surface of the Kaibab and Coconino Plateaus. It is composed primarily of a sandy limestone with a layer of sandstone below it. In some places sandstone and shale also exists as its upper layer. The color ranges from cream to a greyish-white. When viewed from the rim this layer resembles a bathtub ring and is commonly referred to as the Canyon's bathtub ring. Fossils that can be found in this layer are brachiopods, coral, mollusks, sea lilies, worms and fish teeth. Toroweap Formation - This layer averages about 255 million years old and is composed of pretty much the same material as the Kaibab Limestone above. It is darker in color, ranging from yellow to grey, and contains a similar fossil history. Coconino Sandstone - This layer averages about 260 million years old and is composed of pure quartz sand, which are basically petrified sand dunes. Wedge-shaped cross bedding can be seen where traverse-type dunes have been petrified. The color of this layer ranges from white to cream colored. No skeletal fossils have yet to be found but numerous invertebrate tracks and fossilized burrows do exist. Hermit Shale - This layer averages about 265 million years old and is composed of soft, easily eroded shales which have formed a slope. As the shales erode they undermine the layers sandstone and limestone layers above which causes huge blocks to fall off and into the lower reaches of the Canyon. Many of these blocks end up in the side drainages and down on the Tonto Platform. The color of this layer is a deep, rust-colored red. Fossils to be found in this layer consist of ferns, conifers and other plants, as well as some fossilized tracks of reptiles and amphibians. Supai Formation - This layer averages about 285 million years old and is composed primarily of shale that is intermixed with some small amounts of limestone and capped by sandstone. The limestone features become more and more prominent in the western regions of the Canyon, leading one to believe that that region was more marine. The eastern portions where probably a muddy river delta that fed into an ancient sea. The color of this layer varies from red for the shale to tan for the sandstone caps. Numerous fossils of amphibians, reptiles and terrestial plants exist in the eastern portion which are replaced by marine fossils as you move westward. Redwall Limestone - This layer averages about 335 million years old and is composed of marine limestones and dolomites. This is probably the most prominent rock layer in the Canyon as it usually forms a sheer cliff ranging from 400-500 feet in height, which has become a natural barrier between the upper and lower regions of the Canyon. The only way though this barrier is in areas where the rock has faulted and broken apart to form a slope which can be climbed upon. The deep reddish color of this layer is caused by iron oxides leaching out of the layers above it and staining its outward face. Behind the reddish face the rock is a dark brownish color. Numerous marine fossils can be found in the Redwall Limestone including brachiopods, clams, snails, corals, fish and trilobites. Many caves and arches can also be seen in the Redwall. Temple Butte Limestone - This layer averages about 350 million years old and is composed of freshwater limestone in the east and dolomite in the west. In the eastern Grand Canyon this layer occurs irregularly and only then by way of limestone lenses that fill stream beds that have been eroded into the underlaying Mauv Limestone. Apart from these channels, which are quite large in places, the Redwall Limestone sits directly atop the Mauv Limestone. The Temple Butte Limestone is quite prominent, however, in the western regions and forms massive cliffs hundreds of feet high. The color of this layer ranges from purplish in the eastern regions to grey or cream colored in the west. The only fossils to be found in the eastern region are bony plates that once belonged to freshwater fish. In the western region there are numerous marine fossils. Tonto Group - These layers average about 515 to 545 million years old. - Muav Limestone - This layer averages about 515 million years old and is composed primarily of limestone that is separated by beds of sandstone and shale. The Mauv Limestone layer is much thicker in the western areas of the Canyon than it is in the east. Its color is grey and it does not have much in the way of fossils, some trilobites and brachiopods. - Bright Angel Shale - This layer averages about 530 million years old and is composed primarily of mudstone shale. It is also interbedded with small sections of sandstone and sandy limestone. The retreat of the Canyon rim is attributed primarily to the erosion of this layer which forms the top of the Tonto Platform. The plateau is much wider in the eastern portions of the Canyon where the Bright Angel Shale contains less sand and is more easily eroded. The color of this layer varies with its compostion but it is mostly various shades of green with some grey, brown and tan thrown in here and there. Fossils to be found in this layer consist of marine animals such as trilobites and brachiopods. - Tapeats Sandstone - This layer averages about 545 million years old and is composed of medium-grained and coarse-grained sandstone. Ripple marks formed by ocean waves of an early Cambrian sea are common in the upper layer. The Tapeats is similar to the Redwall in that it forms a barrier between upper and lower reaches of the Canyon that can only be traversed where a fault has caused its collapse. The color of this layer is dark brown and it contains fossils of trilobites. brachiopods, and trilobite trails.
Great Unconformity - This non-layer indicates an age in which no sediments can be found. It is indicative of a time when an advancing sea eroded away the sediments that should be here.
Late Pre-Cambrian Rocks Chuar Group - These layers average about 825 to 1,000 million years old and is composed of the following: - Sixtymile Formation - This tan colored layer is composed primarily of sandstone with some small sections of shale. - Kwagunt Formation - This layer is composed primarily of shale and mudstone with some limestone. In the area of Carbon Butte the lower layer also contains a large section of reddish sandstone. The shales within this layer are black and the mudstones range from red to purple. Fossils to be found in this layer are those of stromatolites, the oldest fossils to be found anywhere in the Grand Canyon. - Galeros Formaton - This layer is composed of interbedded sandstone, limestone and shale. The color is primarily greenish with some of the shales ranging from red to purple. Fossil stromatolites also exist in this layer. Nankoweap Formation - This layer averages about 1,050 million years old and is composed of a coarse-grained sandstone. This layer is exposed only in the eastern section of the Canyon and belongs to neither the Chuar or Unkar groups because it is bounded on both sides by unconformities. Unkar Group - These layers average about 1,100 to 1,250 million years old. - Cardenas Lavas - This dark brown layer is composed of basaltic lava flows. - Dox Sandstone - This layer averages about 1,190 million years old, is composed of sandstone interbedded with shale, and occurs primarily in the eastern regions of the Canyon. Its color varies from red to orange and its fossil record contains stromatolites and algae. - Shinumo Quartzite - This layer averages about 1,200 million years old and is composed of sandstone. This layer is only exposed in a few sections in the Canyon. Its color can be deep red, brown, purple or white. - Hakatai Shale - This layer averages about 1,200 million years old and is composed primarily of shale with some sandstone. The color is a very bright orange-red red and is the layer that gives Red Canyon its name. - Bass Formation - This layer averages about 1,250 million years old and is composed primarily of limestone with some interbedded shale. It is greyish in color and its fossil record consists of stromatolites.
Pre-Cambrian Unconformity - This non-layer represents a time where the mountains that had grown here were gradually eroded away to form a plain. Early Pre-Cambrian Rocks Vishnu Schist and Zoroaster Granite - This layer averages about 1,700 to 2,000 million years old and consists of mica schist. These were originally sediments of sandstone, limestone and shale that were metamorphosed and combined with metamorphosed lava flows to form the schist. This layer along with the Zoroaster Granite were once the roots of an ancient mountain range that could have been as high as todays Rocky Mountains. The mountains were eroded away over a long period of time and new sediments were they deposited over them by advancing and retreating seas. The color of this layer is dark grey or black.
OK. Now that we have established that it is quite reasonable to suggest some type of WATER CATASTROPHE as the cause of the Grand Canyon--i.e. Mt. Saint Helens, Missoula Flood, Uniformitarians morphing into Catastrophists, etc.--let's look at the layers a little more closely and answer some questions. You say I won't look at the layers and answer questions, but that is not true. I simply wanted to establish the reasonableness for a catastrophic cause of the Grand Canyon FIRST.
Now we have all these ASSERTIONS by Long Agers about how old these rocks are. Could someone please list the METHOD of determining these ages? Just start at the top and list the layers for me and tell me if it is dated by Index Fossils or Radiometric Dating or what ... I think Deadman said that the layers ABOVE the Great Unconformity are NOT dated radiometrically, correct? Are ALL the layers below dated radiometrically? Do they come out in proper order? Are there any inversions? Are there any gaps in dating?
Someone fill me in a little on this, please ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The ONLY ...er gap.... is between your ears sunshine some people call it god.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, can you please move on to something else? You've utterly lost this argument. The evidence that the Grand Canyon was cut through sedimentary rock (not mud) over millions of years is overwhelming. The evidence dating those sediments is overwhelming. You still haven't answered a single one of the two dozen questions you've been asked about your flood. Even if the Grand Canyon had been carved in a year or so, that wouldn't even begin to be evidence for your global flood. Has it ever occurred to you that if the Grand Canyon had been carved by your "global" flood, we'd expect to see Grand Canyons all over the globe?
Do I have to list the questions you've failed to answer, and cannot answer, about your flood once again? And don't say anything about establishing that the Grand Canyon was carved by the flood first. Until you can establish that your flood is even possible (because it's not possible), nothing you can say about the Grand Canyon is going to get you anywhere.
Once again, the Black Knight has had all his limbs amputated and his entrails eviscerated, and he lies there on the path, grinning, claiming victory.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I know about the channeled scablands, which look nothing like the GC, and have no meanders:
I'll take your word for it that there are no meanders in the Missoula area. The probable explanation for this is that with the Missoula Flood, the water was flowing through already hardened sediments.
Wrong as usual, Davie-poo.
Meanders = slow flowing water
Incised meanders = slow flowing water over hundreds of thousands of years.
Quote
Remember, class ... INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS
Sorry, Davie-piddles, both fluid mechanics theiory and observations of the real world contradict your unsupported assertion. We know you want it ot be true, but reality doesn't catre.
Quote
FLOOD EROSION
Quote
The geology of the flood area is usefully very simple. Lake Missoula lies primarily in Precambrian Belt Series metasedimentary rocks with minor outcrops of Mesozoic granitic rocks. Miocene Columbia River Basalt is the primary bedrock throughout the flooded area. Wisconsin Bull Lake Palouse Loess forms a 160-ft thick [50 m] blanket over the basalt
True, the loess was eroded and it was 160 feet thick, but the Grand Coulee canyon is 900 feet thick. Are you telling me it is 900 feet of loess? I don't think so. The Missoula Flood carved hard basalt and made vertical canyon walls.
It didn't carve much basalt. It carved a lot of soft, unlithified sediments and left the vertical basalt walls behind.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I simply wanted to establish the reasonableness for a catastrophic cause of the Grand Canyon FIRST.
As usual, you failed miserably.
Quote
Now we have all these ASSERTIONS by Long Agers about how old these rocks are. Could someone please list the METHOD of determining these ages? Just start at the top and list the layers for me and tell me if it is dated by Index Fossils or Radiometric Dating or what ... I think Deadman said that the layers ABOVE the Great Unconformity are NOT dated radiometrically, correct? Are ALL the layers below dated radiometrically? Do they come out in proper order? Are there any inversions? Are there any gaps in dating?
Someone fill me in a little on this, please ...
You claim to be the expert. Do your own research and tell us the results.
AFD While you are researching VALID science (you know, the bit that says flapping your arms will never get you off the ground) you should check the validity of the imaginary history of the Jewish people.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
OK. Now that we have established that it is quite reasonable to suggest some type of WATER CATASTROPHE as the cause of the Grand Canyon--i.e. Mt. Saint Helens, Missoula Flood, Uniformitarians morphing into Catastrophists, etc.--let's look at the layers a little more closely and answer some questions.
The only thing you've established Davie is your profound ignorance of geology, combined with a titanic ego that won't let you admit that you made yourself look like a fool yet again.
Quote
You say I won't look at the layers and answer questions, but that is not true.
Great Davie, a ray of honesty from you at last! You can start with the layer basics. Please explain for me how DA FLUD managed to sort the CG into all those distinct layers to begin with; each layer with a unique physical makeup, both in materials and fossils contained.
To save you time, just saying 'hydrodynamic sorting' is NOT an answer Davie. Your FLUD model need to explain the detailed mechanisms of how such sorting could occur.
Over to you, Davie-doo.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Incised meanders = slow flowing water over hundreds of thousands of years. Quote Remember, class ... INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS
Sorry, Davie-piddles, both fluid mechanics theiory and observations of the real world contradict your unsupported assertion. We know you want it ot be true, but reality doesn't catre.
My "INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS" assertion is actually well supported and it didn't take anything close to hundreds of thousands of years. Remember the study I cited a while back?
Eric ...
Quote
Dave, can you please move on to something else?
You beg me for weeks to talk about the Flood, so I do. Now you are begging me to move on?
Sorry, you guys are crashing and burning miserably and I've got lots more to say about the Flood.
I'm having a good time with this topic because the evidence is so overwhelming for the Biblical narrative.
k.e ... Imaginary history of the Jews? Go get that portable oxygen unit I mentioned.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I know about the channeled scablands, which look nothing like the GC, and have no meanders:
I'll take your word for it that there are no meanders in the Missoula area. The probable explanation for this is that with the Missoula Flood, the water was flowing through already hardened sediments.
GD Why don't you learn one thing about geology at least? Basalt is not a sedimentary rock.
AFD Remember, the Missoula Flood was an Ice Age event, which post dates the Flood by as much as several hundred years. The Grand Canyon was formed PRIOR to the Ice Age during the Receding Phase of the Flood. This means that there would still be much SOFT SEDIMENT in which the incised meanders could be cut.
Remember, class ... INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS
GD Except that you utterly lack evidence for such an absurd claim. Of course you ignore the erosion of the Vishnu Schist, because, even in your complete ignorance about geology and pat answers, the Vishnu Schist erosion doesn't work like the erosion of soft sediments do.
GD Show us how the Grand Canyon could form in soft sediments. Does it even occur to you that you need to demonstrate claims, rather than to fit everything to the YEC interpretation of the Bible?
Quote
FLOOD EROSION
The geology of the flood area is usefully very simple. Lake Missoula lies primarily in Precambrian Belt Series metasedimentary rocks with minor outcrops of Mesozoic granitic rocks. Miocene Columbia River Basalt is the primary bedrock throughout the flooded area. Wisconsin Bull Lake Palouse Loess forms a 160-ft thick [50 m] blanket over the basalt
True, the loess was eroded and it was 160 feet thick, but the Grand Coulee canyon is 900 feet thick. Are you telling me it is 900 feet of loess? I don't think so. The Missoula Flood carved hard basalt and made vertical canyon walls.
GD Yes it did, and it didn't make a V-shaped valley, did it? Nor would a massive flood in soft sediments make a V-shaped valley.
GD See, what you don't understand is hydrodynamics. The friction at the bottom of a V-shape would slow the waters down greatly, as compared with the flow up the sides of the canyon. Further up in the canyon a massive flood is only slowed down at the sides, hence the total flow moves very swiftly, and the turbulence and friction at the sides slow the flow at the sides rather less than at the point of the "V". Hence a massive flood does not carve a v-shape (or at most it will be a very shallow "V").
GD Rivers carve v-shaped valleys in mountains because the erosive power of the river exists at the bottom. That is why river-carved valleys are v-shaped, and why the Grand Canyon, which was carved much faster than most valleys are, is also V-shaped, although with much steeper sides than normal valleys.
GD Neither rivers nor floods normally produce V-shapes within their own channels, though a shallow concave shape is not rare. Which is why the V-shape has to be produced by an erosive force operating at the bottom of the "V", with nothing but normal erosion and earth movement to sculpt the "V" on the upper portions.
GD This is the truth which you'd know if you really understood the power of the uniformitarianism that geology still tends to follow, though with significant caveats today. If you have any scientific reason behind your so-far unbased claims about v-shapes and meanders, please produce them. Otherwise we'll just note once more that you have nothing.
Glen D ...
Quote
THERE YOU HAVE IT FOLKS ... THE AUTHORITY HAS SPOKEN
Glen Davidson ...
Quote
The Grand Canyon is a steep V-shaped "valley", just as any rapidly-cut canyon would be expected to be.
Did you catch it? THE GRAND CANYON IS A RAPIDLY-CUT CANYON
Quote
Yes it is. Why don't you learn what that means?
I know what it means ... In the case of the Missoula Flood it was 2 DAYS!
GD Yes, quite obviously I know about it, and have known about the Missoula Flood while you were quite ignorant of it. What you haven't bothered to do is to causally differentiate between the Grand Canyon and the Palouse Canyon within a YEC perspective. Unfortunately, you seem not to recognize the need to do so. Home-schooling is a lot of the problem, I am led to believe.
Glen ...
Quote
Has it ever occurred to you to study deeply into issues prior to making unsupported assertions?
I made the initial assertion that the Grand Canyon was formed catastrophically and involved massive amounts of water.
GD And you've failed repeatedly to back up your assertions.
AFD The "water" part of this assertion is supported by the nature of the layers -- there is a lot of SEDIMENTARY ROCK.
GD Yes, there are a lot of sedimentary rocks over the surface of the earth. Btw, some of the sedimentary rocks were deposited by aeolian processes, another fact that you utterly fail to explain during your "flood".
You have failed to explain even the marine deposits during the flood, since limestone and shale are formed mostly of very fine particles. Nor have you explained the abundance of limestone, just as no YEC has ever been able to do.
AFD The "catastrophically" portion of my assertion is supported by similar (not identical, I understand) phenomena at Mt. Saint Helens and Missoula.
GD How is it supported by them? You haven't begun to deal with the hydronamic issues involved. Did the St. Helens or Missoula floods manage to cut through a dome of rock? Huh? I have mentioned that problem more than once, and of course you have no answer. Just mindless comparisons with very different erosional processes.
Did the St. Helens flow cut through Schists? Did the Missoula Flood create a V-shaped canyon through hard rock? Do you have any reason at all to compare the St. Helens and Missoula processes with the Grand Canyon features, other than your blind adherance to an ancient text?
Can you explain the Cumberland Gap, how apparently a river cut through a (hard rock--igneous and/or metamorphic) mountain that was in its way? There are any number of rivers that have done so, including the Colorado river (though in the case of the Colorado it was a dome). Real geologists deal with these matters, understanding that slow uplift allowed the river to cut through the rocks which were always lower than the river.
Here's an interesting site. It has pictures of the Cumberland Gap about halfway down the page. More interesting is the Grand Canyon picture shortly thereafter, which shows meanders that the river cut through and abandoned after the canyon was about half as deep as it is today:
The site shows old rivers and their meanders, which as anyone competent in geology understands to be where and when meanders develop.
[Added in edit: Note, somewhat below the Grand Canyon pictures is a picture of "Devil's Gap". If AFD could possibly explain how the flood explains how that was cut through, I'd be hugely impressed. Not that this is any more difficult for AFD's "hypothesis" than the Grand Canyon's cutting through the dome (evident in the aerial photos at the linked site), but it is one of the most spectacular evidences of rivers slowly cutting their way through rising rocks. Gee, it's a v-shaped gap, just like the Grand Canyon--while quite obviously any massive flood would have simply gone around the ridge.]
AFD It is also supported by the fact that many "pure uniformitarians" have now become Catastrophists (Derek Ager, etc.) (Yes, I realize that they are not Biblical catastrophists, but we are working on them ... we have patience ... it took Harlan Bretz 40 years to earn respect for his theory)
GD Why are they too intelligent to shift to your point of view? Why do you even accept their work, based as it is on data that you reject? Your hypocrisy is appalling.
GD And why are you telling me about the problems that Betz ran into? I knew about that well before you knew about the Missoula Flood. Betz won in the end because the evidence supported him, while you don't even understand what constitutes scientific evidence.
GD I am more than a little aware that truly new ideas often are rejected in science, often due to little more than prejudice. The core concepts, however, have been vetted, and rarely are expended, more commonly being modified.
Glen ...
Quote
And that is all well and good. However, we do not use the earlier flood tales found in Babylonian sources in order to understand geology, at least not outside of the region of the Persian gulf. Nor do you, for that matter. Why do you suppose it is that you prefer the later source for flood stories, and not the earliest ones? Typically we use the earliest sources for a purported "historical event", not the later, apparently derived ones.
The Genesis Record is not a later source. It is the EARLIEST source as is evident from multiple lines of evidence ... see p. 82 of this thread. Or click here http://www.trueorigin.org/tablet.asp
GD Oh well, I guess you have to cling to that fiction. Sorry, Atra Hasis was written long before any part of the extant Bible was written. Of course evidence isn't going to matter to you with respect to literary sources any more than it does in geology.
Your link is extremely convincing, of course:
Quote
The book of Genesis is an historical account, not an allegory. Its accuracy is assured by the inspirational guidance of the Holy Spirit. I think its details are best explained by this modified tablet theory, which offers a more satisfactory explanation of all the details, and doesn’t violate any known fact. It’s in good accord with Scripture, and adds the authenticity that Genesis was composed of eye-witness accounts. I believe that it’s true. We would do well to simply believe the exact teaching of the Bible, just as God inspired it. To do otherwise is an insult to its Author, our Creator God.
There you go, the Holy Spirit safeguards its accuracy, and doubting its accuracy is an insult to God. Yes, real convincing. You really haven't a clue, do you Dave?
Glen ...
Quote
Considering that you, as you admitted in the general sense, do not understand the so-called "uniformitarian theory", your statement is as meaningless as your claims about Bible accuracy.
I do understand "uniformitarian theory" and I understand how geologists have abandoned major parts of it as JonF explained. This was a major victory in the 20th century for catastrophists.
GD You don't understand "uniformitarian theory" at all well. You don't understand its inception, why it has been quite successful in spite of caveats, or why even the so-called "modern catastrophists" rely heavily upon its principles today.
Here is a contemporary discussion of uniformitarianism:
Quote
The nature of that special something cuts to the discipline's [geology's] philosophical heart. Since the early nineteenth century, geology has been ruled by the principle of uniformitarianism--that the planet operates on unchanging laws, and that the present can be used as a key to the past. But how can that approach hold up when a science from a world where plate tectonics explains more or less everything is applied to a world that may have lacked it? How can you understand ancient rocks when you do not understand what processes put them there?
"The start of the world as we know it" pp. 128-131 Alexandra Witze Nature v. 442 13 July, 2006 p. 128
That the same processes occur in much the same way continues to rule geology, though it has long been recognized that significantly different processes must have acted once, certainly during the Hadean Age and before.
This is why geology has changed little in its methods, despite the fact that it has become more accommodating to catastrophic explanations than in the past. Geology does not resort to your "methods" of "explaining" things without any detailed analysis, and without even a consideration of gravity.
My "INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS" assertion is actually well supported and it didn't take anything close to hundreds of thousands of years. Remember the study I cited a while back?
Wrong again Davie-doo. The study you cited said nothing about incised meanders. It talked about the phenomenon of 'wandering' meanders on a shallow flood plane, in this case the Mississippi delta.
'Incised' means cut through rock solid enough and deep enough so the meander no longer wanders.
'Shit-hot' ignorant Dave drops pants to ankles again!
Now Dave, you were going to explain how the FLUD formed all those CG layers, remember? Better get to it!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Incised meanders = slow flowing water over hundreds of thousands of years. Quote Remember, class ... INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS
Sorry, Davie-piddles, both fluid mechanics theiory and observations of the real world contradict your unsupported assertion. We know you want it to be true, but reality doesn't care.
My "INCISED MEANDERS = SOFT SEDIMENTS" assertion is actually well supported and it didn't take anything close to hundreds of thousands of years. Remember the study I cited a while back?
Yup, I remember that study. It didn't support your claim. Nor did it address the observations and fluid mechanics calculations.
I was going to write more above, but the last post was so long anyhow. Here's what I previously asked of GoP (incorporating a question I first asked of AFD), and which, of course, neither he nor AFD have bothered to address:
Quote
So anyway, why don't you explain the temporal correlations between the Cretaceous/Tertiary iridium layer and the Chicxulub crater? And all of the correlations between relative dating and absolute dating. Oh, that's right, it's because you can't.
By the way, why don't you explain how various types of radiometric dating agree with each other in so many cases, Davie? That in itself is a good question, let alone the questions of why relative dating and absolute dating typically agree (where methods are suitable) and why strongly correlated events like the iridium layer and the Chicxulub strike are correlated by relative and absolute dating.
To be sure, AFD probably doesn't even understand the relevance of such correlations, let alone have any answers.
I wanted to make another post mostly because there are numerous questions to be asked of young earthers. AFD doesn't recognize the significance of such questions, but we're not trying to edify someone so lacking in basic knowledge anyway. Still, I'll address them to AFD, since he owes us answers, and I'd like to emphasize how he fails to produce any credible answers.
How did komatiite and other ultra-mafic rocks form on the earth, Davie-poo? Since magmas hot enough to produce komatiite do not exist today, was it simply a miracle?
Or did the earth cool down several hundred degrees in 6000 years or so? Please explain the thermodynamics of such a cooling process. We need to know how such a huge mass could cool below the temperature at which komatiite forms within a few thousand years. Gee, I'd think it would take billions of years, you know, that this was another rough correlation with radiometric dating.
Why do rocks from the moon date to 4+ billion years old, and the sun is calculated to be at about the temperature that it should be at if it were around 4 and a half billion years of age, according to stellar evolutionary models? How did that just "happen" to occur? How many coincidences are you willing to believe in?
How is there so much reduced carbon in the world that it could combine with something like 20 (or more) of earth's atmospheres' worth of oxygen? I know I asked a similar question before, and was disappointed that a YEC explanation was not forthcoming.
How does the earth/moon system have the angular momentum that would be expected from a glancing blow from Theia (that is, why does the earth-moon system have the momentum that would produce near-escape velocity for its surface when combined into one body? It would need this momentum for the collision to scatter moon-forming debris into orbit)? And how long would it take to transfer that momentum to the moon? How long would it take for the moon day-length to equal the time it takes to orbit the earth? Or is that just another coincidence?
How did asteroids manage to cool to the point of solidification in 6000 years? They were obviously molten once, splattering molten droplets of iron throughout a rocky body in a great collision to produce mesosiderites. I have to wonder how they could have fully solidified in a mere few thousand years.
Why isn't plutonium-239 found to naturally occur? It has a good 20,000 year half-life, or thereabout, and could easily exist from the point of creation. Certainly we have any number of radioactive elements, but other than the ones that are produced by ongoing processes, we find none that wouldn't have disappeared to undetectable levels within 4 and a half billion years or so.
Why is bioturbation found in "flood sediments"? For the past couple hundred million years, at least, most marine sediments have been disturbed by organisms. Surely in a murky turbulent flood the various organisms wouldn't be digging holes to live in. Yet some oil reservoirs are porous partly because of apparent burrowing by marine creatures. Then too, we have coral reefs and rivers appearing throughout "flood sediments", both of which are frequent reserves for accumulating oil.
I could go on, but what's the point? I'll end with what is perhaps the most interesting question of all, which is why absolute dating and relative dating coincide largely with genomic dating. That is to say, why does DNA point to our divergence from fish a few hundred million years ago, and our divergence from chimps to be something on the order of 5 million years ago? Is it coincidence that genomes and the geological record tell the same story?
I like this last one the best, because it shows how ID really doesn't escape from YECism, however embarrassed some of them are by YECs. The fact is that evolution is intimately tied with the fossil record, with mutational changes accumulating about as fast as the fossil record allows for evolutionary change to take place.
In a sense, AFD is right to deny geology as strenuously as he does evolution, because the correlations between geological and evolutionary data only point to a lack of mere coincidence as the explanation for why the dates from various lines of evidence do converge. It's absurd to accept absolute and relative dating, as many IDists do, without accepting the implications of the highly correlated DNA dating.
But of course it's absurd to deny all of the lines of evidence insisting that the earth is old, as well as to deny the implications of relatedness that IDists must deny. IDists try to accommodate some of the evidence, yet they are as incapable as AFD of actually understanding the cross-correlations that point only one thing, evolution via RM + NS (yes, including other evolutionary forces). Really, one might as well deny geological facts as evolutionary facts, rather than playing with a simultaneous acceptance and rejection of "origination" science as IDists do.
Unfortunately for AFD, however, he does accept science, only denying every last bit of evidence that disagrees with his a priori beliefs. So he's in a no more seaworthy boat than Dembski is.
the only reason ["long age"] interpretations seem outlandish to you [Dave] is because—guess what?—they conflict with your Bible.
Color me unimpressed by your "skepticism."
Really. Look, Dave's own hypothesis conflicts with his bible. His bible clearly refers to mountains existing and being covered up by the "great flood." Dave says there were no mountains before the flood!!
Quote (Ved @ July 19 2006,07:42)
Quote (Ved @ July 06 2006,14:05)
Dave, I have a bible question. I don't think you want to make any part of your hypothesis (heh) conflict with your great book.
You say there was nothing but small rolling hills prior to your singular flood event. The bible seems to not have much to say at all about the landscape of the earth until the passage about Noah, where it mentions:
1) high hills, and
2) mountains:
Quote
7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. 7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. 7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. 7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
Now this is a little confusing. It does indeed mention high hills and mountains that were already there before the flood, but it seems to imply that the mountains were 15 cubits (20 feet?) higher than the high hills.
Now maybe you can help me out. Your super accurate foundation for all knowledge either calls things mountains that really weren't mountains, or it gives a rediculously small measurement for the height of those mountains. I assume you have an explanation?
My explanation is that your book is a crock.
Care to comment, Dave? Or are you going to keep ignoring this one too?
You beg me for weeks to talk about the Flood, so I do. Now you are begging me to move on?
I'm begging you to move on, Dave, because you've made it plain at this point that you have nothing to say about it. You've spent the last few weeks making wildly inaccurate and unsupportable claims about how the Grand Canyon was created in a matter of months or years, without any evidence whatsoever to support such claims, and you've had absolutely nothing to say about the origin, mechanisms, and ultimate fate of your flood. You've presented not a particle of evidence that the Grand Canyon was formed in anything less than hundreds of thousands of years, you've managed to refute not a single claim of the geologists who actually have done the research and compiled the evidence supporting their claims, and you've answered not a single one of the two dozen questions put to you about your flood.
It's time to move on, Dave. It's clear at this point that you have nothing intelligent to say about the Grand Canyon, or about the flood. "Crashed and burned"? Spare me. When you manage to answer one single question about your flood, you can make some claim to even holding your own here. You've never even answered the most basic question about your flood: how deep was the water? I've asked you this question at least ten times, and you've never been able to answer it. How much more pathetic can you get?
Next topic, please. Maybe about how your ice age, which you claim happened during historical times, managed to leave not the slightest evidence behind, not even in the written record?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The Grand Canyon was probably carved in much the same way as the Grand Coulee Canyon.
Below is a very good explanation of how it could have happened. Of course we cannot prove it, but it is very plausible given what we know of the Missoula Flood.
***********************************
Ved ... you're right, the Bible does say mountains ... doesn't matter, though. Hills, mountains, whatever.
The important point is that there were no 35,000 foot mountains. Maybe 10,000 feet ... dunno.
In any case, the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory or the Hydroplate Theory both explain how pre-Flood mountains would have gotten covered up completely with water. And the massive uplift of mountain ranges like the Himalayas is also explained by both theories.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The Grand Canyon was probably carved in much the same way as the Grand Coulee Canyon.
Below is a very good explanation of how it could have happened. Of course we cannot prove it, but it is very plausible given what we know of the Missoula Flood.
In any case, the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory or the Hydroplate Theory both explain how pre-Flood mountains would have gotten covered up completely with water. And the massive uplift of mountain ranges like the Himalayas is also explained by both theories.
Dave: enough with the "plausible explanations," or the "it very well could have happened," and the "could be an explanation of," etc. Provide some evidence, or admit that you have none.
The evidence that the Grand Canyon formed over hundreds of thousands to millions of years is extensive, detailed, comprehensive, and mutually reinforcing. This has been pointed out to you again and again. Your rejoinders that "it could have happened this way," or "a plausible explanation for this feature," or "it's reasonable to assume that" is utterly worthless.
Put up or shut up, Dave. I've been saying that for a month now, and you haven't put up anything.
Your "theories" don't explain anything. They don't even propose a mechanism for anything. How did those mountains form? What caused the continent to break up, and what possible force caused giant continental landmasses to move thousands of miles in a day or two? Do you even understand the implication of these sorts of questions for your "theories," Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Davie, Davie, Davie...you're getting more pathetic by the minute.
You hold on to Brown's and Baumgardner's pulled out of their ass "theories" like a security blanket, but do you realize those two moronic theories contradict each other in many ways? Brown has all continental drift happening in one day, Baumgardener has it taking months. Brown has the ice age happening in one day before the FLUD, Baumgardner has it after. Note also that both those goofy fantasies are contradicted by every single piece of geological and archaeological evidence in existence. They both can't be right Davie, but they sure both can be wrong.
You're like a little kid who can't understand why his parents don't buy his "an invisible elephant stepped on my toy and broke it" excuse.
Now, I thought you were going to be honest and answer questions on the CG layers, remember? So how about keeping your Good Christian word?
Please explain for me how DA FLUD managed to sort the CG into all those distinct layers to begin with; each layer with a unique physical makeup, both in materials and fossils contained.
To save you time, just saying 'hydrodynamic sorting' is NOT an answer Davie. Your FLUD model need to explain the detailed mechanisms of how such sorting could occur.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
OA ... sorry, but I'm not an expert on the Religion of Millionsofyearsianism ...
I was nice enough to dredge up your pretty picture ...
Now the ball's in your court if you want to discuss it ...
You saw my questions ...
If you don't ... fine by me ... I'll proceed according to my own views ...
Of course Baumgardner and Brown don't agree in all details ... they are different theories ... not sure which I like better ... but both fit the evidence much better than ...
MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM
:-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I find rather ironical that AFDave manages to piss us off while he's the one who should be pissed by this huge conspiracy. Man, those evil scientists even imagine that we come from monkeys, that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs 65 My ago and that the universe is 13,7 Gy old, just to contradict the truth of the Bible!
Poor Dave. How come all this doesn't drive you mad?
Now the ball's in your court if you want to discuss it ...
You saw my questions ...
If you don't ... fine by me ... I'll proceed according to my own views ...
Of course Baumgardner and Brown don't agree in all details ... they are different theories ... not sure which I like better ... but both fit the evidence much better than ...
MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM
Dave, they're not just different theories; they're mutually contradictory. At least one of them must be wrong, and in fact both of them are wrong. They don't fit the evidence, and in fact are contradicted by the evidence, they have no explanatory power, they have no proposed mechanisms for any of the phenomena claimed to have happened (continents moving thousands of miles whether it's in a matter of hours or a matter of months), and have not even proposed a mechanism for how either an ice age could have predated and precipitated a global flood, or followed and been caused by a global flood.
They're basically fairy tales, Dave, with no more connection to reality than a Peter Pan novel or a Borges short story.
The ball's still in your court, Dave. You're not entitled to any answers to your questions until you've started answering the questions posed to you. We've been asking you these questions for more than a month. If you want some of your questions to be answered (any of which you could answer yourself with a little research), you're going to have to answer some of our questions (none of which can be answerered by you at all, because you haven't the faintest clue how to answer any of them, or even what an answer would entail.)
Put up or shut up, Dave. You've had more than a month to present evidence, any evidence at all, for your gobal flood, and you have failed abjectly and comprehensively to do so. If you can't present any such evidence (and you can't), I propose that you move on to your next baseless and unsupportable assertion.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I think, in Brown's hydroplate theory[sic], that the water exploded off the earth into space and thus explains comets.
I think the "explains" should have a [sic] after it, too. Or at least be in quotes.
AF Dave seems to have the idea that if he asserts something happened a particular way (e.g., the global flood carved the Grand Canyon in a matter of months), that counts as an "explanation."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The Grand Canyon was probably carved in much the same way as the Grand Coulee Canyon.
Below is a very good explanation of how it could have happened. Of course we cannot prove it, but it is very plausible given what we know of the Missoula Flood.
That would have produced something that looks rougly like the Channeled Scablands, not the Grand Canyon.
dunno is where he started, and based on his lack of learning ability, is where he will end.
I can't recall any individual i have ever met who could spend this much time investigating any subject, and proceed to learn absolutely nothing in the end.
like i said, he evidently never progressed in ability beyond middle school.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I can't recall any individual i have ever met who could spend this much time investigating any subject, and proceed to learn absolutely nothing in the end.
But remember, the only "investigating" he's done is from sources bearing the AiG/CRI seal of approval.
AF Dave has no conception of what the real state of the art is in the understanding of geophysical processes, because he's never read about it. As soon as he sees the words "millions of years," or even "tens of thousands of years," he snaps the book shut.
Dave believes that science is like debating club. You marshall your claims, and only assert "evidence" that supports your claims. You never even look at evidence that contradicts them, and hope that your opponent never finds them. But since many of the people debating Dave are actual scientists, and a goodly number are actually geologists or have training in geology, there isn't a prayer his opponents aren't going to discover (if they didn't already know about) evidence contradicting his claims.
So he's fucked. He can only support his claims by reference to evidence that everyone else already knew going into the debate was wrong.
So all he can do is claim victory anyway and hope the lurkers aren't astute enough to see what's really happening.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave believes that science is like debating club. You marshall your claims, and only assert "evidence" that supports your claims. You never even look at evidence that contradicts them, and hope that your opponent never finds them.
yes, which is exactly why earlier i posted the quote on the learning abilities of middle school students from the NSF site.
dave exhibits the social learning abilities of a poorly educated middle school student.
I can't recall having run into someone with that degree of learning disability that wasn't also considered technically retarded before.
Quote
So all he can do is claim victory anyway and hope the lurkers aren't astute enough to see what's really happening.
no worries there. As you recall, several lurkers have already logged their views on the issues, and none have agreed with poor AFdumbass. in fact, most registered shock at Dave's inability to see the flaws in his own logic.
I reiterate, this thread has become nothing more than a big game of whack-a-mole.
simple games can still be fun, from time to time.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
dunno is where he started, and based on his lack of learning ability, is where he will end.
I can't recall any individual i have ever met who could spend this much time investigating any subject, and proceed to learn absolutely nothing in the end.
like i said, he evidently never progressed in ability beyond middle school.
My thoughts exactly. Thank you. Though it is true that I tend to mock certain afflicted folk like afDave, I took this thread seriously when he started it. As I think I have said before, I had set for myself the goal of engaging with a true-blue creationist such as afDave, not with the intention of debate but with the intention of understanding. I really do wonder what it is that makes a person disregard the whole of mainstream science, and embrace ignorance over knowledge in the name of a belief system that has no underpinning in the real world. afDave might say that he feels the same about those who do grant provisional acceptance to mainstream science, but the distance between his wondering and mine is an incalculable gulf (and I am sure afDave would agree).
But now, after reading along with this thread since its inception, I realize that arriving at understanding with someone like afDave is impossible (I may have said this before as well, but I just wish to reiterate it). Much as I want to, I can't understand how a person willfully and joyfully dismisses the world of reason, and furthermore, I recognize that afDave truly hasn't the capacity to understand the position of mainstream science, nor does he wish to. As others have said here, afDave must not treat established science with anything like curiosity or respect. To do so would be the negation of his self, and while I know that afDave will flounce in with something about how I am "psychoanalyzing" him, I also know that what I have said is true. Either that, or people such as afDave really are insane and stupid. I just wish that they weren't elected to high office so often.
find rather ironical that AFDave manages to piss us off while he's the one who should be pissed by this huge conspiracy. Man, those evil scientists even imagine that we come from monkeys, that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs 65 My ago and that the universe is 13,7 Gy old, just to contradict the truth of the Bible!
Poor Dave. How come all this doesn't drive you mad?
It doesn't drive me mad because I can see the truth so clearly ... the truth of the Bible has truly given me such freedom and happiness in my life that nothing can get me down ... and I want everyone to have this ... not a single regular or lurker at ATBC may ever "get it" but that's not my concern ... that's a matter of the human will ... my job is simply to search for the truth, then share it with others. My time here will come to an end. There will be a time when I have investigated all the relevant Biblical topics I care to. But I will have learned a lot and will take my new knowledge with me in my subsequent endeavors.
Clamboy ...
Quote
I just wish that they weren't elected to high office so often.
I have to admit that I am enjoying this rare moment in history when there are some Christians in public office. If you don't like it then organize, my friend. Sell your viewpoint and get your candidates elected. It's the American way!
We'll be looking at Brown's stuff in more detail in the coming weeks ... I think I like the guy!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
and I want everyone to have this ... not a single regular or lurker at ATBC may ever "get it" but that's not my concern ... that's a matter of the human will ... my job is simply to search for the truth, then share it with others.
never has the phrase "ignorance is bliss" been more applicable.
Quote
It doesn't drive me mad because I can see the truth so clearly
it doesn't drive him mad, cause he's already there.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
the truth of the Bible has truly given me such freedom and happiness in my life that nothing can get me down ... and I want everyone to have this
AFDave...private message me about this. I dont understand what parts of the bible are true. I dont understand how believing that any part of the Bible is absolutely true can help me. Do we just believe the old testament...or maybe just the New Testament. What language are we supposed to read the bible in? What translation is the most accurate? Do we ignore the obvious errors in the bible? Do we accept them as the divine will of God? Need some help here.
OA ... sorry, but I'm not an expert on the Religion of Millionsofyearsianism ...
The only thing you do seem to be competent at is lying and evasion. Oh, and making us laugh at you...can't forget that one! You certainly don't know squat about geology, or biology, or physics, or chemistry, or business either.
Quote
I was nice enough to dredge up your pretty picture ...
Now the ball's in your court if you want to discuss it ...
You saw my questions ...
BZZZZT! Wrong again Davie. My questions for you that went with that picture about your how the FLUD formed those layers have been on the table for weeks and you've avoided every last one, just like you avoided every other question on your silly assed YE claims - meanders, C14 calibration, YE business models, etc. Trying to weasel out now by shifting the topic just won't work Davie - is that something you learned at Vacation Bible School?
How did the FLUD form the separate, unique layers Dave??
It is certainly true that you are free to run crying away from my questions about those nasty details yet again. That's fine. Do that, and everyone who witnesses your chickenshit behavior will have that much more evidence that you are nothing but a mouthy ignorant blowhard. Making your claims look stupid and you look cowardly in front of the whole board works for me. Does it float your boat there too, Davie-doll?
You're just a shining beacon of Christian honesty here Dave, a real lamp unto our feet.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
It doesn't drive me mad because I can see the truth so clearly ... the truth of the Bible has truly given me such freedom and happiness in my life that nothing can get me down ...
Dave, you're not interested in truth. If you were, you would long since have realized that the guys at AiG and ICR, etc. aren't interested in the truth either. They aren't interested in finding out what really happened, how life got to be the way it is, how the universe came about and how it unfolded. They're interested in pushing their agenda, and one way of doing that is duping willing ignoramuses like you into believing things that are manifestly, obviously, irrefutably untrue.
When I first became interested in science, Dave, 38 or so years ago, I didn't have any particular agenda. I didn't particularly care, at that age, whether God created the universe or if it just came about by accident. I honestly didn't give it too much thought. I just wanted to know how things work, how they got to be the way they are. And you know what? I did exactly what you're not doing, what you refuse to do. I went out and learned stuff, and in so doing, I noticed that all the different avenues of research, all the different areas of science, from geology to paleontology to evolutionary biology to astronomy to astrophysics to particle physics to cosmology, all point in the same direction: to a universe 13.7 billion years old, to an earth 4.5 billion years old, to life 4 billion years old, to humans a few hundred thousand years old.
Sure, you think I've been "brainwashed." I haven't, Dave. I'm capable of something you're not capable of. I'm capable of critical reasoning. I'm capable of making credibility judgments. I'm capable of looking at a particular assertion (God created the Grand Canyon in a year or two using lots and lots of water), and evaluating it based on how well it fits observation.
Just about everyone else here on this site can make the same assessments, Dave, with a few exceptions, you being the most obvious one. You are simply incapable of making any kind of credibility assessments. Your sole yardstick for credibility is how well something matches up with your preconceived notions. You claim that the Bible is your starting point for hypotheses about the world, but you're wrong. It's the end point.
For you, the Bible is reality, and the real world is the hypothesis. You base your credibility assessments of the real world on the Bible, not the other way around. If there's a conflict between an observation and the Bible, the Bible wins, every time. The Bible says to you, "Who are you going believe, Dave, your lying eyes…or me?" And your answer is always the same.
And you'll never, ever be able to remove those particular scales from your eyes. People don't make those kinds of changes in their lives once they get to be your age. You're hopeless, Dave, and your only real function here is as a pinata for us to poke at. And a lot of the time, you're pretty amusing. The rest of the time you're just sort of tedious.
But one thing you are most certainly not is in search of the Truth.
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We'll be looking at Brown's stuff in more detail in the coming weeks ... I think I like the guy!
Perfect example, Dave. We've demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt that Dr. Brown is a bozo. His theory makes absolutely no sense, has no explanatory power, makes no predictions, is massively contradicted by observation, and requires multiple miracles to work (even Henry Morris was at least honest enough to see that). His hydroplate "theory," aside from being utterly unworkable, doesn't answer even the simplest questions, the same ones we've been pelting you with for weeks: where did that water come from, how much of it was there, where did it go to, what caused massive, impossible, instantaneous continental breakup and mountain-forming? He proposes no mechanisms, no causative factors, no methods. But you like him. Why? Because he's a path to the Truth? No. Because he tells you what you want to believe.
The only difference between you and Fox Mulder, Dave, is that Mulder is a fictional character.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The people here are NOT going to crucify you despite the fact you are a minor foot soldier in the cult of YEC even if you quote the dogma till the cows come home and you won't make any headway here till you're able to address any subject that hasn't already been thrashed to a pulp.
I realize you won't address my questions anymore than you have others, because your "priesthood" hasn't found a "reasonable" answer yet (your sciency guys are still scrambling to come up with an answer to Tiktaalik), but I still have to ask.
How does the newest specimen of Archaeopteryx support your claim that no transitional fossils can be found?
In the mean time, I'll make note of the fact that your air charter business is a dilettante operation like the the rest of your claims about your self.
1. Millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth ...
is excellent evidence for a Global Water Catastrophe ...
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Ager, Derek V., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 151 pp. Ager was Professor and Head of the Department of Geology and Oceanography, University College of Swansea. He had also served as president of the British Geological Association. pp 68, 69 “Uniformitarianism triumphed because it provided a general theory that was at once logical and seemingly ‘scientific.’ Catastrophism became a joke and no geologist would dare postulate anything that might be termed a ‘catastrophe’ for fear of being laughed at or (in recent years) linked with a lunatic fringe of Velikovsky and Californian fundamentalists. But I would like to suggest that, in the first half of the last century, the ‘catastrophists’ were better geologists than the ‘uniformitarians.’”
2. The Grand Canyon is screaming out 'Catastrophe! Catastrophe!'
... yet most scientists ears are plugged. We see similar phenomena at Mt. Saint Helens and in the canyons formed by the Great Missoula Flood. In the case of the Missoula, we even have a geologist--Harlan Bretz--who, like today's catastrophists, persistently advanced his Missoula Flood Theory against all odds ... was laughed at and scorned, yet his theory won out in the end.
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The uniformitarian orthodoxy could not ignore the work of J Harlen Bretz, so a series of rebuttal papers were issued by some of the world’s foremost glacial geologists. A bitter debate among geologists occurred, spanning four decades. Bretz was the solitary champion of the flood hypothesis.
The persistence of Bretz throughout the decades of debate paid off. Geologists did begin to see that the “approved” uniformitarian agents were incapable of accounting for the size, position, and actual existence of landforms of eastern Washington. A turning point in the debate came in the 1960s, when the International Association for Quaternary Research did an extensive tour of the Channeled Scabland and Lake Missoula. In 1965, a busload of geologists sent J Harlen Bretz a telegram: “Greetings and salutations….We are now all catastrophists.”
3. The layers in the Grand Canyon are just what one would expect from a Global Catastrophe such as that described by Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory or John Baumgardner's Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory.
Both of these theories describe massive pre-Flood underground reservoirs of water which burst catastrophically spewing high velocity water, mud, rocks and debris high into the atmosphere (and even into space). The enormous upheaval which followed caused a massive mixing and subsequent redepositing of sediments in waves of deposition. These various depostion waves would naturally deposit sediments in distinct layers which are observable today.
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The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview New evidence shows that the earth has experienced a devastating, worldwide flood, whose waters violently burst forth from under the earth’s crust. Standard “textbook” explanations for many of earth’s major features are scientifically flawed. We can now explain, using well-understood phenomena, how this cataclysmic event rapidly formed so many features. These and other mysteries, listed below, are best explained by an earthshaking event, far more catastrophic than almost anyone has imagined.
The Grand Canyon and Other Canyons Mid-Oceanic Ridge Continental Shelves and Slopes Ocean Trenches (pages 136–155) Earthquakes Magnetic Variations on the Ocean Floor Submarine Canyons Coal and Oil Formations Methane Hydrates Ice Age Frozen Mammoths (pages 178–208) Major Mountain Ranges Overthrusts Volcanoes and Lava Geothermal Heat Strata and Layered Fossils (pages 158–168) Limestone (pages 170–175) Metamorphic Rock Plateaus Salt Domes Jigsaw Fit of the Continents Changing Axis Tilt Comets (pages 210–239) Asteroids and Meteoroids (pages 242–259) Each appears to be a consequence of a sudden and unrepeatable event—a global flood whose waters erupted from interconnected, worldwide subterranean chambers with an energy release exceeding the explosion of 30 trillion hydrogen bombs. When the hydroplate theory is explained later in this chapter, it will resolve the parade of mysteries described in the next few pages.
We will be examining the Hydroplate Theory in detail in the coming weeks.
AFDave...private message me about this. I dont understand what parts of the bible are true. I dont understand how believing that any part of the Bible is absolutely true can help me. Do we just believe the old testament...or maybe just the New Testament. What language are we supposed to read the bible in? What translation is the most accurate? Do we ignore the obvious errors in the bible? Do we accept them as the divine will of God? Need some help here.
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
Crabby ...
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How does the newest specimen of Archaeopteryx support your claim that no transitional fossils can be found?
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Archaeopteryx (unlike Archaeoraptor) is NOT a hoax—it is a true bird, not a “missing link” by Jonathan Sarfati, AiG–Australia
24 March 2000
With all the publicity about the Archaeoraptor fiasco (see Archaeoraptor Hoax Update—National Geographic Recants!, some have recalled the 1986 claim by Sir Fred Hoyle and Dr Chandra Wickramasinghe that Archaeopteryx is a forgery.1 Archaeopteryx is one of the most famous of the alleged transitional forms promoted by evolutionists. This is probably why some anti-Darwinians are keen to dismiss it as a forgery.
However, in the article, Bird evolution flies out the window, the creationist anatomist Dr David Menton shows that Archaeopteryx is a true bird with flight feathers, not a transitional form—and certainly not a feathered dinosaur. And Dr Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself (see Feduccia v Creationists), says:
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”2
[HEY, STEVE STORY, ISN'T UNC YOUR ALMA MATER?]
Both these expert scientists totally reject the charge of forgery. Dr Menton points out that the Archaeopteryx bones have tiny bumps where the feathers were attached to the bones by ligaments. This was unexpected, so impossible to attribute to a forgery. So it is simply wrong to say that the feathers are just imprints added to a dino skeleton.
Also, Alan Fedducia, in his encyclopedic The Origin and Evolution of Birds,3 cites a number of reasons why Fred Hoyle is completely wrong. For example, limestone often contains dendritic (tree-like) patterns formed by precipitating manganese dioxide, and they are unique as are snowflakes. Some of them are on both the slab and counterslab containing the Solnhofen Archaeopteryx fossil, including some on top of the feather imprints. Alan Charig et al. found that when he backwardly printed a negative photograph of the counterslab dendrite patterns, they match perfectly with the corresponding dendrites of the main slab. Therefore the dendrites must have formed on the bedding plane before the slab was split.
Since that book, more recent evidence has even further devastated the hoax theory:
The skeletons had pneumatized vertebrae and pelvis. This indicates the presence of both a cervical and abdominal air sac, i.e. at least two of the five sacs present in modern birds. This in turn indicates that the unique avian lung design was already present in what most evolutionists claim is the earliest bird.4 An evolutionist trying to forge a dinosaur with feathers would not have thought to pneumatize allegedly reptilian bones. Rather, the evidence supports the creationist view that birds have always been birds.
Analysis of the skull with computer tomography (CT) scanning shows that Archaeopteryx had a brain like a modern bird’s, three times the size of that of a dinosaur of equivalent size (although smaller than that of living birds). Archaeopteryx even had large optic lobes to process the visual input needed for flying. Furthermore, even the inner ear had a cochlea length and semicircular canal propoprtions were in the range of a modern flying bird’s. This implies that Archaeopteryx could hear in a similar way, and also had the sense of balance required for coordinating flight.5 Pterosaurs likewise had similar brain structures for flight—the large optic lobes, semicircular canals for balance, and huge floccular lobes, probably for coordination of the head, eye and neck allowing gaze-stabilization while flying.6 Once more, a forger adding feathers to a dino would not have thought to make an avian braincase, while it is yet another problem for evolutionists.
Answers in Genesis will not stock any books that promote the Archaeopteryx hoax idea, at least not without a disclaimer, because it is the truth which shall set you free (cf. John 8:32), not error. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4254news3-24-2000.asp
Crabby ...
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In the mean time, I'll make note of the fact that your air charter business is a dilettante operation like the the rest of your claims about your self.
I see you like that word 'dilettante' ... what exactly are you talking about in regards to my charter business? Do you think I don't really have one or something? Or do you think that I'm a 'dilletante' because I have other people do the 'dirty work' of the business for me? Sort of like I trained students in the AF to go do the 'dirty work' of war? Is that what you are talking about?
***********************************
PS ... does anyone know how to wrap text around pictures on this forum?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
“Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.”
Dude, all birds ARE dinosaurs (as we are apes). Your quote is just stupid. I won't mention the molecular evidence that confirmed what paleontologists have been thinking for more than 100 years, you won't understand them.
You don't even know how to formulate a coherent hypothetis. Once you mention speciation and common descent, then you say that no transitional species ever existed.
But I would like to hear your explanation about the paintings in the Cosquer cave. How do they fit your flood and catastrophic plate tectonic theory?
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all.
Are snakes today descendants of the serpent as described in the bible?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1. Millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth ...
is excellent evidence for a Global Water Catastrophe ...
Quote
Ager, Derek V., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 151 pp. Ager was Professor and Head of the Department of Geology and Oceanography, University College of Swansea. He had also served as president of the British Geological Association. pp 68, 69 “Uniformitarianism triumphed because it provided a general theory that was at once logical and seemingly ‘scientific.’ Catastrophism became a joke and no geologist would dare postulate anything that might be termed a ‘catastrophe’ for fear of being laughed at or (in recent years) linked with a lunatic fringe of Velikovsky and Californian fundamentalists. But I would like to suggest that, in the first half of the last century, the ‘catastrophists’ were better geologists than the ‘uniformitarians.’”
The entire quote is irrelevant. You've presented no evidence supporting your claims, and you've ignored 99.999% of the available observations.
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2. The Grand Canyon is screaming out 'Catastrophe! Catastrophe!'
... yet most scientists ears are plugged. We see similar phenomena at Mt. Saint Helens and in the canyons formed by the Great Missoula Flood.
We see wildly and obvious different phenomena at Mt. Saint Helens and in the canyons formed by the Great Missoula Flood.
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In the case of the Missoula, we even have a geologist--Harlan Bretz--who, like today's catastrophists, persistently advanced his Missoula Flood Theory against all odds ... was laughed at and scorned, yet his theory won out in the end.
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The uniformitarian orthodoxy could not ignore the work of J Harlen Bretz, so a series of rebuttal papers were issued by some of the world’s foremost glacial geologists. A bitter debate among geologists occurred, spanning four decades. Bretz was the solitary champion of the flood hypothesis.
The persistence of Bretz throughout the decades of debate paid off. Geologists did begin to see that the “approved” uniformitarian agents were incapable of accounting for the size, position, and actual existence of landforms of eastern Washington. A turning point in the debate came in the 1960s, when the International Association for Quaternary Research did an extensive tour of the Channeled Scabland and Lake Missoula. In 1965, a busload of geologists sent J Harlen Bretz a telegram: “Greetings and salutations….We are now all catastrophists.”
The entire quote is irrelevant. You've presented no evidence supporting your claims, and you've ignored 99.999% of the available observations. Remember, they lauged at Bozo the Clown.
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3. The layers in the Grand Canyon are just what one would expect from a Global Catastrophe such as that described by Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory or John Baumgardner's Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory.
Are snakes today descendants of the serpent as described in the bible?
Well yes and no.
1. Todays middle eastern snake ancestors were alive in the Levant around over 2,300 years ago around the time the first Imagined History of the Jewish People was transcribed.
2. Today they don't speak any lingua franca (A medium of communication between peoples of different languages.) unless Eve spoke sssssssssssssssssss.
3. Strippers still tell the same story of controlled sexual desire (with snakes as the phallic symbol) ...look and dream, but don't touch.
4. Some people still think talking snakes are real. (They prove the simple fact some people will believe anything.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all.
Well...of course no part of the bible could be "proven" to be untrue....unless we create a time machine.
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I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true.
Ok...gotcha... So we shouldnt pay any attention to books of the New Testament that were not written by, or at least inspired by apostles. So...that means all of the letters of Paul are out. The Gospel of John is out. The Gospel of Luke is out. Revelations is out.
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Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good.
Which Greek translation? The really crappy one...or should we go back and retranslate from the original greek manuscripts?
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I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
What about the ending of Mark? What about the story of the adultress in John? What about: Mark 2:25-26
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He said to them, "Did you never read what David did, when he had need, and was hungry-he, and those who were with him? How he entered into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the show bread, which is not lawful to eat except for the priests, and gave also to those who were with him?"
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Then came David to Nob to Ahimelech the priest: and Ahimelech was afraid at the meeting of David, and said unto him, Why art thou alone, and no man with thee? And David said unto Ahimelech the priest, The king hath commanded me a business, and hath said unto me, Let no man know any thing of the business whereabout I send thee, and what I have commanded thee: and I have appointed my servants to such and such a place. Now therefore what is under thine hand? give me five loaves of bread in mine hand, or what there is present. And the priest answered David, and said, There is no common bread under mine hand, but there is hallowed bread; if the young men have kept themselves at least from women. And David answered the priest, and said unto him, Of a truth women have been kept from us about these three days, since I came out, and the vessels of the young men are holy, and the bread is in a manner common, yea, though it were sanctified this day in the vessel. So the priest gave him hallowed bread: for there was no bread there but the shewbread, that was taken from before the LORD, to put hot bread in the day when it was taken away. Samuel 21:1-6
The problem? Amihelech is Abiathar's father.... and therefore Abiathar is not the high priest. So...um could you explain this "error" to me?
The problem? Amihelech is Abiathar's father.... and therefore Abiathar is not the high priest. So...um could you explain this "error" to me?
I don't know ... I'm sure if you got into the finer details of the Jewish priesthood, you would have an answer ... off the top of my head I don't see why the phrase "in days of Abiathar the high priest" could not mean "in the days when Abiathar became high priest" ... there could be other easy explanations if we really wanted to get into it ...
I think your problem is that you are looking for ways to justify skepticism of the Bible ... if this is your mindset, you can find many ways to do this ... on the other hand, if you are open-minded to the possibility of the Bible to being completely true, then you will find a multitude of possible ways to explain the 'supposed errors.' The fact is, many of them cannot be resolved because we do not have a time machine. But the good news is ... many of them CAN be and HAVE BEEN resolved.
The Genesis Flood is ONE HUGE Bible Difficulty that I find interesting and it is being resolved as we speak by creationist scientists.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
don't know ... I'm sure if you got into the finer details of the Jewish priesthood, you would have an answer ... off the top of my head I don't see why the phrase "in days of Abiathar the high priest" could not mean "in the days when Abiathar became high priest" ... there could be other easy explanations if we really wanted to get into it ...
Well...first off that wouldnt help. Why would Jesus be talking about an insignificant son of a high priest...when He was obviously making reference to a quotation from Jewish scripture... Secondly...your "explanation" is only valid if your reading the KJV of the Bible...in it's original greek that mistake of the=became is almost entirely silly. I love your approach though. You dont bother to try and explain it...suffice it to say that you know that the bible is accurate...and then there must be an explanation that maintains that the bible is accurate. This is, perhaps, the most childish approach to a problem I have ever heard. When Creationists first started pointing out "errors" in non-Creationist explanation of things...scientists would approach each error, and try to answer the question. They wouldn't simply "defend the faith". We only do that now because the same questions have been asked and answered thousands of times.
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I think your problem is that you are looking for ways to justify skepticism of the Bible ... if this is your mindset, you can find many ways to do this ... on the other hand, if you are open-minded to the possibility of the Bible to being completely true, then you will find a multitude of possible ways to explain the 'supposed errors.' The fact is, many of them cannot be resolved because we do not have a time machine. But the good news is ...
But this is completely contradictory. I hate this christian BullShit.... It is not open-minded to believe that something is "completely true". If you consider the possibility that something is "completely true"...then you have no reason to challenge that belief. It is open-minded to be "skeptical" of a belief. Then you can either find reason to dismiss your skepticism...or you can validate your skepticism. Open-minded means the mindset that will lead you to the greatest number of possibilities...not the least.
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I think your problem is that you are looking for ways to justify skepticism of the Bible
Of course I am.... The Bible is the work of man. I will actually exclude argument about the Torah..since it is supposed to be the divinely inspired word of God(so your creationism is safe from my arguments).... But the entire New Testament of the bible is without holy salvation. There do exist quotations that claim divine inspiration...but they only exist in a select number of books...and since the New Testament is actually a composite of several different books...all written long before being codexed... The claim of "divine inspiration" only applies to the book of the bible in which it is written. Why would anyone assume that the claim of "divine inspiration" applies to the entire New Testament?
I also enjoy how you completely ignored my questions about "extra" text in the bible. I listed two sections of the bible that SHOULD NOT EXIST IN THE BIBLE. You simply ignored that....because it would invalidate your view of the bible as being an error-free and singular work.
We only do that now because the same questions have been asked and answered thousands of times.
Bingo! And that is the exact situation we have with your supposed Bible difficulties ... I have not investigated the exact one you brought up, but I have investigated hundreds of others written by many authors.
Do you realize how many books have been written explaining these types of difficulties?
When you read a lot of these as I have, you come to a point where you say "Wow ... this is uncanny ... this Book really is Supernatural!!"
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey AFDave, since you’ve decided to blow off all those embarrassing Grand Canyon / FLUD questions that you can’t answer and instead are all chatty about the literal Bible again – I’ve got a few questions
First, which version of the Bible is the inerrant, literal one? The KJV seems to be the leading contender – is that the one you are using as your literal source? There have been many different translations over the last 2000 years. More than a few passages have been added, deleted, and changed over time. For example, the KJV mentions unicorns several times
"God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn." (Numbers 23:22) "Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?" (Job 39:9) "His glory is like the firstlings of his bullock; and his horns are like the horns of unicorns." (Deuteronomy 33:17) "He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn." (Psalm 29:6)
Does that mean that unicorns actually existed, and are literally real?
Now the KJV uses ‘unicorn’ as a translation for the Hebrew word re’em. In all actuality, re’em probably was a type of wild ox (aurochs) unknown to the KJV translators Since it is known that unicorns are mythical beasts that never actually existed, we have a clear example of the KJV NOT being a literal record of factual events due to a translation interpretation. Similarly, the KJV uses ‘day’ (as in ‘the World was created in six literal days’) as a translation for the Hebrew word yom, which can mean ‘a period of time’ and not just ‘24 hour day’. Just like the re’em / unicorn example, assuming yom means ‘24 hour day’ is a translation interpretation. Because there is so much other scientific evidence that the world was NOT created in six literal days but is actually billions of years old, it is reasonable to assume the KJV is NOT a literal record of ‘six 24 hour days’ factual events due to a translation interpretation.
How do you, AFDave, justify using such translation interpretations as a basis for claiming literal events?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
1. Millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth ...is excellent evidence for a Global Water Catastrophe ...
It's evidence of no such thing. You still, after all this time, haven't presented a single particle of evidence for your flood, and you haven't come up with the most remotely plausible mechanism for how a catastrophic flood could possibly sort millions of fossils into exactly the order expected by evolutionary biology, and not even remotely the order expected by a global flood.
And besides, we hardly need a "review" of statements you've made over and over again, without the slightest bit of supporting evidence.
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2. The Grand Canyon is screaming out 'Catastrophe! Catastrophe!'
No it's not. Standard geology gives a perfectly logical and rational explanation for how the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon over hundreds of thousands to millions of years. Your "global flood" can't even explain the things standard geology can explain, let alone explain things it can't explain. Your "global flood" is hopeless at explaining anything at all, and besides, you haven't presented a single molecule of evidence that your "global flood" ever even happened. We've asked you two dozen different questions that your hypothesis must explain in order to be taken seriously, and you've spend the last month avoiding answering even one of them.
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3. The layers in the Grand Canyon are just what one would expect from a Global Catastrophe such as that described by Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory or John Baumgardner's Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory.
You say this over and over, Dave, but you've given us exactly no reason to think it's true. You've provided no mechanism whatsoever as to how a chaotic, catastrophic flood could possibly have sorted any of these layers. Saying it over and over again simply doesn't establish anything. Where's your evidence, Dave? Are you ever going to present it?
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Both of these theories describe massive pre-Flood underground reservoirs of water which burst catastrophically spewing high velocity water, mud, rocks and debris high into the atmosphere (and even into space).
And neither one of them has any clue as to where that water was underground, how much of it there was, how deep it was, or what caused it to "burst." And neither do you.
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The enormous upheaval which followed caused a massive mixing and subsequent redepositing of sediments in waves of deposition.
What "enormous upheaval," Dave? You haven't presented any evidence of an "enormous upheaval," and you've come up with no model as to how it happened, or what caused it. You just keep asserting it over and over again, as if endless repetition will convince anyone of anything.
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These various depostion waves would naturally deposit sediments in distinct layers which are observable today.
Oh, really? And how is that? We should believe this just because you say it should? Because you've presented exactly no evidence that it ever did, or proposed any mechanism that would do this sorting. Nor have you explained how sediments can lithify underwater.
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The Hydroplate Theory: An Overview New evidence shows that the earth has experienced a devastating, worldwide flood, whose waters violently burst forth from under the earth’s crust. Standard “textbook” explanations for many of earth’s major features are scientifically flawed. We can now explain, using well-understood phenomena, how this cataclysmic event rapidly formed so many features. These and other mysteries, listed below, are best explained by an earthshaking event, far more catastrophic than almost anyone has imagined.
Dave, you haven't pointed to a single thing conventional geology can't explain, and you haven't pointed to a single thing your "flood geology' can explain. It's argument by assertion, over and over and over again, without a single speck of evidence. You say you "can now explain" these phenomena—okay, well, what's your explanation? Are you ever going to give it?
Quote
We will be examining the Hydroplate Theory in detail in the coming weeks.
We've already examined in in detail, Dave, and it's already been ruled out by observation. If it can't pass its initial exposure to reality, what's the point of going over it further?
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1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all.
You mean, other than the fact that it's off by six orders of magnitude about the age of the earth, is completely wrong about human evolution, the origin of languages, the age of the universe, and uncounted other things?
Quote
4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
You mean, other than the things I just mentioned?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I took a vacation so I've been away for a while but yes, DDTTD is exceedingly boring at this point.
His cut and paste reply about Archaeopteryx shows how hopelessly out of touch the dolts over at AiG are and what a dilettante DDTTD really is regarding sciency stuff (or anything else for that matter).
DDTTD, the most recent specimen of Archaeopteryx clearly shows what many paleontologists have been saying for a LONG time. Archaeopteryx has so many features of both dinsaurs AND birds that it's hard to say whether is should be called a flying dinosaur or a bird. It's hands are identical to the hands of Deinonychus, a Dromaeosaur. It has a hyperextended middle toe on it's feet like the other Dromaeosaurs as well (Greg Paul pointed out the hyperextended toe back in the 80's). The hallux that Fedducia and others saw, turns out to have been a misplaced (broken) fourth toe bone exactly like found in the Dromaosaurs and no one thinks Dromaeosaurs were using that fourth toe to perch.
In fact the Dromaeosaurs are so birdlike in so many ways that some have proposed they are secondarily flightless Archaeopterygians. But no one has proposed they be removed from the subclass Dinosauria. Many paleontologists have proposed removing Dinosauria from Class Reptilia and elevating them to their own Class, eliminating Class Aves and making Aves a subclass of Dinosauria though.
So you see DDTTD. Safartis assertion that Archaeopteryx CAN'T be a transistional fossil because Fedducia and others claim it is a bird is ridiculous at best. Without the feathers, Archaopteryx is clearly a birdlike dinosaur, as are many other advanced theropods.
Maybe DDTTD, you should take a short trip to Lawrence (KU) and take a look at some of the other transistional fossils that show the gradual transition from dinosaur to modern birds.
Camels and Zebras, pfft, what a dumbass but thanks for helping expose your lunacy yet again.
Crabby, please tell me you are smart enough to know I was joking about the camels and zebras ...
OA ... Puck is chatty about the Bible ... maybe you could chat with him since you are both in agreement ... go see if AIG has an answer to your unicorn question, then get back to me ...
Birds=Dinosaurs is one of the best ones I've heard yet on this thread ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eric ... I do those periodic reviews because I know you like them so much ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oddly enough, you're becoming repetitive and boring, AirHead. You claim to have a theory to explain the GC, but can't answer a single question. While the uniformitarian view answers each one raised.
So of course all you have left is evasion and trite attempts at obfuscating.
Like I said previously, AirHead, when you can actually answer a question based on the data, you let me know.
Until then you have a muddled concatenation of mutually contradictory models that explains nothing, not even the Palouse.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OA ... Puck is chatty about the Bible ... maybe you could chat with him since you are both in agreement ... go see if AIG has an answer to your unicorn question, then get back to me ...
My question was specifically to you Dave, and it wasn't about unicorns. It was about translation interpretations .
How do you, AFDave, justify using translation interpretations as a basis for claiming literal events?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
When you read a lot of these as I have, you come to a point where you say "Wow ... this is uncanny ... this Book really is Supernatural!!"
And yet when you are shown examples of false claims like Tyre not sinking under the sea and Nebuchadrezzar-invading- Egypt-making-it-a-wasteland prophecies...which are shown false to you directly, you merely run from that. As you ran from supporting your claims about Catal Huyuk and many other large-scale systems that didn't get wiped out by any flood, Dave. So ...where does this leave you, other than in your current state of frantic avoidance?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OA ... Can you read the original languages in which Herodotus' works were written? How about Tacitus? Josephus? Berosus?
No. You trust the translators. There's your answer.
Deadman ... Frantic avoidance? Ha ... no ... it's just the weekend ... time to slow down and do other things -- like clean the garage, and tomorrow, indocrinate little kids :-) (voluntarily of course ... their parents WANT me to teach them ... imagine that ... now all of you will fly into a tizzy! (Oh, guess what the lesson is ... Genesis)
I'll go into high gear on the Flood again on Monday ... although I may not cut and paste all your specific questions like I used to--very time consuming--if you stick around though, I think most of your questions will be answered ...
And your eyes will be opened and your minds enlightened about ...
THE GREAT FLOOD OF NOAH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eric ... I do those periodic reviews because I know you like them so much ...
It's just that your title is wrong, Dave. You should title it "A review of completely unsupportable assertions Dave has made over and over again without a shred of evidence to support even one of them."
Actually, I prefer the periodical reviews of the two dozen questions on Dave's "catastrophic global flood" that he still hasn't been able to answer.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And by the way, Dave, in case you think I've forgotten, here's one of the simple, basic, utterly fundamental questions about your "catastrophic global flood" you've never been able to answer:
"How deep were the floodwaters, Dave?"
You don't have to be precise. In fact, I'll even give you a multiple-choice option; just pick one!
a) 20 feet; b) 200 feet; c) 2,000 feet d) 20,000 feet; e) 200,000 feet f) 2,000,000 feet; g) more than 2,000,000 feet.
Are you up to the challenge, Dave? Can you give us an answer within an order of magnitude? Or are you utterly clueless on even this one, simple little question?
Bonus points if you can justify your answer by reference to some actual evidence independent of your Bible.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
PuckSR ... Quote We only do that now because the same questions have been asked and answered thousands of times.
Bingo! And that is the exact situation we have with your supposed Bible difficulties ... I have not investigated the exact one you brought up, but I have investigated hundreds of others written by many authors.
Do you realize how many books have been written explaining these types of difficulties?
Your an IDIOT.... I dont mean to be insulting...but either you posted that reply to intentionally be misleading, or you are too stupid to understand the point that I was making.
Yes, many books have been written "explaining" these errors. It is known as Fundamentalist Apologetics. However, I was discussing the fact that scientists approach most challenges to the "conventional wisdom" in an unbiased and open-minded way. Fundamentalist Apologetics assumes that the claim against the Bible is false...then attempts to explain away the suggested conflict.
How many books have you read about the "supposed errors of the bible" that were not written by authors who were predisposed to assume that the Bible was true? NONE. Every book you have read, every article, begins with the assumption that the Bible must be true...and therefore a logical explanation must exist. This confirmation bias leads to some very flimsy excuses. Pi equals 3? Father instead of son? Unicorns?
The biggest joke is that with the same degree of "flexibility" that most of the Fundamentalist Apologists grant to the bible when they are making excuses They could easily fit evolution and old earth into the biblical explanation. So...if we use all of the crazy, impossible, and absurd conclusions that people like "AiG" and yourself have used to explain difficulties in the Bible.... Then why cant we use the same level of twisting and manipulating to squeeze evolution into the bible?
In the beginning God could have created the animals. It doesnt tell us how long it took for those animals to turn into modern animals...it also doesnt tell us that he didnt evolve them. It also doesnt tell us that he didnt evolve all of them from a common ancestor...
So....why argue this point. Evolution could easily fit into the bible...without any more manipulation than AiG, Ken Ham, and AFDave have used to explain away biblical inconstincies.....
Unless they just are too close-minded...and want to resist the idea of evolution because of some ulterior motive?
Crabby, please tell me you are smart enough to know I was joking about the camels and zebras ...
Birds=Dinosaurs is one of the best ones I've heard yet on this thread ...
DDTTD, I'm smart enough to know you've exposed your ignorance again, much as you did when informed chimps are genetically closer to humans than to gorillas.
After all how could this,
be considered a secondarily flightless Archaeopterygian?
It don't look nothin' like that purty bird pitcher DDTTD showed us.That there is a scaly skinned lizard!
Here's another Dromaeosaur DDTTD,
Bird or Dinosaur DDTTD?
Another Dromaeosaur,
Starting to get the pitcher DDTTD?
Larry Martin is just down the road from you in Lawrence. He, like Alan Fedducia, thinks Archaeopteryx is a bird, but I'm sure he could help clear up your confusion about birds and dinos and their rock solid connection on the family tree of life.
So tell us AFD (a man who accepts a talking snake as a fact...a sure sign of institutionalized schizophrenia).
Why when you go flying you accept the mainstream theory of aerodynamics and a whole host of advanced science not to mention weather reports not based on any interoperation of the bible, but find other human activities using the same proven methods of measuring data and forming conclusions that have stood the test of time …..must be adapted to a modern American political movement that uses the bible as a tool to claim authority for an intellectually bankrupt and failed anti-enlightenment jihad to reduce the education of the worlds most advanced nation.
Creation scientists?-?-?
What in your own words is an oxymoron AFD?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I'll go into high gear on the Flood again on Monday ... although I may not cut and paste all your specific questions like I used to--very time consuming--if you stick around though, I think most of your questions will be answered ...
And your eyes will be opened and your minds enlightened about ...THE GREAT FLOOD OF NOAH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"High gear," Dave? You're not even out of park. In fact, as far as I can tell the engine isn't even turned on. I can see you sitting behind the wheel, turning it back and forth, but you sure as shit ain't going anywhere.
You've still left unanswered the same exact questions that I was asking you a month ago. You still can't answer even the most elementary questions about your "flood." I'm going to make a prediction that you will not answer a single one of the questions posed to you about the flood, with or without reference to supporting evidence, no matter how long we wait. After all, if you can't come up with answers after a month, how will you ever come up with answers?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OA ... Can you read the original languages in which Herodotus' works were written? How about Tacitus? Josephus? Berosus?
No. You trust the translators. There's your answer.
Can you read in those original languages Dave? No? Well, there are many versions of the Bible out there, and many different interpretations of what is the proper translation. Which translation should be trusted Dave, and why?
Do you think 'unicorn' should be trusted as the best translation for re'em Dave? Why or why not?
Do you think '24 hour day' should be trusted as the best translation for yom Dave? Why or why not?
I asked before and you didn't answer, so I'll ask again -
Which version of the Bible is the inerrant, literal one?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Flying Dinosaurs .....Oh give me a break next you will be talking about flying Mammals.....oh wait.
AFD I had 2 migrants from Nigeria come up to me last night while I was having a coffee and reading my newspaper at my local coffee shop, all nice and friendly ..in fact just a little too friendly..So I was immediately suspicious.
Anyway the point man, who had his young son with him was carrying what looked like a bible and claimed to be a geologist. He was reluctant to acknowledge it was a bible at first so I had to tease it out of him.
Thanks to you I was able to get to the heart of the matter in no time...thanks.
He was disappointed to find out that by his own standards his claim to knowing the word of god was on equal footing to that of Osama Bin Laden...something your President is well aware of.
He even started to blither about Carbon-14 dating when he reluctantly admitted the earth was around 10,000 years old. Before he could get very far into that famous red herring I took his bible and held it to my ear and told him I couldn't hear the world of god so he proceeded to read from it. I had to remind him that he is no more qualified than anyone else to speak on behalf of god and the words written in the bible are not the words of god but the words of the bible’s writers and the stories are mythology and are not to be given the same factual weight as the newspaper I was reading before he interrupted me.
He was shocked to find out he worshipped a book. Needless to say it was closed for the rest of the conversation.
More questioning revealed he was the member of some fundamentalist evangelical sect/cult which paralleled the Christian American Taliban something you yourself have made me aware of.
I left him with a few gory tales of initiation ceremonies of ancient Stone Age tribes …….the beginning of religion in the Human Animal
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
AFDave, you mentioned underground sources of water to explain the flood. Yet, as far as I can tell (I haven't read the bible) they talk about rain. Can the bible be *gasp* wrong on this?? Please, tell me it isn't.
Why don't you move to China and go into business manufacturing fossils for National Geographic ... I hear there's good money in it!
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Archaeoraptor hoax update—National Geographic recants! Update to the article: Archaeoraptor—Phony ‘feathered’ fossil
In stark contrast to their sensationalistic ‘Feathers for T. rex’ article, National Geographic has printed a brief, yet revealing statement by Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. Xu's revelation appears in the somewhat obscure Forum section of the March, 2000 issue, together with a carefully crafted editorial response. The letter from Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, reads:
‘After observing a new feathered dromaeosaur specimen in a private collection and comparing it with the fossil known as Archaeoraptor [pages 100–101], I have concluded that Archaeoraptor is a composite. The tail portions of the two fossils are identical, but other elements of the new specimen are very different from Archaeoraptor, in fact more closely resembling Sinornithosaurus. Though I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.’ 1
National Geographic followed the letter from Xu with this statement:
‘Xu Xing is one of the scientists who originally examined Archaeoraptor. As we go to press, researchers in the U.S. report that CT scans of the fossil seem to confirm the observations cited in his letter. Results of the Society-funded examination of Archaeoraptor and details of new techniques that revealed anomalies in the fossil’s reconstruction will be published as soon as the studies are completed.’ 2
As more evidence of altered fossils begins to surface, one must seriously question the integrity of the fossil industry and the stories these fossils are supposed to tell. A Feb. 19, 2000 New Scientist article sheds light on the growing problem of faked and altered fossils. Referring to the Chinese fossil birds, paleontologist Kraig Derstler from the University of New Orleans in Louisiana says, ‘almost every one that I’ve seen on the commercial market has some reconstruction to make it look prettier.’ 3
The illegal yet highly profitable market of Chinese bird fossils has enticed the local farmers into creating marketable fossils, real or not. Derstler points out that ‘adhesives and fake rock have become very easy to make and very difficult to spot.’ 4
The paleontologist Luis Chiappe, of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, describes how one such specimen almost fooled him, till he noticed that one leg was longer than the other. ‘I wasn’t sure what was wrong with it,’ Chiappe said. Only close examination revealed that two slabs had been mortared together. ‘On the surface you really couldn’t see that.’ 5
Dr Larry Martin of the University of Kansas, who is a staunch critic of the dino-to-bird theory, commented, ‘I don’t trust any of these specimens until I see the X-rays.’ 6 Joints and gaps in the reworked fossils are revealed with X-rays. Martin went on to say:
‘The farmers do not believe this is wrong, they look at it as restoring an art object to make it more marketable. The whole commercial market for fossils has gotten riddled with fakery.’ 7
Archaeoraptor and other Chinese fossils, such as Sinosauropteryx, have been used as ‘proof’ of evolution and thus ‘disproof’ of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God. We must remember that God’s Word never changes and must therefore be the basis for all our thinking rather than the fanciful, ever-changing findings of men.
References Xu Xing, Response to ‘Feathers for T. rex?’ National Geographic 197(3), March 2000, Forum Section (pages unnumbered). Return to text. Response to Xu Xing, National Geographic 197(3), March 2000, Forum Section (pages unnumbered). Return to text. Jeff Hecht, ‘F is for fake’, New Scientist 165(2226):12, Feb. 19, 2000. Return to text. Ibid. Return to text. Ibid. Return to text. Ibid. Return to text. Ibid. Return to text.
Puck ... Here's the deal ... Biblical Apologists are open-minded enough to the possibility that (1) there might be a Creator who inspired Scripture and (2) that He may be perfect ... so they examine the Scriptures with this open-mindedness. Guess what they find? Perfection in what they CAN investigate and plausible explanations in what they cannot ... pretty amazing wouldn't you say? I don't know of another book that can perform like this, do you? And no ... evolution is not accomodated by the Bible ... go do some reading at AIG to find out why not.
k.e ...
Quote
Why when you go flying you accept the mainstream theory of aerodynamics and a whole host of advanced science not to mention weather reports not based on any interoperation of the bible, but find other human activities using the same proven methods of measuring data and forming conclusions that have stood the test of time …..must be adapted to a modern American political movement that uses the bible as a tool to claim authority for an intellectually bankrupt and failed anti-enlightenment jihad to reduce the education of the worlds most advanced nation.
Please rent a portable oxygen unit and try composing this paragraph again while breathing deeply. Thanks!
Glen Davidson ...
My reason for believing that Genesis contains the oldest known historical text is not because the Holy Spirit said so ... it is because of this ...
Quote
From Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis, P.J. and Donald J. Wiseman ...
(See page 82 of this thread for complete book review)
1) Archaeological research (which commenced after "higher criticism" had produced its theories) has, in recent years, given us the ancient and contemporary background of Genesis, which agrees with its contents (Chapter 2). 2) The Genesis narratives imply that rapid development took place in early history. Archaeologists have dug down into virgin soil and found that a high state of culture existed in times previously called "prehistoric." They even assert that long before the time of Abraham, Sumerian civilization had reached its zenith (Chapter 3). 3) As far back as archaeology has been able to go, and in the earliest times, examples of writing have been found. During the period covered by the greater part of Genesis, writing has been discovered to be in common use even for ordinary commercial transactions (Chapter 4). 4) The contents of the earlier chapters of Genesis claim to have been written (Chapter 5). 5) Both Scripture and archaeology give evidence that the narratives and genealogies of Genesis were originally written on stone or clay tablets, and in the ancient script of the time (Chapters 4 & 5). 6) We now know something of the literary methods used by the ancients. Prominent among these was the colophon of the tablet. In our examination of Genesis we find a similar literary method, for the formula, "These are the origins (generations) of ...," was the ancient conclusion which Moses inserted indicating the source from which he obtained the narratives and genealogies (Chapters 5 and 6). 7) Other literary methods were the use of "titles" and "catchlines" in order to bring the tablets together in proper sequence. Although Genesis (as we know it) is a book compiled by Moses, there are still traces of the use of these literary means of preserving sequence (Chapter 6). 8) In some instances indications are provided giving the date when the tablet was written. This is given in a most archaic way and very similar to the method prevailing in very ancient times (Chapter 6). 9) In confirmation of (4) to (8) above, we have shown that in no instance is an event recorded that the person (or persons) named in chapter 5 [of Genesis] could not have written from personal knowledge, or have obtained absolutely unmistakable contemporary information. In Chapter 7, the positive evidence is reviewed showing that they were so written. The familiarity with which all the circumstances and details are described is noted. 10) Additional corroboration is found in the significant fact that the history recorded in the sections written over the names of the patriarchs ceases in all instances on the date on which the tablet is stated to have been written or, where no date is given, before the death of that person. In most cases it is continued almost up to the date of the patriarch's death (Chapter 5). 11) The presence of "Babylonian" words in the first eleven chapters is further evidence that the contents of the earliest narratives and genealogies were written during the lifetime of the earliest patriarchs of Genesis, for they used that language. 12) The presence of Egyptian words and Egyptian environment in the last fourteen chapters of Genesis adds its irresistible testimony that those chapters were written in Egypt (Chapter 6). 13) The first tablet, that of the Creation, seems to have been written at the very dawn of history. This is evidenced by its archaic expressions, for it was put into writing before names had been given to the sun and moon and before polytheism had arisen or clans developed (Chapter 7). 14) There is no statement in Scripture to support the supposition that all the narratives and genealogies were handed down verbally; on the contrary, they claim to have been written down (Chapters 5, 7 and 8). 15) Many references are made to towns which had either ceased to exist or whose names are so ancient that the compiler had to insert the names by which they were known in his day. These new names and explanations fit exactly with the circumstances of a people then on the edge of the land of Canaan, and about to enter it; thus indicating that Moses used earlier records and that he was the compiler of the book (Chapters 6 and 8). 16) That Genesis should still contain archaic expressions and show traces of the literary aids associated with the use of clay tablets is a witness to the fidelity with which the text has been handed down to us (Chapter 6 and 8). 17) It is clear that the ordinary Babylonian tablets of the Creation and the Flood are a corrupted form of the Genesis record. The narratives of Genesis are not merely a purified form of the Babylonian accounts (Chapter 2). 18) Archaeology has completely undermined the "myth and legend" theory [of Genesis}. Evidences of persons once thought by critics to be mythical have been discovered by archaeologists (Chapter 9). 19) The difficulties alleged against Genesis by "higher critics" vanish quite naturally when it is understood that the narratives and genealogies were first written on tablets in an ancient script, by the persons whose names they bear, and that the book was compiled by Moses. Any differences in phraseology and style are just what we would expect in these circumstances (Chapter 10) 20) The "repetition of the same event," of which modern scholars speak, is shown to harmonize exactly with the arrangement of the tablets from which the book was composed and to conform to ancient Sumerian usage (Chapter 10). 21) The outstanding examples brought forward by critics to suggest a late date for Genesis are shown to prove the reverse (Chapter 10). 22) The documentary theory was originated in order to account for the use of the name Jehovah in Genesis and the exclusive use in certain sections (which we claim to have been tablets) of one particular name or title for God. On the basis of the documentary theory the unwieldy structure of "higher criticism" has been reared. It can, however, be shown that there are other possible explanations for the varying use of the divine names. This is especially the case when it is seen that in the book of Genesis we have contemporary and translated records (Chapter 11).
Jeannot and Eric ... water came from underground and shot up into the atmosphere forming rain ... easy isn't it?
(Whew! I saved the Bible from Jeannot and Eric once again! More detail manana!
(Does anyone know how to wrap text around pix on this forum? Thanks in advance!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OA ... there are no inspired versions ... the inspiration applies to the originals of which the later copies and translations are very good, but not perfect. There are many good English versions which are faithful to the meaning of the original languages ... NKJV, NASB, KJV, NIV to name a few.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OA ... Can you read the original languages in which Herodotus' works were written? How about Tacitus? Josephus? Berosus?
No. You trust the translators. There's your answer.
Well, we don't claim that these works areinspired by some Divine, do we? Futher, if science throws doubt on some of the things contained in these great works, we will take the evidence and conclude that there are HUMAN errors in the writings. No big deal, and at least it is honest.
But since you mention Tacitus and Josephus... If Jesus was such an imposing figure that had such a great influence, why is there no other documents outside of the Bible that mentions him and his great deeds? I mean, Tacitus and Josephus wrote at about that time, so why did they not know about him. Hint : The Josephus documents were kept by the Catholic church, and they might just have wondered the same thing and felt obliged to "correct" Josephus. In fact, The Catholic church even felt obliged to correct the gospels and other documents that you take as the unaltered Word of God. But hey, let me give you a little hint. At one stage the Catholic church faced some serious competition by another Christian group that claimed that Christ did not rise or come in the "flesh" (but in the spirit). So, they took the liberty of making sure that this new doctrine gets crushed and outlawed. So, what whould they have added? These perhaps?
Romans 16:17 Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. Romans 16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.
Hebrews 3:12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God.
1 John 4:2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 1 John 4:3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
2 John 1:7 For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. 2 John 1:10 If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed: (1:11) For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds.
Also, looking at the top versus, I hope you don't have any friends that are not "believers"...
And then, just to be nasty and show you something about your own belief and the strenght of it... You are sure the Bible is God's pure unchanged word and to be taken seriously and literally... so, do it.
"Luke 6:27-35 verse 30: Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again."
Thanks super faithfull pure Christian Davey. Send my thy money...
Hey AFD <i>Please rent a portable oxygen unit and try understanding this paragraph again while breathing deeply. Thanks!</i>
Do you have a comprehesion problem?
Are you slightly autistic?
Do you have difficulty understanding more than one concept at a time.?
You do seem rather uncultured, even for an American.
That may explain your simplistic and childish grasp on reality.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Jeannot and Eric ... water came from underground and shot up into the atmosphere forming rain ... easy isn't it?
No, it's not easy, because the characteristics and properties of water are so well known. You need to explain how any life other than a few(1) thermophilic bacteria survived. You need to calculate the thermodynamic state of the water before it "erupted" and the thermodynamic state after it landed on the Earth, and account for the incomprehensibly vast amount of heat released by the transition between the two states.
Oh, and don't forget to calculate the velocity of the water as it "erupts". If it's over Earth's escape velocity, it's never coming back. A Few Silly Flaws In Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory has some example calculations (using Waltie's silly version of how low the temperature of the water would be).
You can't wrap text around pictures in this forum.
--
(1)There's some speculation that most of the biomass on the Earth may be thermophilic bacteria living in thy lower crust and upper mantle.
Where do you come up with 4km of rain? Remember, all the water that covered the mountains did not come from rain. Much (maybe most) of it came from directly underground.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Much (maybe most) of it came from directly underground.
And how fast, and how hot, and in what state did it come out, Davie-poo?
The thermodynamics of water are well understood, and there are lots of steam table calculators on-line. It's easy to figure out the implications of condensing a vapor canopy, or water coming from an ice canopy, or water coming from outer space, or water coming from underground. Creationists can't handle the results without invoking magic.
My reason for believing that Genesis contains the oldest known historical text is not because the Holy Spirit said so ... it is because of this ...
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From Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis, P.J. and Donald J. Wiseman ...
So you believe the bible because some people who you don't know tell you it's accurate?
And yet, when there are far more p[eople telling you of its gross inaccuracies, you refuse to believe them.
Now, what is it that makes this tiny little former group so much more credible than the latter one? Could it be because they're telling you exactly what you want to hear?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Jeannot and Eric ... water came from underground and shot up into the atmosphere forming rain ... easy isn't it?
(Whew! I saved the Bible from Jeannot and Eric once again! More detail manana!
Sure it's easy, Dave, when you're just pulling your answers out of your butt. You still have absolutely no evidence that it even rained during your "flood," let alone that the water originated underground and spurted up into the atmosphere as if from Jonah's whale.
And what do you mean "more" detail? You haven't provided any detail. Your answers are just so precious, Dave: "water came from underground and shot up into the atmosphere forming rain." That's supposed to be an answer? How about my answer? "There wasn't any rain, or underwater reservoirs. Suddenly, all over the planet, one microsecond there were no floodwaters, and the next microsecond there was 60,000 feet of water burying the entire planet. God just 'poofed' it all into existence."
There's just as much evidence for that statement, Dave, as there is for yours.
Oh, and by the way—it hasn't escaped my notice that you've ignored, and failed to answer, my simple, elementary question that I've posed to you at least ten times. Obviously, that's because you don't have an answer, and never will.
There was no flood, Dave. If I ever thought there was one, you, all by yourself, have convinced me otherwise.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Where do you come up with 4km of rain? Remember, all the water that covered the mountains did not come from rain. Much (maybe most) of it came from directly underground.
Hey, at least he came up with a figure, Dave, which is more than you've ever been able to do.
But I know where he came up with the figure: enough water to cover all of the landmasses and most of the mountains (but not completely covering Mt. Ararat, which if I recall correctly, is a mountain). What mountains? First you say there were only low rolling hills, but now you've backtracked and say there just weren't any 35,000-foot mountains. Which I'd be happy to agree with, since there aren't any 35,000-foot mountains today, either.
But you, with all your research, cannot come up with any figure for the level of the floodwaters. You can't even come up with a figure between fractions of an inch and out to the moon's orbit. Was the moon underwater too, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
... Biblical Apologists are open-minded enough to the possibility that (1) there might be a Creator who inspired Scripture and (2) that He may be perfect ... so they examine the Scriptures with this open-mindedness.
I think you've got this completely bass-ackwards Dave.
When one starts with the conclusion that one wants, and then reads the 'evidence' to fit the conclusion while discarding all evidence against the conclusion this is not an example of an open-mind.
Puck ... Here's the deal ... Biblical Apologists are open-minded enough to the possibility that (1) there might be a Creator who inspired Scripture and (2) that He may be perfect ... so they examine the Scriptures with this open-mindedness. Guess what they find? Perfection in what they CAN investigate and plausible explanations in what they cannot ... pretty amazing wouldn't you say? I don't know of another book that can perform like this, do you? And no ... evolution is not accomodated by the Bible ... go do some reading at AIG to find out why not.
Hey AFDave... Are biblical apologists open up to this very simple idea... "Maybe the bible is just wrong?" I mean if they are open-minded...wouldnt this be a very plausible explanation that any rational person should consider before going any further with an explanation?
Why do I want to read AiG to see why evolution is not plausible with the bible. I gave you a very plausible scenario...a rather simple re-reading of the book of Genesis that easily explains Evolution. AiG has an ulterior motive.... I want you to explain to me why Evolution, with the explanation i provided...CANNOT exist in the bible.
The main question about the flood is "what triggered it?".
If it was God's will, we don't even need to argue here. God is omnipotent, He can make the Earth look like 4.5 billions years old while it's only 6000.
So Dave, what caused the flood and how did it happend? Please, detail.
Why don't you move to China and go into business manufacturing fossils for National Geographic ... I hear there's good money in it!
Oooooh, tough words from a fighter stud. Ooops, you never flew fighters, you were a sunken chested pencil necked taxi driver who avoided aircraft with weapon systems (unless you're willing to count your virtual seat time in a B-2).
All the fossil reconstructions I linked to are accepted as genuine DDTTD. They've been X-rayed, CAT scanned and confirmed as genuine, as has the newest Archaeopteryx specimen.
Your dolts at AiG had better get busy 'cause they've got a LOT of 'splainin' to do.
And while you are searching your kiddies story books, you know the ones AFD the ones with pop ups, for the .....ah scientifickle answers to those questions.
Heck it MUST be in National Geographic right? Along with all the other creationist drivel, right?
Just explain how Noah collected all the new world animals from South America and the giant marsupials from Australia (which BTW were extinct long before the mythical Noah was a glint in his mythical daddy's eye) AND why is there no record of those animals in the book you idly worship.
Do unicorns and dragons exist AFD?
Pssst, they come from story books as well...twit.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
OA ... there are no inspired versions ... the inspiration applies to the originals of which the later copies and translations are very good, but not perfect.
Once again you are changing the wording to avoid the question. I made no mention of inspired versions. You told me I should trust the translators. I merely asked you how to determine which translations to trust.
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There are many good English versions which are faithful to the meaning of the original languages ... NKJV, NASB, KJV, NIV to name a few.
I have already show you an example (unicorn/re'em) where the KJV English version is definitely NOT faithful to the meaning of the original language.
How do you, Dave Hawkins, determine which words are faithful to the meaning of the original language, and which words are not?
What evidence do you have that yom should be translated 'literal 24 hour day' and not 'indeterminate period of time'?
I'll keep asking until you stop avoiding, or until I feel I've made you adequately demonstrate your dishonesty for the lurkers yet again.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What evidence do you have that yom should be translated 'literal 24 hour day' and not 'indeterminate period of time'?
Are you trying to attract Carol Clouser? Is it your desire to make this the Boringest Thread of All Time? AFDave is close all by himself, but Carol would seal the deal.
guys, since dave is such a prolific reader would it help to direct him to a books that might help him understand why the current state of affairs exists, for eg. asimov's "foundation" series? Interesting how the fall of the GE is preceeded by an erosion of the application of the scientific method. "Foundation" has one part where a rep of the crumbling empire states that all he has to do is read what has been written and come to a conclusion, without doing fieldwork or collecting data. reflective of the times, eh?
More evidence of Dave's utter cluelessness and ignorance of what's going on the big wide world of real science (as opposed to the dreck he reads on AiG and ICR). Scientific American has an article this month (August) on the interplay between climate and geography in the Himalaya. But if you buy Dave's PlaySkool geology, virtually everything in the article is wrong. The article claims that the Indian Plate collided with Eurasia 45 million years ago. Well, that's obviously wrong, since the world is only 6,000 years old. The article also claims that the Indian Plate continues to crash into the Eurasian plate at 4 to 5 cm a year. Well, how could that be possible? The continents all rushed to their current locations at several hundred miles an hour, 4,500 (give or take a few thousand) years ago.
It's just amazing how all the work by these tens of thousands of scientists , all over the world, working at hundreds of colleges, universities, research institutes, and commercial enterprises, are all completely, utterly wrong about just about everything they study, and a few dozen religious crackpots cranking out "papers" in a handful of bible colleges and affiliated institutions are revealing to us the "truth."
The fact is, Dave, for your "global flood" to have happened, just about 100% of science has to be wrong. You claimed, a few pages ago, to buy "95%" of what science claims. That's a lie. You "buy" essentially nothing of what science claims. Your assertion that the earth is only 6,000 (or is it 10,000?) years old would, if true, invalidate virtually everything scientists have learned about the earth in the past 500 years.
And whatever remains would be invalidated by Bill's goecentrism "theory."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
guys, since dave is such a prolific reader would it help to direct him to a books that might help him understand why the current state of affairs exists, for eg. asimov's "foundation" series?
Help him? The guy's hopeless. They only keep this going so fence-sitters can see what literalism turns your brain into.
Hey, I just saw some more Evo Lies on CNN this morning. The news report claimed that the city of Tyre is being evacuated- but we all know, by reading the bible, that there aren't even any people there. Why would people who don't exist need to flee?
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all.
Ok. Some questions to the great Bible scholar who goes by the name of Afdave...
Questions about the resurection of Jesus (or the SUPPOSED resurection) : 1) How many angel/s was/were at the tomb. 2) Were they inside or outside of the tomb when the first people arrived 3) Who was the first people to arrive at the tomb?
Simple questions with straight answers. Let's here what your errorless Bible says about it...
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
according to the dictionary: Main Entry: equiv·o·cal Pronunciation: i-'kwi-v&-k&l Function: adjective Etymology: Late Latin aequivocus, from aequi- equi- + voc-, vox voice -- more at VOICE 1 a : subject to two or more interpretations and usually used to mislead or confuse <an equivocal statement> b : uncertain as an indication or sign <equivocal evidence> 2 a : of uncertain nature or classification <equivocal shapes> b : of uncertain disposition toward a person or thing : UNDECIDED <an equivocal attitude> c : of doubtful advantage, genuineness, or moral rectitude <equivocal behavior> synonym see OBSCURE
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true.
i must have missed that. Where did Jesus tell them to write the New Testament? You got a verse for me please?
We have established that since we have sedimentary rock all over the earth and fossils buried within these sediments all over the earth, it is reasonable to assume that there must have been a Global Flood of some sort at some time in the past. This is confirmed with legends and/or historical records of just such a Flood from nearly all cultures in all parts of the earth.
So THE FACT OF A GLOBAL FLOOD is very well established.
How exactly it happened is another matter ... Let's take a look.
Let's start with some 'maths' (as our European friends like to call it) on the water that might have been involved in the Global Flood.
Volume of present oceans, Vop=328 Mcu. mi. Area of earth's present surface, Ae=201 Msq. mi. Area of present oceans, Aop=139.4 Msq. mi. Area of present land surface, Alp=201-139.4=69.6 Msq. mi. Avg. Depth of present oceans, Dop=12,430 ft.
IF ... there were a band of subterranean water--the "Fountains of the Deep" about 10 miles below the pre-Flood crust averaging about 1 mile in thickness and covering maybe 80% of the basalt just above the Moho (20% accounts for the "pillars" which rest on the water chamber floor and support the crust), we would have the following volume of water available underground prior to the Flood:
Volume of the "Fountains of the Deep", Vf=201 X .8 X 1 = 161 Mcu. mi.
Now if we postulate the pre-Flood land surface to have shallower seas and lower mountains, we can see how the total amount of water could cover the entire earth during the Inundation Phase of the Global Flood. With the above assumptions, we have ...
Volume of original oceans, Vo=329-161-20=148 Mcu. mi.
(assume 20 Mcu. mi. shot out into space?) Assuming this was spread out over 70% of the earth's surface gives ...
If the pre-Flood mountains were low (3000-5000 ft), then the water from the "fountains of the deep" could easily have covered these mountains.
Actually, no calculations are even needed if you refer to my handy-dandy little diagram below ...
Obviously, we need to talk about a lot more details, but this is a good start ... it should be obvious that with the stated assumptions, the waters could have easily covered the entire pre-Flood earth.
(There, Eric, are you happy? I think you were the one asking so much about where did the water come from ? Where did it go.)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yeah, the water "shot out into space," uh-huh. The problems with your little scenario are that there is no evidence that it ever happened, period.
A global increase in sea level with the concordant flooding and turbidity demanded would create a global stratum, AirHead. Where is it? Why didn't the fish and insects die? Other invertebrates? Plants? don't try to tell me all plants survived on "mats" of vegetation, Airhead, this is not possible , given what we know of the ability of plants to survive in such conditions.
Why didn't the known cultures of that period you have once again returned to ...2300-2500 BC...vanish under this deluge? Why do they keep right on going archaeologically?
Why can't you actually answer a question directly, without relying on magical suppositions that have no evidential basis?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Since you don't even pretend to deal with the actual causal facts regarding the Grand Canyon, simply repeating your baseless claims, let's move on to the Bible claims:
[quote]1) Archaeological research (which commenced after "higher criticism" had produced its theories) has, in recent years, given us the ancient and contemporary background of Genesis, which agrees with its contents (Chapter 2).[/quote]
No, it doesn't. Humans who live for 900+ years are unknown in this time and from past time. Why not just accept the claims that Babylonian kings lived for thousands of years? At least their claims were more audacious, which seems to be an asset to believers in magic like AFD.
That there seem to be some ancient sources for Genesis is true. Nothing new there, since it has been long been known that the Flood story and some other elements of Genesis already existed in the Epic of Gilgamesh and in earlier tales.
[quote]2) The Genesis narratives imply that rapid development took place in early history. Archaeologists have dug down into virgin soil and found that a high state of culture existed in times previously called "prehistoric." They even assert that long before the time of Abraham, Sumerian civilization had reached its zenith (Chapter 3).[/quote]
No, dimbulb, the Genesis narratives state that virtually creationistic invention took place. Almost immediately Tubal Cain is forging iron and brass. Gee, they missed the copper age, as well as the stone age.
Abel doesn't need to domesticate sheep, Cain doesn't have to domesticate crops. Okay, so the Bible missed domestication as well.
And your source is very stupid indeed, since the only reason to think that earlier civilizations hadn't existed was because the Bible misled them into believing that civilization rose later than it did. A fault of the Bible is turned by these liars into support for the Bible.
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3) As far back as archaeology has been able to go, and in the earliest times, examples of writing have been found. During the period covered by the greater part of Genesis, writing has been discovered to be in common use even for ordinary commercial transactions (Chapter 4).
How blatantly dishonest you and your source are. Sumerian writing is actually observed coming into being from pre-linguistic record-keeping. And prehistoric Egypt is well-known.
Symbols appear to have been painted onto ancient cave walls, but there is no writing whatsoever found at that time.
So apparently your ignorant and dishonest source is what proves the Bible to be very ancient and accurate. Well, it proves something, which is that only lies support the claim of the Bible's "truths".
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4) The contents of the earlier chapters of Genesis claim to have been written (Chapter 5).
And almost certainly they were. How else could Genesis be such a collage of contrary claims, of mixed narratives?
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5) Both Scripture and archaeology give evidence that the narratives and genealogies of Genesis were originally written on stone or clay tablets, and in the ancient script of the time (Chapters 4 & 5).
Gee, they actually suggested that the narratives, etc., were written on stone or clay tablets? Where do you think Genesis is said to have been finally redacted, ignoramus? It is said to have been redacted the last time either in Babylon, or at most, shortly after the Babylonian captivity. What did the Babylonians write on? Yes, it was clay tablets, sometimes stone for very permanent texts.
Are you just out to show how stupid creationists/literalists are?
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6) We now know something of the literary methods used by the ancients. Prominent among these was the colophon of the tablet. In our examination of Genesis we find a similar literary method, for the formula, "These are the origins (generations) of ...," was the ancient conclusion which Moses inserted indicating the source from which he obtained the narratives and genealogies (Chapters 5 and 6).
Again, more or less the same style as was used around the time of the Babylonians and beforehand. Learn something about literature, AFD, even if you have no intention of learning any science.
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7) Other literary methods were the use of "titles" and "catchlines" in order to bring the tablets together in proper sequence. Although Genesis (as we know it) is a book compiled by Moses, there are still traces of the use of these literary means of preserving sequence (Chapter 6).
And, so what if that were true?
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8) In some instances indications are provided giving the date when the tablet was written. This is given in a most archaic way and very similar to the method prevailing in very ancient times (Chapter 6).
Btw, has it ever occurred to you that if Genesis was the first book written, or even compiled from the first sources ever written, that it wouldn't be using any particular "style" (or perhaps would use "antedeluvian style")? What you and yours are doing in your dim and ignorant manner is to concede that at most some sources of Genesis date back to some of the earliest writings, with no evidence for the veracity or originality of these sources.
Okay, you probably don't even know what I'm saying. Well, too bad, ancient literature is just another area in which you have no knowledge.
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9) In confirmation of (4) to (8) above, we have shown that in no instance is an event recorded that the person (or persons) named in chapter 5 [of Genesis] could not have written from personal knowledge, or have obtained absolutely unmistakable contemporary information. In Chapter 7, the positive evidence is reviewed showing that they were so written. The familiarity with which all the circumstances and details are described is noted.
We know that the Bible was written from "contemporary information". It's entirely derivative. Your idiot apologists are trying to claim originality of the Bible from its derivative nature which even they acknowledge.
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10) Additional corroboration is found in the significant fact that the history recorded in the sections written over the names of the patriarchs ceases in all instances on the date on which the tablet is stated to have been written or, where no date is given, before the death of that person. In most cases it is continued almost up to the date of the patriarch's death (Chapter 5).
No one (except for those who claim inspiration) denies that Genesis had sources. Indeed, it was "higher criticism" which pointed out the fact that the Bible was written utilizing sources, against the inspirationalists who claimed that Moses was the author of it all. So you're using higher criticism's results to twist what we know into a claim of truthfulness and originality of the Bible.
It just shows how fundamentalism rots all that it incorporates into itself.
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11) The presence of "Babylonian" words in the first eleven chapters is further evidence that the contents of the earliest narratives and genealogies were written during the lifetime of the earliest patriarchs of Genesis, for they used that language.
Really. So Abraham didn't learn the local Canaanite language, and his descendants in the land of Canaan had to have translators wherever they went. In Egypt, too, apparently the Israelites would know Babylonian. Yes, really convincing.
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12) The presence of Egyptian words and Egyptian environment in the last fourteen chapters of Genesis adds its irresistible testimony that those chapters were written in Egypt (Chapter 6).
How long was Moses writing the Bible, anyhow? He actually started in Egypt on Genesis, then went on to write the rest in the wilderness? How enterprising of him to get a head start on the Bible.
Real scholars recognize that knowledge of Egypt exists in the Pentateuch. Not surprising, of course, since Egypt controlled Canaan periodically, and Canaan dealt with Egypt in many ways. Perhaps some Egyptians did flee as well, to produce the Exodus stories.
Again, the sow's ear of Genesis (compared with the mighty and false claims about its absolute "truth", that is) is being touted as a silk purse.
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13) The first tablet, that of the Creation, seems to have been written at the very dawn of history. This is evidenced by its archaic expressions, for it was put into writing before names had been given to the sun and moon and before polytheism had arisen or clans developed (Chapter 7).
Before polytheism had arisen? Are you people really that stupid? Why does God say, "let us make man", and the term Elohim is used in the first part of Genesis?
Chapter 2 of Genesis is recognized as having archaic language. It is one of the contrasts with the apparently later account in Genesis 1.
The sun and moon aren't named because the writers or redactors are trying to leave out pagan names--probably around the time of the Babylonian captivity when monotheism becomes very important in Jewish minds.
The real tip-off to Genesis' late date is that it uses Hebrew words, like Adam and Eve, as supposedly archaic names. I realize that this means nothing to mere apologists, but clearly it is meaningful to those who think.
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14) There is no statement in Scripture to support the supposition that all the narratives and genealogies were handed down verbally; on the contrary, they claim to have been written down (Chapters 5, 7 and 8).
Yes, which hardly lets Moses be the author. I know that you're trying to make the best of the redaction by editors, but unfortunately for you authorship by Moses (supposed to have been affirmed by Jesus) doesn't wash even in this scenario, let alone in an honest scenario.
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15) Many references are made to towns which had either ceased to exist or whose names are so ancient that the compiler had to insert the names by which they were known in his day. These new names and explanations fit exactly with the circumstances of a people then on the edge of the land of Canaan, and about to enter it; thus indicating that Moses used earlier records and that he was the compiler of the book (Chapters 6 and 8).
Right, the fact that anachronisms of Moses' time were used indicates that more ancient texts were used, and Moses had to compile them and change the names. More like ancient accounts were made that included the then-new names, then were compiled later by people who had never heard the old names. A careful compiler who knew both ancient and modern names would probably include both, as sometimes happens in sections of the Bible.
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16) That Genesis should still contain archaic expressions and show traces of the literary aids associated with the use of clay tablets is a witness to the fidelity with which the text has been handed down to us (Chapter 6 and 8).
What's a copyist going to do, rewrite the books? The redactors did rewrite, of course, which is why the Torah is such a mishmash of mistakes and sometimes contrary claims. Redactors would nonetheless try to retain as much of the text as possible.
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17) It is clear that the ordinary Babylonian tablets of the Creation and the Flood are a corrupted form of the Genesis record. The narratives of Genesis are not merely a purified form of the Babylonian accounts (Chapter 2).
So now more flat-out lies. There is no evidence whatsoever of corruption of the Babylonian accounts, and they have much earlier provenance.
The fact that the Genesis narratives are not merely "purified" (well, reified, and stripped of their pagan richness, is more like it--to the extent that they are abstracts of other sources) forms of Babylonian accounts only shows that the flood account, in particular, was a tale widespread in the middle east. What is more, it seems to have started with the Akkadians, since the flood story seems not to be part of the central Sumerian myths (it may have been a minor Sumerian myth).
The Hebrews apparently had worked some earlier accounts to fit their own theology, and the flood tale is different from the Babylonian account in important ways (that water comes from below seems to be a Canaanite addition, since springs exist in Canaan and are essentially absent from the Iraqi flood plains).
But we have actual tablets telling the flood tale from almost as far back as 2000 BC, while the Bible account does not appear in archaeology until after the Babylonian captivity. The only reason why we know that the Genesis tale predates the Babylonian captivity is that it differs from the much earlier known Babylonian flood tales (I should note that Babylon had at least two different versions of the flood, which means that it may have had others, including the Genesis version, as well--but there is no need or reason to posit that they did).
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18) Archaeology has completely undermined the "myth and legend" theory [of Genesis}. Evidences of persons once thought by critics to be mythical have been discovered by archaeologists (Chapter 9).
Sure, "completely undermined". Before Abraham, I don't know of a single name that has been confirmed as fitting the Genesis account of a single person. Some names in Babylonian mythology seem to exist in Biblical mythology as well ("Noah" and "Utnapishtim" may be related), but real scholars don't believe either account except through considerable skepticism.
One difference between Babylonian myths and the Genesis myths prior to Abraham or thereabout, is that we have good reason to believe that some of the Babylonian characters in some myths did exist. Gilgamesh is considered likely to have existed, if hardly to have committed most of the exploits credited to him in the Epic. Ham, Canaan, and Noah are not known to have existed.
Btw, sometimes the label of "mythic" is given simply because no evidence of a person's existence has been found. It is the conservatism of science that waits for sufficient evidence, unlike ignorant apologists who simply say that Genesis is true without having reasons to back up those statements. Troy was thought to be merely mythic as well, yet enough archaeological evidence exists today to believe that the Greeks tangled with Trojan warriors. We don't thereby suppose that Homer's account of the war is "true", however.
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19) The difficulties alleged against Genesis by "higher critics" vanish quite naturally when it is understood that the narratives and genealogies were first written on tablets in an ancient script, by the persons whose names they bear, and that the book was compiled by Moses. Any differences in phraseology and style are just what we would expect in these circumstances (Chapter 10)
So Moses recorded his own death (Deuteronomy, yes, but I have yet to see anyone who thinks Moses wrote Genesis without his also writing the great portion of Deuteronomy--despite the obvious fact that much is retold in that book in a manner that differs substantially from Exodus and other books)? The typical response is to make an exception for that, but what a load the apologists want us to swallow for that. We're waiting for the first datum that supports the claim that Moses wrote Genesis anyhow.
Btw, the author just admitted that they're accommodating "higher criticism". Stupidly and with lies, certainly, but indeed they are agreeing that Genesis is a collage of writings which were redacted at some point. The old "Moses was inspired to write absolute truth in the Pentateuch" seems to be disappearing, and good riddance to it.
But literalists long held to that last claim, because even if Moses himself compiled the Pentateuch, nothing in the world guarantees that he had good sources. And you have done absolutely nothing to demonstrate that he did.
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20) The "repetition of the same event," of which modern scholars speak, is shown to harmonize exactly with the arrangement of the tablets from which the book was composed and to conform to ancient Sumerian usage (Chapter 10).
So some more recognition that the Bible's style is apparently derivative, and no more certain or reliable than Sumerian writings. And yet you don't credit the Sumerian writings which belong to the standard against which you claim the Bible stacks up, rather you lie about the "corruption" of non-Biblical sources.
Since the Sumerian and Akkadian sources have a much earlier provenance, and at best the Bible compares somewhat to those sources, and any real scholar will accept the earlier sources over the later ones.
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21) The outstanding examples brought forward by critics to suggest a late date for Genesis are shown to prove the reverse (Chapter 10).
I truly doubt it. The Philistines which appear in Genesis are an anachronism. So is iron working, of course, though it may not preclude Moses as compiler (like I care--there is no evidence in favor of him compiling Genesis in the first place). I am not completely sure about the linguistic issues, but some claim that a number of portions of Genesis use rather later Hebrew than do some of the clearly earlier portions. The Babylonian words are an anachronism, except in the minds of people who won't admit that the Israelites, even if we believe the Bible stories, would not have spoken Babylonian in the time of Moses.
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22) The documentary theory was originated in order to account for the use of the name Jehovah in Genesis and the exclusive use in certain sections (which we claim to have been tablets) of one particular name or title for God. On the basis of the documentary theory the unwieldy structure of "higher criticism" has been reared. It can, however, be shown that there are other possible explanations for the varying use of the divine names. This is especially the case when it is seen that in the book of Genesis we have contemporary and translated records (Chapter 11).
What a lie! "Higher criticism" dealt with any number of problems that a posit of single authorship would raise for the Pentateuch, including the different creation accounts, the cobbled-together flood story, and the contradictions of the Torah (the second commandment states that "no graven image" shall be made, yet Moses is commanded to form a serpent for snake-bitten people to look at, obviously as a kind of sympathetic magic).
The simple, cogent (parsimonious) explanation for different divine names, however, is that the Israelites were primarily Canaanites who worshipped El. Even if Abraham came from Ur, he worshipped the effective god of Canaan when he arrived (don't forget that Rachel stole her father's gods, either), El. Eventually another name was invented or adopted from somewhere, Yahweh, which appealed to henotheistic cultists in Judah. Different areas of Judah adopted different preferred names, though presumably Yahweh and El were interchangeable rather late.
What apologists don't like to admit is that "El" is the god of the Canaanites. They don't want to deal with the fact that "Yahweh" supposedly was not revealed prior to the time of Moses, and yet in early Genesis it is stated that men began to invoke God by the name "Yahweh" shortly after expulsion from the garden.
What is more, why would I care if Moses compiled Genesis and the rest of the Torah from earlier sources, if there were evidence in favor of it? Moses is rather late in ancient times (presumably New Kingdom in Egypt), while writing goes back a millenium or more before then. At best your claim is that Moses changed things much later than the earliest writings that are known to exist, from sources that are otherwise unknown and unproven.
Clearly the Bible would at best be a fairly late derivative of sources that at their earliest can be compared with much earlier Sumerian and Akkadian writings. I said that the Bible is derivative, and you come back with a claim that Genesis is derivative, but disagreeing with me.
Sometimes I just think you're Brian Greene's dog who he is trying to teach physics. The difference is that the dog doesn't relate anything nearly so unintelligent as you do, though I acknowledge that it requires intelligence above that of a dog to deny true scholarship and science.
It is absolutely bizarre that you don't even understand what "early source" means. You admit as late a date as Moses for the final redaction (don't be stupid, it's not simply a compilation, since clearly the sources have been reworked in a number of cases--notably in the flood account), yet you claim primacy for this derivative and scorn the much earlier versions that exist. You even bring up a host of pathetic claims of Moses "compiling" from earlier manuscripts as if this would indicate that Genesis to be the earlier source, when at best it was a reworking of unknown earlier sources.
Unfortunately, you have no capacity to think through any of the issues which touch upon your religious beliefs. We have writings dating at least a millenium before Moses, and you try to claim that something he compiled is more trustworthy than the truly ancient tablets.
What makes you a loss whenever you leave is the fact that few people who think so badly will stick around to reveal how badly they think after their nonsense has been demonstrated again and again. You represent a host of bad thinkers, and you allow us to practice knocking down a large sampling of the patent falsehoods that apologists come up with to soothe their anxiety produced by the incompetent handling of data.
[snip]If Jesus was such an imposing figure that had such a great influence, why is there no other documents outside of the Bible that mentions him and his great deeds? I mean, Tacitus and Josephus wrote at about that time, so why did they not know about him. Hint : The Josephus documents were kept by the Catholic church, and they might just have wondered the same thing and felt obliged to "correct" Josephus.
This is disingenuous. You say Josephus never wrote anything about Jesus, and the next sentance you say what Josephus wrote about Jesus was corrected by the Catholic church. You should be a little more clear here about what actually occured.
Josephus was a jewish historian who wrote in the first century C.E. His book Antiquities of the Jews contains two short references to Jesus. All extant copies of the book contain the references, but they are all from christian sources. The current state of the debate (including secular scholars) seems to lean towards "He said something about Jesus, but we aren't sure how much is authentic".
As for why no one else mentioning Jesus, well he just wasn't that important at the time. He was a jewish rabbi in the backwoods of the roman empire, with 12 followers. When he died there wasn't a massive popular uprising, it was just 11 of the 12 guys continuing to teach his message. If not for a couple of events the entire religion would have died in obscurity. First off we have Paul going out and starting churches all over asia minor, and writing letters to them to keep them going. Secondly we have the jewish diaspora following the fall of jersulem, which dispersed jews and christians throughout the roman world, and with them came the beginnings of churches there. The capper though is Constantine. He's the one who forced the Council of Nicea, which unified the church under a single theology. He's the one that made christianity the state religion of Rome. Without these there wouldn't have been a single catholic church, and christianity would have been splintered on issues like the trinity. I wouldn't expect anything like the modern christian church if not for these events, Jesus had very little to do with it.
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In fact, The Catholic church even felt obliged to correct the gospels and other documents that you take as the unaltered Word of God. But hey, let me give you a little hint. At one stage the Catholic church faced some serious competition by another Christian group that claimed that Christ did not rise or come in the "flesh" (but in the spirit). So, they took the liberty of making sure that this new doctrine gets crushed and outlawed. So, what whould they have added? These perhaps? [snip lots of bible versus]
This sounds like your talking about Gnosticism, which predates Christianity. In the first century C.E. there was a group of believers that merged gnostic thought with christianity. This was occuring during the writing of the bible though, so many of the references that would be used to stamp out gnosticism could be authentic without any catholic conspiracy. While the Catholic church may trace themselves back to Peter, in the modern view of Catholicism it didn't exist until Nicea. It was the creation of a single dogma and a central church that ended christian gnosticism, along with all the other branches of christianity.
While there are blatent examples of people altering the bible to fit their dogmatic view (Comma Johanneum), most of the arguments seem to be confined to interpretation of the bible, rather than altering the text to fit their views (if you squint hard enough, pull stuff out of context, and hand wave like their's no tomorrow you can get the bible to say almost anything). What we do know about the new testament is this:
* We have no originals. We have nothing even approaching originals. Extant bible texts are usually from hundreds of years after the fact. * Early texts have mistakes. They have lots and lots of mistakes. The vast majority of these are the fairly common form of copiest mistakes (mispelled words, swapping words that are written or sound similar, skipping a line, doubling a line). * The latin Vulgate (which was the gold standard for the bible for 1000 years or so) differs in important ways from the early greek manuscripts. In general it includes passages that are not in the original greek. These passages are still included in Bible translations today (although at least in the NIV they are marked as dubious).
Taken together this would mean that even if the Bible were the litteral word of God we have no evidence that the current version of the bible is an authentic respresentation of the early scriptures, and quite alot of evidence that it's not. None of this seems to really bother christians though. I guess if you believe that the bible is the word of god, and that god is good, he wouldn't allow his words to be twisted to mean things they aren't suppose to mean. As always, any evidence that conflicts with dogma is wrong.
Uh, and where did you get those figures for land and sea area, Davey-goober? You're using 69.6 million square miles for the TOTAL land area of the world? Last I heard, it was about 197 million sq mi total, 57.5 million sq mi of land (I'll correct the double post later)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
IF ... there were a band of subterranean water--the "Fountains of the Deep" about 10 miles below the pre-Flood crust averaging about 1 mile in thickness and covering maybe 80% of the basalt just above the Moho (20% accounts for the "pillars" which rest on the water chamber floor and support the crust), we would have the following volume of water available underground prior to the Flood:
Volume of the "Fountains of the Deep", Vf=201 X .8 X 1 = 161 Mcu. mi.
Now if we postulate the pre-Flood land surface to have shallower seas and lower mountains, we can see how the total amount of water could cover the entire earth during the Inundation Phase of the Global Flood. With the above assumptions, we have ...
Volume of original oceans, Vo=329-161-20=148 Mcu. mi.
(assume 20 Mcu. mi. shot out into space?) Assuming this was spread out over 70% of the earth's surface gives ...
If the pre-Flood mountains were low (3000-5000 ft), then the water from the "fountains of the deep" could easily have covered these mountains.
Sure thing Davie-doo. Since you're into brain-danaged fantasies now days, how about these?
IF a giant space alien's little boy threw a giant cosmic water balloon at his sister, which missed and hit the Earth...
IF the earth was hollow, and all the inhabitants of the center forgot and left their lawn sprinklers on...
IF an infinite number of monkeys quit typing Shakespeare and flew out of AFDave's butt, build a time machine, and carried Perrier bottles back to dump into the ocean basins...
See Davie, there are any number of scenarios that a fundy fanatic can dream up. Problem for the fundy fanatic is, there is not one single bit of evidence that any of his bullshit is true, and tons of evidence that says it's, well, bullshit.
Tell me again about the unicorns in your literal and inerrant KJV Bible.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Oh, I guess I'll bring up again what AFD managed to not to answer regarding the Grand Canyon:
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AFD The "catastrophically" portion of my assertion is supported by similar (not identical, I understand) phenomena at Mt. Saint Helens and Missoula.
GD How is it supported by them? You haven't begun to deal with the hydronamic issues involved. Did the St. Helens or Missoula floods manage to cut through a dome of rock? Huh? I have mentioned that problem more than once, and of course you have no answer. Just mindless comparisons with very different erosional processes.
Did the St. Helens flow cut through Schists? Did the Missoula Flood create a V-shaped canyon through hard rock? Do you have any reason at all to compare the St. Helens and Missoula processes with the Grand Canyon features, other than your blind adherance to an ancient text?
Can you explain the Cumberland Gap, how apparently a river cut through a (hard rock--igneous and/or metamorphic) mountain that was in its way? There are any number of rivers that have done so, including the Colorado river (though in the case of the Colorado it was a dome). Real geologists deal with these matters, understanding that slow uplift allowed the river to cut through the rocks which were always lower than the river.
Here's an interesting site. It has pictures of the Cumberland Gap about halfway down the page. More interesting is the Grand Canyon picture shortly thereafter, which shows meanders that the river cut through and abandoned after the canyon was about half as deep as it is today:
The site shows old rivers and their meanders, which as anyone competent in geology understands to be where and when meanders develop.
[Added in edit: Note, somewhat below the Grand Canyon pictures is a picture of "Devil's Gap". If AFD could possibly explain how the flood explains how that was cut through, I'd be hugely impressed. Not that this is any more difficult for AFD's "hypothesis" than the Grand Canyon's cutting through the dome (evident in the aerial photos at the linked site), but it is one of the most spectacular evidences of rivers slowly cutting their way through rising rocks. Gee, it's a v-shaped gap, just like the Grand Canyon--while quite obviously any massive flood would have simply gone around the ridge.]
AFD could only repeat that the Grand Canyon was like the Missoula flood once again, showing that he doesn't even understand the difficulties of rivers going uphill, or the more difficult issues (not very difficult, but well past Dave's intellect), of how v-shaped valleys and canyons are formed.
And you didn't get around to giving me answers to these questions, AFD:
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I was going to write more above, but the last post was so long anyhow. Here's what I previously asked of GoP (incorporating a question I first asked of AFD), and which, of course, neither he nor AFD have bothered to address:
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So anyway, why don't you explain the temporal correlations between the Cretaceous/Tertiary iridium layer and the Chicxulub crater? And all of the correlations between relative dating and absolute dating. Oh, that's right, it's because you can't.
By the way, why don't you explain how various types of radiometric dating agree with each other in so many cases, Davie? That in itself is a good question, let alone the questions of why relative dating and absolute dating typically agree (where methods are suitable) and why strongly correlated events like the iridium layer and the Chicxulub strike are correlated by relative and absolute dating.
To be sure, AFD probably doesn't even understand the relevance of such correlations, let alone have any answers.
I wanted to make another post mostly because there are numerous questions to be asked of young earthers. AFD doesn't recognize the significance of such questions, but we're not trying to edify someone so lacking in basic knowledge anyway. Still, I'll address them to AFD, since he owes us answers, and I'd like to emphasize how he fails to produce any credible answers.
How did komatiite and other ultra-mafic rocks form onthe earth, Davie-poo? Since magmas hot enough to produce komatiite do not exist today, was it simply a miracle?
Or did the earth cool down several hundred degrees in 6000 years or so? Please explain the thermodynamics of such a cooling process. We need to know how such a huge mass could cool below the temperature at which komatiite forms within a few thousand years. Gee, I'd think it would take billions of years, you know, that this was another rough correlation with radiometric dating.
Why do rocks from the moon date to 4+ billion years old, and the sun is calculated to be at about the temperature that it should be at if it were around 4 and a half billion years of age, according to stellar evolutionary models? How did that just "happen" to occur? How many coincidences are you willing to believe in?
How is there so much reduced carbon in the world that it could combine with something like 20 (or more) of earth's atmospheres' worth of oxygen? I know I asked a similar question before, and was disappointed that a YEC explanation was not forthcoming.
How does the earth/moon system have the angular momentum that would be expected from a glancing blow from Theia (that is, why does the earth-moon system have the momentum that would produce near-escape velocity for its surface when combined into one body? It would need this momentum for the collision to scatter moon-forming debris into orbit)? And how long would it take to transfer that momentum to the moon? How long would it take for the moon day-length to equal the time it takes to orbit the earth? Or is that just another coincidence?
How did asteroids manage to cool to the point of solidification in 6000 years? They were obviously molten once, splattering molten droplets of iron throughout a rocky body in a great collision to produce mesosiderites. I have to wonder how they could have fully solidified in a mere few thousand years.
Why isn't plutonium-239 found to naturally occur? It has a good 20,000 year half-life, or thereabout, and could easily exist from the point of creation. Certainly we have any number of radioactive elements, but other than the ones that are produced by ongoing processes, we find none that wouldn't have disappeared to undetectable levels within 4 and a half billion years or so.
Why is bioturbation found in "flood sediments"? For the past couple hundred million years, at least, most marine sediments have been disturbed by organisms. Surely in a murky turbulent flood the various organisms wouldn't be digging holes to live in. Yet some oil reservoirs are porous partly because of apparent burrowing by marine creatures. Then too, we have coral reefs and rivers appearing throughout "flood sediments", both of which are frequent reserves for accumulating oil.
I could go on, but what's the point? I'll end with what is perhaps the most interesting question of all, which is why absolute dating and relative dating coincide largely with genomic dating. That is to say, why does DNA point to our divergence from fish a few hundred million years ago, and our divergence from chimps to be something on the order of 5 million years ago? Is it coincidence that genomes and the geological record tell the same story?
I like this last one the best, because it shows how ID really doesn't escape from YECism, however embarrassed some of them are by YECs. The fact is that evolution is intimately tied with the fossil record, with mutational changes accumulating about as fast as the fossil record allows for evolutionary change to take place.
In a sense, AFD is right to deny geology as strenuously as he does evolution, because the correlations between geological and evolutionary data only point to a lack of mere coincidence as the explanation for why the dates from various lines of evidence do converge. It's absurd to accept absolute and relative dating, as many IDists do, without accepting the implications of the highly correlated DNA dating.
But of course it's absurd to deny all of the lines of evidence insisting that the earth is old, as well as to deny the implications of relatedness that IDists must deny. IDists try to accommodate some of the evidence, yet they are as incapable as AFD of actually understanding the cross-correlations that point only one thing, evolution via RM + NS (yes, including other evolutionary forces). Really, one might as well deny geological facts as evolutionary facts, rather than playing with a simultaneous acceptance and rejection of "origination" science as IDists do.
Unfortunately for AFD, however, he does accept science, only denying every last bit of evidence that disagrees with his a priori beliefs. So he's in a no more seaworthy boat than Dembski is.
Glen D
I know that you don't understand the Bible, erosion processes, evolution, dating, or the importance of cross-correlated phenomena, but these are crucial questions that need to be answered before anybody here is remotely going to entertain your cut-and-paste pseudoscience. So explain all of that for me. Come on, you're the one who has the superior knowledge, aren't you? So provide us with some answers for once in your sorry display, your constant reminder that we have complete ignoramuses arrayed against us.
Redeem youreself, and tell us why relative DNA dating (which is given absolute dates by comparing with radiometric dates) agrees with absolute and relative dating in the geological record. Just this one question deals with a high degree of cross-correlating evidences which support each other, though they had good bases on their own as well.
Until you answer this (and no, a bunch of codswallop from AIG won't do it, nor will reliance upon derivative ancient texts or stupid remarks like the "scientists are lying" do it), you can hardly persuade competent individuals to even think much about any alternatives as lacking in evidence as your claims are. Can you even comprehend how cross-correlating evidence gives us a high level of confidence? That it is too much to say that chance (or any "design" or whatever) has somehow given us the same relational spread of organisms in both the fossil record and in the DNA record, or that the dates cannot correspond through mere chance alone?
Someday you are going to have to learn (though you won't) how it is that science operates by using independent means of cross-correlating data. Only apologists and like-minded anti-scientists try to claim that dissimilar phenomena are produced by similar methods, and that uncorrelated data point to anything at all, but especially to "design" and the "flood".
So THE FACT OF A GLOBAL FLOOD is very well established.
Nope, Davie-piddles, the fact that many (not all) cultures have flood myths (which differ wildly) does not a flood make.
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Now if we postulate the pre-Flood land surface to have shallower seas and lower mountains, we can see how the total amount of water could cover the entire earth during the Inundation Phase of the Global Flood.
We don't postulate that. You might take it as a hypothesis, but then we need a mechanism for the changes and calculations of how much energy was expended, and how much was wasted as heat, in creating the present topography.
We have established that since we have sedimentary rock all over the earth and fossils buried within these sediments all over the earth, it is reasonable to assume that there must have been a Global Flood of some sort at some time in the past. This is confirmed with legends and/or historical records of just such a Flood from nearly all cultures in all parts of the earth.
True...we do find fossils in "sedimentary" rock. We also find fossils in "metamorphic" rock. Why is this a big deal? Well...the metamorphic rock forms from sedimentary rock...but it requires a great deal of time and pressure.
The existence of these fossils also does not lead one to believe in a global flood. If we had a global flood that created all of these fossils...then the fossils would all be contained in a singular strata of rocks....and we wouldnt see the fossil record stratified "around the world".
In other words, you would at the very least have several fossils that were randomly sorted. This would lead us to believe in a global flood, the stratification does not us to believe in any such thing.
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If the pre-Flood mountains were low (3000-5000 ft), then the water from the "fountains of the deep" could easily have covered these mountains.
Hmmm...that sounds interesting....except 3000-5000 ft isnt even impressive for non-mountains.
I could accept your idea that the flood and rapid plate tectonics created much taller mountains. You ignore the fact that several places exist that are higher 2000ft and that are not caused by "mountains". Your assuming a very low elevation for the common earth.
Dave...these guys are about to blast you.... You keep pulling things "out of your ass". If only we could get you to be open-minded enough to step back and say.... "What if the bible is wrong?" If you ever grasp that concept for even a brief moment you will realize that it is by far the most plausible explanation.
Besides....God is all powerful. Why in the heck would have to violate his own natural laws in order to make his book better?
(There, Eric, are you happy? I think you were the one asking so much about where did the water come from ? Where did it go.)
No, Dave, I'm not happy. For one thing, you haven't even answered the question I asked. I didn't ask, could these "floodwaters" cover the planet (which they can't). My question was, how deep were these waters? You have failed to answer this question. So how deep were they, Dave? 20 feet? 20,000 feet? Two million feet? Do you have the slightest idea how deep they were?
No. You don't.
So no, I'm not "happy," Dave. Other than from being proved right that you can't answer the most basic questions about your flood.
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We have established that since we have sedimentary rock all over the earth and fossils buried within these sediments all over the earth, it is reasonable to assume that there must have been a Global Flood of some sort at some time in the past. This is confirmed with legends and/or historical records of just such a Flood from nearly all cultures in all parts of the earth.
So THE FACT OF A GLOBAL FLOOD is very well established.
Nice try, Dave. You love claiming you've "established" something when you've done no such thing. You claim that the existence of sediment is evidence of the existence of a "global flood"? Would you care to explain why that is? Are you under the impression that the only explanation for the existence of that sediment is a "global flood"? Are you retarded, Dave? For one thing, how does a global flood of any conceivable magnitude account for the average of 6 km of sediment on the continents? Would you care to estimate the amount of floodwaters that would produce 6,000 meters of sediment? And where did that sediment come from? (hint: it didn't erode from the mountains.)
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How exactly it happened is another matter ... Let's take a look.
And Dave, what evidence do you have for your claim of a mile-thick layer of water 10 miles below the surface of the planet? None, is what you have. You and Dr. Brown are completely making up the existence of this mythical "fountains of the deep" out of your heads. You have not the tiniest speck of evidence that it ever existed, and in fact the existence of such a layer of water is ruled out by observation. In other words, it cannot have ever existed, except in your imagination.
So your computations as to the volume of that water, and whether it would be enough to cover your made-up figure of 3,000-5,000 foot high mountains (something else you have not the tiniest scrap of evidence for) are completely meaningless. Your entire hypothesis about your global flood is meaningless, because you never have, and never will, present the slightest bit of evidence that it ever happened.
So, again: what do you mean by "more details"? You haven't presented any "details" at all, yet. You haven't explained where the water in your "fountains of the deep" came from, you haven't explained how it could even exist at that depth to begin with, how it could have been ejected to the surface, and where it could have ended up. Your whole "hypothesis" is based not only on the flimsiest guesswork, but on flimsy guesswork that is utterly ruled out by observation and natural law.
And you still can't tell me how deep the water was.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
If only we could get you (AFDave) to be open-minded enough to step back and say.... "What if the bible is wrong?"
He doesn't have to consider that all of it is wrong, or most of it is wrong. All he has to do is be open mined enough to consider that certain parts weren't meant to be taken literally.
It's really a shame that folks like AFDave are so insecure in their religious beliefs that they must resort to intellectual dishonesty to prop themselves up.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
How old is the earth, Paley? How long have humans been around?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Paley, why linkspam this thread, and ignore the one you started? Your last post of any material in your geocentric thread was the thirtieth of last month.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
But this entire debate is meaningless to you, Bill, since you don't believe in "macroevolution," and you clearly don't believe dinosaurs could have evolved into anything, nor could birds have evolved from anything. So you basically disagree with the fundamental premise of all of these articles: the evolution happens.
Therefore, why do you post the links in the first place? All they really demonstrate is that some phylogenies are controversial, when you don't believe that phylogenies exist at all. You should be posting articles that argue that birds and dinosaurs aren't even related, and that there are no homologies between the two.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Thank you, Diogenes, for pointing out Renier's goofy claims about Tacitus and Josephus hardly mentioning Jesus ... Renier, I'll continue to assume your a smart guy, you just misfired no doubt ...
Glen D ... wow, that was tiring reading your detailed rebuttal ... I think I won't bother rebutting your rebuttal because we already went through all that 20 pages ago ...
And I don't even know what relative DNA dating is, but I'm sure you could enlighten me ... then when I understand it, I'll blow away your reasons why it supposedly supports evolution and long ages ... like I have practically everything else! But you might have to wait a bit ... the Flood is going to take a while and we wouldn't want to disappoint Eric by spending much time on something else!
Deadman ... yes, I think your number is right ... I was punching numbers into my calculator too fast ... you sure are good on details ... too bad you've got the big picture wrong ... you'd make a great Christian apologist ...
OA ... calm down ... there's plenty of evidence for a water catastrophe, and there's quite a bit for this nifty Hydroplate Theory ... not saying I buy it totally yet ... but it's a sight better that the Bippety-Boppety-Boo that you Long Agers dream up ...
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Layer 1 formed in a shallow sea against all odds ... Layer 1 takes an elevator ride up 6000 feet and becomes a desert! Layer 2 gets blown in by the wind, arranging itself to look like it was laid by water! Layer 1/2 takes a DOWN elevator ride back below sea level ... Layer 3 gets deposited by another shallow sea Layer 1/2/3 take another elevator ride of 6000 feet up ... Amazingly, through all these millions of years, there is no erosion between layers and the layers remain perfectly flat for hundreds of thousands of square miles! The tiny Colorado River begins it's relentless cutting of the canyon ... "Over hill, over dale as we cut the dusty trail!" And finally, after millions and millions of years ... Voila! The Grand Canyon!
PuckSR ...
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We also find fossils in "metamorphic" rock. Why is this a big deal? Well...the metamorphic rock forms from sedimentary rock...but it requires a great deal of time and pressure.
Oops! Let me help you out there ...
Metamorphic rock requires a great deal of HEAT (not time) and pressure.
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Metamorphic rock is the result of the transformation of a pre-existing rock type, the protolith, in a process called metamorphism, which means "change in form" (from the Greek prefix meta, "after", and the noun morphe, "form"). The protolith is subjected to heat (greater than 150 degrees Celsius) and extreme pressure causing profound physical and/or chemical change. The protolith may be sedimentary rock, igneous rock or another older metamorphic rock. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphic_rock
PuckSR ...
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Dave...these guys are about to blast you....
ABOUT to? They've been blasting for months ... the problem is they don't have any cannonballs ... only gunpowder! Meanwhile their fort is in virtual ruins!
Eric ...
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No, Dave, I'm not happy.
Yes, I know. You would be if you would believe the truth! (Sorry ... quotemined that one)
How deep were the waters? Deep enough to cover 5000 ft. mountains, I'd say ... maybe 5500 feet? All I know is that they were covered and the evidence is there for all to see. Why don't you and Aftershave go back in his Shakespeare monkey time machine and measure for yourself!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
Care to explain dave? How is a populated Tyre a bare rock? I give you proof positive of a biblical mistake and you sadly call it equivocal?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
OA ... calm down ... there's plenty of evidence for a water catastrophe, and there's quite a bit for this nifty Hydroplate Theory ...
Then why Dave, after 120 pages, have you not presented one single solitary piece?
Pretend you met a man who was marooned on an island since he was 2, and had never heard of ToE or the Bible. What physical evidence can you show him that the world is only 6000 years old? Or that these huge underground reserves of water actually existed? Or that the continents went racing around the globe in one day at over 100 MPH?
Show us the physical evidence Dave. Your idiotic assertions that these mythical things actually happened just don't cut it.
Does your butt get sore from all the stuff you pull from there? Flying monkeys included?
Do you still claim the KJV Bible is inerrant and 100% literal? Why did you run from the questions about how you tell if a translation is accurate or not?
ETA And Dave, because you're such a major league dumbass, I thought I'd save everyone some time by giving you a reference that provides a detailed description of how metamorphic rock really forms (from Tulane U. Geology Department)
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Time - The chemical reactions involved in metamorphism, along with recrystallization, and growth of new minerals are extremely slow processes. Laboratory experiments suggest that the longer the time available for metamorphism, the larger are the sizes of the mineral grains produced. Thus, coarse grained metamorphic rocks involve long times of metamorphism. Experiments suggest that the time involved is millions of years.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
And I don't even know what relative DNA dating is, but I'm sure you could enlighten me ... then when I understand it, I'll blow away your reasons why it supposedly supports evolution and long ages ... like I have practically everything else!
Dave, you're definitely a prisoner of your own imagination. You've "blown away practically everything else"? Give me a break. You haven't managed to put so much as a single pinhole in a single piece of evidence for an old earth and evolution and against biblical inerrancy. Have you a persuaded a single person here, lurker or poster, to your point of view? No. Think there might be a reason for that? Do you think you're smarter than all of us put together?
And how long do you think we'll wait for you to "understand" relative DNA dating, when you've demonstrated no ability to understand any other evidence you've ever been presented? As Upton Sinclair once said, it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it; likewise, it's impossible to get a man to understand something when his religious faith requires that he not understand it.
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OA ... calm down ... there's plenty of evidence for a water catastrophe, and there's quite a bit for this nifty Hydroplate Theory ...
And you're going to present this evidence when, Dave? We've been asking you to present any evidence for any claim you've ever made, and so far you're batting zero. You've never presented a single piece of evidence to back up a single assertion you've ever made, and it's pretty clear at this point that you cannot, and never will be able to.
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PuckSR ...
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Dave...these guys are about to blast you....
ABOUT to? They've been blasting for months ... the problem is they don't have any cannonballs ... only gunpowder! Meanwhile their fort is in virtual ruins!
Sayeth the Black Knight. Dave, I'll ask you again: have you managed to persuade a single person here, poster or lurker, to your position? No. Ever wonder why that is?
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Eric ...
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No, Dave, I'm not happy.
Yes, I know. You would be if you would believe the truth! (Sorry ... quotemined that one)
I'm perfectly happy in general, Dave. I'm just not happy with your "answers," because they're worthless crap, the wildest speculation based on not a single scrap of evidence.
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How deep were the waters? Deep enough to cover 5000 ft. mountains, I'd say ... maybe 5500 feet? All I know is that they were covered and the evidence is there for all to see.
Gee, Dave, is that a wild guess? You think the mountains were only 5,000 feet high (without a particle of evidence to support it), and you think the water was deep enough to cover them (even Mt. Ararat?).
This is what we call "pulling a number out of one's ass," Dave. And can you explain to us how 5,000 feet of water is enough to deposit 5,000 feet of sediment? To say nothing of 30,000 feet of sediment?
You just don't get it, Dave. You think that just pulling a number out of your butt, without reference to anything outside the bounds of your own skull, is an effective way of arguing. You still have no evidence for:
"underground fountains";
massive comet and asteroid strikes within the last ten thousand years;
a mechanism that would cause your "underground fountains" to project water from depths of ten miles into the atmosphere without boiling the entire planet;
thousands of feet (or hundreds of feet, or millions of feet) of water covering the entire planet, or a mechanism to get rid of all that water later;
a mechanism by which any amount of water could deposit thousands of feet of sediment in a matter of weeks;
a mechanism by which that water could lay down that sediment in orderly layers worldwide;
a mechanism by which that water could bury organisms in a perfectly orderly fashion, worldwide, with no exceptions, in an order that isn't predicted at all by flood geology but which is predicted perfectly by evolutionary biology;
a mechanism by which radiometric dates line up perfectly with what would be expected by reference to fossils;
a mechanism by which a single vast supercontinent could have broken up in a matter of hours, moving the continents to their current positions at hundreds of miles an hour without melting them, vaporizing the oceans, and sterilizing the planet;
a mechanism by which 8,000-meter mountain ranges could be thrown up in an afternoon, and a mechanism by which different mountain ranges could be eroded at different rates; nor
a mechanism by which plate tectonics is still active today, building up some mountain ranges, recycling crust at subduction zones and creating new crust at spreading centers.
In short, Dave, your "flood geology" explains nothing, predicts nothing, requires multiple miracles working in multiple ways, and is flatly ruled out by observation. Furthermore, you have yet, after more than three months, to produce a single particle of evidence supporting these, or any other, assertions you've ever made.
If you think you've answered my question by saying, "Gee, I'd guess, 5,500 feet, enough water to cover my mythical 5,000-foot mountains," you're even dumber than you think I think you are.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
With friends like this, DDTTD is really in trouble. The debate about dino/thecodont/bird evolution is SO far over DDTTD's head that if he ever delves into it he's sure to burn (out) and crash.
A bit of advice paley, DDTTD NEEDS purty pitchers and diagrams to help his engineers brain understand the concepts involved.
Deadman ... yes, I think your number is right ... I was punching numbers into my calculator too fast ... you sure are good on details ... too bad you've got the big picture wrong ... you'd make a great Christian apologist ...
The truth of the matter is that if I wanted to do that, yes, I could be very good. But alas, I have a conscience --based on my own moral and ethical concepts-- that won't allow me to engage in the sort of deception and trickery that apologists engage in. I much prefer the straightforwardness of people like former Scientific American writer Martin Gardner who embraces his Spinozan-pantheist views without soiling them with the dirty laundry of apologetics.
As to your "model" (a mutant concatenation of three models, really) I can see why you'd have problems finding any evidence to support the claims in it. Fortunately, models such as yours --which present no evidential support or greater explanatory value -- are easily enough disposed of.
The primary point with new theories is that they are required to subsume/supercede previous ones. They are supposed to explain and clarify issues to a greater degree than previous theories/models.
Your model can't answer any of the questions you have been asked. The "standard uniformitarian" model does answer each one.
Yours loses due to being of lesser value and being supported by *no* evidence that you have supplied. QED.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Diogenes, you are right. It was a poor post from me.
Afdave wrote:
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Thank you, Diogenes, for pointing out Renier's goofy claims about Tacitus and Josephus hardly mentioning Jesus ... Renier, I'll continue to assume your a smart guy, you just misfired no doubt ...
Eh, goofy claims?
Diogenes was right that I should have been more specific. I did not think the reference in Josephus would count, for this reason.
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3.3 Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.
The above text came from a version that was in possession of the church. Also, Josephus was not a Christian, so this passage seems rather odd. Other versions of his manuscript does not contain this passage at all. Heck, even Origen tried to use the Josephus text to defend xtianity yet fails to mention this passage.
Hey Crabby ... did you not notice from my response to your pretty pictures that ...
National Geographic recanted ... ??
They got fooled by Chinese con artists ... just as YOU have been fooled by the just so story of Evolution!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey Crabby ... did you not notice from my response to your pretty pictures that ...
National Geographic recanted ... ??
They got fooled by Chinese con artists ... just as YOU have been fooled by the just so story of Evolution!
Riiiight
What was your (just so) story about the GULO gene again? Something like a hidden message coded by God? And what about the 12 languages that appeared simultaneously? Methinks you don't understand what "just so story" means, 'cause that applies very well to your God hypothesis. You know, blabbering without a single line of evidence, the Flood for instance
But please, develop your theory about those fossils showing feathered dinosaurs. Are the Chinese part of the conspiracy too? And Nature and Science, who published their results? That's fµcking scary.
Hey Crabby ... did you not notice from my response to your pretty pictures that ...
National Geographic recanted ... ??
They got fooled by Chinese con artists ... just as YOU have been fooled by the just so story of Evolution!
They also described methodologies for distinguishing between genuine and fruadulent data. Now, what was that methodology that you use, Dave? Oh yeah, that's right. You just compare everything to what the Bible says, and throw away anything that seems contradictory.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FOR A GIGANTIC "RIP" IN THE CRUST OF THE EARTH
The item to notice on this map is the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, which is the world's longest mountain range ... and unlike most other mountains, it is composed of BASALT. Interesting ... eh? We will be talking about this "rip" in much more detail ...
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE (Eric and OA) FOR PRE-FLOOD SUBTERRANEAN WATER
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The world’s two deepest holes in hard basement rock are on the Kola Peninsula in northern Russia and in Germany’s northeastern Bavaria.17 They were drilled to depths of 7.5 miles and 5.7 miles, respectively. (Such deep holes, when quickly filled with water or dense mud, will stay open.) Neither hole reached the basalt underlying the granite continents. Deep in the Russian hole, to everyone’s surprise, was hot, salty water flowing through crushed granite.18 Why was the granite crushed? In the German hole, the drill encountered cracks throughout the lower few miles. All contained salt water having concentrations about twice that of seawater. Remember, surface waters cannot seep deeper than 5 miles, because the weight of overlying rock squeezes shut even microscopic flow channels. While geologists are mystified by this deep salt water, the hydroplate theory provides a simple answer. (Yevgeny A. Kozlovsky, “Kola Super-Deep: Interim Results and Prospects,” Episodes, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1982, pp. 9–11.) http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview4.html
LONG-AGER VIEW OF SEDIMENTATION IS WRONG
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Landmark Research in Sedimentology
Guy Berthault has produced some landmark research into sedimentology. First on a small scale, but more recently on a larger scale, he has studied the deposition of heterogeneous mixtures from flowing water.34 His results indicate that different sediment layers do not deposit one after the other in a vertical direction, but all at the same time horizontally.35 Applying these findings to the Grand Canyon, the different layers would have been deposited under strong water currents and laid down horizontally, not vertically. Thus many of the layers of the canyon would have been deposited simultaneously, and do not necessarily represent different periods of time. If proved, this has immense implications for the whole theory of sediment formation world-wide. Clearly we must avoid saying that all sediments were laid down this way. The vast coal seams would be one example of deposition in a non-flowing environment. However Berthault’s sedimentology experiments have overturned previous belief that layers form one after the other in stages. Such surprising results may help us understand why the apparent order of the so-called geological column is reversed in some parts of the world. 34. Berthault, G., Genesis and historical geology: a personal perspective, CEN Tech. J. 12(2):213–217, 1998. Return to text.
35. Julien, P.Y., Lan, Y. and Berthault, G., Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures, Bulletin of the Society of Geology, France, 164(5):649–660, 1993. Return to text.
Jeannot ... apparently you missed AIG exposing of the National Geographic Archaeoraptor hoax ... here it is again for you ...
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Archaeoraptor hoax update—National Geographic recants! Update to the article: Archaeoraptor—Phony ‘feathered’ fossil
In stark contrast to their sensationalistic ‘Feathers for T. rex’ article, National Geographic has printed a brief, yet revealing statement by Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing. Xu's revelation appears in the somewhat obscure Forum section of the March, 2000 issue, together with a carefully crafted editorial response. The letter from Xu Xing, vertebrate paleontologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, reads:
‘After observing a new feathered dromaeosaur specimen in a private collection and comparing it with the fossil known as Archaeoraptor [pages 100–101], I have concluded that Archaeoraptor is a composite. The tail portions of the two fossils are identical, but other elements of the new specimen are very different from Archaeoraptor, in fact more closely resembling Sinornithosaurus. Though I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.’ 1
National Geographic followed the letter from Xu with this statement:
‘Xu Xing is one of the scientists who originally examined Archaeoraptor. As we go to press, researchers in the U.S. report that CT scans of the fossil seem to confirm the observations cited in his letter. Results of the Society-funded examination of Archaeoraptor and details of new techniques that revealed anomalies in the fossil’s reconstruction will be published as soon as the studies are completed.’ 2
As more evidence of altered fossils begins to surface, one must seriously question the integrity of the fossil industry and the stories these fossils are supposed to tell. A Feb. 19, 2000 New Scientist article sheds light on the growing problem of faked and altered fossils. Referring to the Chinese fossil birds, paleontologist Kraig Derstler from the University of New Orleans in Louisiana says, ‘almost every one that I’ve seen on the commercial market has some reconstruction to make it look prettier.’ 3
SOME "WEIGHTY" OBJECTIONS TO THE HYDROPLATE THEORY **COUGH COUGH** PRESENTED BY JonF
JonF gave a link to this ...
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A Few Silly Flaws In Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory
by Joyce Arthur
copyright May, 1995
On Friday, March 24, 1995, creationist Walter Brown, Director of the Center for Scientific Creation in Phoenix, Arizona, spoke at a local Vancouver church to share his "hydroplate theory" with the audience.
According to the hydroplate theory, the Earth's crust once floated upon a thin layer of water which was under great pressure. The crust began to crack, allowing the water to come to the surface. Since the water was under great pressure, it shot out of the crust like fountains, possibly as high as twenty miles into the air, and rained down for about 40 days and 40 nights. The part of the earth's mantle where the crack began and spread, very quickly, buckled up and now forms the entire mid-Atlantic ridge. This geological formation divides the Atlantic ocean down the middle, all the way from Canada to the tip of South America. Brown claims the shape of the ridge bears the specific outlines of the continents' edges (the Americas, Europe, and Africa), which, after the flood, moved over the layer of water to their current geographical positions.
According to Brown, the hydroplate theory, along with the occurrence of a global flood, explains the origin of 17 major geological features on Earth, most or all of which he claims are unexplained by modern science. These features include ice ages, frozen mammoths, the mid-Atlantic ridge, submarine canyons, coal and oil formation, ocean trenches, mountains, guyots, the Grand Canyon, strata, salt domes, and volcanoes. However, most, if not all of these features are indeed explained quite well by modern science, so Brown is being less than forthright.
Of course, if anyone objects to anything in modern science, he is "less than forthright" **choke choke**
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Also, his hydroplate theory fails to explain a number of features which are explained by conventional plate tectonics, such as the data from magnetostratigraphy of the ocean crust, overlying sediments, and terrestrial lava flows, correlated with radio-isotope dating. In addition, a global flood scenario has serious problems explaining such things as arctic ice layers and fossil varves.
Brown is a young-earth creationist, so the cracking of the earth's crust and the ensuing flood must have happened only six or eight thousand years ago, and within the space of a few weeks (i.e., forty days and forty nights!. However, geology tells us that it took hundreds of millions of years for the continents to move to their current positions.
Oh really, now? How could Walt Brown be so silly as to propose something which opposes MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM !!??
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Their current rate of movement has been measured at about 2 to 3 centimetres per year. In Brown's scenario, however, the continents must have been moving much faster, at least initially. Let's remember that if the continental plates were still moving rapidly after the flood waters had subsided, the earth would be unlivable due to tremendous earthquakes and volcanic activity. This means the continents must have slowed down considerably within a year after the flood, which is about the time Noah disembarked. If this is the case, we're talking about continental speeds of up to three meters per hour during the flood year! That something as huge as a continental plate could move that fast defies credulity. Therefore, the time factor alone destroys the credibility of Brown's theory.
Seems like some ATBCers were accusing be of using "Arguments from Incredulity" ... let's see now ... who was that?
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I'm not a geologist, and it's difficult for me to comment on many other aspects of Brown's theory.
No you're not ... that's obvious.
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So I sent out a couple of feelers through the Internet to see if anybody else had some insight into the plausibility of Brown's hypothesis. I found a geophysicist who had done a little analysis of the theory and who had discovered several basic errors of physics in it. Glenn Morton of Dallas, Texas, has a B.S. in Physics from Oklahoma University and makes his living searching for oil and gas.
Oh boy ... Glenn Morton ... a BS, huh? In Physics? Woohoo! OK, let's hear what he has to say!
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Interestingly enough, Morton is an old earth creationist, but unlike many other creationists, he is both able and willing to examine and critique the claims of other creationists. Morton worked out his refutation of Brown's theory in response to a creationist description of it on an Internet Usenet newsgroup called talk.origins. For the benefit of those creationists well versed in algebra, calculus, and geophysics (unlike Brown, apparently), Morton's Internet postings are reproduced below, verbatim, with some minor typographical corrections and clarifications. Perhaps other creationists can take a lesson from Morton and spend a bit more time critically analyzing the claims of their leaders.
Yes, we'll do that, sweetie. Thank you for your convincing rebuttal.
1. Brown's model requires that no mountains be on the preflood earth, forcing the Bible to be wrong.
Walt Brown says no such thing. Did you even read his book, Glenn? Glenn apparently didn't even notice that Walt Brown's crust does not "float" on water. It is supported by "pillars" of rock.
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2. Early collapse of the subterranean water (regardless of whether or not man would sin. This collapse could come from a collision of the outer crust with the mantle with the intervening water flowing out of the way. In such a model, one must have pillars to retain the physical connection with the core.
There ARE pillars, Glenn. Read the book.
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3. Everybody will cook.
No they won't ... again, did you read the book, Glenn? This objection is handled thoroughly.
JonF ... you need better allies than Glenn and Joyce.
SevenPopes ... I'm done with Tyre ... go back about 15 pages or so. Deadman could probably tell you the exact pages.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Metamorphic rock requires a great deal of HEAT (not time) and pressure.
Ahh...you are correct....kind of.... Except...first you have to get the original rock in place... Then you have to place that rock under pressure(thats how you get the heat) Now, another interesting thing involving fossils and metamorphic rock is that the fossils cannot form in metamorphic rock...they can only form in sedimentary rock. Therefore...it has to be sedimentary rock....and then because of layers on top of it...it has to get heated and pressured(and over time) will become metamorphic rock. I mention time because it is not an instantaneous process. So...the fossils had to form...which takes time... Then the rock containing the fossils had to be subject to pressure...long lasting continual pressure. 150 days of flood water will not cut it. Then we get metamorphic rock.
Yes...the definition of metamorphic rock does not contain the word "time"....but trust me....it is not an instant change .
"And I don't even know what relative DNA dating is, but I'm sure you could enlighten me ... then when I understand it, I'll blow away your reasons why it supposedly supports evolution and long ages ... like I have practically everything else! "
That's you whole failed logical process process in a nutshell. You are informed of fact, back up with data, then you choose to ignore and deny.
You're kinda like the 5-year old who puts his finger in his ears and shouts, "I can't hear you...I can't hear you...."
For this reason alone, you have absolutely no credibility.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
THE WONDER OF BIBLE PROPHECY I find it interesting that skeptics disregard the hundreds of amazing Biblical prophecies about the Messiah found here www.messiahrevealed.org and the prophecies of Daniel about the major world powers -- Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, and focus their skepticism instead on two prophecies which give them a little bit of ammo for their arguments. The Tyre prophecy admittedly has some points that can be construed one way or the other, and the Nebuchadnezzar in Egypt prophecy does not have much in the way of historical verification. But it should be noted that at many times in recent history, skeptics have argued that Bible prophecy is false or that some character or nation in the Bible is mythical, simply because archaeology was silent at that time. The skeptics time and again have been proven to be wrong once more information is known.
Faid Posted: June 26 2006,16:05 Ghost, Ghost, Ghost...
And postdate, smosdate: What happened to "And you shall be a bare rock, never inhabited again, and people shall look for you but won't find you?
And who does Ezekiel refer to as "he"? Sometimes Nebuchadnezzar, sometimes Alexander, depending on where it suits us?
Like I said: Pathetic.
Seven Popes Posted: June 26 2006,19:31 Quote (afdave @ June 26 2006,12:25) How about you, 7P? Do you have the guts to do an honest inquiry like Josh McDowell did?
It just might change your life!!
Tyre is occupied. Ezekial was wrong. End of story. Edit: and Faid has the links. AF Dave, the bible was wrong.
deadman_932 Posted: June 27 2006,14:08 Ezekiel tells us that Tyre will come to a dreadful end, that it will be no more forever, never to be rebuilt. Tyre will be sunk into the primeval ocean, never to be found again.
None of this ever happened. The "rock" that was Tyre is now connected to the mainland, forming an isthmus that is chock-full of rubble and debris of thousands of years
It is not underwater at all. It has been continuously inhabited since 1600 BCE. After his conquest of 322, Alexander in fact rebuilt Tyre. Thus, McDowell (Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Vol. I) has to claim that 1291 AD then becomes the "real" destruction of Tyre, when the Mamluks conquer it...yet it remained and remains inhabited today. Joukowsky, Martha Sharp, ed. (1992). The Heritage of Tyre: Essays on the History, Archaeology, and Preservation of Tyre. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co. Aubet, Maria Eugenia.(1997). The Phoenicians and the West : politics, colonies, and trade. New York : Cambridge University Press. Lipinski, E., ed. Phoenicia and the Bible (1991) : Proceedings of the Conference Held at the University of Leuven on the 15th and 16th of March 1990. Leuven : Departement Orientalistiek : Peeters.
After proof that Tyre is still occupied, you avoided the question, and continue to do so. Stop running, dave
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Dave, you're still clueless about what constitutes evidence. None of this stuff is "evidence" of anything. Do you somehow think the existence of the mid-Atlantic Ridge is "evidence" for your flood? Do you think the existence of salt water deep in the crust is "evidence" for your flood?
How does some salt water at 7.5 miles equate to a mile-thick layer of water ten miles beneath the surface? Can you even see how absurd such assertions are? It's almost as if you think that if you can find any water deep below ground, that's evidence for your mile-thick layer of water!
And you still haven't explained how your mile-thick layer of water "burst" to the surface without sterilizing the planet, and neither has Brown.
Why do you think it's amazing that the mid-Atlantic Ridge is basalt, Dave? What would you expect it to be? Granite? Limestone? Are you under the misapprehension that science has no idea why the mid-Atlantic Ridge is basalt, and why most mountains are not? Are you that abysmally (pun intended) ignorant of basic geology?
And why does Berthault impress you? He has no mechanism for thousands of meters of sediments being deposited "horizontally" rather that vertically. Can you even picture how absurd such a claim is? And besides, doesn't 5,000 feet of sediment pretty much annihilate your claim that the floodwaters were 5,000 feet deep? Are we talking floodwaters here, Dave, or a global mudslide?
And do you honestly believe, Dave, that because science (yes, science! ) has managed to uncover a few fraudulent fossils (something you cannot even in principle do with your own "evidence") that therefore all fossils are fraudulent? Are you under the impression that, e.g., all Archaeopteryx fossils are fraudulent?
And you still have not managed to answer a single question I just posed to you last night, Dave. You can't just make up your answers, like your 5,500 foot water level. You need to explain where your answer came from ("I just made it up to fit my hypothesis" doesn't count), and what evidence supports it. You have signally failed to do so for a single claim you've ever made.
How does Dr. Brown explain how his continents could have moved thousands of kilometers in a few hours, Dave? What's the mechanism? Where does the energy come from? How do you prevent that energy from vaporizing the oceans? This has nothing to do with "arguments from incredulity," Dave. It's argument from impossibility. You don't think the world can be billions of years old why? Because it's impossible that it could be billions of years old? No. You don't believe it because it conflicts with your precious Bible. We don't believe the continents could have reached their present positions overnight because it's impossible for them to have done so. The energy source for such movement doesn't exist.
You think Morton's rebuttal of Brown is lame for one reason, Dave: because it conflicts with your worldview. Can you explain to us how Brown's model defeats Morton's rebuttal? No? Didn't think so. Where are these "pillars" Brown talks about, Dave? Do you have any evidence for their existence, now or in the past? No? Didn't think so.
So again, after your big long post with a completely irrelevant picture of the mid-oceanic ridges, we're in exactly the same spot we were in yesterday: Dave has yet to present a particle of evidence to support a single one of his assertions. We're not moving from this spot, Dave, until you either present evidence for your "flood" or admit you don't have any. Given your success in backing up your statements so far, I don't think we're ever going to move from here.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hey Crabby ... did you not notice from my response to your pretty pictures that ...
National Geographic recanted ... ??
They got fooled by Chinese con artists ... just as YOU have been fooled by the just so story of Evolution!
AiG exposed the fake fossil Archaeoraptor?
Sorry DDTTD. AiG didn't do anything of the sort.
They are merely jumping on that incident to call into question ANY fossil that might contradict YEC theories(sic).
For how many years did YEC'rs claim Archaeopteryx fossils were fake? 130+? Now they admonish you NOT to make that claim because they know how stupid it makes them look! Heehee! Like that's the only reason they look stupid.
Like I said, your AiG dolts have lots of catching up to do because Microraptor and the latest specimen of Archaeopteryx (among others) are genuine and tell us much about the dino to bird theory of evolution. The evidence just keeps getting better and the obvious conclusion harder to deny.
Thanks for playing DDTTD but you'll have to do better. I realize you want to be the poster boy for YEC stupidity but for that you'd need to have an original thought. As it is, you're just a mouthpiece (what did Swift call them, Flappers?) cutting and pasting your cults nonsense.
Glen D ... wow, that was tiring reading your detailed rebuttal ... I think I won't bother rebutting your rebuttal because we already went through all that 20 pages ago ...
And you have no answers. Still you use the exact same inadequate "rebuttal", without having learned a single thing. This is why we know that you are not only an ignoramus, but dishonest to your very core.
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And I don't even know what relative DNA dating is, but I'm sure you could enlighten me
Well, it isn't actually called "relative DNA dating". I added the "relative" because it is not an absolute dating method, and wanted to pre-empt any blather about it not fix absolute dates.
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... then when I understand it, I'll blow away your reasons why it supposedly supports evolution and long ages ...
This is what is so interesting about you, that you are sure that every evidence for evolution is wrong prior to even knowing about it. You're so stupid, so intellectually dishonest, so ignorant, so far from being convincing to anybody but one as lacking in intelligence and rigor as yourself, that you have become a comfortable caricature of all ID/creationism to us. One thing we need to remember is that rhetorically a number of IDists and creationists are more sophisticated and convincing to poorly educated folk, since we're not going to encounter too many people like you whose anal expulsivity negates everything that you want to get across to others.
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like I have practically everything else!
Another interesting feature of your syndrome is that you have as many illusions about your capabilities as you have of creationist capabilities. Of course your total inability to even understand what constitutes reasonable evidence means that I hope that you never sit on a jury. You can expel all the BS you want on here, failing even to comprehend the knowledge presented to you, however I always have some concern for the jury system when I notice people like you.
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But you might have to wait a bit ... the Flood is going to take a while and we wouldn't want to disappoint Eric by spending much time on something else!
Oh please, you have no concept of what floods even leave behind. Which means that you can never discuss the "flood" any better than you can discuss the Bible.
Leonardo da Vinci noticed in his time that sedimentary rocks were not typically the result of floods. That was the 16th century, and you still haven't learned the slightest bit of what he knew then.
If you want to discuss the flood, then tell us finally how a v-shaped canyon was carved into a dome by a river going uphill and over the dome, until it cut its way down through the dome, AssFuckDave. I upped the rhetoric there, because you are such a dishonest, and stupid person, who merely tells lies because he can't comprehend the evidence, or even understand how to make a scientific case, plus you once again avoided answering the problem of the Colorado River scaling the dome. So for once try to tell the truth, AssFuckDave, and quit being a disgustingly dishonest weasel who only repeats lies because he can't handle the truth. How did the Colorado go uphill, lying AssFuckDave? Your silence speaks once again of your dishonesty and complete ignorance.
So far you have only been a witness against your religion, since none of us would like to be the kind of lying dumbfuck that you are.
What version of the Bible are you using as your 100% literal and inerrant one?
For me to understand your position I need to know your baseline.
It's a simple question for a Christian man like you Dave - why do you avoid answering and make me ask it of you so many times?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
No they won't ... again, did you read the book, Glenn? This objection is handled thoroughly.
I've read the book, Davie-pie. This objection is ignored. Note that Waltie does not account for the phase change of his supposed fountains of the deep as trhey erupt, nor does he calculate the temperature increase due to the many releases of energy that he proposes. He doesn't even account for the kinetic energy of the water as it allegedly erupts!!
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JonF ... you need better allies than Glenn and Joyce.
A feeble attempt to evade the issue Davie-doodoo. Formally known as argument [ad hominem.
When Waltie's supposed fountains of the deep erupt, they would flash into steam. Deal with it.
Oh, and if there are pillars supporting the outer surface, what mechanism forced these supposed fountains of the deep to the surface? If the pillars support the outer surface, the water wouldn't be under pressure.
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SevenPopes ... I'm done with Tyre ... go back about 15 pages or so. Deadman could probably tell you the exact pages.
Ah, I see you acknowledge that the Bible is 100% wrong about Tyre, and you can't come up with any more excuses on the subject.
Ahh...you are correct....kind of.... Except...first you have to get the original rock in place... Then you have to place that rock under pressure(thats how you get the heat) Now, another interesting thing involving fossils and metamorphic rock is that the fossils cannot form in metamorphic rock...they can only form in sedimentary rock. Therefore...it has to be sedimentary rock....and then because of layers on top of it...it has to get heated and pressured(and over time) will become metamorphic rock. I mention time because it is not an instantaneous process. So...the fossils had to form...which takes time... Then the rock containing the fossils had to be subject to pressure...long lasting continual pressure. 150 days of flood water will not cut it.
Fossils speak of catastrophe, i.e. rapid buiral. Show me somewhere on earth where fossils are being formed today. I don't think you'll find many.
And if fossils speak of catastrophe, massive fossil beds speak of massive catastrophes--A SINGLE, massive catastrophe, perhaps?
Metamorphism requires intense heat and pressure. What better situation to get massive heat and pressure on a global scale than in ...
you guessed it ...
A Massive Global Catastrophe ...
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
Glen ...
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This is what is so interesting about you, that you are sure that every evidence for evolution is wrong prior to even knowing about it.
No ... it's just that I've been down this road a hundred times. But surprise me ... maybe you'll be the first ever to come up with something convincing for me.
Glen ...
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anal expulsivity
There's a new one, folks, for the record books! Copy that one down with BWE's famous "I can screw better than you!"
Glen ...
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How did the Colorado go uphill, lying AssFuckDave? Your silence speaks once again of your dishonesty and complete ignorance.
Did you not see the picture series I posted showing how the river did this? I have now posted it twice ...
What is it about people like me that brings out the venom in people like you? Do you feel threatened? Are you afraid that more people like me will get elected to public office? And if they do, how exactly will that harm you? Do you think we'll somehow round up all the Evos and send them to prison camp? Or do you think we will push for a primitive, cave-dwelling society in which everyone sits on mountain tops and sings hymns? I doubt you think this ... I think what you probably think is that you cannot stand the idea of the Bible being true, because if it is, then you have to submit yourself to the God of the Bible ... and you are too proud to do that.
Crabby ...
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For how many years did YEC'rs claim Archaeopteryx fossils were fake?
I don't know about all YECers. I know about AIG and ICR. They don't claim they are fake.
Eric ... Morton is clueless ... his arguments are a non-starter -- at least against Walt Brown. BTW -- I've got a shorthand code for you ... just type #1 everytime you want to say "Dave has no evidence" ... maybe you could save yourself some typing that way :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
BTW -- I've got a shorthand code for you ... just type #1 everytime you want to say "Dave has no evidence" ... maybe you could save yourself some typing that way :-)
Given your propensity for pulling your YEC 'evidence' out of your ass, I'd say we should type #2.
One more time Dave:
What version of the Bible are you using as your 100% literal and inerrant one?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
But surprise me ... maybe you'll be the first ever to come up with something convincing for me.
Dave, you've already told us that the only thing you find convincing is the Bible. In your mind, it is impossible to be convinced of anything contrary. Such challenges are disingenuous when you present them because you will simply disregard contradictory evidence.
Doesn't that seem a bit... stupid?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I find many things convincing besides the Bible ...
Yes, please type #1 and #2 ... this will save bandwidth
There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ...
But I use NKJV ... it's close ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I find many things convincing besides the Bible ...
Bull. You were repeatedly asked how you would evaluate information that might contradict the Bible. You finally replied that you would evaluate it by comparing it to the Bible. Your methodology is completely circular - it begins and ends with the Bible. It is impossible for you to be convinced of anything contradictory to your little strange loop.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Eric ... Morton is clueless ... his arguments are a non-starter -- at least against Walt Brown. BTW -- I've got a shorthand code for you ... just type #1 everytime you want to say "Dave has no evidence" ... maybe you could save yourself some typing that way :-)
Dave, until you show any evidence for a single one of Dr. Brown's assertions, e.g, massive impact craters, massive underground water reservoirs, some mechanism by which all that water could be ejected from 10 miles underground into the atmosphere, massive movement of continents in 24 hours, massive uplift into mountain chains in 24 hours, Dr. Brown's "arguments" are a non-starter. Even if it were true that Morton's arguments were unavailing (and you've shown exactly no reason why you think they are), it wouldn't matter, because you have absolutely no evidence that anything Brown proposes ever actually happened. Even if the things Brown claims to have happened aren't ruled out as impossible (and they are), there's still not the slightest scrap of evidence that they ever did happen.
You just don't seem to get it, Dave. "Arguments" without any "evidence" to support them are nothing more than worthless crap.
Dave, either put up some evidence for your assertions, or admit you don't have any.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Glen ... Quote This is what is so interesting about you, that you are sure that every evidence for evolution is wrong prior to even knowing about it. No ... it's just that I've been down this road a hundred times. But surprise me ... maybe you'll be the first ever to come up with something convincing for me.
Answer the questions, dumbfuck. You pull the most glib lies out of your ass, you haven't given us any evidence, you haven't countered any evidence, and it would be nice if there were a glimmer of honesty that anybody could reach
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Glen ... Quote anal expulsivity There's a new one, folks, for the record books! Copy that one down with BWE's famous "I can screw better than you!"
It's new to you because you know nothing. It's a well-known psychological term (actually, usually written as "anal expulsive"), but then you don't know psychology, literature, science, truth, justice, honesty, or anything else. Considering how dishonest you are, I have my doubts that you were/are an engineer or were in the air force.
<quote>Glen ... Quote How did the Colorado go uphill, lying AssFuckDave? Your silence speaks once again of your dishonesty and complete ignorance. Did you not see the picture series I posted showing how the river did this? I have now posted it twice ...</quote>
I haven't seen it, and you didn't answer. Did you give us some geological evidence for the scenario?
I'm not interested in some stupid lie about how it happened. I wrote that before, so give us an actual answer, AssFuckDave.
<quote>What is it about people like me that brings out the venom in people like you?</quote>
Gee, do you suppose it might be your continual lies and evasions, lying AssFuckDave?
<quote>Do you feel threatened? Are you afraid that more people like me will get elected to public office?</quote>
I feel like you deserve names when you prove yourself to be a lying stupid fuckhead with no respect for truth, honesty, or decency. I would be happy to discuss science with you, but you instead fill the forum with lies, evasions, and dishonest boasts.
Many people tell lies of the type that you do simply to make others angry, since they know that complete and utter dishonesty, without a shred of decent respectful discussion, is infuriating. However, I'm guessing that you are not lying for that reason, which means that I am free to vent anger, or even pretend anger, in response to the idiocies that you continually fart out. It's a proper response to a completely dishonest and stupid moron.
If you were at all likely to be elected to public office I would be afraid. I am guessing that you're far too stupid and dishonest to be elected to anything higher than the Kansas Schoolboard, however, and their idiocy can't be damaged by your stupidity and dishonesty.
<quote>And if they do, how exactly will that harm you?</quote>
Lies would become <i>de rigeur</i> in the public discourse, and ignorance would spread.
<quote>Do you think we'll somehow round up all the Evos and send them to prison camp?</quote>
I wouldn't put it past you. However, the real problem at the present is your goal to tell lies and teach ignorance to children. And the reason you deserve to be called degrading names is that you are an evil lying swine who never deals honestly with what is presented to your ignorant lying brain.
<quote>Or do you think we will push for a primitive, cave-dwelling society in which everyone sits on mountain tops and sings hymns? I doubt you think this ... I think what you probably think is that you cannot stand the idea of the Bible being true, because if it is, then you have to submit yourself to the God of the Bible ... and you are too proud to do that.</quote>
Said the psychologically-ignorant cretin who doesn't even know the term "anal expulsive". You know absolutely nothing about psychology or evidence.
So it's another lie from pervert AssFuckDave that I can't stand the idea of the Bible being true. Since he has nothing to indicate that it has any more truth than other ancient texts do, he has to resort to false characterizations of those who bring in evidence to shore up all of his past lies.
Either provide some answers (not unevidenced scenarios, dimwit) or expect people to call you what you are, a lying and stupid fool. I am not long going to put up with your unconvincing lies, AssFuckDave.
There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ...
But I use NKJV ... it's close ...
So, in other words, there is no extant version of the Bible that is 100% literal and inerrant. Only flawed translations.
Just great, Dave. So you're basing your worldview on a book that one the one hand you claim is inerrant, and on the other hand you say has errors in it, because "There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation."
But you say the KJV is "close." How would you know, Dave? If there is no perfect, inerrant translation of the Bible, what do you compare the KJV to in determining that it's "close"?
For all you know, the KJV is riddled with errors, because you have no standard to compare it to.
Do you have any idea how idiotic that sounds, Dave? What, do you have some "literal, inerrant" version of the Bible in your head that you can compare other versions to?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
<quote>Did you not see the picture series I posted showing how the river did this? I have now posted it twice</quote>
You did post a picture with the most unconvincing of explanations. What it didn't explain was why the "flood" didn't go around the Kaibab uplift. The picture gets cut off to provide the illusion that the Kaibab uplift would act as a dam, when in fact it is more like a dome.
I mentioned that it is a dome, too, but you pay no heed to the facts, but rather tell the lies that you believe. If you could show that there was an actual dam, instead of pretending that the Kaibab uplift acts as a dam, then you'd have a scenario (except that the evidence in the canyon itself tells against it).
See, the thing is that liars like yourself never deal with the facts. Any lie is better than dealing with the evidence, so that you never learn anything at all.
So you simply posted the lies fed to you by other liars. You are one disgustingly dishonest fool.
Btw, I also mentioned the v-shape repeatedly as needing an explanation, as well as the dome (not dam, you lying fool). You don't even begin to address the matter, since you don't understand hydrodyamics in general, nor floods in particular.
There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ...
But I use NKJV ... it's close ...
So, in other words, there is no extant version of the Bible that is 100% literal and inerrant. Only flawed translations.
Just great, Dave. So you're basing your worldview on a book that one the one hand you claim is inerrant, and on the other hand you say has errors in it, because "There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation."
But you say the KJV is "close." How would you know, Dave? If there is no perfect, inerrant translation of the Bible, what do you compare the KJV to in determining that it's "close"?
For all you know, the KJV is riddled with errors, because you have no standard to compare it to.
Do you have any idea how idiotic that sounds, Dave? What, do you have some "literal, inerrant" version of the Bible in your head that you can compare other versions to?
Uh, that's pretty much the standard christian view. I'm not aware of anyone that thinks that the translations are inspired by God. Anyone who even suggests that the copies in the original greek are inspired is in for a rude awakening if they look at the extant copies. The generally held view is that the originals were inspired (with a couple of different meanings of the word inspired), but all copies and translations since then are prone to human error. As for which version is the best, for the majority of people it's just a matter of personal choice. Often you go with whatever your bible school teacher used, otherwise your favorite verses aren't exactly the same, which is mildly annoying.
Also note that he uses NKJV, not KJV. Which depending on who you are, matters alot.
Here's a link which shows how the Grand Canyon cut through the Kaibab Plateau, rather than going around it via the areas of lower elevation that were available to it:
It has a number of maps, but in the first third of the site or so is one showing clearly how the Grand Canyon cuts through, like I wrote, a dome of rock that any flood would have circumnavigated. There it is, a dome rising out of the lower surroundings, and the Grand Canyon simply cuts through the higher elevations rather than going through the lower areas.
But lying AssFuckDave "answers" the question of how the Grand Canyon cut through a dome by showing the dome as a dam which a "flood" supposedly cut through.
Dave, you think we didn't know about oceanic ridges? Man, your just retarded. You've just been aware of their existence, Dave, haven't you?
You'd better explain why a basalt found thousands of miles aways from a ridge appears millions of years older than a basalt found near the rift, and why this age correlates with the distance. Wrong isotopic dating again, confusing hours with million years, making the Earth look like millions of years old? Or is it that decay was billions of time faster during the flood? (this question is a bit complicated for you Dave. Think hard. Hint: basalt is produced in the rift).
Regarding Archaeoraptor, boy your intellectual dishonesty is blatant again.
Really, Dave. I've read the article. I've read what AIG says about Berthault's experiment and how they want it to apply to the Grand Canyon.
What I would like to know is ...have you read it? Since you didn't cite where it is actually located, it is http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v8/i1/sand.asp Now, I would like you to tell me how this experiment that involves fine grades of sand and charcoal and limestone powder applies when the experiments are **not** conducted under water? Answer : It doesn't since you say the deposition was by water.
Now look at the experiments done with all three materials under water. Show me one instance where all three materials together form laminations. Answer: none.
Now show me how this paper applies to the Grand Canyon, Dave. Use your own words. Don't try to merely pass it off by saying " read the paper you found" I am asking YOU to tell me how it applies in regard to the different materials we see in the GC **under the conditions you require in YOUR model**
In particular, I'd like you to tell me how it can be that the Bright Angel Shale contains a number of thin, but coarse-grained, conglomerates. While such features could periodically develop over geologic time, how could these gravelly layers form in the MIDDLE of Berthault's rapid "Flood-based sediment sorting process"? Furthermore, the Bright Angel Shale has materials becoming coarser rather than finer moving UPWARD in the formation. How is this consistent with Berthault's claims? Fossils of brachiopods and other sessile animals are also present in the Tonto Group. How could organisms live and build burrows in such rapidly deposited sediments? Also, if "Noah's Flood" transported the brachiopods into the formations, how would relatively large brachiopods get sorted with finer grained sediments? Why aren't they with the gravels? (courtesy of Kevin Henke)
As to your other claims so far today, only two count in regard to " the flood" you claim: First, you mention the Mid-Oceanic ridges as if this were something not contained in any elementary schoolbook physical science text. Nothing new. Second, you claim that all fossils are due to catastrophism? explain the brachiopods I just mentioned. You know nothing about that topic either (paleontology) do you?
As to walt brown's claims and you deriding Glenn Morton as "only" having a BS in physics...you better check your alligator mouth before your mosquito brain fails to provide the detail. Just for your information, your " Guy Berthault is only listed at AIG as "a keen student of geology " with no degrees at all.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, if anyone wants to compare the actual topography of the Grand Canyon and the Kaibab uplift through which it cut, with the dishonest version of the canyon's topography and origin put into AssFuckDave's cut-and-paste, here are the references:
First, a repeat of the site containing the real version:
Posted: June 26 2006,10:45 10) No Biblical statement has ever been contradicted by an archaeological discovery, so there is excellent reason for the history in Genesis to carry great weight.
Posted: June 26 2006,12:25 No, 7P, the problem is with you. You don't have a clue about the history of Tyre because if you did, you would be amazed at the exactness of detail in Ezekiel's prophecy. I will not go to the trouble of typing it out for you, because you need to go out and buy this book anyway.
Go out and buy Josh McDowell's "Evidence that Demands a Verdict." I have the old version. In Volume I, you will find the story of the fulfilled prophecy of Tyre laid out in stunning detail on pp. 274-281, meticulously documented with non-Christian historical sources.
This is from a former skeptic, mind you, just like you. This guy HATED Christianity. His father was a drunk ... Josh hated Christianity so much he set out to prove it was wrong.
Guess what happened? He studied prophecies about Tyre and others and He was so amazed at the Bible's accurate fulfilled prophecies and other amazing things about the Bible that he became a Christian ... a very outspoken one!!
How about you, 7P? Do you have the guts to do an honest inquiry like Josh McDowell did?
It just might change your life!!
Posted: June 26 2006,13:44 7P... Quote Actually, you are wrong. I do know. and I did read Mr. McDowell's work. Anyone wishing to be spared the drivel can look at a synopsis (and refutation) of his failed argument here: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/steven_carr/non-messianic.html AF Dave, You were wrong.
Ah yes. Another infidel site. Wouldn't you know! 7P, did you know that you can find an internet site to support most anything you want to believe? I've read your site and you are a fool if you think your internet site refutes McDowell.
Again, McDowell's case is meticulously documented and solid as a rock. And that's just ONE of the hundreds of specidically fulfilled prophecies!!!.
Posted: June 29 2006,09:49 WHERE WE HAVE COME FROM, WHERE WE ARE GOING THE WONDER OF BIBLE PROPHECY I find it interesting that skeptics disregard the hundreds of amazing Biblical prophecies about the Messiah found here www.messiahrevealed.org and the prophecies of Daniel about the major world powers -- Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, and focus their skepticism instead on two prophecies which give them a little bit of ammo for their arguments. The Tyre prophecy admittedly has some points that can be construed one way or the other, and the Nebuchadnezzar in Egypt prophecy does not have much in the way of historical verification. But it should be noted that at many times in recent history, skeptics have argued that Bible prophecy is false or that some character or nation in the Bible is mythical, simply because archaeology was silent at that time. The skeptics time and again have been proven to be wrong once more information is known.
Well, I think that the Tyre prophecy is disproven. Ezekial was clear that Tyre would remain a bare rock forever, and I think that we can all agree that it is not, and has not been so. In fact, it has been occupied since Ezekial made his prophecy. The prophecy failed. AF Dave, admit that the bible made a mistake, or explain how this part of the prophecy came true. Be honest, and to be fair, if you chose to ignore this post as you have so many others, you are tacitly admitting the bible was in error.
Actually, dave, you never answered this post. It's been 15 pages, when are you going to address this?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Currently Unanswered Questions. Please feel free to add to this list, folks, since it's a record of Dave's ineptitude, really
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist & granite (obviously , that is not "soft ") (14) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (15) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (16)Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR (17)Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (18)Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (19)Why don't we see disruption of the varves? (20) Why are mountains near each other differentially eroded if they were all formed at the same time in your "theory?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Uh, that's pretty much the standard christian view. I'm not aware of anyone that thinks that the translations are inspired by God. Anyone who even suggests that the copies in the original greek are inspired is in for a rude awakening if they look at the extant copies.
So evidently, there once was a perfect, inerrant version of the Bible, basically authored by God. But now there are only flawed translations. But Dave thinks he can tell which parts of those flawed translations are still inerrant, and which parts aren't. And how does he do this, exactly? By comparing what he reads to some perfect, Platonic ideal of a Bible he has in his head?
Because he sure as shit doesn't compare it to external reality.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How is it possible Dave, since the Altantic was formed in a few hours? Why do we have this correlation between dating and distance from the rift?
Oh, and since you like dumping AIG's garbage here, I feel free to post an appropriate quote from Why I believe the Earth is old
Quote
"Flood geology" has been dead ever since leading Christians scholars in geology at Cambridge and Oxford rejected it, and that was before Darwn's Origins was ever published. By the 1850s, Christian men of science agreed the earth was extremely old. For some of their reasons, see, "Reasons Why 'Flood Geology' Was Abandoned in the Mid-1800s by Christian Men of Science".
Such men included: Reverend William Buckland (head of geology at Oxford) Reverend Adam Sedgwick (head of geology at Cambridge) Reverend Edward Hitchcock (who taught natural theology and geology at Amherst College, Massachusetts) John Pye Smith (head of Homerton Divinity College) Hugh Miller (self taught geologist, and editor of the Free Church of Scotland's newspaper) and, Sir John William Dawson (geologist and paleontologist, a Presbyterian brought up by conservative Christian parents, who also became the only person ever to serve as president of three of the most prestigious geological organizations of Britain and America). All of these giants of the geological sciences rejected the "Genesis Flood" as an explanation of the geologic record -- except for possibly the topmost superficial sediments, though Adam Sedgewick and Buckland later abandoned even that hypothesis. Neither were their conclusions based on a subconscious desire to support "evolution," since none of the above evangelical Christians were evolutionists, none became evolutionists, and the earliest works of each of them were composed before Darwin's Origin of Species was published. The "Flood geology" of Henry Morris (founder of the Institute for Creation Research), was a revival in the 1960s that even failed to convince the American Scientific Affiliation -- a longstanding group of Evangelical Christians and scientists whom Morris fled to form his own little group of strictly young-earth creationists, the Institute for Creation Research. Henry Morris' book that sparked the "Flood geology" revival, The Genesis Flood, is filled with so many errors that it appears to be more a work of "Satan" than of God, since it lies about so many things, from the Paluxy manprints (that ICR and Answers in Genesis have since backed away from); to the "human skull found in coal" (the "Frieberg Skull" that two articles in the Creation Research Society Quarterly later debunked contradictions.darwin.ws/skull.html; to the "Lewis Mountain Overthrust," the world's largest overthrust and reversed layer formation in geology that Morris said would turn the world of modern geology upside down (but later, two ICR scientists, Steve Austin and Kurt Wise, admitted that the evidence that the "Lewis Mountain Overthrust" was a genuine overthrust was reliable, so they have ceased using the world's largest overthrust as evidence of a topsy turvy geological record). In fact, Answers in Genesis has backed away from nearly all claims that "pre-Flood" human bones or artifacts of "pre-Flood" civilizations have been found, and suggested that no such evidence may ever be found. Answers in Genesis has even produced an article at their website concerning "Arguments that Young-Earth that creationists should NOT use Makes one realize how many Young-earth arguments over the years have added up to cases of embarrassment for creationists far greater than"Piltdown man" and "Nebraska man" were to evolutionists.
The evidence for an OLD earth presently includes:
1) Individually dated tree-rings in two or three separate tree-ring series, stretch back 12,000 years. (Even Young-earthers like Aardsma, formerly with the Institute for Creation Research, have admitted that the evidence from individually dated tree-rings in two totally separate tree-ring series on two different continents, demonstrates the reliability of C-14-dating stretching back 12,000 years in time).
2) Individually (C-14)dated varves in a lake in Japan, stretch back 40,000+ layers. (Green River varves have not been individually C-14 dated, but that would be an interesting experiment to perform since there are over 2 million layers per ancient fossil lake in that region, and all toll, when you count the layers of all the fossilized lakes in that region, noting the lowest and highest layers in each lake and how the time overlaps in each lake, there are over 6 million layers.)
3) Deep ice cores feature 100,000 layers of ice -- each layer having its own distinctive isotopic signature (and other types of layer-distinctive signatures as well), stretching back over 100,000+ layers.
4) Evidence of extremely slow sea-floor spreading over a 100,000,000 years. New sea floor is seen forming today from molten rock that emerges from a ridge that runs right down the middle of the Altantic ocean. On each side of that mid-Atlantic ridge, new molten rock continues to emerge, then it cools and hardens, and the date of cooling (as well as the direction and strength of the earth's magnetic field at the time it cooled) is sealed inside the rock in the iron crystals that harden there. Then the next strip of molten rock emerges from the mid-Atlantic ridge, cools, and hardens, as the continents on either side of the Atlantic ocean continue to drift slowly apart from each other. Thus are formed distinctive strips of sea-floor rock that run all the way from the middle of the Atlantic ocean (where the youngest radiometrically strips are) to the shoreline (where the oldest radiometrically dated strips are found). Such strips of rock along both sides of the mid-Atlantic ridge reflect over a hundred million years of sea floor spreading that occured as the continents of North and South American slowly drifted away from Europe and Africa.
Moreover, the radiometric dates that stretch from the middle of the Atlantic to the shoreline, agree with independent measurements (both land based and satellite based) of the present rate of movement of North and South America away from Europe and Africa. In both cases, the expected time it would take for the continents to move apart at their known present rates of speed are the same.
Even Young Earther's agree that if you try, as they have, to explain the evidence for extremely slow sea-floor spreading simply by speeding up the process and imagining that the continents zipped into their present positions in a mere "year," that hypothesis would require a MIRACLE to cool the molten rocks down instantly and in distinctive stages -- because if the continents "zipped" along, then the rocks and their radioactive isotopes would have run together like soft butter spread on microwaved bread, neither would the sea floor rocks exhibit the crystallization patterns that rocks exhibit that have cooled under conditions of much lower temperatures and pressures, which is what the sea floor rocks presently exhibit. Moreover, after the continents had ceased "zipping" along but slowed to their present extremely slow speeds, what odds would there be of achieving the same MATCH between the known range of radiometric dates of sea-floor rocks from the middle of the Atlantic to the shoreline, AND the present speed of the continent's moving apart from one another today? What a coincidence! The strictly scientific odds look far better that the "continental zip" hypothesis is wrong, and the continents took over a hundred million years to separate, and at the same rate they are presently separating.
The evidence of an old-earth is enormous and defies the "odds." There are thousands of individually dated tree rings -- tens of thousands of individually dated lake varves -- a hundred thousand distinctive layers of ice -- and, sea-floor rocks formed in succession and having hardened over successive periods stretching back over a hundred million years.
In your wordview and belief system, why do you think the above moniker is an insult? Shouldn't the activity referred to above be held up on the same level as say, fishing, or going to the car races, or kissing, or eating brownies?
Think about it ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
In your wordview and belief system, why do you think the above moniker is an insult? Shouldn't the activity referred to above be held up on the same level as say, fishing, or going to the car races, or kissing, or eating brownies?
Think about it
Of course you only have a side question, since you can't answer the questions I asked, like how the Grand Canyon cut through a dome instead of going around it.
And are you really so stupid as to think that it's not an insult, acceptable activity or no? Do people say, "fucking idiot" because they think ill of f...ing? It fits the letters you use, and since you do not demonstrate the intelligence needed for the Air Force (not here, at least), why would I use your accepted moniker?
Jeannot, why would you think it was supposed to be "smart"? It's directed at a lying moron.
He's a retard, as you wrote, who can't explain the sediment thickness progression away from the ridges, nor why it is that the far away (dated old) crust is cool, while crust near the ridges is hot. Oh yeah, he's failed to explain how the innards of the earth have cooled several hundred degrees in 6000 years.
Yes, and he thinks that a dome is a dam. True, he was lied to, but he laps up lies told by YECs like they were ambrosia dripping from the realm of the gods, and passes them on as if they were intelligent and worthy of our respect.
Of course it's an insult in MY worldview and belief system, but why is it an insult in YOUR worldview?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That's what I was thinking. You might actually be insulting people on this forum who LIKE that activity and hold it up on the level of boating, fishing, etc.
Who knows ... maybe there's people who view it as some sort of high, religious ritual ...
And I still don't know how your idea of rating this activity very low jives with your world view.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Uh, that's pretty much the standard christian view. I'm not aware of anyone that thinks that the translations are inspired by God. Anyone who even suggests that the copies in the original greek are inspired is in for a rude awakening if they look at the extant copies.
So evidently, there once was a perfect, inerrant version of the Bible, basically authored by God. But now there are only flawed translations. But Dave thinks he can tell which parts of those flawed translations are still inerrant, and which parts aren't. And how does he do this, exactly? By comparing what he reads to some perfect, Platonic ideal of a Bible he has in his head?
Because he sure as shit doesn't compare it to external reality.
It's not that there aren't any perfect translations, it's that there cannot ever be a perfect translation. This is true for any text. If you want to know exactly what it says your going to need to read it in the original language, and to get really picky, your going to need to understand the historical usage of the words, and the particular vernacular being used. Some things just aren't every going to translate well. Poetry will lose it's meter and rhyme, puns lose their meaning, and euphamisms aren't understood (what exactly was Ruth doing on the threshing room floor?). Then you get into all kinds of problems when words don't have a direct translation. Greek has 4 different words that all translate to the english word "love", so how do we differentiate them (or do we). The old testament has even more problems, because some of the meaning isn't known. There are words that show up one time in the bible and we have no external knowledge of the word. The best they can do is either transliterate the word and leave the reader guessing, or they do their best to figure out what the word means in context and fill in a translation. What do you do with the word "Elohim"? It's a plural form of the word for god, but used in a singular tense when refer to big G God, and a plural tense when talking about other peoples little g gods. There are whole books on exactly what that means.
But back to the point, that is, none of this is unique to the bible. People just take these things much more seriously. Attacking bible translations for not being authentic isn't particularly useful, because that's a liability of the limitations of language, not anything particular to the text of the bible. The real problem though is that the modern versions of the bible include a couple of relatively large blocks of text that simple aren't there in the early texts we have available, but these stories have become important enough that people won't remove them from modern translations. Secondly, we have hundreds of years gaps between the writing and the earliest extant copies of numerous of the books of the bible. Thirdly, the combination of books that are included in the bible were decided by comittee well after the time of their writing, and not everyone agrees on what should have be included even today (e.g. the Ethopian version of the bible includes the Book of Enoch). All three of these would seem to be much greater theological trouble than any particular translation quirks of any given translation.
He's a retard, as you wrote, who can't explain the sediment thickness progression away from the ridges, nor why it is that the far away (dated old) crust is cool, while crust near the ridges is hot
I guess Dave doesn't even know how this contradicts his views.
Of course it's an insult in MY worldview and belief system, but why is it an insult in YOUR worldview?
Dave, until you start answering some of our questions (it's your hypothesis, after all), I don't think you're entitled to ask us any.
So are you going to answer some of those questions, or not? Are you going to present some evidence for your flood, or are you going to admit you don't have any?
We already know you don't have evidence for an event that never took place, but you're not going to get anywhere until you've admitted it as well.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, why are you ignoring MY point? I have been patient and far more polite than even you. Thirty days since I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ...
But I use NKJV ... it's close ...
That's not what you claimed here Dave
Quote (AFDave April 29 2006 @ 16:48 )
Yes, I've read many of the myths and they help confirm my theory that the Christian Bible is inerrant ... we'll cover that under Point 9 of my "Creator God Hypothesis". I have also studied the different sections of Genesis and, as you can probably guess, have a different theory than you which I believe has excellent support.
Well well, AFDave actually changes his tune and concedes a point.
The next obvious question for you AFDave is
How do you determine which parts of the NKJV Bible are literal and inerrant, which are metaphor, and which are just plain wrong?
----------------------------------
Aside for Glen D: While I am not above dropping the occasional obscenity to emphasize a point, doing it repeatedly makes it lose its value and only gives AFDave a reason to ignore all of our comments. Chill out a bit and don't give AFDave any reason to ignore the tough questions.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
PS Thanks, Diogenes, for explaining something which apparently is difficult for these guys to grasp.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
PS Thanks, Diogenes, for explaining something which apparently is difficult for these guys to grasp.
Why is it that even the most basic, elementary, fundamental, toddler-level points need to be made to this guy with a sledgehammer and a railroad spike?
Dave, you do understand, don't you, that it's impossible for a text—any text—to be both a flawed translation and inerrant? No text can possibly be both.
Now, you may be claiming that there's some platonically-ideal Bible out there that once existed and is now lost, upon which the currently-available flawed translations are based. But how can you know where those translations are flawed and where they aren't, if you've never seen the original, "inerrant" version, and consequently have nothing to compare the existing translations to? For that matter, how can you have grounds for even saying the current translations are flawed when you've never seen the original? Also, the law of the excluded middle prevents a text (or anything else) from both being errant and inerrant at the same time.
Simple, Dave. You can't. So your claim that the Bible (whatever version you're talking about) is "inerrant" is simply false. You've conceded this point without even realizing you've conceded it. Given your general obtuseness, this is hardly surprising.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
That the Bible you use to form your opinions on reality isn't inerrant.
No, I'm not conceding anything ... you need to go read Diogenes' post ... the original text is inerrant ... the copies are not.
You see? Why is that so hard to grasp?
Your problem is that you cannot admit a Perfect God. If you could, you would have no problem with inerrancy. You have a perfect God who can do no wrong ... He superintends the writing of Scripture and ensures there are no errors. How do I know this? It is taught in Scripture. Why didn't God superintend the translation into English or Latin or any other language to ensure no errors? Why did he make elephants and platypuses? Can't tell you on either score. Why does my two year old do some of the things he does? Can't tell you. He's a free agent ... unpredictable. So is God. How do you expect me to be able to explain Him? I cannot. I can only inform you of what is in Scripture. And I can tell you that my investigation of Scripture leads me to believe it is no mere work of man. Penned by men, yes. But undoubtedly originated in the mind of Someone Supernatural.
I will answer my own question to Glen now ...
Quote
Why is Glen D's latest title for me an insult within HIS worldview?
I think it should NOT be if he is consistent because who is so judgmental as to say that this or that particular activity is wrong or lesser than other activities? Some people may view this activity as a lofty and enlightened "spiritual" experience and may consider his title for me a compliment!!
So what he is truly saying by using it is that he acknowledges MY worldview -- my Universal Moral Code if you will -- he is agreeing with me that there are certain universally despicable activities in life -- the one he named, lying, child abusing, and maybe some others. He is thinking of the most derogatory name for me that he can possibly think of ... and in doing so, iinadvertently helps to confirm my Biblical worldview!!
Incredible!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Ah...but come on.... Obviously Dave is trying to say that the bible is both an imperfect translation and inerrant. God made a perfect bible..... Then God made the perfect bible so perfect that even when it was imperfectly translated, modified, and altered by people... It would still be 100% accurate even if it was 100% identical to the original bible. This is really simple.... All you have to do is accept that God "influenced" the authorship of the Bible. You also have to realize that the "Bible" is one work...not a collection of different works. Then you have to accept that the God that exists is the God that is defined in the Bible...because God himself wrote it. Then you have to understand that it is impossible to understand God, so sometimes that which looks like a contradiction is actually a confirmation.
It all makes sense if you "believe" all of it without question. The devil makes you question these completely unsupported facts. Also, you have to reject all similiar beliefs that are based on even stronger evidence(comparitively speaking)
Also...you have to be open-minded. Open-minded in AFDave speak means that you accept his belief and reject your alternative belief as well as all other beliefs. I guess this means that you are close-minded when you reject his belief on the grounds of reason or logic??
This is Dave in a nutshell. "Your bible errors are not errors, but misunderstandings of the text." "However, Evolution and the age of the earth are not errors or misunderstandings because I say so"
You have a perfect God who can do no wrong ... He superintends the writing of Scripture and ensures there are no errors. How do I know this? It is taught in Scripture.
It just seems odd that a term of abuse that is not in a context which would relate it to homosexuality would be (mis)understood by anybody as applying to homosexuality.
Perhaps missionary man AFD would understand anal intercourse as necessarily being homosexual, but I would certainly not. What is more, anal intercourse is not necessary for homosexuality. "Cocksucker" referring to a guy would be much closer to suggesting homosexuality (no straight guy is willingly going to suck it), and yet even it can be used simply for abuse, not really commenting regarding homosexuality.
If anyone wants to know the reasons for using that term of abuse, it was because it fit the letters AFD uses in his moniker, and because I suspected that it would goad him. It did, quite unlike science stuff, which never reaches into his thick skull.
So that was fun. I would rather hear him try to explain how the Colorado river climbed the dome of rock (without simply using YEC cut and paste lies) and made a v-shaped canyon in the dome, but I'm afraid that he avoids all real science.
Count scientific engagement with him to be a total loss. He is only worthwhile as a means to show how each and every "argument" he takes from YEC sources, but fails to understand, can be shown to be utter nonsense. His inability to explain how the Colorado managed to climb a dome of rock is just one such demonstration, and the abuse was simply what liars and charlatans deserve in response to their glib lies.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, why are you ignoring MY point? I have been patient and far more polite than even you. Thirty days since I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Uh Dave, you just congratulated Diogenes for confirming what has been my point all along.
Quote
No, I'm not conceding anything ... you need to go read Diogenes' post ... the original text is inerrant ... the copies are not.
You see? Why is that so hard to grasp?
Because Dave, after 120 pages you have finally admitted you haven’t been arguing for an inerrant, literal original text Bible; you’ve been posting gobs of ridiculous nonsense arguing for an inerrant, literal Bible translation And as I made you finally own up to (and Diogenes agreed), NO translation EVER is going to be inerrant.
Now that THAT MAJOR HURDLE IN UNDERSTANDING for you has been cleared, maybe you can start finally using your million dollar Air Force brain.
The problem to solve now is – how do you tell if a translation accurately represents what the original authors meant to convey? Or tell if a story is meant to be literal or metaphorical? When there is debate over meaning, I say the best and only way is to look to sources outside the Bible for guidance.
Which is why I provided the re’em example. Some Hebrew scholars (KJV authors) translated it as unicorn. Others scholars translate it as wild ox. How do you decide which one is more probable? You go outside the Bible and look at all available scientific evidence. I learn that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that unicorns ever existed – no fossils, no frozen specimens (a la mammoths), no DNA samples. I find legends and mythology that mention unicorns, but these have a logical explanation (unknowledgeable ancient people trying to explain a narwhal skull). I conclude that there really weren’t unicorns living in those days.
Now let’s go through the same thought process with the word yom. Some Hebrew scholars translate it as ’24 hour day’. Others scholars translate it as ‘indeterminate period of time’. How do you decide which one is more probable? I say the best and only way is to go outside the Bible and look at all available scientific evidence. I learn that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the entire universe was created in six 24-hour days, and plenty that contradict it – no agreeing radiometric results, no way to explain the geologic column, no way to adequately explain the fossil record, no way to adequately explain the genetic record. I learn that there are millions of pieces of evidence that the Earth has been around for roughly 4.5 billion years, and life for over 3 billion years. I find legends and mythology that mention various Gods creating the earth in a brief time frame, but these have a logical explanation (unknowledgeable ancient people trying to explain their existence) I conclude that the Universe and Earth really weren’t created in six literal days.
This is exactly the same thought process we’ve been pounding you snotless with for weeks over the Noah’s Flood story. The original text doesn’t say 'fountains of the deep’, it says macyenoth tehôm rabbah, which roughly translates to “underground springs”. And the original text doesn’t say ‘covered the entire planet Earth’, it says kol erets, which translates roughly into “whole land”. You’re been arguing for a literal English translation, NOT the original text. We’ve provided gobs of physical evidence that the English translation of the Noah story you've been arguing is not literally true. You ignore all the evidence and offer a pulled-out-of-your-ass counter “theory” (several, actually) with NO evidence. You desperately cling to your literal interpretation despite all the contrary evidence.
What do these revelations do to ones faith? If one really is secure in an Omnipotent God, the answer should be NOTHING. If your faith in God is based on clinging to easily disproved translation errors and myths, you’re in deeper kimchee than you realize.
Here’s the punch line Dave – NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU, PERSONALLY, BELIEVE. There’s only a problem when you or other YEC morons try and get their particular interpretation of demonstrated non-literal Biblical mythology pushed as literal science into science classrooms.
Why is that so hard to grasp?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Antievolution.org Discussion Board welcomes our newest member Alexandra making a total of 666 registered members.
Hard times coming Dave; the beast is upon us. Or Nero perhaps.
And you're right, I can't "admit" a perfect God, who is, as you say, unpredictable and unexplainable. It's meaningless. And that was too many commas for such a short sentence.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
OK. One more time real slowly for those among us whose heads are spinning in circles ...
1) You stumble across this book see? Commonly called the Bible ... 2) You hear some fundies claiming that it's supernatural, so you investigate 3) After a thorough investigation, you agree 4) You conclude from your examination of the evidence that this book is supernatural ... superintended by a Supernatural God, who apparently created all things 5) The Bible claims to be inerrant 6) There are many claims in the Bible which cannot be proven, but there are many which can 7) Considering the huge amount of statements which can be proven and which HAVE BEEN proven to be true, you conclude that the Bible's claims to be infallible just might be true
No circularity. Just logic.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
evo: "Holy f*ck Dave, are you gonna keep your head up your ass your whole life?
AFDave: "Huh? What? Did I miss something?"
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, this just might be the most incomprehensible post you've ever authored. And believe me, the competition is stiff.
Now—can you explain to us how you know that the available translations of the Bible are flawed copies of a perfect and inerrant original, when neither you nor anyone else has ever seen the original? This is the point we've been bludgeoning you with for weeks now, and you don't even seem to understand what the problem is, let alone how to answer it.
We get that you think the original version of the Bible is inerrant. We think you're full of crap for thinking so, but we know that's what you think. The question, for the hundredth time, is having never seen the original, "inerrant" version, how do you know which parts of the available translations are correct and which are wrong?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OK. One more time real slowly for those among us whose heads are spinning in circles ...
1) You stumble across this book see? Commonly called the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ... 2) You hear some fundies claiming that it's supernatural, so you investigate 3) After a thorough investigation, you agree 4) You conclude from your examination of the evidence that this book is supernatural ... superintended by a Supernatural God, who apparently created all things 5) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince doesn't have one of those "Any similarities between event or people in this book..." disclaimers. 6) There are many claims in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which cannot be proven, but there are many which can 7) Considering the huge amount of statements which can be proven and which HAVE BEEN proven to be true, you conclude that the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince just might be true
No circularity. Just logic.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
OK. One more time real slowly for those among us whose heads are spinning in circles ...
1) You stumble across this book see? Commonly called the Bible ... 2) You hear some fundies claiming that it's supernatural, so you investigate 3) After a thorough investigation, you agree 4) You conclude from your examination of the evidence that this book is supernatural ... superintended by a Supernatural God, who apparently created all things 5) The Bible claims to be inerrant 6) There are many claims in the Bible which cannot be proven, but there are many which can 7) Considering the huge amount of statements which can be proven and which HAVE BEEN proven to be true, you conclude that the Bible's claims to be infallible just might be true
No circularity. Just logic.
Come on, Dave, what kind of logic is this? The fact that some things the Bible says are true and can be proven means that everything in the Bible is true?
That's not logic, that's blind faith, and I ain't talkin' about the band. There are plenty of things (the flood, the age of the earth, the origin of humans, the sun stopping dead in the sky) that have been proven to be wrong.
But you still think the Bible's inerrant. Despite admitting that no version you've ever read of it is inerrant. You've never seen your mythical "inerrant" version, so you have no way of knowing which parts of the Bible are "inerrant" or not.
Your main reason for thinking the Bible is inerrant is because scripture tells you so. That's about as tight a circle as circular reasoning can go.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1) Your parents force feed you this book see? Commonly called the Bible ... 2) You hear your Fundy parents claiming that it's supernatural, so you investigate 3) You find lots of contradictory evidence, but you totally ignore it 4) You find a single piece of questionable data that will support the idea ONLY IF you suspend the laws of physics. 5) After this ‘thorough’ investigation, you agree with what you were indoctrinated with 6) You conclude from your preconceived ideas and despite the evidence that this book is supernatural ... superintended by a Supernatural God, who apparently created all things 7) The Bible claims to be inerrant 8) There are many claims in the Bible which are easily proven to be in error, but you ignore them all 9) Despite the huge amount of ‘scientific’ interpretations which have been proven erroneous, but just because some bits of the historical data HAVE BEEN proven to be true, you conclude that the Bible's claims to be infallible definitely must be true
No logic. Just brain-dead Fundy mental masturbation.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
4) You conclude from your examination of the evidence that this book is supernatural ... superintended by a Supernatural God, who apparently created all things
Here's your problem. You're using the book itself to evaluate the evidence to determine if the book is right. THAT'S your circle.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Your problem is that you cannot admit a Perfect God. If you could, you would have no problem with inerrancy. You have a perfect God who can do no wrong ... He superintends the writing of Scripture and ensures there are no errors.
Nonsense. This sort of thing is simply stupid to claim. If the Bible were perfect, from the mind of a perfect God, then revelation would be error-free, unambiguously clear, and objectively verifiable as true in all things. The Bible is neither error-free, unambiguously clear, nor objectively verifiable in all things. In fact, as has been shown here, the only way you can make claims about the Bible *being* "perfect" is by avoidance.
Like you avoiding showing how the dendrochronology of ancient cultures that predate your flood period is "wrong." Like you avoid the varves, ice cores and sea floor cores , the corals, the multiple other dating methods mentioned. Like you avoided the issue of Tyre, the "propecy " of Nebuchadrezzar conquering Egypt and making it a wasteland, Like you avoided the lack of any evidence of an Egyptian captivity, like you will avoid any other evidence that the Bible IS wrong in ANYTHING.
This means that you have to indulge in the kind of dishonest ugliness that has been all too evident in each day that you post, AirHead and most people that have a conscience find it disgusting, but you simply make up excuses for yourself by pretending that YOU cannot be wrong about the Bible being Perfectly right.
Another point to be made here would be this, AirHead: An VERY good case can be made that a God whose existence is not possible to doubt is greater than a God whose existence IS possible to doubt... So, IF a greatest conceivable being existed, that being would be IMPOSSIBLE to doubt. Your God has a Bible that allows for multiple interpretations, has errors , has lies in it, has claims that God lies, has claims that god creates evil itself ( not "Satan"), has claims in it that are mutually contradictory so that ONE of the claims involved MUST logically BE wrong. It has claims that are contrary to what we know of the world today, such as "men can live in the stomachs of sea beasts and emerge alive days later." or "rabbits chew the cud."
How about simple things like This: 2 Chron. 9:25 says, "And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen..." while 1 Kings 4:26 says, "And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen." I know you'll say " but that's just a copyists error" but the point is it REMAINS an error TODAY, present in each translation. Or how about Acts 13:17-22, 1 Chron. 29:27-28 and 1 Kings 6:1. The first two state that Solomon's reign began at least 530 years after the Hebrews left Egypt. But 1 Kings 6:1 claims that Solomon's reign began 476 years after the Hebrews left Egypt - a discrepancy of at least 54 years When was Jesus born? Matthew says he was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he was born when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. He could not have been born during the administration of these two rulers because Herod died in the year 4 B.C., and Cyrenius, who, in Roman history is Quirinius, did not become Governor of Syria until ten years later. I could go on and on, listing literally dozens of things that are NOT "explained" by apologetics, but rather they are simply ignored or lied about by apologists.
It is a basic rule of logic that a "thing" cannot be BOTH "x" and "NOT X" simultaneously, but you care nothing about that. The fact is that the Bible ccannot be BOTH "perfect" and have errors...and it HAS errors of multiple kinds, AirHead. Little things like this force people like you, Dave, into the kind of mental contortions that have essentially made you impossibly ILLOGICAL and the OPPOSITE of logical, rational or "scientific" or "skeptical"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Fossils speak of catastrophe, i.e. rapid buiral. Show me somewhere on earth where fossils are being formed today. I don't think you'll find many.
And if fossils speak of catastrophe, massive fossil beds speak of massive catastrophes--A SINGLE, massive catastrophe, perhaps?
Crabby ...
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For how many years did YEC'rs claim Archaeopteryx fossils were fake?
I don't know about all YECers. I know about AIG and ICR. They don't claim they are fake.
Wrong again DDTTD, add taphonomy to list of subjects you're completely ignorant of.
The fossils from the Solnhofen Limestone (which includes the Archaeopteryx specimens) show they were buried in the most gentle way. No catastrophe involved whatsoever (other than the death of the animals). No currents, no scavengers rooting around, no massive floods. Bodies dropped into the calcareous mud, with salt levels too high to support anything but cyanobacteria, and oxygen levels too low on the bottom to support life, there was nothing to disturb them as they were slowly covered. That's why the preservation of those fossils is so good, hence the feather impressions (and the presence of soft bodied specimens like jellyfish).
If AiG and ICR personnel weren't involved with claiming Archaeopteryx specimens were fake, why do they emphasize this point so strongly? ..they doth protest too strongly!
Thanks for playing DDTTD, but once again you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground.
1) You stumble across this book see? Commonly called the Bible ...
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Ummm no. The bible is not a book...it is a collection of books 2) You hear some fundies claiming that it's supernatural, so you investigate
by investigate do you mean that you instantly believe them?
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3) After a thorough investigation, you agree
Why? Because you found absolutely no errors? Because the books of the bible reveal secrets to you? Because it says so? (i think you went with "because it says so"
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4) You conclude from your examination of the evidence that this book is supernatural ... superintended by a Supernatural God, who apparently created all things
How do you come to this conclusion? Torah only? Or did you use portions of the new testament?
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5) The Bible claims to be inerrant
Where does each book claim to be inerrant? Where does it even claim to be inerrant at all?
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6) There are many claims in the Bible which cannot be proven, but there are many which can
True, but their are many claims in "The Da Vinci code" which can be proven, but many more that cannot
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7) Considering the huge amount of statements which can be proven and which HAVE BEEN proven to be true, you conclude that the Bible's claims to be infallible just might be true
This is flawed logic. "The Da Vinci Code" claims to be based on solid facts, and many of its claims are proveable facts...so it must be true too?
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No circularity. Just logic.
Nope, your right. No ciruclar reasoning. Just horrible, horrible, horrible logic.
AFDave I speak to you not as an atheist, or a non-believer. I fully believe in a God. I believe that He is all powerful and grand. I, however, draw the line at attributing work to his name. What modern fundamentalist Christians have done is nothing short of blasphemy!!! I think the action is horrible...and I attack it not to destroy your worldview, but to save you from the embarassment and shame of so blatantly offending God.
Oh—and just a reminder, Dave. This little detour through your numbskull reasoning on Biblical inerrancy shouldn't give you the idea that you've gotten away with not providing a single scrap of evidence for your "catastrophic global flood."
So, Dave—present some evidence, like, you know, this century—or admit you don't have any and move onto your next unsupported and unsupportable assertion.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
To explain scientifically an unobserved event that cannot be repeated, we must first assume the conditions existing before that event. From these assumed starting conditions, we then try to determine what should happen according to the laws of physics. Three criteria should then be used to evaluate the proposed explanation.
Criterion 1: Process. If we can explain all relevant observations better than any other proposed explanation, confidence in our explanation increases. However, if these starting conditions and the operation of physical laws (or known processes) should have produced results that are not present, then confidence in our explanation decreases.
For example, a frequent and intriguing question is, “What caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?” (We will not address that question now, but will use it to show how to evaluate scientific theories attempting to explain unobserved and unrepeatable events.) Some dinosaur extinction theories assume large climatic changes. While many types of climate variation might kill all dinosaurs, we must also (by Criterion 1) look at other consequences of large climatic changes. Flowering plants and many small animals are even more vulnerable to large climatic changes. Because most plants and animals did not become extinct with the dinosaurs, “climatic change” theories for dinosaur extinctions are weakened.
Criterion 2: Parsimony. (Parsimony here means “the use of few assumptions.”) If a few assumptions allow us to explain many things, then confidence in the explanation will be great. Conversely, if many assumptions are used to explain a few observations, or if we must continually add new assumptions or modify our proposed theory as new observations are made, then we should have little confidence in the explanation.
For example, some say a large asteroid or comet struck the earth and killed all the dinosaurs. Supposedly, the asteroid or comet, containing the rare element iridium, kicked up a worldwide dust cloud that blocked sunlight for several years, reduced photosynthesis on earth, and choked off the dinosaurs’ food chain. Support for this theory comes from layers of clay in Europe, New Zealand, and elsewhere containing iridium. Iridium-rich layers are found near many dinosaur fossils and are dated, using evolutionary assumptions, as about 65 million years old. An asteroid or comet striking the earth might explain the worldwide extinction of the dinosaurs and widespread iridium layers near many dinosaur fossils. In other words, one starting condition (an impact of a large asteroid or comet) explains two important observations: dinosaur extinctions and iridium layers. This is good.
But there are some hidden assumptions. While most meteorites contain iridium, it has not been detected in asteroids or comets. So advocates of the impact theory must assume that asteroids or comets have large amounts of iridium (or that meteorites came from asteroids). Other iridium-rich layers have since been discovered too far above and below the layer thought to mark the extinction of the dinosaurs. Further studies have found few iridium-rich layers near known impact craters. (Surprisingly, scientists later learned that airborne particles expelled by volcanoes contain considerable iridium and other rare chemical elements in the iridium-rich layers.)26
Also, many marine plants require daily sunlight.27 How could they have survived a global dust cloud that killed the dinosaurs? Each problem can be solved by making new assumptions. However, by Criterion 2, this reduces our confidence in the theory.
Criterion 3: Prediction. A legitimate theory allows us to predict unusual things we should soon see if we look in the right places and make the right measurements. Verified predictions will greatly increase our confidence in an explanation. Published predictions are the most important test of any scientific theory. Few evolutionists make predictions.
What predictions can be made based on the “climatic variation” and “impact” theories? Few, if any, have been made publicly. This does not inspire confidence in these explanations. Rarely do predictions accompany explanations of ancient, unobserved events.
Some predictions can be associated with the impact theory. For example, a very large impact crater should be found whose age corresponds to the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Extinctions and fossils of many forms of life should concentrate near the crater or, at least, in the hemisphere containing the crater. However, it is recognized that other fossils and extinctions that accompanied the dinosaurs’ demise are uniformly distributed worldwide,28 a point worth remembering.
For several years, no suitable crater could be found.29 Finally, in 1990, an impact site was proposed on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, centered near the village of Chicxulub (CHICK shoo loob). Evolutionists initially dated the site as 40–50 million years before dinosaurs became extinct. No crater shape was visible. Later, a buried crater was claimed based on slightly circular magnetic and gravitational patterns, much imagination, and the desire to explain dinosaur extinctions. Impact advocates then redated the region and, in effect, predicted that drilling in and around Chicxulub would reveal an iridium layer and a buried impact crater. Later drilling projects found neither.30
Other dinosaur extinction theories have even more problems. Our purpose in this section is not to settle this issue but to show how scientific reasoning should be applied to unobserved, nonreproducible events. Incidentally, another theory on dinosaur extinction will soon become obvious—a theory involving a global flood and the harsh conditions afterward. [For more on dinosaurs, see “What about the Dinosaurs?” on page 292.]
Scientific explanations are never certain or final, and the overused word “prove” is never justified except possibly in mathematics or a court of law. Science is even less certain when dealing with ancient, unrepeatable events, because other starting conditions might work as well or better than the proposed starting conditions. Perhaps we have overlooked a physical consequence or have improperly applied the laws of physics. Certainly we can never consider all the possibilities or have all the data.
So to try to scientifically understand unobservable, unrepeatable events, we should consider many sets of starting conditions, estimate the consequences of each based on physical laws, and then see how well those consequences meet the above three criteria. Ancient records, such as legends or the Mosaic account in the Bible, do not give scientific support for the truth or falsity of an ancient event. Such records may provide important historical support to those with confidence in a particular ancient record. This, however, is not science. Here in Part II, we will focus on science.
BASIC ASSUMPTION - There is only one.
The Hydroplate Theory: Key Assumption Starting assumptions, as explained above, are always required to explain ancient, unrepeatable events. One starting assumption underlies the hydroplate theory. All else follows from that assumption and the laws of physics. Theories of past events always have some initial conditions. Usually they are not mentioned.
Assumption: Subterranean Water. About half the water now in the oceans was once in interconnected chambers about 10 miles below the earth’s surface. Excluding the extensive solid structure of these chambers, which will be called pillars, the subterranean water was like a thin, spherical shell, averaging about 3/4 of a mile in thickness. Above the subterranean water was a granite crust; beneath the water was a layer of basaltic rock. [See Figure 53.]
Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas were generally in the positions shown in Figure 51 on page 109, but were joined across what is now the Atlantic Ocean. On the preflood crust were seas, both deep and shallow, and mountains, generally smaller than those of today, but some perhaps 5,000 feet high.
Here the illustration of this assumption again ...
Did I mention that this is an ASSUMPTION?
Oh, wait, did I mention that this is an ASSUMPTION?
********************************************************* THOUGHT QUESTION: HOW DID THESE LAYERS GET FOLDED IF YOUR LONG AGE SCENARIO IS TRUE?
ONE MORE TRY ON GETTING YOU TO UNDERSTAND BIBLICAL INERRANCY
OK. One more try. Let's take another tack ... imagine for a second that you DO agree with Dembski (God forbid! that humans are the product of an Intelligent Designer of some sort. Forget the Bible for now. Now imagine that YOU ARE this Intelligent Designer. If you wanted to communicate with mankind via written messages, how would you do it? First of all, you'd have to convince them that you exist because of this odd propensity that they have to be so skeptical about your existence. Then you'd have to communicate with them in language that they understand. And given that you've used the tool of different languages to get them to obey you and spread out all over the earth, which language would you pick? I suppose you could employ a lightning bolt and dramatically carve the message in stone. But this has reportedly been done already in the days of Moses and people still didn't believe God (I doubt you guys believe it either). OK. How about if you appeared to them in shimmering light with clouds all around you and spoke the message while scribes frantically copied? Again, great for the scribes who experienced it. But would their kids buy it? Probably some. Probably some not. Are you getting the picture? IF there really is a God, and He really created humans, then there is really NO POSSIBLE MEANS that He can employ to make everyone believe the message he wants to communicate. No matter what He does, some will believe Him, some won't.
So apparently, what God has done is choose the approach of communicating in such a way that only those who really WANT to find Him and work at it a bit, will find Him. I admit that it would be nice if God spelled things out a little more clearly in MY 21st century English. But He did not. Is it right to say He doesn't exist because of this? No. It might be right to say He doesn't exist based on a combination of other evidences, but the problem with that is that the other evidences point to God existing! So while the Bible alone may give us some reason to doubt God's existence, there are many other evidences which counter this and support our belief in God, i.e. the necessity of Intelligent Design, the Universal Moral Code (the conscience that Deadman refers to), the accuracy of depiction of the human state, the unity of theme despite hugely varying authorship, the life changing power, etc., etc.
For some reason, God has chosen to use fallible human beings to do His work in His world. Why? I don't know. Believe me, I've had the thought that missionary work would have been a lot easier if he would just write the message in the sky (incidentally, there is evidence that He did just that in the beginning, but still very few believed Him ... maybe I'll cover that sometime). But He does not. He wants to use humans ... and this necessarily means not only copy errors will occur, but errors of character, and many other types of errors will also occur. But that's OK with God. Did you know that a prostitute was in the ancestry of the Messiah? God uses ordinary, sinful human beings to accomplish His work.
I'd be interested to hear what YOU would consider to be evidence of (a) God's existence and (b) authenticity of His message to mankind
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The Hydroplate Theory: Key Assumption Starting assumptions, as explained above, are always required to explain ancient, unrepeatable events. One starting assumption underlies the hydroplate theory. All else follows from that assumption and the laws of physics. Theories of past events always have some initial conditions. Usually they are not mentioned.
Assumption: Subterranean Water. About half the water now in the oceans
Assumption #1
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was once in interconnected chambers
Asumption #2
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about 10 miles below the earth's surface.
Assumption #3.
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Excluding the extensive solid structure of these chambers, which will be called pillars
Assumption #4
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, the subterranean water was like a thin, spherical shell,
Assumption #5
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averaging about 3/4 of a mile in thickness.
Assumption #6
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Above the subterranean water was a granite crust;
Assumption #7
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beneath the water was a layer of basaltic rock. [See Figure 53.]
Assumption #8
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Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas were generally in the positions shown in Figure 51 on page 109,
Assumption #9
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but were joined across what is now the Atlantic Ocean.
Assumption #10
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On the preflood crust were seas, both deep and shallow,
Assumption #11
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and mountains, generally smaller than those of today,
Assumption #12
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but some perhaps 5,000 feet high.
Assumption #13.
All unsupported by any evidence.
And, of course, many more unsupported assumptions to come. Don't forget, Davie-tutu, I've read the book.
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Did I mention that this is an ASSUMPTION?
Oh, wait, did I mention that this is an ASSUMPTION?
OK, they're assumptions. So you cannot claim that your "theory" has anything to do with reality until you provide evidence that these assumptions are true. Feel free to develop the "theory" as an intellectual exercise in following a set of assumptions to a conclusion (pay special attention to the thermodyamics of your underground water eupting), but until you provide evidence for your assumptions being true it's just a fairy tale.
Nope, you're totally off base. What you do, Dave, is believe anything someone tells you as long as it supports your interpretation of the Bible. You dismiss anything that contradicts it. When presented with contradictory data, all you have to do is find the best trash can to throw it into. Either they're interpreting the data wrong or they're just flat-out making it up. Whatever the case, it doesn't really matter, because you already just know that they're wrong. You do not use the methodology you described. You simply compare everything to the Bible.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
To explain scientifically an unobserved event that cannot be repeated, we must first assume the conditions existing before that event. From these assumed starting conditions, we then try to determine what should happen according to the laws of physics. Three criteria should then be used to evaluate the proposed explanation....(snip rest)
Dave, if all you can do is mindlessly C&P crap from creationist web sites, you may as well go home. At least have the honesty to credit your source.
Oh BTW Davie-doo, you keep forgetting to answer :
How do you determine which parts of the NKJV Bible are literal and inerrant, which are metaphor, and which are just plain wrong?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Everything confirms your worldview to your Homo erectus-like mind. Rivers that would have to go uphill to form the Grand Canyon confirms the flood, aeolian sediments in the flood sequence confirms it to your microencephalic intelligence, and the world-wide iridium layer (impossible to emplace exactly at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary the whole world over) no doubt confirms it in your dementia as well.
By the way, your "argument" is yet another non-sequitur. But you don't know how to make a meaningful argument. You have completely abused anyone who has ever trusted you on this matter, and your blatant lies that you have a skeptical and open mind at the beginning (while unbelievable on the face of it) is an abuse of this forum and of proper discourse. You're too stupid and dishonest to acknowledge this, however.
Oh well, at least it is likely that no one who reads this thread, probably not even creationists/IDists, is going to trust you again.
You still have a host of questions and answers that I made that you have not in the least answered, other than with lies, cut-and-pastes from professional creationist liars, or with glib and dishonest claims of triumph. Again, you are the primary witness against Christianity on this forum, which is unfair to reasonable and decent Xians who are appalled at people like yourself.
Flowering plants and many small animals are even more vulnerable to large climatic changes. Because most plants and animals did not become extinct with the dinosaurs, “climatic change” theories for dinosaur extinctions are weakened.
1. Dinosaurs are animals....so WTF? 2. Plants are NOT more sensitive to climatic change. A living plant is more vulnerable. A seed or bulb, however, is incredibly resilient. 3. So, you start off this long post with a lie. Small animals did not survive while dinosaurs died. Dinosaurs(unarguably) were large and small animals. Many of them died, a few survived. Some of those that survived are VERY dinosaur-like. Some that died are not dinosaur-like at all.
So....before discussing ANY of the finer points of your ridiculous post...you need to address this blatant lie. Dinosaurs=animal. Plants=MORE resilient to climate change and catastrophe. If you hadnt plagarized most of that...you might have caught it.
BASIC ASSUMPTION - There is only one. Assumption: Subterranean Water. About half the water now in the oceans was once in interconnected chambers about 10 miles below the earth’s surface. Excluding the extensive solid structure of these chambers, which will be called pillars, the subterranean water was like a thin, spherical shell, averaging about 3/4 of a mile in thickness. Above the subterranean water was a granite crust; beneath the water was a layer of basaltic rock. [See Figure 53.] etc. etc. etc.
Dave, you just don't get it.
We all know what the hydroplate theory claims, and repeating it over and over does you exactly no good. What you need to do is to provide any evidence whatsoever that any of your 13 or so assumptions is valid. You've never done this, you aren't doing it, and you're never going to do it. So discussing Dr. Brown's "hydroplate" theory is a waste of time.
Shit or get off the pot, Dave. Either present some evidence that any of these assumptions are valid, or admit you don't have any.
Also, with respect to your Biblical inerrancy: you've already admitted that no Bible you've ever read is inerrant. You need to explain how you can tell where the Bibles you have read are correct, where they're not, and how you can tell the difference. Your logorrhea this morning didn't even touch on that issue.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
On the subject of Hair-Do-Day's gone ToSorrow hopeless grasp for the inerrancy of his precious book.
AFD does the printing press count as the printer of whichever book you base your story on ,or does the printing company count as the originator?
Because neither of those count as god.
Neither do the translators count as god.
Neither do the scribes who wrote on the papyrus count as god.
Neither do the orators and or preists who told the scribes what to write count as god.
Where is your evidence that any of the above processes actually involved a force so powerful as to make you think fantasy is reality.
Oh right, dementia in your case is self inflicted, sorry...carry on.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Maybe someone can help, I've always been confused by this general form of logic. Given any natural phenomenon, how is it possible for both the following to be true:
1) It is ludicrous to believe that the phenomenon occured by small steps over a very large peroid of time 2) It's completely obvious that the same phenomenon could easily occur in a very short period of time
Not being a psychologist, I ask the members of this forum a question...
Has a study ever been conducted of religious zealots to try and understand the phenomenom?
AFDave may, as crazy as it seems, be right with his "theory". However, his presentation and explanation are completely invalid. He, however, continues. He is completely oblivious to the fact that his "theory" may be correct, but that his explanation and proof are incorrect.
Why do religious zealots connect the validity of their idea with the validity of their arguments? I have frequently "known" something is correct without being able to validly prove it. When i did attempt to make an argument for my position, I admitted the error of my arguments without invalidating my belief.
Dave.... Do you realize that your belief(creationism) could still be perfectly true even if we reject ALL of your arguments? Do you realize that your are connecting your arguments with your belief....and for some strange reason requiring that the truth of one is connected with the other?
Maybe someone can help, I've always been confused by this general form of logic. Given any natural phenomenon, how is it possible for both the following to be true:
1) It is ludicrous to believe that the phenomenon occured by small steps over a very large peroid of time 2) It's completely obvious that the same phenomenon could easily occur in a very short period of time
Some European cathedrals are reputed to have taken hundreds of years to build. Is it more plausible that they could have been built in an afternoon?
I simply do not understand why Dave's tale of incredible deluges of miles-deep water, followed by cataclysmic rearrangement of the earth's crust, with continent-sized blocks of crust rushing to and fro at hundreds of miles an hour, and mountains shooting skyward at thousands of feet per hour, is somehow more plausible than those same things happening by the slow, imperceptible forces we see at work today in the world around us.
Dave sure has a strange definition of the word "plausible."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave.... Do you realize that your belief(creationism) could still be perfectly true even if we reject ALL of your arguments? Do you realize that your are connecting your arguments with your belief....and for some strange reason requiring that the truth of one is connected with the other?
Also, Dave, have you forgotten what I, and others, said, at the very beginning of this thread? We told you that science is not in the business of proving the existence or nonexistence of God. AS PuckSR points out, you could be completely wrong about everything you claim in your "creator god hypothesis" (and you are), but that would say nothing about whether God does or does not exist. Your 6,000 year old earth, your flood, your Noah and his ark, your creation myth, your Biblical inerrancy—all that crap is utterly, thoroughly, irretrievably wrong. But that says nothing whatsoever as to whether God exists or not.
Personally, when it comes to the existence of God, I have my doubts. But your "creator god hypothesis" doesn't even figure into my doubts. I know everything you've claimed so far is just as wrong as your "Portuguese" claims. But God could still exist.
You do a disservice to your own religious beliefs with your patently dishonest posts here, Dave. If I were predisposed to disbelieve in God based on the credibility of your arguments, I would have made my decision halfway through your first page of posts.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AS PuckSR points out, you could be completely wrong about everything you claim in your "creator god hypothesis" (and you are), but that would say nothing about whether God does or does not exist. Your 6,000 year old earth, your flood, your Noah and his ark, your creation myth, your Biblical inerrancy—all that crap is utterly, thoroughly, irretrievably wrong. But that says nothing whatsoever as to whether God exists or not.
He could even be right about Noah, the flood, 6000 year old earth, creation, biblical inerrancy..... His explanations and "evidence" is wrong. Now, if it is proveable...then AFDave may just need to seek out better proofs... Or...maybe it isnt proveable....but it could still be correct.
The problem is that Dave will defend EVERYTHING connected with his belief. i.e. Dave believes that a global flood occured. Now, lets pretend for a moment that AFDave is correct. **Dave...this is actually how open-minded works*** Is his claim about the grand canyon obviously being better explained by flood theory correct? No!!! Is his claim that anything that killed the dinosaurs should have killed plants correct? NO!!! Is his explanation of "Water shooting up from the ground..enough to cover the earth" correct? NO!!!!
Does this mean that the biblical story of Noah's Flood is false? No. It doesnt mean anything. Now, alternative evidence such as the long fossil record, ice core dating, radiometric dating, erosion, plate tectonics, star light, etc. might lead one to believe that most of Dave's claims are wrong.... but the refutation of his "evidence" for his claims does not prove the opposite. Why is Dave so attached to his "evidence".
I believe in evolution....but if i claim that human fetuses are exactly the same as ant larvae....as proof of evolution...everyone would laugh. I would be completely wrong in my claim.... But evolution is still very true, even if my "evidence" is horribly wrong.
Dave, the people on this site are not attacking your beliefs directly...as much as they are attacking your insane and false claims to try and justify your beliefs.
I get the distinct feeling that AFDave is the type of person who needs evidence for his beliefs(a very rational perspective)....however, since AFDave has already decided on his belief without evidence....he now needs to find evidence to validate his belief. The problem is that no solid, quality evidence exists to validate his belief. Of course, his belief may still be correct, but lacking in evidence.
I wish for you to answer a question Dave..... If we can prove to you(hypothetically) that Evolution is true and that Creationism is false, based on the evidence....would you change your mind? I am sure you will say "Yes"...
AFD get in touch with the out of work car salesmen that write you're creationist drival and get them to fix the bit about the fossils will you, there's a good boy.
The problem is that they are not mixed up, when the BFG pulled the plug, some of those fossils seem to have been burried millions of years appart in circumstances that do not match even a minor rain storm let alone a FLUD.
Just how is your ark going BTW AFarkD? Is the whole world against your stupid vision that the world is going to end in a FLUD? Better grap the pets eh AFarkD .....oh and see if you can get your local zoo to shove 2 of each onto your Fark doodly woodly. No cheating, handlers are not allowed...neither are your kids.
You can sail the seas, for what is it ? 40 days, what is it about that number?
Most people with tempory schizophrenia cure themselves in that time, Christ did.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
This is a point I made in connection with Dave's "Portuguese" claim months ago. As I stated at the time, I knew little about the relationship between French, Spanish, and Portuguese, other than that all three are romance languages and are descended from Latin. I told Dave that he could very well be right about his "French + Spanish = Portuguese" claim, but that he hadn't presented any actual evidence to support such a claim.
Dave, of course, begged to differ, and proceeded to post a lot of irrelevant trivia about French knights moving to Portugal, and French and Spanish and Portuguese all sounding alike. I responded by saying that he was making a linguistic claim; that such a claim required evidence from linguistics; and that he had not presented any linguistic evidence.
Of course, after several posters who do have knowledge of linguistics utterly demolished Dave's claim, it was clear that he was wrong. But even without that actual linguistic evidence disproving Dave's claim, he could not have established his claim in the first place, because he never presented any evidence of it.
The same thing is true here with respect to Dave's "Global Flood" claims. It's pretty obvious that Dave's claims are false, because the evidence for an old earth and for geological and geophysical processes that take millions to billions of years is overwhelming, but even if none of that evidence existed, Dave still would not have established any of his claims. The reason for that, as everyone else here is well aware, is that Dave simply has not provided any actual evidence to substantiate any of them. This is the point that Dave simply cannot grasp. No matter how many times we ask him for evidence for such claims as huge underground reservoirs of water, massive comet and asteroid strikes within the past few thousand years, cataclysmic movements of the earth's crust involving the moving of continental landmasses and uplift of entire mountain ranges in a single day, he not only doesn't present any evidence; he simply doesn't even understand what we're asking for.
Instead he'll repeat those very same claims, in yet another one of his "review" posts, without presenting any evidence at all for those claims, and then evinces puzzlement that we don't accept his claims. He thinks it's because we're close-minded, but that's not the problem. The problem is, we're prepared to entertain his claims as soon as he provides evidence to support them, something he has not done, and almost certainly cannot do. He's just not clear on the concept.
Which is why Dave basically functions as a party pinata here. We poke at him with sticks to see what kind of stuff pours out of him when he fractures. So far, the product of our efforts has been pretty entertaining: fantastic stories of arks crammed to the gunwales with tyrannosaurs, giant fountains of water magically prevented from flashing into steam, continents rushing about like out-of-control locomotives, mountain ranges surging skywards like something out of an X-Files episode. Richly entertaining, but that's all it is. It's no more substantial than stories about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, and substantially less supported by actual evidence.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
His mommy and daddy removed the ability to percieve reality as a child by lying and then covering up the lie with more lies.
You only have to meet the poor deluded children of fundies to see that, programmed right of the box.
Little, monkey see monkey do robots.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
still some people were sucked in when Bill did it, now the whole fundy nation is saying "well if the president can deny reality so can we, just watch us".
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
(Where are those mountains going to get all that heat, JonF? Rocks can melt and bend deep underground, but last time I checked it never gets above 120F or so above ground unless you have a fire ... )
(Oh, yeah, I forgot ... the mountains took the "Disney Down Elevator" to a magical place deep underground, then took the elevator back up ... silly me ... I forgot about that)
*************************************
Hey Eric ... Have you ever seen a quark? How do you know they exist? What do you consider to be good evidence to prove to you that they do exist?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey Eric ... Have you ever seen a quark? How do you know they exist? What do you consider to be good evidence to prove to you that they do exist?
You prove a quark exists experimentally. While you may not be able to "see" a quark...you can "observe a quark". This is very similiar to the classic "God is like the wind" argument. The problem is that human understanding of quarks and the wind is all based on observable data. You dont necessarily have to "see" something to observe the data.
You never answered my question though Dave... If we could PROVE to you that Creationism is false, and that we are correct.... Would you change your belief? or would you continue to hold onto your belief, and simply suggest that God in his infinite power could have created the world exactly as described in the bible....and only made it "look" like it is billions of years old.
(Where are those mountains going to get all that heat, JonF? Rocks can melt and bend deep underground, but last time I checked it never gets above 120F or so above ground unless you have a fire ... )
(Oh, yeah, I forgot ... the mountains took the "Disney Down Elevator" to a magical place deep underground, then took the elevator back up ... silly me ... I forgot about that)
Dave, now you're being an assho1e just to be an assho1e. All that was covered IN DETAIL on the Tulane U. Geology Webpage I provided to you earlier
If you're too f-ing lazy to even read the info when it's shoved right under your nose, then don't cry like a big pussy when your ignorance continues unchecked.
And Dave,
How do you determine which parts of the NKJV Bible are literal and inerrant, which are metaphor, and which are just plain wrong?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Where are those mountains going to get all that heat, JonF? Rocks can melt and bend deep underground, but last time I checked it never gets above 120F or so above ground unless you have a fire.
(Oh, yeah, I forgot ... the mountains took the "Disney Down Elevator" to a magical place deep underground, then took the elevator back up ... silly me ... I forgot about that)
Dave, those rocks weren't at the surface when they were bent. If you knew anything about geology, even what junior high-school students knew, you'd know that.
What is now the Himalayas was once sea floor. The hills near where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, are also ancient seabed. It's not unusual for rocks that were once in the basement of continents to now be located at the tops of mountains. The crust of the earth is in constant motion (living in San Francisco, I can testify from personal experience), and the fact that a piece of real estate is currently part of an island arc doesn't mean it won't be part of a continental margin some millions of years hence.
You think this is "magic," but then primitive tribesman often think that jetliners are "magic." The difference is, primitive tribesmen are educable. You, on the other hand, are not. Your ridicule of well-understood natural processes merely shows you for the dunce you are when it comes to science.
I can't wait to hear you tell us that stellar cores couldn't possibly be milllions of degrees celsius because anyone can tell you that chemical fires never get that hot.
Quote
Hey Eric ... Have you ever seen a quark? How do you know they exist? What do you consider to be good evidence to prove to you that they do exist?
No, Dave, I've never seen a quark, and no one else has, either. No one else has seen a hydrogen atom, either. That doesn't mean we don't have evidence that either one exists. The evidence that both quarks and hydrogen atoms exist is conclusive, and this is why scientists are persuaded that they exist.
Observations from particle accelerators provide abundant evidence for the existence of both hydrogen atoms, quarks, and dozens of other particles, such as nuetrinos, muons, electrons, neutrons, photons, etc. I don't need to actually "see," with my own eyes, evidence to know that it exists.
What evidence do you have for any of your assertions, Dave? Before you can answer this question, you first need to understand what the word "evidence" means. And that's your stumbling block. You simply don't grasp the concept. Until you do, you're going to flail around endlessly.
Of course, once you do understand what the word "evidence" means, you're still stuck, because you can't come up with evidence for something that never happened. But you'll burn that bridge when you come to it, I'm sure. Before you can get there, you need to get clear in your head what "evidence" for your assertions would even look like.
But don't ask me to tell you what that evidence would look like. It's your hypothesis; you figure out what evidence would support it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, now you're being an assho1e just to be an assho1e.
I'm not, but if I wanted to be, I have some good examples here at ATBC :-)
I did read your Tulane article and I read JonF's article and I found ONE KEY WORD ...
HYPOTHETICAL
(In other words ... pulled out of an ... er ... orifice)
No matter how much you whine, if you are committed to MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM, you are stuck with the "Disneyland Elevator Ride" down into the bowels of the earth to get enough heat to bend those rocks!
On the other hand, if you are a YEC, life is easy and explanations are easy ...
THE SEDIMENTS WERE SOFT WHEN THEY WERE BENT!!!!
Hee, hee, hee, hee !! Life is good!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The problem is that human understanding of quarks and the wind is all based on observable data. You dont necessarily have to "see" something to observe the data.
Precisely. I agree completely. You have made my point.
We have much observable data that you don't necessarily "see" to prove that God exists.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
there are many other evidences which counter this and support our belief in God, i.e. the necessity of Intelligent Design, the Universal Moral Code (the conscience that Deadman refers to), the accuracy of depiction of the human state, the unity of theme despite hugely varying authorship, the life changing power, etc., etc.I'd be interested to hear what YOU would consider to be evidence of (a) God's existence and (b) authenticity of His message to mankind
What would it take for you?
Dave, I'd like you to actually READ this, slowly, for comprehension 1. There are many people at Panda's Thumb that *ARE* religious. They DO believe. 2. These people are not ostracized/rejected by all others here. 3. The mere fact that i reject your ideas on evolution and a young earth has absolutely nothing to do with my beliefs in God. Let me repeat that slowly...my rejection of your YEC position has nothing to do with my faith in God. NONE. It IS a rejection of **your** claims about Young Earth Creationism -- because you have not provided any evidence to support it. Instead what you have done is to use every ploy, including outright lies and every logical fallacy in the book...to try to bullshi+ me. I take that personally, because I view it as an insult when a person thinks that they can threaten or "fool" me into doing what they want me to do. I am not a coward, to be coerced by threats (of he11 and damnation), and I am not a child or an idiot, to merely be swayed by what are demonstrable falsehoods. In short, Dave, it is not *God* that is being rejected by ME. It is YOU and your patently stupid AND ignorant claims about Young Earth Creationism. Like Puck and eric and MANY others have said -- your basic error is tying your faith in God to YEC-ism. This leads you to make claims that you cannot provide evidence for. So when your claims get rejected, you automatically think that the listener is rejecting God. This is a fundamental error in both logic and your inability to accept reality.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
(Oh, yeah, I forgot ... the mountains took the "Disney Down Elevator" to a magical place deep underground, then took the elevator back up ... silly me ... I forgot about that)
It's called plate tectonics, Davie-dork, and there's an incredible amount of evidence for it. We've even taken tomographic pictures of subducting plates (e.g. http://eesc.ldeo.columbia.edu/courses....7.htm). Your inability to comprehend that evidence does not affect its validity.
The problem is that human understanding of quarks and the wind is all based on observable data. You dont necessarily have to "see" something to observe the data.
Precisely. I agree completely. You have made my point.
We have much observable data that you don't necessarily "see" to prove that God exists.
Dave, you don't have any data, visible or not, to support your assertions about your flood (or anything else, for that matter). You seem to be hung up on a visible/invisible dichotomy, when the real problem is an exisent/non-existent dichotomy.
So no, he didn't make your point for you. You still do not have any evidence, visible or invisible, for any of your assertions. Until you come up with such evidence, your hypothesis is wrong. Dead. Buried.
So get working, Dude. You've got a lot of work in front of you.
Also, as an aside—we're not talking about whether God exists or not, Dave. As has been pointed out to you ad nauseum, that's outside of science's province. You're trying to prove the elements of your "Creator God Hypothesis," and so far you're batting zero.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I did read your Tulane article and I read JonF's article and I found ONE KEY WORD ...
HYPOTHETICAL
Yes, and it was describing 1 single figure used as an example - NOT the entire article. God, you're dumb.
Quote
On the other hand, if you are a YEC, life is easy and explanations are easy ...
Wow. Just... wow. I can't argue with that.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
[quote]I did read your Tulane article and I read JonF's article and I found ONE KEY WORD ...
HYPOTHETICAL
(In other words ... pulled out of an ... er ... orifice)
Lyin' again, Davie-dip. The word "hypothetical" does not appear in the article to which I linked, nor does any reasonably close cognate. The word "hypothetical" does appear in Occam's article, but not in relation to any processes; it refers to a schematic an idealized picture that maqkes complex concepts clear. IOW, the processes that mainstream science knows form metamorphic rocks and folded rocks are not hypothetical.
Rather than force you to come up with answers and evidence all at once for the two dozen questions you've been posed just with respect to your "catastrophic global flood," let's start with just one:
Please present evidence for the existence of large underground reservoirs of water prior to the flood. Don't just tell us they were there. Tell us: exactly where they were located, i.e., how deep, under what current surface features, etc.; how deep they were; whether they were solid bodies of water or were merely contained within the interstices of rock; what the temperature and pressure at the time were; and what supported the weight of the rock above them.
That's step one. Step two (the hard part) is to provide actual evidence, that someone could go out and locate today, that demonstrates that those large underground reservoirs of water actually existed. Don't just tell us they were there and what they looked like. Tell us how we could go and dig a hole, do a seismic survey, etc., that would demonstrate that they once actually existed. Since you're claiming you know they were there, presumably you already have this evidence, or know someone who does, or know where the evidence can be found. You shouldn't have to propose an experiment to find them; you claim you already have evidence they exist.
Have at it, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(Oh, yeah, I forgot ... the mountains took the "Disney Down Elevator" to a magical place deep underground, then took the elevator back up ... silly me ... I forgot about that)
Dave, you said
Quote
If the pre-Flood mountains were low (3000-5000 ft)...
Oops
And talking about magic, do you believe in miracles?
On the other hand, if you are a YEC, life is easy and explanations are easy ...
Yes, so long as you are able to make unsupported claims and present no evidence while simultaneously avoiding any critical arguments or questions aimed at you. It's easier still when you exaggerate, twist, lie and embrace the use of fallacies and childish rhetorical ploys.
Let me point out the obvious, Dave: You are here to support your "hypothesis." And the MOMENT you began to use the childish "hee-hee's" and use the tactics I described above--you began to be rejected. Eventually you got to the point where many people, like me, believe that you are simply screwed up in the head and a born liar. And I have stated multiple times in this thread WHERE you have lied, so don't pretend that I haven't.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
We have much observable data that you don't necessarily "see" to prove that God exists.
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! You do not see it, you do not observe it. Let me explain..... Can you see electrons? No Can you prove electrons exist? Yes How, by observing their interaction with other "things. Now, observe in this case does not mean "visually observe".
Your "observable data" for God is not direct evidence for God. It is not even indirect evidence...it is casual assumption that is extremely subjective.
Anyone with an adequate understanding of physics can prove to himself that electrons exist. Anyone with an adequate understanding of physics and some expensive equipment can prove that quarks exist.
How will you prove God exists? If i throw a ball up in the air...will God catch it? That would be indirect evidence for God... If God was visible while catching the ball...that would be direct evidence for God.
Pointing at the stars in the sky and saying "wow...that must have been God" is not proof of God. Aquinas, Descartes, and others have actually done "proofs of God". They might be flawed, they might be debated...but at least they attempted to logically prove God.
Dave, your returning to some mythological definition of God... You disgust me...I cannot believe that you call yourself a Christian. Claiming to know the nature of God---blasphemy Restricting God to the definition of men---insulting How can you sleep at night, knowing that you have lied? Knowing that you have lied and committed blasphemy?
I find it sad that the Feduccia papers I've read basically read like creationist papers. No good supporting evidence, and only weak attempts to punch holes in the current theory and bizarre logic.
Oh, and Dave?—I expect your next post to be an answer to my question regarding your evidence for the existence of your "fountains of the deep." Either that, or an explicit admission that you have no such evidence.
I'm simply not going to let you skate on this one, Dave. Either you answer, or everyone here will know that you have no answer. I'm weary of your evasions. Put up or shut up.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since you posted the photo of folded mountains, Dave, I'd like you to answer me one question. I will preface this with some details drawn from here (I'm lazy), then a brief version of your explanation, then the question. An online dictionary of geologic terms is provided here Metamorphic rocks come in many types. They include Gneiss, Schist (like the Vishnu Schist in the Grand Canyon), and Marble Metamorphism begins to occur at temperatures and pressures higher than 200oC and 300 MPa.(3Kilobars) This comes in two ranges: 1. Low-grade metamorphism takes place at temperatures between about 200 to 320oC. This is *generally* shown by the presence of hydrous minerals. 2. High-grade metamorphism temperatures greater than 320oC and relatively higher pressure. Hydrous minerals lose H2O, and non-hydrous minerals become more common.
Okay, now. Let's look at HOW metamorphism occurs. This can be divided into 6 general categories:[/B] 1. Contact Metamorphism -- occurs adjacent to igneous intrusions and results from high temperatures associated with the igneous intrusion. Characterized by "contact aureoles." 2. Regional Metamorphism -- occurs over large areas and generally does not show any relationship to igneous bodies. Most regional metamorphism is accompanied by deformation under non-hydrostatic or differential stress conditions. Regional metamorphism usually results in metamorphic rocks that are strongly foliated, such as slates, schists, and gniesses. Thus, regionally metamorphosed rocks occur in the cores of fold/thrust mountain belts or in eroded mountain ranges. Compressive stresses result in folding of rock and thickening of the crust, which tends to push rocks to deeper levels where they are subjected to higher temperatures and pressures. 3. Cataclastic Metamorphism -- occurs as a result of mechanical deformation, like when two bodies of rock slide past one another along a fault zone. Heat is generated by the friction of sliding along such a shear zone, and the rocks tend to be mechanically deformed, crushed and pulverized. 4. Hydrothermal Metamorphism -- Rocks that are altered at high temperatures and moderate pressures by hydrothermal fluids. This is common in basaltic rocks that generally lack hydrous minerals. 5. Burial Metamorphism -- When sedimentary rocks are buried to depths of several hundred meters, temperatures greater than 300oC may develop in the absence of differential stress. New minerals grow, but the rock does not appear to be metamorphosed. The main minerals produced are often the Zeolites. Burial metamorphism overlaps, to some extent, with diagenesis, and grades into regional metamorphism as temperature and pressure increase. 6. Shock Metamorphism (Impact Metamorphism) -- When an extraterrestrial body, such as a meteorite or comet impacts with the Earth or if there is a very large volcanic explosion, ultrahigh pressures can be generated in the impacted rock. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay, Dave, now , let's look at your picture again and your scenario for how they were formed. You say they were deposited then deformed while "still wet." I presume they were then uplifted by the Cataclysmic forces of your "Deluge." You have a very few means by which the mountains you showed ---thousands upon thousands of feet hight-- were metamorphosed.
My question is: HOW (PRECISELY! )..were the mountains in your photograph ..metamorphosed?
Given the limited range of possibilities and the fact that there are thousands of such mountains on the earth, composed of various kinds of minerals, I want you to give me details on how that ONE range was formed. My money says you can't even begin to say HOW it metamorphosed, except by waving your hands and proposing magic.. Show me I'm wrong
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dammit! Dave, now you've got two questions to answer: mine, and Deadman's. If I were you, I'd get busy posthaste. If you're not quick, the questions are going to pile up far, far faster than you'll ever be able to answer them. I suggest that tomorrow you concentrate all your efforts on these two questions, because they're monsters. Forget the biblical inerrancy, forget the Grand Canyon, forget the ark, forget Tyre, forget all the other crap you've been slapping up against the wall, hoping it will stick. You could easily spend the rest of your life coming up with believable answers to just these two questions.
(If you don't mind, Deadman, I'd like Dave to work on my question first, only because I've been asking it for more than a month now. Dave seems pretty distractible, and not very good at multitasking, so I'm not sure he should tackle both simultaneously.)
So have at it, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
On the other hand, if you are a YEC, life is easy and explanations are easy ...
Wow, Davie gets it right twice in one week! Ignorance truly is bliss for a YEC, eh Davie? Or is it 'no brains, no headaches!' for you?
If you're a YEC, explanations are easy because you get to lie and make shit up as you go. What could be easier than that? You don't need any of that 'evidence' stuff, or that 'pathetic level of detail' that actual science requires, no siree! You just pull a fantastic claim (the more known scientific laws it violates, the better) out of some orifice, then declare it to be true in ALL BOLD, CAPITAL LETTERS unless the evil atheist Evos disprove it.
Doing actual science, OTOH can be brutally hard, dirty, repetitive work. Some experiments or field research can occupy a scientist's whole professional career. Of course, the rewards are a much better detailed understanding of the world we live and the physical processes that make it so.
Davie, I notice you haven’t uttered one peep about the NKJV being a non-inerrant translation, something you finally admitted after 3 months of “IT”S LITERAL AND INERRANT!!” bullshit from you. You haven’t addressed at all the fact that you’re defending an imperfect translation and not the original text. I know that must be giving you fits, because it cuts the legs right out from under your biggest argument - ‘because the Bible says it, it must be true’.
C’mon Davie –speak up! Tell us how you justify claiming that because something appears in a known imperfect English translation it must be literal and true. Then tell us:
How do you determine which parts of the NKJV Bible are literal and inerrant, which are metaphor, and which are just plain wrong?
These are important questions Dave, and they won't go away.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
If you don't mind, Deadman, I'd like Dave to work on my question first
Not at all, eric. Dave -- being comparable to Newton and Maxwell, etc. (so he says, p. 6 this thread) -- will be capable of disposing of these minor quibbles POSTHASTE, I'm sure.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Wow. Just wow. I'm gone for a month or two and you are still at it.
Dave, your brain is made of highly evolved dung. You are sweat from Father Sky's balls after they were cut off. Your religious ideas are more useless and wrong than something that is severely useless and wrong. For christs sake Dave. You have failed to make even one point that casts even a haze from a shadow of a doubt on one single thing that might make us believe in your pansy assed, pouting, juvenile, pathetic and provincial god. You have been all those things yourself too. You lost all our respect when you claimed to have won the portuguese thing but you also proved my point that you are in fact dumber than dirt and can't debate using reality. But we knew that the moment you claimed tyo be a YEC. You are as hopeless as the rest. You are a danger to children and civilization as a whole. You are wrong on so many levels that we could never unravel them for you.
I just read the last 10 or so pages and I formally declare it is safe to write yoy off as an unteachable idiot. Cheers
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Afdave wrote Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT.
Please answer my question. Where did Jesus tell them to write the NT? One verse will do!
Oh, just to refresh your memory, here are some very simple questions that you appear to have missed.
Questions about the resurection of Jesus (or the SUPPOSED resurection) : 1) How many angel/s was/were at the tomb. 2) Were they inside or outside of the tomb when the first people arrived 3) Who was the first people to arrive at the tomb?
Come one Davey... you can do it!
Quote
Afdave wrote: There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ... But I use NKJV ... it's close ...
I simply do not understand why Dave's tale of incredible deluges of miles-deep water, followed by cataclysmic rearrangement of the earth's crust, with continent-sized blocks of crust rushing to and fro at hundreds of miles an hour, and mountains shooting skyward at thousands of feet per hour, is somehow more plausible than those same things happening by the slow, imperceptible forces we see at work today in the world around us.
Well, it's pretty simple, Eric.
With my theory you have ...
1) some examples of floods laying down ordered strata and carving canyons through solid rock -- Toutle, Palouse, etc. 2) authorities I quoted who say fossils require RAPID burial -- this speaks of catastrophism 3) millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth 4) universal flood legends of people all over the earth 5) Derek Ager and his friends all becoming catastrophists and saying that "Creationists were better geologists than the Uniformitarians were."
With your theory you have ... 1) NO EXAMPLES of slow processes accomplishing anything 2) TOTAL SPECULATION about how it could have happened 3) HYPOTHETICAL pictures to show how mountains could have got folded 4) FANTASTIC TALES of huge regions starting off as seabeds, then taking an elevator ride up 6000 feet, then becoming a desert, then taking the "down elevator" and becoming a seafloor again -- all the while keeping the interface between layers perfectly flat! And mind you, there's no erosion between layers! I laugh about this one and the Chimp DNA every day!
From JonF's supposed "refutation" of my claim that the folded strata occurred during the Flood ...
Quote
Obviously, rocks are folded much more than 25 percent in the real world. That is where time, temperature, and solution come into play. In the laboratory experiments, only pressure was measured, and that was done over a brief period of time. In the field, obviously we have millions of years to work with, not just hours.
Abracadabradoo! .... MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM !! Never observed it myself. No one else ever has either. Can't figger quite how it could happen. But I'm REAL SURE it did. After all, I'm a real scientist! I have to be right!! There's thousands of other scientists who agree with me!!
JonF...
Quote
FWIW, Henke has replied to Humphreys' reply to Henke's reply to Humpreys' reply to Henke's critique:
Yes and he still is grasping at the wind. He still thinks soft mica can be compared to hard zircon ... he's kinda like you guys ... hard headed.
PuckSR ...
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I wish for you to answer a question Dave..... If we can prove to you(hypothetically) that Evolution is true and that Creationism is false, based on the evidence....would you change your mind? I am sure you will say "Yes"...
Yes. Very good, Puck. You predicted my answer correctly. Are you happy now?
K.e ...
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HECK he doesn't know what IS is.
On the subject of Hair-Do-Day's gone ToSorrow hopeless grasp for the inerrancy of his precious book.
Count on k.e for some ... er ... unique one liners!
Eric ...
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What is now the Himalayas was once sea floor.
Yes, you're right. A violent, raging sea. It's commonly known as THE FLOOD OF NOAH. I'm glad you at least acknowledge that the Himilayas were once a sea floor. At least you are at first base.
Eric ...
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Your ridicule of well-understood natural processes merely shows you for the dunce you are when it comes to science.
The processes that are occurring TODAY are well understood. The problem for you is that these present-day processes are utterly bankrupt for explaining the phenomena we see. This is why Derek Ager and his friends are now catastrophists. There had to have been processes which happened in the past which we do not understand well today. This is what the Hydroplate Theory and the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics Theory are all about. They are not perfect theories. But they are a start. Your theory is simply a non-starter.
Eric ...
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But don't ask me to tell you what that evidence would look like. It's your hypothesis; you figure out what evidence would support it.
I already know what evidence is. And I've given you plenty. If you think it's something different, then by all means, be my guest ... tell me what you think it is and I will consider it.
JonF ...
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It's called plate tectonics, Davie-dork, and there's an incredible amount of evidence for it.
Oh, so you think the "1 inch per year" movement (or whatever it is) would fold those mountains? Oh wait, next you talk about subducting plates ... so you think those mountains used to be on the bottom of the sea and got subducted, then uplifted to their present position? Oh, yeah, right!
Eric ...
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We told you that science is not in the business of proving the existence or nonexistence of God.
I understand that you view yourself as one of the "Gaurdians of Science" ... this is great as long as what you say makes sense. But that's the problem. You Long Agers are not making sense anymore, so there will come a time when you will no longer be one of the "Guardians of Science" because you have adulterated science itself with statements like this.
Improv ...
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Yes, and it was describing 1 single figure used as an example - NOT the entire article. God, you're dumb.
Yes, a single figure which just happened to be the very picture that would illustrate his point ... but, alas, it doesn't because it's HYPOTHETICAL, just like everything else in your Darwinian Millionsofyearsianism Religion.
Jeannot ... I like your pretty colored picture of the Mid-Atlantic ridge with the nice, orderly ages denoted. You say I'm afraid to investigate? Wrong. Let's take a look. How did you come up with those ages? Sorta like Incorygible came up with his ages for ape ancestors, perhaps? Or possibly like Aftershave came up with his ages for upper strata in the Grand Canyon.
Eric ...
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Please present evidence for the existence of large underground reservoirs of water prior to the flood.
Eric, this is Brown's ASSUMPTION as I stated before. He attempts to show that this is a reasonable assumption by showing it's explanatory power for various phenomena. We will look at this in detail. But I did already give you some direct evidence for the existence of this subterranean water. I predict that you can go out and dig yourself and you will find this same water.
Jeannot ...
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And talking about magic, do you believe in miracles?
Yes, Jeannot, I believe in miracles. The reason I poke fun at YOU GUYS for invoking magic is because you claim NOT to believe in miracles. And yet you have to invoke them in order to explain many things.
PuckSR ...
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How will you prove God exists?
Did you miss the first 50 or so pages of this thread?
General Murphy ...
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Oh, and Dave?—I expect your next post to be an answer to my question regarding your evidence for the existence of your "fountains of the deep."
Right-oh, sir! At your service!
Deadman ...
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My question is: HOW (PRECISELY! )..were the mountains in your photograph ..metamorphosed?
They were SOFT when bent and they hardened later. Remember? Massive quantities of layered sediments were deposited during the Flood and continents were shifted. There was an immense amount of sliding and pushing and shifting which inevitably caused FOLDING OF SOFT STRATA.
OA ... go back and do some remedial reading on mine and Diogenes posts about inerrancy. Lie face down on a white mat and pray to your "God of Millionsofyearsianism" ... maybe He will explain it to you.
BWE...
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You are sweat from Father Sky's balls after they were cut off. Your religious ideas are more useless and wrong than something that is severely useless and wrong.
Great to have you back, BWE! Man I've missed your creative insults! How do you top this stuff? "I am sweat from Father Sky's balls after they were cut off." Wow. I've never seen such linguistic innovation.
Renier ...
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Please answer my question. Where did Jesus tell them to write the NT? One verse will do!
He didn't use those words. If you study the NT, you find that Jesus had a definite small group of "apostles." They even "elected" another one to replace Judas. In John 16:13, we find "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. Although we are only given glimpses into this, it is apparent that these apostles were given special authority by Jesus. Thus the early church only accepted writings as canonical if they were authorized or authored by apostles. An apostle was one who had a direct commission from Jesus. Paul received his commission later than the others and the genuineness of his commission was verified by other living apostles. Contrast this with modern day, self-proclaimed "apostles" whose commission HAS NOT been verified by living apostles who actually lived and walked with Jesus.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Contrast this with modern day, self-proclaimed "apostles" whose commission HAS NOT been verified by living apostles who actually lived and walked with Jesus.
such as yourself?
oh the blushfemmy
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Ooops I think I might have misunderestimated you there hair do day...when you said.
Contrast this with modern day, self-proclaimed "apostles" whose commission HAS NOT been verified by living apostles who actually lived and walked with Jesus.
You WERE talking about THE ORINGINAL Bob Marley ...RIGHT?
I know, I know ......there are a lot of fakes around.
...appologies accepted.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, I cannot fail to note that your giant post today provides no evidence whatsoever to support your claim of vast underground reservoirs prior to the flood. This is clearly because you have no such evidence.
As JonF pointed out yesterday, "assumptions" do you absolutely no good unless you can demonstrate that your assumptions are valid. You and Dr. Brown have failed to so. If you "assume" something, you can prove anything you want to prove. I can "assume" that my apartment building was built in 30 seconds by billions of microscopic apartment-constucting fairies 75 years ago, and that certainly explains the existence of my apartment building, by your logic.
Once again, you've demonstrated your pathetic lack of understanding of how science, or logic, works. Any claim made in a scientific context requires evidence. You don't have any evidence. Neither does Dr. Brown. If there were indeed vast underground reservoirs of water existing a mere 6,000 or so years ago, there should be evidence for their existence. No one, especially not you, has any evidence that they ever existed. You claim you've presented evidence, but you have not. It's hard to characterize that claim as anything other than a lie, Dave.
The truth is, Dave, you have absolutely no evidence for even the most basic, fundamental requirements of your "catastrophic global flood," a source for all that water. You haven't presented a single scrap of evidence for it, despite your claims to the contrary, and anyone who has read this thread is aware of that.
"Assumptions" aren't evidence, Dave. Your "assumptions" are clearly unfounded, because you have no evidence that they're valid. You've failed to provide any evidence whatsoever that your "fountains of the deep" ever existed, let alone that they were somehow the source for the water in Noah's flood.
Get over it, Dave. Your "catastrophic global flood" claim is dead. You've given no reason to suppose it ever happened.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric, this is Brown's ASSUMPTION as I stated before. He attempts to show that this is a reasonable assumption by showing it's explanatory power for various phenomena. We will look at this in detail. But I did already give you some direct evidence for the existence of this subterranean water. I predict that you can go out and dig yourself and you will find this same water.
Dave, you're an idiot. The fact that water has been found at depths of 7.5 miles is not, not not not not evidence for vast underwater reservoirs of water. Water is ubiquitous on earth. It's evidence that there's water down there, not that there are, or ever were, cubic miles of water down there. How stupid do you think we are?
I'm through giving you chances to support your claims. It is clear that you cannot. I know you will never admit that you're wrong, because you've never admitted you were wrong about anything. But everyone here, to the extent they didn't already know you were wrong about your "flood" (I doubt anyone here didn't already know you're wrong), certainly knows now.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, you're confused. Plate tectonics is not speculation, it's explained by thousands of evidence, just read a book. The picture I provided, which debunks all YEC's nonsense and that you little coward can't refute, is just one of them.
Meanwhile, your hydroplate theory is crap.
Admit that the Bible is wrong about the young Earth Dave. We know that you realised it, you're not fooling anyone here. You can quit posting AIG's garbage and be honest once in your life.
But I know you won't. Because you are a liar, your God must be ashamed of you.
Can you at least tell us if you believe in miracles?
Dave, why are you ignoring MY point? I have been patient and far more polite than even you. Thirty days since I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
I can "assume" that my apartment building was built in 30 seconds by billions of microscopic apartment-constucting fairies 75 years ago, and that certainly explains the existence of my apartment building, by your logic.
Your theory of how YOU cam into existence is almost that fantastic!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I can "assume" that my apartment building was built in 30 seconds by billions of microscopic apartment-constucting fairies 75 years ago, and that certainly explains the existence of my apartment building, by your logic.
Your theory of how YOU cam into existence is almost that fantastic!
Well, you see when a man and a woman love each other very much...
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
I can "assume" that my apartment building was built in 30 seconds by billions of microscopic apartment-constucting fairies 75 years ago, and that certainly explains the existence of my apartment building, by your logic.
Your theory of how YOU came into existence is almost that fantastic!
Except for the fact, Dave, that my claim of how I came into existence is supported by evidence, in the form of literal terabytes of data, that you, if you had the slightest interest in looking into it, could find all over the web, to say nothing of the libraries of every university in the world.
Evidence, Dave. That's the key word. The evidence for common descent with modification is overwhelming, mountainous, which you would know if you'd even read the Theobald paper I sent you back in May, and which you claimed to have read, but could not point to a single criticism of any point it made. Evidence in favor of common descent with modification is piling up every day, in research labs around the world, and on zoological and botanical expeditions all over the world.
Meanwhile, the "evidence" in support of your "catastrophic global flood" hypothesis is most conspicuously failing to pile up. In fact, as you have yourself demonstrated, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever, of any kind, supporting your hypothesis. You cannot even provide evidence for the existence of the water necessary to create your flood!
That's why the theory of my origins is not fantastic, Dave, and why your global flood fairy tale is fantastic.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, why are you ignoring MY point? I have been patient and far more polite than even you. Thirty days since I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...
Integrity is a virtue that Dave doesn't know. You point an obvious error in the Bible, the only thing he can do is ignore it.
Dave doesn't have any self esteem either. Calling him a coward won't help it. Playing the buffoon is not a problem for him.
Dave, why are you ignoring MY point? I have been patient and far more polite than even you. Thirty days since I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...
Integrity is a virtue that Dave doesn't know. You point an obvious error in the Bible, the only thing he can do is ignore it.
Dave doesn't have any self esteem either. Calling him a coward won't help it. Playing the buffoon is not a problem for him.
Yes, Jeannot, I know. It just hurts, you know... I try to be nice and considerate, and he ignores me, and is mean. I mean, if he's going to be like that, why did he even come <sniff> to the dance ,errrr the webforum anyway... He's just a big meanie. I wonder what his reaction will be when his kids ask the same questions? Will he do what he did to me? Ignore my questions for a month, and then say that the the prophecy could be interpreted in other ways? I was clear, and he evaded me... Hope he won't do the same to his kids... He reads this stuff to them, you know.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Obviously, rocks are folded much more than 25 percent in the real world. That is where time, temperature, and solution come into play. In the laboratory experiments, only pressure was measured, and that was done over a brief period of time. In the field, obviously we have millions of years to work with, not just hours.
Abracadabradoo! .... MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM !! Never observed it myself. No one else ever has either. Can't figger quite how it could happen. But I'm REAL SURE it did. After all, I'm a real scientist! I have to be right!! There's thousands of other scientists who agree with me!!
Actually, as I pointed out already, we have observed it happening in the lab, and we understand very well how it happens in the wild.
How many observations of a global flood ya got, Davie-diddle!
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It's called plate tectonics, Davie-dork, and there's an incredible amount of evidence for it.
Oh, so you think the "1 inch per year" movement (or whatever it is) would fold those mountains? Oh wait, next you talk about subducting plates ... so you think those mountains used to be on the bottom of the sea and got subducted, then uplifted to their present position? Oh, yeah, right!
Yup, you got it, right, the mountains used to be on the bottom of the sea. (BTW, Davie-pie, Leonardo da Vinci figured out in the 15th century that the marine fossils on top of mountains were not laid down by a global flood; you're still 600-ish years out of date). They may or may not have gotten subducted, depends on which mountains you're talking about, and then the observed tectonic movements craised the mountains.
Your inability to understand the evidence doesn't affect reality, nor does your lame attempts at ridicule signify as refutation. Oh, Davie, did you observe those sediments getting folded while they were soft? Or is direct observation not necessary?
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Yes, and it was describing 1 single figure used as an example - NOT the entire article. God, you're dumb.
Yes, a single figure which just happened to be the very picture that would illustrate his point ... but, alas, it doesn't because it's HYPOTHETICAL, just like everything else in your Darwinian Millionsofyearsianism Religion.
Nope, that figure illustrated an ancillary point. You obviously haven't comprehended the article. Nor have you apologized for your lie about the article I posted.
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I like your pretty colored picture of the Mid-Atlantic ridge with the nice, orderly ages denoted. You say I'm afraid to investigate? Wrong. Let's take a look. How did you come up with those ages? Sorta like Incorygible came up with his ages for ape ancestors, perhaps? Or possibly like Aftershave came up with his ages for upper strata in the Grand Canyon.
Doesn't matter, Davie-pie, what matters is your explanation for those measurements. Feel free to interpret the data as indicating something other than age ... but you then need to come up with a coherent explanation of what the data does indicate and why, accounting for all the data. Don't forget to include the reversed magnetic strips (Waltie's "explanation" of these is particularly a risible lie; he writes "There are no magnetic reversals on the ocean floor, and no compass would reverse direction if brought near an alleged 'reversed' band. However, as one moves across the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, magnetic intensities fluctuate, as shown in Figure 46." Of course, there are magnetic reversals:
But you're afraid to present an explanation of the data, 'cause you got nothing in the way of explanation.
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Please present evidence for the existence of large underground reservoirs of water prior to the flood.
Eric, this is Brown's ASSUMPTION as I stated before. He attempts to show that this is a reasonable assumption by showing it's explanatory power for various phenomena. We will look at this in detail. But I did already give you some direct evidence for the existence of this subterranean water.
No, you provided some evidence for the existence of a small amount of subteranean water today. You provided no connection between that and the vast amount of water Brown assumes. Hey, Davie, did you observe this water directly? Or, perhaps, is it not necessarily for a human to observe something directly for it to be true?
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How will you prove God exists?
Did you miss the first 50 or so pages of this thread?
Nope. No proof of God anywhere in this thread, on any pages.
Just out of curiosity, if they were soft at the time, wouldn't those sediments have slumped and concentrated towards the valleys of those folds?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Just out of curiosity, if they were soft at the time, wouldn't those sediments have slumped and concentrated towards the valleys of those folds?
Maybe, maybe not. What is typical (but not omnipresent) of soft-sediment folding is cracks on the upper surface of layers (perpendicular to the layer surfaces), often penetrating through the entire layer. Another common morphology is wildly folded layers with undisturbed layers above and below.
Some good discussion and links (some, alas, broken) at Bent strata.
Some pictures of non-sedimentary folding: first, folded aplite dike in Cretaceous augen gneiss, Koolen gneiss dome, Chukotka Peninsula, NE Russia:
And stretched pebbles in the Raft River metamorphic core complex, Idaho:
OA ... go back and do some remedial reading on mine and Diogenes posts about inerrancy. Lie face down on a white mat and pray to your "God of Millionsofyearsianism" ... maybe He will explain it to you.
No can do, Davie-doo. The question wasn't about anything Diogenes said, it was about your words.
Remember your words Davie-doo?
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Afdave wrote: There is no 100% literal, inerrant translation ... But I use NKJV ... it's close ...
I'm sure you regret saying them, even though it was one of the few honest thoughts you have had. Problem for you is - it totally screws your "The original text of the Bible is literal and inerrant" claim because you don't have access to the original text Davie, all you have are known imperfect translations.
C'mon you macho Bible 'expert' - pull your pants up and tell us
How do you determine which parts of the NKJV Bible are literal and inerrant, which are metaphor, and which are just plain wrong?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I asked you how the mountains in your photo got METAMORPHISED, Dave, not "did they dry out" Metamorphosis , as I explained, requires lots and lots of heat and pressure. your answer was only :
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They were SOFT when bent and they hardened later. Remember? Massive quantities of layered sediments were deposited during the Flood and continents were shifted. There was an immense amount of sliding and pushing and shifting which inevitably caused FOLDING OF SOFT STRATA.
SO HOW DID THE LAYERS ALL GET METAMORPHISED, IDIOT? that mountain is well above 10000 feet tall, Dave. I know where it's located. If the layers got all bent up, then the mountain was raised...IT STILL HAS TO HAVE PRESSURE AND HEAT to metamorphise the SEDIMENT to METAMORPHIC ROCK, and it IS metamorphic. SO where did the pressure and heat COME FROM, AirHead? There's no overlying monster igneous layer, you say it CAN'T be that it was SUBDUCTED in that amount of time, so...HOW DID IT HAPPEN??
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The mountain range in your photo is called "vetebrae ridge," Dave, and it's located near Golden, British Columbia. It is high-grade metamorphic rock. YOU say it was sedimentary rock, bent while soft, then raised to a mountain. HOW DID IT GET METAMORPHISED? That rock needs to be raised to a temperature of above 320oC and ABOVE 3 kilobars of pressure to form. There are no monster igneous layers above it..so HOW did it become metamorphic?
All YOU said was " it dried out"...well, that alone won't make it metamorphic, stupid. SO, HOW was it metamorphised PRECISELY?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Okay, Dave, your day has come and gone. You haven't presented a single particle of evidence for the existence, now or in the past, for your "fountains of the deep." Since the existence of these "fountains" is a necessary assumption for your "catastrophic global flood," it's clear that you can proceed no further with your claims as to that flood. You can't build a house working from the roof down, Dave, and you can't assume there was a flood without having a source of water for it. No water, no flood.
Therefore, your "catastrophic global flood" hypothesis has collapsed, and we need not consider it further.
Are there any other assertions about your "Creator God Hypothesis" you'd care to discuss?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
This has been a really bad week for our YEC target drone AFDave. He's been getting pounded unmercifully from both sides, top, and bottom with no let up in sight. He's been made to look like a complete fool not only in geology, but also in his Bible 'expertise'. Looks like he's going a bit unstable too from all the evidence he can't explain and questions he can't answer - regressing farther and farther into child-like denial. The fact that he brought it all on himself with his arrogant actions and ignorant claims should not deter us from taking pity on his sore, stretched rectum.
Anyone think we should give him a breather, maybe let him stop whimpering and catch his breath?
How about it Davie - you need a minute to grab a grab a hankie and change your Maxi-pad?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Here's the photo you posted, AirHead You say it cannot be formed by "millionsofyearianism" uniform geologic processes that are known and studied both in the lab and in situ, AirHead. I asked you , then, given your "theory that is better than any other" -- HOW WAS THIS ROCK METAMORPHISED?
I **didn't** ask about it "drying out," I asked specifically about METAMORPHOSIS...YOU say you have a better theory than any other, Dave. Show me, punkin'--as I said, my bet is you can't even BEGIN to tell me how those mountains metamorphosed and so far, I am quite correct in that. What that gneiss requires is OVER 320oC and OVER 3 kilobars of pressure, AirHead. Get to work on avoiding, Dave
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, and hey, Jon, here's a nice pic to add to your references on neat metamorphic folds, if you don't already have it: The caption is: " Intense folding in high grade metamorphic rocks on the Connemara Peninsula of western Ireland."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Below is an image of saprolite from the piedmont of central Virginia. This formerly igneous rock has been folded, faulted, baked, squeezed, and, finally, rotted. You'll notice that some of the more resistent layers (mostly quartz) remain solid but the rest has been reduced to dirt by chemical weathering. Regrettably, the innate limitations of my imagination prevent me from concieving how this could have all happened in only 6000 years. Can you help, Dave?
Oh, and hey, Jon, here's a nice pic to add to your references on neat metamorphic folds, if you don't already have it: The caption is: " Intense folding in high grade metamorphic rocks on the Connemara Peninsula of western Ireland."
One advantage of pounding stupid old Dave here is that some of these photos are actually quite beautiful...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Wow ... a barrage of pretty pics! Very nice, guys.
I take it you think that I don't buy into the idea of strata folding under intense heat and pressure ... hmmm ... did I say that? Noooo ... listen carefully, class.
I simply poked fun at your idea that "vertebra ridge" as Deadman calls it was formed over millions of years by the same slow processes which we observe today. The truth most likely is that it happened VERY QUICKLY--like weeks!. No one can ever really know for sure how exactly ... sorry, Deadman, you cannot either ... but a likely scenario is that the strata was laid during the Inundation Phase of the Great Flood of Noah. Then as the continents shifted the layers were folded, heated (and metamorphosed) and uplifted, all in a very short time span. These are all very well-understood processes and this is a very plausible scenario.
What is NOT a plausible scenario is that it happened very gradually--almost, ahem, imperceptibly--over millions and millions of years.
Oh ... and here's some folding in the Tapeats Sandstone ... what say you about that? This picture is being sold to the public at the Grand Canyon in a --GASP -- Creationist Book!!
Aftershave ... no, I'm NOT sorry I said the NKJV is not without errors. I'm quite sure it has a few. This has no bearing on the concept of inerrancy of the originals. Get a clue. Go back and do your remedial reading.
Hey ... anybody know what ever happened to Rilke? I miss her ... er ... insightful posts. Is she too good for this forum or something now that she got a PhD? Or maybe she's just too good for my thread.
************************************
Sorry to break your hearts again, but I am gone for the next two days to the Great EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh!
What will you do without my guidance and wisdom for 2 days?
I know it will be tough.
Maybe you can all study up some and be better prepared for all I'm going to put you through next week!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I simply poked fun at your idea that "vertebra ridge" as Deadman calls it was formed over millions of years by the same slow processes which we observe today. The truth most likely is that it happened VERY QUICKLY--like weeks!. No one can ever really know for sure how exactly ... sorry, Deadman, you cannot either ... but a likely scenario is that the strata was laid during the Inundation Phase of the Great Flood of Noah. Then as the continents shifted the layers were folded, heated (and metamorphosed) and uplifted, all in a very short time span. These are all very well-understood processes and this is a very plausible scenario.
Sorry, Dave. Those rocks took millions of years to form, not weeks. How do I know that? Simple. Your flood never happened, dude. You don't have any water to create a flood. You do know that a flood requires water, right? And you don't have any water.
I've asked you several times in the past couple of days to produce evidence—any evidence at all—that your "fountains of the deep" ever existed. Unsurprisingly, you failed to produce any such evidence. Therefore, you have no evidence your flood ever happened. Therefore, the sediment you claim was laid down in a matter of weeks was not laid down in a matter of weeks. It took millions of years, just as every geologist in the world says it does.
You just don't get it, Dave. You can't just skip over critical parts of your "hypothesis," blow by absolutely unsupported assumptions, and expect to get anywhere. Your "catastrophic global flood" hypothesis has bitten the dust, and everyone here except for you knows it. If you want to come up with some sort of explanation for those bent metamorphic formations that doesn't take millions of years, you're going to have to come up with something other than your flood, because your "flood" never happened.
Once again, your claims have been blown sky-high, only you didn't seem to have noticed.
You can ignore my posts on your lack of floodwaters, Dave, but everyone else here is reading them, and as a result they know you're a complete and utter fraud. Your hypothesis regarding a "catastrophic global flood" blew up right out of the gate. End of story. Move on to your next claim…which is:
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Aftershave ... no, I'm NOT sorry I said the NKJV is not without errors. I'm quite sure it has a few. This has no bearing on the concept of inerrancy of the originals. Get a clue. Go back and do your remedial reading.
Dave, you're completely missing Mr. Aftershave's point, even after he (and I) have spelled it out for you a dozen times. You admit you've never seen the supposedly "inerrant" originals. So—first—how do you know they're "inerrant"? Because the admittedly flawed copies tell you so? And you believe them why?
But even if we grant your claim that there once existed, somewhere, somewhen, perfect, "inerrant" originals, you've never seen them, so how do you know where the errors are? How do you know which parts of the "flawed copies" are mistaken, and which aren't?
You don't, is how. You don't have a fucking clue which parts of your Bible are accurate and which aren't, because you self-admittedly have never seen anything but flawed copies.
That's a Q.E.D., Dave. You do know what that means, don't you? Just like the Q.E.D. on your "catastrophic global flood" hypothesis.
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Sorry to break your hearts again, but I am gone for the next two days to the Great EAA Fly-In at Oshkosh!
Don't worry, Dave. I'll be sure to remind you of your catastrophic defeat on both your flood claims and your Bible claims.
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Maybe you can all study up some and be better prepared for all I'm going to put you through next week!!
Nothing left to study, at least until you move on to your next completely foundationless assertions.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Aftershave ... no, I'm NOT sorry I said the NKJV is not without errors. I'm quite sure it has a few. This has no bearing on the concept of inerrancy of the originals. Get a clue. Go back and do your remedial reading.
Of course you're not sorry Davie doo doo head - compulsive liars like you rarely are. I'll just point out once again that you don't have access to the originals, that you have never read or even seen the originals, and you have no idea what the originals said or meant.
That being the case, any claim about the inerrancy of the originals is strictly wishful thinking bullshit on your part. Funny, but bullshit seems to be the stock and trade of just about every YEC that I meet. Sure is easy to be a YEC! You, Davie, are a master of the craft!
Jesus must be so proud of you for the lies you tell for Him, right Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Then as the continents shifted the layers were folded, heated (and metamorphosed) and uplifted, all in a very short time span. These are all very well-understood processes and this is a very plausible scenario.
HAHAHAHAHA...you say that the GNEISSES of that range can be FOLDED, HEATED (((HOW?!?!?!?!?!?!)) and THEN UPLIFTED in a SHORT time span, but NOT a LONG ONE?? IF IT IS A "WELL-UNDERSTOOD" PROCESS BY WHICH THIS CAN OCCUR AND CREATE GNEISS IN A SHORT SPAN OF TIME, SHOW ME THE REFERENCES FOR GNEISS , DAVELIAR You KNOW damm well you can't show me how it formed DaveLiar, if it is not SUBDUCTED. How could it be subducted in 4000 years, dave? If it is NOT subducted, WHAT HEATED IT? WHAT MADE THE PRESSURE SO GREAT ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH? 3KILOBARS ?!?!?!?!?! THAT'S A MOUNTAIN, YOU IDIOT...NO KNOW PROCESS CAN CREATE IT IN THE TIME SPAN YOU WANT...NONE!!!!!
SHOW ME YOUR REFERENCES FOR SUCH AN EVENT OCCURING --NONE!!!!! SHOW ME THE STUDIES SHOWING HOW GNEISS CAN BE FORMED IN THAT AMOUNT OF TIME WITHOUT SUBDUCTION --NONE!!!
SHOW ME HOW FAST THE FASTEST RATES OF SUBDUCTION ARE. HAHAHAHA. YOU JUST AVOIDED GIVING ANY DETAIL, BUT YOU SAY YOU HAVE THE "BEST" THEORY ON HOW THIS OCCURED?
HAHAHAHAHA ....YOU DID MAKE IT UP, JUST AS I PREDICTED. WOTTA SCUMBAG
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Two questions, Dave. That's all you had to answer—mine, and Deadman's. But you couldn't manage it. You completely, utterly, catastrophically failed to answer either question. As a result, if anyone had any doubts about whether you could support your "catastrophic global flood" hypothesis, those doubts have been laid to rest.
And as an added bonus: you failed to answer Occam's question too! Sounds like a hat-trick to me!
Are you going to admit you were wrong? Of course not. But that's okay; you don't have to. It couldn't possibly be more obvious anyway.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Aftershave ... no, I'm NOT sorry I said the NKJV is not without errors. I'm quite sure it has a few. This has no bearing on the concept of inerrancy of the originals. Get a clue. Go back and do your remedial reading.
Now that the original texts of the Old Testament have been found, I'm sure you'll read up and see which parts have been translated correctly to the NKJV...
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Old Testament Original document found! Not In Hebrew!
A couple of boys interned in an israeli guarded palestinian "neighborhood" unearthed what religious scholors are calling the "Greatest Find In History"- A perfectly preserved scroll which turned out to be the original copy of the old testament. In Swahili! The various translation difficulties that have plagued translators throughout the ages are resolved. For example, many famous scholars have argued that Yohm can mean either "Era" or "day", chief among them is a man named Mr. Lando Calrissium who published a brilliant scholarly endeavor proving conclusively that it means "Era" in Genesis so we don't have to think that the earth is only 6000 years old. THis emmensely important work reconciled huge swaths of scientific investigation with the words of the Bible. Other important contributions have included his much more accurate translations of the flood story to show that it was definitely describing a local event and therefore also was not contradicting important scientific discoveries.
Imagine our surprise when we discovered that there were serious errors in the Hebrew translation. "All our work is bunk" lamented Lando. "After reading that disclaimer inside the front cover we were all feeling pretty foolish."
The scrolls had a sticker, stuck to the top of each scroll. The sticker, made of ultrafine lambskin and affixed with a clearish milkyish glue, read:
This scroll contains material on the chronology and events of creation. This information is not a fact regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered as the pure allegory for the human condition that it indeed is.
Approved By Yamashukalevi, grand Archmage of the tribe of israel written in the language of the swahili, the language which brings the listener closer to this god that we are making up. Thursday, March 28, 4021 BCE.
Lando is busy at work on his new translation of the Swahili where he will prove conclusively that aliens built the pyramids.
Welcome back, BWE.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
I have a hard time getting any answers out of Dave... let's try again.
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Afdave wrote : Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT.
I asked where Jesus told them to write the NT, and Davey replies with this.
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He didn't use those words. If you study the NT, you find that Jesus had a definite small group of "apostles." They even "elected" another one to replace Judas. In John 16:13, we find "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. Although we are only given glimpses into this, it is apparent that these apostles were given special authority by Jesus. Thus the early church only accepted writings as canonical if they were authorized or authored by apostles. An apostle was one who had a direct commission from Jesus. Paul received his commission later than the others and the genuineness of his commission was verified by other living apostles. Contrast this with modern day, self-proclaimed "apostles" whose commission HAS NOT been verified by living apostles who actually lived and walked with Jesus.
So to be clear, Jesus never told them to write the New Testment...
This thing about the Holy Spirit not speaking on it's own authority is a bit freaky eh? So much for the Trinity.
Let's then continue the discussion. Who wrote the following books. Mathew? Mark? Luke? John?
If you could also tell us WHEN they were written, added bonus points to you. (Ps, you need some, you have none).
And I think you missed the questions I have now asked you twice.
Questions about the resurection of Jesus (or the SUPPOSED resurection) : 1) How many angel/s was/were at the tomb. 2) Were they inside or outside of the tomb when the first people arrived 3) Who was the first people to arrive at the tomb?
God, Dave, if you can't answer questions properly about books you have read, how are you going to answer questions about books, and indeed entire subjects, you haven't read?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have to say at this point, Dave really makes me love science. Imagine if any real science today was done the way Dave does science: we'd have the continents flying around the globe, mountains flying up in weeks, flood waters washing everywhere (and leaving no trace) to name a few. Why doesn't Dave like our science method? Eh, too many assumptions. The sun just might not come back up tomorrow. And this is what I love, the same science method that built the technology that lets us communicate and watch 'the Hoff' helps us understand silly things like plate techtonics and relativity.
I know Dave brings on his own heaping portions of criticism everyday, but I think he likes it. And just like a bad car accident, we can't help but to watch either. Eric made a comment that he was like a pinata, and I would agree, but to him we're just as silly and fun to play with. And now we've reach 125 pages. I think for posterity we should catalog "Dave's take on:", for future generations to enjoy and learn from.
So here's to Dave for making me glad I don't inhabit his world!
... no, I'm NOT sorry I said the NKJV is not without errors. I'm quite sure it has a few. This has no bearing on the concept of inerrancy of the originals.
Until you can point anyone to a location where they can view an original papyrus or vellum scroll, stone or clay tablet (guess which one the nomadic Hebrews would have been most likely to keep records on?), it renders any argument you make about the concept of inerrency irrelevant and ridiculous.
DDTTD, find another chair to fly, 'cause I wouldn't trust you to walk my grandson across the street.
DDTTD, I keep reminding you of the single most relevant fossil specimens that blows so many of your theories (sic) out of the water but all you could do was cut and paste AiG crap in answer.
Anybody here ever hit a piece of plattenkalk with a hammer?
Since dave is out I guess it's once more into the breach for me.
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I have a hard time getting any answers out of Dave... let's try again.
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Afdave wrote : Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT.
I asked where Jesus told them to write the NT, and Davey replies with this.
He didn't, it's usually taken as implied though. Presuming the existence of a good god, one can then presume that god would not want books falsly attributed to him, especially if those books would cause people to stray from his plan. Therefore, everything in the bible is correct. See how much easier things are when you don't let facts get in the way.
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He didn't use those words. If you study the NT, you find that Jesus had a definite small group of "apostles." They even "elected" another one to replace Judas. In John 16:13, we find "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. Although we are only given glimpses into this, it is apparent that these apostles were given special authority by Jesus. Thus the early church only accepted writings as canonical if they were authorized or authored by apostles. An apostle was one who had a direct commission from Jesus. Paul received his commission later than the others and the genuineness of his commission was verified by other living apostles. Contrast this with modern day, self-proclaimed "apostles" whose commission HAS NOT been verified by living apostles who actually lived and walked with Jesus.
So to be clear, Jesus never told them to write the New Testment...
Pretty much
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This thing about the Holy Spirit not speaking on it's own authority is a bit freaky eh? So much for the Trinity.
I never quite understood why the trinity was important. Jesus as god made flesh, Jesus as a portion of god, Jesus as a lesser being than god, they all work pretty much the same IMO.
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Let's then continue the discussion. Who wrote the following books. Mathew?
According to the early church elders the Apostle Matthew was the author. According to modern textual analysis someone else seems likely. Matthew is verse by verse 50% compatible with Mark. The suggestion is that Matthew was written with Luke as a reference (with possible other unknown sources), which would be odd if Matthew wrote it since he was there first hand for the events.
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Mark?
According to 2nd century sources, Mark the disiple of Peter, taken from Peters accounts of the events.
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Luke?
According to 2nd centry sources, Luke the travel companion of Paul (Luke the Doctor). It is generally accepted that the author of Luke and the author of Acts are the same person because both books are addressed to the same person, and the style and vocabulary is consisten across both books. The author of Acts uses "we" when talking about Paul and his companions.
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John?
Historical, John the Apostle. Often thought to have been redacted (possibley more than once). If the late dating of the book is correct then John would likely not be the author. Also claims that anacronistic portions of text indicate that the author did not have 1st hand knowledge of the events.
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If you could also tell us WHEN they were written, added bonus points to you. (Ps, you need some, you have none).
Matthew: Religious view (destruction of the temple is prophesized) 60-65 C.E, Secular view 80-100 C.E. Mark: Religious view (destruction of temple is prophesized) 60-70 C.E, Secular view 60-80 C.E. Luke: 50-100 C.E. John: Religious view 50-70 C.E., Secular view 95-100 C.E.
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And I think you missed the questions I have now asked you twice.
Questions about the resurection of Jesus (or the SUPPOSED resurection) : 1) How many angel/s was/were at the tomb.
1 (Matthew, Mark) or 2 (Luke, John)
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2) Were they inside or outside of the tomb when the first people arrived
Inside (Mark, Luke), Outside (Matthew) or Neither (John has the angel appearing later after Mary fetched the apostles and they left)
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3) Who was the first people to arrive at the tomb?
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James (Matthew) or Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salmoe (Mark) or Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women (Luke) or Mary Magdalene (John)
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Come on Bible-Scholar-Davey. Easy peasy!
Indeed, all those years of bible bowl are finally good for something.
This thing about the Holy Spirit not speaking on it's own authority is a bit freaky eh? So much for the Trinity.
Diogenes replied:
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I never quite understood why the trinity was important. Jesus as god made flesh, Jesus as a portion of god, Jesus as a lesser being than god, they all work pretty much the same IMO.
According to Dave's docrine (I think), they are all equal. So if the Holy Spirit does no speak on his own authority, only what he has heard, from either the Father, or the Son, then it just sounds pretty stupid. Agreed?
As for the Gospels, who wrote them and when they were written, my point would have been that there are no origionals. Thus, the origional manuscript of, say, Mathew, does not exist, only copies. As for the dates and actual authors, nobody really knows, but it does get interesting when you look at the doctrine of salvation, because if Mathew wrote the gospel of Mathew, he never hear of it or forgot to write it down. In fact, the only Gospel that goes on and on about salvation by belief is John.
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Questions about the resurection of Jesus (or the SUPPOSED resurection) : 1) How many angel/s was/were at the tomb.
1 (Matthew, Mark) or 2 (Luke, John)
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2) Were they inside or outside of the tomb when the first people arrived
Inside (Mark, Luke), Outside (Matthew) or Neither (John has the angel appearing later after Mary fetched the apostles and they left)
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3) Who was the first people to arrive at the tomb?
Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James (Matthew) or Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salmoe (Mark) or Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women (Luke) or Mary Magdalene (John)
So, the 4 Gospels differ as to the account of the resurection. They differ on the number of angels, where the angels were, who came to the tomb first, to who Jesus appeared first etc.
This in itself leaves us with the question. If the Bible is inspired and 100% true, then why did god get so confused over the facts of the resurection? All four Gospels therefore cannot be true.
It's sort of funny to me that DaveTard2 --( is he now the no.#1 DaveTard, now that Dave"shmucky"Scot was killed in action?) -- anyway, it's funny that AirHead started this thread full of vim and vigor, proudly boasting about his "jet pilot" status and his mental abilities...and he's now reduced to this beppo the clown pinata figure. You can actually SEE him trying out various approaches as you look through the 125 pages of the thread. The cocksure "hero" ready to take on the heathens became the teacher and the sober scientist and the outraged citizen and the witty guy and then the righteous holyman and then the purveyor of radical truths, etc. etc...as he sought out approaches that "worked." The problem remained the same, though--that in order to succeed, he had to back up his "god hypothesis" claims better than any other competing claims, and with each approach, he failed...so now what is our pinheaded little palm pilot left with? All he has left is " the trickster" and " the hit-and-run insult comic " trying to be buddies with the enemy, alternating with "righteous teacher" as he lies his ass off daily. It's sort of like watching Reagan deteriorate from a pretty effective figurehead to "the great babbler" --mumbling about film scenes and plot points as though they were real. Dave came in with SUCH hope and fire in his eyes..and is now just content with his role as class clown. I imagine this is a pattern that he's followed much of his life... I think most people in academia recognized *brilliant* fellow students when they saw them, and they saw the above-average ones that didn't have to work very hard to make the grade...and they saw the middle-range students that knew they were less skilled, so they worked their asses off to get by. Then you have the odd types like Dave. Inferior in all respects, but possessed of an almost obsessive-compulsive ego-enhanced drive to try to succeed..while ultimately barely scraping by.
So, on this 125th page, I'll raise my glass of fine Irish whiskey to DaveDumbass, provider of amusement and a caution to parents everywhere: treat your kids better or they'll wind up like Dave Hawkins--as stevestory once called him -- "unskilled and unaware"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
William Kingdon Clifford, one of the greatest men of this century, said: "If there is one lesson that history forces upon us in every page, it is this: Keep your children away from the priest, or he will make them the enemies of mankind."
In every orthodox Sunday school children are taught to believe in devils. Every little brain becomes a menagerie, filled with wild beasts from ####. The imagination is polluted with the deformed, the monstrous and malicious. To fill the minds of children with leering fiends -- with mocking devils -- is one of the meanest and basest of crimes. In these pious prisons -- these divine dungeons -- these Protestant and Catholic inquisitions -- children are tortured with these cruel lies. Here they are taught that to really think is wicked; that to express your honest thought is blasphemy; and that to live a free and joyous life, depending on fact instead of faith, is the sin against the Holy Ghost.
Children thus taught -- thus corrupted and deformed become the enemies of investigation -- of progress. They are no longer true to themselves. They have lost the veracity of the soul. In the language of Prof. Clifford, "they are the enemies of the human race."
So I say to all fathers and mothers, keep your children away from priests; away from orthodox Sunday schools; away from the slaves of superstition.
They will teach them to believe in the Devil; in #### in the prison of God; in the eternal dungeon, where the souls of men are to suffer forever. These frightful things are a part of Christianity. Take these lies from the creed and the whole scheme falls into shapeless ruin. This dogma of #### is the infinite of savagery -- the dream of insane revenge. It makes God a wild beast -- an infinite hyena. It makes Christ as merciless as the fangs of a viper. Save poor children from the pollution of this horror. Protect them from this infinite lie.
This is from Ingersol's writing... sort of had to post it here, as it is on-topic to the tee.
The truth most likely is that it happened VERY QUICKLY--like weeks!. No one can ever really know for sure how exactly ... sorry, Deadman, you cannot either ... but a likely scenario is that the strata was laid during the Inundation Phase of the Great Flood of Noah. Then as the continents shifted the layers were folded, heated (and metamorphosed) and uplifted, all in a very short time span. These are all very well-understood processes and this is a very plausible scenario.
Time, Davie-doodles. Metamorphism isn't instantaneous, the reactions take time. nad yuor claim that it's plausible is belied by all the evidence.
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What is NOT a plausible scenario is that it happened very gradually--almost, ahem, imperceptibly--over millions and millions of years.
Your incredulity does not affect reality.
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Oh ... and here's some folding in the Tapeats Sandstone ... what say you about that?
It's folded. We know that some formations were folded before lithification (I even posted some pictures), just as we know that most formations were folded over many many years after lithification. I like Michael's Virgina saprolite ... how did that happen in weeks? Details, Davie, details.
Historical, John the Apostle. Often thought to have been redacted (possibley more than once). If the late dating of the book is correct then John would likely not be the author. Also claims that anacronistic portions of text indicate that the author did not have 1st hand knowledge of the events.
The problem with John the Apostle writing John is the fact that from all external information....John the Apostle was illiterate. This wouldnt completely void his authorship, since he obviously could have dictated the text, but given the text's rather eloquent form....it seems highly unlikely that an illiterate fisherman wrote the "best written" Gospel of the Bible.
Also...I agree with your claims that his information seems to be drastically different than the information presented by Peter via scholars.
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Aftershave ... no, I'm NOT sorry I said the NKJV is not without errors. I'm quite sure it has a few. This has no bearing on the concept of inerrancy of the originals. Get a clue. Go back and do your remedial reading.
Hmm...ok.... But... 1. We will NEVER find the originals. I can say with a great deal of confidence that if the originals were not preserved as "relics" that we will most certainly NEVER find them. 2. Many scholars argue that the concept of "originals" is invalid. Most writers make "drafts" of their works. Which "draft" is the original? Do we consider the 1st draft the original? Do we consider the final draft as original? ??
Also....you guys really need to quit referring to the scripture of the Jewish people as the "Old Testament". Depending on the "Old Testament" that you are using...the books contained within vary. Also...no matter which Old Testament you use....the Christian old Testament is very different from the Jewish scriptures.
Jesus normally "confirmed" the Torah....not the "OT". He might also have "confirmed" the validity of other Jewish scripture....but it was entirely seperate. When Jesus claimed the validity of the Torah...he was not claiming the validity of the entire Old Testament....no matter who is interpreting his statements.
This same argument can be used to defuse most idiot-Christian claims. When a passage in Revelations claims inerrancy...that does not extend to the entire New Testament....since all of the books are seperate works. When Paul confirms the accuracy of Christian Scripture...he is also not referring to the current New Testament....since it hadnt even been compiled yet.
The confusion is almost entirely based around the concept of "THE BIBLE". Fundamentalist Christians with very poor educations decided in the 1850's that "THE BIBLE" was one book. This was encouraged by long standing Christian traditions.
If you ever want to observe the stupidity of mid 19th century fundies...simply read the book of mormon. Joseph Smith was a 19th century fundie... Which explains why he thought that Native Americans had: Steel, horses, pigs, cows, goats, etc. Actually the entire book of Mormon is an exercise in historical and scientific ignorance.
The thing I (and Diogenes, for one) don't get about this line of "argument," Dave, is why you find it implausible that certain geological processes, like lithification of sediment, or metamorphization, or the bending and folding of metamorphized sediments, or the movement of continents over thousands of miles for that matter, could take millions of years, but find it much more plausible that these same processes could be completed in weeks.
Could you explain to us why you think this is, Dave? I know this is asking for a lot more introspection that you're really capable of, and of course we already know the answer, but I'd be curious to hear your take on why you think it's ludicrous that geological processes could take millions of years, but entirely believable, even likely, that they could wrap up in a matter of weeks. I've never heard anyone make this argument before, and I'd like to know why you think it makes sense.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I was just cruising by after a night of dousing my brain cells in ethanol and was idly looking at the thread titles, deciding if anything might be amusing, when it struck me that "Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" is much like AFarceDave the Palm Pilot himself--a fraud.
I mean, seriously, it's such a reflection of who DaveTard2 *IS*
He tossed out this thread, complete with a makeshift outline and loads of bravado....but none of the parts are HIS. He has shown consistently that he knows shit-for-shingles about the subject points, and they're all cobbled together from ICR, AIG and standard creationist con-job sites. NONE of it is original, none of it required any *real* thought, none of it shows any real time or effort expended in "learning" the arguments--it's just cut-and-paste regurgitation of the "work" ( such as it is) of others. And the really funny part is that he mangles even the parts that he's cobbling together.
I think it was Rilke's GrandDaughter that mentioned whenever he's left to his own devices and tries to put forward ideas that *might* be "original" to Dave--they're even more stupid than the creationist stuff he's stealing from others, like his portuguese nonsense, or his claim
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I can show how the Laws of Relativity make it conceivable that someone could "live outside of space and time" (P.6)
or
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P. 24: "'Homonoid' (there, is that better?) civilizations SHOULD BE a prediction of ToE and they were early on." "My statement says that there should be LIVING hominid (OK ... homonoid) civilizations.
Following the "portuguese affair" he's given up on even *trying* to offer up what might be his own ideas and now it's pretty much just a rehash of crap we've all heard and seen before.
I submit that the thread title should actually be: " Palm Pilot Productions Presents: The Creationist Arguments of Others"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I came late to the party so I'm a bit confused as too the history of this thread, but why exactly are we talking about rock formations? Let's say that dave is correct (rock formations and massive tectonic activity is possible in a matter of days, all caused by catastrophic events, most likely a flood). Now, how do we know these events happened 4500 years ago and not 45 million years ago? If you want to prove a young earth don't you need to start with the dating methods that show an old earth?
I came late to the party so I'm a bit confused as too the history of this thread, but why exactly are we talking about rock formations? Let's say that dave is correct (rock formations and massive tectonic activity is possible in a matter of days, all caused by catastrophic events, most likely a flood). Now, how do we know these events happened 4500 years ago and not 45 million years ago?
Don't worry about it, Diogenes: Dave is way more confused than you are. There are so many problems with his young-earth geology it's hard to even remember them all. As you point out, even if all these processes could have happened in a matter of days (or a matter of seconds), that wouldn't help Dave's argument that they all happened 4,500 years ago. On the other hand, since it can be shown that these processes do indeed take hundreds of thousands to millions of years, they're fatal to Dave's claims, and therefore he has to argue they could have taken much less time (although hundreds of years would probably work as well as the "weeks" he claims).
But of course all of his flood-mediated processes can't have happened, since there was no flood, since there was no water to have created a flood. Q.E.D.
(PuckSR, just so you know: I know that Dave's inability to prove his claims doesn't mean they're false. Of course, we know they're false on other grounds, but something happened or didn't happen independent of Dave's ability to find evidence for it.)
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If you want to prove a young earth don't you need to start with the dating methods that show an old earth?
Yes, he does need to start there, and he tried, back about 50 pages ago. He performed so miserably trying to discredit radiometric and radiocarbon dating methods that he finally gave up and moved on. I know Dave claims to have won those debates (he claims to win every debate), but I think even he knows he lost that one, just as he's lost every other debate so far.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
If you ever want to observe the stupidity of mid 19th century fundies...simply read the book of mormon. Joseph Smith was a 19th century fundie... Which explains why he thought that Native Americans had: Steel, horses, pigs, cows, goats, etc. Actually the entire book of Mormon is an exercise in historical and scientific ignorance.
There's a great essay by Hampton Sides about Mormons excitedly going on archaeological digs looking for evidence of those things, and coming back with their faiths shaken. 'Course, there are also AFDave types, who are oblivious and unshakeable.
I came late to the party so I'm a bit confused as too the history of this thread, but why exactly are we talking about rock formations? Let's say that dave is correct (rock formations and massive tectonic activity is possible in a matter of days, all caused by catastrophic events, most likely a flood). Now, how do we know these events happened 4500 years ago and not 45 million years ago? If you want to prove a young earth don't you need to start with the dating methods that show an old earth?
We've discussed that some. Dave thinks that microscopic amounts of 14C in coal and diamonds, and some interesting but preliminary and obviously incomplete results on measurement of helium in a few zircons, disprove the whole shebang. He's ignored 14C calibration, varves, U-Th dating, physics in general, chemistry in general, dendrochronology, SN1987A, fission-track datin, the Oklo reactor, and pulled the standard claim that the tens of thousands of concordant dates are the result of discarding hundreds of hundreds of thousands of discordant dates (and has stated explicitly that he thinks geologists would have no problem paying for all those resutls that get discarded).
There's a great essay by Hampton Sides about Mormons excitedly going on archaeological digs looking for evidence of those things, and coming back with their faiths shaken. 'Course, there are also AFDave types, who are oblivious and unshakeable.
Dont get me started on Mormons.... At least Fundie Christians have something to stand on. Their faith is based on texts written thousands of years ago...and the origins and originals have been lost...they can blame mistakes on "missing" data. Mormons have claimed INSANE things...that are easily proveable...and have failed to prove any of their unique claims.(Any of their claims that were not confirmed by general knowledge at that time....)
Thanks for the free geology education guys...fantastic.
Does anyone have a 2d seismic slide that shows dated horizons going back millions of years, with lots of faults.
Dave will have to show how over 6000 years the earth's crust would have to have a major Alaskan (like) earth quake every few years AND a FLUD to cover the faults. making several 100 or 1000's over the last 6000 years
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave will have to show how over 6000 years the earth's crust would have to have a major Alaskan (like) earth quake every few years AND a FLUD to cover the faults. making several 100 or 1000's over the last 6000 years
Can't have a flood—no water.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh that's right it flew off into space or something. So for his repeated floods where the water covered Mt Everest every few years after each earth quake the results of which one can see in seismic.
We would need to have cosmic flooding!!
Now those hindu creation myths are starting to make sense....except the earth was created from ambrosial butter churned from the milky cosmos by the gods and anti-gods both holding a ladle made from the cosmic snake wrapped around the cosmic mountain several trillion years ago.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
All he has left is " the trickster" and " the hit-and-run insult comic " trying to be buddies with the enemy, alternating with "righteous teacher" as he lies his ass off daily.
I think his current tactic is the "5-year-old tantrum".
"The flood is too the best explanation, and I'm going to hold my breath and beat my fists on the floor until you agree with me!"
"There couldn't have been a flood, Dave, because your flood requires a great deal of water, and you have no source of water available."
"Well, the flood happened, so there must have been water available for it."
"Dave, you're assuming what you're trying to prove. You assume there was a flood, so there must have been a source of water for it, therefore assuming the existence of a source of water, it is reasonable to conclude there was a flood."
"Exactly."
"But Dave, you can't assume there was a source of water, because you have no evidence for it."
"But since the flood happened, it is reasonable to assume there was a water source."
"And in what way is this not circular logic?"
"Because scripture tells me it is so."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Even if the cops had a video of him speeding through a red light, he would deny it in court, if he thought they would believe he was on a mission from god.
Fortunately for science the courts actually do apply the rules of evidence and all the religious nutjobs have failed the test and were found to be: a)lying or b)were unable to provide evidence that evolution is not true.
Next case.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Sorry about the drive by's. Work has me nailed down all summer. Very good run through of the geology thing. Y'know it corresponds with the fossil thing too.
e.g. divergent species on either side of a split with same fossils on both sides. That is the most compelling evidence for both plate tectonics and evolution to me. I don't have time to pull up the specifics now but Dave, I'd be willing to make you some sort of a bet that I could produce the evidence.
Correction: Zooplankton living in the sweat from Father Sky's balls after they were cut off.
Some balls are held for charity and some for fancy dress...
Argy, I'm glad you caught that very important bit of news from my blog.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
This is one of my first projects at Kids4Truth. We all worked very hard on it and I hope you enjoy it!
AFDave
:-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
This is one of my first projects at Kids4Truth. We all worked very hard on it and I hope you enjoy it!
AFDave
:-)
Great. Pass along the ignorance to the next generation.
If you can't see how this tripe misrepresents evolutionary theory, your intelligence has to be questioned. If you CAN see, but make the claim anyway, then you are a liar.
Very nice "cartoon," AirHead. Suitable for your ideas, doggerel and cheesy flash sans content. The only questions I had were why you didn't include your discussions here and the reasons why Paley's watchmaker is a fallacy.
By the way, you might want to look into compressing .swf files
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I guess Davie had us fooled. Turns out he's just another con artist.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Let me ask you a question, Dave: have you ever seen a watch split in half into two new watches, which might differ in microscopic ways from the original watch? Or two watches mating, and then a few, oh I don't know, minutes/hours/days/months later, a new litter of watches appearing? No? Didn't think so.
Has it ever occurred to you that the fact that watches cannot reproduce might pose a slight difficulty for your watch analogy?
And don't you think it's a bit, well, idiotic to try to use an analogy that was soundly rebutted over a century ago? I'd ask you to join the 21st century, but it's clear you're still mired in the 19th, or was it the 9th?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
When my son was around five years old, we saw a xian store at the mall and he asked me what it was. When I told him he started laughing (loudly) and said- seriously - "Dad, that's ironic isn't it?"
Any preacher with more than 2 suits is a shyster -Lenny Bruce
Dave, you are dishonest. You are all those other things too but actually you have the real bad guy thing going. You are dishonest and you are trying to profit from your dishonesty.
You and others like you make me sick.
You are comical in your stupidity and I can make you the butt of any joke because of it but you are preying on those weaker than you and you should be ashamed.
Portuguese, dicksweat. Remember?
You are a bad man.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Way back on page 36 of this thread , I told Dave this:
Quote
I believe what you want most is the imprimatur of groups like ICR. So you come here, spew your claims, get responses that you can re-package and show to ...oh, ICR members...so you can get their "approval" and access to their built-in audience. That is the real reason you are here, I would wager...You want to make money off kids and their parents. You need the backing of Christian groups and their audiences.
On page 60 of this thread, I reiterated:
Quote
I believe that you will use your experience here as a means of gaining the attention and approval of ICR/AIG so you can sell your kiddy-brainwash materials.
Dave responded (p.61) by saying: ""I have no plans to make any money from anything I write about Origins."
Notice the weasel-room he left himself. I trust that Dave, as the Treasurer of a tax-exempt non-profit organization, Kids 4 Truth, Int'l....isn't drawing a salary from the sales of this material.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
If we donate a penny using a credit card via Paypal, does it actually end up costing the recipient more than that for the transaction?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
A further point about your frequent (one might almost say omnipresent) use of argument by analogy, Dave. If your analogy is inapt (and the "watch" analogy certainly is, for the reasons I've already given), the whole argument fails.
You used the same technique in your Portuguese argument (if French, Spanish, and Portuguese all resemble each other, that's evidence that French + Spanish = Portuguese), your grand canyon argument (the Toutle River Canyon resembles the Grand Canyon, therefore they both must have formed from similar processes), and your human/chimp argument (chimps look more like gorillas than they do humans, hence chimps must be more closely related to gorillas than humans).
In every one of these cases, your analogy was inapt, inaccurate, or inapplicable, and as a result, your argument failed. Your "watch" argument (which is hardly original to you; it's just about 200 years old now) fails for exactly the same reason.
This is what you get for superficial analysis, Dave. You get laughter from your opponents. If you really want to learn the "truth," so you can teach it to your children, go out and take some undergraduate courses in geology, then go out and do some field work. You'll discover, as many formerly young-earth creationists have, that the evidence does not support an earth less than billions of years old.
Or, you can continue to rely on bad, unworkable analogies, and continue to get laughed at here. It's your choice, really.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In the back of my mind I knew Dave was busy in the off hours poisoning the minds of innocent little kids; but seeing his little video really sickened me.
You're like a pedophile Dave. You were intellectually molested by your father as an impressionable young boy. And you are compelled to do it to your kids and their peers as well.
And you fail to see the immorality of brainwashing them with your deliberate misinformation the same way NAMBLA members go to outrageous lengths to rationalize their behavior.
You are pitiful.
What kind of mother would hamstring her sons; put sand in their eyes and ice on their tongues? - Richard Thompson
Neither, but thanks for asking ... nice to have you back after such a long silence :-)
Eric...
Quote
Let me ask you a question, Dave: have you ever seen a watch split in half into two new watches, which might differ in microscopic ways from the original watch? Or two watches mating, and then a few, oh I don't know, minutes/hours/days/months later, a new litter of watches appearing? No? Didn't think so.
No, I haven't. Pretty ridiculous scenario isn't it? Now my turn. Have you ever seen a bacteria evolve into a jellyfish? And the jellyfish evolve into a squid? Squid to fish? Fish to amphibian? Huh? Have you now? No? Didn't think so. Just as ridiculous. Hence the poem. Hence the attempt to "turn the light on" for millions of Evolution-darkened young minds!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Let me ask you a question, Dave: have you ever seen a watch split in half into two new watches, which might differ in microscopic ways from the original watch? Or two watches mating, and then a few, oh I don't know, minutes/hours/days/months later, a new litter of watches appearing? No? Didn't think so.
No, I haven't. Pretty ridiculous scenario isn't it?
Yes, Dave, it is a pretty ridiculous scenario for a watch to self-assemble out of substances that are not now, nor ever have been, available naturally, such as stainless steel, refined metals of any sort, or painted surfaces. If that's what you're talking about, yeah, it sure is a ridiculous scenario.
But so what? Your "watch" scenario, as I pointed out, has absolutely nothing to do with biological evolution, and as an analogy fails on every conceivable level. Which is why it's a bad argument, Dave. And it's why it failed as an argument over a century ago, when way less was known about the way organisms evolve. But you, a hundred years later, are still taken in by it! Imagine my astonishment that you could know so little about any branch of science that you wouldn't see the gaping holes in it.
By contrast, everything that living organisms are made out of—amino acids, simple carbohydrates, fatty acids, are readily available, and there's no reason to think they weren't readily available 4 billion years ago. As you yourself know, amino acids have been detected in meteorites.
So did you have a point, Dave? No? Didn't think so.
Quote
Now my turn. Have you ever seen a bacteria evolve into a jellyfish? And the jellyfish evolve into a squid? Squid to fish? Fish to amphibian? Huh? Have you now? No? Didn't think so.
No, Dave, but I've seen two people have children, all of whom differ subtly from their parents. I've also seen dogs give birth to puppies, all of which differ in small ways from their parents. Is it ridiculous to suppose that, if we waited a few million years, the great-to-the-nth-power descendants of those dogs would look quite a bit different from what dogs look like today? Of course not; it would be entirely predictable.
Let's imagine, just for the sake of argument, that it only took a thousand years (or even a hundred years) for a jellyfish to evolve into a bumblebee. Would you ever expect to see such a thing, Dave? After all, you claim that the original ape "kind" has radiated into all the currently existing species of apes in a little less than five thousand years. Have you ever seen an ape "kind" evolve into a chimp? Have you now? No? Didn't think so. So are you claiming that, since you've never seen anything evolve into anything, that all the tens of millions of species of organisms alive today must all have existed at the time of your "flood" and consequently must have been on Noah's ark? Well, you must think so, since evidently your expectation is that you'd be able to see them evolve from their original "kind" to what they are today.
Or is sauce for the goose not sauce for the gander?
Quote
Just as ridiculous. Hence the poem. Hence the attempt to "turn the light on" for millions of Evolution-darkened young minds!
Only someone as pathetically ignorant as yourself, Dave, would find organisms evolving over time to be ridiculous. Only someone as absurdly dishonest as yourself would analogize between a non-reproducing watch and avidly-reproducing living organisms. Only someone as willfully blind, deliberately ignorant, and recklessly in disregard of reality as you would fail to understand the distinction. Only someone as dishonest as you are would even make such a stupid argument.
Once again, Dave's "arguments" (not that they're original to him or anything) get obliterated on contact with reality. The thing that's so astonishing is that Dave is dumb enough to even make an argument like this, evidently in anticipation of us sitting in front of our computers with little thought-bubbles over our heads, saying "Gosh, we never though of that before!"
One an entirely related note, I'm pleased to see you've given up on your "flood geology" as the intellectually-bankrupt exercise in stupidity it is. Although, since I brought it up, I'm sure you'll come right back with how you "won" that argument and "destroyed" all the objections to it.
You're as predictable as the day is long, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Nope. Sorry to disappoint you, Eric. We will talk more about the Flood (as long as you people keep answering me, that is -- I've been amazed at how long you have tried to keep up with me) ...
We will be doing a Flood Dynamation for K4T also as soon as I gather enough info ...
:-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
BWE ... you're losing your touch on insulting me ...
What happened to all the really colorful insults?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Nope. Sorry to disappoint you, Eric. We will talk more about the Flood (as long as you people keep answering me, that is -- I've been amazed at how long you have tried to keep up with me) ...
We will be doing a Flood Dynamation for K4T also as soon as I gather enough info ...
Keep up with you, Dave? You tripped over your shoelaces coming out of the gate.
I assume your "Flood Dynamation" will point out the fact that you do not have any evidence of a source of water to create the flood in the first place, so the whole scenario is necessarily fantastic and fictional, right? I mean, you're not going to mislead your defenseless audience on so basic a point, are you?
Of course you are.
There's a special place in he11 for people like you, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now my turn. Have you ever seen a bacteria evolve into a jellyfish? And the jellyfish evolve into a squid? Squid to fish? Fish to amphibian? Huh? Have you now? No? Didn't think so.
Yeah, "Eric", if that's your real name! And have you ever seen a cloud of dust condense into a star? and that star begin fusion? and then become a variable star? and then turn into a red giant, and then a white dwarf?
(everyone should do a Faux AFDave post once in a while. It's amusing)
Yes, I agree; I do them all the time.
The thing that's amazing about Dave, though, is it's actually pretty hard to do a parody of him that's more absurd than he is all by himself. Which, I guess, makes it kind of a rewarding challenge.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
"I'm ignorant, but look at my grin! I'm really, really happy! I'm not really a liar, because liars and cheats can't be happy, and. look!, I'm smiling and cheery, so I'm not a liar or a cheat."
What a completely impotent penis you are, AF! You and your flaccid whore'shit couldn't be more embarras'skin! No god could possibly exist that would accept the fealty of such as you.
Neither, but thanks for asking ... nice to have you back after such a long silence :-)
DDTTD, every claim you've advanced here so far has been so thouroughly disproved, demolished or exposed as a lie that it's ridiculous.
Here are two more of your lies.
Science will continue to expose the ignorant superstitious beliefs that are the core of your dogma, as it has in the past. It's inevitable DDTTD. Get over it, stud.
EVIDENCE SUPPORTING A FAST SPLIT BETWEEN CONTINENTS, BY AIR FORCE DAVE
As Dr Podovski clearly shows (http://www.answersingenesis/arefullofshit.php) :
Quote
the usual argument touted by atheist evilutionists regarding the age of basalts from the atlantic ridge (0 Million years) to the shores (160 Myears) is in fact convincing evidence supporting an instantaneous split between continents, occurring 4500 years ago.
Indeed, according to the groundbreaking hydroplate theory, the spacetime continuum in the oceanic crust became distorted, as the Altantic widened, due to the formidable lithospheric forces taking place (another prediction from Einstein's relativity). Thus, time goes faster as we walk towards the shores. This explains why radionuclids in basalts decayed millions of time faster near the shores, compared to the rift. Therefore, basalts appear millions of years older than they really are as they are sampled closer to the shores, because they formed solidified in a parallel hyperspace in the oceanic crust, whose spacetime becomes more and more distorted as we approach the shores. Of course, basalts sampled in this area show a normal decay rate in the laboratory: as soon as they are extracted from this parallel hyperspace, the decay of their radionuclids becomes normal again.
HOW STUPID would you have to be to believe That stuff.
uh...question already answered.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Well, I read back 15 pages or so and I didn't see it but, if we are still even trying to present real info to the Snake Oil ® salesman, did anyone mention the magnetic reversals?
My explanation is that God didn't actually Flud the earth, he stripped away the magnetosphere and let everyone get irradiated. Noahaster and his clan didn't build an ark, rather a giant lead coated sporting arena where everyone stayed until god gave us back the magnetothingy. and this time, god put north to the north and south to the south (mostly, noahs intruments weren't very precise so god didn't worry too much).
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I might have missed it, but I read the link, Jon, and I didn't see any "explanation" at all for the magnetic reversals. Dr. Brown claims he has an explanation, but then unaccountably fails to present it. Are we just supposed to take him at his word?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No, NO, eric!! You see, you have to BUY THE BOOK so that Waltzy will then disclose the secrets of his whizzing hydroplates that zoom around the earth at 1 km/hr...kind of like how AirHead was told that **if he bought the books,** "Dr." Humphreys of ICR would disclose his helium ratios for the Fenton Hill zircons...except..well, he didn't.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No, NO, eric!! You see, you have to BUY THE BOOK so that Waltzy will then disclose the secrets of his whizzing hydroplates that zoom around the earth at 1 km/hr
Oh. Is this, like, you know, one of those infomercials you see at two in the morning when some guy talks about how he used to slave away at a dead-end job for years until he discovered an ancient wealth-creating secret, which he can't wait to share with you once you buy his 99-dollar book along with the poorly-produced, bug-ridden CD-ROM with the cheesy soundtrack?
I wonder if that's why Dave doesn't ever post any quotes from Walt's book. He's afraid Walt will sue him for copyright infringement.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Grave robbers took all the lead during roman times to make eating utensils and vitamin pills. All we have is a written document by the roman governor of the times claiming the jews started all the wars in history. Of course he was drunk and trying to tell the legionaires who was boss. Since the Anti defamation league's writings were burned at alexandria, there is no way to know if he issued a formal apology through his publicists or not.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Now my turn. Have you ever seen a bacteria evolve into a jellyfish? And the jellyfish evolve into a squid? Squid to fish? Fish to amphibian? Huh? Have you now? No? Didn't think so.
Ha ha ha, he got you, Eric. Have you ever seen U-238 decay for 4.5 billion years, have you ever seen Darwin, Einstein, Jesus, or Noah? Haver you ever seen a global flood, creation, Adam, or Eve? Have you even seen a god create anything? So what are you doing claiming that all these things happened?
.....only Creationists are allowed to ask questions that can't be proved ....without an intelligence transplant.
...and besides he asked first nya nya nya thrrrrrrp.
And his Daddy TOLD him it was true...so it IS true...so there.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
- Well, I've seen a horsefly, I've seen a dragonfly. I've seen a housefly. I've seen a peanut stand and heard a rubber band. I seen a needle that winked its eye. But I be done seen about ever'thing When I see a jellyfish turn into a squid
I seen a front porch swing heard a diamond ring I seen a polka-dot railroad tie But I be done seen 'bout ever'thing When I see a jellyfish turn into a squid
I saw a clotheshorse He rear up and buck And they tell me that a man made a vegetable truck (I didn't see that I only heard)
I heard a fireside chat - I saw a baseball bat But I be done seen 'bout ever'thing When I see a jellyfish turn into a squid
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I might have missed it, but I read the link, Jon, and I didn't see any "explanation" at all for the magnetic reversals. Dr. Brown claims he has an explanation, but then unaccountably fails to present it. Are we just supposed to take him at his word?
I suppose that's pretty much it.
What I was referring to was his "there are no reversals" lie and his Hovind-esque "a compass wouldn't change direction" claim. Obviously he's counting on his audience to be too stupid to realize that a large constant signal (the present magnetic field) plus a smaller signal that varies from positive to negative (the recording in the rocks of the paleomagnetic field) adds up to a varying but always positive overall signal (what's measured by the magnetomoter as it moves along the ocean floor).
That explanation is wrong, as detailed magnetic maps clearly show. There are no magnetic reversals on the ocean floor, and no compass would reverse direction if brought near an alleged “reversed” band.
OMG. Stupid doesn't do this stuff justice.
Innocent until proven guilty? Alleged???
Fuck.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
What I was referring to was his "there are no reversals" lie and his Hovind-esque "a compass wouldn't change direction" claim. Obviously he's counting on his audience to be too stupid to realize that a large constant signal (the present magnetic field) plus a smaller signal that varies from positive to negative (the recording in the rocks of the paleomagnetic field) adds up to a varying but always positive overall signal (what's measured by the magnetomoter as it moves along the ocean floor).
Well, if people like Dave are his target audience, his assumption is certainly warranted.
But regardless of whether Dr. Brown thinks there's an actual reversal, he still hasn't explained why the magnetic profile is what it is. He doesn't deny that the profile varies (in fact he's got a little diagram of it). So what's his explanation for the profile?
I didn't see one. Maybe there's one in the book, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have, right here in my office, a small piece of equipment that can measure salinity relatively accurately to parts per thousand. Any guesses on how it works? Any guesses on what it measures?
Hint: you don't need to know much but you need to know more than you do.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I can just see the watchmaker, searching with his hand behind him, muttering.
"Where the hel! did I put that damm viamin-c gene wrench?" Oh he11, I'm tired, I'll just stick them down over by those fruit trees and forget about that gene on these ones."
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
But regardless of whether Dr. Brown thinks there's an actual reversal, he still hasn't explained why the magnetic profile is what it is. He doesn't deny that the profile varies (in fact he's got a little diagram of it). So what's his explanation for the profile?
I didn't see one. Maybe there's one in the book, Dave?
Maybe as the continents were zooming around the oceans at 100 mph, they were also spinning, and the spinning created a magnetic field.
But regardless of whether Dr. Brown thinks there's an actual reversal, he still hasn't explained why the magnetic profile is what it is. He doesn't deny that the profile varies (in fact he's got a little diagram of it). So what's his explanation for the profile?
I didn't see one. Maybe there's one in the book, Dave?
Maybe as the continents were zooming around the oceans at 100 mph, they were also spinning, and the spinning created a magnetic field.
In my mind I can picture Dave reading that and then nodding thoughtfully.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
But have we lost our precious Davie-boo, other than the odd cartoon link and little blustery posts? I'm am afraid we have, that perhaps we have been too mean just at the point at which he was going to provide the masses of evidence needed to support his statements.
His scientific expertise is wasted on children. Who else could have told us how rivers climbed the hills in order to cut them down, who else could have explained the iridium layer as a flood deposit, who else could have explained the mechanisms of continents moving faster than the speed limit which produced cool crusts far from spreading centers?
It does seem in retrospect, and given his potential moneymaking venture, that his empty boasts of "winning" arguments that he clearly lost according to any reasonable standards, along with his refusal to admit to being wrong about almost anything at all (when he was wrong about well nigh everything), was intended for the know-nothings he wishes to con. Now, I don't doubt that he is unteachable and unwilling to admit mistakes in general, however the fact that he had some lies to sell likely made him appear to be even more clueless and arrogantly ignorant than he would otherwise have been.
There are people who would believe his claims, and they are exactly his market. He may be a competent businessman indeed, who knows that denial of all problems will sell among the naive.
It's the sickening aspect in this whole episode. It's fun having a bobble-doll that you can punch, only to have the head bobble back with the same clueless grin every time. But he's not content to grin comically at us, he has the huckster's insincere smile and a suitcase full of poison to peddle as cures.
He's had it with the "atheistic questions," he's got the Truth, and not incidentally the Truth will make you rich. What's being set free compared with a lucrative mission to imprison minds into a recursive worldview which recoils against any threatening thoughts?
Personally, I'm happy AFDave didn't learn anything. As an atheist, it benefits my side when christians choose not the reasoned intellectualism of a Ken Miller, but the raving lunacy of an AFDave. AFDave is like a walking 'this is your brain on fundiness' poster.
About two hours ago, MSNBC had an AFDave on--preacher who was talking about how the bible tells us there'll be nuclear war in the middle east, and we are now just a few years away from the Rapture or whatever. He was accomplishing the same thing AFDave accomplishes. He makes christians look stupid.
Glen, thanks for the compliment! I'm glad to know ...
a) That you agree that I have scientific expertise, and b) That you think using scientific expertise to train children is a waste of one's time
Thanks, Crabby, for pointing out Glen's quote ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Glen, thanks for the compliment! I'm glad to know ...
a) That you agree that I have scientific expertise, and b) That you think using scientific expertise to train children is a waste of one's time
To the sarcasm-impaired ArrogantFundyDave:
Deliberately teaching known false information to innocent, trusting children and charging money for it is truly despicable. Davie-doo, you really are a POS stuck on the bottom of Christianity's shoe.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Yes, AirHead, your level of scientific expertise is quite evident in these pages. It's found in your claims about "existing outside of time and space," and "hominoid civilizations" and mile-high fresh flood deposits that can't slump, and stars "created" to give the illusion of distance and age -- for the purely esthetic pleasure of man... and a thousand different topics that you clearly showed your colors in. Bravo! Dave, p.10, this thread:
Quote
Yes. I'm dangerous and so was Newton and Maxwell. Look out world!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
PROOF OF GIGANTIC EARTH MOVEMENTS AS PROPOSED BY THE HYDROPLATE THEORY AND OTHER CREATIONIST THEORIES
SUBTITLE: Proof once again that Uniformitarian theories of the origin of crustal features are LOONEY!!
Sorry to be so scarce, guys ... I forgot about Vacation Bible School this week ... I volunteered to teach, so it was a busy week! You know ... indoctrinating kids with my evil Bible information!!
Remember this picture? Well ... since you all are competent scientists here, I'm sure you all know that basically the whole string of mountains on the western side of North and South America are FOLDED MOUNTAINS.
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The great Rocky Mountain chain, especially as developed in the Southern Rockies, is essentially a series of great folds. (Charles Schuchert: Stratigraphy of the Eastern and Central United States New York, Wiley, 1943, pp. 117-122.)
The most conspicuous and perhaps also the most significant structural feastures of the face of the earth are the great belts of folded mountains, like those of the Himilayas, the Andes, the Urals and the Appalachians, the so-called orogenic belts. Along these long and relatively narrow zones, great thicknesses of dominantly marine sediments have been squeezed together and thrust one upon the other to form highly elongated folds with axes essentially parallel to that of the belt. (W. H. Bucher, "Fundamental Properties of Orogenic Belts," Transactions, American Geophysical Union, Vol. 32, August 1951, p. 514.)
Interesting, isn't it? Looks like both of the North and South American continents might have "slammed on the brakes" quite suddenly, wouldn't you say? Possibly after a little "westward safari" originating at the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, perhaps?
Hmmmmm ...
Wasn't there some guy named Walt Brown that proposed something like this?
Oh, yes! Something like a Hydroplate Theory, wasn't it, now?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, Davie-diddles, you neglected to explain the measurements of age and magnetic striping in the floor of the Atlantic. Feel free to interpret the data as something other than age, but your "theory" is dead in the insufficient-for-a-global-flood water until you have a coherent explanation for all the evidence..
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 04 2006,17:43)
Interesting, isn't it? Looks like both of the North and South American continents might have "slammed on the brakes" quite suddenly, wouldn't you say? Possibly after a little "westward safari" originating at the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, perhaps?
Nope, Davie-poo. The strain rate would be way too high; you'd get rubble rather than folded mountains.
Quote
Hmmmmm ...
Wasn't there some guy named Walt Brown that proposed something like this?
Oh, yes! Something like a Hydroplate Theory, wasn't it, now?
Hydroplate fantasy. Long debunked. References already provided.
Being a man of humble intelligence and very little knowledge of geology I find these discussion immensely useful. I've been keeping track in a little notebook of who I think is winning the debate, and with the return of AFDave, now seems the perfect time to publish the results.
Predictive Power of the Theory Scientists: Have theory that explains folds in the earth's crust Creationists: Have theory that explains folds in the earth's crust Winner: I have no idea which of these is more correct, so I call it a tie
Popularity Scientists: The entire scientific community Creationists: The entire evangelical community Winner: Given the resulsts of last two elections, I'd say Creationists win this one
Apparel Scientists: White lab coats Creationists: Large variety of costumes, clergy are particularly well known for their exotic plumage. Also I heard some turks are creationists and my recollection from HS history was that they tend to wear funny hats and pointy shoes Winner: Narrow victory to scientists. While creationists have alot of good costumes they are restricted to a fairly small subset of the believers. Most of them seem to be just phoning it in at this point, with the suit and tie style.
Source Material Scientists: Exceedingly boring papers written so as to be almost incomprehensible to normal people. Way too many papers don't include any mention of dinosaurs Creationists: Lots of interesting stories that cover a large number of themes: Talking animals, wrath of god, sex, dragons, excrement humor, unicorns, fire-breathing sea monsters, lists of those funny laws that were real at one point, magic, violence, golden hemorrhoids, zombies, demons, human/angel hybrids, giants, penis poetry, and finally, the four horsemen of the apocalypse Winner: Creationists by a landslide. Inclusion of more dinosaurs would have made it better but even the most mind numbing portions of the bible don't hold a candle to the average peer reviewed paper.
Final Scorecard Creationists win 17-4. Congratulations AFDave and the faithful hordes of his lurking supporters.
The strain rate would be way too high; you'd get rubble rather than folded mountains.
Oh, puleeezz! This from JonF's Orogeny Lab at MIT no doubt.
What's YOUR explanation for 6000(?) miles of folded mountains along the western side of BOTH Americas? Let me guess ... it includes something about "millions and millions of years" ? Perhaps? What mechanism, JonF?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The strain rate would be way too high; you'd get rubble rather than folded mountains.
Oh, puleeezz! This from JonF's Orogeny Lab at MIT no doubt.
What's YOUR explanation for 6000(?) miles of folded mountains along the western side of BOTH Americas? Let me guess ... it includes something about "millions and millions of years" ? Perhaps? What mechanism, JonF?
Puerile attempts at ridicule don't make a case, Davie-pie.
Yes, millions of years, plus plate tectonics. Extremely low strain rates. Well known to be required to produce the results we see.
Okay, Dave, right out of the gate, your "Catastrophic Global Flood" hypothesis bites the big one, because you ain't got any water. You need water to have a flood, Dave, and until you can come up with water, you have no flood. No water, no "hydroplate" theory either.
Put up or shut up, Dave, but I'm not letting you get away with this.
And one more time, Dave: why do you think it's perfectly reasonable that those folds could have been created by continents crashing together at hundreds of miles an hour (without shattering), but completely ludicrous to think it could have happened over millions of years? Can you explain, in your own words, why the latter is inherently not credible? You've been asked this question at least three times, and so far we've heard nothing out of you.
Tell you what, Dave. Let me put your thumb in a vise. You know, just the regular kind of wood vise every wood shop in every high school in America has. Now, let me turn the screw on it. I promise I'll only turn the screw a quarter of a turn an hour. Or even a quarter of a turn a day. Or a week, take your pick. Now, if I turn it slowly enough, is there ever a rate slow enough that your thumb won't eventually be squashed flat?
Now, instead of a woodshop vise, we have a continent, weighing maybe 10^19 kg. We'll move it at as slow a rate as you want; an inch a decade, let's say. You think that amount of mass can't push up a mountain over millions of years? Why is that? Because you don't want to believe it can?
And, of course, you haven't answered a single one of the two dozen questions posed to you just on your flood, but it bears repeating that the first, most critical question for you to answer is, "Where's the evidence for your 'fountains of the deep'"?
Answer it or admit that your hypothesis is wrong, Dave. Actually, don't bother; we already know it's wrong.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Looks like both of the North and South American continents might have "slammed on the brakes" quite suddenly, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, and my ass looks like a couple of pressed hams when I put it on a pane of glass; what's your point? Congratulations, you've reached the level of inquiry of a 5 year old.
Shit, or get off the pot. Show me the data that the picture DOESN'T show, like a record of the stresses on the plate or perhaps some geological evidence that would indicate that plates have been only flying around for 6000 years, or STFU.
You know, based on Dave's commentary accompanying his picture of those mountain folds, I'm almost led to conclude that he believes the notion of Africa and North and South America moving apart from the mid-Atlantic ridge is original to Dr. Brown's "hydroplate" "theory." (I'm assuming the emphasis in the Bucher quote is Dave's.) Could Dave be that naive? He sure could.
In case this is news to you, Dave, I should point out that plate tectonics actually is the explanation for why the coasts of South America and Africa match up. It's also the explanation for why both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have been moving apart from the mid-Atlantic ridge for the past hundred million years or so. It explains why the oceanic crust gets older as one moves away from the mid-Atlantic ridge. It also explains how island arcs are in the process of accreting themselves against the western margin of the North American craton, causing all those mountain ranges (both the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas) to continues to rise up, even as we speak. It explains how the Pacific Plate has ground against the South American craton to force up the Andes.
Plate tectonics explains all of the features of continental drift, synclines, geoclines, subduction zones, and spreading centers, in a logically consistent, cohesive, and comprehensive fashion. It fits with and is supported by the evidence. And it does all this without recourse to miracles, the will of God, supernatural intervention, or the suspension of natural law (and it does it without requiring that the continents rush around the globe like rabid lemmings at hundreds of miles an hour). And it certainly doesn't require millions of cubic miles of water for which you have no evidence it ever existed, nor do you have an explanation for what became of it.
I love how Dave says things like "I bet you guys didn't know there were folded mountains (as opposed to the non-folded variety, apparently) in North America," like this is supposedly news or like it supports his hare-brained "argument."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yes, millions of years, plus plate tectonics. Extremely low strain rates. Well known to be required to produce the results we see.
Well known HOW? From the famous MIT Orogeny Lab? Or ... perhaps ... well known because ... well ... just BECAUSE! After all ... everyone just KNOWS that's how it works!!
You guys are hilarious!
Eric, most of the underground water is gone, my friend. I gave you a perfectly plausible accounting of where the water could have come from and where it is distributed today.
Eric, about your wood vise scenario ... the difference with mountains is that in your scenario, they would CRACK and SHATTER and GET CRUSHED, not bend. In my scenario, the sediments are still soft and pliable due to recent sedimentation in some cases, and partial melting in other cases.
You have no proposed mechanism to SOFTEN your sediments.
Creekbelly ... how did you know that most interesting factoid that you shared? Did you use a mirror? I have this really hilarious mental image of you in my head now. You may want to post a picture of yourself so this image I have does not persist!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eric, most of the underground water is gone, my friend. I gave you a perfectly plausible accounting of where the water could have come from and where it is distributed today.
Dave, are you ever going to understand what's wrong with your "hypothesis."? "Plausibility gets you absolutely nowhere. Evidence is what gets you somewhere. Where is the evidence that your "fountains of the deep" ever existed? You do not have have any, despite being asked over and over again for weeks now.
It's entirely "plausible" that I could have a Klein bicycle, isn't it? I mean, I certainly make enough money to own one, and one would cost a fraction of the bike I actually own. But where's the evidence that I have one, Dave? Here's the evidence of the bike I actually do own.
Do you get the distinction, Dave? Aside from the fact that your explanation is utterly implausible, it wouldn't matter even if it were, because you have not the merest scrap of evidence for it.
And "most of the water is gone"? What is that supposed to mean, Dave? Gone where? Into the ectoplasmic alternative dimension it came from? Saying it's "gone" is supposed to be an explanation or accounting for it?
Quote
Eric, about your wood vise scenario ... the difference with mountains is that in your scenario, they would CRACK and SHATTER and GET CRUSHED, not bend. In my scenario, the sediments are still soft and pliable due to recent sedimentation in some cases, and partial melting in other cases.
You have no proposed mechanism to SOFTEN your sediments.
Dave, your ignorance knows no bounds, even after you've been educated. In the actual, real accounting for those folds, we know exactly how those sediments bent, rather than fractured. Heat and pressure is what it takes, and Deadman gave you the numbers. That you refuse to believe them, based on nothing other than your own incredulity, changes nothing.
Quote
I **didn't** ask about it "drying out," I asked specifically about METAMORPHOSIS...YOU say you have a better theory than any other, Dave. Show me, punkin'--as I said, my bet is you can't even BEGIN to tell me how those mountains metamorphosed and so far, I am quite correct in that. What that gneiss requires is OVER 320oC and OVER 3 kilobars of pressure, AirHead. Get to work on avoiding, Dave.
So in what way does that amount to "no proposed mechanism for softening those sediments?
Meanwhile, you haven't even proposed evidence for the existence of your sediments, since you don't have a flood.
And you still haven't answered the question of why there's nothing implausible about continents rushing around at hundreds of miles an hour, but it's ludicrous that they could be moving inches a year over millions of years. Can you feel the motion of the continents, Dave? Can you see it?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Plate boundaries presently active have been mapped and their relative motions to each other resolved such that the absolute motion of the plates relative to the core of the Earth can be understood. Measurements by geostationary satellites have proved beyond any possible doubt that the continents and ocean floors are moving relative to each other. Seismic studies using P and S waves and High-resolution 3-D tomographic images of the crust and upper mantle show GREAT pictures of what IS underground, AIRHEAD, but you're citing crap from over a half-century ago, so you don't have a clue as to what *IS* known in geology and geomorphology today. Your ignorance is your shield, and frankly, I'm sick of dealing with your childish shit. Studies have been performed on all types of minerals and rocks showing how they are changed by heat and pressure, we SEE subduction occuring and mountains being raised today, so that I or anyone willing to do the work of studying can actually answer the questions you ask. On the other hand, AirHead, you can't answer any of the questions I ask except to say " I don't know" or to make up stories that have no evidence to back them in the least. This makes a great deal of difference in why your "theory" simply doesn't hold up and doesn't have the same value. DETAILS, Dave, EVIDENCE, shit that you DON'T HAVE, but which allows me or , again, ANYONE willing to READ --the ability to answer your questions in excruciating detail that you can't begin to match with your silly fucking "hydroplate" theory -- that doesn't even hold up THEORETICALLY without evoking miracles to prevent the oceans from boiling off completely. You've offered NO "explanation" of where the water came from except to say " well it was underground" WHERE? SHOW ME EVIDENCE OF THIS...and don't dare point to boreholes because the fact is that for any borehole you point to I can point to five that DON'T show underground water, but molten sulfur or simply hot earth. NO SEISMIC studies done show the evidence you claim about huge underground reservoirs, so shitheads like your hydroplate buddy have to say " well, they collapsed and the water flew off into space after the flood" which is just the same as saying "elves made the water, then stole the water back" The bottom line for me is not JUST that you're stupid, dave, you're DELIBERATELY stupid, because you have a computer that could lead you to hundreds of sites and references on geology, you have a world-class library near you that you could check books out from that wouldn't be a HALF-CENTURY old or more, like the ones you cite. You have Universities near you that you COULD learn from, but the fact of the matter is that you have such low ethics and morals that you won't DO that, you'd rather leech off of children like the parasite you are.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Totally off topic, but I'm soooo jealous. My beatiful Raleigh Pro '72 stolen from the Clark County Court House fourteen years ago was the last truly gorgeous bike I have owned. . . Nothing like desert wind rushing by riding down the Kyle Canyon Road. Now back to your regularly scheduled afdave drivel.
-------------- Beauty is that which makes us desperate. - P Valery
Oh, and here's another bottom-line fairy-tale killer for you, AirHead. You are on the record for accepting the 2300-2500 BCE dates for the flood. You TRIED to push the "flood" dates back to 5000 BCE or more, but when I asked you to support that biblically, you couldn't, so you went back to the original dates you agreed to, Dave...and the problem remains the same as I mentioned on page TWELVE of this thread...
During this period that the BIBLE says the "global flood " happened, the records of various groups continue uninterrupted: By 2375 BC, most of Sumer was united under one king, Lugalzaggisi of Umma, Sumerian records continue on.Uninterrupted by any mention of global flooding . The earliest surviving inscriptions in Akkadian go back to 2500 B.C. and are the oldest known written records in a Semitic tongue. They continue in an unbroken record.
Egyptian history during the Old Kingdom (2700-2200 BC) continues unbroken by global flooding . 2200 bc is the date of oldest existing document written on papyrus, prior to that, we have inscriptions and incised clay tablets as well. The Chinese had settled in the Huang He (or "Ho" in some translations) , or Yellow River, valley of northern China by 3000 BC. In the Indus Vallley, we have the Early Harappa Phase C, 2550 BC which continues unbroken to c.1900 BC . We also have the early minoan and mycenean groups in the mediterranean, and as for the new world, Researchers publishing in the Dec. 23 edition of the scientific journal Nature date the first complex society of the Americas, from roughly 3000 to 1800 B.C. NONE of these groups were destroyed by any "global flood" NONE. This KILLS all your mindless speculation and claims of hydroplates and everything else, jackoff, because the fact is that the dates you agree to don't SHOW what you want..and there's both written and archaeological evidence showing this. So when you're taking money from the parents of those kids, have the decency to remember that, scumbag
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The most conspicuous and perhaps also the most significant structural feastures of the face of the earth are the great belts of folded mountains, like those of the Himilayas, the Andes, the Urals and the Appalachians,
OK DDTTD, I'll play State Trooper for a few minutes and try to use analogies your feeble brain can grasp. I realize you're from the Show Me State. (Too stupid to understand written or verbal instructions, you need to be shown how it works.)
'Splain to me, stud, how the Appalachians got folded up?
You (North America) are hauling ass west on I-70 when you see the Pacific Plate moseying along in the fast lane at 50 mph. You slam on the brakes, but too late, you've been trying to convince your wife it's time to get busy if you're gonna father all those children you've planned for, hit the Pacific Plate and the front end (the Coastal Range, NOT the Rockies DDTTD) buckles up. I've seen a few car wrecks and I can understand your explanation.
Show Me DDTTD, who or WHAT was tailgating you, ran up your tailpipe and caused the Appalachians and why that damage on your rear end looks like it's from a previous accident?
Same for the Rockies DDTTD, damage from a PREVIOUS accident but after you got rear ended.
Answer quick bub cause the DUI test unit as well as the drug sniffing dog is on its way. Your "car" has clearly been involved in multiple wrecks at multiple times and you are clearly a wreckless driver or You're a LIAR!
It's entirely "plausible" that I could have a Klein bicycle, isn't it? I mean, I certainly make enough money to own one, and one would cost a fraction of the bike I actually own.
Klein bikes used to be very expensive. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, Kleins were handmade with ungodly amounts of time spent on the detailed finish of the welds. These frames costed upwards of $5000. Just for the frame. For context, at this time, you could get top of the line Italian frame with Campy Super Record for $900. It wasn't until after Klein was bought by Trek did the prices of his bikes come down into the affordable range.
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But where's the evidence that I have one, Dave? Here's the evidence of the bike I actually do own.
Serotta is cool, but Shimano? A sweet ride like that really deserves Campagnolo.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Dave, are you ever going to understand what's wrong with your "hypothesis."? "Plausibility gets you absolutely nowhere. Evidence is what gets you somewhere. Where is the evidence that your "fountains of the deep" ever existed? You do not have have any, despite being asked over and over again for weeks now.
OK. So you're a little slow and have missed the evidence? That's fine. I'll review for you.
EVIDENCE FOR THE HYDROPLATE THEORY 1) The Mid-Ocean Ridge which appears to be a massive "rip" in the earth's surface 2) Folded mountain ranges which extend almost the full length of North and South America -- it appears that the entire landmass took a westward ride away from the MAR and then had a very sudden stop while sediments were still soft 3) Massive quantities of sedimentary rock -- this indicates massive quantities of WATER, does it not? Or would you propose gasoline? Elmer's glue perhaps? Maybe another liquid which no longer exists? 4) Tons of marine fossils on mountain tops indicating they used to be underwater 5) The fact of billions of fossils all over the earth argues strongly for CATASTROPHIC burial ... not slow burial 6) Saltwater found in deep holes in Bavaria and Russia
...and these are just some of the evidences I have covered ...
Ones I have not covered yet include plateaus, ocean trenches, frozen mammoths, limestone, salt domes, and many, many more ...
Eric...
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So in what way does that amount to "no proposed mechanism for softening those sediments?
Quite simple. Anyone can quote a temperature and pressure requirement to form gniess, Eric. It is quite another matter to propose a MECHANISM for how this pressure and temperature was achieved.
But go ahead, give it a try. I'd like a good laugh this morning!
Eric...
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And you still haven't answered the question of why there's nothing implausible about continents rushing around at hundreds of miles an hour, but it's ludicrous that they could be moving inches a year over millions of years.
Two things. "Rushing around" is not what I say. I say they moved away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge, then stopped rather suddenly. This caused folding and thickening onthe leading edge of the plate and generated massive quantities of heat and pressure leading to metamorphism. Secondly, I do not say it's ludicrous for the continents to move inches per year. I recognize that they do. I simply say this is inadequate to produce the phenomena we actually observe. Remember, Eric, good scientists like yourself should be concerned about WHAT WE ACTUALLY OBSERVE.
Deadman...
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Plate boundaries presently active have been mapped and their relative motions to each other resolved such that the absolute motion of the plates relative to the core of the Earth can be understood. Measurements by geostationary satellites have proved beyond any possible doubt that the continents and ocean floors are moving relative to each other. Seismic studies using P and S waves and High-resolution 3-D tomographic images of the crust and upper mantle show GREAT pictures of what IS underground, AIRHEAD, but you're citing crap from over a half-century ago, so you don't have a clue as to what *IS* known in geology and geomorphology today.
Actually I have a better understanding of what's there and how it got there than you do. And it should be an embarrassment to you to know that way back in the 40's (or was it 50's) they knew that the mountains looked folded, then I have made you aware of the shift from Uniformitarianism to catastrophism of Ager and others, and yet today in 2006 you still want to promote your archaic fairy tale of "millionsofyearsianism."
Deadman...
Quote
Studies have been performed on all types of minerals and rocks showing how they are changed by heat and pressure, we SEE subduction occuring and mountains being raised today, so that I or anyone willing to do the work of studying can actually answer the questions you ask.
I agree with you that it takes heat and pressure. My question to you is WHAT MECHANISM caused the heat and pressure to occur in such a vast scale that was required to produce the phenomena we actually see? Subduction? OK. It's occurring. How much? How does this provide a mechanism for explaining the phenomena?
Deadman...
Quote
You've offered NO "explanation" of where the water came from except to say " well it was underground" WHERE? SHOW ME EVIDENCE OF THIS...
I did and you blew it off, like you do all evidence that you don't like.
Deadman ...
Quote
Oh, and here's another bottom-line fairy-tale killer for you, AirHead. You are on the record for accepting the 2300-2500 BCE dates for the flood. You TRIED to push the "flood" dates back to 5000 BCE or more, but when I asked you to support that biblically, you couldn't, so you went back to the original dates you agreed to, Dave...and the problem remains the same as I mentioned on page TWELVE of this thread...
I've been over this before. Two things. First, it does no damage to Creationism to move the Flood back to 5000 BC and Creation back to 7 or 8000 BC. If there were missing genealogies ... so be it ... no problem at all. And no one I know of has any way of proving that those genealogies are not missing. BUT ... your evidence for the groups you mentioned living during the dates you say they did is FLIMSY at best ... tree ring dating and God knows what else. And Egyptian chronology? There's been much revision of that ... it is anything but settled.
Bottom line is ... Creationism wins either way and you are not going to get me to be dogmatic about either position because it does not matter. Both of my scenarios trounce your ridiculous scenario of a 200,000 year human history.
But go on ... keep bringing it up if you like ... I like reliving past victories!
Deadman...
Quote
Hey Crabby! Your post got me thinking -- I wonder how DaveTard2 would explain the Coastal Mountain Ranges here in Calif...which run east to west.
My map shows them running pretty much north and south. They have a little bit of NW/SE slant ... maybe 30 degrees off of a true N-S line.
What's your point?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
EVIDENCE FOR THE HYDROPLATE THEORY 1) The Mid-Ocean Ridge which appears to be a massive "rip" in the earth's surface 2) Folded mountain ranges which extend almost the full length of North and South America -- it appears that the entire landmass took a westward ride away from the MAR and then had a very sudden stop while sediments were still soft 3) Massive quantities of sedimentary rock -- this indicates massive quantities of WATER, does it not? Or would you propose gasoline? Elmer's glue perhaps? Maybe another liquid which no longer exists? 4) Tons of marine fossils on mountain tops indicating they used to be underwater 5) The fact of billions of fossils all over the earth argues strongly for CATASTROPHIC burial ... not slow burial 6) Saltwater found in deep holes in Bavaria and Russia
...and these are just some of the evidences I have covered ...
do you have any links/references with those nibbles?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
You would have to search previous pages ... I was just reminding Eric of stuff we have already covered. He likes to pretend that I don't have evidence and he needs reminding periodically that I DO have much evidence.
I hope to compile a complete, down-loadable, searchable "AFDave Text file" at some point.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, millions of years, plus plate tectonics. Extremely low strain rates. Well known to be required to produce the results we see.
Well known HOW? From the famous MIT Orogeny Lab?
No, but from laboratory and field experiments and observations.
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Eric, about your wood vise scenario ... the difference with mountains is that in your scenario, they would CRACK and SHATTER and GET CRUSHED, not bend. ... You have no proposed mechanism to SOFTEN your sediments.
Heat, pressure, and time. That's the mechanism. Observed in the lab and the field; sediments bent while soft are different from sediments bent while lithified. Lots of pictures and references supplied previously.
Still afraid to discuss the magnetic stripes and dates of the Atlantic seafloor, hum, Davie-doodles?
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 05 2006,06:37)
1) The Mid-Ocean Ridge which appears to be a massive "rip" in the earth's surface. 2) Folded mountain ranges which extend almost the full length of North and South America -- it appears that the entire landmass took a westward ride away from the MAR and then had a very sudden stop while sediments were still soft
Consistent with hydroplate theory, with the exception of "had a very sudden stop while sediments were still soft"; the energy expended would have melted the rocks, and we don't see that; the folded rocks would appear very different, and we don't see that. So that part is actually evidence against your "theory". But the remainder is also consistent with plate tectonics. Sorry, Davie-kid, evidence for hydroplate theory has to be something that is not consistent with plate tectonics.
Of course, you have ignored the erosion of the Appalachians and the fascinating recent work that has traced the products of that erosion way into the midwest; it's certain they didn't erode while they were soft! [/quote]Massive quantities of sedimentary rock -- this indicates massive quantities of WATER, does it not? [/quote] It does not. Much sedimentary rock is subaerial. And the massive quantities of sedimentary rock, separated by formations that could not form wet, and the lack of a world-wide single layer of sedimentary rock are strong evidence against hydroplate "theory", Davie-dumpling.
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Tons of marine fossils on mountain tops indicating they used to be underwater
Consistent with plate tectonics.
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The fact of billions of fossils all over the earth argues strongly for CATASTROPHIC burial ... not slow burial
The vast majority of the fossils argue for extremely slow burial. Archaeopteryx has been mentioned; cf. the White Cliffs of Dover.
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Saltwater found in deep holes in Bavaria and Russia
In miniscule quantities compared to what you need.
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...and these are just some of the evidences I have covered
Ones I have not covered yet include plateaus, ocean trenches, frozen mammoths, limestone, salt domes, and many, many more ...
You have ignored all the details of the evidence you have presented thus far, because the details contradict your claims, and you have ignored the evidence others have posted that also contradicts your claims.
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So in what way does that amount to "no proposed mechanism for softening those sediments?
Quite simple. Anyone can quote a temperature and pressure requirement to form gniess, Eric. It is quite another matter to propose a MECHANISM for how this pressure and temperature was achieved.
Subduction. Driven by convection in the mantle. Observed.
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And you still haven't answered the question of why there's nothing implausible about continents rushing around at hundreds of miles an hour, but it's ludicrous that they could be moving inches a year over millions of years.
Two things. "Rushing around" is not what I say. I say they moved away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge, then stopped rather suddenly.[quote] And what pushed 'em in the first place, Davie-lump? And how much kinetic energy did they have, which would be expended as heat when they stopped? And what would that much heat do to the rocks, Davie-dork?
7 TdeF wins in a row was good enough for Lance on Shimano, at the DA/Campy Record level I believe that any performance differences are due to the legs and not the components.
I've been over this before. Two things. First, it does no damage to Creationism to move the Flood back to 5000 BC and Creation back to 7 or 8000 BC. If there were missing genealogies ... so be it ... no problem at all. And no one I know of has any way of proving that those genealogies are not missing. BUT ... your evidence for the groups you mentioned living during the dates you say they did is FLIMSY at best ... tree ring dating and God knows what else. And Egyptian chronology? There's been much revision of that ... it is anything but settled.
1. You have yet to show dendrochronology is wrong. 2. Please show me about revisions of Egyptian chronology during the relevant period, and how it shows the egyptians "died " during the flood, when in fact they kept right on writing. 3. I didn't JUST mention the Egyptians and Dendrology, I mentioned several cultures like the Sumerians and Harrapans who also didn't vanish at that time. 4. Finally and most hilariously, since you can't support a BIBLICALLY-based alternate chronology, you want me to prove a negative? ("And no one I know of has any way of proving that those genealogies are not missing. ") Could you GET more desperate?
Dave says about geology and geomorphology:
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Actually I have a better understanding of what's there and how it got there than you do.
Then why can't you answer my questions other than by special pleading or invoking miracles or avoiding entirely, DaveTard2?
Why don't all boreholes show saltwater if you are claiming 2 do? By the way, the German borehole water sources are not at the depths that your "hydroplate" buddy needs...don't assume that if a hole is 8,000 meters that the water IN it comes from that depth. And the "saltwater" from the Kola borehole is derived from being squeezed out of minerals by the pressure, not some global underground reservoir.
On the other hand, the Bertha Rogers well in Oklahoma, Texas, which is a 9,583 m (31,441 ft) deep gas well. This was the previous world record holder prior to the drilling in the Kola Peninsula. The well was started in 1974 and continued until it struck molten sulfur at its final depth. No water
Scientists, technicians, and drillers with the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program have recovered rocks from 1415.5 meters (>4644 feet) below the seafloor that will provide valuable information on the composition of the Earth. Scientists drilled to create the third deepest hole ever in the basement (area below the sediment cover) of the oceanic crust. no water there, either.
Boreholes at the Oklahoma Geological Survey, Leonard Oklahoma--no water.
There are lists of thousands upon thousands of oil and natural gas wells drilled to various depths across the world, DaveTard2...why don't they show the same "fountains of the deep " as the TWO examples you gave? Why wouldn't Saudi Arabia, all of the middle east and the arid Asian countries drill for such reservoirs, Dave? Because it's not there. Such reservoirs would be shown by the thousands upon thousands of seismic studies done, too, AirHead, but no such data exists, nor does it show "collapsed" remnants of reservoirs held up by "pillars". Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada
Now, about the Coastal ranges here in southern california, DaveTard2...the Transverse Ranges are called just that because they run east-west. They were created by one plate smacking into another and don't seem to fit your claims about north-south mountains. WHY ARE THEY THERE?
If you say that ALL the ranges running down the americas are due to "stopping" of the plates' rapid movement, why aren't they running along the length...the FULL length of the coasts? The andes don't run up through central america, they veer off towards columbia. The rockies don't run down the west coast, they go through colorado. The Sierra Nevada aren't on the coast, either, they are inland, on the side of the California basin. http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~joel....ms.html
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quite simple. Anyone can quote a temperature and pressure requirement to form gniess, Eric. It is quite another matter to propose a MECHANISM for how this pressure and temperature was achieved.
I gave you the mechanism, shitforbrains...subduction. Very, very well understood, and in fact captured in tomographic images while occuring. See herehereand here for differing types of images.
It's not my fault that you still can't find an alternate means of getting the Vertebrae Range to the temps and then the pressures needed to create gneiss, Dave, and in fact you simply said you didn't KNOW "how" it happened. Well, That's why your theory and model fail.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Another example would be the Himalayas, DumbassDave, running generally east-west, while the Urals don't. and why ARE the urals so far inland if mountains are due to plates whizzing around and stopping real fast? Why do the Atlas mountains run generally east-west while the mountains on the east coast of africa run north to south?
Did those continents STOP TWICE? IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS? IN ONE YEAR?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hey Crabby! Your post got me thinking -- I wonder how DaveTard2 would explain the Coastal Mountain Ranges here in Calif...which run east to west.
Wait, my psychic powers say: "Dave pulls out the 'Miracle Card' again."
Well so far DM, all he has to say is, uh, I don't know of any east west range in the Coastal Range, heehee.
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Why do the Atlas mountains run generally east-west
Hey DDTTD, you're busted. No one was tailgating you. Much earlier in the day, you backed out into traffic while adjusting your seat and Africa ran into you. We have the paint from your bumper on the damage you caused (Atlas Mountains).
So now we have two collisions with your "car", North America, travelling in 2 different directions, all in the space of a year!
Yep, that's plausible.
In the mean time I want you to blow hard into this tube. I know you can do it 'cause you been a blowhard for an awfully long time.
7 TdeF wins in a row was good enough for Lance on Shimano, at the DA/Campy Record level I believe that any performance differences are due to the legs and not the components.
Functionally, to be sure. In fact, I'd even suggest that there aren't any signficant differences between gruppos at different price points that aren't drowned out by rider conditioning. But, I prefer the cleaner aesthetics of the Campy Ergopower shifters to the bulbous shape of the Shimano.
Admittedly, I am also something of a traditionalist, having started riding in the early 1980s when Italian steel and Campagnolo Super Record was the thing. Ironically, my first pro bike was a Cilo with the first generation Dura Ace SIS. My main ride now (although I haven't ridden much in the last 4 years. ) is a Cinelli Supercorsa with Campy 8-speed Chorus. Nothing real cutting edge, but it sure is purty!
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Dave, are you ever going to understand what's wrong with your "hypothesis."? "Plausibility gets you absolutely nowhere. Evidence is what gets you somewhere. Where is the evidence that your "fountains of the deep" ever existed? You do not have have any, despite being asked over and over again for weeks now.
OK. So you're a little slow and have missed the evidence? That's fine. I'll review for you.
EVIDENCE FOR THE HYDROPLATE THEORY 1) The Mid-Ocean Ridge which appears to be a massive "rip" in the earth's surface 2) Folded mountain ranges which extend almost the full length of North and South America -- it appears that the entire landmass took a westward ride away from the MAR and then had a very sudden stop while sediments were still soft 3) Massive quantities of sedimentary rock -- this indicates massive quantities of WATER, does it not? Or would you propose gasoline? Elmer's glue perhaps? Maybe another liquid which no longer exists? 4) Tons of marine fossils on mountain tops indicating they used to be underwater 5) The fact of billions of fossils all over the earth argues strongly for CATASTROPHIC burial ... not slow burial 6) Saltwater found in deep holes in Bavaria and Russia
...and these are just some of the evidences I have covered ...
Ones I have not covered yet include plateaus, ocean trenches, frozen mammoths, limestone, salt domes, and many, many more ...
Dave, I can't tell if you're intellectually incapable of getting it, or if you deliberately refuse to get it. But I'll put this in bold and all-caps and see if that helps:
NONE OF THE PHENOMENA YOU LIST ARE "EVIDENCE" FOR YOUR "HYDROPLATE" HYPOTHESIS.
How is the mid-Atlantic ridge "evidence" for the hydroplate hypothesis, Dave? Does the hydroplate hypothesis explain how it got there or what caused it? No. Does plate tectonics? Yes. Hydroplate loses.
Are folded mountain ranges "explained" by the hydroplate hypothesis? No. It proposes no mechanism whatsoever for what causes the movement, plus it predicts a completely wrong speed for how fast the continents move. You forget that your little graphic shows the continents arriving at their current ranges in about a day. Brown gives no justification for that time scale, and you give no justification for any slower timescale, because the hydroplate hypothesis is massively ad hoc and doesn't predict any particular timescale or speed for continental drift.
Massive quantities of sedimentary rock rules out a flood, Dave. Do you understand why? The continents are covered by an average of 6,000 meters of sediment. How does your 5,000-foot deep flood produce 6,000 meters of sediment? Do you even stop to consider things like this? What you call "evidence" for your hypothesis actually rules it out of consideration!
Same thing with marine fossils on mountain tops, and fossils in general, Dave. They're not evidence for your hypothesis, in many ways rule it out of consideration, and fit the alternative hypothesis—plate tectonics—much, much, better.
Once more with the bold and all-caps:
AND YOU STILL HAVE NO EVIDENCE FOR YOUR FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP
You think you do, but that's only because you don't understand the meaning of the word "evidence." See, for any of the phenomena you listed to be evidence for your "hydroplate" guess and against plate tectonics and other theories of actual geology, your "hydroplate" guess would have to explain those phenomena better that the existing theories. But it doesn't. In fact, it doesn't "explain" them at all. You can't come up with any water for your flood, you can't come up with a mechanism to get that water to the surface without flashing into steam, you have no energy source to move those continents around in a day or two, and you certainly can't explain how such extraordinary energy releases could have happened without sterilizing the planet. In short, your "hydroplate" guess is not even slightly supported by any of those phenomena at all, and one more time, you have no source of water for your flood
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Eric...
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So in what way does that amount to "no proposed mechanism for softening those sediments?
Quite simple. Anyone can quote a temperature and pressure requirement to form gniess, Eric. It is quite another matter to propose a MECHANISM for how this pressure and temperature was achieved.
Dave, anyone who doesn't have his head firmly wedged between his butt-cheeks can see exactly where that heat and pressure comes from. (I have to keep reminding myself that you know absolutely nothing about geology, not even what elementary schoolkids learn.)
It has doubtless escaped your notice that not all rocks that are at the surface of the earth were always at the surface. In fact, all metamorphic rocks were once deep underground, whether from subduction, from being buried by overlying sediments over millions of years (yes, those millions of years) or buried under igneous rock. It has doubtless also escaped your notion that the deeper you go, the higher the temperature and pressure get. Where do you think metamorphic rock comes from, Dave? Does the rock fairy make it in her easy-bake oven?
So that's the mechanism, Dave. Rock ends up being buried by one mechanism or other, where, if it's sedimentary, it becomes metamorphized, which incidentally softens it and makes it plastic. Yes, you think that's all preposterous, but you think everything that doesn't fit into your hypothesis is preposterous, and in the meantime, where do you think metamorphic rock comes from? Deadman has asked you this question numerous times, and you've completely ignored him, because—surprise!—you not only don't have an answer; you don't even understand the significance of the question.
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Two things. "Rushing around" is not what I say.
Oh but it is. Look back at your little timeline you posted back on page 108 of this thread. You'll note that the time given for the breakup of the supercontinent (i.e., "Continental Drift Phase) is given as approximately one day (I'm not sure "drift" is an apposite term for this little scenario).
Of course, you feel free to ignore anything about Walt's model that doesn't fit into your own worldview, because you feel you can ignore anything you want. But everyone reading this thread knows the uncounted dishonesties you've made in one post after another.
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I say they moved away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge, then stopped rather suddenly. This caused folding and thickening onthe leading edge of the plate and generated massive quantities of heat and pressure leading to metamorphism.
Dave, you don't even know what your own model says! And you expect us to take anything you say seriously? Your own model says "Continental Drift Phase (1day)." And in the meantime, do you have the foggiest notion of what caused the continents (which weigh on the order of 10^19 kg) to "slam on the brakes"? No? Imagine my surprise.
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Secondly, I do not say it's ludicrous for the continents to move inches per year. I recognize that they do. I simply say this is inadequate to produce the phenomena we actually observe.
The only reason you think continental drift at inches per day is inadequate to explain the current position of the continents is because you're proceeding under the delusion that they've only had thousands of years to get there. Anyone who knows the first thing about geology knows for a fact that they've had millions of years to get there.
And one more time for the world: YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE THAT YOUR "FOUNTAINS" OF THE DEEP EVER EXISTED.
Put up or shut up, Dave. And I know you'll never put up.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
7 TdeF wins in a row was good enough for Lance on Shimano, at the DA/Campy Record level I believe that any performance differences are due to the legs and not the components.
Campy's very pretty, but it's very expensive, too, and it takes more TLC than the Shimano stuff. Plus, look at that paint job. How much bling do I really need? It's a bike, for crying out loud.
Which, for the record, has 15,000 miles on it after two years. :-)
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
NONE OF THE PHENOMENA YOU LIST ARE "EVIDENCE" FOR YOUR "HYDROPLATE" HYPOTHESIS.
Eric ... nothing constitutes "evidence" for you if it opposes your religion of Millionsofyearsianism. If God himself appeared to you in a shining cloud, I think you would explain it away ...
Too bad for you ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Ahem. Why didn't you even pretend to answer the questions I asked you, stupid?
Ah, yes..."too bad for you" that you're dishonest and ignorant, Dave. Each post of yours seems to highlight that your "theory that is better than any other" has the explanatory ability and predictive power and evidence of a complete fabrication piggybacking on standard tectonics. How odd, eh?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ahem ... it's late at night and I'm not in the mood ... you should know me well enough by now to know that I will answer questions when I get good and ready and if it serves my purpose ... otherwise, no.
(Remember what my purpose here is? Do you need a reminder?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Here, Dave, I'll save time and respond for you: 1. I already answered that, even though I can't say precisely where. 2. I don't know and neither do you. 3. The Hydroplate movement caused massive changes that are complex and massive, causing large shifts in land and water until the water vanished in space and the massive land motion stopped. 4. I never said that 5. The flood water separated out minerals by layers because currents made deposits in various areas, but there's no global layers because the plates were moving, too. Real fast.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
NONE OF THE PHENOMENA YOU LIST ARE "EVIDENCE" FOR YOUR "HYDROPLATE" HYPOTHESIS.
Eric ... nothing constitutes "evidence" for you if it opposes your religion of Millionsofyearsianism.
No, Dave. Nothing constitutes "evidence" for me if it's contradicted by observation. This is the part you steadfastly refuse to get. Your "hydroplate" joke is flat-out contradicted by observation, and worse, you have absolutely no evidence for critical parts of your joke. Floodwaters? Nope. Mechanism for the mid-atlantic ridge? Nope. Non-existent floodwaters depositing thousands of meters of sediment? Nope.
Dave, I have no reason to believe in "Millionsofyearsism," other than the fact that it is in accord with observation. I have no reason to disbelieve in your "hydroplate" phantasm, other than the fact that it is not in accord with observation. Not even close. In fact, it's ruled out of consideration by observation.
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Ahem ... it's late at night and I'm not in the mood ... you should know me well enough by now to know that I will answer questions when I get good and ready and if it serves my purpose ... otherwise, no.
Dave, you never answer questions, unless it's with utter speculation. You've still, after at least a month, never answered Deadman's question as to why you think dendrochronology is wrong.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You've still, after at least a month, never answered Deadman's question as to why you think dendrochronology is wrong.
Well, to be fair, AirHead DID say "Catastrophism, catastrophism, catastrophism" which is, in his mind, an excellent rebuttal and presentation of evidence.
Dave also mentioned AIG's "Dr." Don Batten who said
1. Farmed Pinus radiata trees in New Zealand show multiple rings, even if they're in an artificial, non-seasonal environment. 2. He found two "bad" dendro studies out of hundreds of thousands. One was re-measured, the other was withdrawn due to procedural/methodological problems, but clearly this shows all dendro studies are wrong. 3. Dendro and radiometrics are used to circularly confirm each other as long as you overlook other confirming non-radiometric methods that we just won't mention.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You ready yet to give us the YEC explanation for why the six independent C14 dating calibration methods all agree with one another, and extend back to 50,000 YBP?
Or why NO ONE in the world has used the YEC model for an honest successful business case?
Or maybe you could show us the calculations about where the heat energy went when the trillion trillion ton continents accelerated and decelerated to/from 100MPH in one day?
What are you hiding from Davie? Don't you want to know the TROOTH?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Remember what my purpose here is? Do you need a reminder?
Yep Davie, we sure do remember:
1) Hone your lies to make them sound more 'sciency' and believable to the other YEC idiots. 2) Force feed your known lies to innocent children. 3) Make money off the gullible like all the other Fundy TV Evangelist shitheels.
Did I miss any?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I think the only thing I've gotten out of this thread is a belly laugh about the 100 mph continents. That was truly great.
Maybe friction worked differently in those days. The friction of the continents worked in reverse, actually cooling down the superheated 'fountains of the deep' water.
I think the only thing I've gotten out of this thread is a belly laugh about the 100 mph continents. That was truly great.
Maybe friction worked differently in those days. The friction of the continents worked in reverse, actually cooling down the superheated 'fountains of the deep' water.
Maybe the butts of the continents were coated with Teflon™? Of course, that would have made it even harder to stop them.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ahem ... it's late at night and I'm not in the mood ... you should know me well enough by now to know that I will answer questions when I get good and ready and if it serves my purpose ... otherwise, no.
(Remember what my purpose here is? Do you need a reminder?)
Dang dudes, I can't believe your insensitivity!
DDTTD is obviously cramping and bloated and you still keep hammering him.
Yes DDTTD we remember what your purpose here is. To bilk the marks by spinning Tales of Ignorance and Stupidstition.
Since DDTTD is having a Midol moment, I won't press him for an answer about his damaged junk filled trunk (Appalachians). He passed the breath and blood tests so he's clearly challenged mentally. I will cite him for DWI though (Driving While willfully Ignorant).
Although his ignorance of all the other 'ologies is clear, let's expose his ignorance of orogeny some more.
Boston Mountains, stud muffin. East/west mountains, mud stuffin. Closer to your home than the Coastal String, er, I mean Range of mountains and in the middle of the continent
'Splain away when your AiG cult members ain't done it for ya buddy boy.
OK, OK. IF YOU INSIST. I'LL SLAM YOU AGAIN ON DENDROCHRONOLOGY.
Gladwin, Harold S., “Dendrochronology, Radiocarbon, and Bristlecones,” Anthropological Journal of Canada, vol. 14, no. 4 (1976), pp. 2-7.
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p 4 “For those who are neither radiocarbon physicists nor ‘dendrochronologists,’ it is essential to know that all trees are not of equal value for tree-ring dating. It probably would be safe to say that the great majority of deciduous trees are of little or no value, because of the difficulty in deciphering rings.”
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p 5 “Among the conifers, junipers are unsatisfactory to the point of being actually misleading, chiefly because many species are partly dead and consequently undependable; the living parts of the tree either grow no annual rings at all or very often grow multiple rings in the same year…. Among the pines, Pinus aristata (i.e., the bristlecone pine) is, if anything, even more undependable than the junipers, principally because of the size of the tree, so much of which is dead. “We have many cores at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden that were collected from Bristlecones growing in the White Mountains of California east of the Sierra Nevada, at altitudes of 10,000 feet, where the rainfall is low and erratic. There are also a number of cores from Bristlecones growing at high altitudes in southwestern Utah and on the San Francisco Peaks at Flagstone, Arizona. Comparison of charts of measured rings show no similarity whatever.”
Here, Deadman and Aftershave, let me paraphrase that for you guys ...
Dendrochronology is basically useless.
Now, of all your supposed "independent age correlations" could you give me one that's a little harder to shoot down.
I get bored shooting down the Mickey Mouse ones.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
DID SOMEONE MENTION VARVES A WHILE BACK? I THINK VARVES ARE A FAVORITE "EVO-HORSE" TO RIDE, ARE THEY NOT?"
Wood, A. E., “Multiple Banding of Sediments Deposited During a Single Season,” Bulletin, Geological Society of America, vol. 57 (December 1946), p. 1245. Wood was in the Department of Biology, Amherst College.
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“Abstract. The Arkport Flood Control Reservoir near Hornell, N.Y., held water for the first time during the spring of 1940. This flood had 3 peaks over a period of 2 weeks. The sediments deposited during this period form what appear to be three typical varves. A series of varvelike bands, not readily distinguishable from varves, may be deposited in a very short time and may by no means indicate the number of years required for the formation of a given deposit.” [From article in American Journal of Science, vol. 245 (May 1947), pp. 304-312]
Hmmm... 3 varves in 2 weeks. Let me get out my calculator ... 3 X 52 = 156 varves in a year. That would make something that you guys say is, for example 15,600 years old, in reality only 100 years old, right? Good dating method, boys. Really good!
Berthault, Guy, “Experiments on Laminations of Sediments, Resulting from a Periodic Graded-bedding Subsequent to Deposit: A Contribution to the Explanation of Lamination of Various Sediments and Sedimentary Rocks,” C. R. Academic des Sciences Paris, vol. 303, series 2, no. 17 (1986), pp. 1569-1574.
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p 1574 “The continuous deposit of a heterogranular sediment in still water was studied. 1. It was noted that the deposited material organized itself immediately after deposition into periodic graded laminae giving the appearance of successive beds. 2. One of the more striking features of these laminae formed in the sediment itself was their regular periodicity. 3. The thickness of the laminae is measured in millimetres. It is independent of the speed of sedimentation and varies according to the extreme difference in the size of the mixed particles. 4. When deposition took place in a water flow, the lamination phenomenon was also observed. The geometry of lamination was modified by the water flow, but the latter was not the cause of the modification. 5. The periodic graded laminae were similar to the laminae or varves observed in nature which are interpreted as a superposition of seasonal or annual beds. Their origin, however, was quite different arising from periodic structuring after deposit. 6. The question now is to study a number of laminated or varved formations in relation to this mechanism for physical structuring obtained from experimentation.”
Quite different indeed!!
Burroughs, W. J., Weather Cycles: Real or Imaginary.
Quote
p 74 “There is one further example of cyclic behavior in geological records which needs to be taken on its own. This is what appeared to be the most stunning evidence of solar influence on the weather. It came from the work of George Williams in South Australia. He became intrigued in 1979 by the laminated sandstones and siltstones in the Elatina formation in South Australia which appeared to reveal the Sun’s influence on the climate in the Precambrian era.” p 74 “The geological explanation of the Elatina formation was that the layers were standard varves which were produced from the sediment when turbid glacial meltwater filled a lake each summer. “The laminations studied occupied a 10-m thick unit in the 60-m thick formation. This contained roughly 19,000 laminations which contained 1580 cycles.” p 76 “All of this bore an uncanny resemblance to the observed variations in sunspot number which have occurred since 1700. This led to two fascinating hypotheses. First, that the behavior of the Sun had remained relatively unchanged for 700 million years. Second, that for all this time, solar activity had been modulating the weather. But subsequent analysis of this record and others from Australia suggests that the explanation may be lunar rather than solar. The new explanation is that the laminations record the variations in sediment laid down by daily tides. So the 19,000 laminations studied would have been deposited in just 56 years rather than the 19,000 ‘years’ originally assumed.”
Ooooops!! 19,000 vs. 56 is a BIIIIIG difference, boys!
Ray, Louis L., “Pleistocene Research,” Part 9: “Problems of Pleistocene Stratigraphy,” Bulletin, Geological Society of America, vol. 60 (September 1949), pp. 1463-1474.
Quote
p 1468 “[Quoting Sigurd Hansen, (Danmarks Geology), 1940] Many of the varves measured by DeGeer ‘cannot be taken to be annual deposits or varves; they are sub-sections of annual deposits, registering shorter periods of change in the force of the water movement or in the quantity of the mud carried . all distant or telecorrelations between Danish and Scandian varve localities mutually and between Scanodanian on the one hand and North American on the other, must be regarded as fallacious.’”
Fallacious, boys. Get used to that word. It's the story of your life as an Evobot!!!
************************************************
THIS IS BACK-TRACKING, BUT I COULDN'T RESIST ... I STUMBLED ON TO THIS QUOTE AND I THOUGHT JONF WOULD ESPECIALLY APPRECIATE IT BECAUSE HE SAYS THERE ARE NO INCONSISTENCIES IN RADIO-METRIC DATING
Faure, G., and J. L. Powell, Strontium Isotope Geology (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1972).
Quote
p 102 “It is readily apparent that these rocks [i.e., the Pahrump diabase from the Panamint Mountains in California] scatter widely on the isochron diagram. Dates ranging from 1.09 to 34 billion years could be calculated for individual specimens. Dates in excess of the age of the earth (4.6 x 109 years) are obviously not acceptable. [Obviously! Of course! Then our theory would be wrong!!] A possible explanation for the scatter of points on the isochron diagram is that these rocks may have been variously enriched in radiogenic 87Sr which might have been derived from the adjacent granite and gneiss during Mesozoic metamorphism. These results indicate that even total-rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age.” p 102 “All of the above conclusions regarding the suitability for dating of rocks and minerals apply only when the rocks or their minerals have not been altered by chemical weathering at or near the surface of the Earth. Because most rocks that are used for dating are usually collected from outcrops, the effects of chemical weathering on the 87Rb-87Sr decay scheme may be important.”
Oh, I bet I know how this one will be explained ... "This is 35 years old, Davey-wavy! We've fixed all those inconsistencies now, you silly boy!!"
Yeah, by "fixed" do you mean "began discarding results you don't like?"
Heh, heh, heh!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'M KINDA IN THE MOOD TO REMIND YOU OF A FEW ITEMS OF ... AHEM ... ER ... UNFINISHED BUSINESS. Welles, Samuel Paul, “Fossils,” World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (1978), p. 364. Welles was Research Associate, Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley.
Quote
“Scientists determine when fossils were formed by finding out the age of the rocks in which they lie.”
[NOTE: I have the 1993 version of World Book and it says essentially the same thing but adds the method for dating ... "Paleontologists determine how old a fossil is by measuring the radioactive isotopes in the rocks that contain the fossil."]
Welles, Samuel Paul, “Paleontology,” World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 15 (1978), p. 85.
Quote
“Paleontology (the study of fossils) is important in the study of geology. The age of rocks may be determined by the fossils found in them.”
[NOTE: My 1993 version of World Book says exactly the same thing.]
OK, guys ... two HUGE things to note here ...
1) First, we have Circular Reasoning ... i.e. Fossil Age = Age of Rock in the "Fossil" article, and Age of Rock = Age of Fossil in the "Paleontology" article.
2) I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically.
**********************************
Sooooooo ... how exactly do we date those upper layers in the GC, boys? By the fossils? If so, how do we know how old the fossils are?
"Well, you silly Davey-piddles, EVERYONE knows how old fossils are!! What do you mean, 'How old are the fossils??' !! Dumb question!"
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
HERE'S ANOTHER REALLY GOOD ONE FOR YOU TO CHEW ON DURING YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON SIESTA!
R. H. Rastall, “Geology,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, 1954, p. 168.
Quote
“It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain.”
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
HERE'S ANOTHER REALLY GOOD ONE FOR YOU TO CHEW ON DURING YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON SIESTA!
R. H. Rastall, “Geology,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, 1954, p. 168.
Quote
“It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain.”
That article is wrong, Davie-poo, just as you are wrong, as has been pointed out many times already in this thread, with lots of details. Repeating your debunked falsehoods doesn't make 'em true. Stratigraphy and radiometric dating are independent ways of dating strata; the fact that they essentially always agree is not circularity.
Hah, you remind me of an old toothless chihuahua simultaneously shivering and yapping "fiercely" Dave LOOK DAVE, BOLD LETTERS, POODLE-BOY
1. You never "slammed" anyone on dendrochronology, Dave-tulip. You quoted a goober from AIG and his crap was as worthless as the Gladwin quote you whip out.
2. Just for the edification of the audience, I'd like to say WHY H.S. Gladwin was published in the Anthropological Journal of Canada back in 1976.
The reason that I'm recounting this is to illustrate how dishonest creationists can be
Gladwin was published in the Anth. Journal of Canada at because the Assistant Editor of that Journal at the time was one Robert E. Lee.
Robert E. Lee was associated with the Creation Research Society and in fact, the Journal was "rescued" with money from creationists for the purpose of publishing creationist-oriented articles. Lee published regularly in the Creation Research Society Quarterly.
Now, H.S. Gladwin was born in 1883. He lived until 1983. He was thus NINETY-THREE years old when he ALLEGEDLY wrote that article for the Anth. Journal of Canada. (oh, and incidentally, he "wrote" some pieces for...yep, the "Creation Research Society Quarterly" (e.g. Gladwin, H.S., 1978. Dendrochronology, radiocarbon and bristlecones. Creation Research Society Quarterly 15: 24-26 )
So, who was H.S. Gladwin? Well, he was a stockbroker that became fascinated with the archaeology of the Southwest and in 1922, sold his seat on the NY Stock Exchange and moved west, to eventually start and finance the "Gila Pueblo Archaeological Foundation" in 1928. In Arizona, he met archaeologists A.V. Kidder, Emil Haury and the founder of dendrochronology, Ellicott Douglass.
The story of how Douglass came to establish dendrochronology is an interesting one, so I'll digress a bit. Douglass was originally an astronomer who got fired because he disputed Percival Lowell's claims of canals on Mars. He was sent to Arizona to scout out a site for Lowell's observatory, but got fired because he essentially told Lowell he was full of crap.
Douglass moved to archaeology and climatology, becoming interested in sun spot cycles and if they could be discerned in tree growth, and joined the faculty of the U. of Arizona where Emil Haury became his assistant and they established the first dendro lab in 1930. Eventually this became the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research.
Also, in 1930, Haury became head of Gladwin's "Gila Pueblo Archaeological Foundation" and left the tree-ring lab at the U. of Arizona because Gladwin had told him he'd pay for his PhD tuition at Harvard. Haury got his PhD in 1934 (on the classic Hohokam period,) and returned to work for Gladwin. But rifts quickly developed. Gladwin had odd, if not bizarre ideas on the archaeology of the region. See references below. Eventually, Haury left to become head of the dept. of Archaeology at U. of Arizona in 1937. Gladwin resented this and Haury's discovery of the Mogollon culture and in fact it was at that time that Gladwin's dislike of both Douglass and Haury came to a head.
Gladwin came to dislike Douglass because he (Douglass) worked with Haury on the Mogollon culture and developed the first chronology for that group and the entire southwest, eventually.
Gladwin, lacking an academic degree, used a series of "proxies" whom he funded, to attack dendro., but oddly decided to donate his entire collection to the U. of Arizona in 1950, when he lost interest in archaeology, largely due to the success of his imagined rivals and the acceptance of the dendrochronology of the region.
Cut to the end of Gladwin's life. He was still wealthy and as an old man facing death, began to fund the Creationists who were once again attacking dendrochronology unsuccessfully, ultimately. This is where Robert E. Lee comes in. Did Gladwin actually even WRITE the articles in question? Only Lee and Gladwin know, because Gladwin died alone, but still wealthy. And still without any real expertise in dendrochronology.
Gladwin's claims in the Journal AirHead cited...are worthless on several levels and is frankly wrong about both junipers and bristlecones and indeed, about deciduous trees in general, since Oak trees and many others have been and are continuing to be used successfully.
References: Gladwin became best known for promoting such questionable theories as that of "multitudinous migrations" into the Americas. That included the certainty that the New World was inhabited by a succession of people. These people included the Pygmies from Africa, Australoids from Australia, and Greeks and Middle Easterners stranded on the Persian Gulf by Alexander the Great who later made their way to the Americas. 1. Haury, Emil. Emil W. Haury’s Prehistory of the American Southwest. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson: 1986, 194-200. 2. Martin, Paul. The Archaeology of Arizona. Double Day/Natural History Press, Garden City: 1973, 6. McGregor, John. Southwestern Archaeology. 2nd Edition. University of Illinois Press, Chicago: 1982, 66-68 3. Reid, J. J. 1986. Emil Walter Haury: The archaeologist as humanist and scientist. In Emil W. Haury’s Prehistory of the American South- west, eds. J. J. Reid and D. E. Doyel, pp. 3-17. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. 4. Willey, G. R. 1994. Emil Walter Haury (2 May 1904-5 December 1992). Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 138(3):426-30
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
THIS IS BACK-TRACKING, BUT I COULDN'T RESIST ... I STUMBLED ON TO THIS QUOTE AND I THOUGHT JONF WOULD ESPECIALLY APPRECIATE IT BECAUSE HE SAYS THERE ARE NO INCONSISTENCIES IN RADIO-METRIC DATING
Faure, G., and J. L. Powell, Strontium Isotope Geology (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1972).
Quote
p 102 "It is readily apparent that these rocks [i.e., the Pahrump diabase from the Panamint Mountains in California] scatter widely on the isochron diagram. Dates ranging from 1.09 to 34 billion years could be calculated for individual specimens. Dates in excess of the age of the earth (4.6 x 109 years) are obviously not acceptable. [Obviously! Of course! Then our theory would be wrong!!] A possible explanation for the scatter of points on the isochron diagram is that these rocks may have been variously enriched in radiogenic 87Sr which might have been derived from the adjacent granite and gneiss during Mesozoic metamorphism. These results indicate that even total-rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age." p 102 "All of the above conclusions regarding the suitability for dating of rocks and minerals apply only when the rocks or their minerals have not been altered by chemical weathering at or near the surface of the Earth. Because most rocks that are used for dating are usually collected from outcrops, the effects of chemical weathering on the 87Rb-87Sr decay scheme may be important."
Oh, I bet I know how this one will be explained ... "This is 35 years old, Davey-wavy! We've fixed all those inconsistencies now, you silly boy!!"
Yeah, by "fixed" do you mean "began discarding results you don't like?"
Nice try, Davie-pie. No, actually not a nice try. Just pathetic. And, of course, you're wrong about the explanation.
I never claimed that there are no inconsistencies in radiometric dating; there are a very, very few, and those inconsistencies lead to interesting science. You haven't come up with any evidence of significant inconsistencies. How's your inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab (about discarded results) going?
Your first quote is part of a discussion of how robust and self-checking isochron methods are. When a test system has been "opened" (that is, relevant isotopes have been added to or removed from the samples after solidification), it is virtually certain that this will be indicated by the lack of a straight line on the isochron diagram. Faure and Powell illustrated this by an extreme example and discussed the reasons that might lead to such incredible discordance; but the bottom line is that the data showed conclusively, back then and now, that no valid date could be derived from those samples. The discussion at that point was actually about how valid dates that are not the date of solidification can be sometimes be derived from open systems. Here's the relevant isochron diagram reproduced from Dalrymple's discussion of it in 1984:
Note that the lines on the graph are not isochrons, as Woodmorappe thought; they are merely reference lines drawn to indicate how extreme the data scatter is. It's pretty obvious that only a moron would try to draw one straight line through those data points! A diagram like that would never be taken as an age indicator by a trained geologist. The data would be discarded as an age indicator because there are objective and obvious indications in the data that no age can be derived; the data is not discarded because of any subjective reason such as not agreeing with current theory.
As Henke writes at Woodmorappe Can't Read Rb-Sr Diagrams, including a very relevant further quote from Faure & Powell that closes their discussion of how robust and accurate isochron methods are:
Quote
Finally, Faure and Powell (1972, p. 102) state the following conclusions that should be important lessons to anyone that is interested in reliable radiometric dates:
Quote
In summary, meaningful dates can be derived from altered rocks under the following conditions: (1) if isotopic homogenization has occurred among the minerals of a rock, the mineral isochron indicates the time elapsed since re-equilibration (2) if total-rock samples remained closed systems during the re-equilibration of the minerals, the total-rock isochron gives the time elapsed since crystallization and thus the "age" of the rocks; (3) if the total rocks were open to rubidium and strontium, but the minerals were isotopically homogenized, the mineral isochron indicates the time of last closure of the minerals, but the age of the rocks cannot be determined by the Rb-Sr method.
Clearly, the Pahrump diagram fails to meet these requirements and Woodmorappe (1979, p. 122; 1999, p. 2) has no basis for slandering Rb-Sr dating by trying to derive a date from the Pahrump data.
Your second quote is pointing out a rather obvious fact, but one that should be stated in a textbook like Faure & Powell; the surfaces of weathered rocks are very likeley to have been "opened", and therefore samples should be collected from the interior. This is standard and universal practice, and no problem for radiometric dating.
So, you lose again, Davie-gorp. Your example clearly illustrates that isochron methods are very difficult to fool, and the obvious straight lines that appear on them are valid and true ages of the tested rocks.
you should know me well enough by now to know that I will answer questions when I get good and ready and if it serves my purpose ...
So, you admit that you won't answer questions if the answers don't serve your purpose. That's called ignoring the data, Davie-diddles, and is dishonest.
Like that data on dating and magnetic stripes on the Atlantic seafloor, that you're terified of 'cause it destroys your "theory". And ocean-floor sediment thickness; thinnest near the mid-oceanic ridges, thickest at the continental boundaries, smoothly varying in between. Waiting with bated breath for your explanation of the data, Davie-poo.
Yes folks it the air whistling out of AFD's balloon head.
Now he is just a 2 diminsional piece of cartoon rubber head lying on the floor.
For his next trick AFD talks out of his ass.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
2) I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically.
Dave repeats another lie, again, that has been refuted. . . . This is what I posted on Page 109 of this thread
Quote
On p.108, AirHead Dave says/asks:
Quote
I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically. What's up with that?
AirHead, you're an adult, allegedly. Your claim above implies I said you couldn't date *any* sedimentary layers. The context of my statement was on the Coconino quartz and the Hermit mudstones/shale. You asked on p.106 of this thread:
Quote
the Hermit Shale is dated at 280 million years by "index fossils" and the Coconino at 270 my, presumably by the same method. Has anyone dated this radiometrically? Does it agree? ... Bwahahahaha!
And I responded by asking (p.107) you how you would radiometrically date the Hermit and Coconino layers : " How would you radiometrically date the siltstone of the Hermit and the fine, rounded, pitted, frosted Quartz grains of the Coconino?" If a layer of shale/mudstone contains ilite, or bentonite or other minerals, it's possible to date it. If it has feldspars, great. I specifically asked YOU how you would date the layers mentioned, idiot---I didn't say you could *never* date sediments. Get your lies straight.
You're older than I am, AirHead, but you're a joke in terms of any kind of emotional or cognitive maturity.
So, Dave, why are you once again repeating an utter lie, which you have been reminded of twice?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
speaking a a layperson: Searching for “Multiple Banding of Sediments Deposited During a Single Season" in google gives 2 results.
Both are promoting creationism. If this work was so significant, would there not be more hits then that and on non-creationist sites? All the articles/books you cite are relatively old. Unless you have been keeping up with the literature since 1947 or thereabouts (timestamp on one of your refernces), how can you be sure that this work you reference has not been superseded?
But for him lying is not a matter of superceding preceding lies, it is a necessity of the moment.
Digging up long refuted 'facts' to prove his non factual god is a pathological obsession.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
And finally, on the varve "refutations" you posted , AirHead... 1. Why is "varve" deposition in a flood-control reservoir important, Dave? There is a DAM on that reservoir, with gates that open and close, bringing in debris. So during any given period, you can have multiple "layers"...SO? It's not a natural environment, stupid.
2. "Guy Berthault's" alleged studies have already been discussed, AirHead. Remember, he's the guy in France that has no degrees at all? Not that this alone would negate his claims, but when you look AT the claims themselves, they show he has no standing at all. More importantly, his studies on rocking sluice deposition bears no resemblance to actual natural conditions.
3. You cite a claim from a book “Weather Cycles: Real Or Imaginary” by W.J. Burroughs. Your quote-mining reference is at : http://www.godsaidmansaid.com/topic3.asp?Cat2=244&ItemId=807 Interestingly, the author offers no references to the source claim. And more importantly, the reference is for tidal depositions that were erroneously identified by an unknown and unnamed person. So?
4. You quote a 1949 article by Ray Lewis in which he cites a Danish article from 1940 by Sigurd Hansen where he disputes De Geer's interpretations of annual varves. (By the way, De Geer is generally considered the "father" of varve studies) which were undertaken in the 1920's-1930's. I hate to tell you this, Dave, but one disputed claim doesn't negate the validity of varve studies TODAY.
To summarize: All of your last posts were largely composed of quote-mining taken from various creationist sites, Dave. Many of those quotes are from OVER a half-century or more ago. No actual evidence was given by you disputing current standards and practices, methods or theory, except to post those quote-mined bits. Typical of your level of "scholarship" and "science"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Jon: sure, no problem. I'd like to find out more on the last years of Gladwin's life, though, and if he left ANY memoirs. I worked with Jim Hill (former head of the anth dept. at UCLA) on the Grasshopper Pueblo material for a while and that's where I first heard this story about "the rich stockbroker that thought he was an archaeologist and came to hate Douglass and Haury."
While it's *possible* Gladwin actually wrote the pieces (after all, Ernst Mayr kept on writing up to his death at what 100?) I sincerely doubt it, and more importantly, Gladwin hated dendro and how it "destroyed" his weird-ass claims, and knew almost nothing about it, as his quote indicates
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'M KINDA IN THE MOOD TO REMIND YOU OF A FEW ITEMS OF ... AHEM ... ER ... UNFINISHED BUSINESS. Welles, Samuel Paul, “Fossils,” World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (1978), p. 364. Welles was Research Associate, Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley.
Quote
“Scientists determine when fossils were formed by finding out the age of the rocks in which they lie.”
Dave, this was explained to you weeks ago. But I suspect it's not because you actually "forgot" it; it's because you repressed it, the same way you repress anything that contradicts your world-view.
Dave, before the advent of radiometric dating, the geological column was assigned relative dates, largely by noting the fossils contained in various layers. Up until the mid-twentieth century, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to the absolute age of most fossils, but very little as to their relative age, because they appeared in the same layers in the geological column worldwide.
Once the technology and methodology of radiometric dating became established, it then became possible to establish absolute dates for fossils. I know this will strain your brain to the breaking point, but here's how it works: you've got fossils embedded in sediment which, for various reasons, cannot be dated radiometrically. But you've seen these same types of fossils elsewhere, in rock which can be dated radiometrically. Since we know the relative ages of all of these fossils, and we know the absolute age these fossils in some rocks through radiometric dating, we can use that information to date fossils in rocks that cannot be dated radiometrically.
This has all been explained to you once already Dave, so I have no hope of you understanding it this time. But I'm not posting this for your benefit anyway.
And let's not forget (hit the cap-lock button first): WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE FOR YOUR "FOUNTAINS OF THE DEEP," DAVE?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave appears to be older than we thought, given the ancient-ness of his recent references.
76, 54 (from an ancient eclyclopedia no less), 78 (again from an encyclopedia)...
ya know dave, I have an old collection of wildlife encyclopedias I was given when i was 6 years old. Even then, they were full of remedial errors, both in classification and in detail.
It's why adults don't rely on enclyclopedias as a primary source of information.
that's for children. Oh, that's right, that's your target audience anyway.
Do you realize you're a dishonest idiot and just plow ahead anyway? Or do you honestly think the "references" you posted actually have real world meaning?
I'm genuinely curious. Are these ancient encyclopedias the primary "textbooks" you use to teach your own kids with?
If so, your kids should sue you.
Quote
AFD is losing it.
IS? He was gone before he ever came here.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Do you realize your a dishonest idiot and just plow ahead anyway? Or do you honestly think the "references" you posted actually have real world meaning?
I'm genuinely curious. Are these ancient encyclopedias the primary "textbooks" you use to teach your own kids with?
You (and JonF and Deadman) really have not figured me out yet, have you? Good. This serves my purpose very well.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDave walks into a geology convention and tries to find evidence for his global flood. He goes to the post presentation Q&A session:
AFDave: “Excuse me, I’d like a hundred trillion gallons of water for my ‘fountains of the deep’ flood model please” Geologists: “I’m sorry sir, there is no source for such water” AFDave: “Oh, OK. In that case, I’d like ten trillion gallons of water for my ‘fountains of the deep’ flood model please” Geologists: “We just told you sir, there is no source for such water” AFDave: “Oh, alright. I’d like one trillion gallons of water for my ‘fountains of the deep’ flood model please” Geologists: “Look sir, how do you spell the ‘mount’ in ‘mountain’? AFDave: “er…M-O-U-N-T” Geologists “And how do you spell the ‘plate’ in ‘plate tectonics’? AFDave: “er…P-L-A-T-E” Geologists: “Now sir, how do you spell the ‘fuck’ in ‘water source for the fountains of the deep’? AFDave: “but there is no ‘fuck’ in ‘water source for the fountains of the deep’” Geologists: “That’s what we’ve been telling you, you moron. There is no fuckin’ water source for the fountains of the deep!”
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
You (and JonF and Deadman) really have not figured me out yet, have you? Good. This serves my purpose very well.
Dave, don't be completely idiotic. Your "purpose" here isn't exactly a mystery to us.
And if you're trying to sound like a man of God by saying that, man are you ever wrong. You sound exactly like the cliché villain in some poorly-written violence-drenched Saturday-morning cartoon. And you're just as good for the well-being of children.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
HERE'S ANOTHER REALLY GOOD ONE FOR YOU TO CHEW ON DURING YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON SIESTA!
R. H. Rastall, ?Geology,? Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, 1954, p. 168.
Quote
?It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain.?
Dang DDTTD, you actually CHEW on stuff during your siestas? Do you chew on your blanky, stud? Your pillow?
Am I gonna have to break out my old Rolodex and have a foram counter from the oil industry come visit you and 'splain how fossils can be used to date deposits in terms your feeble brain can understand?
Keep in mind DDTTD, you are (obviously) WAY out of your league here.
Time to get your boys at AiG/ICR busy to find an answer for the Boston Mountains DDTTD.
Dave, don't be completely idiotic. Your "purpose" here isn't exactly a mystery to us.
And if you're trying to sound like a man of God by saying that, man are you ever wrong. You sound exactly like the cliché villain in some poorly-written violence-drenched Saturday-morning cartoon. And you're just as good for the well-being of children.
AFD's 'God' is the god of liars and the insane, he is no different to the loonies who were locked up for thinking they were Napoleon Bonaparte. Delusions of grandeur indeed, the current clinical definition is Narcissistic Personality Disorder however it was previously known as Megalomania.
Paradoxically, a person who exhibits such tremendous ego and self-confidence in reality has such low self-esteem and such a fragile ego that he cannot abide any expression other than his own, for fear of annihilation of the self. Therefore everything that is not under his control is perceived as a threat.
AFD's whole world view and perception of self is so tied up with his unsupportable delusion that he must resort to any wild and or ridiculous assertion by personality types similar to himself ...NOT to do so risks annihilation of his ego.
He is trapped, on the one hand to accept reality he loses his identity and on the other to ensure the survival of his ego he must move further from reality (believing his senses) and further into insanity ( unable to determine what is real and what is not).
His posts are getting wilder and more desperate.
AFD you need help.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Geologists: “Now sir, how do you spell the ‘fuck’ in ‘water source for the fountains of the deep’? AFDave: “but there is no ‘fuck’ in ‘water source for the fountains of the deep’” Geologists: “That’s what we’ve been telling you, you moron. There is no fuckin’ water source for the fountains of the deep!”
That was pretty good, OA. I got a pretty good laugh out of this one!
EVO-BOT RULES I'M LEARNING HERE
CREATIONIST LEANINGS ALWAYS DISQUALIFY A PERSON FROM MAKING SCIENTIFIC STATEMENTS Alright, you don't like Gladwin because he's a Creationist and he wrote an article when he was 93 and he was a stockbroker before he was a geologist. (But you do like Lyell and he was a lawyer-turned stratigrapher). You don't like Morris because he was a creationist. You don't like Batten ... ditto. I've noticed you guys don't like "skeptic" because he slightly resembles a creationist. Hmmm ... who WOULD you believe if they came out and said Dendrochronology is not reliable? I think you would just say, "Ah, that guy's just a stupid creationist."
WORLD BOOK AUTHORS ARE INCOMPETENT (cough cough, especially if they make us look bad) So, I guess the History professor at Oxford that I quoted is incompetent. And probably all those other specialists in their fields that write all those other articles are too.
EVO-BOTS USED CIRCULAR REASONING ON DATING FOSSILS ONLY UNTIL 1993. During this landmark year, they suddenly saw the light and realized how foolish they had been looking all those years prior to 1993. They quickly sent out an Official Evobot Memo to all encyclopedia companies (including World Book) and fixed this embarrassing problem.
I'll check the latest version of World Book at the library today and see what I find. Let me guess ... I'll find the same thing. What will your explanation be? That World Book is a Creo publication? You've already implied the authors are incompetent because it was designed for kids.
JonF...
Quote
That article is wrong, Davie-poo, just as you are wrong, as has been pointed out many times already in this thread, with lots of details. Repeating your debunked falsehoods doesn't make 'em true. Stratigraphy and radiometric dating are independent ways of dating strata; the fact that they essentially always agree is not circularity.
You say it is wrong and yet you cannot explain how the dates at the upper layers in the GC are determined. Sorry, Jonny ... World Book is right.
JonF...
Quote
Like that data on dating and magnetic stripes on the Atlantic seafloor, that you're terified of 'cause it destroys your "theory". And ocean-floor sediment thickness; thinnest near the mid-oceanic ridges, thickest at the continental boundaries, smoothly varying in between.
I'm interested in these ... we'll get to them.
Deadman...
Quote
And I responded by asking (p.107) you how you would radiometrically date the Hermit and Coconino layers : " How would you radiometrically date the siltstone of the Hermit and the fine, rounded, pitted, frosted Quartz grains of the Coconino?"
Yes, Deadman, that is my question. How WOULD you date them? Someone has. How did they do it? A WAG?
DON'T LIKE MY VARVES QUOTES? OF COURSE YOU DON'T. BUT HERE'S MORE
Quote
Varves A common argument against the Bible involves varves — rock formations with alternating layers of fine dark, and coarse light sediment. Annual changes are assumed to deposit bands with light layers in summer and dark layers in winter. It is reported that some rock formations contain hundreds of thousands of varves, thereby ‘proving’ the earth is much older than the Bible says.9 But the assumption that each couplet always takes a year to form is wrong. Recent catastrophes show that violent events like the Flood described in Genesis can deposit banded rock formations very quickly. The Mount St Helens eruption in Washington State produced eight metres (25 feet) of finely layered sediment in a single afternoon!10 And a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit about a metre (3–4 feet) of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football field (cross-section shown on the right: normal silica sand grains are separated by darker layers of denser mineral grains like rutile).11
When sedimentation was studied in the laboratory, it was discovered that fine bands form automatically as the moving water transports the different sized particles sideways into position.12 Surprisingly, the thickness of each band was found to depend on the relative particle sizes rather than on the flow conditions.13 A layered rock (diatomite) was separated into its particles, and when redeposited in flowing fluid, identical layers formed.14
Much is often made of the Green River varves,9 in Wyoming, USA. But these bands cannot possibly be annual deposits because well-preserved fish and birds are found all through the sediments.
It is unthinkable that these dead animals could have rested on the bottom of the lake for decades, being slowly covered by sediment. Their presence indicates catastrophic burial. It is often claimed that the fish and birds remained in prime condition at the bottom of the lake because the water was highly alkaline and this preserved their carcasses.15 Yet highly alkaline water causes organic material to disintegrate, and that is why alkaline powder is used in dishwashers! [Ed. note: some sceptics have claimed that alkali merely ‘cuts grease’, evidently ignorant of the elementary chemistry involved, i.e. base-catalyzed hydrolysis of polymers, which would do the opposite of preserving the fish.] Another problem for the varve explanation is that the number of bands is not consistent across the formation as it should be if they were annual deposits.16 http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i4/geology.asp
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
CREATIONIST LEANINGS ALWAYS DISQUALIFY A PERSON FROM MAKING SCIENTIFIC STATEMENTS
False. What disqualifies a CLAIM is the evidence or lack thereof that they bring to the table, stupid. Merely being a creationist doesn't inevitably or invariably "disqualify" the claims of that person. But in the case Gladwin, I cited what his motives were, his lack of expertise and his incorrect statements, such as his claim on deciduous trees, junipers and bristlecones. THOSE FACTORS are what show he was wrong and his claims wrong.
In other instances, creationists show high levels of duplicity, or "research" that is inapplicable or inappropriate or otherwise flawed. This is why they don't like peer-review: they have an ideological axe to grind that shows up as bias in their work. Christians, Muslims and Hindus and any other proponents of religion or lack thereof are all free to publish, but it is the QUALITY of the work and the conclusions reached or not reached ...that count. In short, if you want to complain about me or anyone rejecting creationist claims...look at the specific claim I am rejecting and if the creationist has supported their case or not.
Using 94-year-old NON-ARCHAEOLOGISTS with NO expertise in dendrochronology, and in fact, a known bias against it...using THAT "data" as SOURCE information...as REFERENCE material ...shows how low creationists are. And I hope you don't like it, AssHatDave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Let's look at another example of the poor quality of the "research" done to support overreaching claims by creationists, DaveStupid: Your last citation on AIG's claims about Varves, specifically the Green River Varves.
Look at the article, Dave. Show me what RESEARCH THEY DID. The extent of the article is : "Well, ONE reference cited says something about alkali environments"
Okay, so what? The article then goes on to say that "well-preserved" green river fossils couldn't be possible because alkali dissolves...what? fats? So?
Then the leap to the statement that NO fossils could be formed over years ...despite this being shown in such environments and in anoxic environments and in slow-deposition environments like the deep sea TODAY, and Lake beds TODAY?
And what do they use to back up that claim? NOTHING. No references at all. No discription of what constitutes a "well-preserved " fossil at all. Green River fossils are all over the market today, you can BUY them ONLINE. LOOK at them, tell me how "well-preserved" they are...do you see organs? Do you see minute features? To you see other soft tissues?
So what does this "article " about varves have? it has a long argument from incredulity with no original research or experiment by the creationists. It says "well-preserved " fossils like the green river MUST be rapidly covered...because alkali dissolves fats...SO FUCKING WHAT? IT wouldn't DISSOLVE BONE, it wouldn't affect gradual fossilization, it wouldn't affect anoxic preservation there or elsewhere, it has NO BEARING except to convince credulous idiots like you , Dave , that won't even do BASIC research on the subject before immediately swallowing their shit hook,line and sinker. AND THAT is why their "articles" are NEVER presented in peer-reviewed journals not owned by creationists...because they know it won't stand up to scrutiny by people that WON'T be so stupid and easily led as you, DumbassDave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No comment on my fisking of your radiometric dating quote, hum, Dabvie-pooper?
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 07 2006,05:50)
WORLD BOOK AUTHORS ARE INCOMPETENT (cough cough, especially if they make us look bad) So, I guess the History professor at Oxford that I quoted is incompetent. And probably all those other specialists in their fields that write all those other articles are too.
Wrong. The World Book is a simplified source for young children who are not prepared for the real complexities. It also has some errors. It's not a pprorpaite as a refernce for a discussion like this.
Quote
EVO-BOTS USED CIRCULAR REASONING ON DATING FOSSILS ONLY UNTIL 1993. During this landmark year, they suddenly saw the light and realized how foolish they had been looking all those years prior to 1993. They quickly sent out an Official Evobot Memo to all encyclopedia companies (including World Book) and fixed this embarrassing problem.
Circular reasoning was never used on dating fossils.
Quote
Check the latest version of World Book at the library today and see what I find. Let me guess ... I'll find the same thing. What will your explanation be? That World Book is a Creo publication? You've already implied the authors are incompetent because it was designed for kids.
No, the authors are competent, although that particular quote appears to be a mistake.
Quote
JonF...
Quote
That article is wrong, Davie-poo, just as you are wrong, as has been pointed out many times already in this thread, with lots of details. Repeating your debunked falsehoods doesn't make 'em true. Stratigraphy and radiometric dating are independent ways of dating strata; the fact that they essentially always agree is not circularity.
You say it is wrong and yet you cannot explain how the dates at the upper layers in the GC are determined. Sorry, Jonny ... World Book is right.
Whether or not I have any idea on how some particular set of layers is dated has nothing to do with the issue.
Quote
The Mount St Helens eruption in Washington State produced eight metres (25 feet) of finely layered sediment in a single afternoon!
Looking nothing like varves.
Quote
And a rapidly pumped sand slurry was observed to deposit about a metre (3–4 feet) of fine layers on a beach over an area the size of a football field (cross-section shown on the right: normal silica sand grains are separated by darker layers of denser mineral grains like rutile).
Looking nothing like varves.
Quote
When sedimentation was studied in the laboratory, it was discovered that fine bands form automatically as the moving water transports the different sized particles sideways into position.12 Surprisingly, the thickness of each band was found to depend on the relative particle sizes rather than on the flow conditions.13 A layered rock (diatomite) was separated into its particles, and when redeposited in flowing fluid, identical layers formed.
All looking nothing like varves.
Quote
Much is often made of the Green River varves,9 in Wyoming, USA. But these bands cannot possibly be annual deposits because well-preserved fish and birds are found all through the sediments.
It is unthinkable that these dead animals could have rested on the bottom of the lake for decades, being slowly covered by sediment.
Argument from incredulity. Logical fallacy.
Quote
Their presence indicates catastrophic burial. It is often claimed that the fish and birds remained in prime condition at the bottom of the lake because the water was highly alkaline and this preserved their carcasses.15 Yet highly alkaline water causes organic material to disintegrate, and that is why alkaline powder is used in dishwashers!
Gee, laden with references throughout, except here ... the only reference for alkaline water decomposing organic material is Cascade Detergent! Looks as if they just made that one up.
I think you would just say, "Ah, that guy's just a stupid creationist."
No AFD wrong. I would say "Ah, that guy's just an ignorant uneducated lying pseudo scientist, who values his own self importance and quite often money above truth."
Pseudo science avoids peer review --in layman's terms a reality check or idiot test.
Just like you do AFD.
Peer review is NOT a one sided process.
If a scientist proposes a testable idea and that idea is shown to be wrong by his peers he is expected to provide enough evidence to support his conclusion or retract his assertion.
If he doesn't, he does not get the support of his peers and if his proposals are clearly wrong he can no longer claim to have the support of that body of wisdom and the organizations and governments that support them.
Heck AFD the world of science is littered with stories of various shysters trying to promote their scams while assuming a 'scientific' air of respectability...don't tell me you can't spot a fraud..what is the matter with you?
Are you a fool?
The single greatest value science has is in fact not an objective measure but a moral value, that of ones conscience. Where someone is found to be deliberately lying, then they lose creditability and respect.
That is to say AFD ...now you will have to bear with me here because this is a concept you have no grasp of...indeed your past actions show that you do not only NOT understand this but are pathologically UNABLE to understand it..
I only say that because, others while they may be aware of it need to understand that AFD is physically incapable of understanding the value of truth, his own conscience lies to him.
In science ego's get hurt, many careers have ended where cherished causes not based on reality cause their owners to literally 'go off the rails', fortunately the great majority of the people involved in science value the opinion of their peers AND have enough self respect to know when to admit they are wrong. Their world doesn't end because of an emotional defect, as yours would if you acknowledged the truth.
AFD has been damaged as a child, he is carrying a wound and until he seeks professional help will never be able to deal with his problem.
Mythology actually has something to say in this area. The tale of Parsifal an uneducated fool who tasted early success which gave him a higher opinion of himself than was deserved, spent many years wandering the forests searching for the hidden castle and each time he found it forgot to ask the question that would have ended his perpetual miasma “What ails thee Knight?”.
AFD has the capacity to pass that damage on, and there is very little we can do to prevent it.
All we can do is reveal his delusion.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I'd be glad to have a nice long debate on the Green River evidence, Dave, but the fact is that you won't do that, since you've learned from the Zircon-helium creationist claims you made...that it becomes very easy to show that creationists use the deceptive, false or irrelevant and unsupported tactics I described above.
I was going to cite a bunch of material on the Green River Varves, but instead, I'll let Glenn Morton take center stage. Morton, citing references at http://home.entouch.net/dmd/greenriver.htm
"Every feature of the Green River formation points to long periods of deposition. The coprolites of fish and birds, algal encrusting of logs, footprints, variations in laminae thickness consistent with known weather patterns, sunspots, and Earth orbital parameters. Radioactive dating confirms the depositional rates which indicate yearly varves. The young-earth creationist, like Garner, can sit on the fence and throw rocks at the geological explanation, but he can't explain any of these features. The young-earth creationist must ask himself the following set of questions if he is to be rational."
1. Why were the flood waters on layer after layer the depth of a bird leg as indicated by [shorebird] footprints? 2. How were catfish able to leave so many coprolites on the layers if this is a rapidly deposited formation? 3. Why would God imprint orbital parameters and sunspot cycles on the thicknesses of the laminae? 4. Why do the radiometric dates seem to verify the slow depositional rates? 5. How could a bird take the time to nibble the lake floor during a global flood? 6. How are raindrop impressions preserved under the waters of a global flood? 7. Why did God produce a flood deposit which exactly matches the areal distribution seen in lakes? Did God deceive us? 8. Why do the oxygen-18 values decrease around the edges of Fossil Lake as would be expected of a modern lake?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The young-earth creationist must ask himself the following question if he is to be a Normal Rational Person
Why am I an irrational abnormal person
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
EVO-BOTS USED CIRCULAR REASONING ON DATING FOSSILS ONLY UNTIL 1993. During this landmark year, they suddenly saw the light and realized how foolish they had been looking all those years prior to 1993. They quickly sent out an Official Evobot Memo to all encyclopedia companies (including World Book) and fixed this embarrassing problem.
Dave, did you even read my post on your "circular reasoning" argument? My guess is you did read it, realized it obliterated your argument, and ignored it, hoping no one would notice.
Until the advent of radiometric dating, it was impossible to assign an absolute date to a fossil, Dave, other than by using some educated guesswork. After the advent of radiometric dating, it became possible to assign absolute dates to fossils which were embedded in sediments that could be dated radiometrically. Then, when geologists came upon sediments that could not be dated radiometrically, they could assign dates to those sediments according to the fossils embedded therein.
Where do you see circular reasoning here, Dave?
And what's your explanation for any of this? You don't have a flood, because you ain't got no water, so where's your explanation for anything?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Last night when I read AFD's last blither about circular reasoning my jaw dropped (again).
I even wasted some time digging up the usual creationist false use of logic to support their own ...er circular reasoning. (The same type of logic that failed in Dover BTW)
They seem to think that by making a statement (any statement) the statement itself IS evidence.
The moon is made of green cheese, therefore the moon IS green cheese.
Why do you think the moon is made of green cheese?
Well some guy who merely made the assertion, said so
Yes, and what did he say?
The moon is made of green cheese, therefore the moon IS green cheese.
So a circular argument made by a 3rd person?
But it was written in a BOOK, AND it had footnotes so it MUST be science
And guess what ....surprise ...surprise.. the 2 competing world views in geography in the early 1800's were .......wait for it....catastrophism and gradualism.
Trust a born again idiot to dredge up a 200 year old disproved bible based 'scientific theory'.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
So, Dave..back to dendrochronology. I asked you specifically to show me how it is wrong and flawed, and you offered up two whole citations. Your first citation is a short article at AIG, where "dr." Don Batten made three claims: 1. He claims that specific species of pine, like Pinus radiata...produce multiple rings per year. But the interesting thing is that your expert offers no citations at all. This is from New Zealand work that is discussed at http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/free_issues/NZJEcol10_77.pdf . The data is from FARMED trees in an artificial setting and a non-seasonal environment.
2. Batten claimed Dendro and 14C are used in a "circular " way to confirm each other. False. Multiple non-radiometric methods are used to check dendro records. They include the dating methods I have listed previously
3. In all the hundreds of thousands of tree ring studies ever performed, Don Batten finds a total of TWO that were questioned : one was re-measured, the other was withdrawn due to procedural/methodological problems
That was what you claimed you "slammed" me with on dendro ( !!!! )
Your next "big gun" was H.S. Gladwin, a former stockbroker who is not an archaeologist, not a dendro expert, but had a long history of being a crank that thought african PYGMIES populated the Americas, despised dendro in general and was NINETY THREE when he wrote the cited article in which he claims three things: (1)bristlecone and (2)juniper dendrochronology is unreliable and (3)deciduous trees can't be used for dendro.
To examine that last claim by Gladwin on deciduous trees not being useful ( I could have done the same on all of his claims), I did a brief search in a couple of databases, and got well over 200 hits on journal articles for oak alone since 1980. Here's a VERY FEW on deciduous trees:
Friedrich, M., Remmelel, S., Kromer, B., Hofmann, J., Spurk, M., Kaiser, K.F., Orcel, C., Kuppers, M. 2004. The 12,460-year Hohenheim oak and pine tree-ring chronology from central Europe - A unique annual record for radiocarbon calibration and paleoenvironment reconstructions. Radiocarbon 46(3): 1111-1122.
Blasing, T.J. 1980. How climatologists use tree ring data. In: P.P. Feret and T.L. Sharik, eds., Dendrology in the Eastern Deciduous Biome. School of Forestry and Wildlife Resources. School of Forestry and Wildlife Resources, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Publication FWS-2-80: 108-109 Cleaveland, M.K. 1980. Dating tree rings in the eastern United States. In: P.P. Feret and T.L. Sharik, eds., Dendrology in the Eastern Deciduous Biome. School of Forestry and Wildlife Resources. School of Forestry and Wildlife Resources, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Publication FWS-2-80: 110-124 Leak, W.B. 1987. Comparison of standard and actual tree-growth trends for deciduous and coniferous species in New Hampshire. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 17: 1297-1300. Pilcher, J.R. 1996. Dendrochronological insights into past oak growth. In: E. Dreyer and G. Aussenac, eds., Ecology and Physiology of Oaks in a Changing Environment. Annales des Sciences forestičres 53(2-3): 663-670 Tessier, L., Nola, P., Serre-Bachet, F. 1994. Deciduous Quercus in the Mediterranean region: tree-ring/climate relationships. New Phytologist 126(2): 355-367. Yin, X., Foster, N.W., Morrison, I.K., Arp, P.A. 1994. Tree-ring-based growth analysis for a sugar maple stand: relations to local climate and transient soil properties. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 24: 1567-1574 Tabuchi, R., Takahashi, K. 1998. The development of a new dendrometer and its application to deciduous broadleaf tree species in Hokkaido, northern Japan. Journal of Sustainable Forestry 6(1-2): 23-34 Worbes, M. 1999. Annual growth rings, rainfall-dependent growth and long-term growth patterns of tropical trees from the Caparo Forest Reserve in Venezuela. Journal of Ecology 87(3): 391-403. Abrams, M.D., Orwig, D.A., Dockry, M.J. 1997. Dendroecology and successional status of two contrasting old-growth oak forests in the Blue Ridge Mountains, U.S.A.. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 27: 994-1002. Babos, K. 1987/1988. Atmeneti kkorb˘l sz rmaz˘ Quercus robur L. toerzs evgyuerueszelessegenek oesszehasonlˇt sa a napfolttevekenyseg ciklus val. Botanikai Koezlemenyek 74/75(1-2): 219-233. English title: Comparison of annual ring width in the stem of Quercus robur L. originating from the transitional Stone Age with the sunspot activity cycle Akkemik, U., Dagdeviren, N., Aras, A. 2005. A preliminary reconstruction (AD 1635-2000) of spring precipitation using oak tree rings in the western Black Sea region of Turkey. International Journal of Biometeorology 49(5): 297-302. Shapley, M.D., Johnson, W.C., Engstrom, D.R., Osterkamp, W.R. 2005. Late-Holocene flooding and drought in the Northern Great Plains, USA, reconstructed from tree rings, lake sediments and ancient shorelines . The Holocene 15(1): 29-41. Soucy, R., Heitzman, E., Spetich, M.A. 2005. The establishment and development of oak forests in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35(8): 1790-1797. Rozas, V. 2005. Dendrochronology of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur L.) in an old-growth pollarded woodland in northern Spain: tree-ring growth responses to climate. Annals of Forest Science 62(3): 209-218. Haneca, K., Van Acker, J., Beeckman, H. 2005. Growth trends reveal the forest structure during Roman and Medieval times in Western Europe: a comparison between archaeological and actual oak ring series (Quercus robur and Quercus petraea). Annals of Forest Science 62(8): 797-805. Cater, M., Levanic, T. 2004. Increment and environmental conditions in two Slovenian pedunculate-oak forest complexes. Ekologia-Bratislava 23(4): 353-365. Lyubenova, M., Asenova, A. 2003. Indicatory significance of the early and late wood of Quercus rubra L. in dendrological research in Sofia region. Phytologia Balcanica 9(1): 53-58
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, and AirFraudDave: On your question about radiometric dating of the upper layers of the Grand Canyon, I already told you that the Coconino, Hermit Shale and Kaibab Limestone are not radiometrically dated directly. So what? How does this show circularity? It doesn't and you didn't even read the articles on this subject provided for you.
So I'll ask you once again, Dave: why did you repeat your lie about me saying NO sedimentary layers could be dated? --- When I pointed out twice previously that I said no such thing?
See, Dave, I'll answer your questions directly. Other people here answer your questions directly. You can look back on the 130 + pages of this thread and show that there are only a handful of questions that **you** asked that were left unanswered.
I'm telling you flat-out that **IF** you ask me a question directly, I'll answer you directly.
On the other hand, I went back and looked at how many questions you refused to answer, Dave. I had to stop at 234 unanswered questions.
You cannot claim to answer questions directly, Dave, not in the least, YOU CAN'T And WON'T...because you don't view this as a "search for truth," you view it as a game to be played on as dishonest a level as you can manage -- to avoid dealing with the data as it is.
Now, you might not find that significant, but it certainly indicates the utter disregard you have for direct debate and logic, the dishonesty of your claims and the depth of your ignorance on the very subjects you brought up. Have a nice day, liar.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You don't have a flood, because you ain't got no water, so where's your explanation for anything?
I'll hop in here and help Dave out. but first a song.
Don't know much about history Don't know much biology Don't know much about a science book Don't know much about the French I took But I do know that I love you (dog) And I know that if you love me too (dog) What a wonderful world this would be
Now if you think HairFoolDunce has run out of stupid quotes to mine ...he obviously hasen't seen THIS.
Don't Know Much About History
A song popular about 40 years ago contained the line “don’t know much about history.” Apparently things haven’t changed much. Here are some purported-to-be actual answers collected from 6th grade history tests (including spelling anomalies): “Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.”
“The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.”
“Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who gave people advice. They killed him. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.”
“The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter.”
“Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.”
“Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music.”
That’s an “F” in World History. What about American history? A couple answers were: “Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.”
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Bush: His theme song Melodi: What a wonderful world...
Don't know much about history. Don't know much foreign policy. I don't know the names of men I grill, Or implications of the seats I fill. But I do know who has paid my way. For corporate interests and the NRA What a wonderful world this will be.
Don't know much about ecology. Cutting trees has always worked for me. And I don't know about the women's vote, And I can't think of any bill I wrote. But there's one thing that I know for sure, If the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor What a wonderful world this will be. I never claimed to be an A student, but I don't have to be. If you have deep pockets and sell nuclear rockets You're a friend of my family.
Don't know much about air pollution. Don't know much about the Constitution. Don't care much for solar energy. There's nothing in it for my friends and me. And if we can't find any on our soil We can go to war and get more oil, and What a wonderful world this will be.
Don't know much about the driving rules. Don't know much about the public schools. Don't know why the inner cities fail Why can't folks get dad to pay for Yale? And if the issues causing you to lose Are never covered in the evening news, What a wonderful world this will be. I never claimed to be an A student, but I don't have to be. If you have a brother who's the Florida Governor, the result's no mystery.
Don't know much about history. Don't know much foreign policy. Don't know 'bout paying off a debt. I never had to pay one off yet. But I do know who has paid my way. For special interests in the USA What a wonderful world this will be.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I thought the following "quote" looked familiar, so I looked around. Guess what I discovered, Dave?
Yet another example of Creationist Quote-mining
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 06 2006,06:45)
HERE'S ANOTHER REALLY GOOD ONE FOR YOU TO CHEW ON DURING YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON SIESTA!
R. H. Rastall, “Geology,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, 1954, p. 168.
Quote
“It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle. The succession of organisms has been determined by a study of their remains embedded in the rocks, and the relative ages of the rocks are determined by the remains of organisms that they contain.”
Okay, let's set the stage. RH (Robert Heron) Rastall lived from 1871-1950. He was thus dead for years before the Encyclopaedia Brittanica published this.
Now let's look at the original source for the quote, "The Testimony of Geologic History" in Henry Morris' book The Twilight of Evolution, (Baker: Grand Rapids) 1963, pp. 47-64. The excerpt can be seen at http://www.the-highway.com/geologic-history_Morris.html
First, notice that Morris gives the Encyclopedia date as 1956.
First, the author of the article [Rastall]gives background as to stratigraphical geology, leading up to the quote mined section. Then the quote follows:
Quote
It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle(...etc., from Ratsall)
BUT, as the TalkOrigins Quote-Mine page notes:
Quote
However, immediately following on that sentence, Rastall continues the paragraph:
"Nevertheless the arguments are perfectly conclusive.This apparent paradox will disappear in the light of a little further consideration, when the necessary limitations have been introduced... (read the rest of it at Talk Origins)
The authors of the Talk Origin Quote-Mine Project article on this conclude:
Quote
There is no credible scenario by which the quote miner could have plucked this sentence out of this article, separating it from the rest of that paragraph, without the deliberate intent of misrepresenting what the author was saying. Rastall states clearly that the seemingly circular reasoning is merely an "apparent paradox" that is not only resolved but is rendered "perfectly conclusive" by the interplay of the two laws he describes. Even if creationists wanted to quibble with Rastall's acceptance of the "Law of Uniformity" or the empiric evidence for certain strata always being associated with certain fossils, they cannot appeal to Rastall as an expert on the logic behind stratigraphical geology and then intentionally hide his explanation of that very logic. At least they can't and keep any pretense of personal integrity. - John (catshark) Pieret and R. Dunno
Busted again, AirChumpDave .
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I told Dave a long time ago he needs to get his head out of the creationist ghetto. It's the only way he'll ever see how tiny the support is for his young-earth creationism. Dave never reads anything but creationist tracts (he obviously never read Rastall in the original, or he never would have used that quote, knowing he'd be busted here for using it), so he never knows how thorougly he's being duped.
But hey, I also pointed out a while ago that Dave actually enjoys being duped.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hey Dave--since you kick our butts so thoroughly, why don't you invite a bunch of your church / sunday school buddies to come here and take a look at how you did?
Hmm...the news just seems to get worse and worse for Dave's tiny little universe, barely a few thousand years old.
Seems like it's just getting older and older and bigger and bigger, Dave. And that trend's been going on for at least a hundred years.
I personally wouldn't put much stock in the new older-age results yet. Recent measurements put the age of the universe pretty tightly around 13.7 billion years. It'll take a good bit of work to change that.
I personally wouldn't put much stock in the new older-age results yet. Recent measurements put the age of the universe pretty tightly around 13.7 billion years. It'll take a good bit of work to change that.
It's certainly a preliminary result. But my general point is this: estimates of the universe aren't getting any closer to Dave's perferred value of 6,000 years. He can't even get estimates he agrees with to converge on 6,000 years. He can't even estimate its age within much less than 50% of a particular value.
Let's face it: the difference between 13.7 billion and 15.8 billion is proportionally much less than the difference between 6,000 and 10,000.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hey Dave--since you kick our butts so thoroughly, why don't you invite a bunch of your church / sunday school buddies to come here and take a look at how you did?
Already did that long ago ... they can't believe how hard headed you guys are.
And they all loved the "Watchmaker" Dynamation ... :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey Dave--since you kick our butts so thoroughly, why don't you invite a bunch of your church / sunday school buddies to come here and take a look at how you did?
Already did that long ago ... they can't believe how hard headed you guys are.
And they all loved the "Watchmaker" Dynamation ... :-)
Really? And none of them saw fit to make a single comment? AFDave, are you lying?
ALRIGHT ... ENOUGH RABBIT TRAILS ... LET'S PICK A FLOOD-RELATED TOPIC AND DISSECT IT
(I'm helping a couple of friends start a new business and I will have less time, so I'll have to quit bouncing around and focus on one thing at a time)
Now, I know you guys don't like World Book ... too bad ... they pointed out a very revealing flaw in your thinking -- circular reasoning, i.e. date the rocks with the index fossils and date the fossils with the rocks. You say it's not a flaw ... just a misunderstanding on my part ...
Alright, let's see ... here's the famous GC layer picture ...
Now, you can see it has all these neat dates assigned to each layer, right? Now here's Eric's explanation of how this works. (I chose it b/c I could find it easily and it's concise.)
Quote
Dave, before the advent of radiometric dating, the geological column was assigned relative dates, largely by noting the fossils contained in various layers. Up until the mid-twentieth century, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to the absolute age of most fossils, but very little as to their relative age, because they appeared in the same layers in the geological column worldwide.
Once the technology and methodology of radiometric dating became established, it then became possible to establish absolute dates for fossils. I know this will strain your brain to the breaking point, but here's how it works: you've got fossils embedded in sediment which, for various reasons, cannot be dated radiometrically. But you've seen these same types of fossils elsewhere, in rock which can be dated radiometrically. Since we know the relative ages of all of these fossils, and we know the absolute age these fossils in some rocks through radiometric dating, we can use that information to date fossils in rocks that cannot be dated radiometrically.
Now ... I would like to know WHICH of these layers were dated RADIOMETRICALLY. Is it correct that NONE of the layers above the Great Unconformity can be dated RM? How about the layers below the GU? I'm thinking that the only layers that CAN be dated RM are the Zoroaster Granite and the Vishnu Schist. Is this correct?
If this is correct, then according to Eric's explanation, we should have dated these layers according to OTHER rock formations which ALSO contain these same fossils and CAN be dated RM, right?
Can you give me some examples?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
ALRIGHT ... ENOUGH RABBIT TRAILS ... LET'S PICK A FLOOD-RELATED TOPIC AND DISSECT IT
No Flood, Dave, remember? No water. No water, no flood.
Quote
Now, I know you guys don't like World Book ... too bad ... they pointed out a very revealing flaw in your thinking -- circular reasoning, i.e. date the rocks with the index fossils and date the fossils with the rocks. You say it's not a flaw ... just a misunderstanding on my part ...
And Dave, why are you still saying the World Book pointed out a "revealing flaw" in our thinking even after we've explained exactly why it's not a flaw and that there's no circular reasoning involved at all. And especially after Deadman pointed out how the quote you mined completely contradicts your argument.
Quote
Alright, let's see ... here's the famous GC layer picture ...Now, you can see it has all these neat dates assigned to each layer, right? Now here's Eric's explanation of how this works. (I chose it b/c I could find it easily and it's concise.)
Quote
Dave, before the advent of radiometric dating, the geological column was assigned relative dates, largely by noting the fossils contained in various layers. Up until the mid-twentieth century, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to the absolute age of most fossils, but very little as to their relative age, because they appeared in the same layers in the geological column worldwide.
Once the technology and methodology of radiometric dating became established, it then became possible to establish absolute dates for fossils. I know this will strain your brain to the breaking point, but here's how it works: you've got fossils embedded in sediment which, for various reasons, cannot be dated radiometrically. But you've seen these same types of fossils elsewhere, in rock which can be dated radiometrically. Since we know the relative ages of all of these fossils, and we know the absolute age these fossils in some rocks through radiometric dating, we can use that information to date fossils in rocks that cannot be dated radiometrically.
Now ... I would like to know WHICH of these layers were dated RADIOMETRICALLY. Is it correct that NONE of the layers above the Great Unconformity can be dated RM? How about the layers below the GU? I'm thinking that the only layers that CAN be dated RM are the Zoroaster Granite and the Vishnu Schist. Is this correct?
If this is correct, then according to Eric's explanation, we should have dated these layers according to OTHER rock formations which ALSO contain these same fossils and CAN be dated RM, right?
Can you give me some examples?
Dave, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that every other layer in the grand canyon had at least one fossil in it, and no layer other than the lowermost layers could be dated radiometrically (this is not the case; I'm just laying out a hypothetical). Is it impossible to assign a date to any of these layers then?
Of course not.
If you can find a similar fossil elsewhere, Dave—anywhere—in sediment that can be dated radiometrically, than you can extrapolate that date to the fossil in the sediment you can't date. Not really that difficult. Except in your case, because you cannot be made to understand something if your worldview depends on you not understanding it.
In any event, Dave, many of the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon can be dated radiometrically, but even if none of them could, that would hardly mean we'd have to guess as to the dates.
I hate to be mean, Dave, but it's becoming harder and harder not to think of you as mentally challenged.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Here's one you won't expect, DaveStupid --deal with this one first.
Meteor Crater in Arizona penetrates the Permian Kaibab and Toroweap Formations and has caused shock effects on the Coconino Sandstone. Because the crater penetrates Permian strata, it is Permian or younger. And since the crater contains some Pleistocene lake deposits, it is Pleistocene or older. The Geomorphology of the crater itself indicates only a small amount of erosion.
Nishiizumi et al. (Nishiizumi, K., Kohl, C.P., Shoemaker J.R., Arnold, J.R., Klein, J., Fink, D. and Middleton, R., 1991. In situ 10Be and 26Al exposure ages at Meteor Crater, Arizona. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2699-2703.) report a minimum age of 49.2±1.7ka, based on 10Be and 26Al analyses of samples from the crater walls and ejecta blocks at the crater rim.
Phillips et al. (Phillips, F.M., Zreda, M.G., Smith, S.S., Elmore, D., Kubik, P.W., Dorn, R.I. and Roddy, D.J., 1991. Age and geomorphic history of Meteor Crater, Arizona, from cosmogenic Cl-36 and C-14 in rock varnish. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2695-2698.) report a 36Cl exposure age of 49±0.7ka for dolomite ejecta on the crater rim.
Both sets of dates are in turn statistically identical to quartz thermoluminescence dates of 49±3ka reported by Sutton (Sutton, S.R., 1985. Thermoluminescence measurements on shock-metamorphosed sandstone and dolomite from Meteor Crater, Arizona. Journal of Geophysical Research 90(B5), pp. 3690-3700.)
See Also: Kieffer, S.W., I. Shock Metamorphism of the Coconino Sandstone at Meteor Crater, Arizona: II. The Specific Heat of Solids of Geophysical Interest, Ph.D. Thesis, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, 1970.
Kieffer, S. W., Shock metamorphism of the Coconino Sandstone at Meteor Crater, Arizona, Journal of Geophysical Research, 76, 5449-5473, 1971.
Shoemaker, E. M. and Kieffer, S.W., Guidebook to the Geology of Meteor Crater, Arizona, printed by the Meteoritical Society and the U.S. Geological Survey for the 37th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, August, 1974.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Once you're finished with that little tidbit, I have some others for you, Dave, but I'd like you to notice that all the dates on the Meteor Crater converge at 49 KYA. That kinda puts the kibosh on your young earth claims for the region. Enjoy, stupid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
ALRIGHT ... ENOUGH RABBIT TRAILS ... LET'S PICK A FLOOD-RELATED TOPIC AND DISSECT IT
DDTTD decides to hand out some rabbit pellets and tries to convince us they are choice plump raisins.
Quote
Now ... I would like to know WHICH of these layers were dated RADIOMETRICALLY. Is it correct that NONE of the layers above the Great Unconformity can be dated RM? How about the layers below the GU? I'm thinking that the only layers that CAN be dated RM are the Zoroaster Granite and the Vishnu Schist. Is this correct?
If this is correct, then according to Eric's explanation, we should have dated these layers according to OTHER rock formations which ALSO contain these same fossils and CAN be dated RM, right?
Can you give me some examples?
Do you really think anyone here is going to fall for your pedagoguery? The ICR's 6 Million Dollar Man has already had his work exposed as fraudulent.
Here's more - on the Chinle - just because Crabby and I get along, and we both think you're pretty much a walking sphincter, Dave:
NEIL J. TABOR, CRAYTON J. YAPP, and ISABEL P. MONTANEZ (2004) Goethite, calcite, and organic matter from Permian and Triassic soils: Carbon isotopes and CO2 concentrations. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 68, No. 7, pp. 1503-1517
Shane J. Prochnow, Lee C. Nordt, Stacy C. Atchley and Michael R. Hudec (2006). 3-Multi-proxy paleosol evidence for middle and late Triassic climate trends in eastern Utah. Journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology Vol.232, No.1, pp.1-96 "temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels from stable oxygen and carbon isotopes of pedogenic carbonate, and ecosystem reconstruction by a combination of climate indexes and paleosol characteristics."
Riggs, N. R., S. R. Ash, and J. M. Mattinson. 1994. Isotopic dating of a non-volcanic continental sequence, Chinle Formation, Arizona. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 26(6):61
Bazard, D.R., Butler, R.F. Paleomagnetism of the Chinle and Kayenta Formations Journal of Geophysical Research 1991 vol. v. 96, page 9847 I think I have lots left on other formations/layers/groups
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The last photo is a satellite shot, the crater is left-center. Notice that pretty brown exposed sandstone, where tiny spiders leave tracks in the layers and dance on Dave's pinheaded skull.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So .....AfterFartDave (trust me I'm a creationist)..... have you invited your softheaded fools ...er friends back for a second bite of humble pie?
No?
Why not, scared?
You are a weeping waterless sissy ArseFondleDood.
BTW all the evidence is in AllF*ck*d*p Dave you are a liar of babelic proportions.
Now where is the tower of bable again?
Howzabout posting some archaelogical evidence to support that fable?
Whaaa, no can do?
So it's just an imaginary tale?...thought so.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
How are those supposed to show me that the layers in the GC are dated correctly?
Missed that ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Still nothing about how they come up with 250 million years old for the Kaibab Limestone.
Now what?
Quote
Kaibab Limestone Usage of Geologic Unit Name: Kaibab Limestone (AZ*,NV*,UT*) Kaibab Limestone of Park City Group (NV*,UT*) Kaibab Formation (AZ*,NV*,UT) Kaibab Marble (CA*) Kaibab Group (UT)
Kaibab Limestone on Grand Canyon's South Rim.
Age: Permian, Early* Leonardian*
Early Middle Permian - 270 million years (age used by National Park Service; Mathis and Bowman, 2005) Oh, oh, oh ... I see ... if the National Park Service says it's 270 million years old, then that's authoritative, is that it??
Geologic Province: Plateau sedimentary province* Black Mesa basin* Paradox basin* Salton basin* Basin and Range province* Great Basin province*
Areal Extent: AZ(n)* CA(se)* NV(ec)* UT(s)*
Subunits: Formation rank (alphabetical): Fossil Mountain Member (AZ*,NV*,UT), Harrisburg Member (AZ*,NV*,UT*).
Unit Name History: Named as upper formation of Aubrey Group (Darton, 1910). Revised, Harrisburg Member named (Bassler and Reeside, 1921). Areal limits (Gilluly and Reeside, 1928; Gregory and Moore, 1931). Redescribed as Kaibab Formation; lower contact revised and Kaibab informally divided into (ascending): alpha, beta, and gamma units (McKee, 1938). Upper contact revised (Blakey, 1974). Rraised to group rank and divided into several formations; Areal limits (Welsh and others, 1979). Redescribed as Kaibab Marble in CA; Areal limits (Hamilton, 1982). Redescribed as Kaibab Formation (Ulrich and others, 1984). Redescribed as Kaibab Formation; Reference; Revised, divided into (ascending): Fossil Mountain Member (new) and Harrisburg Member (Sorauf and Billingsley, 1991). Areal limits (Anderson and Hintze, 1993).
Description from Grand Canyon Area (from Billingsley, George H., 2000)
Kaibab Formation (Lower Permian), undivided—Includes, in descending order, Harrisburg and Fossil Mountain Members, undivided, as defined by Sorauf and Billingsley (1991).
Harrisburg Member—Reddish-gray and brownish-gray, slope-forming gypsum, siltstone, sandstone, and limestone. Informally subdivided, in descending order, into three units forming an upper slope, middle cliff, and lower slope. Upper slope unit is interbedded red and gray gypsum, sandstone, and siltstone, and yellowish-gray fossiliferous sandy limestone. Middle cliff unit is gray, thin-bedded, fossiliferous cherty limestone and sandy limestone. Lower slope unit is (1) yellowish-gray to pale-red gypsifereous siltstone and calcareous sandstone, (2) gray, thin-bedded sandy limestone, and (3) gray to white, thick-bedded gypsum. Upper, middle, and lower units become inseparable on the Kaibab Plateau, northeastern quarter of map area. Solution weathering within gypsum beds of lower slope unit has resulted in warping and bending of limestone of middle cliff unit, especially in or near local drainages on Kanab and Coconino Plateaus where middle cliff unit forms surface bedrock. Gypsum solutioning is responsible for several sinkhole depressions within Harrisburg Member. Contact with underlying Fossil Mountain Member is gradational and arbitrarily marked at top of cherty limestone cliff of the Fossil Mountain. About 260 ft (80 m) thick in western half of map area, thinning eastward to about 120 ft (36 m) in northeastern quarter of map area. Average thickness about 165 ft (50 m).
Fossil Mountain Member—Light-gray, cliff-forming, fine- to medium-grained, thin to medium-bedded [1–6 ft (0.3–2 m)], fossiliferous, sandy, cherty limestone. In general, unit weathers dark gray. Unit characterized by gray to white fossiliferous chert nodules and white chert lenses parallel to bedding; chert weathers dark gray to black. Some chert nodules contain concentric black and white bands. Includes brecciated chert beds 4–10 ft (1–3 m) thick in upper part at contact of thin limestone or gypsifereous siltstone of Harrisburg Member. Chert in central and western parts of map area makes up about 20 percent of unit; unit becomes sandy in northeastern quarter of map area. Generally forms cliff at rim of the Grand Canyon. Weathers into pinnacles or “pillars” detached from cliff in western half of map area. Unconformable contact with underlying Woods Ranch Member of Toroweap Formation attributed to solution erosion and channel erosion; average relief about 10 ft (3 m). Some channels have eroded as much as 150 ft (45 m) into the Woods Ranch in western half of map area. Erosion channels were filled with sandy cherty limestone typical of the Fossil Mountain, providing an extra thickness of the Fossil Mountain. Thickness about 230–350 ft (70–107 m).
References
Darton, N.H., 1910, A reconnaissance of parts of northwestern New Mexico and northern Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 435, 88 p., (incl. geologic map, scale 1:1,000,000).
Bassler, Harvey and Reeside, J.B., Jr., 1921, Oil prospects in Washington County, Utah, IN Contributions to economic geology, 1921; Part 2, Mineral fuels: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 726-C, p. C87-C107.
Gilluly, James and Reeside, J.B., Jr., 1928, Sedimentary rocks of the San Rafael Swell and some adjacent areas in eastern Utah, IN Shorter contributions to general geology, 1927: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, 150-D, p. D61-D110.
Gregory, H.E. and Moore, R.C., 1931, The Kaiparowits region, a geographic and geologic reconnaissance of parts of Utah and Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, 164, 161 p.
McKee, E.D., 1938, The environment and history of the Toroweap and Kaibab formations of northern Arizona and southern Utah: Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication, no. 492.
Blakey, R.C., 1974, Stratigraphic and depositional analysis of the Moenkopi Formation, southeastern Utah: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Bulletin, no. 104, 81 p.
Welsh, J.E., Stokes, W.L. and Wardlaw, B.R., 1979, Regional stratigraphic relationships of the Permian "Kaibab" or Black Box Dolomite of the Emery high, central Utah, IN Baars, D.L., ed., Permianland: Four Corners Geological Society Field Conference Guidebook, 9th Field Conference, Moab, UT, September 27-30, 1979, p. 143-149.
Hamilton, Warren, 1982, Structural evolution of the Big Maria Mountains, northeastern Riverside County, southeastern California, IN Frost, E.G., and Martin, D.L., eds., Mesozoic-Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the Colorado River region, California, Arizona, and Nevada; Anderson-Hamilton volume: San Diego, CA, Cordilleran Publishers, p. 1-27. [Published in conjunction with the Geological Society of America symposium and field trip, April, 1982 Ulrich, G.E. (compiler), Billingsley, G.H. (compiler), Hereford, Richard (compiler), Wolfe, E.W. (compiler), Nealey, L.D. (compiler) and Sutton, R.L. (compiler), 1984, Maps showing geology, structure, and uranium deposits of the Flagstaff 1 degrees by 2 degrees quadrangle, Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map, I-1446, 2 sheets, scale 1:250,000.]
Hopkins, R. L., 1990, Kaibab Formation. In: Beus, S.S., Morales, M. (eds), Grand Canyon Geology, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 225-245.
Sorauf, J.E. and Billingsley, G.H., 1991, Members of the Toroweap and Kaibab Formations, Lower Permian, northern Arizona and southwestern Utah: The Mountain Geologist, v. 28, no. 1, p. 9-24.
Anderson, R.E. and Hintze, L.F., 1993, Geologic map of the Dodge Spring quadrangle, Washington County, Utah and Lincoln County, Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map, GQ-1721, 1 sheet, scale 1:24,000
Condon, Steven M, 1997, Geology of the Pennsylvanian and Permian Culter Group and Permian Kaibab Limestone in the Paradox Basin, southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado: U. S. Geological Survey Bulletin, Report: B 2000-P, pp.P1-P46.
Thompson, Kelcy Louise, 1995, Paleoecology and biostratigraphy of the Fossil Mountain Member, Kaibab Formation in northwestern Arizona: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, masters thesis, 108 p.
Billingsley, George H., 2000, Geologic Map of the Grand Canyon 30' by 60' Quadrangle, Coconino and Mohave Counties, Northwestern Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Investigation Series I-2688, Available on-line at: http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2688/.).
Mathis, A. and Bowman, C., 2005, What's in a number? Numeric ages for rocks exposed within the Grand Canyon, Part 2: Nature Notes ( Grand Canyon National Park ), v. 21, no. 2, p. 1-5.
* show accepted USGS usage. Note that data on this page is modified from information available via the National Geologic Map Database GEOLEX: http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Geolex/geolex_qs.html.
U.S. Department of the Interior - U.S. Geological Survey - Geology Discipline Privacy statement -- General disclaimer -- Accessibility The URL of this page is: http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/coloradoplateau/lexicon/kaibab.htm Maintained by Webmaster, Menlo Park, CA Last modified: 5/6/2006
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Still nothing about how they come up with 250 million years old for the Kaibab Limestone.
Now what?
Quote
Kaibab Limestone
References
Darton, N.H., 1910, A reconnaissance of parts of northwestern New Mexico and northern Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 435, 88 p., (incl. geologic map, scale 1:1,000,000).
Bassler, Harvey and Reeside, J.B., Jr., 1921, Oil prospects in Washington County, Utah, IN Contributions to economic geology, 1921; Part 2, Mineral fuels: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin, 726-C, p. C87-C107.
Gilluly, James and Reeside, J.B., Jr., 1928, Sedimentary rocks of the San Rafael Swell and some adjacent areas in eastern Utah, IN Shorter contributions to general geology, 1927: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, 150-D, p. D61-D110.
Gregory, H.E. and Moore, R.C., 1931, The Kaiparowits region, a geographic and geologic reconnaissance of parts of Utah and Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper, 164, 161 p.
McKee, E.D., 1938, The environment and history of the Toroweap and Kaibab formations of northern Arizona and southern Utah: Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication, no. 492.
Blakey, R.C., 1974, Stratigraphic and depositional analysis of the Moenkopi Formation, southeastern Utah: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Bulletin, no. 104, 81 p.
Welsh, J.E., Stokes, W.L. and Wardlaw, B.R., 1979, Regional stratigraphic relationships of the Permian "Kaibab" or Black Box Dolomite of the Emery high, central Utah, IN Baars, D.L., ed., Permianland: Four Corners Geological Society Field Conference Guidebook, 9th Field Conference, Moab, UT, September 27-30, 1979, p. 143-149.
Hamilton, Warren, 1982, Structural evolution of the Big Maria Mountains, northeastern Riverside County, southeastern California, IN Frost, E.G., and Martin, D.L., eds., Mesozoic-Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the Colorado River region, California, Arizona, and Nevada; Anderson-Hamilton volume: San Diego, CA, Cordilleran Publishers, p. 1-27. [Published in conjunction with the Geological Society of America symposium and field trip, April, 1982 Ulrich, G.E. (compiler), Billingsley, G.H. (compiler), Hereford, Richard (compiler), Wolfe, E.W. (compiler), Nealey, L.D. (compiler) and Sutton, R.L. (compiler), 1984, Maps showing geology, structure, and uranium deposits of the Flagstaff 1 degrees by 2 degrees quadrangle, Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Miscellaneous Investigations Series Map, I-1446, 2 sheets, scale 1:250,000.]
Hopkins, R. L., 1990, Kaibab Formation. In: Beus, S.S., Morales, M. (eds), Grand Canyon Geology, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 225-245.
Sorauf, J.E. and Billingsley, G.H., 1991, Members of the Toroweap and Kaibab Formations, Lower Permian, northern Arizona and southwestern Utah: The Mountain Geologist, v. 28, no. 1, p. 9-24.
Anderson, R.E. and Hintze, L.F., 1993, Geologic map of the Dodge Spring quadrangle, Washington County, Utah and Lincoln County, Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Quadrangle Map, GQ-1721, 1 sheet, scale 1:24,000
Condon, Steven M, 1997, Geology of the Pennsylvanian and Permian Culter Group and Permian Kaibab Limestone in the Paradox Basin, southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado: U. S. Geological Survey Bulletin, Report: B 2000-P, pp.P1-P46.
Thompson, Kelcy Louise, 1995, Paleoecology and biostratigraphy of the Fossil Mountain Member, Kaibab Formation in northwestern Arizona: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, masters thesis, 108 p.
Billingsley, George H., 2000, Geologic Map of the Grand Canyon 30' by 60' Quadrangle, Coconino and Mohave Counties, Northwestern Arizona: U.S. Geological Survey Geologic Investigation Series I-2688, Available on-line at: http://pubs.usgs.gov/imap/i-2688/.).
Mathis, A. and Bowman, C., 2005, What's in a number? Numeric ages for rocks exposed within the Grand Canyon, Part 2: Nature Notes ( Grand Canyon National Park ), v. 21, no. 2, p. 1-5.
U.S. Department of the Interior - U.S. Geological Survey - Geology Discipline Privacy statement -- General disclaimer -- Accessibility The URL of this page is: http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/coloradoplateau/lexicon/kaibab.htm Maintained by Webmaster, Menlo Park, CA Last modified: 5/6/2006
You clearly didn't attempt to check a single one of the very comprehensive list of references, did you?
If we showed you a recipe book, and there were a recipe on page 116 for an apple pie, and the recipe started by saying "Make a crust according to the pastry recipe on page 53", you would probably say: "I've read the recipe on page 116 and it still doesn't tell me how to make the crust!"
No. I enjoy hanging out here and arguing people who disagree with me ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The last photo is a satellite shot, the crater is left-center. Notice that pretty brown exposed sandstone, where tiny spiders leave tracks in the layers and dance on Dave's pinheaded skull.
I thought it was a picture of AFDave's arguments.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
Still nothing about how they come up with 250 million years old for the Kaibab Limestone.
Ah, that wasn't the question you asked.
Quote
Now what?
Assuming you want to find out how the Kaibab limestone is dated, continue your research by reading the references cited in the extract you posted. The following look especially promising:
McKee, E.D., 1938, The environment and history of the Toroweap and Kaibab formations of northern Arizona and southern Utah: Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication, no. 492.
Welsh, J.E., Stokes, W.L. and Wardlaw, B.R., 1979, Regional stratigraphic relationships of the Permian "Kaibab" or Black Box Dolomite of the Emery high, central Utah, IN Baars, D.L., ed., Permianland: Four Corners Geological Society Field Conference Guidebook, 9th Field Conference, Moab, UT, September 27-30, 1979, p. 143-149.
Hopkins, R. L., 1990, Kaibab Formation. In: Beus, S.S., Morales, M. (eds), Grand Canyon Geology, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 225-245.
Sorauf, J.E. and Billingsley, G.H., 1991, Members of the Toroweap and Kaibab Formations, Lower Permian, northern Arizona and southwestern Utah: The Mountain Geologist, v. 28, no. 1, p. 9-24.
Condon, Steven M, 1997, Geology of the Pennsylvanian and Permian Culter Group and Permian Kaibab Limestone in the Paradox Basin, southeastern Utah and southwestern Colorado: U. S. Geological Survey Bulletin, Report: B 2000-P, pp.P1-P46.
Thompson, Kelcy Louise, 1995, Paleoecology and biostratigraphy of the Fossil Mountain Member, Kaibab Formation in northwestern Arizona: Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, masters thesis, 108 p.
No. I enjoy hanging out here and arguing people who disagree with me ...
Arguing good! Learning bad! Dave smash!
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Assuming you want to find out how the Kaibab limestone is dated, continue your research by reading the references cited in the extract you posted. The following look especially promising:
Ha! That's what I thought. There isn't a single one of you that even KNOWS (well, possibly Deadman ... we'll see when he checks in) how they determine the age of those layers.
All you can do is send me off to some references which you HOPE will explain it.
What will I find if I go read those references?
I will most likely find ...
The rocks are dated by the index fossils in them and ... The fossils are dated by the rocks which contain them ... CLASSIC CIRCULARITY
And the funny thing is ... you guys don't even realize you are arguing in a circle.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well. Isn't this amusing. Dave has a hypothesis. Dave says his hypothesis contains a geologic sub-theory that is "better than all others." Dave can't answer questions about his hypothesis. Dave can't answer questions about his geologic sub-theory. So...where is Dave's Hypothesis now? Reduced to trying to show that other theories are equally vapid?
Okay, Dave, what you appear to want to know is how does one do a regional geologic map. You started out wanting to examine the layers above the Great Unconformity of the Grand Canyon, but now you decided to narrow it down to the Kaibab Limestone.
Okay. You've already been told the Kaibab is not dated directly...it's mainly limestone. But the Kaibab formation (composed of the Fossil Mountain and Harrisburg members) extends from Colorado to New Mexico to Arizona and Utah. In each of those areas it is tied in to local geology.
For instance, in Utah, the Kaibab is part of the Park City Group, which ties into such areas as the Paradox Basin and Beaver Dam Mountains. The Park City Group in turn extends from Utah to Idaho and Wyoming and Montana.
Now, Dave. I'd like you to answer a simple question...would you like to know precisely how the Kaibab/Park City Formations are dated and how they are bracketed by verifiable absolute dates? Is THAT what you want? because I'm getting tired of having you shift the goalposts
I'm interested in having YOU SUPPORT YOUR THEORY. The one you can't SEEM TO MANAGE to answer a single question about.
But you want others to take the time to go into detail about formations in the Grand Canyon while you shift the goalposts continuously?
I'll answer questions on the Kaibab/Park City...and I want you to answer what I asked on the Meteor Crater. For each question you ask me, I require that you answer ME as well. If you cannot, then why pretend you have a viable theory at all?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Guys, we need to talk. While I understand that during a heated debate over the internet getting your points across can be difficult. So to accentuats points many of you have taken to using excessive use of bold, capitilization, and italics. While this is often used to good effect, there should be a threshold of it's usage compared to the non-accentuated characters. To help everyone out I've devised a mathematical evaulation that can used on text to verify that you have not gone beyond the limits of acceptability.
I call it the Information Disarray/Information Order Threshold. We can shorten that to ID/IOT. Actually, that / looks completely out of place, let's just call it IDIOT for simplicity sake. The formula is easy enough, you simply take the count of the number of accented characters and divide it by the total number of characters, and represent the results as a percentage score (not counting quoted material). Note that if a character is accentuated in multiple ways it counts for each different accentuation. So for an example let's look at Dave's latest post:
Quote
JonF ...
Ha! That's what I thought. There isn't a single one of you that even KNOWS (well, possibly Deadman ... we'll see when he checks in) how they determine the age of those layers.
All you can do is send me off to some references which you HOPE will explain it.
What will I find if I go read those references?
I will most likely find ...
The rocks are dated by the index fossils in them and ... The fossils are dated by the rocks which contain them ... CLASSIC CIRCULARITY
And the funny thing is ... you guys don't even realize you are arguing in a circle.
The above contains 571 total characters, 135 of them are bolded, 27 of them are unnecessarily capitilized. This gives Dave and a 27% IDIOT score. Doing a bit of research I think it's safe to presume that a 10% IDIOT is about the most that normal people can stand. Note that because any individual character can be accentuated in multiple ways there are people that can have over 100% IDIOT scores, but that's just to much IDIOT for me to deal with.
The rocks are dated by the index fossils in them and ... The fossils are dated by the rocks which contain them ... CLASSIC CIRCULARITY
And the funny thing is ... you guys don't even realize you are arguing in a circle.
No, Dave. Wrong. Bad Dave. Bad, wrong Dave.
How many times will I have to repeat this before you get it: some sedimentary and metamorphic rocks can be dated radiometrically. Some of those same rocks contain fossils. Since radiometric dating provides an absolute date for those rocks, obviously fossils in those rocks can now be assigned absolute dates.
With me so far? Probably not, but I'll plow ahead anyway.
Now, say we find some other sedimentary or metamorphic rocks, which cannot be dated radiometrically. However, we notice that those rocks contain fossils, the same sort of fossils we see in other rocks that can be dated radiometrically. We can infer that the rocks which can't be dated are the same age as the ones that can be, since they contain the same sorts of fossils. Where is the circularity here, Dave? Nowhere, is where. There's nothing about this argument that is remotely circular, but I simply cannot get this through your thick, brainless heads (inside joke for Niven fans).
Now, it's also possible that sedimentary rock which cannot be dated radiometrically can be given upper or lower bounds by radiometrically-datable igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary rock above or below it. I'll leave it to you, Dave, to figure this out on your own.
And besides, Dave, I don't know what you read, but I read in Deadman's post that the Coconino sandstone at Berringer's crater can be dated radiometrically. You do understand, do you not, that Coconino sandstone is going to be the same date everywhere it's found, because it was all formed at the same time, right? You aren't restricted to just the Grand Canyon to determine the ages of its various strata if you can find the same strata elsewhere.
Normally I wouldn't think it would be necessary to point this out, but in your case I can't make that assumption.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Let me give a more concrete example, Dave. Let's say you've notice that there's a particular type of fossil, an extinct cnidarian, let's say, or a particular subspecies of trilobite. You find these critters all over the world, and you always find them in the same narrow stratum, and nowhere else, in the geological column everywhere you've ever looked. Based on where this fossil is in the geological column, knowing nothing else, you can still assign a relative date to this fossil.
Now, suppose you've managed to find half a dozen samples of this particular type of fossil, scattered all over the world, out of the tens of thousands of different similar fossils, that can be dated radiometrically. You discover that the derived dates for all six fossils are, e.g., 457mya +/-1.5 mya.
Now—and here's the good part—anywhere you see this fossil, Dave, you can rest assured that the rock you find it embedded in is 457 mya, +/- 1.5 mya. And you don't need to use any kind of circular logic, or even pretzel logic. You can use straightforward inductive reasoning. You've never, ever seen this type of fossil anywhere except in the same stratum, and every time you've been able to date this stratum, you always come up with the same figure: 457 mya, +/- 1.5 mya.
So okay, Dave. Can you explain to me why my reasoning here is "circular"?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What will I find if I go read those references? I will most likely find ... The rocks are dated by the index fossils in them and ... The fossils are dated by the rocks which contain them ... CLASSIC CIRCULARITY
Really, DumbAssDave? Would you like to make a bet on that, a gentleman's agreement? One that involves you dropping (meaning never taking part in again) the children's "education program" you're treasurer of -- in exchange for an agreed-upon sacrifice on my part?
You say that the Kaibab, which extends over thousands of square kilometers, is only dated by index fossils and is not bracketed by absolute dates?
You seem to have a great deal of faith that you're "right" AssHatDave...so show me the strength of your convictions, coward. YOU selected out the Kaibab because YOU thought YOU could impress the lurkers here. So, now that you have your target, show me how courageous you are, Dave Hawkins. Stand up for once in your life.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Really, DumbAssDave? Would you like to make a bet on that, a gentleman's agreement? One that involves you dropping (meaning never taking part in again) the children's "education program" you're treasurer of -- in exchange for an agreed-upon sacrifice on my part? ...
So, now that you have your target, show me how courageous you are, Dave Hawkins. Stand up for once in your life.
Deadman, I know you know this, but there are probably lurkers who don't. Dave may agree to such a gentleman's wager, but he will never, ever abide by the terms of it.
Wheneve honor comes between Dave and his midget god, honor will go over the side every single time.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Here's more - on the Chinle - just because Crabby and I get along, and we both think you're pretty much a walking sphincter, Dave:
Ayep, walking sphincter is pretty good. Semi coloned, demi fundamentalist, hmm, I bet if we put our minds to it we could come up with something really good for DDTTD.
He might be a new species of hominid that we can describe and name.
Ha! That's what I thought. There isn't a single one of you that even KNOWS (well, possibly Deadman ... we'll see when he checks in) how they determine the age of those layers.
All you can do is send me off to some references which you HOPE will explain it.
What will I find if I go read those references?
I will most likely find ...
The rocks are dated by the index fossils in them and ... The fossils are dated by the rocks which contain them ... CLASSIC CIRCULARITY
And the funny thing is ... you guys don't even realize you are arguing in a circle.
Proving once again you are a liar.
The link I provided explains how the sedimentary Chinle Fm. has been radiometrically dated. DM (thanks bud) immediately added a bunch of related sources. You'll never check them because you can't handle the truth and it would require you to take the time to actually enter a secular repository of scientific knowledge like the Linda Hall Library, minutes from where you live.
No HOPE, no FAITH DDTTD. No circular reasoning. Science.
The Chinle Fm. isn't the only formation above or below the GU that can be RM dated as you well know, or you wouldn't have phrased your questions as you did. Having been caught, you moved the goal posts as DM (and eric and jon and jean and so many others) has pointed out so many times before
The thing is DDTTD, science is already hard to keep up with. If you waste all your time trying to debunk work that's been refined, as GC geology has, the present scientific work passes you by.
what gets me is that why does AFD feel the need to say/prove that the flood water was all underground 1st off and the Gawd made it erupt and flood the earth. If Gawd can do that, cant he just make the water appear from no-where instantly? Why does it have to be underground 1st off, what's the reasoning there? Is there some set of rules for Gawd, like for the Asended beings in stargate, i.e he cant interfere directly (create the actual water itself) but can pull the plug and let it erupt. Great site btw, CSALOCL - i'm totally clear now (those pesky unnamed "european scientists" proving their case for them!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Aug. 10 2006,07:55)
what gets me is that why does AFD feel the need to say/prove that the flood water was all underground 1st off and the Gawd made it erupt and flood the earth. If Gawd can do that, cant he just make the water appear from no-where instantly? Why does it have to be underground 1st off, what's the reasoning there?
He's trying to pretend that it's scientific. Miracles remove his "hypothesis" instantly from the purview of science and plop it back into religion. Can't be taught in science class in U.S. public schools.
the funny thing is that i went to a school run by Monks, in the UK. A roman catholic school even. We had mass in the chapel in the actual school, prayers, even a G.C.S.E exam on religion (Religious education, i failed!. We also had a perfectly good science education, better then most schools at the time even. Not once, ever, was there the slightest hint of incompatability between what we were taught in science and what we were taught in Religious education. We understood, even if it was not stated explicitly, that the two lessons were not about the same worldview. The religion class was really more like a philosophy class then anything else. It certanly was not trying to disprove what we'd just learnt 10 minutes earlier in biology! So, take heart, even if you have schools that mix religion and science then they can still spit out people like me that were not conned to believe in the oldmaninthesky without critically examining the reasons for there belief (or, in my case, disbelief).
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Things you won't find mentioned on creationist websites (wonder why?)
Reynolds, S.J., Florence, F.P., Welty, J.W., Roddy, M.S., Currier, D.A., Anderson, A.V., and Keith, S.B., 1986, Compilation of radiometric Age Determinations in Arizona: Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology, Geological Survey Branch, Bulletin 197, 258 p.
(contains data on Fission-Track, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb dates and correlations. 258 pages worth of it).
Or, another small example:
J. Palfy, P.L. Smith, and J.K. Mortensen (2000) A U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar time scale for the Jurassic. Can. J. Earth Sci./Rev. can. sci. Terre 37(6): 923-944
"A radiometric age database consisting of fifty U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar ages was compiled to construct a revised Jurassic time scale. Accepted ages have a precision of +/- 5 Ma...or better. The majority of these calibration points [are from] the western North American Cordillera and have not been previously used in time scales."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
MY ASSERTION OF EVO-BOT CIRCULAR REASONING IS AS SOUND AS EVER
No one yet has come up with anything to show why those detailed dates on the Grand Canyon layers are valid ...
My theory is that Evo-bots really, really want those to be the proper dates on those layers because that makes for a nice theory and nice pictures in textbooks which in turn can make for nice programs on TV and nice magazine articles. Since the Evo-bot scientific establishment really wants to have those particular dates for those layers, they publish mounds and mounds of papers with lots of information which no one ever really pulls together in one place and analyzes, and as a result, everyone just assumes that "this has been proven by modern science."
Well, I've got news for you ... IT HASN'T. I think it is Smoke and Mirrors.
Let's look at some responses from you guys ...
Eric ...
Quote
Dave, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that every other layer in the grand canyon had at least one fossil in it, and no layer other than the lowermost layers could be dated radiometrically (this is not the case; I'm just laying out a hypothetical). Is it impossible to assign a date to any of these layers then?
Of course not.
If you can find a similar fossil elsewhere, Dave—anywhere—in sediment that can be dated radiometrically, than you can extrapolate that date to the fossil in the sediment you can't date. Not really that difficult.
OK, fine. Aftershave's article says that the fossils found in the Kaibab Limestone are brachiopods, coral, mollusks, sea lilies, worms and fish teeth.
Show me a layer somewhere that has similar fossils that can be dated RM. Then show me how this relates to the Kaibab Limestone, thus proving that the Kaibab is 250-270my old.
You say you can do it. Show me.
Eric...
Quote
In any event, Dave, many of the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon can be dated radiometrically, but even if none of them could, that would hardly mean we'd have to guess as to the dates.
Really? Which ones can be dated RM?
Deadman ...
Quote
Well. Isn't this amusing. Dave has a hypothesis. Dave says his hypothesis contains a geologic sub-theory that is "better than all others." Dave can't answer questions about his hypothesis. Dave can't answer questions about his geologic sub-theory. So...where is Dave's Hypothesis now?
Sure I can and I have. We have made great progress giving evidence for many points so far in my Hypothesis. We are now on Points G & H in case you were not keeping track. G & H involve the Great Flood of Noah and require discussion of many things ... Grand Canyon, the Brown Theory, the Baumgardner Theory, Water Accounting and many more things. Where we are now is looking at layers of the GC and answering some fundamental questions about how old they are and how they possibly were laid down.
Deadman ...
Quote
Okay, Dave, what you appear to want to know is how does one do a regional geologic map. You started out wanting to examine the layers above the Great Unconformity of the Grand Canyon, but now you decided to narrow it down to the Kaibab Limestone.
Okay. You've already been told the Kaibab is not dated directly...it's mainly limestone. But the Kaibab formation (composed of the Fossil Mountain and Harrisburg members) extends from Colorado to New Mexico to Arizona and Utah. In each of those areas it is tied in to local geology.
For instance, in Utah, the Kaibab is part of the Park City Group, which ties into such areas as the Paradox Basin and Beaver Dam Mountains. The Park City Group in turn extends from Utah to Idaho and Wyoming and Montana.
Now, Dave. I'd like you to answer a simple question...would you like to know precisely how the Kaibab/Park City Formations are dated and how they are bracketed by verifiable absolute dates? Is THAT what you want? because I'm getting tired of having you shift the goalposts
Yes. That's what I want. My theory is that it is Smoke and Mirrors. But I'm not going to bet you. Maybe you'll surprise me and come up with something really believable. Incorygible was not able to come up with anything believable about the supposed age of the LCA for apes and humans -- all he had was Smoke and Mirrors. But hey, maybe you are different.
Eric ...
Quote
How many times will I have to repeat this before you get it: some sedimentary and metamorphic rocks can be dated radiometrically. Some of those same rocks contain fossils. Since radiometric dating provides an absolute date for those rocks, obviously fossils in those rocks can now be assigned absolute dates.
With me so far? Probably not, but I'll plow ahead anyway.
Now, say we find some other sedimentary or metamorphic rocks, which cannot be dated radiometrically. However, we notice that those rocks contain fossils, the same sort of fossils we see in other rocks that can be dated radiometrically. We can infer that the rocks which can't be dated are the same age as the ones that can be, since they contain the same sorts of fossils. Where is the circularity here, Dave? Nowhere, is where. There's nothing about this argument that is remotely circular, but I simply cannot get this through your thick, brainless heads (inside joke for Niven fans).
I understand your logic perfectly. The problem is that I don't think you can show me any real world situation where this applies. I'm asking for you to prove your logic on any layer of the GC and you cannot do so--at least not so far.
Quote
Now, it's also possible that sedimentary rock which cannot be dated radiometrically can be given upper or lower bounds by radiometrically-datable igneous, metamorphic or sedimentary rock above or below it. I'll leave it to you, Dave, to figure this out on your own.
No. You show me an example where this occurs.
Quote
And besides, Dave, I don't know what you read, but I read in Deadman's post that the Coconino sandstone at Berringer's crater can be dated radiometrically. You do understand, do you not, that Coconino sandstone is going to be the same date everywhere it's found, because it was all formed at the same time, right? You aren't restricted to just the Grand Canyon to determine the ages of its various strata if you can find the same strata elsewhere.
I have not understood anyone's point with the meteor crater. To me it looks like a meteor happened to land on some stratified rock. So?
Quote
Let me give a more concrete example, Dave. Let's say you've notice that there's a particular type of fossil, an extinct cnidarian, let's say, or a particular subspecies of trilobite. You find these critters all over the world, and you always find them in the same narrow stratum, and nowhere else, in the geological column everywhere you've ever looked. Based on where this fossil is in the geological column, knowing nothing else, you can still assign a relative date to this fossil.
Now, suppose you've managed to find half a dozen samples of this particular type of fossil, scattered all over the world, out of the tens of thousands of different similar fossils, that can be dated radiometrically. You discover that the derived dates for all six fossils are, e.g., 457mya +/-1.5 mya.
Now—and here's the good part—anywhere you see this fossil, Dave, you can rest assured that the rock you find it embedded in is 457 mya, +/- 1.5 mya. And you don't need to use any kind of circular logic, or even pretzel logic. You can use straightforward inductive reasoning. You've never, ever seen this type of fossil anywhere except in the same stratum, and every time you've been able to date this stratum, you always come up with the same figure: 457 mya, +/- 1.5 mya.
So okay, Dave. Can you explain to me why my reasoning here is "circular"?
First, can you show me some rocks that contain fossils that can be dated RM? No one has shown me any yet. And even if you do, then how can you correlate those rocks to other "non-RMable" rocks? If you say that the "non-RMable" rocks are the same age as the "RMable" rocks just because they contain the same fossils, then you are simply assuming the fact of evolution.
Here's the logic flow that I see ...
Rock A contains a trilobite. Rock A is dated RM to 500my. Rock B has a trilobite. But Rock B cannot be dated RM. But Rock A and B both contain trilobites. MACRO-EVOLUTION HAS OCCURRED. Therefore, Rock B is also 500my.
So what you are doing is assuming that the appearance of a 500my RM date on Rock A really means the rock is actually that old. (a big assumption) Then you are assuming that the trilobite is also that old. (another big assumption) Then you are assuming that all strata that contain trilobites are also that old, whether they are "RMable" or not. (another big assumption)
So you've got all these huge assumptions that everyone just assumes are OK.
Now if you CANNOT find an "RMable" rock which contains fossils, you have circular reasoning ...
Macro-evolution has occurred. Evolution requires millions of years. Trilobites are dated at 500myo--had to be--look how "simple" they are. Rock B has a trilobite. Therefore, Rock B is 500 myo. How do you know it's that old?? Because it has a trilobite. How do you know trilobites are that old? Because Evolution has occured.
Circle completed. Go to top and repeat. Repeat often enough and your brain dies. Lots of evidence for dead brains at ATBC.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
[massive snippage] So what you are doing is assuming that the appearance of a 500my RM date on Rock A really means the rock is actually that old. (a big assumption)
Oh, it makes sense now, I finally understand. Dave doesn't believe in facts. It's simple really, just because you gather data, make measurements, and draw conclusions from that data doesn't mean that any of it is correct. Regardless of the method he would be equally skeptical of the measurements. Please for the love of god no one mention a tape measurere to him, he may go fit about the evils of secularist measurement systems.
Incorygible was not able to come up with anything believable about the supposed age of the LCA for apes and humans -- all he had was Smoke and Mirrors.
Thanks for making me spit out my much-needed coffee, Davie-boy.
I ceased engaging your dishonest bullshit long ago, but please, by all means, feel free to link to my "smoke and mirrors" in the first half of this ridiculous thread. Show us how you revealed the spindly, impotent man behind the curtain of thousands of papers (dozens of which I referenced and summarized for you, back when I held slim hope that you had two neurons to rub together), mulitiple lines of evidence, and every pedagogical tool in my repertoire. It was something along the lines of, "ha ha, 1%?! look at this picture of Dawkins and a gorilla!", wasn't it? Go ahead and back up that mud-raking, Davey -- I'm shaking in my boots.
Or were you hoping that the passage of time and my absence from this thread would let you get away with puffed-up claims of victory? We've certainly seen that tactic before by your ilk.
You're truly an ass, Dave. How's that for something "believable"?
[massive snippage] So what you are doing is assuming that the appearance of a 500my RM date on Rock A really means the rock is actually that old. (a big assumption)
Oh, it makes sense now, I finally understand. Dave doesn't believe in facts. It's simple really, just because you gather data, make measurements, and draw conclusions from that data doesn't mean that any of it is correct.
Well, you know, you're making the assumption that the facts aren't Satanic illusions. That's a big assumption, and frankly, I can't abide it.
dave: Yes, yes. And more to come! We're working hard to teach kids the truth while they are young so they won't grow up with--er ... shall we say ... sub-optimal ... OK, muddled--brains like those here at ATBC.
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me: Yeah, why don't you invite some of your sunday school buds to your thread, so they can see whose brain is muddled.
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dave:
I have. They say yours are.
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me: Care to tell us a username so we can verify this?
Please for the love of god no one mention a tape measurere to him, he may go fit about the evils of secularist measurement systems.
If you think that radiometric dating is as reliable as a tape measure, then you are more naive than you look!
Deadman ... you're just going to SNORT at my refusal to bet you? OK. Here's what I'll bet you on ... you show me a good comprehensive case that macroevolution has in fact happened and that Genesis is a fairy tale and I will promise never to teach kids about the Book of Genesis again. OK? (This is basically what you guys have been trying to do since I started here)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OK, fine. Aftershave's article says that the fossils found in the Kaibab Limestone are brachiopods, coral, mollusks, sea lilies, worms and fish teeth.
Show me a layer somewhere that has similar fossils that can be dated RM. Then show me how this relates to the Kaibab Limestone, thus proving that the Kaibab is 250-270my old.
You say you can do it. Show me.
Dave, have you ever considered that maybe it isn't a good idea to get your geology degree from an internet flamewar?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I have not understood anyone's point with the meteor crater. To me it looks like a meteor happened to land on some stratified rock. So?
A meteor hit the Earth 49,000 years ago (but you said the earth didn't exist then)...and went INTO the Coconino sandstone. This means the Coconino is **at least** that age, stupid.
Here's another small example of how you date one layer, look at the fossils and many other things and begin to come up with a local, regional, then a continental, then maybe even a global geology.
This is the Morrison formation:
The Morrison formation is Jurrasic. Everyone likes dinosaurs, right? The Morrison has been extensively studied by regional tectonics, regional stratigraphic framework, radiometric and paleontologic dating, sedimentology, paleosols (fossil soils), dinosaur biostratigraphy, trace fossils, taphonomy, microfossils, invertebrates, smaller vertebrates, and isotopic analysis of teeth and paleosol nodules. See: http://www2.nature.nps.gov/geology....son.htm for...Oh, about 100 or so references.
Allow me to digress for a moment, since you're particularly stupid, AssHatDave. Here's the Geologic order of things, oldest to youngest (North Amrerican version), starting in the Paleozoic: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, Permian. Mesozoic: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous.
Here's a simple mnemonic device for a simple guy like you to remember this, DaveStupid: Can Oscar See Down My Pants Pocket? The Joker Can!
Now, StupidDave, the Kaibab is what period? Why, it's PERMIAN. The Morrison is Jurrasic (that means it's younger, less old)!! And if you'll take a look at any regional map, or the handy-dandy stratigraphic "Grand Staircase" here:
You'll notice a few things. First, the Kaibab is overlain by the Moenkopi...which extends into Utah, too. Those layers you see on the Utah stratigraphic columns USED to exist in the Grand Canyon, too. 5000 or so more feet of layers were washed away in the Grand Canyon, but not the Moenkopi...This is the extent of the Moenkopi during the Triassic:
Now remember, the Morrison sits on top of the Chinle (radiometrically dated, remember?) and the Moenkopi, and the Cutler formation, which is also tied to the...that's right, Kaibab. To the west of the Paradox basin, the White Rim Sandstone at the top of the Cutler is overlain by marine rocks of the Permian Kaibab Limestone ( see below, for instance: Molenaar, 1975 ; Baars, 1983 ; Huntoon and Chan, 1987 ).
Now, besides all the other methods I mentioned of dating the Morrison, there are radiometric dates for it, too... Kowallis, B.J., Christiansen, E.H., Deino, A.L., Peterson, F., Turner, C.E., Kunk, M.J., and Obradovich, J.D., 1998, The age of the Morrison Formation: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 235-260. 40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old.
During the Triassic, marginal-marine to continental red beds and minor marine limestones of the Lower to Middle Triassic Moenkopi Formation, and variegated to red continental strata of the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation filled the present "basin" of the southwest.
Now I realize, that's a lot for your tiny brain to hold, so I'll stop there and let you tell me two things: (1)Why is this invalid? and (2)If a meteor hits the Earth 49 thousand years ago and penetrated the coconino sandstone...why do you think that date is invalid, too?
Some references: Molenaar, C.M., 1975, Stratigraphic correlation chart for Canyonlands country: in Fasset, J.E., and Wengred, S.A., eds., Canyonlands Country: Four Corners Geological Society, Eighth Field Conference Guidebook, p. 4 Baars, D.L., 1983, The geology in and near Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, Utah: in Gurgel, K.D., ed., Geologic excursions in Stratigraphy and Tectonics: From southeastern Idaho to the Southern Inyo Mountains, California, via Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, Utah: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Special Studies 60, GSA Rocky Mountain and Cordilleran Sections Meeting Fieldtrip Guidebook Part II, p. 75–92 Huntoon, J.E., and Chan, M.A., 1987, Marine origin of paleotopographic relief on the eolian White Rim Sandstone (Permian): Elaterite Basin, Utah. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 71, p. 1035–1045
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
MY ASSERTION OF EVO-BOT CIRCULAR REASONING IS AS SOUND AS EVER
But I'm not going to bet you.
*Snort*
I find his lack of faith... amusing.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
MY ASSERTION OF EVO-BOT CIRCULAR REASONING IS AS SOUND AS EVER
Well, yah ... but what you're missing is that's not good news for you.
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No one yet has come up with anything to show why those detailed dates on the Grand Canyon layers are valid ...
Oh, we've come up with a lot ... you've just refused to look at them, or try to understand the methods.
However, it's not our responsibility to show why those detailed dates on the Grand Canyon layers are valid. We'll be glad to supply information that we have or can easily obtain, but the claim and the burden of proof are yours.
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And besides, Dave, I don't know what you read, but I read in Deadman's post that the Coconino sandstone at Berringer's crater can be dated radiometrically. You do understand, do you not, that Coconino sandstone is going to be the same date everywhere it's found, because it was all formed at the same time, right? You aren't restricted to just the Grand Canyon to determine the ages of its various strata if you can find the same strata elsewhere.
I have not understood anyone's point with the meteor crater. To me it looks like a meteor happened to land on some stratified rock.
Well, you've totally misunderstood. The Kaibab and Coconino are part of those strata.
The lake in the crater is younger than the crater
The crater is younger than the formations the meteor crashed into
Since the Kaibab and Coconino are some of the strata in which the meteor crashed, therefore the Kaibab and Coconino are older than the lake
The lake dates to about 49 Mya
Therefore the Kaibab and Coconino are older than about 49 Mya.
Quote
Here's the logic flow that I see ...
Rock A contains a trilobite. Rock A is dated RM to 500my. Rock B has a trilobite. But Rock B cannot be dated RM. But Rock A and B both contain trilobites. MACRO-EVOLUTION HAS OCCURRED.
Nope, wrong there Davie-diddles. You should have written:
NO TRILOBITE HAS EVER BEEN FOUND IN A ROCK DATED AS YOUNGER THEN 500 MY, BUT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF TRILOBITES HAVE BEEN FOUND IN ROCKS DATED TO 500 MY (or thereabouts)
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Therefore, Rock B is also 500my.
Yup. When you use the correct premises, the conclusion follows.
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So what you are doing is assuming that the appearance of a 500my RM date on Rock A really means the rock is actually that old. (a big assumption) Then you are assuming that the trilobite is also that old. (another big assumption) Then you are assuming that all strata that contain trilobites are also that old, whether they are "RMable" or not. (another big assumption)
So you've got all these huge assumptions that everyone just assumes are OK.
As we pointed out many times, but you've ignored, nobody just assumes that these premises are OK. (I don't like calling them assumptions precisely because of the false connotation of "un-checked"). These premises have been checked six ways from Sunday, and passed every test (the RATE group results aren't good enough yet to call that a failed test; we need lots of replication and analysis and elimination of other hypotheses). Even now scientists are looking for new and different ways to test them
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Macro-evolution has occurred.
True, but not a required premise here.
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Evolution requires millions of years.
True, but not a required premise here.
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Trilobites are dated at 500myo--had to be--look how "simple" they are.
False. Trilobites are dated by other means; they're not particularly simple.
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Rock B has a trilobite. Therefore, Rock B is 500 myo. How do you know it's that old?? Because it has a trilobite. How do you know trilobites are that old? Because Evolution has occured.
The last one is wrong:
How do you know trilobites are that old?
Because the rocks in which they are found consistently are dated, by a wide variety of methods and investigators, to 500 Mya. These dating methods are based on premises and procedures which are checked, cross-checked, double-checked, and triple-checked in many interesting and clever ways. But every test indicates the accuracy of the methods.
Deadman ... you're just going to SNORT at my refusal to bet you? OK. Here's what I'll bet you on ... you show me a good comprehensive case that macroevolution has in fact happened
Let's make sure we have our terms in order, DaveShitBrain.
"Macroevolution" is speciation, Dave, yes or no?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm not interested in getting a geology degree ... by an internet flame war or any other way ...
I'm interested in showing that those who DO have geology degrees are grotesquely mistaken when they say that sedimentary rock layers were laid down over millions and millions of years by the same well-understood processes which are in operation today (the present is the key to the past) ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFD, weener, part time bus pilot, and all round idiot is high on luv, luv for some dusty old tracts printed on paper.
Circularity..he doesn't even understand what it means.
Facts..for someone so wrapped up in them he doesn't have a clue what facts are.
You just can't buy this sort of entertainment.
Thanks AFD for proving rocks are not as stupid as you.
And now back to the main program where AFD continues to talk out of his arse.
Who is to blame? His Mom, poor girl, ignored little Davey while (how many Martinis a day was it in Gay Brazil was it Davey?) Daddy did his stuff, not now boy.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Of course you're not interested in getting a geology degree, Dave. ####, you can't even grasp basic logic and physics.
Answer what I asked about that Arizona meteor crater, the Barringer. If it hit 49,000 years ago....AND the Coconino was UNDER it, meaning the METEOR HIT IT...therefore the Coconino IS at least that old, yes or no, Stupid?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Answer what I asked about that Arizona meteor crater, the Barringer. If it hit 49,000 years ago....AND the Coconino was UNDER it, meaning the METEOR HIT IT...therefore the Coconino IS at least that old, yes or no, Stupid?
Obviously, your question is nonsensical because nothing can be older than 8,000 years.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Obviously, your question is nonsensical because nothing can be older than 8,000 years.
Yes nothing can be older than that, because the Bible says so and the Bible is true because God says so in the Bible and God is real because the Bible says so.
It's all so clear now...all I had to do was stick that blade in my eyesocket and wiggle it around until the frontal lobes detached.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, the point that you are trying to make is that the crater was part of goD's wrath at the anasazi worshipping the sun rather than the son right? Why did god leave out the Americas with his jesus thing? Why are you a boneheaded idiot?
Every single independent method of dating things agrees to an uncanny degree. This is the opposite of a conspiracy Dave. It is a bunch of folks who figure things out all figuring things out and then looking at the other guys and saying, "gee whilikers mister, your results are the same as mine even though we used totally different methods to arrive at them."
Why do you think your goD is better than mine? I happen to think my god is better and he wrote more books so I know he is better. And your god can't even fix his pr problems. Mine can. Why is the hindu myth not true but the xtian myth true? Why are some prophets real but others false? How can I know a real christian from a fake one? Do you wear boxers or briefs? Do enjoy sex with goats? WHat does baby blood taste like? I heard xians eat babies. Do you eat white babies too or just black ones?
Mamamamoron.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Answer what I asked about that Arizona meteor crater, the Barringer. If it hit 49,000 years ago....AND the Coconino was UNDER it, meaning the METEOR HIT IT...therefore the Coconino IS at least that old, yes or no, Stupid?
OK. Wonderful. Small problem though ...
How do you know the meteor hit 49,000 years ago?
Also ... doesn't the meteor crater cut through several layers? Was it a really slow meteor that took millions of years to land and lodge itself in multiple layers of strata? Maybe it was equipped with a parachute? A really BIG parachute?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Every available dating method used...agrees. That is pretty good evidence, considering the dating metods used are quite different. Palynology is not thermoluminesence is not radiometric. Now, remember, ChumpDave, *IF* the dates derived for one of those methods were different, those people making that claim would get lots of money in funding and notoriety...but the dates all agree. Your stupid-ass claim would be " they're all in cahoots, trying to bring down the bible"...yet, the fact is that those people MIGHT be hindu, christian protestant, christian catholic, zen buddhist....but you would indict EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM AS BEING SOMEHOW DISHONEST OR DELUDED.
And WHY whould you do that? Because YOU cannot support your OWN theory well enough to answer a single question directly, like a man. SO you HAVE to blame others
Like people have pointed out MANY times here, Dave...your theory has to be capable of supporting itself with data. Your Theory has thus far proved itself incapable of answering the simplest questions.
What you have TRIED to do, and run into a brick wall with....is switch the tables and try to pretend the burden is on regular geologists to "prove" things while YOU do nothing.
Let's use an analogy. YOU come to me saying you are faster than me in running. I say fine, show me...and you ask me to run again and again to set a baseline...yet YOU ....never run.
I have BEEN showing how the standard model for geology WORKS and ANSWERS your questions...BUT....YOU REFUSE to answer even the LEAST question given you....but you say your "theory " is the BEST?
That's why you're a joke to anyone with a reasoning mind.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Here's another example of how stupidly you think, Dave. You say this:
Quote
doesn't the meteor crater cut through several layers? Was it a really slow meteor that took millions of years to land and lodge itself in multiple layers of strata? Maybe it was equipped with a parachute?
Now look at the first sentence, stupid.
"doesn't the meteor cut through SEVERAL layers?" ( meaning: wasn't it REALLY powerful with lots of kinetic energy?")
Then you say: "Was it really SLOW?" (meaning with less kinetic energy by definition)
How can it be POWERFUL AND SLOW? POWERFUL WITH NO ABILITY TO IMPOSE IMPACT FEATURES?
That crater is over a kilometer wide...small in comparison to other impact craters we know of, but ...people HAVE conducted ballistic tests to determine what size of an object...and what speed ....it would take to create that impact crater, stupid. ....
So...why would you say it "Maybe it was equipped with a parachute?" if a small object at high velocity created that?
Again, I am reminding you that studies by the US military have been done on ballistic impacts on various kinds of target materials. You really are stupid.
NOTE* I wanted to add this, because earlier I said that you didn't grasp basic logic OR physics and you just proved it. KINETIC energy= 1/2 mV ^2.
I am saying this sincerely, if YOU are the caliber of human that is allowed to fly a fucking plane in the US Air Force..and you cannot grasp basic things like this...then it explains a great deal about current events.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'm not interested in getting a geology degree ... by an internet flame war or any other way ...
I'm interested in showing that those who DO have geology degrees are grotesquely mistaken when they say that sedimentary rock layers were laid down over millions and millions of years by the same well-understood processes which are in operation today (the present is the key to the past) ...
Like every Creobot before him, we see the usual "I don't know shit about it, but I know it's wrong!" (Stevestory is shuddering, jaw agape, somewhere.)
And after Dave "shows" that geologists don't know shit about rock layers, he'll move onto (another Dave's famous) "biologists don't know shit about life and cellular processes", probably follow that up with "physicists and astronomers don't know shit about about cosmology", take a brief detour (to return the favour for a recent endorsement) to engage Dembski's critics by claiming "mathematicians don't know shit about numbers and probabilities", then move on to the more esoteric wonders of YEC paranoia, like "doctors don't know shit about medicine -- I don't want no vaccines, and you can't show me HIV causes AIDS!". We have another polymath on our hands, folks.
Kids, this is what happens when you are so intent on finding SOMEBODY (anybody! to take authority over you (and accountability away from you), but have absolutely no clue on how to actually assess who has earned the right to be authoritative.
Do you realize your a dishonest idiot and just plow ahead anyway? Or do you honestly think the "references" you posted actually have real world meaning?
I'm genuinely curious. Are these ancient encyclopedias the primary "textbooks" you use to teach your own kids with?
You (and JonF and Deadman) really have not figured me out yet, have you? Good. This serves my purpose very well.
Purpose? LOKI TROLL. No one can be this thick. I admit I was suckered for the first 100 pages, but not anymore.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Here's another example of how stupidly you think, Dave...
I think it was supposed to be some sort of joke based on GC erosion. In any case, it's just Dave trying to avoid learning anything.
Remember, he's not here to learn. He's here to argue.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I think it was supposed to be some sort of joke based on GC erosion. In any case, it's just Dave trying to avoid learning anything. Remember, he's not here to learn. He's here to argue.
I suppose it's possible that it was some lame attempt at a joke. The real problem is: how can you tell?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The Warning Signs of Toxic Religion By J. Lee Grady Charisma Magazine
CBN.com – After Elisha watched Elijah ascend into heaven, the prophet went to the city of Jericho and performed his first miracle. The men of that city faced an environmental crisis: Their water was toxic, most likely because of the sulphur and other chemicals that had rained down upon nearby Sodom and Gomorrah years earlier. This poison had made the land barren (see 2 Kings 2:19-22) and it was probably affecting people and animals as well as plant life.
So Elisha performed a bold, prophetic act. He threw salt in the water and proclaimed: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I have purified these waters; there shall not be from there death or unfruitfulness any longer” (NASB). His proclamation brought immediate cleansing.
This obscure story in the Old Testament offers us a picture of the gospel’s power. The message of Jesus Christ heals us. The Holy Spirit brings life where death has reigned. He neutralizes the poisons that cause spiritual barrenness. He balances the pH level so that spiritual growth and vitality is possible.
All of us would like to enjoy a healthy spiritual life. But the sad truth is that many of us, and many churches today, are barren because of hazardous additives. We have believed a different gospel—one laced with legalism, performance-based religion and salvation by works—when Christ alone is our only source of life.
Jesus Himself referred to these toxins as “the leaven of the Pharisees” (Luke 12:1). He told us that the Pharisees’ brand of religion, which looked good on the outside, was deadly—and contagious. Have you been infected? You can take your own pH test by examining these eight characteristics of a religious spirit.
1. A religious spirit views God as a cold, harsh, distant taskmaster rather than an approachable, loving Father. When we base our relationship with God on our ability to perform spiritual duties, we deny the power of grace. God does not love us because we pray, read our Bibles, attend church or witness, yet millions of Christians think God is mad if they don’t perform these and other duties perfectly. As a result they struggle to find true intimacy with Jesus.
2. A religious spirit places emphasis on doing outward things to show others that God accepts him. We deceive ourselves into believing that we can win God’s approval through a religious dress code, certain spiritual disciplines, particular music styles or even doctrinal positions.
3. A religious spirit develops traditions and formulas to accomplish spiritual goals. We trust in our liturgies, denominational policies or man-made programs to obtain results that only God alone can give.
4. A religious spirit becomes joyless, cynical and hypercritical. This can turn a home or a church completely sour. Then, whenever genuine joy and love are expressed, this becomes a threat to those who have lost the simplicity of true faith.
5. A religious spirit becomes prideful and isolated, thinking that his righteousness is special and that he cannot associate with other believers who have different standards. Churches that allow these attitudes become elitist—and dangerously vulnerable to deception or cult-like practices.
6. A religious spirit develops a harsh, judgmental attitude toward sinners, yet those who ingest this poison typically struggle with sinful habits that they cannot admit to anyone else. Religious people rarely interact with nonbelievers because they don’t want their own superior morals to be tainted by them.
7. A religious spirit rejects progressive revelation and refuses to embrace change. This is why many churches become irrelevant to society. They become so focused on what God did 50 years ago that they become stuck in a time warp—and cannot move forward when the Holy Spirit begins to speak in new ways. When religious groups refuse to shift with God’s new directives, they become “old wineskins” and God must find more flexible vessels that are willing to implement His changes.
8. A religious spirit persecutes those who disagree with his self-righteous views and becomes angry whenever the message of grace threatens to undermine his religiosity. An angry religious person will use gossip and slander to assassinate other peoples’ character and may even use violence to prove his point. Jesus, in fact, warned His disciples: “There will even come a time when anyone who kills you will think he’s doing God a favor” (John 16:2, The Message).
If the poison of religion has seeped into your life, ask Him today to pour a fresh understanding of His grace into your barren spirit.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
MY ASSERTION OF EVO-BOT CIRCULAR REASONING IS AS SOUND AS EVER
Let's look at some responses from you guys ...
Eric ...
Quote
Dave, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that every other layer in the grand canyon had at least one fossil in it, and no layer other than the lowermost layers could be dated radiometrically (this is not the case; I'm just laying out a hypothetical). Is it impossible to assign a date to any of these layers then?
Of course not.
If you can find a similar fossil elsewhere, Dave—anywhere—in sediment that can be dated radiometrically, than you can extrapolate that date to the fossil in the sediment you can't date. Not really that difficult.
OK, fine. Aftershave's article says that the fossils found in the Kaibab Limestone are brachiopods, coral, mollusks, sea lilies, worms and fish teeth.
Show me a layer somewhere that has similar fossils that can be dated RM. Then show me how this relates to the Kaibab Limestone, thus proving that the Kaibab is 250-270my old.
You say you can do it. Show me.
Dave, that wasn't my point and you know it. Your claim was that using radiometric dating and index fossils required circular logic. I demonstrated that the reasoning involved wasn't remotely circular. Now you want me (who, need I remind you, is not a geologist) to go out and find evidence for you that such methodology has in fact been used in a particular instance, when that information is readily available to you, but you still haven't admitted that you were wrong when you claimed the methodology I outlined involved circular reasoning. Classic moving of the goalposts, Dave.
This is a classic example of how Dave tries to change the subject when he's been caught out. But I'm not going to let him get away with it.
So are you going to stop claiming that geologists' methods do not involve circular logic, Dave, or are you continue making the claim after it's already been disproven, the way you usually do?
And, just like any other loser creationist, how does Dave find support for his "creator god hypothesis"? By trying to criticize someone else's hypothesis. He has no evidence to support his own absurd claims, so all he can do is try to get other people to support their claims. As if somehow disproving someone else's claims could prove his claims.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'm not interested in getting a geology degree ... by an internet flame war or any other way ...
I'm interested in showing that those who DO have geology degrees are grotesquely mistaken when they say that sedimentary rock layers were laid down over millions and millions of years by the same well-understood processes which are in operation today (the present is the key to the past) ...
Dave, if that's your goal, you should have given up a long time ago, because you don't have a prayer of convincing anyone of anything.
Your astounding ignorance knows no bounds. You cannot grasp the simplest of concepts (like how a meteor strike cannot be older than the strata it has penetrated), and you don't have the slightest conception of the continent-sized mass of data supporting an old earth. Here you are talking about a single chunk of rock with a single trilobite lodged in it, and you act like that's the sum total of evidence for an old earth. Do you have the foggiest notion of how many trilobites have ever been found, Dave? Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, and not one of them has ever been found in any rock that can be dated by any method known to man to be less than 500 million years old. That's hundreds of thousands of data points, you idiot.
And macroevolution's not even an assumption about that, Dave. Trilobites could have built by God out of a Build-a-Critter™ kit, and that wouldn't change anything about the ages of the fossils themselves or the rocks. We know we never see trilobites outside of a certain band of the geological column, and as far as dating that portion of the column goes, it doesn't matter where trilobites come from.
These aren't a few random "assumptions," based on a few dozen data points, Dave. These are entire museums full of fossils, rocks, vast catalogs full of radiometric data, and it all fits together seamlessly. For fuck's sake, Dave, you can't even date your "global catastrophic flood," something that supposedly happened a few thousand years ago, to closer than a few thousand years! Your error bars are on the order of 50%! And you can't get any of the data you want to use to converge on any particular date! And that's to the extent you even have any data that doesn't flat-out contradict your conclusion in the first place!
Your stupid carbon-14 in coal was a perfect example, Dave. Even if we granted that your data was accurate, it would still have your age of the earth off by almost a factor of ten.
And you have absolutely no explanation of any kind whatsoever for the same geologic column that you think geologists are so mistaken about, Dave. You can't even begin to account for the kilometers of sediment found on every continent on the planet. Your "hypothesis" can't account for any observation at all other than through entirely ad hoc means that have no connection to external reality.
The only reason we've gotten to parts "G" and "H" of your "hypothesis" is because you've given up and moved on, Dave. As I've pointed out before and will certainly point out again, you haven't persuaded a single person here of the validity of a single claim you've made.
Not one.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
dave: Yes, yes. And more to come! We're working hard to teach kids the truth while they are young so they won't grow up with--er ... shall we say ... sub-optimal ... OK, muddled--brains like those here at ATBC.
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me: Yeah, why don't you invite some of your sunday school buds to your thread, so they can see whose brain is muddled.
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dave:
I have. They say yours are.
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me: Care to tell us a username so we can verify this?
ROUND AND ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH ... BUT STILL NOTHING TO PROVE HOW OLD THE GC LAYERS ARE
Just like there was nothing to prove the age of the ape/human LCA ...
Yes, Improv ... the meteor w/ parachute was a joke ...
Here's the deal ... the meteor thing doesn't say anything about those layers ...
You guys say that the layers were laid over millions of years ... then this meteor hits 49,000 years ago ... God only knows what fantasy dating method you used to get that ... and how does this help your claim that the GC layers are 245 my old and older in that nice ordered succession?
It doesn't ...
I say it's made up ... just like the 8 my old gorilla ancestor ...
Just another JUST SO story ...
So ... if no one has anything convincing, I'm moving on to another Flood topic ...
I've got lots more to say about the Flood ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Here's the deal ... the meteor thing doesn't say anything about those layers ...
It says the layers were there when the meteor hit.
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You guys say that the layers were laid over millions of years ... then this meteor hits 49,000 years ago ... God only knows what fantasy dating method you used to get that ...
Details and references were supplied earlier in the thread. Ignoring 'em ain't going to make 'em go away.
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and how does this help your claim that the GC layers are 245 my old and older in that nice ordered succession?
It's one brick in a gigantic wall of interlocking and consistent bricks that make up the whole picture (to mix my metaphors)
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It doesn't ...
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, Davie-pie.
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So ... if no one has anything convincing, I'm moving on to another Flood topic ...
I've got lots more to say about the Flood ...
Running away again.
Waiting for your explanation of the dating of the seafloor, the sediment thickness on the seafloor, and the magnetic reversal stripes on the seafloor. But you can't handle it, can ya, Davie-doodles? You're terrified of adddressing the actual evidence, just like you can't handle the truth about Meteor Crater.
me: Care to tell us a username so we can verify this?
Think, Steve. First, there's only a handful of people at my church that would have any interest in these things ... these are the ones who I have given a link to this forum. Second, I doubt even the ones who have an interest would actually get a username and post some comments. Third, why should they tell me what their username is if they got one?
JonF ... so the layers were there when the meteor hit ... what does that prove?
You have given me nothing on why the meteor is 49,000 years old and ...
If you did, this would not have any bearing on why the GC layers are dated as they are ...
The only one here that has tried to give me this info is Eric ... and his explanation was hypothetical ... he has no real data ...
So until someone comes up with something, I'm assuming I am correct that the layers are just dated arbitrarily ...
Just like I suspected ...
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Waiting for your explanation of the dating of the seafloor, the sediment thickness on the seafloor, and the magnetic reversal stripes on the seafloor.
Might get into this ... we'll see ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Think, Steve. First, there's only a handful of people at my church that would have any interest in these things ... these are the ones who I have given a link to this forum. Second, I doubt even the ones who have an interest would actually get a username and post some comments. Third, why should they tell me what their username is if they got one?
So we can't verify your claim? Why am I not surprised.
ROUND AND ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH ... BUT STILL NOTHING TO PROVE HOW OLD THE GC LAYERS ARE...
So ... if no one has anything convincing, I'm moving on to another Flood topic ...
I've got lots more to say about the Flood ...
Dave, you're in idiot.
You've been given ample evidence explaining exactly how old the grand canyon sediemnts are, but you keep pretending you haven't been. That doesn't help you, because the evidence is posted right on this very thread, right where everyone (except, evidently, you) can see it.
And you've got nothing to say about your flood, because you, all by yourself, have demonstrated that it never happened. Why do I say that? Because you haven't been able, over the four months you've been posting here, to present the tiniest speck of evidence for the existence of one thing without which it is simply impossible to have a flood: a source of water.
So you're not going to be talking about your flood, Dave, because every time you bring it up, we're going to tell you that you have no evidence it ever happened.
Come up with another myth to talk about.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Here's a simple mnemonic device for a simple guy like you to remember this, DaveStupid: Can Oscar See Down My Pants Pocket? The Joker Can!
That's pretty good ... I like it.
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You'll notice a few things. First, the Kaibab is overlain by the Moenkopi...which extends into Utah, too. Those layers you see on the Utah stratigraphic columns USED to exist in the Grand Canyon, too. 5000 or so more feet of layers were washed away in the Grand Canyon, but not the Moenkopi...
5000 feet of layers washed away ... hmmmm ... did a dinky little river do that over millions of years? Or perhaps was it a Global Flood?
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Now remember, the Morrison sits on top of the Chinle (radiometrically dated, remember?)
So the Chinle is the only one dated RM? How old supposedly? What method?
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40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old.
Isn't the Argon method even more wildly discordant than all the other methods?
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Now I realize, that's a lot for your tiny brain to hold, so I'll stop there and let you tell me two things: (1)Why is this invalid? and (2)If a meteor hits the Earth 49 thousand years ago and penetrated the coconino sandstone...why do you think that date is invalid, too?
(1) I'll process this and get back to you ... (2) I have no idea how they dated the meteor impact ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The only one here that has tried to give me this info is Eric ... and his explanation was hypothetical ... he has no real data ...
Real data, as in he's not holding all these fossils in his hands along with geological samples, or real data in the sense that this hasn't been carried out over, and over, and over again?
So if we gave you real data using this "hypothetical" method, you would concede the point that there was no catastrophic flood, and millionsofyearism is actually plausible?
Congratulations Eric, it only took 130+ pages for him to concede anything.
Nishiizumi et al. (Nishiizumi, K., Kohl, C.P., Shoemaker J.R., Arnold, J.R., Klein, J., Fink, D. and Middleton, R., 1991. In situ 10Be and 26Al exposure ages at Meteor Crater, Arizona. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2699-2703.) report a minimum age of 49.2±1.7ka, based on 10Be and 26Al analyses of samples from the crater walls and ejecta blocks at the crater rim.
Phillips et al. (Phillips, F.M., Zreda, M.G., Smith, S.S., Elmore, D., Kubik, P.W., Dorn, R.I. and Roddy, D.J., 1991. Age and geomorphic history of Meteor Crater, Arizona, from cosmogenic Cl-36 and C-14 in rock varnish. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2695-2698.) report a 36Cl exposure age of 49±0.7ka for dolomite ejecta on the crater rim.
Both sets of dates are in turn statistically identical to quartz thermoluminescence dates of 49±3ka reported by Sutton (Sutton, S.R., 1985. Thermoluminescence measurements on shock-metamorphosed sandstone and dolomite from Meteor Crater, Arizona. Journal of Geophysical Research 90(B5), pp. 3690-3700.)
See Also: Kieffer, S.W., I. Shock Metamorphism of the Coconino Sandstone at Meteor Crater, Arizona: II. The Specific Heat of Solids of Geophysical Interest, Ph.D. Thesis, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, 1970.
Kieffer, S. W., Shock metamorphism of the Coconino Sandstone at Meteor Crater, Arizona, Journal of Geophysical Research, 76, 5449-5473, 1971.
Shoemaker, E. M. and Kieffer, S.W., Guidebook to the Geology of Meteor Crater, Arizona, printed by the Meteoritical Society and the U.S. Geological Survey for the 37th Annual Meeting of the Meteoritical Society, August, 1974.
Are you mental in saying that I had not posted this before?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Third, why should they tell me what their username is if they got one?
well, I hope they would, for your sake, as so far EVERY lurker that has uncloaked and left a message in this thread has clearly noted what an utter idiot you are.
If any of these were your "acquaintances", I sure would like to know if I were you.
OTOH, maybe not. Ignorance is bliss, right?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Diogenes... If you think that radiometric dating is as reliable as a tape measure, then you are more naive than you look!
Dave, a statement like this coming from you is nothing short of preposterous.
You have absolutely no idea how reliable radiometric dating is. You have no idea which methods are used on which samples, or for which timescales (which is why you tripped over your own shoelaces trying to date quarter-of-a-billion year old coal seams with C14), and you have no idea what the expected error bars are for different methods used on different materials over which timespans.
Let me ask you a question, Dave: You have a 10-foot tape measure which is accurate to about 1.5 mm over its length. I have a radiometric dating method which is accurate to ± 1.5 mya at 3.1 gya. Which is more accurate?
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Deadman ... you're just going to SNORT at my refusal to bet you? OK. Here's what I'll bet you on ... you show me a good comprehensive case that macroevolution has in fact happened and that Genesis is a fairy tale and I will promise never to teach kids about the Book of Genesis again. OK? (This is basically what you guys have been trying to do since I started here)
Dave, if that's your bet, pay up. You've lost, Deadman has won. The case that macroevolution has happened is amply demonstrated from the fossil record, and the fossil record alone. The additional evidence (which is mountainous) is merely icing on the cake. The evidence that the Book of Genesis is a fairy-tale not suitable for 3-three-olds is equally comprehensive, coming from virtually every subdiscipline of science there is.
Deadman would be safe in taking this bet from you no matter how dishonest you are, because you'll never, ever be able to prove the converse. On the other hand, he'll never see a payoff from your loss because you'll never, ever, do the honorable thing and admit you've lost. We have all the proof of that we could ever need.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
seriously AssHatDave, what the F%@ck is wrong with you? I had posted that before...i can post 100 different things that all tie in with the kaibab...but you're MENTAL , meaning you have some form of mental disease that keeps you from seeing what is put in front of your face....what IS wrong with you?
I have NO reason but to conclude at this point , that given what you have done...that you are mentally ill.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, and for your information, ShitfaceDave, and including some things you won't find at TalkOrigins:
Example 1-Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated less than 4000 years ago from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. The citation is: Mayr, E., 1970. Populations, Species, and Evolution, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348 Example 2- Evidence that a species of fireweed formed by doubling of the chromosome count, from the original stock. The citation is: Mosquin, T., 1967. “Evidence for autopolyploidy in Epilobium angustifolium (Onaagraceae)”, Evolution 21:713-719 Example 3- A naturally occurring speciation of a plant species, Stephanomeria malheurensis, was observed in Burns County, Oregon. The citation is: Gottlieb, L. D. 1973. Genetic differentiation, sympatric speciation, and the origin of a diploid species of Stephanomeria. American Journal of Botany 60(6):545-553
Example 4 - Central American fish, Xiphoporus maculatus [Endler, J.A. (1977) Geographic Variation, Speciation, and Clines. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.], that lives in rivers up the east coast and exibits various stages of speciation, from simple diversity of a single population, to subspecies, to full isolated species. Mayr [ Mayr, E. (1963), Populations, Species, And Evolution Harvard University Press. p.281] points out "Here then we have a series of related, allopatric populations showing every stage from the local genetic race, to the ordinary subspecies, to the almost specifically distinct subspecies ([X.] xiphidium), to the full species (couchianus)."
Example 5- RAPID ALLOPATRIC SPECIATION IN LOGPERCH DARTERS Evolution: Vol. 58, No. 12, pp. 2798-2808. A resolved phylogeny was generated using mitochondrial DNA gene sequences for logperches, a monophyletic group of darters composed of 10 recognized species.
Example 6- the Australian mallee thickhead Pachycephala [.Keast, A. (1961) Bird Speciation on the Australian Continent, Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 123:305-495] In the first stage a wide ranging population became split into two due to changes in the vegetation of southern Australia. Eventually, the two populations were allowed to come into contact, but were reproductively isolated from each other --two new species.
Example 7 - is the fruit fly Rhagoletis [Bush, G.L. (1975) "Sympatric Speciation in Phytophagous Parasitic Insects" in Evolutionary Strategies of Parasitic Insects and Mites, edited by Price, P.W., Plenum Press, N.Y.]
Example 8 - An example is the separation of marine creatures on either side of Central America when the Isthmus of Panama closed about 3 million years ago, creating a land bridge between North and South America. Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama has been studying populations of snapping shrimp. She and her colleagues found that shrimp on one side of the isthmus appeared almost identical to those on the other side -- having once been members of the same population.They had become separate species, just as the theory would predict.
Nancy Knowlton;Lee A. Weigt. 1998. "New dates and new rates for divergence across the Isthmus of Panama". Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) B. 265: 2257-2263 . Nancy Knowlton;Lee A. Weigt 2001. Evidence for three major clades within the snapping shrimp genus Alpheus inferred from nuclear and mitochondiral gene sequence data., Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 20:375-389. Nancy Knowlton and DeEtta K. Mills: “The Systematic Importance of Color and Color Pattern: Evidence for Complexes of Sibling Species of Snapping Shrimp (Caridea: Alpheidae: Alpheus) from the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts of Panama.” Proceedings of the San Diego Society of Natural History, No. 18, 1 November, 1992: 1-5.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
JonF ... so the layers were there when the meteor hit ... what does that prove?
It proves that the layers are older than the meteor strike.
You're awfully slow-witted, Davie-moron.
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You have given me nothing on why the meteor is 49,000 years old and ...
Deadman provided a detailed description, with references, on exactly how the date was determined. He provided a brief summary in another message. You are lyin' again, Davie-dip.
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If you did, this would not have any bearing on why the GC layers are dated as they are ...
More lies, Davie-dork. The layers at the crater are the same layers as at the GC. The dates of the layers at the crater are the dates of the layers at the GC.
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So until someone comes up with something, I'm assuming I am correct that the layers are just dated arbitrarily ...
Waiting for your explanation of the dating of the seafloor, the sediment thickness on the seafloor, and the magnetic reversal stripes on the seafloor.
Might get into this ... we'll see ...
Preparing to go back on your pledge to do so, hum, Davie-liar? Adding another item to the list of truths that terrify you so much you can't acknowledge they exist? I understand ... addressing real data would cause your "hypothesis" to implode; you can't stand the light of truth.
You'll notice a few things. First, the Kaibab is overlain by the Moenkopi...which extends into Utah, too. Those layers you see on the Utah stratigraphic columns USED to exist in the Grand Canyon, too. 5000 or so more feet of layers were washed away in the Grand Canyon, but not the Moenkopi...
5000 feet of layers washed away ... hmmmm ... did a dinky little river do that over millions of years?
Yup.
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Or perhaps was it a Global Flood?
Nope.
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Now remember, the Morrison sits on top of the Chinle (radiometrically dated, remember?)
So the Chinle is the only one dated RM? How old supposedly? What method?
You should at least pretend you're trying to keep, up, Davie-doodles. Specifics were posted.
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40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old.
Isn't the Argon method even more wildly discordant than all the other methods?
No.
Davie-ignoramus, 40Ar/39Ar is not the same as the K-Ar method that creo-dorks love to criticise because error is more possible than in other methods (although the observed concordance with other methods shows that error is rare). 40Ar/39Ar is self-checking, like isochron methods, and often can prodce a valid date even if the system has been opened/disturbed.
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I have no idea how they dated the meteor impact ...
There's no excuse for not knowing. Read the messages.
Albertson RC, Markert JA, Danley PD and Kocher TD. 1999. Phylogeny of a rapidly evolving clade: the cichlid fishes of Lake Malawi, East Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 96(9): 5107-5110
Kocher TD, Conroy JA, McKaye KR, Stauffer JR and Lockwood SF. 1995. Evolution of the ND2 gene in East African cichlids. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 4:420-432.
Meyer A, Kocher TD and Wilson AC. 1992. African fishes. Nature 350:467-468.Meyer A, Kocher TD, Basaibwaki P and Wilson AC. 1990. Monophyletic origin of Lake Victoria cichlid fishes suggested by mitochondrial DNA sequences. Nature 347:550-553.
Kornfield I, McKaye K and Kocher T. 1985. Evidence for the immigration hypothesis in the endemic cichlid fauna of Lake Tanganyika. Isozyme Bulletin 18:76
Danley PD, Markert JA, Arnegard ME, and Kocher TD. 2000. Divergence with gene flow in the rock-dwelling cichlids of Lake Malawi. Evolution 54(5):1725-37.
Arnegard ME, Markert JA, Danley PD, Stauffer JR Jr., Ambali AJ and Kocher TD. 1999. Population structure and colour variation of the cichlid fish Labeotropheus fuelleborni Ahl along a recently formed achipelago of rocky habitat patches in southern Lake Malawi. Proceedings Royal Society London B 266: 119-130.
Markert, JA, Arnegard ME, Danley PD and Kocher TD. 1999. Biogeography and population genetics of the Lake Malawi cichlid Melanochromis auratus: habitat transience, philopatry and speciation. Mol. Ecol. 8(6): 1013-1026
Stauffer JR Jr, Bowers NJ, Kocher TD and McKaye KR. 1995. Hybridization between Cynotilapia afra and Pseudotropheus zebra (Teleostei: Cichlidae) following an intralacustrine introduction in Lake Malawi, Africa. Copeia 1996: 203-208.
Bowers N, Stauffer JR, and Kocher TD. 1994. Intra- and interspecific mitochondrial DNA sequence variation within two species of rock-dwelling cichlids (Teleostei: Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi, Africa. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 3:75-82 . McKaye KR, Kocher T, Reinthal P, Harrison R and Kornfield I. 1984. Genetic evidence of allopatric and sympatric differentiation among color morphs of a Lake Malawi cichlid fish. Evolution 38:215-219.
McKaye KR, Kocher T, Reinthal P, Harrison R and Kornfield I. 1982. A sympatric sibling species complex of Petrotilapia trewavas (Cichlidae) from Lake Malawi analyzed by enzyme electrophoresis. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 76:91-96.
Sabine Wilkins.(2001) The Evolution of Cichlids. A talk presented at the June 2001 meeting of the Cichlid Society of NSW, Australia
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
seriously AssHatDave, what the F%@ck is wrong with you? I had posted that before...i can post 100 different things that all tie in with the kaibab...but you're MENTAL , meaning you have some form of mental disease that keeps you from seeing what is put in front of your face....what IS wrong with you?
I have NO reason but to conclude at this point , that given what you have done...that you are mentally ill.
He's got he worst case of Morton's Demon I've ever seen. The combination of that, extreme ignorance, no intellectual capability, and compulsive lying gives us ... our Davie!
Example 4 - Central American fish, Xiphoporus maculatus [Endler, J.A. (1977)
actually, this is one of Endler's more "tedious" papers; you should check out his work on selection that he did a little later.
Classic stuff. He was a prof of mine when I was an undergrad at UCSB. I still regard his selection experiments some of the best and most interesting to date.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I was reminded of this as someone pointed out that the "sexual selection is bogus" meme is currently making the rounds on the creobot sites.
Off the top of my head, I really can't think of any field experiments conclusively demonstrating the mechanism and effects of selection that I would recommend more than Endler's work on Poecilliids.
Funny enough, he is now working in the very area I did my thesis in as a grad student. It's making me think about getting another degree....
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
seriously AssHatDave, what the F%@ck is wrong with you? I had posted that before...i can post 100 different things that all tie in with the kaibab...but you're MENTAL , meaning you have some form of mental disease that keeps you from seeing what is put in front of your face....what IS wrong with you?
I have NO reason but to conclude at this point , that given what you have done...that you are mentally ill.
He's got he worst case of Morton's Demon I've ever seen. The combination of that, extreme ignorance, no intellectual capability, and compulsive lying gives us ... our Davie!
Seriously, though, what do you people expect him to say? We know his job is selling creo tracts to kids. Is it in any way feasible for him to just say, "Gosh, you science people really do have a point. My life and livelihood are based on ignorance and lies. I guess I'll just find something else to do instead." Dave is invested in creo propaganda - both psychologically and financially - up to his beady little eyeballs. There is no way whatsoever he can back out of it now.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I will give credit where credit is due and I have to say that Deadman is quite impressive at coming up with highly documented "conventional wisdom" facts. This is a very helpful diagram for trying to understand uniformitarian interpretations of geology.
But alas, where Deadman fails is in his interpretations of these data ...
Before I give my analysis, let me see if I understand your postion:
We have some 26 different layers over a large region which includes the GC and extends into Utah and Colorado. Of these 26 layers, 2 of them are dated radiometrically -- the Chinle layer (?? my) and the Morrison Formation (150 my). No one has told me the age of the Chinle layer (did I miss it?). I suppose I could guess it based upon its position ... Assuming that the Wasatch formation (top of the staircase) is a mere million or so years old and the bottom of the Vishnu Schist is 1.7 byo, I guess I can assume that the Chinle is about halfway between this, or 1.7 / 2 = 850 myo. ("o" stands for Old, Crabby) Oops ... this doesn't work ... the Kaibab is only 245 myo and it's only about 1/3 of the way up the staircase. Hmmmm ... let's see. How about starting at the top and working down ... the Morrison is supposedly 150 myo at about 2/3 of the way up (or 1/3 down) the staircase. So maybe 200 myo for the Chinle? That'll make it younger that the Kaibab, but older than the Morrison. Are we happy?
Now, some questions ...
Why do we cover 1.5 billion years in the lower half of the staircase, but only 200 million years in the upper half?
Are we really basing the nice dating scheme throughout the entire staircase on just TWO LAYERS which can be dated radiometrically?
Deadman ...
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Nishiizumi et al. (Nishiizumi, K., Kohl, C.P., Shoemaker J.R., Arnold, J.R., Klein, J., Fink, D. and Middleton, R., 1991. In situ 10Be and 26Al exposure ages at Meteor Crater, Arizona. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2699-2703.) report a minimum age of 49.2±1.7ka, based on 10Be and 26Al analyses of samples from the crater walls and ejecta blocks at the crater rim.
Phillips et al. (Phillips, F.M., Zreda, M.G., Smith, S.S., Elmore, D., Kubik, P.W., Dorn, R.I. and Roddy, D.J., 1991. Age and geomorphic history of Meteor Crater, Arizona, from cosmogenic Cl-36 and C-14 in rock varnish. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2695-2698.) report a 36Cl exposure age of 49±0.7ka for dolomite ejecta on the crater rim.
OK. I have to hand it to you. At least you came up with something that SOUNDS scientific. I have no idea how 10Be and 26Al dating works, but I am sure that people much wiser than myself do **ahem** just like much wiser folks know that apes and humans have a common ancestor, just like much wiser folks know that bacteria turned into jellyfish over millions of years, etc. etc.
Deadman...
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Both sets of dates are in turn statistically identical to quartz thermoluminescence dates of 49±3ka reported by Sutton (Sutton, S.R., 1985. Thermoluminescence measurements on shock-metamorphosed sandstone and dolomite from Meteor Crater, Arizona. Journal of Geophysical Research 90(B5), pp. 3690-3700.)
Amazing! Both dating methods correlate! Well that settles it. I will just take their word for it and not even investigate. No doubt I will find nothing suspicious (just as I found nothing suspicious with the GULO gene).
Eric...
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Let me ask you a question, Dave: You have a 10-foot tape measure which is accurate to about 1.5 mm over its length. I have a radiometric dating method which is accurate to ± 1.5 mya at 3.1 gya. Which is more accurate?
Very funny. Ha ha ha ha.
Deadman...
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Example 1-Formation of five new species of cichlid fishes which formed since they were isolated less than 4000 years ago from the parent stock, Lake Nagubago. The citation is: Mayr, E., 1970. Populations, Species, and Evolution, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. p. 348
Neat. Did any of them grow legs? Let me know when they do. Oh and a related question. Why do conservationists worry about species going extinct ... if evolution is true, we shouldn't worry. Many more new and wonderful species will evolve, right??!!
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Example 2- Evidence that a species of fireweed formed by doubling of the chromosome count, from the original stock. The citation is: Mosquin, T., 1967. “Evidence for autopolyploidy in Epilobium angustifolium (Onaagraceae)”, Evolution 21:713-719
Cool. Where do fireweeds fit on the Evo Tree? Do they branch off from fungi or something? What do they evolve into? Redwoods? Have any of your fireweeds done this? No? Hmmmm ... not enough time?
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Example 7 - is the fruit fly Rhagoletis [Bush, G.L. (1975) "Sympatric Speciation in Phytophagous Parasitic Insects" in Evolutionary Strategies of Parasitic Insects and Mites, edited by Price, P.W., Plenum Press, N.Y.]
So is this the new Super Fruit Fly that can leap tall buildings that I've been asking about for months now?
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Nancy Knowlton;Lee A. Weigt. 1998. "New dates and new rates for divergence across the Isthmus of Panama". Proceedings of the Royal Society (London) B. 265: 2257-2263 . Nancy Knowlton;Lee A. Weigt 2001. Evidence for three major clades within the snapping shrimp genus Alpheus inferred from nuclear and mitochondiral gene sequence data., Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 20:375-389. Nancy Knowlton and DeEtta K. Mills: “The Systematic Importance of Color and Color Pattern: Evidence for Complexes of Sibling Species of Snapping Shrimp (Caridea: Alpheidae: Alpheus) from the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts of Panama.” Proceedings of the San Diego Society of Natural History, No. 18, 1 November, 1992: 1-5.
Hmmm ... snapping shrimp, huh? What do they evolve into? Fish? I have an idea! Maybe someone like Incorygible could "help" the shrimp evolve into Self Cooking Shrimp! Then I wouldn't have to cook them on my grill ... just a thought.
JonF...
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It proves that the layers are older than the meteor strike.
You're awfully slow-witted, Davie-moron.
Oh really? You're kidding!! JonF ... you must be from MIT or something. Let me try you again ... my question is actually "what does a meteor have to do with the supposed ages of the GC layers?"
JonF..
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More lies, Davie-dork. The layers at the crater are the same layers as at the GC. The dates of the layers at the crater are the dates of the layers at the GC.
Yes. The dates of the layers at the GC = the dates of the layers at the Crater = the dates of the layers at the GC. Very informative.
JonF...
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Davie-ignoramus, 40Ar/39Ar is not the same as the K-Ar method that creo-dorks love to criticise because error is more possible than in other methods (although the observed concordance with other methods shows that error is rare). 40Ar/39Ar is self-checking, like isochron methods, and often can prodce a valid date even if the system has been opened/disturbed.
Oh I see. The new improved dating method. OK. What do you want to bet that Evos and Creos were arguing about K-Ar back when it was hot and new. I bet there weren't any Evos admitting K-Ar had problems then, now were there? Probably the same situation here.
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OK. Outta time. It's been fun. More tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OK. I have to hand it to you. At least you came up with something that SOUNDS scientific. I have no idea how 10Be and 26Al dating works, but I am sure that people much wiser than myself do **ahem** just like much wiser folks know that apes and humans have a common ancestor, just like much wiser folks know that bacteria turned into jellyfish over millions of years, etc. etc.
Dave's criticism (earlier by Steve S)
"I don't know how it works, but I know it's wrong."
Why do we cover 1.5 billion years in the lower half of the staircase, but only 200 million years in the upper half?
So you're saying we should see a perfect linear relationship between deposition and time? As measured by depth, with no consideration of pressure, erosion, source of the rock, etc.? Why Davey, how stupendously UNIFORMITARIAN of you. Breathtakingly ignorant, too, but the amusing irony almost makes up for that. Almost.
5000 feet of layers washed away ... hmmmm ... did a dinky little river do that over millions of years? Or perhaps was it a Global Flood?
Dave, I just cannot believe how asinine a human being can be. Can you possibly explain to us how 5,000 feet of sediment could be washed away by 5,000 feet of water? Do you even see how utterly mentally-retarded such an assertion is?
And how is it, with a global flood, which remember you claimed covered the entire planet with a layer of water 5,000 feet deep, that only the sediment within the Grand Canyon washed away? Why didn't all 6 kilometers of sediment wash off the continent? Because there wasn't enough water? There's not enough water to wash 5,000 feet of sediment out of just the Grand Canyon, either! And don't give me any crap about Hopi Lakes, etc., because your model won't accommodate them! How can there be lakes anywhere, when the entire globe is covered with a mile-thick layer of water?!
Your model is nothing but inconsistencies, Dave. Nothing about your "model" makes any sense whatsoever.
But you think all of science is crap. Right. Whatever.
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(2) I have no idea how they dated the meteor impact ...
Dave, you can't be this stupid. DM posted how the impact crater was dated TWICE in the past two pages! DOES IT HELP YOU IF I TYPE EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS AND IN BOLD?! I hope not, because that will get my IDIOT score way into the triple digits.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1. you refused a gentleman's agreement on the dates for the Grand Canyon .
You desired to separate out one layer on the Grand canyon and even though I gave you multiple radiometric dates isolating and bracketing that that ONE layer, you insist that therefore the entire Grand Canyon is dated ONLY by those dates.
I gave you multiple dating methods on the Barringer Crater and your response was to call it wrong despite not knowing anything about the dating metods
I gave you those dates and you said you didn't see them, despite replying to other statements in those posts.
I have some empathy for your illness, Dave, but no tolerance.
For you, as an alleged adult...to immediately deny the validity of any dating method that places the earth older than 8000 BCE..shows how nuts you are. To deny that I had posted data... that was part of what you responded to ..shows how fucked-up you are.
these are also absolute dates (just a small sample--do your own work to support YOUR theory):
Two radiometric ages have been published for the the reworked tuff deposits found in the highest member of the Chinle, a K-Ar date of 239±9 Ma, and a U-Pb date of 207±2 Ma (Riggs, N. R., S. R. Ash, and J. M. Mattinson. 1994. Isotopic dating of a non-volcanic continental sequence, Chinle Formation, Arizona. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 26(6):61).
Ash beds within the Carmel have yielded dates between 166.3 and 168.0 ± 0.5 Ma (Kowallis, et al. 2001. The record of Middle Jurassic volcanism in the Carmel and Temple Cap Formations of southwestern Utah. GSA Bulletin, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 373-387).
Tuff from the Jurassic Morrison Formation is dated to 155-148 mya (Peterson, F., and Turner, C.E., 1998. Stratigraphy of the Ralston Creek and Morrison Formations [Upper Jurassic] near Denver, Colorado: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 3-38).
RICHARD L. REYNOLDS, MARK R. HUDSON, NEIL S. FISHMAN, and JOHN A. CAMPBELL. (1985) . Paleomagnetic and petrologic evidence bearing on the age and origin of uranium deposits in the Permian Cutler Formation, Lisbon Valley, Utah Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 96, No. 6, pp. 719-730
Roberto S Molina Garza, John W Geissman, Spencer G Lucas (2000) Palaeomagnetism and magnetostratigraphy of uppermost Permian strata, southeast New Mexico, USA: correlation of the Permian-Triassic boundary in non-marine environments. Geophysical Journal International Volume 141, Issue 3, Page 778-786
Igneous sills on top of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale have been dated at 66 million years ago, and ash layers in the Green River Shale have been dated at 50.2 +/- 1.9 mya (Buchheim, H. P., and Eugster. 1998. The Green River Formation of Fossil Basin, southwestern Wyoming. In J. Pitman, and A. Carroll, (eds.), Modern and Ancient Lacustrine Depositional Systems: Utah Geological Association. )
The Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river: Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742.
Wendell Duffield, Nancy Riggs, Darrell Kaufman, Duane Champion, Cassandra Fenton, Steven Forman, William McIntosh, Richard Hereford, Jeffery Plescia and Michael Ort. 2006: Multiple constraints on the age of a Pleistocene lava dam across the Little Colorado River at Grand Falls, Arizona. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 118, No. 3, pp. 421-429
Hamblin, W. Kenneth, (1994), “Late Cenezoic Cenezoic Lava Dams In The Lava Dams In The Western Grand Canyon”, Geological Society of America Memoir 183:139
Faulds, J. E., D. L. Feuerbach, C. F. Miller, and E. I Smith, Cenozoic evolution of the northern Colorado River extensional corridor, southern Nevada and northwest Arizona, in The Geologic Transition, High Plateaus to Great Basin-A Symposium and Field Guide, The Mackin Volume, M. C. Erskine, J. E. Faulds, J. M. Bartley, and P. D. Rowley (eds.), Utah Geol. Assoc. Publ., 30 [also Pacific Sec., Am. Assoc. Petrol. Geol. Publ. GB78], 239-271, 2001.
Fenton, C. R., R. H. Webb, P. A. Pearthree, T. E. Cerling, and R. J. Poreda, Displacement rates on the Toroweap and Hurricane faults: Implications for Quaternary downcutting in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, Geology, 29, 1035-1038, 2001.
Foster, D. A., A. J. W. Gleadow, S. J. Reynolds, and P. G. Fitzgerald, Denudation of metamorphic core complexes and the reconstruction of the transition zone, west central Arizona; constraints from apatite fission track thermochronology, Journal of Geophysical Research, 98, (2), 2167-2185, 1993.
Fenton, Cassandra R., Poreda Poreda, Robert J., Nash, Barbara P., Webb, Robert H., and Cerling, Thure E., (2004), “Geochemical Discrimination of Five Pleistocene Lava Discrimination of Five Pleistocene Lava-Dam Outburst-Flood Deposits, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona”, The Journal of Geology, Vol. 112, pp. 91-110.
N.R. Riggs, S.R. Ash, A.P. Barth, G.E. Gehrels and J.L. Wooden. 2003: Isotopic age of the Black Forest Bed, Petrified Forest Member, Chinle Formation, Arizona: An example of dating a continental sandstone. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 115, No. 11, pp. 1315-1323
Galen P. Halverson, Paul F. Hoffman, Daniel P. Schrag, Adam C. Maloof and A. Hugh N. Rice. 2005: Toward a Neoproterozoic composite carbon-isotope record. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 117, No. 9, pp. 1181-1207.
C.M. Dehler, M. Elrick, J.D. Bloch, L.J. Crossey, K.E. Karlstrom and D.J. Des Marais. 2005: High-resolution d13C stratigraphy of the Chuar Group (ca. 770-742 Ma), Grand Canyon: Implications for mid-Neoproterozoic climate change. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 117, No. 1, pp. 32-45.
Ochs, S., 1988, Stratigraphy, depositional environments, and petrology of the lowermost Moenkopi Formation, southeastern Utah: Salt Lake City, M.S. Thesis, University of Utah.
Richard F. Holm. 2001: Cenozoic paleogeography of the central Mogollon Rim-southern Colorado Plateau region, Arizona, revealed by Tertiary gravel deposits, Oligocene to Pleistocene lava flows, and incised streams. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol.
J. Michael Timmons, Karl E. Karlstrom, Carol M. Dehler, John W. Geissman and Matthew T. Heizler. 2001: Proterozoic multistage (ca. 1.1 and 0.8 Ga) extension recorded in the Grand Canyon Supergroup and establishment of northwest- and north-trending tectonic grains in the southwestern United States. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 113, No. 2, pp. 163-181.
Jacqueline E. Huntoon, Russell F. Dubiel, John D. Stanesco, Debra L. Mickelson and Steven M. Condon. 2002: Permian-Triassic depositional systems, paleogeography, paleoclimate, and hydrocarbon resources in Canyonlands and Monument Valley, Utah. GSA Field Guide 3: Science at the Highest Level: Vol. 3, No. 0, pp. 33-58.
Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742 " We hypothesize that this differential incision is due to west-down slip on the Toroweap fault of 94 ± 6 m/m.y. based on measured offset of the newly dated Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
seriously AssHatDave, what the F%@ck is wrong with you? I had posted that before...i can post 100 different things that all tie in with the kaibab...but you're MENTAL , meaning you have some form of mental disease that keeps you from seeing what is put in front of your face....what IS wrong with you?
I have NO reason but to conclude at this point , that given what you have done...that you are mentally ill.
He's got he worst case of Morton's Demon I've ever seen. The combination of that, extreme ignorance, no intellectual capability, and compulsive lying gives us ... our Davie!
Seriously, though, what do you people expect him to say? We know his job is selling creo tracts to kids. Is it in any way feasible for him to just say, "Gosh, you science people really do have a point. My life and livelihood are based on ignorance and lies. I guess I'll just find something else to do instead." Dave is invested in creo propaganda - both psychologically and financially - up to his beady little eyeballs. There is no way whatsoever he can back out of it now.
i think part of his "plan" is to get people so angry that they respond with "swear words" (oooh). Then, he can take pictures, and say "look how the evo-bots react when they get caught in a lie". From this thread, i've learnt more about geology then i knew existed before - mutiple dating methods, how to date samples that cannot be dated (age of the fossils etc) via normal methods. It's a shame that the level of proof AFD demands is not the same level of proof he applies to the Bible. Tell you what, why dont you tell us what dating methods you accept as working, and we can go from there. "I stared at it for 1 hour, therefore it's at least 1 hour old"
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Kenneth L. Cole and Larry Mayer. 1982: Use of packrat middens to determine rates of cliff retreat in the eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona. Geology: Vol. 10, No. 11, pp. 597-599. "cliff retreat, which is comparable to other cliff-retreat rates reported from arid environments, implies that the Colorado River cut through the Redwall Limestone in the vicinity of Horseshoe Mesa about 3.7 m.y. B.P."
Wendell Duffield, Nancy Riggs, Darrell Kaufman, Duane Champion, Cassandra Fenton, Steven Forman, William McIntosh, Richard Hereford, Jeffery Plescia and Michael Ort. 2006: Multiple constraints on the age of a Pleistocene lava dam across the Little Colorado River at Grand Falls, Arizona. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 118, No. 3, pp. 421-429
STEPHEN T. NELSON, JON P. DAVIDSON and KIM R. SULLIVAN. 1992: New age determinations of central Colorado Plateau laccoliths, Utah: Recognizing disturbed K-Ar systematics and re-evaluating tectonomagmatic relationships. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 104, No. 12, pp. 1547-1560. "incision of meanders on the Mogollon Slope occurred in the late Pliocene to Pleistocene Epochs as a result of integration of the Little Colorado River with the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon."
Marith C. Reheis, Richard L. Reynolds, Harland Goldstein, Helen M. Roberts, James C. Yount, Yarrow Axford, Linda Scott Cummings and Nancy Shearin. 2005: Late Quaternary eolian and alluvial response to paleoclimate, Canyonlands, southeastern Utah. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 117, No. 7, pp. 1051-1069
Baker, S.P., and Huntoon, J.E., 1996, Depositional analysis of the Black Dragon Member of the Triassic Moenkopi Formation, southeastern Utah: in, Huffman, A.C., Jr., Lund, W.R., and Godwin, L.H., eds., 1996, Geology and Resources of the Paradox Basin: Utah Geological Association Guidebook 25, p. 173-196
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You should note this, ShitHeadDave: the early western U.S. is marked by lots of marine-deposition layers, but when one starts moving out from the local Grand Canyon area...say to the Paradox Basin Area of Utah...the citations multiply by what I see as a factor of 5
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
No one has told me the age of the Chinle layer (did I miss it?).
Not only did you miss it, you were told that you had missed it.
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Are we really basing the nice dating scheme throughout the entire staircase on just TWO LAYERS which can be dated radiometrically?
No. There's gobs more data which has not been mentioned in this thread. First you wanterd to talk about the entier canyon, then you wanted to talk about one layer and now (when a small amount of the data on that one layer has been presented) you assume that there's nothing available on the other layers. Pathetic and transparent goalpost-shifting, Davie-dork.
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JonF...
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It proves that the layers are older than the meteor strike.
You're awfully slow-witted, Davie-moron.
Oh really? You're kidding!! JonF ... you must be from MIT or something. Let me try you again ... my question is actually "what does a meteor have to do with the supposed ages of the GC layers?"
Answered immediately below. You even quoted it.
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JonF..
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More lies, Davie-dork. The layers at the crater are the same layers as at the GC. The dates of the layers at the crater are the dates of the layers at the GC.
Yes. The dates of the layers at the GC = the dates of the layers at the Crater = the dates of the layers at the GC. Very informative.
Yup, you finally got it, except you forgot one word:
Dates of the layers at the GC = the known dates of the layers at the Crater = the dates of the layers at the GC
.That's the truth. The minimum-age dates of the layers at the crater give us a minimum age for the dates of the same layers at the GC.
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JonF...
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Davie-ignoramus, 40Ar/39Ar is not the same as the K-Ar method that creo-dorks love to criticise because error is more possible than in other methods (although the observed concordance with other methods shows that error is rare). 40Ar/39Ar is self-checking, like isochron methods, and often can prodce a valid date even if the system has been opened/disturbed.
Oh I see. The new improved dating method. OK. What do you want to bet that Evos and Creos were arguing about K-Ar back when it was hot and new. I bet there weren't any Evos admitting K-Ar had problems then, now were there? Probably the same situation here.
There were lots of "evos" admitting problems with K-Ar when it was first introduced; the literature was full of ppaers on the problems. Creos, always being 50+ years behind the times, weren't heard from. Then the "evos" got to work and solved the problems.
Yup, same situation here, except the knowledge we've gained refining other methods allowed us to solve the problems with 40Ar/39Ar much quicker, and the problem-solving phase is over. Now it's one of a large suite of tested and reliable dating tools.
Your argument from ignorance is not effective, Davie-diddles; evidence of problems is what you need.
Amazing! Both dating methods correlate! Well that settles it. I will just take their word for it and not even investigate.
Oh, come on, Dave. We know the only way you investigate anything is by comparing it to what the Bible says. The idea of you actually doing field research is absurd.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1. you refused a gentleman's agreement on the dates for the Grand Canyon .
You desired to separate out one layer on the Grand canyon and even though I gave you multiple radiometric dates isolating and bracketing that that ONE layer, you insist that therefore the entire Grand Canyon is dated ONLY by those dates.
Maybe Dave wants you to actually show him how radiometric dating is done, DM? Maybe he wants you to send him a video of some guys in white coats actually dating a sample, while explaining how they're doing it? I mean, you've posted results listing the method, the date, and the error bars, and the people who published the results, and he says you haven't shown him how the GC walls were dated! I imagine everyone here is scratching their heads wondering how Dave could be so obtuse (I would be, except I'm used to it).
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So you're saying we should see a perfect linear relationship between deposition and time? As measured by depth, with no consideration of pressure, erosion, source of the rock, etc.? Why Davey, how stupendously UNIFORMITARIAN of you.
Not perfectly linear, but close is what one would expect ... but it's not even close. The bottom of the staircase is 1.7Byo and halfway up is only 230 million? This is highly suspect to me. What you are basically saying is that it took 1.2 Billion years to get up to the Tapeats, then 542 million to deposit the remainder. How is this explained?
Erosion? That's just another "Achilles heel" of your whole timescale. If your theory is correct, we should find multiple examples of erosion between layers ... but we do not. What we find is smooth interfaces between layers with no erosion and subsequent depostion.
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Now turning to our progress in dating the staircase layers ...
Deadman has gone to a lot of work ... what did he come up with? Here's what I glean from it ...
ONE RADIOMETRIC DATE (Yellow) ... HOW WERE ALL THE OTHER DATES DETERMINED?
Eric...
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Dave, I just cannot believe how asinine a human being can be. Can you possibly explain to us how 5,000 feet of sediment could be washed away by 5,000 feet of water? Do you even see how utterly mentally-retarded such an assertion is?
How many feet were eroded away in the Missoula Flood, Eric? 1000? I forget, but it was a lot ... and that was only a regional flood.
Eric ...
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How can there be lakes anywhere, when the entire globe is covered with a mile-thick layer of water?!
Eric, YOU are the one being asinine now. The lakes occur as a result of water being retained behind debris dams as the flood waters receded. This is also how the Missoula lake formed ... a debris dam. Think, my friend.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You'll notice a few things. First, the Kaibab is overlain by the Moenkopi...which extends into Utah, too. Those layers you see on the Utah stratigraphic columns USED to exist in the Grand Canyon, too. 5000 or so more feet of layers were washed away in the Grand Canyon, but not the Moenkopi...
5000 feet of layers washed away ... hmmmm ... did a dinky little river do that over millions of years? Or perhaps was it a Global Flood?
No, Dave, it was a river. You can tell because the river cut a typical river valley. A global flood would wash away EVERYTHING. And you can't HAVE a global flood, because there's no water to make it, and if there were, there'd be nowhere for it to go.
Dave, before we get too far away from it, I'm interested in your response to this post from Deadman. The quote he examines is one of the two or three affirmative proofs you've offered for your dismissal of geological dating (as opposed to various forms of "uh-huh," "no way!" "did not" and other playground zingers). The fact that, in context, the quote says exactly the opposite of what you think it does -- well, that kinda takes the wind out of your rhetorical sails, doesn't it? Or it would, if you had the tiniest sliver of honesty, humility, or self-reflection.
I'm guessing you didn't see the original post, right? Well, here it is! Click the link above for the whole thing but here's the meat of it:
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First, the author of the article [Rastall]gives background as to stratigraphical geology, leading up to the quote mined section. Then the quote follows:
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It cannot be denied that from a strictly philosophical standpoint geologists are here arguing in a circle(...etc., from Ratsall)
BUT, as the TalkOrigins Quote-Mine page notes:
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However, immediately following on that sentence, Rastall continues the paragraph:
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"Nevertheless the arguments are perfectly conclusive. This apparent paradox will disappear in the light of a little further consideration, when the necessary limitations have been introduced... (read the rest of it at Talk Origins)
The authors of the Talk Origin Quote-Mine Project article on this conclude:
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There is no credible scenario by which the quote miner could have plucked this sentence out of this article, separating it from the rest of that paragraph, without the deliberate intent of misrepresenting what the author was saying. Rastall states clearly that the seemingly circular reasoning is merely an "apparent paradox" that is not only resolved but is rendered "perfectly conclusive" by the interplay of the two laws he describes. Even if creationists wanted to quibble with Rastall's acceptance of the "Law of Uniformity" or the empiric evidence for certain strata always being associated with certain fossils, they cannot appeal to Rastall as an expert on the logic behind stratigraphical geology and then intentionally hide his explanation of that very logic. At least they can't and keep any pretense of personal integrity. - John (catshark) Pieret and R. Dunno
Dave, I'm not quite sure I understand on your position regarding radiometric dating methods. The usual position I hear is that there was a massively increase in radioactive decay rates during the flood. If that is true then radioametric dating would still be useful to date sediment relatively, just not absolutely. Your position seems to be more that radiometric dating is not useful at all for dating. If that is the case then do you think the radiometric dating results are effectively random?
Got no response to any of the points I made, I see.
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 11 2006,11:46)
Incorygible ...
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So you're saying we should see a perfect linear relationship between deposition and time? As measured by depth, with no consideration of pressure, erosion, source of the rock, etc.? Why Davey, how stupendously UNIFORMITARIAN of you.
Not perfectly linear, but close is what one would expect
Why? Be specific, with data.
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Deadman has gone to a lot of work ... what did he come up with? Here's what I glean from it ...
ONE RADIOMETRIC DATE (Yellow) ... HOW WERE ALL THE OTHER DATES DETERMINED?
Well you've gleaned wrong; a lot more than one radiometric date has been presented. And several non-radiopmetric but absolute dates have been presented.
There are a he11 of a lot more radiometric dates that are available but have not been presented. Going over it all would require at least a full-semester college course, if not several, and that course would have prerequisites which you obviously don't have. And lots of reading assignments. We can give you the flavor and the highlights, but if you want all the details, hie thee to the library and/or your local college's registrar's office.
No, Dave, it was a river. You can tell because the river cut a typical river valley. A global flood would wash away EVERYTHING. And you can't HAVE a global flood, because there's no water to make it, and if there were, there'd be nowhere for it to go.
I agree it was a river. A MIGHTY RUSHING river, which flowed for a very brief period (3 or 4 days maybe?) when a debris dam burst. Yes, a global flood WOULD wash everything away, which it in fact did. It then redeposited everything all over the earth in layers, and there was no time to make erosion between layers you will notice. Where did the water go? Into newly deepened ocean basins. Where did it come from? Can't say for sure ... a lot likely from underground thereby causing old (shallow) ocean beds to sink.
All you other guys, I'm focusing on this Grand Canyon layer thing now ... sorry
As for you, JonF ... I was very specific about the layer dating being non-linear ...
As for more RM dates, why would Deadman only give me ONE if he had more available? He gave me 5, but only ONE of them is radio-metric.
WHY???
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As for you, JonF ... I was very specific about the layer dating being non-linear ...
Not once do you explain why you expect it to be linear.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
HOW, HOW, HOW, HOW ... WERE THOSE RED DATES DETERMINED, BOYS?
Diogenes...
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Dave, I'm not quite sure I understand on your position regarding radiometric dating methods. The usual position I hear is that there was a massively increase in radioactive decay rates during the flood. If that is true then radioametric dating would still be useful to date sediment relatively, just not absolutely. Your position seems to be more that radiometric dating is not useful at all for dating. If that is the case then do you think the radiometric dating results are effectively random?
My position currently is that radioactive decay HAS occurred. However, I am not at all convinced that all dates are concordant and have not had time to investigate this myself with the labs. What I am also not convinced of is that the apparent RM dates represent the actual ages of the strata. I am a catastrophist due to the evidence I have seen and I am not convinced that there was not an event of accelerated nuclear decay during the Creation Week or during the Flood or both.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
However, I am not at all convinced that all dates are concordant and have not had time to investigate this myself with the labs.
Get back to us as soon as you're done with that.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Not once do you explain why you expect it to be linear.
It should be approximately linear if "the present is the key to the past," which, of course, is wrong ... thankfully a few geologists are starting to become catastrophists in small ways ... we'll keep pushing them and maybe the lightbulb will come on!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Not once do you explain why you expect it to be linear.
It should be approximately linear if "the present is the key to the past,"...
Nope, you're still not explaining why you expect it to be linear. What processes are you assuming that would cause it to be linear?
Feel free to just shrug and say, "I dunno." At least that would be an honest answer.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
What processes are you assuming that would cause it to be linear?
The present processes, Improv. The ones you see year in and year out. Rain, snow, hurricanes, earthquakes, occasional volcanoes, etc. etc. ... the whole idea of Uniformitarianism is that present processes have been happening for millions of years ...
If that is true, the dating of the layers should at least be CLOSE to linear ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't know anything about Geology (well, more than AFDave, but anybody could say that) but I would expect, as a first guess, the layer dates would be exponential, rather than linear, for the same reason the atmosphere is exponential.
I agree it was a river. A MIGHTY RUSHING river, which flowed for a very brief period (3 or 4 days maybe?) when a debris dam burst.
It would have produced something looking like the Channeled Scablands. It would not have produced a canyon with meanders.
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As for you, JonF ... I was very specific about the layer dating being non-linear ...
But you were not specific about why you think the dates should be linear. Current mainstream geological thinking is (and has been for well over a century) that all the processes we see operated in the past but not necessarily at the same rate and at the same time. You are presuming steady and uniform deposition without considering the observed processes of uplift, erosion, subduction, submersion, and volcanism, and probably a few others.
If you want to say that is should be uniform because that's your model, well, that's just another falsification of your model.
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As for more RM dates, why would Deadman only give me ONE if he had more available? He gave me 5, but only ONE of them is radio-metric.
WHY???
I presume that he gave you the best evidence he had reasonbaly quickly available that answered your question. Why should all the dates be radiometric? Radiometric dating is not the only method that yields absolute dates. You are trying to avoid the fact that your question has been answered by changing questions. If you now want a ccomplete listing of all the evidence for all the dates of all the GC strata, Awell, as I wrote earlier today, and you ignored: there are a he11 of a lot more radiometric dates that are available but have not been presented. Going over it all would require at least a full-semester college course, if not several, and that course would have prerequisites which you obviously don't have. And lots of reading assignments. We can give you the flavor and the highlights, but if you want all the details, hie thee to the library and/or your local college's registrar's office.
Think of AFDave as a baby. It's your job to puree tough-to-chew food into an easy to swallow paste, and it's his job to make faces and spit it back out.
Green River: "Mike Smith is working on 40Ar/39Ar age determinations for tuff horizons interbedded in the Green River Formation, in collaboration with Brad Singer of the UW Rare Gas Geochronology Laboratory. He is currently completing an M.S.. His Ph.D. dissertation will continue with this work, with a goal of documenting the uplift timing of Laramide basin-bounding uplifts by dating synorogenic coarase clastic deposits that interfinger with the Green River Formation."
There's lots of relevant radiometric dates out there.
Davie's an idiot who can't find them.
We're not going to do all your research for you, Davie-doodles. You've gotten a reasonable number of answers for free. For the rest, dig 'em up yourself. They're easily found.
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However, I am not at all convinced that all dates are concordant and have not had time to investigate this myself with the labs.
Take some time off from your fantasies and do some real research.
I don't know anything about Geology (well, more than AFDave, but anybody could say that) but I would expect, as a first guess, the layer dates would be exponential, rather than linear, for the same reason the atmosphere is exponential.
Uh ... Steve ...
The atmosphere is "exponential" as you say because it is a COMPRESSIBLE GAS. Surely you at least know enough about geology to know that ...
a) Dirt is a solid b) Rocks are solids c) Water is an incompressible liquid
Wow!!
You guys really flounder when Deadman's away don't you!
SOS!! SOS!! .... Deadman!! Deadman!! Where ARE you??!! Steve desperately needs your help!!
JonF...
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You are presuming steady and uniform deposition without considering the observed processes of uplift, erosion, subduction, submersion, and volcanism, and probably a few others.
No. I have considered those as well.
It should be approximately linear deposition rates ...
... AND IT IS NOT ... THIS SHOULD TURN ON A LIGHTBULB IN YOUR HEAD ...
JonF ...
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Why should all the dates be radiometric? Radiometric dating is not the only method that yields absolute dates.
Fine. Show me some different absolute dating for these layers. I'm not picky.
The reason we started this whole discussion is this ...
I SAY THAT THE DATING OF THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND CANYON IS PRIMARILY SMOKE AND MIRRORS -- ARBITRARILY ASSIGNED DATES BASED ON THE HUGE EVO-BOT FANTASY OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
I'm starting to feel pretty good about that statement.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't know anything about Geology (well, more than AFDave, but anybody could say that) but I would expect, as a first guess, the layer dates would be exponential, rather than linear, for the same reason the atmosphere is exponential.
You mean asds the atmosphere's density is exponential? No, the two cases aren't at all analogous; the atmosphere's density is exponential becasue the density is set by what's above. The dates of a cross-section of strata are almost always monotonically increasing but don't follow any reasonable functional rule because of the many processes that affect the presence or absence of layers.
I don't know anything about Geology (well, more than AFDave, but anybody could say that) but I would expect, as a first guess, the layer dates would be exponential, rather than linear, for the same reason the atmosphere is exponential.
Uh ... Steve ...
The atmosphere is "exponential" as you say because it is a COMPRESSIBLE GAS. Surely you at least know enough about geology to know that ...
a) Dirt is a solid b) Rocks are solids c) Water is an incompressible liquid
Wow!!
You guys really flounder when Deadman's away don't you!
SOS!! SOS!! .... Deadman!! Deadman!! Where ARE you??!! Steve desperately needs your help!!
I started to reply to AFDave, but I quickly stopped. I'm not here to argue with him. I trust my comment made sense to everyone else, so unless someone else wants an explanation, I'll just leave it there.
Update: A serious person says:
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You mean asds the atmosphere's density is exponential? No, the two cases aren't at all analogous; the atmosphere's density is exponential becasue the density is set by what's above. The dates of a cross-section of strata are almost always monotonically increasing but don't follow any reasonable functional rule because of the many processes that affect the presence or absence of layers.
I don't know what asds means, but I accept your explanation. My exponential comment, which remember I qualified as a guess, was based on the fact that soil and mud is compressible. In general, a compressible material in a gravity field is going to have some amount of exponential density function. But I didn't know if this applied to the earth's crust, because I didn't know what amount of the crust was rock vs mud/soil. Rock is still compressible, but obviously much, much less so.
[snipping pictures I don't know anything about, and my previous comments] My position currently is that radioactive decay HAS occurred. However, I am not at all convinced that all dates are concordant and have not had time to investigate this myself with the labs. What I am also not convinced of is that the apparent RM dates represent the actual ages of the strata. I am a catastrophist due to the evidence I have seen and I am not convinced that there was not an event of accelerated nuclear decay during the Creation Week or during the Flood or both.
The event would have to occur during the flood to explain the dating of the geologic column layed down by the flood. You wouldn't need any increased decay rate during the creation if you envoke Appearence of Age (Appearence of Age really does cure all ills, you should use it more often).
If radiometric dates weren't reliable at all then you wouldn't see the neatly sequential dates withing the geologic colomn, and on the ocean floor, they would just be scattered chaotically instead. Also, radioactive elements with shorter half lives can be tested in real time, so you know that radiometric dating works in theory. From this isn't the only rational stance that radiometric dating is valid as a means of dating objects? Furthermore does that not leave an increase in radioactive decay rates as the only rational way to merge scientific understanding with the Bible?
[Fair Warning: Diogenes is an ignorant laymen, all comments should be taken as possibly false until someone more intelligent comes along and corrects it. This is pretty much true of everything Diogenes may say on all possible topics.]
If radiometric dates weren't reliable at all then you wouldn't see the neatly sequential dates withing the geologic colomn, and on the ocean floor, they would just be scattered chaotically instead. Also, radioactive elements with shorter half lives can be tested in real time, so you know that radiometric dating works in theory. From this isn't the only rational stance that radiometric dating is valid as a means of dating objects?
Yes, except for the numerous other indicators that the earth is young ...
(enumerated many times before on this thread)
This requires to investigate more deeply than we otherwise would.
****************
Steve ...
Dirt is a solid Rocks are solids Water is an incompressible liquid Air is an incompressible gas
(just a reminder)
Also ... you are much smarter than me in Geology...
(Another reminder)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You are presuming steady and uniform deposition without considering the observed processes of uplift, erosion, subduction, submersion, and volcanism, and probably a few others.
No. I have considered those as well.
It should be approximately linear deposition rates ...
Nope, Davie, deposition rates vary widely in different environments, and your simplistic mind can't conceive of the fact that deposition is not the only process. Let's consider a simple example.
Igneous layer A is deposited. Subsidence moves it underwater to a river delta, where sedimentary layer B is deposited quickly. Further subsidence moves it to the deep ocean, where sedimentary layer C is deposited very slowly. Uplift moves it to the near-surface near-shore, where sedimentary layer D is deposited at "medium" speed. Uplift moves it above the surface, where erosion completely removes layer D and much of layer C. Volcanism caps this with thick igneous layer E. Erosion very slowly erodes layer E. Before it's totally gone, subsidence again submerges the surface and sedimentary layer F is deposited. After a few more cycles of this and that, we see the following strata
. . . F E C B A . . .
Now,even if deposition were linear with time, we'd see a large discontinuity between C and E, because a large chunk of time has been removed. Wee'd also see a large discontinutiy between E and F, because E's resistance to erosion means that there was a long time between when it was laid down and when F got deposited. Of course, deposition is not linear with time, it varies widely in different environments, so even A-B-C wouldn't look linear (asuming we can date them somehow).
Now that's just an illustrative example. But it's a possible example, and one such example is enough to blow your linearity claim out of the water. Davie-doodles, you can't get away with "well, golly gosh all hemlock, I really think it should be linear". We need a detailed discussion of all the relevant processes and their rates and the derivation of why you think it should be linear.
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Why should all the dates be radiometric? Radiometric dating is not the only method that yields absolute dates.
Fine. Show me some different absolute dating for these layers. I'm not picky.
Already provided, Davie-doodles, in conjunction with Barringer Crater.
See also the long list of references on the Green River that I just posted.
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I SAY THAT THE DATING OF THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND CANYON IS PRIMARILY SMOKE AND MIRRORS -- ARBITRARILY ASSIGNED DATES BASED ON THE HUGE EVO-BOT FANTASY OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
Unsupported asserion, Davie-piddles. Let's see the evidence. You dig up the information, you analyze it, you formally present it with references and quotes and footnotes, and we'll evaluate it.
I assume you meant to say that air is a compressible gas, AFDave? Anyway, is it your contention that soil and mud aren't compressible?
Yes. Compressible (typo). Of course soil and mud are somewhat compressible, but your contention was that air density is exponential, so rock and dirt layer dates should be also ...
Sorry to pop your bubble, but I'm ahead of you in geology if you don't see that this doesn't make any sense ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If radiometric dates weren't reliable at all then you wouldn't see the neatly sequential dates withing the geologic colomn, and on the ocean floor, they would just be scattered chaotically instead. Also, radioactive elements with shorter half lives can be tested in real time, so you know that radiometric dating works in theory. From this isn't the only rational stance that radiometric dating is valid as a means of dating objects?
Yes, except for the numerous other indicators that the earth is young ...
(enumerated many times before on this thread)
This requires to investigate more deeply than we otherwise would.
[snipping comments to steve]
We seem to be misunderstanding each other. If we presume a young earth (based on other scientific evidence, or based soley on the bible, it doesn't matter which), then we still need to explain radiometric dating. Since all evidence seems to indicate that radiometric dating is valid for short durations of time, and there is no evidence that it doesn't continue this validity back into prehistory, then the only valid explanation that is supported by the bible (as far as I can tell) is that radioactive elements decayed at a different rate previously. Given that the biblical time frame is much shorter than the geological time frame, then at some point in the past the radioactive decay rate must have been much much faster. Since dating of near term events is so accurate, and because the entire geological column was deposited by the flood, and the radiometric dates for geological column very so much throughout it's depth, it seems logical that the increase occured during the flood. Since the oldest dated rocks are around 3 billion years old, and the flood occured 4500 years ago, we should be able to surmise that during the period of the flood the radioactive decay rate was approximately 6 orders of magnitude greater than current decay rate. I don't see any other solution except the one I outlined above, do you disagree? I would be interested in hearing any other theories.
some types of mud are highly compressible. 'Exponential' refers to certain mathematical properties of the curve, not its severity. If you fill a silo with bay mud, for instance, and take density samples at different depths you will get a pretty clear exponential curve. Now, if you fil the silo at a constant rate, and add markers at equal-time intervals, the marker number vs depth with make a nice exponential chart on a graph. It was those vague ideas which informed my guess. Which JonF showed to be quite wrong.
the turn of events in this thread ...dave claiming he can't "see" data posted to him...dave claiming that only one radiometric date was provided when I took the time to provide multiple examples from the caltech library...that sort of thing....convinces me that Dave Hawkins is mentally ill and incapable of dealing with reality
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
*note...you'll not find the data I provided on any "thread" on the internet, Dave Hawkins. I gathered that little bit by going to the library at Caltech...about 2 miles away from me. I did that to try to have you deal with reality, Dave, but your illness has stymied any attempts at getting you to deal with reality.
Let's recap a bit here, Dave: 1. You said the bible was immutable truth, and this is the basis for your claims...but "prophecies " in the bible were shown to be false
2. you continued to rely on sources (AIG and ICR) that had been shown to be false and proven wrong. In fact, you were lied to directly by ICR not once, but twice.
3. In this little conversation about the Grand Canyon, you have shifted your claim three times to avoid what was posted to you, but not once have you shown supporting evidence for your claims.
First your claim was about all the layers above the great unconformity, then it was about the kaibab...now you have shifted it again after being posted multiple absolute dates.
In order for AirHead to make his claims, he has to say that Physics is wrong, that decay is not statistically constant and has in fact accellerated , even though that would melt the planet.
Dave has to say Astronomy is wrong, and that the stars are actually young, because god made them with the appearance of age and distance, just for our aesthetic pleasure.
Biology is wrong, because there was accellerated speciation from "kinds" within the last 4000 years that suddenly stopped within the last 2000.
Paleontology is wrong, because fossils are really just variations on "kinds" and don't represent separate species.
History is wrong, Math is wrong, Chemistry is wrong, Geology is wrong, because tectonic plates flew across the globe at 1 km per hour. Hydrology is wrong, the oceans wouldn't boil off during those movements. Engineering is wrong, the sides of the grand canyon could stand up, even if deposited and cut in one year. Archaeology is wrong, there were no cultures older than 2300 BCE...all to accomodate the bible, all this has to be wrong. There's not one major science that is not wrong.
All because a literal reading of religion has to be "right."
Sorry, Dave Hawkins, but you're fucked-up in the head and regardless of what you claim here, you will always be wrong...because you are a literalist.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
135 pages? Good grief. For AFDave, "closed-minded" means not making his mistakes -- it's an impenetrable unfalsifiable position. I hope you folks are engaging in this for your own sakes, and not with any daft idea that you will actually change his mind about anything.
Deadman was only able to provide ONE radiometric date for the entire staircase ... if he knew of others, I think he would have given them. If it is so obvious what the dates are, why are the dating methods not more readily available?
JonF referred to a guy who is apparently trying to get a radiometric date for the Green River formation ... that would make TWO if he is successful ...
Steve Story ... well ... never mind ...
Anyone else want a shot at explaining how these dates were arrived at before I give the REAL TRUTH about them?
Aftershave, maybe? He was the one who gave me the original detailed picture of the layers.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Deadman was only able to provide ONE radiometric date for the entire staircase ... if he knew of others, I think he would have given them. If it is so obvious what the dates are, why are the dating methods not more readily available?
Liar. You were given 26 absolute dates. All are tied to the Grand Canyon
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Two radiometric ages have been published for the the reworked tuff deposits found in the highest member of the Chinle, a K-Ar date of 239±9 Ma, and a U-Pb date of 207±2 Ma RADIOMETRIC DATE ... THE ONLY ONE I CAN FIND THAT YOU SUPPLIED(Riggs, N. R., S. R. Ash, and J. M. Mattinson. 1994. Isotopic dating of a non-volcanic continental sequence, Chinle Formation, Arizona. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 26(6):61).
Ash beds within the Carmel have yielded dates between 166.3 and 168.0 ± 0.5 Ma HOW DATED ...??(Kowallis, et al. 2001. The record of Middle Jurassic volcanism in the Carmel and Temple Cap Formations of southwestern Utah. GSA Bulletin, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 373-387).
Tuff from the Jurassic Morrison Formation is dated to 155-148 mya HOW DATED ...?(Peterson, F., and Turner, C.E., 1998. Stratigraphy of the Ralston Creek and Morrison Formations [Upper Jurassic] near Denver, Colorado: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 3-38).
RICHARD L. REYNOLDS, MARK R. HUDSON, NEIL S. FISHMAN, and JOHN A. CAMPBELL. (1985) . Paleomagnetic and petrologic evidence bearing on the age and origin of uranium deposits in the Permian Cutler Formation, Lisbon Valley, Utah Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 96, No. 6, pp. 719-730
Roberto S Molina Garza, John W Geissman, Spencer G Lucas (2000) Palaeomagnetism and magnetostratigraphy of uppermost Permian strata, southeast New Mexico, USA: correlation of the Permian-Triassic boundary in non-marine environments. Geophysical Journal International Volume 141, Issue 3, Page 778-786
Igneous sills on top of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale have been dated at 66 million years ago, and ash layers in the Green River Shale have been dated at 50.2 +/- 1.9 mya HOW DATED ...??(Buchheim, H. P., and Eugster. 1998. The Green River Formation of Fossil Basin, southwestern Wyoming. In J. Pitman, and A. Carroll, (eds.), Modern and Ancient Lacustrine Depositional Systems: Utah Geological Association. )
The Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river: Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742.
Wendell Duffield, Nancy Riggs, Darrell Kaufman, Duane Champion, Cassandra Fenton, Steven Forman, William McIntosh, Richard Hereford, Jeffery Plescia and Michael Ort. 2006: Multiple constraints on the age of a Pleistocene lava dam across the Little Colorado River at Grand Falls, Arizona. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 118, No. 3, pp. 421-429
Hamblin, W. Kenneth, (1994), “Late Cenezoic Cenezoic Lava Dams In The Lava Dams In The Western Grand Canyon”, Geological Society of America Memoir 183:139
Faulds, J. E., D. L. Feuerbach, C. F. Miller, and E. I Smith, Cenozoic evolution of the northern Colorado River extensional corridor, southern Nevada and northwest Arizona, in The Geologic Transition, High Plateaus to Great Basin-A Symposium and Field Guide, The Mackin Volume, M. C. Erskine, J. E. Faulds, J. M. Bartley, and P. D. Rowley (eds.), Utah Geol. Assoc. Publ., 30 [also Pacific Sec., Am. Assoc. Petrol. Geol. Publ. GB78], 239-271, 2001.
Fenton, C. R., R. H. Webb, P. A. Pearthree, T. E. Cerling, and R. J. Poreda, Displacement rates on the Toroweap and Hurricane faults: Implications for Quaternary downcutting in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, Geology, 29, 1035-1038, 2001.
Foster, D. A., A. J. W. Gleadow, S. J. Reynolds, and P. G. Fitzgerald, Denudation of metamorphic core complexes and the reconstruction of the transition zone, west central Arizona; constraints from apatite fission track thermochronology, Journal of Geophysical Research, 98, (2), 2167-2185, 1993.
Fenton, Cassandra R., Poreda Poreda, Robert J., Nash, Barbara P., Webb, Robert H., and Cerling, Thure E., (2004), “Geochemical Discrimination of Five Pleistocene Lava Discrimination of Five Pleistocene Lava-Dam Outburst-Flood Deposits, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona”, The Journal of Geology, Vol. 112, pp. 91-110.
N.R. Riggs, S.R. Ash, A.P. Barth, G.E. Gehrels and J.L. Wooden. 2003: Isotopic age of the Black Forest Bed, Petrified Forest Member, Chinle Formation, Arizona: An example of dating a continental sandstone. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 115, No. 11, pp. 1315-1323
Galen P. Halverson, Paul F. Hoffman, Daniel P. Schrag, Adam C. Maloof and A. Hugh N. Rice. 2005: Toward a Neoproterozoic composite carbon-isotope record. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 117, No. 9, pp. 1181-1207.
C.M. Dehler, M. Elrick, J.D. Bloch, L.J. Crossey, K.E. Karlstrom and D.J. Des Marais. 2005: High-resolution d13C stratigraphy of the Chuar Group (ca. 770-742 Ma), Grand Canyon: Implications for mid-Neoproterozoic climate change. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 117, No. 1, pp. 32-45.
Ochs, S., 1988, Stratigraphy, depositional environments, and petrology of the lowermost Moenkopi Formation, southeastern Utah: Salt Lake City, M.S. Thesis, University of Utah.
Richard F. Holm. 2001: Cenozoic paleogeography of the central Mogollon Rim-southern Colorado Plateau region, Arizona, revealed by Tertiary gravel deposits, Oligocene to Pleistocene lava flows, and incised streams. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol.
J. Michael Timmons, Karl E. Karlstrom, Carol M. Dehler, John W. Geissman and Matthew T. Heizler. 2001: Proterozoic multistage (ca. 1.1 and 0.8 Ga) HOW DATED ...??extension recorded in the Grand Canyon Supergroup and establishment of northwest- and north-trending tectonic grains in the southwestern United States. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 113, No. 2, pp. 163-181.
Jacqueline E. Huntoon, Russell F. Dubiel, John D. Stanesco, Debra L. Mickelson and Steven M. Condon. 2002: Permian-Triassic depositional systems, paleogeography, paleoclimate, and hydrocarbon resources in Canyonlands and Monument Valley, Utah. GSA Field Guide 3: Science at the Highest Level: Vol. 3, No. 0, pp. 33-58.
Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742 " We hypothesize that this differential incision is due to west-down slip on the Toroweap fault of 94 ± 6 m/m.y.HOW DATED ... ?? based on measured offset of the newly dated Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
There's not even 26 dates listed here. There are 6 that I see ... ONE radiometric ...
What in the world are you talking about ??
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river: Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742
Kowallis, B.J., Christiansen, E.H., Deino, A.L., Peterson, F., Turner, C.E., Kunk, M.J., and Obradovich, J.D., 1998, The age of the Morrison Formation: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 235-260. 40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old.
Liar
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
AnusFogDave .....look boyo forget all that stuff about not having enough water all g*d needed was INSTANT WATER.
Just add a drip.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, I just cannot believe how asinine a human being can be. Can you possibly explain to us how 5,000 feet of sediment could be washed away by 5,000 feet of water? Do you even see how utterly mentally-retarded such an assertion is?
How many feet were eroded away in the Missoula Flood, Eric? 1000? I forget, but it was a lot ... and that was only a regional flood.
Eric ...
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How can there be lakes anywhere, when the entire globe is covered with a mile-thick layer of water?!
Eric, YOU are the one being asinine now. The lakes occur as a result of water being retained behind debris dams as the flood waters receded. This is also how the Missoula lake formed ... a debris dam. Think, my friend.
Dave, you can't have it both ways. You can't have 5,000 feet of water from your "global catastrophic flood" (which, by the way, you can't have at all, because you don't have any water for it) eroding the Grand Canyon, and at the same time having water from a few lakes eroding it. It has to be from one or the other, but you have it happening from both.
Now who did you think was being asinine?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No, Dave, it was a river. You can tell because the river cut a typical river valley. A global flood would wash away EVERYTHING. And you can't HAVE a global flood, because there's no water to make it, and if there were, there'd be nowhere for it to go.
I agree it was a river. A MIGHTY RUSHING river, which flowed for a very brief period (3 or 4 days maybe?) when a debris dam burst. Yes, a global flood WOULD wash everything away, which it in fact did.
Dave, you never cease to amaze me with the fatuousness of your comments, which is why I keep coming back here to be further amazed. Your flood didn't wash everything away. Have you noticed that the Grand Canyon is surrounded by sedimentary layers which didn't wash away? Like, the entire rest of the plateau?
And you still think your non-existent flood could wash out 5,000 feet of sediment in three or four days? You think that's somehow more believable than the same thing happening in a few million years? You still haven't explained how that follows, other than that one fits in with your bible myth and the other one doesn't.
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It then redeposited everything all over the earth in layers, and there was no time to make erosion between layers you will notice.
What is "it," Dave? It wasn't your flood, because you DON'T HAVE A FLOOD. How many times am I going to have to tell you that? You have no source of water for your flood, ergo, no flood. Find something else to explain the Grand Canyon, because you can't do it with a flood that doesn't exist and never existed.
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Where did the water go? Into newly deepened ocean basins.
And the ocean basins got 5,000 feet deeper how? More magic, Dave? Or was God out there with his gardening tools to deepen them? You're just making this shit up, Dave, literally on the spur of the moment. You have no evidence that the ocean basins are currently deeper, shallower, or the same depth as they were at any previous point in time.
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Where did it come from? Can't say for sure ...
You mean you can't say at all. You have absolutely no evidence for any source of your floodwaters whatsoever, something you've been hammered with over and over again, and you come up with nothing.
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All you other guys, I'm focusing on this Grand Canyon layer thing now ... sorry
Dave, you can't explain the layers in the Grand Canyon using floodwaters because you have no evidence that any flood ever occurred. Are you starting to get the impression I'm not going to let you get away with trying?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I SAY THAT THE DATING OF THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND CANYON IS PRIMARILY SMOKE AND MIRRORS -- ARBITRARILY ASSIGNED DATES BASED ON THE HUGE EVO-BOT FANTASY OF BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
I'm starting to feel pretty good about that statement.
well, that's pretty much the world according to AFDumbass.
If it feels good, it must be true!
who needs data when you have a gut to rely on?
What on earth is the point of arguing with someone who takes that kind of approach to life?
I keep wondering if that's what he told his kids:
"If you feel good about it, it must be true!"
yikes.
@TM:
Yes, you would entirely be wasting your time arguing with Dave, though many interesting references have popped up from time to time in this thread.
None by Dumbass, of course.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
So Dave, since this is supposedly your "hypothesis" we're talking about here, how do you date the Grand Canyon? Based on dates in the Bible and nothing else? You haven't even provided us a hypothetical methodology you would use to date it. Would you count the number of layers and multiply by a constant? Would you take the number of feet and divide by a constant? Would you a pick a number out of your ass, like you picked a number out of your ass for the depth of your floodwaters?
You've spent dozens of posts trying, without success, to poke a hole in radiometric dating methods, but you've come up with exactly nothing to replace it with, other than counting begats in your Bible. You can't even date your flood within a few thousand years, or 50%!
And bad enough you can't date the Grand Canyon; you can't even explain its existence!
How did the Grand Canyon come to be, Dave? It wasn't carved by a flood that didn't exist, and it wasn't carved by mythical lakes that didn't exist, either. So before you start accusing working professional geologists of using smoke and mirrors to date the Grand Canyon, maybe you should look at yourself in the mirror and marvel at how much of a fraud you've become, so that even when your errors are explained to you in minute detail, you still can't admit it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You've spent dozens of posts trying, without success, to poke a hole in radiometric dating methods, but you've come up with exactly nothing to replace it with, other than counting begats in your Bible.
The most hilarious part of his explanation of using the "INERRENT BIBLE" as a dating sytem is his admission that some of the begats may or may not be missing, yet hit don't faze him atall. No sir.
I can't say quite why but DDTTD brings two mental images to mind. One is from an Ozark Mountain Daredevils album cover with two mule skinners on it, the other is from the movie Deliverance, where the old guy at the put in point screams, "You don't know nuthin!"
OT, DM what's your take on Cactus Hill as a pre Clovis site. Looks pretty solid to me that our ancestors sure as #### weren't no devolved lost tribe 'o Israel, not that DDTTD could ever be convinced.
HOW, HOW, HOW, HOW ... WERE THOSE RED DATES DETERMINED, BOYS?
WHAT, WHAT, WHAT, WHAT DO THOSE DATES IN RED HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR CLAIMS ABOUT THE CREATION OF THE GRAND CANYON?
Correlate the Cardenas Lava with your begats DDTTD!
Found any Trilobites in the Bass Limestone DDTTD?
Anyone?
I don't think I'd trust Dave to "drive" a rickshaw much less a taxi. I might let him drive a 3 legged stool if he promised to keep it below 3 mph and 10'.
40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old.
Now you have given me TWO RM dates for the 25 or so layers in the staircase ...
At least you are trying ...
Eric...
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Your flood didn't wash everything away. Have you noticed that the Grand Canyon is surrounded by sedimentary layers which didn't wash away? Like, the entire rest of the plateau?
1) It washed everything away BEFORE redepositing those layers. 2) Then it deposited the layers as the continents and ocean basins were shifting 3) Then the receding phase commenced and the waters ran off the land into the enlarged ocean basins 4) There was some water trapped in lake with debris dams 5) Some debris dams broke and released massive quantitites of water in a short period of time (Grand Canyon, Palouse Canyon, etc.)
This is not rocket science, Eric ...
Eric ...
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And you still think your non-existent flood could wash out 5,000 feet of sediment in three or four days? You think that's somehow more believable than the same thing happening in a few million years?
Yes. It is MUCH more believable because we have examples of TWO such documented occurrences happening in recent history -- Mt. Saint Helens and Missoula ... maybe there are more.
You have exactly ZERO examples of your scenario happening ... all you can say is that it must have happened because the Biblical Flood is a stupic children's tale.
Eric...
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How did the Grand Canyon come to be, Dave?
If you haven't heard me by now, then there is no hope for you!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) It washed everything away BEFORE redepositing those layers. 2) Then it deposited the layers as the continents and ocean basins were shifting 3) Then the receding phase commenced and the waters ran off the land into the enlarged ocean basins 4) There was some water trapped in lake with debris dams 5) Some debris dams broke and released massive quantitites of water in a short period of time (Grand Canyon, Palouse Canyon, etc.)
but HOW do you know this? Where you there when it happened? On one side i see references, work, books, efforts to work out what's going on in a methodical way. What are you offering? What is a "receding phase" ? Is god whispering in your ear? Where are you getting your information from?.... Why dont you just go back to teaching 10 year olds, who'll be trusting you to tell the truth. Nobody here is getting converted, quite the opposite. Before i started reading here i would have been quite happy to let people like you believe what you want. Belief is a personal matter. Now, i'll take every opportunity to fight you and those like you. Ah, perhaps when you were flying your jet fighters (yeah, right) you were so close to heaven that you could hear God dictating the next verion of the bible, and you are a prophet come down to teach us how silly we've all been. Ad hominem, perhaps. Do.nt care anymore.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
The Mancos Shale article is not online, but the references to it are abundant and a simple google book search can direct you to it. And yes, the dating is radiometric. Ingenous sills, remember?
So, how many HOWs are you down to now, dave?
Now seriously, what do you think is happening: Has everyone in this forum, the entire scientific community, the publishing companies and the whole darnn internet conspired to lie to you? Or maybe, um, it's someone else instead?
Anyway, work on that in your mind a little. I'll be back for good next week, and if you're still around, I'd love to discuss your amazing "Ape-Breeding Scenario"™ with you... I hope you'll have made it there by then. Cheers!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Deadman was only able to provide ONE radiometric date for the entire staircase ... if he knew of others, I think he would have given them.
He did give them. Your claim of one is a lie. A repeated and deliberate lie.
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If it is so obvious what the dates are, why are the dating methods not more readily available?
They are readily available. See below.
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JonF referred to a guy who is apparently trying to get a radiometric date for the Green River formation ... that would make TWO if he is successful ...
I also referred and linked to five dates that have been obtained for the Green River formation, and Those only took me a few minutes on Google. Readily available, Davie-doodles. That's five from me. And from Deadman:
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Reynolds, S.J., Florence, F.P., Welty, J.W., Roddy, M.S., Currier, D.A., Anderson, A.V., and Keith, S.B., 1986, Compilation of radiometric Age Determinations in Arizona: Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology, Geological Survey Branch, Bulletin 197, 258 p.
(contains data on Fission-Track, Rb-Sr, and U-Pb dates and correlations. 258 pages worth of it).
{emphasis added}. That's at least three, since they mentioned three different methods. Now, do you think they wrote 258 pages and didn't mention more than three dates?
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J. Palfy, P.L. Smith, and J.K. Mortensen (2000) A U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar time scale for the Jurassic. Can. J. Earth Sci./Rev. can. sci. Terre 37(6): 923-944
"A radiometric age database consisting of fifty U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar ages was compiled to construct a revised Jurassic time scale. Accepted ages have a precision of +/- 5 Ma...or better. The majority of these calibration points [are from] the western North American Cordillera and have not been previously used in time scales."
{emphasis added}
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Kowallis, B.J., Christiansen, E.H., Deino, A.L., Peterson, F., Turner, C.E., Kunk, M.J., and Obradovich, J.D., 1998, The age of the Morrison Formation: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 235-260. 40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old.
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Two radiometric ages have been published for the the reworked tuff deposits found in the highest member of the Chinle, a K-Ar date of 239±9 Ma, and a U-Pb date of 207±2 Ma (Riggs, N. R., S. R. Ash, and J. M. Mattinson. 1994. Isotopic dating of a non-volcanic continental sequence, Chinle Formation, Arizona. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 26(6):61).
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Ash beds within the Carmel have yielded dates between 166.3 and 168.0 ± 0.5 Ma (Kowallis, et al. 2001. The record of Middle Jurassic volcanism in the Carmel and Temple Cap Formations of southwestern Utah. GSA Bulletin, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 373-387).
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Igneous sills on top of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale have been dated at 66 million years ago, and ash layers in the Green River Shale have been dated at 50.2 +/- 1.9 mya (Buchheim, H. P., and Eugster. 1998. The Green River Formation of Fossil Basin, southwestern Wyoming. In J. Pitman, and A. Carroll, (eds.), Modern and Ancient Lacustrine Depositional Systems: Utah Geological Association. )
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The Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river: Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742.
(note two methods)
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N.R. Riggs, S.R. Ash, A.P. Barth, G.E. Gehrels and J.L. Wooden. 2003: Isotopic age of the Black Forest Bed, Petrified Forest Member, Chinle Formation, Arizona: An example of dating a continental sandstone. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 115, No. 11, pp. 1315-1323
That's an absolute minimum of sixty-one dates, and certainly many more if we actually dove into the first reference and also looked up the references that don't make radiometric dating obvious in the titles.
Absolute minimum sixty-six radiometric dates posted in the past few days, Davie-dip. With a minimal amount of effort. Think of what someone who was reaslly researching the field could find!
The phrase you are looking for, Dave, is "radiometric dates for the Grand Canyon and Grand Staircase are incredibly readily available and numerous".
Two radiometric ages have been published for the the reworked tuff deposits found in the highest member of the Chinle, a K-Ar date of 239±9 Ma, and a U-Pb date of 207±2 Ma RADIOMETRIC DATE ... THE ONLY ONE I CAN FIND THAT YOU SUPPLIED(Riggs, N. R., S. R. Ash, and J. M. Mattinson. 1994. Isotopic dating of a non-volcanic continental sequence, Chinle Formation, Arizona. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 26(6):61).
Didn't look very hard, did you, Davie-diddles? There's several more in the very list you quoted.
Oh, and that paper is two radiometric dates; one K-Ar and one U-Pb.
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Ash beds within the Carmel have yielded dates between 166.3 and 168.0 ± 0.5 Ma HOW DATED ...??(Kowallis, et al. 2001. The record of Middle Jurassic volcanism in the Carmel and Temple Cap Formations of southwestern Utah. GSA Bulletin, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 373-387).
Tuff from the Jurassic Morrison Formation is dated to 155-148 mya HOW DATED ...?(Peterson, F., and Turner, C.E., 1998. Stratigraphy of the Ralston Creek and Morrison Formations [Upper Jurassic] near Denver, Colorado: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 3-38).
Igneous sills on top of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale have been dated at 66 million years ago, and ash layers in the Green River Shale have been dated at 50.2 +/- 1.9 mya HOW DATED ...??(Buchheim, H. P., and Eugster. 1998. The Green River Formation of Fossil Basin, southwestern Wyoming. In J. Pitman, and A. Carroll, (eds.), Modern and Ancient Lacustrine Depositional Systems: Utah Geological Association. )
Tuffs, ash, and igneous rock are always dated radiometrically.
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The Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river: Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742.
Missed those two, didn't you, Davie-dorkie? {emphasis added}
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N.R. Riggs, S.R. Ash, A.P. Barth, G.E. Gehrels and J.L. Wooden. 2003: Isotopic age of the Black Forest Bed, Petrified Forest Member, Chinle Formation, Arizona: An example of dating a continental sandstone. Geological Society of America Bulletin: Vol. 115, No. 11, pp. 1315-1323
"Twelve grains analyzed by SHRIMP provide 206Pb/238U ages from 214 ± 2 Ma to 200 ± 4 Ma.".
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Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742 " We hypothesize that this differential incision is due to west-down slip on the Toroweap fault of 94 ± 6 m/m.y.HOW DATED ... ?? based on measured offset of the newly dated Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river."
So we've got the Chinle, the Carmel and the Morrison dated radiometrically, right?
3 RM dates out of 25 or so layers?
Anyone got more?
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but HOW do you know this? Where you there when it happened?
No ... I wasn't there. And I don't KNOW it happened this way any more than you KNOW it happened YOUR way. But the evidence for my way is more convincing and does not require one to discard one's intellect as it does for your way. Sorry, but my esophagus is too small to swallow the idea of 26 layers being laid down with nice smooth interfaces between them over millions of years with NO erosion and subsequent deposition between them, then a dinky little river cutting the Grand Canyon. If the dinky river took millions of years to cut the canyon AT THE SAME TIME that the layers were being deposited over the same millions of years, you would have a far different picture than what we really do have. I have an idea ... I think I will draw this out for you in pictures ... it seems that not only kids benefit from pictures ... adults do to.
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On one side i see references, work, books, efforts to work out what's going on in a methodical way. What are you offering?
Admittedly a much smaller quantity of references, work, books and efforts ... however, the creationist work is much more believable ... just as heliocentricity was in the minority, yet much more plausible than geocentricity at one time in history.
Incidentally ... does anyone have a time scale for the supposed canyon cutting of the imagined dinky river? How many millions of years did it take to carve what we see today?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Absolute minimum sixty-six radiometric dates posted in the past few days, Davie-dip. With a minimal amount of effort. Think of what someone who was reaslly researching the field could find!
I'm not looking for mass quantities of dates for the same layers ...
I want to know HOW MANY OF THE 25 LAYERS have been dated radiometrically?
I count THREE so far ... the Chinle, the Carmel and the Morrison ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Absolute minimum sixty-six radiometric dates posted in the past few days, Davie-dip. With a minimal amount of effort. Think of what someone who was reaslly researching the field could find!
I'm not looking for mass quantities of dates for the same layers ...
I want to know HOW MANY OF THE 25 LAYERS have been dated radiometrically?
I count THREE so far ... the Chinle, the Carmel and the Morrison ...
Well, then get to work, Davie-piddles. Hie thee to the library and start reading. We're here to discuss, not to chase down every piece of information you can think of asking about. We've posted plenty of information answering your questions, and given plenty of pointers to where you can go to answer the questions you came up with to avoid admitting your previous questions have been answered
Incidentally ... does anyone have a time scale for the supposed canyon cutting of the imagined dinky river? How many millions of years did it take to carve what we see today?
Yup. Readily available. Look it up and get back to us to discuss it.
Three? They were two before. You seem to have left out the Green River, davesy... Although you did count it the first time. Getting careless? Or desperate? And the Mancos Shale? Ingenous sills are dated radiometrically, dave. And even if it's not online, the article exists, much to your discomfort... And that's only... oh... ALL the cute lil'arrows from your HOW? HOW? HOW?" post. There are hundreds more. Do you even have a point with all this? I don't think so. Is your "circular reasoning" argument beaten to a fine pink mist? Most certainly. Is your foot firmly in your mouth? Yup. Got anything else?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
How many of the 25 layers have actually been dated radiometrically?
Maybe 5?
If only 5, then that's a pretty small number ... how can you show these nice pictures of the layers with all the dates filled in if you have only dated FIVE layers?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Absolute minimum sixty-six radiometric dates posted in the past few days, Davie-dip. With a minimal amount of effort. Think of what someone who was reaslly researching the field could find!
I'm not looking for mass quantities of dates for the same layers ...
I want to know HOW MANY OF THE 25 LAYERS have been dated radiometrically?
I count THREE so far ... the Chinle, the Carmel and the Morrison ...
Byt, Davie-liar, you posted:
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Deadman was only able to provide ONE radiometric date for the entire staircase ... if he knew of others, I think he would have given them. If it is so obvious what the dates are, why are the dating methods not more readily available?
JonF referred to a guy who is apparently trying to get a radiometric date for the Green River formation ... that would make TWO if he is successful ...
Those were both lies, Davie. Now you admit there's "mass quantities" of readily available radiometric dates.
Also, you brought up deposition rates. Still waiting for a response to:
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Quote
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You are presuming steady and uniform deposition without considering the observed processes of uplift, erosion, subduction, submersion, and volcanism, and probably a few others.
No. I have considered those as well.
It should be approximately linear deposition rates ...
Nope, Davie, deposition rates vary widely in different environments, and your simplistic mind can't conceive of the fact that deposition is not the only process. Let's consider a simple example.
Igneous layer A is deposited. Subsidence moves it underwater to a river delta, where sedimentary layer B is deposited quickly. Further subsidence moves it to the deep ocean, where sedimentary layer C is deposited very slowly. Uplift moves it to the near-surface near-shore, where sedimentary layer D is deposited at "medium" speed. Uplift moves it above the surface, where erosion completely removes layer D and much of layer C. Volcanism caps this with thick igneous layer E. Erosion very slowly erodes layer E. Before it's totally gone, subsidence again submerges the surface and sedimentary layer F is deposited. After a few more cycles of this and that, we see the following strata
. . . F E C B A . . .
Now,even if deposition were linear with time, we'd see a large discontinuity between C and E, because a large chunk of time has been removed. Wee'd also see a large discontinutiy between E and F, because E's resistance to erosion means that there was a long time between when it was laid down and when F got deposited. Of course, deposition is not linear with time, it varies widely in different environments, so even A-B-C wouldn't look linear (asuming we can date them somehow).
Now that's just an illustrative example. But it's a possible example, and one such example is enough to blow your linearity claim out of the water. Davie-doodles, you can't get away with "well, golly gosh all hemlock, I really think it should be linear". We need a detailed discussion of all the relevant processes and their rates and the derivation of why you think it should be linear.
So, Davie, giving up on your idea that the ages should be linear??
How many of the 25 layers have actually been dated radiometrically?
Maybe 5?
Went from one, to two, to three, to five ...
Davie-dork, all of them have been dated radiometrically (or with other absolute dating methods)
We've given you plenty of examples, with the readily available mass quantities of radimetric dates. But this is a discusion group, not a college course in geology. You want the entirety of the information, you go dig it up and get back to us when you're done.
No, dave. Your initial point (that you have too much of an arrogant ego to admit) was that we couldn't provide details for the methods of all these datings, because you thought they were dated relatively from fossils and stratigraphy (because some creo liar told you that was the case). Now that you see this is not the case, have you got the guts to admit that you were wrong? And read Eric's explanation again (good job, Eric) and finally get why your "circular" claims are bogus?
...didn't think so.
Well, anyway. Have some fine fine arguments about methodical ape breeding in historical times waiting for me when I get back, 'kay?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
No, dave. Your initial point (that you have too much of an arrogant ego to admit) was that we couldn't provide details for the methods of all these datings,
No. I'm quite sure you can provide details for the methods.
What I'm not sure you can do is show me that very many of these layers have actually been dated radiometrically.
I don't think many of them have been ...
I have been given 3 so far ... are there more?
There are something like 25 layers there, guys.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Your flood didn't wash everything away. Have you noticed that the Grand Canyon is surrounded by sedimentary layers which didn't wash away? Like, the entire rest of the plateau?
1) It washed everything away BEFORE redepositing those layers. 2) Then it deposited the layers as the continents and ocean basins were shifting 3) Then the receding phase commenced and the waters ran off the land into the enlarged ocean basins 4) There was some water trapped in lake with debris dams 5) Some debris dams broke and released massive quantitites of water in a short period of time (Grand Canyon, Palouse Canyon, etc.)
This is not rocket science, Eric ...
Dave, Your "flood" didn't wash anything away because it never existed in the first place! That's the part you're simply not getting, and it's why none of your explanations for how the Grand Canyon came to be are viable. You're missing the first, most crucial ingredient for your flood. You have no source of water for it, and I'm not going to let you slide on this.
And as for your five-step process, you came up with this sequence how? You pulled it out of your ass, is how. You don't have a single scrap of evidence for a single one of these things happening. Rocket science or not (you'd at least think it was geology), you have no evidence whatsoever that it ever happened.
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Eric ...
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And you still think your non-existent flood could wash out 5,000 feet of sediment in three or four days? You think that's somehow more believable than the same thing happening in a few million years?
Yes. It is MUCH more believable because we have examples of TWO such documented occurrences happening in recent history -- Mt. Saint Helens and Missoula ... maybe there are more.
No you don't, Dave. Neither Mt. St. Helens nor Missoula are anywhere near the size of the Grand Canyon, the sediments involved are nothing like the sediments of the Grand Canyon, and again, you have no source of water for your flood. Are you saying there's no source of water for the floods that caused the Toutle River Canyon or the Missoula river canyon?
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You have exactly ZERO examples of your scenario happening ... all you can say is that it must have happened because the Biblical Flood is a stupic children's tale.
Dave, you idiot, there are canyons all over the world caused by the same processes that caused the Grand Canyon. The only difference is they're not quite so big.
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Eric...
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How did the Grand Canyon come to be, Dave?
If you haven't heard me by now, then there is no hope for you!
Oh, I've heard you all right. But you're talking about something we already know never happened. No water, no flood, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
No, dave. Your initial point (that you have too much of an arrogant ego to admit) was that we couldn't provide details for the methods of all these datings,
No. I'm quite sure you can provide details for the methods.
What I'm not sure you can do is show me that very many of these layers have actually been dated radiometrically.
I don't think many of them have been ...
I have been given 3 so far ... are there more?
There are something like 25 layers there, guys.
Yes. Look 'em up and get back to us when you have. We've given you a representative sample and lots of pointers to further data, which is all you can expect in a discussion. You want more, dig up the info yourself or sign up for a course in the geology of the American Southwest.
Got any evidence, other than your uninformed opinion, for circularity in dating, Davie-widdles?
Got any evidence, or analysis, other than your uninformed opinion, for expecting linear decrease in age as we move up the layers of the GC?
Post your evidence, Davie-piddle. Reality doesn't care whether you [i]think[/b] many of the layers have been dated absolutely.
Eric ... you can keep saying there's no source of water as long as you like, but you are avoiding the obvious possibility that there was a massive source of water that came from SOMEWHERE. Of course I was not there to prove the source was underground, but I am here to observe the physical evidence.
If there were no massive water catastrophe, there would be no massive layers of sedimentary rock which have no subsequent erosion and deposition -- all over the whole earth!! The sheer quantity of sedimentary layers is enormous evidence for a water cataclysm. It is self evident to anyone who has no agenda.
Of course there are canyons all over the world similar to the Grand Canyon ... and they were ALL caused by massive quantities of rapidly flowing WATER, my friend.
Not by dinky rivers flowing over millions of years.
Sedimentation 101, Eric. 1) Water causes sedimentation. 2) Large water causes large sedimentation. 3) Massive water causes massive sedimentation.
Observation: massive sedimentation Conclusion: massive water from somewhere
Again, not rocket science.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OK, Eric ... you're hard headed, but I like challenges ...
Let's approach this question of "How did 5000 feet (how many feet tall is the "staircase" anyway -- I don't know) of sediment happen?" a different way ...
What is the global trend of sedimentation over the last periods that anyone has observed it? I have no idea how long ago people began observing this ... do we have data from 200 years ago? 500 years ago? I don't know.
But let's look as far back as we can look and ask what the trend is ... are new layers being formed overall considering the whole earth? Do we see any evidence historically of layers being added? Or even a small section of layers being added?
Or is there in fact the opposite trend? Layers being eroded away into the ocean, but no building up of layers?
My guess is that the answer is the latter ...
Maybe Deadman can help us on this question (in his spare time while he is scrambling to find dates for the remaining 22 of the 25 layers) ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Take a look at the GC wall and look up the word sedimentation, you have no idea what it means.
Then after you have asked a grown up to explain what that big word means. Do a search on "seismic cross section gulf of mexico"
And when you read the results take your head of your ass.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
If anyone has a better one and the time feel free to put it up as an embedded image.
Now AFD...... where did all the layer upon layer of deposits over millions of years in the Gulf of Mexico come from? And how much organic matter from the carboniferous age was trapped and cooked under those salt domes?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
If there were no massive water catastrophe, there would be no massive layers of sedimentary rock which have no subsequent erosion and deposition -- all over the whole earth!! The sheer quantity of sedimentary layers is enormous evidence for a water cataclysm.
As has been pointed out before, the sheer quantity of different sedimentary layers, deposited underwater and under air, interspersed with igneous and metamoprphic layers that did not form underwater, is conclusive evidence that there was no single water catastrophe responsible for even a tiny portion of the geologic column.
There is no evidence of any large amount of water from anywhere, there is lots of evidence contradicting your claims. Your flood is a non-starter.
But you've forgotten to post your evidence for circularity in dating, and your evidence or analysis for your hypothesis that the dates of the GC layers should increase linearly.
And the seafloor dating, magnetic reversals, and sediment thickness is still lurking in the wings, Davie-pie; we're not going to let you forget that.
My evidence for circularity in dating strata is moving along quite nicely partly because only 3 of 25 layers have been dated radiometrically as far as I can tell ...
JonF...
Quote
As has been pointed out before, the sheer quantity of different sedimentary layers, deposited underwater and under air, interspersed with igneous and metamoprphic layers that did not form underwater, is conclusive evidence that there was no single water catastrophe responsible for even a tiny portion of the geologic column.
Oh really, now. So you deny that a majority of the "staircase" is sedimentary (i.e. water laid) rock?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
What is the global trend of sedimentation over the last periods that anyone has observed it? I have no idea how long ago people began observing this ... do we have data from 200 years ago? 500 years ago? I don't know.
But let's look as far back as we can look and ask what the trend is ... are new layers being formed overall considering the whole earth? Do we see any evidence historically of layers being added? Or even a small section of layers being added?
Sedimentary layers are being formed as we watch (e.g the Mississippi delta and it's extension into the Gulf of Mexico, or the deep sea floor sediment, or the Sahara desert), and have been traced historically (e.g. recently sandstone in the Midwest was traced to material eroded from the Adirondacks).
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Or is there in fact the opposite trend? Layers being eroded away into the ocean, but no building up of layers?
Nope.
Quote
My guess is that the answer is the latter ...
Your guess is obviously based onyour incredible ignorance and is useless. What data or evidence or analysis ya got?
But you've forgotten to post your evidence for circularity in dating (whether or not we can come up with references for radiometric dates of all the GC layers is not evidence for your claim), and your evidence or analysis for your hypothesis that the dates of the GC layers should increase linearly.
And the seafloor dating, magnetic reversals, and sediment thickness is still lurking in the wings, Davie-pie; we're not going to let you forget that.
My evidence for circularity in dating strata is moving along quite nicely partly because only 3 of 25 layers have been dated radiometrically as far as I can tell ...
Irrelevant, Davie-poozle. To support your claim you need to show actual circular references.
Quote
Quote
As has been pointed out before, the sheer quantity of different sedimentary layers, deposited underwater and under air, interspersed with igneous and metamoprphic layers that did not form underwater, is conclusive evidence that there was no single water catastrophe responsible for even a tiny portion of the geologic column.
Oh really, now. So you deny that a majority of the "staircase" is sedimentary (i.e. water laid) rock?
Davie, Davie, Davie. You are so stupid. So incredibly stupid.
"sed·i·men·ta·ry also sed·i·men·tal adj. 1. Of, containing, resembling, or derived from sediment. 2. Geology. Of or relating to rocks formed by the deposition of sediment."
See any mention of water there, Davie? Sedimentary rock is often "subaerial", meaning that it did not form under water (and it's easy to tell; e.g the cross-bedding angles are very different). The Coconino Sandstone (that's a GClayer) is an example of such (Paleozoic Strata, Coconino Sandstone deposition environment), and the Sahara Desert will probably be such a layer one day.
Most of the Grand Staircase is sedimentary (but lots of it was not formed underwater), but it's still interspersed with igneous and volcanic layers that did not form underwater (such layers are even more easily distinguishable from layers formed underwater). Ignoring those layers ain't gonna make 'em disappear.
There is no possibility that even a significant portion of the Grand Staircase formed in one event.
{ABE} There's also plenty of paleosols, fossil soils, in the Grand Staircase. How many soils have you seen formed underwater, Davie-pie? Something like zero?
Oh really, now. So you deny that a majority of the "staircase" is sedimentary (i.e. water laid) rock?
Wow. Just wow. Goddam DikHeadDave. 3 questions:
1) Are you sure you ought to be equating sedimentary with water laid? 2) Do you know what metamorphic rock is, how it is formed, and why some of the stairs contain it? 3) STAIRCASE- why is this the word used to describe a process that happened ove the course of a brief time?
* and, to answer for davy gravy where the water came from, jeeze I can't believe you... er.. nevermind, gOdDiDiT!
Dyuh.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
From Wikipedia (and probably anyplace else I might happen to look) ...
Quote
Formation [of sedimentary rocks] Sedimentary rocks are formed from overburden pressure as particles of sediment are deposited out of air, ice, or water [Shameful of you pretending that I'm stupid for saying sedimentation usually involves water] flows carrying the particles in suspension. As sediment deposition builds up, the overburden (or 'lithostatic' pressure squeezes the sediment into layered solids in a process known as lithification ('rock formation' and the original connate fluids are expelled.
Now, JonF, my opinion is that MOST sedimentary rocks we see in the Grand Staircase appear to be water laid.
Before we go further, are you denying this? If so, what % would you say are water laid?
********************************
Secondly, of course sediments are accumulating at the Mississippi delta and other similar deltas ...
I was talking about ABOVE WATER ...
If you want to talk about river deltas, then you are going to be in much deeper water (ha, ha) than you already are.
But I'll be content to bury you one point at a time ...
Back to the above ground sediments ...
I say that most of the Grand Staircase is WATER LAID. Do you disagree?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
From Wikipedia (and probably anyplace else I might happen to look) ...
Quote
Formation [of sedimentary rocks] Sedimentary rocks are formed from overburden pressure as particles of sediment are deposited out of air, ice, or water [Shameful of you pretending that I'm stupid for saying sedimentation usually involves water] flows carrying the particles in suspension. As sediment deposition builds up, the overburden (or 'lithostatic' pressure squeezes the sediment into layered solids in a process known as lithification ('rock formation' and the original connate fluids are expelled.
Now, JonF, my opinion is that MOST sedimentary rocks we see in the Grand Staircase appear to be water laid.
Before we go further, are you denying this? If so, what % would you say are water laid?
********************************
Secondly, of course sediments are accumulating at the Mississippi delta and other similar deltas ...
I was talking about ABOVE WATER ...
If you want to talk about river deltas, then you are going to be in much deeper water (ha, ha) than you already are.
But I'll be content to bury you one point at a time ...
Back to the above ground sediments ...
I say that most of the Grand Staircase is WATER LAID. Do you disagree?
just a couple of questions:
1: have you been to the grand canyon? 2: If the water event made all canyons at once, it seems logical that they will all be "pointing" the same way (unless every point on the globe was the source of the water). Are they? If not, how do you explain this? 3: Do you think, that even if you can "demolish" the current dating schema for the grand canyon that this then provides evidence for your viewpoint? 4: You said that your evidence for circular reasoning re: dating of the layers is coming along nicely. Will you be collating this data and submitting it to a peer-reviewed publication? If not, why not? 5: what exact percentage of the Grand staircase appears to be water laid to you ("most" is not a percentage). How did you determine this? 6: Do you really think thousands of hard working normal everyday scientists are involved in a conspiracy to prevent the truth coming out? Could they really live with themeslves day in day out making up results that not only are internally self consistant, but consistant with experiments carried out by unrelated groups of people (on other continents, who've not heard of eatch other). 7: Do you believe radioactive elements decay and this decay duration can be simply stated as it's half-life? 8: If you accept that (say) 3 of the 25 layers have been dated, this does in fact mean that the earth is in fact millions of years old - 3 or 25 datings, it's the same, why is 25 more believable then 3? Does not 1 single instance disprove your theory (i.e then there's missions of years for this to have happened). If not, what's your specific problem with the dating method used?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
1: have you been to the grand canyon? 2: If the water event made all canyons at once, it seems logical that they will all be "pointing" the same way (unless every point on the globe was the source of the water). Are they? If not, how do you explain this? 3: Do you think, that even if you can "demolish" the current dating schema for the grand canyon that this then provides evidence for your viewpoint? 4: You said that your evidence for circular reasoning re: dating of the layers is coming along nicely. Will you be collating this data and submitting it to a peer-reviewed publication? If not, why not? 5: what exact percentage of the Grand staircase appears to be water laid to you ("most" is not a percentage). How did you determine this? 6: Do you really think thousands of hard working normal everyday scientists are involved in a conspiracy to prevent the truth coming out? Could they really live with themeslves day in day out making up results that not only are 7: Do you believe radioactive elements decay and this decay duration can be simply stated as it's half-life? I
1) No. However, one does not need to go to know that most of the sediments are water laid. One reason we know this is because of the marine fossils in many of the layers. 2) No need for them to "point" the same way. Canyons were formed when debris dams burst. Dams could have been facing any direction. 3) Yes. It provides some evidence that the Bible is accurate when it speaks of the Great Flood of Noah. 4) No. As I have said many times here, I have an undergraduate engineering degree, not an advanced science degree and I am not involved in publishing scientific papers in conventional peer-reviewed journals. At some point, if I were to get an advanced degree of some type, I might have an interest in publishing in Creationist journals. At the moment I am involved in publishing children's material. www.kids4truth.com 5) I have not come up with a figure yet, but I intend to find out. My guess would be at least 80%. 6) Of course not. I think they want to be accepted by their peers. And to do that they must think WITHIN the box. It is the same dynamic that causes many kids in school to wear the same kind of jeans, wear their hair the same, listen to the same kind of music, etc. 7) Yes.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1: have you been to the grand canyon? 2: If the water event made all canyons at once, it seems logical that they will all be "pointing" the same way (unless every point on the globe was the source of the water). Are they? If not, how do you explain this? 3: Do you think, that even if you can "demolish" the current dating schema for the grand canyon that this then provides evidence for your viewpoint? 4: You said that your evidence for circular reasoning re: dating of the layers is coming along nicely. Will you be collating this data and submitting it to a peer-reviewed publication? If not, why not? 5: what exact percentage of the Grand staircase appears to be water laid to you ("most" is not a percentage). How did you determine this? 6: Do you really think thousands of hard working normal everyday scientists are involved in a conspiracy to prevent the truth coming out? Could they really live with themeslves day in day out making up results that not only are 7: Do you believe radioactive elements decay and this decay duration can be simply stated as it's half-life? I
1) No. However, one does not need to go to know that most of the sediments are water laid. One reason we know this is because of the marine fossils in many of the layers. 2) No need for them to "point" the same way. Canyons were formed when debris dams burst. Dams could have been facing any direction. 3) Yes. It provides some evidence that the Bible is accurate when it speaks of the Great Flood of Noah. 4) No. As I have said many times here, I have an undergraduate engineering degree, not an advanced science degree and I am not involved in publishing scientific papers in conventional peer-reviewed journals. At some point, if I were to get an advanced degree of some type, I might have an interest in publishing in Creationist journals. At the moment I am involved in publishing children's material. www.kids4truth.com 5) I have not come up with a figure yet, but I intend to find out. My guess would be at least 80%. 6) Of course not. I think they want to be accepted by their peers. And to do that they must think WITHIN the box. It is the same dynamic that causes many kids in school to wear the same kind of jeans, wear their hair the same, listen to the same kind of music, etc. 7) Yes.
fair enougth.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
What I'm not sure you can do is show me that very many of these layers have actually been dated radiometrically.
I don't think many of them have been ...
I have been given 3 so far ... are there more?
There are something like 25 layers there, guys.
Dave, how many times do we have to go through this with you? You don't need to be able to date every single layer of sediment individually to be able to figure out how old each layer is.
Let's say you're able to date a particular layer (whether it's radiometrically, by index fossils, or other method) at, e.g., 149 mya. Then there are three more layers above this layer that you can't date at all. But there's a fourth layer, on top of the first four, that you can date, through one method or another, to 117 mya.
Now, Dave: are you maintaining that there's no way to date the three middle layers? You can't figure out a way to at least establish limits to what age those middle layers are? Are you telling us you can't figure out even a range of dates for those middle layers?
How many layers would you need to date to give you a general idea of how old the Grand Canyon is, Dave? You seem to be implying that you need to date every single layer in order to tell how old any of them is. Is that really your position?
My claim is that even if you can date only two layers—the uppermost layer, and the lowermost layer—you can at least assign a range of dates to all the layers in the Grand Canyon. And all of the layers in the Grand Canyon can be dated, either directly or indirectly, to be more than 10,000 ya, which means your "flood" hypothesis is blown completely out of the water.
Not that it hasn't aready been blown totally out of the water for dozens of other, completely independent, reasons.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Absolute minimum sixty-six radiometric dates posted in the past few days, Davie-dip. With a minimal amount of effort. Think of what someone who was reaslly researching the field could find!
I'm not looking for mass quantities of dates for the same layers ...
I want to know HOW MANY OF THE 25 LAYERS have been dated radiometrically?
I count THREE so far ... the Chinle, the Carmel and the Morrison ...
Dave, you're here to show evidence for your hypothesis. But all you can do is complain about the evidence for everyone else's hypothesis. We're not here to prove geology to you, Dave. You're supposedly here to prove your hypothesis to us. Which, given your pathetic reasoning and logic, coupled with your complete absence of evidence for a single assertion you've ever made, ain't never gonna happen.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric ... you can keep saying there's no source of water as long as you like, but you are avoiding the obvious possibility that there was a massive source of water that came from SOMEWHERE. Of course I was not there to prove the source was underground, but I am here to observe the physical evidence.
Dave, this simply doesn't wash. You've already assumed your flood happened, and therefore think you're entitled to assume there's a source of water for it. That's not how it works.
I asked politely, then demanded, evidence for a source of water for your flood. You were completely unable to provide any. Therefore, you have no evidence for anything that depends on your source of water, including your flood.
I'm not avoiding the possibility that there's a source of water somewhere, Dave. I asked you to provide evidence that there once was some water for your flood. You've been unable to provide it, therefore I am entirely justified in saying it never existed. This is how science works, and it's the part that for some reason you'll never, ever get. You can't just assume a flood, Dave, and you can't just assume that there was water available for it.
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If there were no massive water catastrophe, there would be no massive layers of sedimentary rock which have no subsequent erosion and deposition -- all over the whole earth!! The sheer quantity of sedimentary layers is enormous evidence for a water cataclysm. It is self evident to anyone who has no agenda.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, Dave. Standard geological theory has no difficulty explaining where 6,000 m of sediment overlaying all the continents came from. That's because standard geological theory has billions of years for that erosion to happen. Your artificial toy universe with its 6,000 years of existence doesn't have nearly enough time to produce all that sediment. You don't even begin to have an explanation for the existence of all that sediment. I've asked you at least four times how 5,000 feet of water could have deposited 30,000 feet of sediment. So far, you haven't even acknowledged the question, let alone provided an answer.
Quote
Of course there are canyons all over the world similar to the Grand Canyon ... and they were ALL caused by massive quantities of rapidly flowing WATER, my friend.
Not by dinky rivers flowing over millions of years.
And your evidence for this assertion is what, Dave? For not the first time, and certainly not for the last time, I will point out once again that you have not the slightest stick of evidence for your flood.
Quote
[b]Sedimentation 101, Eric. 1) Water causes sedimentation. 2) Large water causes large sedimentation. 3) Massive water causes massive sedimentation.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Explain, Dave, how small amounts of water (water for the existence of which there is abundant evidence all around us—have you ever observed rain?) over millions of years can't do the same thing huge amounts of water (for which you have not the slightest evidence) can't do in a few days or years. You've never been able to explain why this is, because it's not possible to explain.
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Observation: massive sedimentation Conclusion: massive water from somewhere
How much water, Dave, to produce 30,000 feet of sedimentation? 5,000 feet?
Quote
Again, not rocket science.</b>
Not any kind of science, and certainly not geology.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
From Wikipedia (and probably anyplace else I might happen to look) ...
Quote
Formation [of sedimentary rocks] Sedimentary rocks are formed from overburden pressure as particles of sediment are deposited out of air, ice, or water [Shameful of you pretending that I'm stupid for saying sedimentation usually involves water] flows carrying the particles in suspension. As sediment deposition builds up, the overburden (or 'lithostatic' pressure squeezes the sediment into layered solids in a process known as lithification ('rock formation' and the original connate fluids are expelled.
Dave, you're completely missing Jon's point. His point is, if the Grand Canyon were created from a single catastrophic flood event, you would expect every single layer, from top to bottom, to be composed of water-laid sediment. To no one's surprise other than yours, it turns out that some of the layers in the Grand Canyon are water-laid sediment, some are subaerial sediment, some are igneous rock, and some are metamorphic rock. If you weren't a complete, utter idiot about science in general and geology in particular, you would realize that this observation completely rules out your catastrophic flood scenario. Even if your flood scenario hadn't already been ruled out due to a complete lack of available floodwaters.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
My evidence for circularity in dating strata is moving along quite nicely partly because only 3 of 25 layers have been dated radiometrically as far as I can tell ...
Dave, what does the number of layers have to do with "circularity"? Do you even understand what "circularity" means? As I pointed out, you only need to date two layers in the entire Canyon in order to be able to assign upper and lower bounds for all of the layers between them.
You originally stated that the dating of the Grand Canyon's layers were dated using circular reasoning because the ages of the layers were used to date the fossils, and the fossils were used to date the layers. I explained, patiently, two or three times, that this is not the case. Nevertheless, you persist in your claim that the Grand Canyon's layers are dated using circular reasoning. When, oh when, are you going to retract this brain-dead claim?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric ... your a pain and quite clueless. I'm wasting time on you. Go find another creationist to blather at. I'd rather argue with someone who at least has some data ... like Deadman. Or JonF once in a while.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I will answer one of Eric's questions that are not simply a tiresome repeat of already answered questions ...
Quote
His (JonF's) point is, if the Grand Canyon were created from a single catastrophic flood event, you would expect every single layer, from top to bottom, to be composed of water-laid sediment.
Well most of it IS water-laid sediment judging from the fossils contained in the layers. You have a case for the Coconino not being water laid, but in my opinion it's a weak case. But all the others above the GU appear to me to be water laid (I think the Coconino also is), and MOST of the layers below the GU are also water laid. Also, you are forgetting that the Great Flood was not ONLY a water event. It involved "breaking up of the fountains of the deep" (whatever that means ... admittedly we do not understand that well, but the Hydroplate Theory is a good guess), and probably massive volcanic and tectonic activity. There is no reason to doubt that there were waves of water-borne sediment laid, followed by lava flows, in turn was followed by more sediment laying, followed by heating of previously laid sediments which metamorphised the layers.
We're talking about a MASSIVE catastrophe, Eric.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That's five not three, dave... missed a few fingers again. And what is your point anyway? You want every layer, including all sedimentary ones, dated radiometrically? dave, from what I read, it was explained to you repeatedly why even one absolute date in a location is enough to blast your 'circular' assertions to shreds- Just as one sediment that is not water-laid is enough to expose your 'flud' theory for the lame joke it is. Ericmurphy was patient enough to explain it to you again. Didn't you get it?
...Of cooooourse you did- that's why you answered all of oldman's questions... except 8). And that's why you suddenly decided that Eric is not a person you should bother responding to -even if you have responded to nothing he asked you so far. You're so predictable, dave.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Davie Dumbshit sez: Of course there are canyons all over the world similar to the Grand Canyon ... and they were ALL caused by massive quantities of rapidly flowing WATER, my friend.
Not by dinky rivers flowing over millions of years.
Hey DavieDumbfuck, check out this canyon. Looks just like the Grand Canyon, right? Must have been formed by massive quantities of receding FLUD water, right?
Only problem for you is, this canyon is carved in limestone and buried under 17000 feet of sediment! That's over three miles deep of overlying rock and soil for the mathematically challenged Fundies out there. It is in the Tarim Basin in far western China, and was discovered and mapped by geologists using reflection seismology methods for exploration of deep underground petroleum deposits. It is from the Ordovician period of the Paleozoic era, and was formed between 480 – 430 million years ago, then buried by the subsequent sedimentation from seas that later covered what is now China.
Now Davie Dickless, you want to tell us how your FLUD model explains the canyon being formed in exceptionally hard limestone (which itself first had to be deposited), then was covered by 17000 feet of sediment in just a few days?
Source for this and more info on other buried canyons and buried river formations courtesy of the ever helpful geologist Glenn Morton, the ex-YEC Davie loves to hate.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Read, Faid. Eric already asked this and I answered. Welcome back from Greece (?), BTW. Welcome back to the slaughterhouse! Where hordes of Evo-bot warriors are slain daily! How long will YOU survive?
Come on, OA. Give me a hard one ... that one's too easy.
1) Limestone gets deposited by water 2) Limestone hardens 3) Canyon is carved rapidly 4) More sediment gets deposited in the canyon
This is probably quite common ...
Welcome back also, BTW, to the "House of Evobot Slaughtering."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eric ... your a pain and quite clueless. I'm wasting time on you. Go find another creationist to blather at. I'd rather argue with someone who at least has some data ... like Deadman. Or JonF once in a while.
Dave, I'm not clueless. I'm tireless. I'm tirelessly pointing out the questions you simply cannot answer, not for anyone else's benefit (they already know you can't answer these questions), but to point out to you that you simply cannot answer simple, fundamental questions about your own hypothesis. Remember, Dave, this thread is for you to provide evidence for your own hypothesis. We're almost 140 pages, 4,200 posts, and you haven't been able to support a single element of your "hypothesis" with any actual evidence.
I don't need any data, Dave, because I'm not presenting a hypothesis. You are the one who needs data, and you don't have any. You can't even explain things like where the water from your flood came from, and where it went.
If you don't want to hear the endless repetition, Dave, then retract your "global catastrophic flood" claim, and admit that you have no evidence (to say nothing of "proof") that it ever happened.
Get used to it, Dave, because I'm never going to tire of pointing this out to you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742 " We hypothesize that this differential incision is due to west-down slip on the Toroweap fault of 94 ± 6 m/m.y.HOW DATED ... ?? based on measured offset of the newly dated Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river."
Just to point out how nuts and willing to lie dave is...look at the above. He asks how the Toroweap fault was dated...and it says uranium series and argon/argon ...but he can't "see" it
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I will answer one of Eric's questions that are not simply a tiresome repeat of already answered questions ...
Quote
His (JonF's) point is, if the Grand Canyon were created from a single catastrophic flood event, you would expect every single layer, from top to bottom, to be composed of water-laid sediment.
Well most of it IS water-laid sediment judging from the fossils contained in the layers. You have a case for the Coconino not being water laid, but in my opinion it's a weak case. But all the others above the GU appear to me to be water laid (I think the Coconino also is), and MOST of the layers below the GU are also water laid. Also, you are forgetting that the Great Flood was not ONLY a water event. It involved "breaking up of the fountains of the deep" (whatever that means ... admittedly we do not understand that well, but the Hydroplate Theory is a good guess), and probably massive volcanic and tectonic activity.
You have a strange idea of what already-answered questions are, Dave. Are you claiming you've "answered" my question about where the water came from? Because everyone here, posters and lurkers all, knows that you haven't answered that question. Saying it came from "fountains of the deep" isn't an answer, because you've presented not an atom of evidence that those "fountains of the deep" ever existed.
"Most" of the layers being water-laid doesn't cut it. If there is one sedimentary layer in the entire canyon that was not laid by water, that kills your hypothesis dead (even if it weren't already killed dead eight ways from Sunday).
An air-borne layer of sediment cannot form in the middle of a flood, Dave. A metamorphic layer cannot form in the middle of a flood. An igneous layer cannot be formed in the middle of a flood without leaving obvious evidence that it was formed under water. Do a little research on pillow lavas, Dave.
Quote
There is no reason to doubt that there were waves of water-borne sediment laid, followed by lava flows, in turn was followed by more sediment laying, followed by heating of previously laid sediments which metamorphised the layers.
Do you know how long it takes massive lava flows to cool below the boiling point of water, Dave? Because it doesn't happen in a year. You simply don't have nearly enough time for any of this stuff to happen. Your own model claims it happens in less than a year (among all the other impossibilities it claims).
Quote
We're talking about a MASSIVE catastrophe, Eric.
Dave, you're talking about a massive catastrophe. No one else is, because you have not a scrap of evidence for your massive catastrophe. Remember those 24 questions you were asked about your flood, about 45 pages ago? Well, you still haven't answered one of them, and you haven't presented any evidence for any component of your "catastrophe."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, thinking he was clever...wanted to know about dates above the great unconformity in the grand Canyon. Dave switched his claim to the KAibab and was given dates on that , now Dave switched back to " well, I want all the layers dated absolutely. "
Dave was given a few dozen absolute dates. anyone here can look at them. Dave says he only "sees" one, then it's two, then suddenly he sees three, and five...but he's returned back to claiming that there are only two or maybe three.
Dave is simply mentally ill. When dave can support his own claims and answer questions, then I'll deal with dave. but remember, Dave, you refused a gentleman's argreement on the layers in question...because you have the honor and ethics of a mentally ill person.
Currently Unanswered Questions
(1) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (2) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (3) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (4) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (5) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (6) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (7) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (8) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (9) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (10) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (11) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (12) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (13) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist & granite (obviously , that is not "soft ") (14) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (15) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (16)Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR (17)Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (18)Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (19)Why don't we see disruption of the varves? (20) Why are mountains near each other differentially eroded if they were all formed at the same time in your "theory?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Read, Faid. Eric already asked this and I answered. Welcome back from Greece (?), BTW. Welcome back to the slaughterhouse! Where hordes of Evo-bot warriors are slain daily! How long will YOU survive?
Oh reeeeally? You answered eric's explanation on dating methods, that explain why your cirular arguments are bogus? Where was that, exactly? And you responded to oldman's No.8 question? Where, exactly? dave, as you know better than any of us, the only things that get slaughtered here repeatedly are your ludicrous arguments, and all you can do is move the goalposts a mile away each time, while gloating and blabbing like some 12 year old. Now, if you had some actual data or arguments besides "it appears to me" and "it's obvious" you might be able to have a sensible conversation: But since, as we both know, you're running a little short on those... well, your lame attempts at irony are understandable. As is your deliberate evading and distorting and well, plain lying. And that's why you're only valuable as a source of entertainment. But get on with it: I'm really anxious to find out if I will survive your onslaught in the Ape-breeding issue. (without dying laughing, that is.)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
If I wanted to bother, ShitHeadDave I could draw up an outline of some 200 questions that you have refused to answer. Now...what questions have you asked that have been unanswered? I can't find any. Can you name a few?
Remember, AirHEad, this is your hypothesis...you are required to support it. What you have done is lie your way through it. Well, back your claims and answer questions about your hypothesis...otherwise, you lose.
You can start with telling me how a meteor penetrated the Coconino sandstone 49,000 years ago, when you said the Grand Canyon didn't exist.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
It's as I suspected. There are radiometric dates available for the Chinle, the Morrison, and the Carmel ...
Did I miss any?
Apparently all the other layers cannot be dated radiometrically ...
RIGHT?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Maybe some WILDLY discordant dates that may have been discarded because they did not "fit" the standard sequence?
Perhaps?
Hmmmmmmm ..........
(Oh ... and did I mention that you gave me RM dates for 3 out of TWENTY FIVE or so layers?)
Pretty conclusive, I'd say! Yuppers!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'm incredibly interested in how the Kaibab was formed in your model, Dave. Tell me how limestone was preferentially deposited in that layer. How is it that calcium carbonate was deposited in a flood, with the turbidity of a flood? Especially since it was deposited several times in the overall stratigraphy of the grand staircase? mixed in with eolian sandstones and evaporites?
These are the kinds of questions you have to answer...but you cannot....in order to make your hypothesis stand.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
1) Limestone gets deposited by water 2) Limestone hardens
When did the limestone get deposited Dave? Before the FLUD? During the FLUD? Remember, according to you there were at most only 1500 years between Genesis and the FLUD. The fastest known rate for the depositing of limestone is 1210 grams/meter squared per year, measured in a reef environment in the tropics, or less than 1mm per year. The limestone with the canyon I showed you is thousands of feet thick. How long did the limestone take to deposit Dave?
Quote
3) Canyon is carved rapidly
How long did it take to carve the canyon Dave? Limestone is an exceptionally hard material, much harder than the ‘soft mud sediment’ model you’ve been pushing for the CG – it doesn’t just ‘wash away’. Less than a hundredth of a gram of limestone can be dissolved in a gallon of fresh water Dave, and virtually none will dissolve in sea water. How did the FLUD carve meandering channels in rock-solid limestone Dave?
Quote
4) More sediment gets deposited in the canyon
If the receding FLUD carved the canyon, how did an additional 17000 feet of sediment later appear? A second, undocumented FLUD II? Where did the 17000 feet of sediment come from Dave?
Quote
Come on, OA. Give me a hard one ... that one's too easy.
The pro-science folks here have been giving you the hard one ever since you began spouting your rubbish Davie – it’s just so weird that you grab your ankles and enjoy it so.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Maybe some WILDLY discordant dates that may have been discarded because they did not "fit" the standard sequence?
Perhaps?
Hmmmmmmm ..........
(Oh ... and did I mention that you gave me RM dates for 3 out of TWENTY FIVE or so layers?)
Pretty conclusive, I'd say! Yuppers!!
dave, do you have ANY idea how pathetic this post of yours looks?
Especially for someone who pretends to have a scientific debate, like you do?
Where is your evidence? Where are your arguments? Where is your logic?
Besides your familliar disregard for data (5, not 3, remember? and it's just those that you can find on the net), is vague and unsupported slander of scientists all you have left?
Grow up.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
okay, dave shithead...you said that I only provided three radiometric dates...want to make a gentleman's agreement on that? I'll bet you that I have given you much more than that. I will leave this forum and proclaim your victory if I am wrong.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The Morrison Formation in Utah and Colorado contains many volcanic ash layers and ashy beds, now altered mostly to bentonite, that have yielded isotopic ages.
The Brushy Basin Member, at the top of the formation, gives single-crystal, laser-fusion and step-heating, plateau- Ar/ Ar ages on sanidine that range systematically between 148.1 ±0.5 (1 std. error of mean) at the top of the member to 150.3±0.3Ma near the bottom.
The Tidwell Member, at the base of the Morrison Formation, contains one ash bed about 3 m above the J-5 unconformity thai occurs in al least two widely separated sections.
This ash has been dated by 40 39 Ar/ Ar dating of sanidine and gives ages of 154.75 ±0.54 Ma (Deino NTM sample, laser- fusion),
Dave - As you count up all the little souls you're saving with your cartoons, do you ever account for all the damage you are doing to Christianity? How many otherwise God-fearing believers run screaming into the arms of the secularists because they are disgusted with the stupidity and deceit of you and your ilk?
Your final reward might not be what you're expecting.
10 year olds in your Sunday School might think you're hot shit, but any fence-sitters coming here to learn more about this topic are certainly coming away convinced that creo's are out of their mind.
All I want is to know how many of the LAYERS have been dated radiometrically ...
Is it 3?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Accept my gentleman's agreement and you'll have a direct answer. Or you could go back and look over each of the dates I have given you as well as those given by others...and find out, cocksucker. I'm tired of your evasions, Dave. Be a man and stand up, or sit the fuck down
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'll not only leave this forum, but I'll pay for my plane ticket to your church and proclaim in front of them how I was wrong...IF I am wrong.
In return--if you are wrong, you will get in front of your group at church and film it while you say you were wrong, begging my forgiveness, and post it on the internet here.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
If there were no massive water catastrophe, there would be no massive layers of sedimentary rock which have no subsequent erosion and deposition -- all over the whole earth!! The sheer quantity of sedimentary layers is enormous evidence for a water cataclysm. It is self evident to anyone who has no agenda.
You're claiming you have no agenda DDTTD?
You're so full of shit that if I squeezed the shit out of you there'd be nothing left but hair, teeth and skin.
You want an example of historical deposition of sediments?
We know the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers had seperate mouths in the past, they don't now. Why DDTTD?
To infer there's erosion going on without deposition is another one of your Portugeuse moments. Stupid, ignorant liar, there's no question in my mind why you were never offered a seat in a fighter. I'm surprised they allowed you in a rotary winged bird.
Dave, you've never explained why you think a lot of sedimentary rock argues for a catastrophic flood. Why does one follow from the other? Why is it impossible for large amounts of sedimentary rock to have formed over billions of years of erosion? I've made it clear to you that there is far too much sediment ever to be deposited by only 5,000 feet of water. If you want your flood to deposit all 5,000 feet of sediment just at the Grand Canyon, I think you need more like two million feet of water.
You still haven't been able to explain why it's so ludicrous that slow geological processes working over billions of years could produce the geologic features we observe, but fantastically rapid processes (like continents moving over thousands of miles in a 24-hour period) doing the same thing in miniscule amounts of time within the last few thousand years is not.
Add this to the list of questions you haven't answered and cannot answer.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'd rather argue with someone who at least has some data ... like Deadman. Or JonF once in a while.
If the arguing is limited to people with data, then I'm afraid you'll have to STFU, too.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
It's as I suspected. There are radiometric dates available for the Chinle, the Morrison, and the Carmel ...
Did I miss any?
Apparently all the other layers cannot be dated radiometrically ...
RIGHT?
NOPE
Not even close Sara.
I mentioned the Cardenas Lava WAY on the other side of the GU already, but you ignored it like you did my mention of dating the Chinle Fm till it was forced down your throat.
Do your own homework you incredibly silly excuse for a fighter stud.
SO THERE WE HAVE IT, FRIENDS ... AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, WE HAVE A HUGE LONG LIST OF DATES FOR THE LAYERS IN THE "GRAND STAIRCASE" BUT ONLY 4 LAYERS HAVE BEEN DATED RADIOMETRICALLY.
The layers are ... the Chinle, the Morrison and the Carmel and the Cardenas that Crabby mentioned (I'll take your word for it since I don't want to go find your post and it is reasonable that someone has dated this layer since it is a lava flow.)
Now this week we will take a close look at each formation to see what fossils are contained in each and how the RM dates of the 4 dated layers were arrived at. Of course, my hypothesis is that all 25 (or so) of these layers were deposited and eroded in a relatively brief time (depostion less than a year, erosion possibly in a few days, but not commencing until possibly several years after the Flood). Parting of demonstrating my hypothesis will involve showing the implausibility of the "Dinky River Cut the Canyon Over Millions of Years" theory.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey stupid dave, don't forget to checkout Uranium dating in Coral, Oxygen Isotope dating in lake sediments and sea sediments and Ice-cores, plus pollen dating which all correlate.
See how real science uses these various dating methods to calibrate their data.
Now Uranium has a half life of about 11,000 years that means if your pathetic idea was true none of the Uranium on earth would have reached its first half life.
So DAFT one explain why scientists think Uranium has been around for millions of years;
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Of course, my hypothesisPathetic Brain Fart is that all 25 (or so) of these layers were deposited and eroded in a relatively brief time (deposition less than a year, erosion possibly in a few days, but not commencing until possibly several years after the Floodmythical story ).
Parting of (sic) demonstrating my hypothesis delusion will involve showing the implausibility of the Christian Scripture and the failure of US Christian fundamentalist education.
Indeed.......Parting of reality and AFD's thoughts.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
dave, dave, dave... I see you're still your usual dishonest self.
First, you self-assuredly claim that NO layer besides the Vishnu Schist, and certainly none above the GU, can be dated radiometrically. You challenge people to show you just one.
When they provide you with multiple datings of many layers, you start screaming HOW? HOW? HOW? hysterically, as if to dispute that they have been dated radiometrically at all, and
When details of the radiometric datings (that you could easily have found yourself, if you wanted to prove us wrong) are given, what do you do? You fall back, saying "nononono, I NEVER disputed those were radiometric datings, no sireee... I just think that well, 3 layers (or 4, or 5, or 6) out of 25 are a pretty small number, right? RIGHT?"... As if that has any meaning at all, and as if your 'circular' theory (that of course relied in no layers save the oldest ones being able to be dated radiometrically) wasn't already obliterated.
Aaaand at the same time, you sink to a new low by squeaking unsupported and imaginary fairytales of slander- about scientists ignoring supposed discordant data, because they don't fit the "evo" view. Niiiice.
But then again, it makes sence; Conspiracy theories are always the last (and only) resort of the YEC mind.
How 'bout inviting your church friends to the thread again, to show them what a honest christian you are?
So that's -what? Chinle, Morrison, Carmel, Dakota, Green river, Mancos, Cardenas? 28% of all layers? and that's without counting other lava dams and such, that have also been dated... And it's just what you can find online.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
If you want your flood to deposit all 5,000 feet of sediment just at the Grand Canyon, I think you need more like two million feet of water.
Forget the 5000 feet. I want Shit For Brains to explain the 17,000 feet of sediment over the buried Chinese canyon that he says was cut from FLUD run-off. How many million feet of water would that take?
How about it SFBDave? Tell us what you know about how a limestone canyon could form and get buried 17000 feet deep by DA FLUD.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
From Wikipedia (and probably anyplace else I might happen to look) ...
Quote
Formation [of sedimentary rocks] Sedimentary rocks are formed from overburden pressure as particles of sediment are deposited out of air, ice, or water [Shameful of you pretending that I'm stupid for saying sedimentation usually involves water] flows carrying the particles in suspension. As sediment deposition builds up, the overburden (or 'lithostatic' pressure squeezes the sediment into layered solids in a process known as lithification ('rock formation' and the original connate fluids are expelled.
Now, JonF, my opinion is that MOST sedimentary rocks we see in the Grand Staircase appear to be water laid.
>>>>>>Shameful of you pretending that I'm stupid for saying sedimentation usually involves water<<<<<< [LOL]
Too bad that link doesn't support your position. It only mentions water as one of three different ways to lay down sediment.
That's 33%, Dave- not a majority.
If you want to make a point you should make sure the reference you cite actually helps you.
From Wikipedia (and probably anyplace else I might happen to look) ...
Quote
Formation [of sedimentary rocks] Sedimentary rocks are formed from overburden pressure as particles of sediment are deposited out of air, ice, or water
[Shameful of you pretending that I'm stupid for saying sedimentation usually involves water]
You are stupid, Davie. You did not say sedimentation usually involves water. You wrote:
"sedimentary (i.e. water laid) rock".
I know that you have reading comprehension difficulties, but what you wrote means that all sedimentary rock is water-laid. And it's wrong.
Quote
Now, JonF, my opinion is that MOST sedimentary rocks we see in the Grand Staircase appear to be water laid.
True. But the ones to concentrate on are the ones that are not water-laid; those are the ones that your theory must address and explain satisfactorily. And the paleosols, tuffs, ash layers, dikes, sills, hardgrounds, dessication cracks, terrestrial animal tracks, buried rivers and streams, ...
Any idiot (viz.: you) can claim that a flood laid down some water-borne sediment. A viable theory must explain all the data.
Quote
Secondly, of course sediments are accumulating at the Mississippi delta and other similar deltas ...
I was talking about ABOVE WATER ...
You didn't mention ABOVE WATER. You asked for "are new layers being formed overall considering the whole earth? Do we see any evidence historically of layers being added? Or even a small section of layers being added?" "Considering the whole Earth" certainly includes under water.
But I've already mentioned the Sahara Desert. And let's add the Namib.
It's as I suspected. There are radiometric dates available for the Chinle, the Morrison, and the Carmel ...
Did I miss any?
Yes.
Quote
Apparently all the other layers cannot be dated radiometrically ...
RIGHT?
Wrong.
Quote
What if we took a close look at those dates?
What might we find?
Some discordance perhaps?
Maybe some WILDLY discordant dates that may have been discarded because they did not "fit" the standard sequence?
Perhaps?
Nope.
Quote
(Oh ... and did I mention that you gave me RM dates for 3 out of TWENTY FIVE or so layers?)
Yup. And I mentioned, many times, that we're not here to do your research for you. We've given you representative samples and plenty of leads to further information. You want to claim that discordant dates are discarded? Fine, come up with the evidence. You want to know how all the layer in the GC are diated? Fine, get to the library and start reading the many references we've provided. You want me to provide the specifics of how the GC layers are dated? Fine, my standard consulting rate for this is $125 per hour; but it'll be a lot of hours, and I'll give you a discount. PM me if you're interested.
Interesting thread on loess and YEC at 600 kyr of not sweeping the floors. Note that Glen had to revise his intiial estimate of the size of the loess deposit significantly upward.
SO THERE WE HAVE IT, FRIENDS ... AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, WE HAVE A HUGE LONG LIST OF DATES FOR THE LAYERS IN THE "GRAND STAIRCASE" BUT ONLY 4 LAYERS HAVE BEEN DATED RADIOMETRICALLY.
The layers are ... the Chinle, the Morrison and the Carmel and the Cardenas that Crabby mentioned (I'll take your word for it since I don't want to go find your post and it is reasonable that someone has dated this layer since it is a lava flow.)
Dave-pinata, how many times am I going to have to tell you this before you pay attention: in theory, you only need to date two layers in the Grand Canyon radiometrically to be able to assign upper and lower limits to the dates of all the layers between them. Four layers is just gravy. And, if you were able to locate index fossils in any of the remaining layers, you'd be able to date those ones, too, using the entirely non-circular method I had to knock into your skull with a ball-peen hammer.
And besides, Dave-pinata, where did you get the idea that we had to prove your hypothesis wrong? (Not that it was hard or anything; every single date for every single layer in the Grand Canyon is far older than the 6,000 years your hypothesis allows for.) You're supposed to be providing evidence that it's right.
Or did you miss that part?
Quote
Now this week we will take a close look at each formation to see what fossils are contained in each and how the RM dates of the 4 dated layers were arrived at. Of course, my hypothesis is that all 25 (or so) of these layers were deposited and eroded in a relatively brief time (depostion less than a year, erosion possibly in a few days, but not commencing until possibly several years after the Flood). Parting of demonstrating my hypothesis will involve showing the implausibility of the "Dinky River Cut the Canyon Over Millions of Years" theory.
Dave-pinata, how are you going to accomplish this? You don't begin to know enough about either radiometric dating or index fossils or paleontology or geology to expound intelligently on the topic. I mean, right out of the gate you're lost. You cannot have sedimentary layers that were not laid by water (and there are at least some layers that are not) formed during the middle of a raging flood, and certainly not while the earth is a mile deep in water (well, at least in some places it's a mile deep in water; in other places it's two miles deep, and in others it's only a few feet deep).
And besides, Dave-pinata, you still haven't provided a single scrap of evidence that your flood ever happened, so why do you think you have the right to even discuss anything your flood did? You can't just skip over the step of demonstrating your flood ever happened, and use your flood to explain some phenomenon. You totally have the cart before the horse here, and I don't care how sick you get of hearing about it, you're going to continue to hear about it until you actually present evidence that your "flood" ever happened. Until then, you really should just shut up about it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'm interested in showing that those who DO have geology degrees are grotesquely mistaken when they say that sedimentary rock layers were laid down over millions and millions of years by the same well-understood processes which are in operation today (the present is the key to the past) ...
Dave, you must be completely unaware of the June 21, 2006 announcement by the Interacademy Panel on International Issues, a global network of science academies (global Dave, that means all over the world), which states as its first, and presumably most important "evidence-based fact about the origins and evolution of the Earth and life on this planet":
"In a universe that has evolved towards its present configuration for some 11 to 15 billion years, our Earth formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago."
There were 66 countries and 2 international organizations that signed the evolution statements. Some of the signing countries included Iran, Chile, Spain, India, Indonesia, Italy, Israel, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, etc. Many of these countries have official religions, ranging from Christianity to Judaism to Islam. If it were true that geologists are "grotesquely mistaken" (your words), wouldn't you expect to see some disagreement among scientists of competing religions? Wouldn't you expect that scientists of a predominantly Christian nation (Chile, Columbia, Peru, Mexico) would disagree with those from a nation with either (A) no state-sponsored religion, or (B) a non-Christian state-sponsored religion? After all, if the Bible is inerrant, and Genesis is a literal account, wouldn't you think that a scientist in a country where nearly everyone is 'officially' a Christian would find and publish the evidence that proved the Genesis story beyond a shadow of a doubt? Since you claim is it liberally available, yet cast away or covered up by U.S. scientists, do you think that other nations are involved in this vast conspiracy of silence?
Your claims about what you're trying to accomplish change as often as your numbers on dated strata. You first claimed to just provide uncontrovertible evidence for the Genesis story. Then you claimed you were helping the lurkers see how idiotic the 'evobots' were. Now you're claiming to try to prove how geologists (from all over the globe and across all ethinc, racial, and religious groups) are "grotesquely mistaken."
Your claims and lies make Christians seem like complete idiots. You are hurting others of your faith by continuing to post completely unverifiable claims. (I've laughed loud & long over the idea of continents whizzing about the globe in a day's time.)
You've come onto a scientific forum and ignored how science is done. The lurkers have unmasked themselves and told you that you've convinced none of them. You can convince 10 year olds because they'll believe practically anything anyone tells them. ("C'mere, little boy, I've got free puppies in my car...")
I've taught retarded 8th graders (for 13 years) who have better powers of logical reasoning than you.
I read your posts for the entertainment value. I read the others for the sheer wealth of information about all sorts of scientific findings. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. My humors were off last week and I bought a steak to eat to bring them back into balance. But I ran out of materials with phlogiston in them, so I couldn't grill and the steak went bad. I threw it in the garbage, and it turned into maggots. Now I have to perform an exorcism to get rid of the infected meat & maggots in the garbage can.
Cheers!
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
I'm incredibly interested in how the Kaibab was formed in your model, Dave. Tell me how limestone was preferentially deposited in that layer. How is it that calcium carbonate was deposited in a flood, with the turbidity of a flood? Especially since it was deposited several times in the overall stratigraphy of the grand staircase? mixed in with eolian sandstones and evaporites?
These are the kinds of questions you have to answer...but you cannot....in order to make your hypothesis stand.
Does AFDave even know what an evaporite is?
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
I will answer one of Eric's questions that are not simply a tiresome repeat of already answered questions ...
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His (JonF's) point is, if the Grand Canyon were created from a single catastrophic flood event, you would expect every single layer, from top to bottom, to be composed of water-laid sediment.
Well most of it IS water-laid sediment judging from the fossils contained in the layers. You have a case for the Coconino not being water laid, but in my opinion it's a weak case. But all the others above the GU appear to me to be water laid
Wrong, Davie-doodles.
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(I think the Coconino also is)
And your evidence for this is?
Oh, I forgot, this is just your fantasy we're discussing here. There's no evidence for any of your claims, and the evidence against them you ignore.
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There is no reason to doubt that there were waves of water-borne sediment laid, followed by lava flows, in turn was followed by more sediment laying, followed by heating of previously laid sediments which metamorphised the layers.
We're talking about a MASSIVE catastrophe, Eric.
Paleosols. Davie-dork. Were there multiple waves of paleosol deposition in the middle of this catastrophe?
Okaayay.......this has realllly got to...got to...oh, sh**.........got tpoopo...SSSTTOP.
AWrtight, see, it's like this... . .. I made a BETTYT!! with myself. I bet thatttt afdavee sxsweoulfd, um, woufdl, um, WOULDC, make certain claims and taht thesea claims woudl be the usuals and regular claism gthat are seen all the friggggin time on talkorigins that i have beeeen readingb for a long time and that thesxy woudl be the same and this has bveen the case and so i seethat aFDEAVEW is without a doubt the most creationsaist of all the creaetionsistss. afdave hsa faollowed every prediction i have madde, and so, becasue3e this was a driunlking game, I am now going to be entering rehab.
AND HERE SI THE POINT - afdave has said notheing, anfd i mean NOTHING, tjhat has not been said by a creationist before, and that has not bveen souhndly refuted. he has nothing to offer to any deabate about the origins or develoipment of life, his arguments are paptently ridiculous, and, and, well,,,
Here is the real point: if I had been playing a drinking game based on the typical creationist objections to mainstream science (geology, astronomy, biology, etc.), afdave would have worn through the livers of Dorothy Parker, Dylan Thomas, Ernest Hemingway, and Shane McGowan in no time. afdave, you have said NOTHING here that other creationists have not said before. All of your points have been well-refuted before, here and elsewhere. I have been following the conversations between dark-ages fanatics such as afdave and people who live in the 21st century BCE for years, and it pleases me to know that the arguments of afdave and his ilk are, and have been for a long time, dull (not to mention completely wrong).
So yes, afdave, you are a very bad man. But the fun part is, you are also a stupid man.
Anyone make an actual count of the number of normally silent lurkers who were moved to submit a post just to comment on what an ignorant shit-for-brains scumbag AFDave is?
AFDave is sure winning hearts and minds with his 'arguments', ain't he?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Paleosols. Davie-dork. Were there multiple waves of paleosol deposition in the middle of this catastrophe?
I doubt you'll find anything that AFDumdum can't cut and paste an AiG 'response' to. You might have more fun if you could get him to flesh out his 'model', but, like GoP, he might just completely fail to do so.
But then again, it makes sence; Conspiracy theories are always the last (and only) resort of the YEC mind.
I wouldn't say the last (and only) resort because in my experience, when they really get desperate, they always finish their arguments by trying to confuse the issue with the claim that Evolution IS IN FACT A RELIGION.
Dave thinks so too, hence his snide references to millionsofyearsism.
Interesting thread on loess and YEC at 600 kyr of not sweeping the floors. Note that Glen had to revise his intiial estimate of the size of the loess deposit significantly upward.
I thought about China as I mentioned loess but I know Creidiots like to claim it was a result of a Glaciation Event they THEY KNOW THEY HAVE TO DEAL WITH. But DDTTD can take an afternoon drive up the road and see some 'merican loess and then we can present him with sites that have clear multiple layers of loess the demonstrate that more than one Glaciation Event took place, again within driving distance of his home (I don't like the idea of this dolt flying over my house).
Anyone make an actual count of the number of normally silent lurkers who were moved to submit a post just to comment on what an ignorant shit-for-brains scumbag AFDave is?
AFDave is sure winning hearts and minds with his 'arguments', ain't he?
*raises hand*
You can add one to that number. At least AFDave is not even bothering to sustain his pretence of being willing to give a fair hearing to the arguments against his case.
I'm not going to bother answering any of DumbAss Dave's claims or comments or requests for data.
I asked him three times to back his claims by entering into a gentleman's agreement...and he ran like the typical gutless wonders creationists are.
A long time ago in this thread, I said several times that he was going to use our responses to infect the minds of kids, after he had twisted them and them omitted the fact that he hadn't supported his claims at all. He said he had no plans to...then it turns out that's exactly what he's doing.
He's too lazy and stupid to gather his own data, but you can bet your last dollar that he will use the data others get FOR him..after he suitably perverts it.
Due to this, I won't allow him to have all the data that I can dig up, and he sure as #### better not use my screenname or any of my actual writing, other than references I provided.
You better starting supporting your own hypothesis with actual data, CowardlyDave.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Pinata Dave used to have a thread where he wanted people to prove evolution to him "in five sentences or less," or something equally ridiculous. But in any event, at least on that thread he was justified in asking people to support the contentions that evolutionary theory makes.
But the title of this thread is "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis." Dave should be providing evidence to support his hypothesis here, something he has signally failed to do. In fact, he hasn't provided evidence to support a single claim he's made here on any subject, whether it's related to his hypothesis at all. Instead, he's spent the vast majority of his time (when he wasn't stumbling around in entertaining diversions like his Portuguese misadventure) asking us, once again, to prove evolution to him, or prove geology to him, or prove that radiometric dating works, or prove that humans and chimps are more closely related than chimps and gorillas, or that the sun is a star (okay, I made that last one up). He just doesn't seem to get that in a scientific venue, if someone makes a claim, no matter how outrageous or pedestrian, that person is expected to support that claim with evidence. So instead of presenting his evidence, he's constantly asking us to provide evidence for our claims.
And, of course, it would help if Pinata Dave had the slightest conception of what evidence even is. He seems to have a lot of trouble with the concept, for someone who claims to be a skeptic and a scientist.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In passing, it's amusing to note that, while Dave continues to claim that we're all somehow religiously wedded to gradualism or some such, we have in the course of the discussion run across two examples (channeled scablands; meteor crater) or sudden, catastrophic events which are easily recognised as such on the basis of the, you know, EVIDENCE. Much as the gradual formation of the Grand Canyon is easily recognised based on the evidence. Dave, meanwhile, thinks that he can make his problems go away by claiming that all the GC layers are water-deposited, even though he knows no geology; has never been to the Grand Canyon; and ignores all the known facts. Pathetic.
In passing, it's amusing to note that, while Dave continues to claim that we're all somehow religiously wedded to gradualism or some such, we have in the course of the discussion run across two examples (channeled scablands; meteor crater) or sudden, catastrophic events which are easily recognised as such on the basis of the, you know, EVIDENCE.
Indeed, virtually all modern geologists have a combination of gradualist and catastrophist positions. I think probably everybody here laughed when AFDave said "thankfully a few geologists are starting to become catastrophists in small ways". LOL. Can you find any geologists who don't accept that Chicxulub was a catastrophic event?
In passing, it's amusing to note that, while Dave continues to claim that we're all somehow religiously wedded to gradualism or some such, we have in the course of the discussion run across two examples (channeled scablands; meteor crater) or sudden, catastrophic events which are easily recognised as such on the basis of the, you know, EVIDENCE.
Indeed, virtually all modern geologists have a combination of gradualist and catastrophist positions. I think probably everybody here laughed when AFDave said "thankfully a few geologists are starting to become catastrophists in small ways". LOL. Can you find any geologists who don't accept that Chicxulub was a catastrophic event?
No, that meteor hit the Yucatan very, very slowly.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Now seems like a good time to have a look at Pinata Dave's scorecard: the claims he made for his "Creator God Hypothesis," and which ones he's supported with actual evidence. I've abbreviated them slightly, but if anyone wants to look at what he originally posted, you can see them on the first post on the first page of this thread. So:
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A. There is a God—My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being—I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans.
Actually, this would have made a good conclusion, but unaccountably Dave has placed this first in his list of claims. Which leads one inexorably to the conclusion that Dave has already decided, before looking at any of the evidence, that God does in fact exist, and will spend the rest of this thread trying to find evidence to support this conclusion. Of course, he's failed to do that, too, but we all told Dave that no one was going to claim that God definitely doesn't exist anyway, so it's unclear exactly why he made this claim in the first place. The most he was going to hear was what he has heard: that the evidence that God exists is highly equivocal, and in any event, Dave hasn't presented any evidence anyway.
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B. This God created the Cosmos as a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose.
Has Dave presented any evidence to support this claim? Well, no, he hasn't. The best he's come up with is the argument (not evidence, but argument) that "cosmic fine tuning" proves God created the cosmos specifically to support life. But first, he hasn't presented any evidence of fine tuning, and second, since we can only exist in a universe that can support life, we'd be surprised to find ourselves in a universe that can't support life.
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C. All of human kind descended from two genetically rich parents, Adam and Eve, but did not diversify significantly due to minimal geographic isolation. My hypothesis proposes that there was only one large "super-continent" prior to the Great Flood of Noah, thus minimizing geographic isolation and resultant natural selection and specialization/diversification. The same applies to animals except that I make no proposal as to HOW MANY animals there were initially. Obviously, there would have to be at least one pair of each 'kind' (a term to be defined later)
Dave hasn't gotten very far with this one, either. He's made a few desultory stabs at criticizing the evidence for human evolution, but he's never presented any actual evidence (other than the Biblical account itself, which he seems to believe is self-authenticating) that God created Adam and Eve, nor any of his subsidiary claims, such as Adam and Even being "genetically-rich" (whatever that even means). He claims that there was at one time only one super-continent, which is no different from conventional claims, except that Dave (or the people whose claims he is parroting) thinks this continent broke up a few thousand years ago, in about 24 hours.
And here we are, more than three months later, and Dave hasn't even come up with a definition for what a "kind" is, let alone how many "kinds" were on Noah's ark. He does seem to think that one ape "kind" and one monkey "kind" have radiated into hundreds of species in less than 5,000 years, which is some sort of ultra-maga-spectacu-evolution.
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D. Early man was created perfectly, i.e. no deleterious genetic mutations. It is proposed that early man was vigorous, healthy and possibly taller than modern humans. Early families were very large--on the order of 30 to 50 kids per couple and lives were long, many over 900 years. Sons routinely married their sisters in the ante-diluvian world with no worries of genetic defects. The first laws prohibiting close marriages did not occur until the time of Moses by which time we assume that accumulated harmful genetic mutations would have been a significant consideration.
Need I point out that Dave hasn't even begun to provide any evidence for this wild-ass guess? Somehow he seems to have skipped right past this point "D" on his way to whatever he's talking about now, which seems to be "H."
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E. Mankind chose NOT to do God's will very early on (just as all young children choose not to do parents' will), thus prompting God to institute a system for persuading humans to admit their folly and begin doing His will, for "redeeming" humans who choose this path, and for reminding humans that the present physical world is only a "proving ground" or "training camp" for the next world which will be created at a definite point in the future. These events are commonly called the Fall and the Curse by Christian Theologians.
These are kind of strange claims to be made in a scientific context. I mean, how would Dave present evidence, even in principle, that people have defied "God's will"? Obviously, we could have gotten into some big long discussion about the nature of free will, the nature of Sin, what God's will is and how one would go about finding out what it is, and the existence of evil in the world, but a scientific forum seems a rather odd place to be discussing such issues.
But in any event, Dave hasn't presented any evidence of any sort to support any of his claims in this part "E"
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F. God allowed the choices of mankind to take their natural course for the most part, intervening in the affairs of men sporadically and briefly. Most of the "day-to-day management" of Planet Earth was delegated to mankind himself, similar to how modern parents delegate the day-to-day management of their children to a school or a day care center.
I know Dave thinks I get repetitive when I say he hasn't provided evidence to support this or that claim he's made, but if I don't say so, he'll later claim that he has. Has Dave provided the tiniest sliver of evidence that God has ever intervened in the affairs of men, whether sporadically or regularly? Since he's never provided any evidence that God even exists, I'd have to say "no."
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G. The natural result of collective disobedience to the revealed will of God was an extremely corrupt society--i.e. rampant dishonesty, injustice, murder, theft, etc.--which was terminated by God through the agency of a global, life-destroying flood--the Flood of Noah described in Genesis.
This seems to be more or less where Dave is now. He certainly hasn't established the existence of his "flood," but even if he had, he certainly can't establish that God did it, since he hasn't established that God even exists. I mean, how would he?
And Dave, has it ever occurred to you that God's "flood" was a failure anyway? Have you noticed that there's still a lot of "rampant dishonesty, injustice, murder, theft, etc."? Seems like a big huge waste of time and energy, if you ask me.
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H. The Global Flood of Noah was an immense cataclysm of enormous tectonic, volcanic and hydraulic upheaval. It completely reshaped the ante-diluvian world and resulted in massive, worldwide sedimentation and fossilization, mountain range uplift, sea basin lowering, continent separation, and climate change. The Flood was survived in a floating ark by 8 humans (four couples) and one or more pairs of terrestrial, air-breathing, genetically rich animals and birds. The diversity we see in the living world today is the result of subsequent geographic separation and isolation of species and natural selection.
Well, this is definitely where Dave is right now, and he's been here a while. I probably don't need to stress that he has support for none of these contentions, and has spent most of his time trying to prove that radiometric dating doesn't work in the sediments in the Grand Canyon.
Also, Dave seems to believe that all the organisms alive today evolved from "one or more pairs of terrestrial, air-breathing, genetically rich animals and birds." Really, Dave? Fish are descended from terrestrial, air-breathing, genetically rich animals? And what about plants? Are they descended from animals too? Or maybe they're descended from birds?
If nothing else, this claim shows Dave's pre-schooler's understanding of biology.
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I. Following the Global Flood, we hypothesize an Ice Age of undetermined duration brought on by the massive climate changes induced by the Flood. It was during this time that the dinosaurs and many other species died out. Since the time of the Ice Age, the structure of the earth's crust and the climate which followed, has not changed appreciably, and uniformitarian principles may now be applied to geological studies.
Dave, can you point to any actual evidence that there's been an ice age in the past 4,500 years? And how would you date such an ice age, anyway? You don't think radiometric dating works, you don't think ice cores work, you don't think radiocarbon dating works, you don't think lake varve dating works, and you don't think dendrochronology works, either. Since the Bible doesn't mention an ice age, you can't use the Bible to date your ice age. So how do you know when it happened? And why wasn't it reported? Did it happen overnight, when everyone was asleep and missed it?
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J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
Okay, great. You hypothesize a Tower of Babel, but where's your evidence? Since you can't even really assign a date to your Tower of Babel (it would have to be at least 5,000 or more years ago, since the oldest written records are that old), where would you come up with evidence for it?
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K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
Evidence, Dave? You're just guessing, and assuming what you're trying to prove, i.e., that the Bible is inerrant. Of course, Dave doesn't even know which Bible is inerrant, except that none of the existing Bibles is inerrant (they're "close"), and he's never seen one that is.
And just out of curiosity: why did God leave out the ice age? Was he ashamed of it, or embarrassed about it?
I guess it would be fair to stop here, since Dave hasn't gotten past this point yet. But he seems to be under the impression that he's completed providing evidence for his hypothesis up through part J or K or something, or maybe only through part G. But in fact he hasn't provided any evidence whatsoever for any part of his hypothesis. Oh, he certainly thinks he has, but the rest of us know better.
So: Dave, when are you going to stop sniping at the evidence for an old earth and for evolution, and start providing evidence for your own UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In passing, it's amusing to note that, while Dave continues to claim that we're all somehow religiously wedded to gradualism or some such, we have in the course of the discussion run across two examples (channeled scablands; meteor crater) or sudden, catastrophic events which are easily recognised as such on the basis of the, you know, EVIDENCE.
Indeed, virtually all modern geologists have a combination of gradualist and catastrophist positions. I think probably everybody here laughed when AFDave said "thankfully a few geologists are starting to become catastrophists in small ways". LOL. Can you find any geologists who don't accept that Chicxulub was a catastrophic event?
No, that meteor hit the Yucatan very, very slowly.
By using a parachute
(Oh, wait, was that a joke??)
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
Don't think I've posted this here before, but even if I have it's just been updated; Claims of Accelerated Radioactive Decay by a PhD in physics (specializing in astrophysics). Covers Humphreys' "model" of accelerated decay and some of AIG's claims.
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{In re Humphreys} In this graph, we plot the ratio of decay rates for different parent isotopes (Sm-147, Th-232, U-235, U-238) with a changing pion mass. The vertical line at a pion mass 0.749325 times the current value accelerates the U-238 decay rate by a factor of 750,000.0, the amount of acceleration Humphreys requires. We see that with this pion mass, Sm-147 experiences a rate increase of only 28,200, less than 4 percent of the required value. This means that for a given sample, the Sm-147 ages should be significantly less than U-238 ages. ....
{several other errors and problems listed and explained}
The interesting thing about this analysis is that these flaws in Humphreys model were immediately apparent. I identified them on my first reading of the RATE document. The fact that Z and/or A appeared in the rate equations was a dead giveaway that these rates would vary by element and isotope. It took me an evening to estimate these values, an additional few days to explore other implications and generate nice graphics.
This error was trivial to find. It could be recognized by a bright high-school student, yet none of the Ph.D.s at the ICR, including Humphreys, noticed it before it made it into print. This points to a very serious failure in their peer-review process (though it is far from the first...).
D. Early man was created perfectly, i.e. no deleterious genetic mutations. It is proposed that early man was vigorous, healthy and possibly taller than modern humans. Early families were very large--on the order of 30 to 50 kids per couple and lives were long, many over 900 years. Sons routinely married their sisters in the ante-diluvian world with no worries of genetic defects. The first laws prohibiting close marriages did not occur until the time of Moses by which time we assume that accumulated harmful genetic mutations would have been a significant consideration.
Need I point out that Dave hasn't even begun to provide any evidence for this wild-ass guess? Somehow he seems to have skipped right past this point "D" on his way to whatever he's talking about now, which seems to be "H."
Presumably this part applies to the post-Garden of Eden crowd. I have a simple question for AFDave. How long can a persons teeth last? Teeth wear as time passes. I am guessing there was no such thing as dental care. At least the bible doesn't say anything about dental care. Did YHVH operate a clinic? Anyway, one method to age-date a prehistoric skeleton is to look at tooth wear. There are others related to the skeleton but I will let other posters bring them up. So how about it Mr. Hawkins? Teeth wear down over time. Did Methuselah chew his food with his original teeth or did he eat soup for the last 500 hundred years of his life?
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
Teeth wear down over time. Did Methuselah chew his food with his original teeth or did he eat soup for the last 500 hundred years of his life?
how bout this:
Tooth wear was retarded in similar fashion to cellular decay; the same thing that allowed them to live 1000 years made their teeth more resistant to wear as well.
oh, and speaking of retarded...
on to you Dave.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
A. There is a God—My hypothesis proposes that there is a Super Intelligent, Incredibly Powerful Being—I choose to call him God -- who has knowledge of scientific laws far more advanced than anything ever discovered by 21st Century humans.
(emphasis mine)
That is the most Peggy Hill thing I have ever heard.
Thanks to all, especially (for me) Deadman, for really informative posts on the topics nit-wittingly raised by that lying, dumb, sneak who began it all.
(P.s. Ic! Pardon the over-reaction over at another blog.)
J. We hypothesize a supernatural intervention by God at the Tower of Babel which instantly and miraculously created several new languages (we think on the order of 12 or so), whereas prior to this event, there was only one language.
Okay, great. You hypothesize a Tower of Babel, but where's your evidence? Since you can't even really assign a date to your Tower of Babel (it would have to be at least 5,000 or more years ago, since the oldest written records are that old), where would you come up with evidence for it?
I think we know the answer to that question. Bible says it, I believe it, I'm right, that settles it.
What's funnier is a couple months ago I asked AFD where he got that hilarious "we think on the order of 12" figure, and what the 12 languages were. Unsurprisingly, he ignored the question.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
You guys make me laugh! Thanks for the entertainment! More tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
stevestory: prehistoric archaeology of the southwest U.S. and Sonoran Mexico, but I like geology. In field studies in archaeo, people try to get different skills...cartography, surveying, illustration, faunal analysis, whatever...I just liked geology and a few other things, so I picked them up. I also like pottery analysis, so that shows you how truly boring I am. Cheers!
As for you, DipshitDave:
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You guys make me laugh! Thanks for the entertainment! More tomorrow!
The sentiment is mutual, except on this end, the amusement is at your lying, flailing and general lack of "Christian" ethics -- not to mention how truly dirt-stupid you are.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You guys make me laugh! Thanks for the entertainment! More tomorrow!
What do you mean, "more"? In order for you to give us "more," Dave, you must have given us something previously. But you haven't given us anything yet. Well, yeah, I mean, you've given us plenty of wild speculation, fantasy-spinning, tall-tale-telling, and a ripping yarn or two, but you've never given us what you supposedly were going to give us right from the beginning: the "excellent evidence" that's going to support your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis."
I almost asked you when you were planning to give us such evidence, but then answered the question myself: never.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You guys make me cry (here in the loony bin we think it's laughing) Thanks for the thrashing us martyrs call that entertainment! More dirt eating tomorrow!
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
What's funnier is a couple months ago I asked AFD where he got that hilarious "we think on the order of 12" figure, and what the 12 languages were. Unsurprisingly, he ignored the question.
Let me hypothesize, the 12 languages are "kinds" of robust languages which god bequeathed us after the Babel incident (sic).
ALL modern languages derive from those "kinds" and the evolution of those languages involve "loss" of information.
Obviously, modern languages are devolved from the "Ur Language" that Adam spoke.
"We" don't know what that "Ur Language" was but rest assured it WAS inscribed on stone tablets by nomadic goat and sheep herders for multiple generations (and we may or may not know if or how many generations are unknown) and ultimately translated and compiled by Moses when he wrote the Pentateuch.
Well good morning everyone ... I see everyone is in a fine mood! In the past week I've learned a great deal about the Grand Staircase, dating of layers and even discovered some new names for myself. So I'm looking forward to another excellent week of discovery!
Today I am going to get rather detailed on the layers of the Grand Staircase ... so let's start right out with a nice picture of it ...
Now there are many things to notice, but first we need to tie up the loose ends of a point I was making last week ... my claim was basically this ...
The dating of the layers in the Grand Staircase is largely arbitrary--I think I used the term "Smoke and Mirrors"
What I mean by this is that I think geologists BELIEVE in Millionsofyearsianism, and this clouds their thinking. It appears to me that the PRIMARY means of dating a geologic sequence is with fossils ... see the quote below ...
FOSSILS RECORD THE PRIMARY AGE [quote]Fossils record the initial, or primary, age of a rock unit. Isotopic systems, on the other hand, can yield either the primary age or the time of a later event, because crystalline materials are very specific in the types of atoms they incorporate, in terms of both the atomic size and charge. An element formed by radioactive decay is quite different from its parent atom and thus is out of place with respect to the host mineral. All it takes for such an element to be purged from the mineral is sufficient heat to allow solid diffusion to occur. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69762
Hmmm ... all it takes is sufficient heating to change the Parent/Daughter ratios, eh? Seems like that could have happened quite a bit in the past, doesn't it now?
Let's look at the assumptions of radiometric dating a little closer now ...
Quote
Many radioactive dating methods are based on minute additions of daughter products to a rock or mineral in which a considerable amount of daughter-type isotopes already exists. These isotopes did not come from radioactive decay in the system but rather formed during the original creation of the elements.
Wow ... that's revealing! So the amount of daughter we are using to date the rock is MINUTE. And the initial amount is CONSIDERABLE. How much is "considerable"? How is this considerable amount estimated? Hmmmm....
The EB article never mentions this ... go look for yourself and see if you can find it ... I could not. There is much discussion of "closure temperatures" and such and that zircon has a high closure temperature and thus it supposedly retains the daughter products better than mica, for example, because mica's closure temperature is much lower.
But there is no mention of HOW initial amounts of daughter products are determined.
Consider also this quote ...
MOST ROCKS CANNOT BE DATED ISOTOPICALLY
Quote
Relative geologic ages can be deduced in rock sequences consisting of sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous rock units. In fact, they constitute an essential part in any precise isotopic, or absolute, dating program. Such is the case because most rocks simply cannot be isotopically dated. Therefore, a geologist must first determine relative ages and then locate the most favourable units for absolute dating. It is also important to note that relative ages are inherently more precise, since two or more units deposited minutes or years apart would have identical absolute ages but precisely defined relative ages. While absolute ages require expensive, complex analytical equipment, relative ages can be deduced from simple visual observations. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69751
also ...
CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR ISOTOPIC DATING
Quote
Likewise, the conditions that must be met to make the calculated age precise and meaningful are in themselves simple:
1. The rock or mineral must have remained closed to the addition or escape of parent and daughter atoms since the time that the rock or mineral (system) formed.[PRETTY TOUGH TO TELL THIS I THINK]
2. It must be possible to correct for other atoms identical to daughter atoms already present when the rock or mineral formed. [HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU DO THAT?]
3. The decay constant must be known. [OK ... PRETTY EASY, AT LEAST UNDER PRESENT CONDITIONS]
4. The measurement of the daughter-to-parent ratio must be accurate because uncertainty in this ratio contributes directly to uncertainty in the age. [OK. WE HAVE BETTER INSTRUMENTS NOW.]dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69756
So let's summarize what we have just learned ...
1) The Grand Staircase has 80 or so layers of sedimentary rock (mostly water-laid, JonF, Coconino probably was too--studies I cited long ago) 2) The layers were dated by the fossils contained FIRST (see articles above) 3) Very few of these rocks can be dated radiometrically (same article) 4) Certain rocks were chosen for RM dating because they were "favorable" (??) 5) I have been given 4 such RM dates for the 80 or so layers of the Grand Staircase 6) In these 4 cases, why were the selected rocks chosen? Ostensibly because they contained the desired minerals like Zircons or some other "suitable" mineral, but my guess is that if you looked at each individual case, you would find that the "Art of Selecting Datable Rocks" has been tailored to correlate with the Primary Dating System - Index Fossils (remember the article above? Fossils yield Primary Dates) 7) OK. More questions, then. In these "suitable" minerals, how do you know how much daughter was initially present? And why should we think that the "suitable mineral" has any relation to the sedimentary layer? Remember, the "RM dateable minerals" were formed by melting rock (see EB article) which somehow got into the sedimentary layer in question. How did it get there? And why is it's supposed date of creation (EB's terminology, not mine) the same as the sedimentary layer's date of depostion? If you look at the Grand Staircase picture above, you can see the lava flow which comes up through all the layers on the left side of the picture. It is obvious that some of this lava has entered many of the layers. Considering the info given in the EB article, what "date" are you going to get if you take a sample of this (or similar) lava from any one of the many layers it intrudes into? The date of the original creation of the rock which later melted to make the lava flow? Or the "heating date" corresponding to the time when the lava flow occurred? You see ... there are many questions. And there can be no good answers to any of them because no one was there to really determine if the assumptions are even in the right ballpark.
WHAT YOU REALLY HAVE IS A BIG, FAT NOTHING What you really can conclude is that the Grand Staircase is dated by fossils. Period. Then along came the RM Daters and took some igneous rock samples wherever they could find them in the sedimentary layers, carefully selected them by what criteria, God only knows, made some enormous assumptions about initial daughter products which far exceed the amount of "dateable" daughter products (see article), made some more enormous assumptions about the heating history of the rocks, selected several samples from each site so as to increase "accuracy" (who cares about accuracy at this point after you have made so many baseless assumptions?? go figure!
Can you see how ridiculous the whole system is? (Probably not ... oh well)
So given the above discussion, what we are back to is that the whole Grand Staircase is dated by FOSSILS. END OF STORY.
How do we determine the dates based on fossils? Because Evolution has occurred and we know the favorable mutation rates. (Yeah, right) How do we know Evolution has occurred? Well, it just has. How else do you suppose all these life forms got here? Are you gonna believe some Hebrew fairy tale? And look at all the variation of species. There's new species being formed all the time. (Never mind that they are basically the same critters, never any big changes). And look at the fossils. (Yeah, look at 'em. There's not very many ... check out this quote from EB ...)
Quote
Furthermore, useful fossils are either rare or totally absent in rocks from Precambrian time, which constitutes more than 87 percent of Earth history. Precambrian rocks must therefore be correlated by means of precise isotopic dating. ... Following Smith's pioneering work, generations of geologists have confirmed that similar and even more extensive fossil sequences exist elsewhere. To this day, fossils are useful as correlation tools to geologists specializing in stratigraphy. In dating the past, the primary value of fossils lies within the principle of faunal succession: each interval of geologic history had a unique fauna that associates a given fossiliferous rock with that particular interval. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69753
THIS IS CIRCULARITY AT IT FINEST, FOLKS! 1) The rocks are dated by the fossils. 2) Then other fossils are dated by the rocks just dated by fossils. 3) Sprinkle some fake RM dating onto the whole mess to help it not stink so bad!! 4) Feed it to the public and then pat each other on the back about what great scientists we are!!
Just amazing!!
Just in case you didn't catch this point, EB clearly states that it is FOSSILS that are used to determine date in the past 600my, here it is again ...
Quote
FOSSILS ARE USED TO DATE THE PAST 600 MY. Just as the use of the fossil record has allowed a precise definition of geologic processes in approximately the past 600 million years, absolute ages allow correlations back to the Earth's oldest known rocks formed almost 4 billion years ago. ... Unlike ages derived from fossils, which occur only in sedimentary rocks, absolute ages are obtained from minerals that grow as liquid rock bodies cool at or below the surface. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
And here's a quote that explains Index Fossils ...
Quote
CORRELATION TOOL=INDEX FOSSILS. The basic conceptual tool for correlation by fossils is the index, or guide, fossil. Ideally, an index fossil should be such as to guarantee that its presence in two separated rocks indicates their synchroneity. This requires that the lifespan of the fossil species be but a moment of time relative to the immensity of geologic history. In other words, the fossil species must have had a short temporal range. On the practical side, an index fossil should be distinctive in appearance so as to prevent misidentification, and it should be cosmopolitan both as to geography and as to rock type. In addition, its fossilized population should be sufficiently abundant for discovery to be highly probable. Such an array of attributes represents an ideal, and much stratigraphic geology is rendered difficult because of departure of the natural fossil assemblage from this ideal. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69753
and I like this one ...
THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN IS A "MENTAL ABSTRACTION" (OR SHOULD WE SAY A MENTAL "ABERRATION"?)
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The end product of correlation is a mental abstraction called the geologic column. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69754
And last but not least for your morning's enjoyment ...
EB ACKOWLEDGES CREATION (HA HA)
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When the elements in the Earth were first created, many radioactive isotopes were present. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69758
(Paul Flocken ... this was a joke ... I know you think I am too dumb to know what an evaporite is and you probably think I'm so dumb that I think EB really believes God created the earth ... so put your mind at ease ... I'm not that dumb)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
(Paul Flocken ... this was a joke ... I know you think I am too dumb to know what an evaporite is and you probably think I'm so dumb that I think EB really believes God created the earth ... so put your mind at ease ... I'm not that dumb)
In your own words then Dave, how dumb are you?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
MV ...Point A? You want to go back to Point A? What ever for?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
TheCreationist dating of the layers in the Grand Staircase is largely arbitrary--I think I used the term "Smoke and Mirrors"
What I mean by this is that I think geologists Creationists BELIEVE in Millions6000ofyearsianism, and this clouds their thinking.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
look out AssFartDunce; falling rocks in the quote mine.
It is also important to note that relative ages are inherently more precise
Quote
Relative geologic ages can be deduced in rock sequences consisting of sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous rock units. In fact, they constitute an essential part in any precise isotopic, or absolute, dating program. Such is the case because most rocks simply cannot be isotopically dated. Therefore, a geologist must first determine relative ages and then locate the most favourable units for absolute dating. It is also important to note that relative ages are inherently more precise, since two or more units deposited minutes or years apart would have identical absolute ages but precisely defined relative ages. While absolute ages require expensive, complex analytical equipment, relative ages can be deduced from simple visual observations. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69751
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
"Today I am going to get rather detailed on the layers of the Grand Staircase ... so let's start right out with a nice picture of it ..."
Then let us all hope you acknowledge the validity of the scientific data you will receive in return and not just stick your fingers in your ears yelling "I cant hear you...!!!", as you have done in the past.
It would also be nice if you answered questions when asked of you.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Dave, I'm looking at the encyclopedia entry on aircraft right now. It has brief descriptions of things like lift, resistance, etc., as if they're supposed to get a heavy object off the ground. I have so many remaining questions about the actual intricacies and practical realities of flight. I've read that three-page entry from top to bottom, and there's no way I could fly a plane! I wouldn't know where to start! SO I CONCLUDE THAT ALL PILOTS REALLY HAVE IS A BIG, FAT NOTHING! It's all smoke and mirrors, and any pilot who tells you otherwise is full of shit. Well, one is at least...
Quote
Because Evolution has occurred and we know the favorable mutation rates.
Okay, Dave, I've seen this one from more than a few Creobots now. Where are you getting this? What in the world has led you guys to believe that knowing "favorable mutation rates" has anything whatsoever to do phylogeography and paleontology?
Another lurker. Hey, BooBoo! I consider myself to be only slightly smarter than the average pick-a-nick basket, but even I am able to recognize that afdave has the brains of a duck, and the duck was glad to be rid of them - the brains, that is.
He is awfully entertaining though, and the responses! I am way behind on my real work because I am learning so much from all of you who take the time to explain things. It's much more fun and educational than my job.
I am anxiously awaiting dave's explanation of where all the flood water came from. Will I have to wait a long time?
Back to lurk mode.
-------------- "Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburgers." Abbie Hoffman
THIS IS (Creationist) CIRCULARITY AT IT FINEST, FOLKS! 1) The rocks are dated by the fossils.Hebrew Fairy tale 2) Then other fossils are dated by the rocks just dated by fossils.Hebrew Fairy tale 3) Sprinkle some fake Hebrew Fairy tale RM dating onto the whole mess to help it not stink so bad!! 4) Feed it to the public and then pat each other on the back about what great scientistsHebrew Fairy tale re-tellers we are!!
AFD doesn't realize he came down in the last shower and thinks babies are brought by storks.....Just amazing!!
By George I think AFD's got it!
Oh quick question AFD, why did god not make water? There is no record of it in Genesis.
Another question.
If the earth was covered in your flud why are the ice caps on Greenland over a 100,000 years old (dated by oxygen isotopes)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
If the earth was covered in your flud why are the ice caps on Greenland over a 100,000 years old (dated by oxygen isotopes)
Oh, I know how to evaD this one! I just read [insert encyclopedia here] and learned that 18O is only 0.2% of all oxygen molecules. 0.2%?! You guys are basing this on 0.2%?! What a joke!
3) Very few of these rocks can be dated radiometrically (same article) 4) Certain rocks were chosen for RM dating because they were "favorable" (??) 5) I have been given 4 such RM dates for the 80 or so layers of the Grand Staircase 6) In these 4 cases, why were the selected rocks chosen? Ostensibly because they contained the desired minerals like Zircons or some other "suitable" mineral, but my guess is that if you looked at each individual case, you would find that the "Art of Selecting Datable Rocks" has been tailored to correlate with the Primary Dating System - Index Fossils (remember the article above? Fossils yield Primary Dates)
In other words... you cannot dispute validity of the rocks that were dated so, in an attempt to muddy the waters, you try you call into question the motives behind what rocks were dated and why they were chosen.
While rocks may be hard to date, the fact remains, they can be dated.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
No, Steverino, this is actually a "double whammy" (or maybe a triple) ... not only are there very few rocks dated radiometrically in this whole 80 layer sequence, the ones that are dated RM were very likely NOT deposited at the same time as the sedimentary layers. And if they were, what does that say? Nothing, because what in the world does the RM dating even indicate in the first place? The formation age of the igneous layer? The heating age? The second heating age? The third? Which is it? Then the triple whammy. Let's say by some stretch of the imagination, you are able to determine that there were NO heating events after the rock was "created." (I don't think you can do this, but let's pretend, OK?) How in the world do you determine the amount of initial daughter product? The initial daughter product is MUCH greater than the decayed product that you are supposed to be measuring (according to the article). So if you are off by even a tiny amount, your dates are horrendously meaningless.
Bottom line ... the more I learn about RM dating, the more fishy it smells.
And the more I study the Grand Staircase, the more I see that it was not dated radiometrically at first ANYWAY! It was dated by fossils, for God's sakes! That's what the article says. Are you telling me EB is wrong? You all complain about World Book, so now are you going to add EB to the pile of "Dave's Unreliable Sources." (I can hear Faid now ... you quote mined! That's not what that article says! You're such a liar!! Fine ... read it for yourself.)
And Incorygible, if it's not "favorable mutation rates" that help you determine the date of the LCA for humans and apes, then what is it? How else do you get that 8 mya figure? Don't tell me its fossils because then I'm going to ask you how you know the fossils are that old. you are going to say 8 my and i will say, "How do you know?" to which you will respond, "because they are in 8 myo strata!" Oh really? How do you know the strata is that old? "The fossils in it!!""
Round and round the Mulberry Bush, the Monkey chased the Weasel !!
Again, CIRCULAR REASONING at its finest!!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And by the way you do not understand circular reasoning.
The evidence for RM is NOT reasoning it exists outside reasoning and is independently verifiable by anyone from any religious background unlike creationism and interpretation of scripture which is nothing but reasoning limited to an ideological cult.
Words in a book do not represent evidence otherwise the statement "electric sheep exist" is true.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
[b]THIS IS CIRCULARITY AT IT FINEST, FOLKS! 1) The rocks are dated by the fossils. 2) Then other fossils are dated by the rocks just dated by fossils.
Obviously this is not circular. Circular would be using the other fossils" dates to date the original fossils. In other words 2) is not used to support 1). AFDave, you can't even get the basics right.
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 15 2006,09:09)
3) Sprinkle some fake RM dating onto the whole mess to help it not stink so bad!! 4) Feed it to the public and then pat each other on the back about what great scientists we are!!
Nothing to do with circular, since 3) and 4) also are not used to support 1)
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
"the ones that are dated RM were very likely NOT deposited at the same time as the sedimentary layers."
Where is your proof?...documents?..you base this all on an assumption because the opposite proves you wrong.
Do you feel that a conspiracy is being commited by everyone in the scientific community?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Originally, AFDumdum said he loved science but thought evolution was a blemish on its pretty face. Since then, he's discovered some new blemishes, nuclear physics and geology. I wonder if there's a limit to how much science he'd deny? A breaking point? My guess is no.
Hey AFD there is an explanation for everything even your stupidity.
But really..... choosing an old English Nursery Rhyme as a philosophical argument ?....Pathetic...it just shows how much of a child you are.
BTW do you know the origin of "Pop goes the Weasel"
In the early 1800's in England there was huge planting of Mulberry trees for silk worm farming.
They planted many in prison yards and 'Round and round the Mulberry Bush' was an allusion to "doing time". Just like you are in your own little fundy child's brain prison.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You asked "How in the world do you determine the amount of initial daughter product? The initial daughter product is MUCH greater than the decayed product that you are supposed to be measuring (according to the article). "
One method is Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. It is extraordinarily precise and can determine "single atoms in the presence of 10^15 stable atoms." It is not appropriate for every situation, but works well in general. Look here for further info... http://tesla.physics.purdue.edu/primelab/introduction/ams.html
-------------- "The innocent shall suffer...big time!"
Tracy-- It's circular, my friend. I abbreviated the logic and probably confused you. Let me explain it in more detail ...
1) Evolution has occurred. (Really? How do you know?) 2) Because the rocks are old. (How do you know this?) 3) See they contain trilobites. (Why does that make them old?) 4) They are old because evolution has occurred and takes millions of years. (Wait ... I thought that's what you were trying to show by the age of the rocks.) 5) No. Evolution is a fact. It stands alone. (I thought you said it is proven by old rocks) 6) I did. (Then how again are the rocks shown to be old?) 7) I told you ... they contain trilobites.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Steve Story...
Quote
Originally, AFDumdum said he loved science but thought evolution was a blemish on its pretty face. Since then, he's discovered some new blemishes, nuclear physics and geology. I wonder if there's a limit to how much science he'd deny? A breaking point? My guess is no.
This from a guy who claims intellectual superiority over me in geology, yet thought sedimentary layers should be dated exponentially because the atmosphere varies exponentially in density ... ??&&%%!!
Quote
"the ones that are dated RM were very likely NOT deposited at the same time as the sedimentary layers."
Where is your proof?...documents?..you base this all on an assumption because the opposite proves you wrong.
Friend, this is like asking documentary proof that the 2 week old garbage stinks. No need to go to the trouble to document something that stinks to high heaven. Mind you, as recently as a few months ago, I was under the illusion that there was some validity to assigning all these dates to layered sequences like the Grand Staircase, but that illusion has been blown completely away now that I really understand how it works. I've got all the documentation I need. What documentation would you believe anyway? Do you want a Henry Morris quote? You would spit on that. Do you want some statement from a Uniformitarian Geologist? There AREN'T any ... he wouldn't be a Uniformitarian if there were any. And if STOPS being a Uniformitarian, he is black balled and thrown into the "Henry Morris" category. This is why my mission is NOT to convert people like you. You guys are skeptics and are only convertible by a miracle of God himself. A much easier task--my goal--is to educate myself, then teach kids the truth.
Quote
Do you feel that a conspiracy is being commited by everyone in the scientific community?
No conspiracies. Just misinformation and peer pressure.
Quote
AfDave,
You asked "How in the world do you determine the amount of initial daughter product? The initial daughter product is MUCH greater than the decayed product that you are supposed to be measuring (according to the article). "
The quoting facility has gone wonkers, and I can't figure where the problem is, so the he11 with it.
[quote]Hmmm ... all it takes is sufficient heating to change the Parent/Daughter ratios, eh? Seems like that could have happened quite a bit in the past, doesn't it now?[/quote] Yup. And it's easy to detect.
[quote]Let's look at the assumptions of radiometric dating a little closer now ... [quote]Many radioactive dating methods are based on minute additions of daughter products to a rock or mineral in which a considerable amount of daughter-type isotopes already exists. These isotopes did not come from radioactive decay in the system but rather formed during the original creation of the elements. [/quote] Wow ... that's revealing! So the amount of daughter we are using to date the rock is MINUTE. And the initial amount is CONSIDERABLE. How much is "considerable"? How is this considerable amount estimated?[/quote] No estimates involved, Davie-dork. Measurements. The "considerable amount" is measured.
MOST ROCKS CANNOT BE DATED ISOTOPICALLY [quote]Relative geologic ages can be deduced in rock sequences consisting of sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous rock units. In fact, they constitute an essential part in any precise isotopic, or absolute, dating program. Such is the case because most rocks simply cannot be isotopically dated. Therefore, a geologist must first determine relative ages and then locate the most favourable units for absolute dating. It is also important to note that relative ages are inherently more precise, since two or more units deposited minutes or years apart would have identical absolute ages but precisely defined relative ages. While absolute ages require expensive, complex analytical equipment, relative ages can be deduced from simple visual observations. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69751[/quote][/quote] So? Many rocks can be and are dated isotopically.
[quote]CONDITIONS REQUIRED FOR ISOTOPIC DATING[/b] [quote]Likewise, the conditions that must be met to make the calculated age precise and meaningful are in themselves simple: [/quote] Gee, I'm really disappointed in the Britannica. That's really bad. It's about 60-ish years out off date.
[quote]1. The rock or mineral must have remained closed to the addition or escape of parent and daughter atoms since the time that the rock or mineral (system) formed.[PRETTY TOUGH TO TELL THIS I THINK] [/quote] Actually, in most cases, pretty easy to tell. Like in the isochron diagram I posted earlier, or as described in the references above, or on a concordia-discordia diagram (the most widely used method of dating). And the Ar-Ar method and the concordia-discordia method can often provide a valid age even if the system has not remained closed ... as has been pointed out several times before in this thread.
[quote]2. It must be possible to correct for other atoms identical to daughter atoms already present when the rock or mineral formed. [HOW IN THE WORLD DO YOU DO THAT?][/quote] Easy. In the case of isochron dating and Ar-ar dating, the correction is automatic. In the case of concordia-discordia dating, there are no significant number of other atoms identical to daughter atoms already present, because zircons so strongly reject lead at solidification (and, as has been pointed out before, even the RATE group acknowledges this; from HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY:
[quote]Samples 1 through 3 had helium retentions of 58, 27, and 17 percent. The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth — at today’s rates — of nuclear decay occurred.[/quote] {emphasis in original}
Read the references for details.
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3. The decay constant must be known. [OK ... PRETTY EASY, AT LEAST UNDER PRESENT CONDITIONS]
Yup, and pretty easy under past conditions too.
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4. The measurement of the daughter-to-parent ratio must be accurate because uncertainty in this ratio contributes directly to uncertainty in the age. [OK. WE HAVE BETTER INSTRUMENTS NOW.]dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69756
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1) The Grand Staircase has 80 or so layers of sedimentary rock (mostly water-laid, JonF, Coconino probably was too--studies I cited long ago)
2) The layers were dated by the fossils contained FIRST (see articles above) 3) Very few of these rocks can be dated radiometrically (same article) 4) Certain rocks were chosen for RM dating because they were "favorable" (??) 5) I have been given 4 such RM dates for the 80 or so layers of the Grand Staircase 6) In these 4 cases, why were the selected rocks chosen? Ostensibly because they contained the desired minerals like Zircons or some other "suitable" mineral, but my guess is that if you looked at each individual case, you would find that the "Art of Selecting Datable Rocks" has been tailored to correlate with the Primary Dating System - Index Fossils (remember the article above? Fossils yield Primary Dates)
Nobody cares about your guesses, Davie-pootles. What matters is the data and evidence you can muster in favor of your claims ... so far, zilch.
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7) OK. More questions, then. In these "suitable" minerals, how do you know how much daughter was initially present?
See references above.
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And why should we think that the "suitable mineral" has any relation to the sedimentary layer?
Principle of superposition.
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Remember, the "RM dateable minerals" were formed by melting rock (see EB article) which somehow got into the sedimentary layer in question. How did it get there?
Liquid flow.
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And why is it's supposed date of creation (EB's terminology, not mine) the same as the sedimentary layer's date of depostion? If you look at the Grand Staircase picture above, you can see the lava flow which comes up through all the layers on the left side of the picture. It is obvious that some of this lava has entered many of the layers. Considering the info given in the EB article, what "date" are you going to get if you take a sample of this (or similar) lava from any one of the many layers it intrudes into?
For an intrusive formation like that, a date that is younger than any of the formations into which it intrudes. Duh.
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The date of the original creation of the rock which later melted to make the lava flow?
No.
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Or the "heating date" corresponding to the time when the lava flow occurred?
Close.
Technically, you get the date at which the lava/magma cooled enough to "freeze" the relevant isotopes into position. This is usually close enough to the solidification time as makes no difference here, but in the case of plutons it can be tens of thousands of years after the magma flow.
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You see ... there are many questions. And there can be no good answers to any of them because no one was there to really determine if the assumptions are even in the right ballpark.
All questions easily answered, your ignoring of the answers notwithstanding. Personal observation is not necessary.
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So given the above discussion, what we are back to is that the whole Grand Staircase is dated by FOSSILS. END OF STORY.
Wrong as usual. Some layers are dated by fossils, some are dated by absolute mehtods, and the absolute dates bracket the possible dates for the sedimentary layers.
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How do we determine the dates based on fossils? Because Evolution has occurred and we know the favorable mutation rates. (Yeah, right)
No, this is totally irrelevant to biostratigraphy.
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THIS IS CIRCULARITY AT IT FINEST, FOLKS! 1) The rocks are dated by the fossils. 2) Then other fossils are dated by the rocks just dated by fossils. 3) Sprinkle some fake RM dating onto the whole mess to help it not stink so bad!! 4) Feed it to the public and then pat each other on the back about what great scientists we are!!
What you describe in this list, even with the unsupported claims of fakery, is not circularity.
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Just in case you didn't catch this point, EB clearly states that it is FOSSILS that are used to determine date in the past 600my, here it is again ...
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FOSSILS ARE USED TO DATE THE PAST 600 MY. Just as the use of the fossil record has allowed a precise definition of geologic processes in approximately the past 600 million years, absolute ages allow correlations back to the Earth's oldest known rocks formed almost 4 billion years ago. ... Unlike ages derived from fossils, which occur only in sedimentary rocks, absolute ages are obtained from minerals that grow as liquid rock bodies cool at or below the surface. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
Davie-diddles, that doesn't say what you claim it does.
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And here's a quote that explains Index Fossils ...
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CORRELATION TOOL=INDEX FOSSILS. The basic conceptual tool for correlation by fossils is the index, or guide, fossil. Ideally, an index fossil should be such as to guarantee that its presence in two separated rocks indicates their synchroneity. This requires that the lifespan of the fossil species be but a moment of time relative to the immensity of geologic history. In other words, the fossil species must have had a short temporal range. On the practical side, an index fossil should be distinctive in appearance so as to prevent misidentification, and it should be cosmopolitan both as to geography and as to rock type. In addition, its fossilized population should be sufficiently abundant for discovery to be highly probable. Such an array of attributes represents an ideal, and much stratigraphic geology is rendered difficult because of departure of the natural fossil assemblage from this ideal. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69753
That's a pretty good description. If only you understood what it's saying ...
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and I like this one ...
THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN IS A "MENTAL ABSTRACTION" (OR SHOULD WE SAY A MENTAL "ABERRATION"?)
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The end product of correlation is a mental abstraction called the geologic column. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 15, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69754
And Incorygible, if it's not "favorable mutation rates" that help you determine the date of the LCA for humans and apes, then what is it? How else do you get that 8 mya figure? Don't tell me its fossils because then I'm going to ask you how you know the fossils are that old. you are going to say 8 my and i will say, "How do you know?" to which you will respond, "because they are in 8 myo strata!" Oh really? How do you know the strata is that old? "The fossils in it!!""
Round and round the Mulberry Bush, the Monkey chased the Weasel !!
Again, CIRCULAR REASONING at its finest!!!
Okay, Dave, I won't tell you it's fossils (stick to the subject -- what the #### do molded lumps of minerals have to with DNA, jackass?). Brace yourself, Davey: your fondness for insane and incomprehensible false dichotomies (fossils vs. "favorable mutation rates"?!?! has left you vulnerable to yet another smack upside the head from outta left field.
We use NEUTRAL mutation rates, dipshit.
Since you're a little slow, I'll spell it out for you: "neutral" is about as far from "favorable" as you can get without being its exact opposite, numbnuts. Which is what led me to ask what fountain of misinformation was feeding you the "favorable mutation rate" bullshit.
As for the "how did you arrive at 8 mya" dishonesty, go read my answers to this question from the first hundred times you asked it -- no one is interested in seeing me post it yet again, and even the most retarded chimp could reproduce my detailed answer by now.
Dave, want to play a game of pretend? Let's pretend we are scientists today (luckily I have my labcoat under my desk at work and have grown accustomed to the looks my coworkers give me when I wear it). So let's propopse a hypothesis, taken from your latest post.
Hypothesis: Do to many conditions (e.g. containmation over time and during testing, variability of initial concentrations) all forms of radiometric dating have such large margins of error such that the end dating results are effectively useless for absolute or relative dating.
That looks pretty good, we've got a hypothesis now. Now that we have a hypothesis what do scientists do next....I guess we'll need to make some sort of prediction so our hypothesis is falsifiable and therefore a valid hypothesis.
Prediction: Given that radiometric dating methods are highly unreliable then their values should differ from those of other dating methods. Furthermore in the geologic column we should see differences in dating within the same layer at different locations, and we should see layers out of sync with each other such that many layers appear above layers that are dating as younger than themselves.
Woohoo, we're cooking now, we've got a falsifiable prediction. Now on to data collection.
Data Collection: Radiometric dating methods correlate to Dendrochronology, Ice Core, Lake Varves dating methods. Layers date to the same time period with different radiometric dating methods, from different scientists at different locations. The dates of the layers of the geological column align in a succession of dates that descend as you get deeper.
Now we compare the data we collected to our predicted results and get....
Conclusion: Data does not match prediction, therefore the hypothesis is false.
Hmmm....that didn't work out right, maybe I got something wrong. Maybe you could put up your own hypothesis and prediction for radiometric dating and show that matches the results we see in nature, because I surely can't.
Do you feel that a conspiracy is being commited by everyone in the scientific community?
No conspiracies. Just misinformation and peer pressure.
Riiiigghhht, Dave, "misinformation and peer pressure" across 66 countries, 2 international science organizations, and tens of thousands of scientists in all branches of science.
Maybe you were thinking of your middle school years, when everyone made fun of you because of the weird pants your mother made you wear?
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
THIS JUST IN ... UK GENETICS PROF STEVE JONES IS WORRIED! GOTTA LOVE IT!
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How did we get here?
Evolution is on the way out - more than 30% of students in the UK say they believe in creationism and intelligent design. Harriet Swain reports on a surprising new survey
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) Evolution has occurred. (Really? How do you know?) 2) Because the rocks are old. (How do you know this?) 3) See they contain trilobites. (Why does that make them old?) 4) They are old because evolution has occurred and takes millions of years. (Wait ... I thought that's what you were trying to show by the age of the rocks.) 5) No. Evolution is a fact. It stands alone. (I thought you said it is proven by old rocks) 6) I did. (Then how again are the rocks shown to be old?) 7) I told you ... they contain trilobites.
You asked "How in the world do you determine the amount of initial daughter product? The initial daughter product is MUCH greater than the decayed product that you are supposed to be measuring (according to the article). "
One method is Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. It is extraordinarily precise and can determine "single atoms in the presence of 10^15 stable atoms." It is not appropriate for every situation, but works well in general. Look here for further info... [URL=http://tesla.physics.purdue.edu/primelab/introduction/ams.html
Thanks. I do understand that AMS is great for determining small quantities. However, if you read the article closely, you will see that determining small quantities is not the challenge. Determining the INITIAL daughter quantity is the challenge. No AMS equipment can help you look into the past and determine this. All it can do is measure the present minute quantity.
But, if you knew anything about radiometric dating, you'd understand how isochron methods and the Ar-Ar method produce the initial daughter quantity automatically as part of the method, and why the initial daughter quantity is not a problem or issue in concordia-discordia dating (acknowledged by the RATE group in the quote I posted a couple of mesages up).
Well good morning everyone ... I see everyone is in a fine mood! In the past week I've learned a great deal about the Grand Staircase, dating of layers and even discovered some new names for myself. So I'm looking forward to another excellent week of discovery!
Dave, why do you think "difficult" means "impossible"?
Just because most rocks cannot be dated radiometrically, and it takes a great deal of effort to dates those that can, doesn't mean no rocks can be dated radiometrically.
If you would get your head out of the creationist ghetto you would realize that radiometric dating of rocks is a firmly established methodology for determining the absolute age of rocks. Do you really think that you, with your undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and your pre-schooler's understanding of science, are qualified to dispute the results obtained by specialists in the field? I've got news for you, Pinata Dave: you're not.
Radiometric dating can establish absolute dates for many (not all, not even most) rocks, and any fossils that are embedded in them. I know you don't like that, because it demolishes your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis, but that's life.
And speaking of which: when are you going to stop trying to poke holes in other peoples' arguments and start finding support for your own arguments? Did you miss my big long post about how you have failed to provide supporting evidence for a single assertion you've made so far? Or should we rename this thread "AF Dave's UPDATED Lame-Ass Attempts to Rebut Other Peoples' Hypotheses While Providing No Evidence For His Own"?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
That article does illustrate why Dave believes what he does, even if he maintains otherwise:
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Annie Nawaz, a second-year law student at Hertfordshire, distinguishes between scientific and "natural" evidence written in stone in the holy books. "As a practising Muslim, the holy Qur'an - that's our proper evidence," she says. It does bother her when this conflicts with other kinds of evidence, but "it just comes down to the way you have been brought up and your beliefs and values and how strong they are".
Incorygible has conquered me ... I should have said NEUTRAL instead of FAVORABLE!! What a dastardly crime I committed!!
Hey JonF from MIT ... your posts are too big. Chop them in half and the quotes will work ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Just before you get too excited Dave I think I should just point out a couple of things:
a) the survey was all students not just science not just science students
b) the survey is based on self selection, so what it actually tells us is of the people with a .ac.uk email address (includes anyone who works at a UK university including secretaries, IT technicians etc), who are registered with the website and decided to fill in the survey.
c) most people in the UK think that intelligent design is the same thing as theistic evolution
Dave, since you've established the "circular reasoning" of geological dating, maybe you could help me out?
I have a clock at home that I last set according to an online atomic clock (I know you probably don't believe that atomic time-keeping stuff -- how can we know?! -- but bear with me).
Last month, I got a new watch. I set it according to the clock in my house. Now, when I'm out and about, it would probably be most accurate for me to check that atomic clock again, but that's often either impractical or impossible, so I make do with the time my watch gives me.
Two weeks ago, the power in my house went out. Being lazy, I reset the clock in my house according to my watch.
Now, weeks later, it seems that, despite my abhorent circular reasoning -- I set my watch by my clock, and then set my clock by my watch! the horror! -- both the clock and the watch are giving me accurate times. I know this because they match every other clock I encounter.
Here's part of the article from The Guardian that Dave neglected to include.
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The findings come as little surprise to Roger Downie, professor of zoological education at Glasgow University. Two years ago he surveyed the views on evolution of biology and medical students there. "What was extremely worrying for students embarking on evidence- and science-based disciplines was that they were perfectly prepared to say they had rejected it not on the basis of evidence but on the basis of their religious beliefs," he says. (emphasis added)
He says schools and universities need to be clearer about how science differs from other evidence, such as that provided by religion. "The impression people get is that science is about accumulating a lot of facts in your head rather than testing of evidence and fine-tuning what you find."
Scientists have recently expressed growing concern about creationism being taught alongside evolution in schools, particularly at the new academies run by the Christian Vardy Foundation. In April, a Royal Society statement opposed the misrepresentation of evolution in schools to promote particular religious beliefs.
Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London [...] blames the influence of Christian fundamentalists in America and political correctness among teachers here who, he says, feel they have to give a reasonable hearing to beliefs held by people from other cultures, particularly Muslims.
So, the UK is not actively accepting creationism in its schools. On the contrary, kids are rejecting evolution based solely on their religious beliefs, not on the 'evidence'.
Dave, I'm not as worried as you think I should be.....probably 85% of Americans in the Bible Belt believe in Biblical creationism - that still doesn't make it correct.
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
Tracy-- It's circular, my friend. I abbreviated the logic and probably confused you. Let me explain it in more detail ...
Bwhahhahahahahahahahaha
AFD stop playing with yourself, your going blind.
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1) Evolution has occurred. (Really? How do you know?) 2) Because the rocks are old. (How do you know this?) 3) See they contain trilobites. (Why does that make them old?) 4) They are old because evolution has occurred and takes millions of years. (Wait ... I thought that's what you were trying to show by the age of the rocks.) 5) No. Evolution is a fact. It stands alone. (I thought you said it is proven by old rocks) 6) I did. (Then how again are the rocks shown to be old?) 7) I told you ... they contain trilobites.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
AFD that is so stupid its not even worth deconstructing.
Proven by evidence not reasoning.
But just as a matter of interest, How old are trilobites?
(And baby stories about some camel driver building a boat don't count.)
What testable method do you use to date them.
(And baby stories about some camel driver building a boat don't count.)
Where is your peer reviewed papers to support your argument.
(And baby stories about some camel driver building a boat don't count.)
What professional scientific bodies support your assertion.
(And baby stories about some camel driver building a boat don't count.)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Your misinformation has been refuted and with supporting documentation.
How is it only Creationist with little or know knowledge of....anything can figure all this stuff out while those who study for years, learning all the sciences and earn the degrees can't seem to grasp the truth?
Failure to acknowledge supported fact doesn't make you the victor, it makes you ignorant.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Incorygible has conquered me ... I should have said NEUTRAL instead of FAVORABLE!! What a dastardly crime I committed!!
That's okay, Dave. I frequently say "evolution" when I really mean "God". Guess we'll just chalk it up to a careless (but meaningless) mistake, eh?
Yes, you should have said "neutral" in your braggadoccio tirade, you moron. But you said "favorable", and you meant "favorable". "Favorable" is very wrong -- it runs counter to the very methodology you thought you were refuting. Consequently, you were very wrong. Again. And again. And again. As you say, round 'n' round the mulberry bush.
AFD fossils don't reason; only humans and other animals that read bibles.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
As JonF described, there are several forms of radiometric dating in which the initial daughter product concentrations are actually determined by the method, or in which the daughter would not be expected to be present initially. An interesting example is the use of radioisotopes generated in a sample when enough shielding material (soil) has been eroded from above it. The only real assumption in most of these cases is that cosmic ray production is relatively constant. Here is a link to such an example, that uses 36Cl produced by neutron capture from 35Cl. Hope this is helpful to you.
Well, well... dave tries to paddle back against the stream again...
"Well, my 'circularity reasoning' argument stands because... because... RM dating is wrong! So there!"
And he substantiates that with his very own "Turning On The Spot" reasoning:
"But why is RM dating wrong?" "because I say so!" "but why do you say so?" "because I'm sure!" "but why are you sure?" "because it's my firm opinion!" "but why is it your firm opinion?" "because I bet I'm right!" "but why do you bet you're right?" "because I say so!"
Color me convinced, dave.
And good job on pulling the EB again- remember what happened last time you did that? you got your ass handed to you. Well, guess what:
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Fossils record the initial, or primary, age of a rock unit. Isotopic systems, on the other hand, can yield either the primary age or the time of a later event, because crystalline materials are very specific in the types of atoms they incorporate, in terms of both the atomic size and charge.
You conclude from that that rocks are dated primarily by fossils? from the use of the word "primary"? Do you even know what "primary age" means in geology? Can you even understand, with your reading comprehension problem (which I'm actually convinced it exists now)? Read your quote again. Slowly, and carefully. You'll get it eventually.
The funny thing is that you of all people, with your evident lack of scientific understanding, has the nerve to dismiss isotope dating, for no other reason than because it "smells fishy" to you! And start babbling about fudging data and other unsupported slander. Aah, conspiracy theories... the good old BS the YEC mind always gravitates into.
Fishy, huh? dave, if you wanna get rid of the smell, get out of the YEC fishmarket.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
No conspiracies. Just misinformation and peer pressure.
Bull. You previously stated that you suspect scientists around the world (a majority of them, it would seem) are falsifying data in an attempt to disprove the existence of God. What, exactly, is the difference between that and a conspiracy?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
"What documentation would you believe anyway? Do you want a Henry Morris quote? You would spit on that."
No but, I wouldn't give it much weight initially becuase Henry Morris has an agenda. His research, history proven, is not unbiased.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Back when all this started, back before AFDave's record got stuck on the "circular reasoning" groove, I asked him one simple thing: was he "man enough" to debate this with intellectual honesty (phrasing I chose because he was challenging if other people were "man enough" to debate him).
He said he was.
I just like to bring that up every now and then, because apparently...he isn't.
Just before you get too excited Dave I think I should just point out a couple of things:
a) the survey was all students not just science not just science students
b) the survey is based on self selection, so what it actually tells us is of the people with a .ac.uk email address (includes anyone who works at a UK university including secretaries, IT technicians etc), who are registered with the website and decided to fill in the survey.
c) most people in the UK think that intelligent design is the same thing as theistic evolution
regarding point c) - spot on. In fact, not a single person i've ever spoken to in my life knows the "creepy USA fairytale" of ID. And i went to a school run by Monks. If anybody was going to push GODDIDIT it would have been them, i assure you.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
No conspiracies. Just misinformation and peer pressure.
Bull. You previously stated that you suspect scientists around the world (a majority of them, it would seem) are falsifying data in an attempt to disprove the existence of God. What, exactly, is the difference between that and a conspiracy?
Nah, Dave gives them more credit than that. Instead of a vast, coordinated, perfectly executed (except in Kansas, etc.) conspiracy to further their insane (but brilliant) diabolical plans, Dave grants scientists far more respect. He doesn't think they're intelligent but evil -- he just thinks they're too dumb to know any better. Apparently, any scientists in disciplines that Davey and AIG have put "on notice" are just plain stupid enough to devote their lives to exploring subjects that anyone armed with an Encyclopedia Britannica and the intellectual capacity of your average cinder-block could see are nothing but "smoke and mirrors". Oh, and peer pressure. Just look at the lot of 'em -- you can tell scientists are SO image-conscious. Spread the word: if you don't help them now, every smoking, drug-using, virginity-losing, wedgie-giving, ear-piercing, vandalizing, shoplifting kid with an eating disorder is gonna grow up to be a scientist! Peer-pessure/peer-review -- what's the diff?
I'm busy today reinstalling Red Hat and rebuilding my system, but I wanted to say this:
For any lurkers curious about this...look back over the last 10 pages or so and you'll see a few things.
1. DumbAssDave ORIGINALLY WANTED DATES IN THE GRAND CANYON ABOVE THE GREAT UNCONFORMITY. This was later shifted to
2. DumbAssDave wants to know precisely how the Kaibab was dated. This is now shifted to
3. Dave says not enough dates were given for the entire Grand Staircase..a stratigraphy column that is a composite of sites seen in the illustrations given.
Dave is merely running a form of the "Gish Gallop," a technique used by the creationist named Gish which involves constantly shifting the target, back and forth. While never providing data or evidence supporting the creationist view.
Remember, this is DumbAssDave's hypothesis and he is supposed to support it. I have said I will refuse to continue giving him data, although I have supplied enough that is easily available.
I challenged little gutless FlyboyDave three times and he refused, thus I am under no obligation to feed him data until he begins to support his own claims.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hey guys, I realize that all the scientists and even all the science students in the UK are not going Creo ... that will take more time.
But I love it when people like Steve Jones are lamenting about Creo progress in the last 20 years !!!!
Hey, Faid ... you're getting predictable ... I guess you could go back to Greece and I could make your answers for you ... give it some thought
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey guys, I realize that all the scientists and even all the science students in the UK are not going Creo ... that will take more time.
But I love it when people like Steve Jones are lamenting about Creo progress in the last 20 years !!!!
Hey, Faid ... you're getting predictable ... I guess you could go back to Greece and I could make your answers for you ... give it some thought
And in a huge surprise to nobody, Dave demonstrates his inability to distinguish between "PR" and "scientific research".
BTW, how's that lab work coming, Dave? Shouldn't you be conducting field research right now?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Explain the Greenland Icecap and all the other unanswered questions
Air Taxi Loser
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
THIS JUST IN ... UK GENETICS PROF STEVE JONES IS WORRIED! GOTTA LOVE IT!
Dave, why do you think it matters whether most people believe evolution is an accurate description of reality? Do you think science is some sort of popularity contest?
Most people (and certainly most Americans) don't know enough about science in general and evolution in particular to be qualified to even hold an opinion on the subject. Many of them hardly know more about either one than you do.
What do you think would happen if, say, the New York Times ran a survey on Bell's Theorem and asked people if they believed nonlocality was a property of the universe? Do you think the survey results would have any significance, or impinge in any way on the validity of the theorem?
The most obvious conclusion one can draw from polls like this is that science education, not only in the U.S. but apparently in the UK, is lamentably bad. How else can one explain how someone like you, who evidently not only made it through grade school and high school but also through college, managed to learn essentially nothing at all about science, the scientific method, or methods of logic or critical thinking. How else does one explain how someone living in the 21st Century can be taken in by the kinds of blatant lies and misrepresentations peppering such sites as the AiG site and the ICR stuff? How else does one explain how a person living in the 21st Century can still believe the kinds of obvious fairy tales contained in Genesis?
You've said several times that you "buy" 95% of what scientists say, Pinata Dave. But in fact you "buy" essentially none of it, because practically everything scientists say, from astronomy to geology to biology to quantum physics to general relativity to paleontology, contracts your worldview.
(By the way, it took me half an hour to get this one post up on the site; constant time-outs while the site was unreachable.)
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
THIS JUST IN ... UK GENETICS PROF STEVE JONES IS WORRIED! GOTTA LOVE IT!
Dave, why do you think it matters whether most people believe evolution is an accurate description of reality? Do you think science is some sort of popularity contest?
Most people (and certainly most Americans) don't know enough about science in general and evolution in particular to be qualified to even hold an opinion on the subject. Many of them hardly know more about either one than you do.
What do you think would happen if, say, the New York Times ran a survey on Bell's Theorem and asked people if they believed nonlocality was a property of the universe? Do you think the survey results would have any significance, or impinge in any way on the validity of the theorem?
The most obvious conclusion one can draw from polls like this is that science education, not only in the U.S. but apparently in the UK, is lamentably bad. How else can one explain how someone like you, who evidently not only made it through grade school and high school but also through college, managed to learn essentially nothing at all about science, the scientific method, or methods of logic or critical thinking. How else does one explain how someone living in the 21st Century can be taken in by the kinds of blatant lies and misrepresentations peppering such sites as the AiG site and the ICR stuff? How else does one explain how a person living in the 21st Century can still believe the kinds of obvious fairy tales contained in Genesis?
You've said several times that you "buy" 95% of what scientists say, Pinata Dave. But in fact you "buy" essentially none of it, because practically everything scientists say, from astronomy to geology to biology to quantum physics to general relativity to paleontology, contracts your worldview.
(By the way, it took me half an hour to get this one post up on the site; constant time-outs while the site was unreachable.)
It's been unreachable to me for the last three hours.
Hey, Faid ... you're getting predictable ... I guess you could go back to Greece and I could make your answers for you ... give it some thought
Translation:
"Whoops, I made another booboo... Well, I'll just blab something irrelevant, to pretend I answered later, and hope nobody else notices it..."
Talk about predictable, dave.
And give thought to what? Your "I'm pretty sure", "In my opinion" and "I bet that if I check, I'll prove me right" non-arguments? Provide some actual 'evidence' first, and I'll be glad to blast it away. In the meantime, and in the unlikely case you're not pretending, and you actually don't get what you got totally wrong, read the quote you posted again. Slowly and carefully, as I suggested. My highlights might help. Maybe there is still hope for you.
PS. And I'm still in Greece, genius. Ever heard of teh Internets?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Since you ignored me the first, second, and third times, Dave, I'll ask you once again: when are you going to start providing evidence to support your own "hypothesis," rather than posting poorly-thought-out, poorly-researched, poorly-argued, and poorly-defended critiques of well-established, thorougly-supported bodies of evidence which have persuaded the entire scientific community, but not ignorant dunces like you, of the reality of an ancient universe, and ancient earth, and the evolution of life?
This thread is supposed to be where you provide some evidence for your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis. It's been over three months since your first post on this thread, and you not only haven't successfully defended a single assertion you've made as part of your UPDATED Hypothesis; you haven't even provided a single piece of evidence for any part of it.
I frankly don't care whether you're convinced by the evidence supporting an old age for the earth and the universe, or for the reality of evolution. You have neither the wit nor the knowledge to even understand any of that evidence, as you've made screamingly obvious over your 600-odd posts. But I'm interested to see if, at long last, you can provide the tiniest particle of evidence to support any of the outlandish assertions you made as part of your "hypothesis."
So far, I'm pretty sure you're not up to the challenge, and that's putting it charitably.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(Paul Flocken ... this was a joke ... I know you think I am too dumb to know what an evaporite is and you probably think I'm so dumb that I think EB really believes God created the earth ... so put your mind at ease ... I'm not that dumb)
Okay then Dave, Please explain to us how they form. You have learned that much atleast, haven't you? What is the process that makes evaporites? This is not a hard task, and you don't have to spend two vertical feet of page space filler. A few sentences is all. I want to know how you think evaporites are formed.
-------------- "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy
Dave, since you've established the "circular reasoning" of geological dating, maybe you could help me out?
I have a clock at home that I last set according to an online atomic clock (I know you probably don't believe that atomic time-keeping stuff -- how can we know?! -- but bear with me).
Last month, I got a new watch. I set it according to the clock in my house. Now, when I'm out and about, it would probably be most accurate for me to check that atomic clock again, but that's often either impractical or impossible, so I make do with the time my watch gives me.
Two weeks ago, the power in my house went out. Being lazy, I reset the clock in my house according to my watch.
Now, weeks later, it seems that, despite my abhorent circular reasoning -- I set my watch by my clock, and then set my clock by my watch! the horror! -- both the clock and the watch are giving me accurate times. I know this because they match every other clock I encounter.
Is this a conspiracy?
I'll take this one because it seems there is a lot of confusion about the Circular Reasoning thing ... First, the circular reasoning applies only to Fossil Dating of layers ... it has nothing to do with any other kind of dating. The EB article I quoted referred to this kind of dating as Primary Dating. Your clock analogy makes me think you are very confused on this point. So if you can, for just a minute, as long as it takes to read this post, just flush radiometric dating from your mind. Pretend the year is 1940 or so before RM really got going ... EB says RM just confirms what the Primary Dating with Index Fossils anyway, so in a sense it is superfluous. OK. Now. Here's what the EB article told us ... it said that Fossil Dating is Primary, i.e. we date the rocks by Index Fossils, right? OK.
(Start of Circle) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred. How do you KNOW evolution has occurred? Well, because look at all the diversity of life. Look at microevolution happening before our eyes. Add up all those small changes over millions of years and "Voila!" you've got the Origin of Species! How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really?
(Circle begins again) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred. How do you KNOW evolution has occurred? Well, because look at all the diversity of life. Look at microevolution happening before our eyes. Add up all those small changes over millions of years and "Voila!" you've got the Origin of Species! How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really?
(Circle begins again) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred. How do you KNOW evolution has occurred? Well, because look at all the diversity of life. Look at microevolution happening before our eyes. Add up all those small changes over millions of years and "Voila!" you've got the Origin of Species! How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really?
(Circle begins again) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred. How do you KNOW evolution has occurred? Well, because look at all the diversity of life. Look at microevolution happening before our eyes. Add up all those small changes over millions of years and "Voila!" you've got the Origin of Species! How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really?
(Circle begins again) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred. How do you KNOW evolution has occurred? Well, because look at all the diversity of life. Look at microevolution happening before our eyes. Add up all those small changes over millions of years and "Voila!" you've got the Origin of Species! How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really?
(Are you dizzy yet?) I am ... see you tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'll take this one because it seems there is a lot of confusion about the Circular Reasoning thing ...
Dave, we know the rocks are old because radiometric dating (you know, the kind you don't think works?) tells us they're old. That's the long and short of it.
As I've told you before ad nauseum, we don't know rocks are old because of the fossils that are in them, or because of evolution, or any of that stuff. Fossils only provide a relative date. The absolute date comes from other methods. Radiometric dating, in particular, gives us absolute dating that is extremely well-confirmed because it relies on the quantum-mechanical properties of atomic nuclei that are extremely well-supported by experimental data. There's no doubt about the accuracy and reliability of quantum mechanics, Dave, so why do you think there's any doubt about the reliability of radiometric dating techniques?
There simply isn't any "circular reasoning" involved in the dating of the geological column, no matter how hard you wish it to be so. The only "confusion" here is yours.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You didn't read the EB article ... you should read it. It says FOSSIL DATING IS PRIMARY. Even today. As in 2006. Hard to believe ... but that's what it says. I know this comes as a shock to your system.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Creationists just don't understand what circular reasoning is.
Call it fundy brain rot but the classic one is the Ken Ham "weeeeere youuuuu theeere?"
No of course not, no one was there when the mythical flud occurred either.
Children with uncorrected thinking skills are the only ones who fall for that.
No AFD, circular reasoning does not mean using differing sets of data/evidence that correlate to support a conclusion.
That is simply calibration. Exactly the same way as measuring a standard and then using that standard measure, to measure an object in situ.
It is the basis for all modern technology, if it didn't work then the Internet and countless other modern developments would not be possible.
Otherwise no conclusions about anything could be made if your childish 'logic' had any relevance.
And therein lies the problem, tell a child that something exists without proof, any proof, then that child's logical facility will remain in a childish state, in other words the child will accept a lie as a truth.
Now why would anyone want to that?
Oh that's right ........circular reasoning is bad because it disproves the objective statement 'god exists' ....there is no data to support the conclusion, and the bible is not data. The hyper rationalistic AFD cannot accept that a story is just that, a story to be read subjectively.
The answer for AFD is to claim circular reasoning is drawing a conclusion from data BECAUSE the data AGREES with other relevant data.
The 'logic' here is that because the data can have an imaginary line drawn from one point to another producing a putative circle, box, triangle, polygon, etc etc then somehow that is 'circular' reasoning, and the same thing as reaching a conclusion based on a false premise.
No the the false premise is his. AFD: "the flud is fact" (premise) the data does not agree with the premise.
Thus AFD's conclusion is the data is false.
AFD circular reasoning means, that in very simple terms for your simple calcified childlike brain, the premise, the idea, the thought, a creative product of the human mind, or for some a delusion drives the conclusion ......not the data.
You want to prove the flud without circular reasoning, fine provide the evidence (and a 2500 year old tale from sand farmers in the middle east is not evidence)
On Radio Metric dating.
Creationist circular reasoning "Oh yeah, well according to the bible the earth is 6000 yo (The premise) so the data from RM is false (conclusion)"
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dude, I am beginning to wish violence upon you. Sometimes I have to meditate for a long time to remember that Nero was a bad guy overall. I know that stupidity isn't a crime nor should it be but you are evil and decietful.
Dave you are a liar and a bad man.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Is it quote mining to pull up an old ditty I put on the thread where he lost the portuguese thing?
Quote
Davey Dickhead Missed out on the Special Ed That could have fixed his head
Cause he was stuck 'neath The Bong Bong Leaves Pulling on his Reverend daddy's sleeves Saying "When we take their stuff does it make us theives?"
His reverend daddy said: Son they'd be better off dead Than miss out on the lord's spread
So what we're giving in return is grace Something in short supply in this godforsaken place And when they see the color of the chief's new baby's face We'll be gone son, without a trace.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
You didn't read the EB article ... you should read it. It says FOSSIL DATING IS PRIMARY. Even today. As in 2006. Hard to believe ... but that's what it says. I know this comes as a shock to your system.
Dave, you don't know what primary means. It doesn't mean what you think it does.
This is exactly why you aren't knowledgeable enough to critique the theory of evolution, or any other scientific theory. You barge in, like a bull in a China shop, thinking you know enough about highly technical areas of scientific research, when you simply don't.
Let me ask you one more time: do you think that you, with your undergraduate EE and a pre-schooler's knowledge of science, are qualified to critique the work of Ph.D.s who have made these areas of study their life's work? And you think you can get enough information out of the Encyclopedia fucking Britannica to do it?
And when are you going to stop blundering around, trying to critique the work of actual scientists, and start actually trying to support your own assertions? Do you have a hypothesis, or not? And do you think you can support it with evidence, or not?
It's pretty obvious what the answer to that question is, Dave, and whether you're ready to admit it or not, no one here thinks you're anything but a clown. We're still waiting for a single lurker to come out and tell us he thinks you've given him something to think about.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How dumb, approximately? That's kind of one of those "Can Gawd drop a turd so buoyant he can't flush it?" or "If Jesus rose again, did Rose jesus again, too?" questions, but in the name of the complete and utter disrespect I (and perhaps hundreds of others, since to know of AFDAVE is to lose all shame in wishing to ridicule another human [assumed - he may be a reproducing clockwork, considering his award-winning animation])
Anywhere, here goes:
Imagine ALL the ball-peen hammers in the WHOLE WORLD, everywhere - Christian ballpeen hammers, Muslim hammers, Jewish, Amerindian, Atheist ballpeen hammers, and so on. Got it? But don't stop there! Imagine all the ballpeen hammers in this galaxy. made by other species upon other worlds; ballpeen hammers not to be recognized by the human eye, devised for uses far beyond the twisting of the human heart, forged by methods that, to our puny human intelligence, seem god-like. Don't stop there, but imagine all other galaxies, dimensions, imaginings.
Whoa, nelly! That's some set of all hammers!
Now, imagine a bag SO BIG (and cunningly made as the rope that bound the Asgardian Wolf) that ALL these ballpeen hammers can be stowed within.
Got that?
Pretty much blows your fuggin' mind, eh?, just holding onto those thoughts.
You, Dave, are still dumber than that cosmic-sized bag of ballpeen hammers.
You didn't read the EB article ... you should read it. It says FOSSIL DATING IS PRIMARY. Even today. As in 2006. Hard to believe ... but that's what it says. I know this comes as a shock to your system.
Hah!
I should have known... Not only does dave insist on his "primary dating" blooper, he actually makes it a central argument in his "circular reasoning" claims!
"Circular reasoning" which, if I may add, now seems to apply only to the fossil dating:
Quote
First, the circular reasoning applies only to Fossil Dating of layers ... it has nothing to do with any other kind of dating.
So dave's argument now is, "IF we only used fossils to date the rocks, it would be circular". Good job, man.
And, of course, he keeps on with his new *ahem* misconception:
Quote
The EB article I quoted referred to this kind of dating as Primary Dating.
Quote
Here's what the EB article told us ... it said that Fossil Dating is Primary, i.e. we date the rocks by Index Fossils, right? OK.
Wrong, dave. Last chance: read your quote again,
Quote
Fossils record the initial, or primary, age of a rock unit. Isotopic systems, on the other hand, can yield either the primary age or the time of a later event
Slowly and carefully, and as many times you want, until you finally understand what it says about the "initial, or primary, age of a rock unit". Because frankly,
Still trying to peddle that strawman, Davie-dingleberry. Sory, no sale.
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 15 2006,20:55)
(Start of Circle) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them.
No. We know the rocks are old because it takes lots of time to form the many diverse structures we see. That fact was obvious to the great Christian geologists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, creationists to a man ... but, unlike you, honest creationists. When they faced the obvious fact that the Earth is far older than a few thousand years, they tried to figure out how to reconcile that with Ussher's chronology. When that proved impossible, they chose reality over fantasy and discarded Ussher's chronology.
In the end, the old diluvial cosmogonies fell victim to their own success. The genuine spirit of scientific inquiry that they engendered and stimulated gradually produced a wealth of geological discoveries that undercut the premises of diluvialism. All manner of different field observations indicated that geological strata could not be the remains of layers of soft sediments deposited together at the same time. Furthermore, the plethora of exegeses of the deluge account raised doubts in many scholarly minds about whether the Bible was being properly used in trying to settle questions of geological history. By the middle of the eighteenth century, few competent proponents of diluvialism remained.
The basic pattern of the attempts to accommodate extrabiblical information during this period is by now familiar. Scholars began with the assumption that the biblical flood narrative describes a literal universal deluge and then sought evidence of that event using the best scientific tools and evidence available to them. As evidence accumulated, however, their theories became increasingly untenable, and when that happened, all those who were dedicated to the truth of the matter -- scientists and theologians alike -- abandoned the discredited hypotheses and began to look elsewhere.
Incorygible ... I'll take this one because it seems there is a lot of confusion about the Circular Reasoning thing ... First, the circular reasoning applies only to Fossil Dating of layers ... it has nothing to do with any other kind of dating. The EB article I quoted referred to this kind of dating as Primary Dating. Your clock analogy makes me think you are very confused on this point. So if you can, for just a minute, as long as it takes to read this post, just flush radiometric dating from your mind. Pretend the year is 1940 or so before RM really got going ... EB says RM just confirms what the Primary Dating with Index Fossils anyway, so in a sense it is superfluous. OK. Now. Here's what the EB article told us ... it said that Fossil Dating is Primary, i.e. we date the rocks by Index Fossils, right? OK.
(Start of Circle) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred. How do you KNOW evolution has occurred? Well, because look at all the diversity of life. Look at microevolution happening before our eyes. Add up all those small changes over millions of years and "Voila!" you've got the Origin of Species! How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really?
[snip]
(Are you dizzy yet?) I am ... see you tomorrow!
Why does it not surprise me that Dave sees watches in hummingbirds, but can't see clocks in regular, measured natural processes? Stop spitting in the face of the Watchmaker, Dave!
Yes, Dave, you're dizzy. The confusion is yours, not mine (or ours, or the thousands of actual scientists you think you're smarter than). No amount of humping the leg of your latest strawman will change this fact, though I give you props on your longevity, little fella.
Dave, just as you made clear in the Great Chimp Debate of Spring 2006, you lack basic reasoning ability, be it mathematical or otherwise. Just as back then, your "circular reasoning" tubthumping reveals that you really don't know the difference between a relative measure and an absolute measure, much less how the latter can be used to calibrate the former. You really don't know how to gauge the significance and uncertainty in data (that would require understanding what values actually mean!. You don't even understand what the most basic terms represent. Basically, Dave, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
You're pig-ignorant, Dave. Actually, that's not fair. I've helped raise pigs, and they understand far better than you the processes involved in timing events. ####, they can even calibrate relative and absolute measures, which seems an impossible task for you. Every morning at sunrise, they'd come into the barn (that's an absolute measure of time, Davey). Then they'd lay down, and wouldn't get up until I came along. They'd watch me go about my business, then move to the gate as soon as I picked up their slop bucket, as they knew food would be coming a few minutes later (that's a relative measure, Davey). Evidently, pigs can tell time and incorporate available information more rationally than you, so you're not even pig-ignorant.
Furthermore, you revel in this ignorance. If you had any Christian values whatsoever regarding hubris, you might shut the fuck up and ask yourself why, not only everyone on this board, but also thousands upon thousands of scientists and other educated folk, see logic and rationality in a body of knowledge that you can only reduce to a ridiculous parody. Instead, you go with the laughable, "everybody is lost but me!" That's ugly pride, Davey. Jesus weeps.
Nevertheless, here are some things to think about (which everyone seems to understand but you -- ####, those pigs have probably figured it out by now):
1. NO ONE has ever used, nor will ever use, some estimate of how long we think "evolution" (by which I mean your non-standard definition as the development of favorable adaptations), did or should take as a method for dating anything. We've explained to you (many times) why this is a fool's game. You're the only one playing it. Every time you suggest this is some standard methodology, you're broadcasting your ignorance.
2. Fossils provide a RELATIVE dating system. The order of appearance of different fossils in rock strata allows us to say "at the same time as this period" (i.e., when fossil X appeared), "which was before this period" (i.e., when fossil Y appeared), "but was after this period" (i.e., when fossil Z appeared). Thus, we can take those relative positions from good records of strata and apply them to different formations where the layering is not as obvious to get a relative idea of when those sediments were laid. The only role evolution plays in all this is allowing us to be confident that fossils were put in the rock at about the same time (i.e., we won't find trilobites in recent rock). You should be aware that this would work for your flood model, too. If differential mortality or hydrodynamic sorting actually occurred as your YEC idols suggest (it didn't, but whatever), the location of fossils should be consistent, allowing you to measure when different layers of sediment were laid down by "da flud". So what's your beef with relative dating by fossils, Davey?
3. The development of RM allowed us to confidently ascribe ABSOLUTE dates to strata. Before RM, these were various guesses, based on events where absolute time could be estimated, estimates of sedimentation rates, etc., with varying degrees of accuracy. With RM (for any strata where it can be applied), we can say "fossil X was laid down at time A". Note the potential for this to have gone very wrong if RM didn't work (as you guys say it doesn't). If we said fossil X was laid down at time A and fossil Z was laid down at time B, and time B is after time A but fossil X was supposed to have appeared after fossil Z, we'd be up shit creek. That DIDN'T happen (at least not in any way that couldn't be readily explained from our understanding of geology). Think of how many times it could have (should have) happened if RM was nothing but "smoke and mirrors". It didn't.
4. RM is expensive, time-consuming, and impractical or impossible for many strata. However, now that we have our RELATIVE fossil dating system calibrated according to our ABSOLUTE RM dating, the process is simplifed. If you see fossil X, and you have the RM date of fossil X from somewhere else, you've dated your rock with ease. If you see fossil Y, even assuming we have no date for Y, we know it's somewhere after the RM date of X (but before the RM date of fossil V, for example).
That's it, Dave. That's the process. It's simple, elegant, convincing (to anyone with a modicum of honest intelligence), and absolutely nothing like your ludicrous strawman. You won't get it, but everyone else does.
So if you want to argue the absolute dates provided by RM (as you've tried unsuccessfully before), go ahead. You won't succeed, but you'll at least be pursuing a rational argument. If you want to argue that fossils aren't consistent, go ahead. You'll have an even tougher time with this one, and you'll be refuting many a creationist researcher in the process (both the Victorian geologists and the more recent hydrodynamic-sorting models), but fire away. At least you'd have a valid target. But this circular reasoning crap? It doesn't fly, Davey. If you don't know that by now, well...we (and the pigs) will just keep laughing at you, as will your kids when they grasp a simple concept that you seemingly can't or won't.
You didn't read the EB article ... you should read it. It says FOSSIL DATING IS PRIMARY. Even today. As in 2006. Hard to believe ... but that's what it says. I know this comes as a shock to your system.
Davie, Davie, Davie-doodles. Wotta maroon. Even though your error has been pointed out multiple times, you still cling to it.
From answers.com:
"Primary ... 5. Geology. Characteristic of or existing in a rock at the time of its formation."
Therefore, the passage you quoted could be accurately paraphrased as:
"Fossils record the initial, or time-of-formation, age of a rock unit. Isotopic systems, on the other hand, can yield either the time-of-formation age or the time of a later event, ..."
That is, fossils always record when a rock formed, but radiometric dates can sometimes indicate a different point in time (and, just to forestall you, we can tell when they do). The quote does not say that fossils are the first way of dating a rock, nor does it say that fossils are the most important way of dating a rock.
In geologic context, "primary" does not mean what you unthinkingly assumed it does (even though it's pretty easy for anyone with reasonable reading comprehension to figure out what "primary" means in this context from the quote you provided, without looking it up). Moron.
Does the word "fine" mean the same thing in both sentences? Possible, but extremely unlikely. Most words have more than one meaning, as well subtler connotations. Also, many common words have very specific meanings other than the colloquial when used in a specialized, professional context. To understand what someone writes or says, the definitions of all the words have to match at both ends, sending and receiving. Otherwise, the result is confusion, and often hilarity.
With me so far? If not, our problems are even larger than I thought. Moving on...
In your EB quote, you've repeatedly stressed the word "primary" as support for your rejection of radiometric dating. So let's take a look at that word:
Quote
From the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.
pri*mar*y
ADJECTIVE: 1. First or highest in rank, quality, or importance; principal. 2. Being or standing first in a list, series, or sequence. 3. Occurring first in time or sequence; earliest. 4. Being or existing as the first or earliest of a kind; primitive. 5. Geology Characteristic of or existing in a rock at the time of its formation. 6. Serving as or being an essential component, as of a system; basic. See synonyms at chief. 7a. Immediate; direct: a primary effect; a primary information source. b. Preliminary to a later stage in a continuing process: primary training. c. Of or relating to a primary school: the primary grades. 8. Of or relating to a primary color or colors.
Dave, does the meaning of the sentence change when the definition of "primary" changes? What definition are you using? Are you certain that's what the writer intended? If so, how have you ruled out all other possibilities?
Maybe if we get the basic comprehension problems straightened out, we can make some progress here. (Possible, but extremely unlikely.)
Oh, and speaking of the malleability of language -- please address the point Deadman raised in this post. Turns out one of the quotes you used to support your notion that science depends on circular logic actually says exactly the opposite. Whoops! Honest (if stupid) mis-reading, or deliberate deception?
I'm asking because the quote is still up on the Creation Science page, where you got it. I'm sure they aren't consciously posting misleading material, because that's lying and lying is a sin. No doubt they'd appreciate a note from you, pointing out the error so they can correct it.
ALRIGHT ... YOU STILL DON'T GET IT ... LET'S DRIVE IT HOME A LITTLE DEEPER
Here we go again with Encyclopedia Britannica ...
FOSSILS ARE USED FOR DATING TO A LARGE DEGREE
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dating Encyclopćdia Britannica Article
Page 1 of 32
in geology, determining a chronology or calendar of events in the history of the Earth, using to a large degree the evidence of organic evolution in the sedimentary rocks accumulated through geologic time in marine and continental environments. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
Got that? "TO A LARGE DEGREE" ... that's why they use the word "PRIMARY" for Index Fossil Dating later on in the article. Notice RM dating is not even mentioned yet. Of course, it is mentioned a few sentences down and it is mentioned as being "complementary," (see below) but the Fossil Dating is Primary.
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Radiometric dating and certain other approaches are used to provide absolute chronologies in terms of years before the present. The two approaches are often complementary, as when a sequence of occurrences in one context can be correlated with an absolute chronlogy elsewhere. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
OK? Let's move on ...
GEOLOGISTS USED FOSSILS TO PIECE TOGETHER 600 MY OF EARTH HISTORY
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In addition, because sediment deposition is not continuous and much rock material has been removed by erosion, the fossil record from many localities has to be integrated before a complete picture of the evolution of life on Earth can be assembled. Using this established record, geologists have been able to piece together events over the past 600 million years, or about one-eighth of Earth history, during which time useful fossils have been abundant. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
Got it? They used the FOSSIL RECORD to piece together 600 my of earth history. BTW, they would have used the fossil record to piece together the rest, but IT'S NOT THERE! Kind of strange that it SHOULD be there, but it's not, don't you think? We only have 13% of the supposed history!! Yet, incredibly, you guys think Evolution really happened!
DATABLE MINERALS GROW AND RE-GROW, SO HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN THEY WERE CREATED?
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When rocks are subjected to high temperatures and pressures in mountain roots formed where continents collide, certain datable minerals grow and even regrow to record the timing of such geologic events. When these regions are later exposed in uptilted portions of ancient continents, a history of terrestrial rock-forming events can be deduced. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
The next topic in the article is the GLOBAL TECTONIC ROCK CYCLE.
Then we come to ...
RELATIVE DATING (FOSSILS) COMES FIRST ... DID YOU HEAR THAT? FIRST!!
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Relative geologic ages can be deduced in rock sequences consisting of sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous rock units. In fact, they constitute an essential part in any precise isotopic, or absolute, dating program. Such is the case because most rocks simply cannot be isotopically dated. Therefore, a geologist must first determine relative ages and then locate the most favourable units for absolute dating. It is also important to note that relative ages are inherently more precise, since two or more units deposited minutes or years apart would have identical absolute ages but precisely defined relative ages. While absolute ages require expensive, complex analytical equipment, relative ages can be deduced from simple visual observations. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69751
Next, the article spends a considerable amount of space talking about PRINCIPLES OF RELATIVE DATING AND CORRELATION.
Just gotta throw this one out there again ... love it! THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN IS A MENTAL ABERRATION ... er, sorry ... ABSTRACTION
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The end product of correlation is a mental abstraction called the geologic column. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69754
ISOTOPIC AGES CAN BE RESET BY HIGH TEMPERATURES
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It will become apparent, for example, that isotopic ages can be reset by high temperatures; however, this seeming disadvantage can be turned to one's favour in determining the cooling history of a rock. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69755
Fine ... we can determine the cooling history, but how do we determine the Age of Creation, the Age of Sedimentation, etc.?? You say that rocks are recycled into the crust, right? How do we know how many times they were recycled? I understand that apparently zircons, for example, have no daughter products in them when they are formed. So presumably the daughter products that ARE there represent radioactive decay. So in theory, these zircons are really 1.5 Byo or whatever the number is. But this appears to have absolutely NOTHING to do with the Date of Sedimentation for a water-laid sedimentary layer. Why?
AN EXAMPLE TO KEEP EVERYONE'S BRAINS CLEAR Well, let's just take a typical sandstone layer, OK? Let's say it contains some zircon grains and we'll assume for the moment that the daughter product measured representS the age of the last cooling event. With me? So this means that those zircon grains got real hot (>700C or so) 1.5 By ago (I'll give you this for the moment, OK?). Now, does this mean the WATER-LAID SEDIMENT which contains the zircons is ALSO 1.5 Byo? Of course not! The sediment was laid by WATER! You can't tell me for certain that the zircon grains were created at the same time as the sediment was laid. MAYBE they were, but no one can really tell. The most likely situation is that they were ERODED from some granite (formed by some super hot process) and mixed with the sand and water. Then they were transported by water and deposited.
Now how in the world do you know WHEN this deposition took place? You cannot tell me by dating the zircons radiometrically. That's impossible.
Another way those zircons could have got there is by a volcanic eruption and the lava intruded into the layer. Again, you may be able to tell something about the age of the lava (if you accept the assumptions), but again, there is no way that this will tell you anything about the WATER-LAID sedimentary layer which contains some lava intrusion.
Gimme a break!!
So now you see why I have focused on the Grand Staircase ... what we have there is mostly WATER-LAID sediment, with a little bit of other stuff like lava flows and supposedly one layer of eolian sediment.
You cannot tell me that you know the dates of depostion of those layers by dating zircon grains or lava contained in the sediment.
Sorry, but I'm not that dumb.
The way those layers are dated is .... [DRUM ROLL] ... FOSSILS!
And that being said, we are now quite familiar with CIRCULARITY involved with this approach.
Now we could go on with the EB article and put a microscope on RM dating, but my point today is this ...
I DON'T EVEN NEED TO QUESTION RM DATING ACCURACY TO BLOW AWAY YOUR CLAIM THAT THE GRAND STAIRCASE IS DATED (OR EVEN BRACKETED) RADIOMETRICALLY!
THE GRAND STAIRCASE IS DATED BY FOSSILS, THEN SAMPLES ARE FOUND WHICH MATCH THE ALREADY-DETERMINED-AGE. PERIOD.
Prove me wrong. I dare you.
*************************
Ha! I was about to hit "Add Reply" when I saw JonF calling me a moron ...
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That is, fossils always record when a rock formed, but radiometric dates can sometimes indicate a different point in time (and, just to forestall you, we can tell when they do). The quote does not say that fossils are the first way of dating a rock, nor does it say that fossils are the most important way of dating a rock.
In geologic context, "primary" does not mean what you unthinkingly assumed it does (even though it's pretty easy for anyone with reasonable reading comprehension to figure out what "primary" means in this context from the quote you provided, without looking it up). Moron.
So let me review the quote again for Jonny ...
RELATIVE DATING (FOSSILS) COMES FIRST ... DID YOU HEAR THAT? FIRST!!
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Relative geologic ages can be deduced in rock sequences consisting of sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous rock units. In fact, they constitute an essential part in any precise isotopic, or absolute, dating program. Such is the case because most rocks simply cannot be isotopically dated. Therefore, a geologist must first determine relative ages and then locate the most favourable units for absolute dating. It is also important to note that relative ages are inherently more precise, since two or more units deposited minutes or years apart would have identical absolute ages but precisely defined relative ages. While absolute ages require expensive, complex analytical equipment, relative ages can be deduced from simple visual observations. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69751
I don't disagree with your expanded information ...
BUT YOU ARE WRONG if you do not recognize that this article clearly states that Fossil Dating comes FIRST and one could easily argue that it is considered to be MOST IMPORTANT.
Be careful who you call a moron!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, since you've established the "circular reasoning" of geological dating, maybe you could help me out?
I have a clock at home that I last set according to an online atomic clock (I know you probably don't believe that atomic time-keeping stuff -- how can we know?! -- but bear with me).
Last month, I got a new watch. I set it according to the clock in my house. Now, when I'm out and about, it would probably be most accurate for me to check that atomic clock again, but that's often either impractical or impossible, so I make do with the time my watch gives me.
Two weeks ago, the power in my house went out. Being lazy, I reset the clock in my house according to my watch.
Now, weeks later, it seems that, despite my abhorent circular reasoning -- I set my watch by my clock, and then set my clock by my watch! the horror! -- both the clock and the watch are giving me accurate times. I know this because they match every other clock I encounter.
Is this a conspiracy?
If you couldn't see when the power went out, you could call this story the Blind Watchsetter.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
No FAIR! Finally, after 141 pages, the ever-shifting topic (following Davey's motorized goalposts) shifts to something I actually know about, and you guys beat me to it. Would it kill you to throw a bone to the weak-minded liberal arts majors?
Tracy-- It's circular, my friend. I abbreviated the logic and probably confused you. Let me explain it in more detail ...
1) Evolution has occurred. (Really? How do you know?)
Well, all we have to do is stop right there. 1) is not used to date fossils or strata at all.
You lose again, even sooner this time. Perhaps next time you could actually support your original argument rather than futilely trying to make it look better in comparison by making another, even worse argument?
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
LET'S TRY TO FIND ROCKS THAT CAN FIT OUR PRE-DETERMINED TIMESCALE
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An ideal mineral is one that has sufficient parent and daughter isotopes to measure precisely, is chemically inert, contains little or no significant initial daughter isotopes, and retains daughter products at the highest possible temperatures. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69760
"Sufficient parent and daughter isotopes to measure precisely?" What if it has NO daughter isotopes? Doesn't that mean it was formed VERY RECENTLY? i.e. not much time for daughter products to be formed? I mean, in theory, couldn't we go to a lab with a really hot furnace and make a zircon TODAY? in 2006? I don't know how hot the furnace has to be and how much pressure is required. Maybe beyond our capabilities. But if we could, the zircon should have ZERO daughter products, right? Is this article snippet telling me that there are plenty of samples with little to no daughter products ... and we are rejecting them as "undatable" because they don't have the right amounts of parent and daughter?
Am I reading that right?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No tantrum or any amount of screaming, jumping up and down, running around yelling mommy mommy is going to change things.
You lost in Dover and every single court case previous to it.
Not one single business uses diluvian creationism as a valid persuit except utter charletons.
Besides all that AFD, you have convinced everyone you are stark raving insane.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
No tantrum or any amount of screaming, jumping up and down, running around yelling mommy mommy is going to change things.
What in the world are you talking about? What are you anyway? A psych major or something?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't disagree with your expanded information ...
BUT YOU ARE WRONG if you do not recognize that this article clearly states that Fossil Dating comes FIRST and one could easily argue that it is considered to be MOST IMPORTANT.
Be careful who you call a moron!
Davey, your last post alone offers ample evidence that you're woefully deficient in judgment and good sense, and therefore are, by definition, a moron. Also an ass, fool, idiot, imbecile, jackass, mooncalf, nincompoop, ninny, nitwit, simple, simpleton, softhead, tomfool, dope, gander, goose, cretin, ding-dong, dip, goof, jerk, nerd, schmo, schmuck, and turkey.
* You're flat-out wrong about "primary," and your reasoning is not merely circular but orbital. No rational human being would agree with your "argument," with the possible exception of your long-suffering wife, just to get you to shut your yap.
* Even if all your blithering were true, how does any of it help you prove the flood actually happened?
* "Aberration" and "abstraction" aren't synonyms. Not outside DaveWorld, anyway.
* How about Deadman's correction? Very simple, Dave. You don't even have to google anything! Are you and your pals liars, or morons, or both?
Dave, when are you going to get over the idea that scientists are trying to fit their dates into some sort of preconceived notion of how old the earth should be? You have (as usual) absolutely no evidence to support such a notion. Given that, as you yourself noted, there's little in the way of complex life for the first four billion years the earth's been around, "evolutionists" certainly could have decided on an age of around a billion and a half years for the earth. They didn't, because the data didn't converge on that value. It converged on a much older value, which means that it looks like the earth was basically inhabited by bacteria for three quarters of its existence. You think that's ridiculous, but then you believe in Noah's ark, so you obviously have a weird idea of "ridiculous."
And you still haven't figured out what the word "primary" means in your EB article. After having half a dozen people explain it to you. Well, what can I say: it's difficult to get someone to understand something when his religious beliefs require that he not understand it.
And in the meantime, Dave, when are you going to start supporting your own "hypothesis" with some evidence? You've been at it for three and a half months, and so far you don't have a single checkmark in the "evidence for hypothesis" column. Are you ever going to get to the point?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFD changes from "Circular reasoning" to CIRCULARITY
(still in his tiny mind meaning the same, since he was embarrasingly flogged in shower, boo hoo hoo)
now change that to RELATIVE and you get the actual meaning.
Now CALIBRATE only 2 layers with ABSOLUTE TIME and extrapolate the age of other layers for known processes able to be MEASURED or CALCULATED and ESTIMATE with a measure of STATISTICAL CONFIDENCE the age of the other layers.
DO not make up data like super heated rocks destoying evidence JUST TO FIT YOUR STUPID PREMISE or believe ridiculous stories such as men living to 900 years old when quite plainly it is impossible.
AFD actually has no concept of time (another common creationist trait)
Geologic Age is can be measured by the 11 year sun spot cyle which effects the atomic structure of the rock surface, it can be measured by known sedimentation rates, atomic decay of a host of elements, the eccentricity of the earths orbit which has various periods that can be traced to variations in sediments look it up AFD. One of the Deadman links gives it....did you even read that?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
The sheer extent of ShitHeadDave's Fallacies here is hard to describe, but I'll try. But first, Dave says this:
Quote
Be careful who you call a moron!
I *AM* careful about who I call a moron, Dave Hawkins, and I am careful about who I call a liar or a coward. You are demonstrably all three. Dave's Fabric of lies has multiple parts here: First, he claims that scientists use circular reasoning in determining the age of strata. This is false. Second, He cites the Encyclopedia Britannica extensively to try to show that fossils are the "primary" way to date strata relatively. This is equivocation and false. Multiple data points are used and no one method has absolute primacy. Third, he tries to claim that he's concentrating on the "Grand Staircase" to show the circularity and flawed logic of modern geology. Fourth, he fails to show how any of this is remotely relevant in supporting HIS model. Even if it could be shown that geology was fatally flawed, it doesn't make his claims the default answer. *********************************************************************************
(Start of Circle) How do we know the rocks are old? Because of the fossils in them. Well, how do we know the fossil is old? Well because evolution over millions of years has occurred...How do you know millions of years is available? Well, look how old the rocks are. They are millions of years old. Oh really? (Circle begins again)
Now, the question becomes...is this true? Is this how science has reasoned these things out? No. Notice that there are two primary parts to the claim of circularity: (1) The Earth is old and (2) Fossils are used to show rocks are old. The fact of the matter is that these two claims were initially investigated separately, as is known to anyone who bothers to pick up a book on the History Of Science.
500 BCE. Xenophanes discovered sea shells in a high cliff on the island of Malta, concluding perhaps the sea once covered land. 500 BCE Xanthos of Sardis believed fossils were remains from extinct animals entombed in rock. 490 BCE Herodotus noticed such remains and Aristotle (384 BCE) suggested fish fossils were remains of unkown sea animals that had swam into cracks of rocks and stranded. 50 BCE -- The Roman writer Lucretius explained that species could change and become extinct under a sort of natural selection-there was no other plausible way to interpret these "giants in the Earth." 83 CE -- A fossil skull from a "dragon" was found in digging a canal in North China and Warng Chung, in his "Balanced Discussions," ("Lun Heng", 83AD) claimed that such fossils were from creatures who no longer existed, but lived once in the region. 200 CE--Tertullian asserted that fossils resulted from the flood of Noah In the 600's, Isidore thought that they resulted from the Flood of Noah. In the following century (700's) Bede developed the same orthodox tradition. In 1020 CE Ibn Sina (Avicenna) publishes an important work on erosion and he rejects the explanation of fossils as organic remains and accounted for the fossils by suggesting a ``stone-making force.'' Albertus Magnus attributed them to a ``formative quality;'' in the following centuries some philosophers ventured the idea that they grew from seed; and the Aristotelian doctrine of spontaneous generation was constantly used to prove that these stony fossils possessed powers of reproduction like plants and animals. About 1500 CE Leonardo da Vinci described fossil shells and put forward a theory that they were the remains of once-living organisms, and that changes had occurred in the relationship between sea and land.
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if you wish to say that it was the Deluge which carried these shells hundreds of miles from the sea, that cannot have happened, since the Deluge was caused by rain, and rain naturally urges rivers on towards the sea, together with everything carried by them, and does not bear dead objects from sea shores toward the mountains. And if you would say that the waters of the Deluge afterwards rose above the mountains, the movement of the sea against the course of the rivers must have been so slow that it could not have floated up anything heavier than itself." - Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1500
What you'll notice up to this point (and beyond) is that no one is claiming that fossils are millions of years old, and many people are claiming they're not even from organic creatures. It was not until later, when the Earth was determined to be older than the 4004 BCE dates of Ussher and John Lightfoot, etc., that people began thinking of fossils as being VERY old.
The reason for this is simple: no one knew how old the Earth was likely to be, so no one could claim the fossils were deeply old.
All they knew was that they MIGHT be from creatures that no longer lived in the areas they were found in. BUT, up to the 17th century and beyond, Theologians, philosophers, and even some men of "science" continued to insist upon such explanations as that fossils were the product of ``fatty matter set into a fermentation by heat''; or of a ``lapidific juice''; or of a ``seminal air''; or of a ``tumultuous movement of terrestrial exhalations''; and there was a prevailing belief that fossil remains, in general, might be brought under the head of ``sports of Nature,'' a pious turn being given to this phrase by the suggestion that these ``sports'' indicated some inscrutable purpose of the Almighty. We find theological substitutes for scientific explanation ripening into phrases more and more hollow - making fossils ``sports of Nature,'' or ``mineral concretions,'' or ``creations of plastic force,'' or ``models'' made by the Creator before he had fully decided upon the best manner of creating various beings.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave's comments are getting more and more Farfromreality. He used to jump from topic to topic, and actually respond to the occassional question (though rarely answering it). Now he's just stuck on repeating one nonsense thought. I half expect Dave's brother Hersey to come here and apologize for him, and for Dave to accuse his brother of being Ed Brayton in disguise.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
ALRIGHT ... YOU STILL DON'T GET IT ... LET'S DRIVE IT HOME A LITTLE DEEPER
Here we go again with Encyclopedia Britannica ...
FOSSILS ARE USED FOR DATING TO A LARGE DEGREE
Quote
dating Encyclopćdia Britannica Article
Page 1 of 32
in geology, determining a chronology or calendar of events in the history of the Earth, using to a large degree the evidence of organic evolution in the sedimentary rocks accumulated through geologic time in marine and continental environments. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
Got that? "TO A LARGE DEGREE" ... that's why they use the word "PRIMARY" for Index Fossil Dating later on in the article.
Nope, Davie, they use "primary" later on in its geological meaning: "Characteristic of or existing in a rock at the time of its formation". It's obvious.
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GEOLOGISTS USED FOSSILS TO PIECE TOGETHER 600 MY OF EARTH HISTORY
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In addition, because sediment deposition is not continuous and much rock material has been removed by erosion, the fossil record from many localities has to be integrated before a complete picture of the evolution of life on Earth can be assembled. Using this established record, geologists have been able to piece together events over the past 600 million years, or about one-eighth of Earth history, during which time useful fossils have been abundant. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749
Got it? They used the FOSSIL RECORD to piece together 600 my of earth history.
Originally, they did. But we didn't know it was 600 my until radiometric dating gave us the absolute time scale. Before that, they used just the fossil record and knew the time was millionsof years, but didn't know exactly how many millions.
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BTW, they would have used the fossil record to piece together the rest, but IT'S NOT THERE! Kind of strange that it SHOULD be there, but it's not, don't you think?
Nope. It's there, from the very beginnings of life circa 3.5 billion years ago.
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DATABLE MINERALS GROW AND RE-GROW, SO HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN THEY WERE CREATED?
Already answered. But read the references I gave, and learn a litle something about radiometric dating while you're at it.
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Just gotta throw this one out there again ... love it! THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN IS A MENTAL ABERRATION ... er, sorry ... ABSTRACTION
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The end product of correlation is a mental abstraction called the geologic column. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69754
Refuted yesterday, Davy. Ignoring evidence don't make it disappear.
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ISOTOPIC AGES CAN BE RESET BY HIGH TEMPERATURES
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It will become apparent, for example, that isotopic ages can be reset by high temperatures; however, this seeming disadvantage can be turned to one's favour in determining the cooling history of a rock. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69755
Davie-dork, this shows that in some cases the date we get for rocks may actually be less than the actual age of the rock. Contradicting your young Earth arguments
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Fine ... we can determine the cooling history, but how do we determine the Age of Creation, the Age of Sedimentation, etc.?? You say that rocks are recycled into the crust, right? How do we know how many times they were recycled? I understand that apparently zircons, for example, have no daughter products in them when they are formed. So presumably the daughter products that ARE there represent radioactive decay. So in theory, these zircons are really 1.5 Byo or whatever the number is. But this appears to have absolutely NOTHING to do with the Date of Sedimentation for a water-laid sedimentary layer. Why?
Duh. Because the zircons are remnants of the rock which eroded to fomr the sedimentary layer. When ypu date the zircons, you get the age of the rocks that eroded to form the sedimentary layer, not the age of the sedimentary laayer. Duh. That's why nobody ever tries to date sedimentary rocks that way.
However, it is sometimes possible to date sedimentary layers directly by dating something that formed when the layer lithified (turned into rock). This has been made easier by advances in instrumentation sensitivity and consequent reductions in sample size. One example is dating of diagenic xenotime that forms in zircons when a sedimentary layer containing them lithifies. For examaple, SHRIMP Uranium-Lead Dating of Diagenetic Xenotime in Siliciclastic Sedimentary Rocks (requires freee registration).
I know that you don't have a chance of comprehending that, Davesicle, but the lurkers may be interested.
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AN EXAMPLE TO KEEP EVERYONE'S BRAINS CLEAR
Dave, your extreme ignorance of radiometric dating is shining through the layer of sh*t you are covered with. Making up unrealistic scenarios isn't an argument; addressing realistic scenarios, of which you obviously know nothing, is approriate.
If you stopped making up stupiod and unrealistic scenarios and learned something about real scenariuos, maybe you could carry on a discussion.
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Well, let's just take a typical sandstone layer, OK? Let's say it contains some zircon grains and we'll assume for the moment that the daughter product measured representS the age of the last cooling event. With me? So this means that those zircon grains got real hot (>700C or so) 1.5 By ago (I'll give you this for the moment, OK?). Now, does this mean the WATER-LAID SEDIMENT which contains the zircons is ALSO 1.5 Byo? Of course not! The sediment was laid by WATER! You can't tell me for certain that the zircon grains were created at the same time as the sediment was laid. MAYBE they were, but no one can really tell. The most likely situation is that they were ERODED from some granite (formed by some super hot process) and mixed with the sand and water. Then they were transported by water and deposited.
Dave-dingleberry, you're actually correct. That's why nobody tries to date sediemtnary rocks that way.
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Now how in the world do you know WHEN this deposition took place? You cannot tell me by dating the zircons radiometrically. That's impossible.
Yup. But that doesn't mean you can't find the date of the sediment by other means. The creationis throws up his hands and gives up, the scientist looks for further information. By dating igneous intrusions, sills, dikes, overlayers, and underlayers (all of which can be dated radiometrically), and by cross-correlating with index fossils, we can get darned small ranges of ages for the sedimentary layers.
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Another way those zircons could have got there is by a volcanic eruption and the lava intruded into the layer. Again, you may be able to tell something about the age of the lava (if you accept the assumptions), but again, there is no way that this will tell you anything about the WATER-LAID sedimentary layer which contains some lava intrusion.
Er, dork-face, it does tell you something. As I wrote yesterday, it tells you that the WATER LAID sedimentary layer is older than the intrusive lava. (Actually, it's intrusive magma, but we can't expect you to know anyting about correct trerminology).
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You cannot tell me that you know the dates of depostion of those layers by dating zircon grains or lava contained in the sediment.
Nobody has tried to claim that. You made it up.
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The way those layers are dated is .... [DRUM ROLL] ... FOSSILS!
Sort of. Let's take a realistic example.
We find a sedimentary layer with a certain index fossil in it. We also find an igneous intrusion in it that dates to 300 my. We find, in another place, another sedimentary layer with the same index fossil in it. Below that sedimentary layer we find an igneous layer that dates to 320 my. Knowing that the index fossil we are using wasn't around for long, because the thousands of such fossils we find are always confined to very very thin layers, we know that the two sedimentary layers are the same age (plus or minus a few million years), that both are more than 300 million years old (because of the intrusion in the first layer) and both are more than 320 million years old (because of the ingeous rock underlying the second layer). No circularity, just calibration and correlation.
Of course, sometimes we find sedimentary layers that have igneous intrusions and surroundings that allow us to closely bracket the date of the layer with no reference to fossils at all.
Address that realistic scenario, Davie-pie.
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I DON'T EVEN NEED TO QUESTION RM DATING ACCURACY TO BLOW AWAY YOUR CLAIM THAT THE GRAND STAIRCASE IS DATED (OR EVEN BRACKETED) RADIOMETRICALLY!
THE GRAND STAIRCASE IS DATED BY FOSSILS, THEN SAMPLES ARE FOUND WHICH MATCH THE ALREADY-DETERMINED-AGE. PERIOD.
Wrong, Davie-doodles. The sedimentary layers are dated indirectly by radiometric dating, often (but not always) involving fossils as (non-circular) calibrators and correlators. No circularity, Davie-pie.
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Prove me wrong. I dare you.
Done.
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BUT YOU ARE WRONG if you do not recognize that this article clearly states that Fossil Dating comes FIRST and one could easily argue that it is considered to be MOST IMPORTANT.
Be careful who you call a moron!
Fossil dating is important. It does not always come first; if the article says so, and it seems to, the article is wrong. Fossil dating is never used for igneous rocks and seldom used for metamorphic rocks. And, in dating, fossils are not ever used to establish absolute dates, except insofar as they are used to cross-correlate radiometric dates that bracket the ages of the fossiliferous layers.
I was going to add a second part to that, showing how a "deep age" for the Earth gradually developed. THEN people began seeing how fossils might be SOMETIMES useful in terms of looking at the relative ages of things.
BUT it was in the work of Steno and John Woodward, and Robert Hooke and Buffon and Lehmann and Herschel and Hutton and Playfair and many others that a DEEP AGE of the Earth began to be formed, reaching a culmination in the "millionsofyearsianism" of Lyell and others...BEFORE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY.
Fossils were only used to RELATIVELY date things in the early development of geology
Another important point is dave's claim that there's only a few dates on the Grand Staircase....I've asked him to enter into a gentleman's agreement with me, whereby I would prove him wrong.
But he runs from that and now he's back to talking shit about dating the coconino sandstone blah, blah, blah, none of which has anything to do with supporting his stupid claims...which is the most important thing to remember here.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
LET'S TRY TO FIND ROCKS THAT CAN FIT OUR PRE-DETERMINED TIMESCALE
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An ideal mineral is one that has sufficient parent and daughter isotopes to measure precisely, is chemically inert, contains little or no significant initial daughter isotopes, and retains daughter products at the highest possible temperatures. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69760
"Sufficient parent and daughter isotopes to measure precisely?" What if it has NO daughter isotopes? Doesn't that mean it was formed VERY RECENTLY? i.e. not much time for daughter products to be formed? I mean, in theory, couldn't we go to a lab with a really hot furnace and make a zircon TODAY? in 2006? I don't know how hot the furnace has to be and how much pressure is required. Maybe beyond our capabilities. But if we could, the zircon should have ZERO daughter products, right?
Pretty much.
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Is this article snippet telling me that there are plenty of samples with little to no daughter products ... and we are rejecting them as "undatable" because they don't have the right amounts of parent and daughter?
No, it's not telling you anything at all like that. There's no mention of undateable samples, rejection of samples, or any "right" amount of parent or daughter. You're just projecting your preconceptions. In the rare cases when samples are rejected, they are rejected for clearly stated and objective reasons, not vague excuses.
In practice, there's no such thing as a sample with absolutely dead-nuts zero, unmeasurable, daughter product; there are eentsy weentsy (technical term) trace amounts of daughter product (lead) in all zircons at solidification, enough to throw off the dating results by a percent or two. That's not enough to give you any consolation; if we date a rock at 300 million years but it's really 295 million years old, it's still not young enough for you by a long shot. But it bothers geochronologists, so they develop correction factors for "common lead" (AKA "primordial lead"), to get the answers a little more precise. Most, but not all, of these techniques rely on measuring the amount of lead-204, which is not produced by radioactive decay, and therefore any lead-204 in the zircon was there at solidification. Knowing the amount of lead-204 and knowing the average ratio of lead-206 to lead-204 and of lead-207 to lead-204 allows us to calculate a very good approximation to the amounts of lead-207 and lead-206, which are produced by radioactrive decay, in the zircon at soldification. Since the correction is very small, the error involved in introducing it is also very small, well under 1% of the reported age.
Again obviously far over Davie's head, but the lurkers may be interested.
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Am I reading that right?
Of course not, Dave, you should take that as given.
For those people that might be interested in it, the science writer Loren Eiseley, among others noted that, in order for things like evolution to be accepted as the fact that it is, a few things had to come first: 1) The idea that things COULD change. Remember, Aristotle said that the heavens themselves were constant and stars did not age or die and this was holy writ for centuries, until men like Galileo showed motion and movement and mutability
2) That the Earth itself was older than the Bible claimed ( via Ussher and others). This allowed TIME for change.
3.) That creatures could die off during time. When, for instance, Thomas Jefferson among others, found mammoth and mastodon remains in the Americas, this set off a big search for American elephants living in the forests of North America...which were never found, showing that species, in deep time could also change and even become extinct.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
In 1779, the Comte de Buffon made a little "model" Earth, heated it and then measured its rate of cooling. This led him to estimate that the Earth was about 75,000 years old. But the theological faculty of the Sorbonne dragged him at once before them, forced him to recant ignominiously, and to print his recantation. It runs as follows:
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``I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses.''
There's many other examples like that in history, putting the lie to the idea that there is no "necessary" conflict between science and fanatical religionists.
Uh, contra Gould and others...yeah, there is.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Whilst we're on geology, I just want to mention Sir James Hall, (1761-1832) who carried out experiments on metamorphism in rock. Yes, experiments. (He was also a colleauge of James Hutton)
For example, he filled an iron cylinder with powdered chalk, sealed it, and had it heated in a blast furnace. What formed was marble. He made igneous rocks by melting Feldspar and quartz together in the proportions found in nature. His experiments helped disprove the ideas of the Neptunists who believed that all the rocks on earth were the result of a great flood.
Is it quote mining to pull up an old ditty I put on the thread where he lost the portuguese thing?
Lost? But Dave said he won that argument!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Since everything else has been addressed, how on earth could you use this quote:
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Radiometric dating and certain other approaches are used to provide absolute chronologies in terms of years before the present. The two approaches are often complementary, as when a sequence of occurrences in one context can be correlated with an absolute chronlogy elsewhere. dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: [URL=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69749]
to back up your contention that, when it comes to dating, all we've got are fossils and the rest is made up?! It says precisely the opposite (and, despite their primacy in your mind, doesn't even mention fossils by name). Do "complementary" and "correlated" mean anything to you? Obviously not the same thing that they mean to anyone with a sixth-grade reading level or higher!
In fact, as JonF so aptly demonstrated, not a single quote from the EB supports your argument. Furthermore, with the exception of fossils coming "first" (a flawed generalization on the part of EB, as Jon F points out, and certainly not uncommon in encyclopedias), not a single quote from EB refutes ANYTHING argued by those who are currently tearing you a new one (you've got quite the matching set now). Finally, even if the EB read, word for word, like a typical AFDave diatribe, complete with bold-caps, it would simply be wrong on the facts. The real facts are in the rocks themselves, Davey-boy, and in the methods and voluminous results of the scientists who study them. Or do you think that scientists daily consult the encyclopedia for instruction and commentary on their field? Did you keep a copy in the cockpit so you could fly?
Dave, you're a layman. Nothing wrong with being a layman. You're an uneducated layman. Can't fault you for that either. But you're an uneducated, obnoxious layman with with delusions of grandeur who thinks he knows better than every last professional in his topic du jour. THAT makes you deserving of every ounce of scorn we could possibly heap upon you. Which we do, of course, but only with a considerable measure of education thrown into the deal that you would do well to avail yourself of. Or remain the village idiot forever. Your choice.
To drive this point home, only the deranged mind of a desperate and dishonest fool whose treasured beliefs were not supported by any independent observation whatsoever could ever equate multiple complementary lines of evidence with "circular logic". This bass ackwards reasoning is one of many reasons why your version of the "truth" is compelling to no one except, perhaps, your kids and congregation. And even that will only last until they receive an actual education, provided they're not as hubristic, dishonest, and unteachable as you.
THANKS, DEADMAN, FOR THE HISTORY BACK TO XENOPHANES, BUT I WAS TALKING ABOUT MORE RECENT TIMES, SUCH AS SAY, THE LAST 150 YEARS (?) - I THINK THAT'S WHAT THE AUTHOR BELOW HAD IN MIND, WOULDN'T YOU SAY?
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For years investigators determined the relative ages of sedimentary rock strata on the basis of their positions in an outcrop and their fossil content. geochronology. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9117437
HERE, JONF, 13% IS ALL WE HAVE, READ IT FOR YOURSELF
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As has been seen, the geologic time scale is based on stratified rock assemblages that contain a fossil record. For the most part, these fossils allow various forms of information from the rock succession to be viewed in terms of their relative position in the sequence. Approximately the first 87 percent of Earth history occurred before the evolutionary development of shell-bearing organisms. The result of this mineralogic control on the preservability of organic remains in the rock record is that the geologic time scale—essentially a measure of biologic changes through time—takes in only the last 13 percent of Earth history. Although the span of time preceding the Cambrian period—the Precambrian—is nearly devoid of characteristic fossil remains and coincides with some of the primary rocks of certain early workers, it must, nevertheless, be evaluated in its temporal context. geochronology. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-70055
PALEOS NEED LONG AGES TO ACCOMODATE THEIR FAUNAL CHANGES
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Acceptance of these new [radiometric] ages was slow in coming. Perhaps [Perhaps? Ha!] much to their relief, paleontologists now had sufficient time in which to accommodate faunal change. Researchers in other fields, however, were still conservatively sticking with ages on the order of several hundred million, but were revising their assumed sedimentation rates downward in order to make room for expanded time concepts. geochronology. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: [URL]http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-70057 [/url]
THEY NEEDED HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS ... WHY? TO ACCOMODATE THE FAIRY TALE OF EVOLUTION ... er ... "FAUNAL CHANGE" REFERRED TO ABOVE
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The fossiliferous part of the geologic column includes perhaps 122,000 metres of sedimentary rock if maximum thicknesses are selected from throughout the world. During the late 1800s, attempts were made to estimate the time over which it formed by assuming an average rate of sedimentation. Because there was great diversity among the rates assumed, the range of estimates was also large—from a high of 2.4 billion years to a low of 3 million years. In spite of this tremendous spread, most geologists felt that time in the hundreds of millions of years was necessary to explain the sedimentary record. geochronology. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-70061
So you see, my friends, JonF and Deadman are wrong again ...
(actually, they are right that the exact timescale was not "nailed down" until RM dating in the early 1900's)
But this is simply a quibbling point and makes no difference at all to the Creationist point that ...
EVOLUTION REQUIRES MILLIONS OF YEARS, SO THE GEOLOGIC TIME-SCALE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS (how many millions doesn't really matter) FOR THE GRAND STAIRCASE WAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED BEFORE RM DATING HAPPENED ON ANY OF THE LAYERS
So my point is established. Geologists believed the Grand Staircase represented millions of years long before anyone dated any lava--OK magma--in any of the layers.
And I have already established that if you think a series of rock layers is old because it has such and such fossils, you are reasoning in a circle. This is what was done for many years.
Now some folks want to tell us that a few of the layers have been dated radiometrically, and that's fine. I'll listen and I am listening. But this doesn't change the fact that the reasoning was circular to establish the "Millions of Years" timescale to begin with--whether it's 1 By or 100 My or whatever. Now you are just in a phase of trying to VALIDATE your earlier misstep of Circular Reasoning.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
here's a quote for you Dave: "The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars" 1925, A Hitler.
While you may not be an expert liar here, to those kids you poison you are.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
I'm quite glad to know that I'm a remarkable TOOL :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But this is simply a quibbling point and makes no difference at all to the Creationist point that ...
EVOLUTION REQUIRES MILLIONS OF YEARS, SO THE GEOLOGIC TIME-SCALE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS (how many millions doesn't really matter) FOR THE GRAND STAIRCASE WAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED BEFORE RM DATING HAPPENED ON ANY OF THE LAYERS
So my point is established. Geologists believed the Grand Staircase represented millions of years long before anyone dated any lava--OK magma--in any of the layers.
Bzzz. Wrong, Dave. While factually correct re: the chronology of a scientific acceptance of deep time vs. radiometric dataing, the main point that you (and Creationists) are desperately trying to make here is that deep time arose from the ToE's need for it (i.e., "Evolution requires millions of years, so..."). Since, as deadman pointed out, as anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of science already knows, and as you revealingly ignored, the discovery of deep time preceded the ToE, your point is obviously in error (not "established"). Deep time (which came first on the evidence, as established by creationist researchers) made the theory of evolution (which came second) plausible.
HERE, JONF, 13% IS ALL WE HAVE, READ IT FOR YOURSELF
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As has been seen, the geologic time scale is based on stratified rock assemblages that contain a fossil record. For the most part, these fossils allow various forms of information from the rock succession to be viewed in terms of their relative position in the sequence. Approximately the first 87 percent of Earth history occurred before the evolutionary development of shell-bearing organisms. The result of this mineralogic control on the preservability of organic remains in the rock record is that the geologic time scale—essentially a measure of biologic changes through time—takes in only the last 13 percent of Earth history. Although the span of time preceding the Cambrian period—the Precambrian—is nearly devoid of characteristic fossil remains and coincides with some of the primary rocks of certain early workers, it must, nevertheless, be evaluated in its temporal context. geochronology. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved August 16, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Premium Service: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-70055
Doesn't mean what you think it does, Davie-poodles. The geologic time scale is based on fossils, rock strata, and radiometric dating. It covers the entire 4.55 billion years of Earth's existence.
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EVOLUTION REQUIRES MILLIONS OF YEARS, SO THE GEOLOGIC TIME-SCALE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS (how many millions doesn't really matter) FOR THE GRAND STAIRCASE WAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED BEFORE RM DATING HAPPENED ON ANY OF THE LAYERS
You got it wrong, Davie-doodles. Ignoring the refutations of your fantasies ain't going to make your fantasies true.
The geological time scale of millions of years was well established, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before evolution even came on the scene. It still didn't seem long enough for evolution, until the discovery of radioactivity showed how the Sun could last so long and accurately quantified exactly how many millions of years.
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So my point is established. Geologists believed the Grand Staircase represented millions of years long before anyone dated any lava--OK magma--in any of the layers.
Yup. But not because of evolution; because of investigation and knowledge of physical processes. Long before Darwin the geologists knew formations like the Grand Staircase represented millions of years. They didn't like it much -- they were all creationists -- but they were honest, and they coudl see what was plainly written in the rocks.
God wrote the rocks, Davie, Man wrote the Bible. I choose to believe what God wrote. You worship your idol, a book.
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And I have already established that if you think a series of rock layers is old because it has such and such fossils, you are reasoning in a circle. This is what was done for many years.
You've posted some reallyu ludicrous claims of circular reasoning; but those claims have been thoroughly debunked, and you have not produced any evidence of circular reasoning.
Since without your beloved Encyclopedia Brittanica you'd be reduced to blubbering in a puddle of your own urine -
Please go look up the EB entry for Origin of Limestone. Pay particular attention to the formation time for the process.
Then look up the entries for Niobrara Limestone, Solnhofen Limestone, and Helderbergian Stage Limestone.
Come back and tell what EB says the formation time is, and the dates for those deposits are, OK?
If it's in Encyclopedia Brittanica it must be true, right Davie-doo?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
EVOLUTION REQUIRES MILLIONS OF YEARS, SO THE GEOLOGIC TIME-SCALE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS (how many millions doesn't really matter) FOR THE GRAND STAIRCASE WAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED BEFORE RM DATING HAPPENED ON ANY OF THE LAYERS
Further "circular reasoning" according to AFDave's logic:
1. Chemistry. "Polymer chemistry requires sub-microscopic chains of elements, so the atomic scale of picometres was already established (how small doesn't really matter) for diamine before we invented nylon."
2. Cosmology. "Cosmology requires vast expanses of space, so the spatial scale of millions of miles was already established (how many millions doesn't really matter) for the universe before the speed of light allowed us to calculate the distance to other stars."
Davey DH, you are missing the requisite education necessary for this debate. I'm sorry that it means so much to you that your provincial little sky daddy isn't what you thought he was. It must be unsettling to realize that we simply are what we are if you were led to believe otherwise. Unfortunately, geology 101, oceanography 101, biology 101, or any other kind of things like it would absolutely devastate you. But it might be worth it since you can't seem to find anything worthwhile to do with your time. You are simply too wrong to start here.
Icthy... I never got it to be a man eater but I did get it to fruit more than once. My mom would never let me turn it into a man eater. She was kind of mean that way.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Aug. 16 2006,14:31)
here's a quote for you Dave: "The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars" 1925, A Hitler.
While you may not be an expert liar here, to those kids you poison you are.
Oh, geez, now you've gone and done it! The thread's been Godwinned. Definition
Thanks. Thanks a lot. It was really starting to heat up, too. I had a couple of questions for Dave myself, but didn't want to take things in another direction while he was *blindly* arguing in circles.
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
notta, I think the 'circularity' part of the discussion is almost over. AFDave seems to have backed down to merely claiming that the dating used to be circular. So the topic's ripe for changing.
Since without your beloved Encyclopedia Brittanica you'd be reduced to blubbering in a puddle of your own urine -
Meaning that WITH my beloved EB, I'm something better than that, I presume? From the likes of YOU, I'll take that as a complement!
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And even that will only last until they receive an actual education, provided they're not as hubristic, dishonest, and unteachable as you.
Go explain this to Steve Jones in the UK. It looks like just the opposite of what you are predicting is happening there! Sorry to disappoint you :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Quote (oldmanintheskydidntdoit @ Aug. 16 2006,14:31)
here's a quote for you Dave: "The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars" 1925, A Hitler.
While you may not be an expert liar here, to those kids you poison you are.
Oh, geez, now you've gone and done it! The thread's been Godwinned. Definition
Thanks. Thanks a lot. It was really starting to heat up, too. I had a couple of questions for Dave myself, but didn't want to take things in another direction while he was *blindly* arguing in circles.
i know, i'm sorry i just happened to read it in this weeks private eye magazine, and the 1st person i thought of was Dave. Dont worry, i think we have an exception in this case, as the law states the dicsussion will be over shortly. In this case, nothing short of nuclear war would stop it i suspect.
notta, I think the 'circularity' part of the discussion is almost over. AFDave seems to have backed down to merely claiming that the dating used to be circular. So the topic's ripe for changing.
WAS circular. Stunk real bad. Still IS circular. Poured some perfume called "Radiometric Dating" on the stinking mess in the hopes that people wouldn't smell it. But the perfume's wearing away. Time for some new perfume.
Does that help clarify my position for you?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, you still haven't managed to put the tiniest pinprick into radiometric dating, which is still, no matter how you try to spin it, a reliable and accurate method of dating rocks back to billions of years. All your whining and complaing about non-existent "circularity," or how only some (which even you still have to admit is more than "none") of the rocks out there are datable radiometrically, doesn't change that.
The fact is, and always has been as long as you've been discussing it, that the evidence that the earth is 4.5 billion +/- a few million years old is mountainous, irrefutable. The evidence that the earth is a few thousand years old is—non-existent.
Your laugable attempts to claim "victory" here, and your comical attempts to try to teach geology to people like JonF and Deadman, who actually know the relevant topic, remind me a great deal of your claims of "victory" in your "Portuguese" debacle, and your attempts to teach linguistics to linguistics Ph.D.s like Arden Chatfield.
So—when are you going to start trying to find support for your hypothesis, rather than continuing in your flaccid and ineffectual attempts to undermine other hypotheses?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Um, getting a bit annoyed, dave? You shouldn't be. You've done everything to deserve this characterization.
You demonstrate an extreme deficiency in reading comprehension, by asserting that fossils determining the "initial, or primary, age of a rock unit" means that rocks are dated primarily by fossils (!!!!!!!! )
After we (laugh our asses off and) explain your unbelievable blooper to you in ten different ways, so that even a 5-year old would understand, what do you do? Do you admit your silly mistake?
Of course not. You insist on saying it, completely ignoring our answers... and furthermore, you try to support it by making another one! You quote a passage from EB, saying that "the two methods are complementary" to argue that RM dating is "only complementary" to fossil dating! Amazing.
Now seriously, what do you expect us to call you after all that?
Oh and:
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WAS circular. Stunk real bad. Still IS circular. Poured some perfume called "Radiometric Dating" on the stinking mess in the hopes that people wouldn't smell it. But the perfume's wearing away. Time for some new perfume.
Does that help clarify my position for you?
Why yes it does dave. "It's circular because I say so, and I don't have to prove anything to you *%$*^% Atheists, because I know I'm right".
Which is what we thought you'd eventually say, too.
Sooo... What else is new in La-La Land?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
SFBDave: Does that help clarify my position for you?
We all know your position by now Dave.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
While factually correct re: the chronology of a scientific acceptance of deep time vs. radiometric dataing, the main point that you (and Creationists) are desperately trying to make here is that deep time arose from the ToE's need for it (i.e., "Evolution requires millions of years, so...").
A couple things to point out here ... 1) Good on you for acknowledging that I am factually correct about something ... this may be the start of a new era for you. 2) Creationists are not desperate. We are gaining ground as more and more light is shined on the dark mess called Darwinism. You want to hear somebody desperate? Try Steve Jones.
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Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, who gave a public lecture on "Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong" at the time, has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. "Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist or delude themselves that they are." http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1844478,00.html
Reason lost. The revelation that almost a third of students believe in creationism shows how the resurgence of superstitious belief is endangering the world.
Help! Help! The sky is falling! There's Creationists everywhere!! Red alert! What are we gonna do??!!
***********************
More on the Grand Staircase tomorrow!! Then "Onward Ho" on our Truth Quest!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
EVOLUTION REQUIRES MILLIONS OF YEARS, SO THE GEOLOGIC TIME-SCALE OF MILLIONS OF YEARS (how many millions doesn't really matter) FOR THE GRAND STAIRCASE WAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED BEFORE RM DATING HAPPENED ON ANY OF THE LAYERS
So my point is established. Geologists believed the Grand Staircase represented millions of years long before anyone dated any lava--OK magma--in any of the layers.
You have established jack s###, dave, and you know it. Your point -your initial point, not what you cowardly back off to- was that the dating of rocks involved a circular reasoning. And The very quotes from EB that you use (and many more that you somehow, um, neglect to mention) disprove your 'circular' BS. They specifically say that the fossils were used to determine the relative age of the layers. Then they explain all the methods used to try and determine an absolute age of the layers (sedimentation rates, salt deposition etc) before radio dating, with little success save to decide on the Earth's old age: many millions of years (and yes, it does matter how many millions, foo, if you are a scientist looking for the truth -if you are an ignorant creo, and every date other than 6000 years more or less is an atheist lie, of course it doesn't). And it explains how they did that for decades before ToE appeared on the scene, and continued to do so untill RM dating provided a reliable dating mechanism. Now: Did you see any circularity in all that? Moreso, did you see any "calculation of mutation rates" to establish a date for rocks containing fossils, in all that? No. Because it exists nowhere save in the fading light of your deluded mind. But you know all that, of course, since you were the first to read it. You just choose to ignore it. How christianly honest of you.
Got anything else?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Well, Faid, I wouldn't expect you to get it ... that's OK. I'm sure you're a good doctor in spite of your "Evo glasses" ...
And yes, I have lots more!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
SFBDave, what did Encyclopedia Britannica say about the time required for formation of limestone, huh?
You ever gonna give us the details of how the buried limestone canyon in China was formed, and then covered by 17000 feet of sediment?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Well, Faid, I wouldn't expect you to get it ... that's OK. I'm sure you're a good doctor in spite of your "Evo glasses" ...
And yes, I have lots more!
"Lots more," Dave? That's a relief. Because you haven't presented anything yet.
You know, I sent my brother a link to this thread. Here's his impression of Pinata Dave:
Quote
This is so hysterically funny, and a great example of how astonishingly ignorant this man is.
First, he pulls this quote from Talk Origins:
Quote
"The claim assumes life in its present form is a given; it applies not to life but to life only as we know it. The same outcome results if life is fine-tuned to the cosmos."
Then he comes back with his brain-dead response:
Quote
"Yes. Life in its present form IS a given. (This author is bright! )
No. You cannot fine tune life, then build a cosmos. Sorry, doesn't work that way. You know ... gotta do site prep then build the foundation before you build the house. See? (Wow, these are convincing rebuttals, guys. I can see why you got taken in! )
In Dave's mind, the author of the first quote is implying that life came before the universe. Can he really be that stupid? Even someone as dumb as me can see that the author meant that the universe came first, then life arrived, and "fine-tuned" itself to its environment, i.e., the universe. Where in that first statement does it say, or even imply, that life came before the universe was created?
Again, the combination of sarcastic, I'm smarter than you, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyhah arrogance with stupendous, earth-shattering ignorance.
What a jackass.
Yep. You're really winning the lurkers over with your tripe, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Online encyclopedias put to the test http://www.theage.com.au/news....45.html By Stephen Cauchi, December 15, 2005 ...According to a study by journal Nature, Wikipedia stuff-ups - such as this week's one on President Kennedy's assassination - are "the exception rather than the rule", and the resource is almost as accurate as the online Encyclopaedia Britannica, at least when it comes to science. Nature took stories from Wikipedia and Britannica on 42 science-related topics and submitted them to experts for review. The experts were not told which encyclopedia the stories were from. "The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, around three," according to Nature. The entries covered topics including Agent Orange, quarks and synchrotrons. "Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia … but reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica respectively."
(The reps of Encyclopedia Brittanica were not happy to find that their editors had failed to find errors by their writers, and filed some rebuttal to the Nature claims, but the fact is that any person that relies solely on popularized condensations of science is going to propagate the errors contained therein.)
While factually correct re: the chronology of a scientific acceptance of deep time vs. radiometric dataing, the main point that you (and Creationists) are desperately trying to make here is that deep time arose from the ToE's need for it (i.e., "Evolution requires millions of years, so...").
A couple things to point out here ... 1) Good on you for acknowledging that I am factually correct about something ... this may be the start of a new era for you.
Yes, Dave, congratulations. You managed to make a rather simple, obvious point (i.e., that we already thought the Earth was millions of years old before we were able to harness radioisotopes for dating purposes) without lying or being in error. Props. Unfortunately, within the same sentence, you linked an otherwise sound fact to a wild argument that it didn't support in the slightest (i.e., that we thought the Earth was millions of years old because this was neccessary for evolution), so I can't give you full points. I've decided that the best compromise is to make the ribbon I send you for this momentous achievement a blue one. See, blue is for first place in the States (so you can feel nice and proud), but second place in Canada (red is first here, so my conscience is clear).
Oh, and I'll just continue to ignore the rest of your irrelevant bullshit that tries to distract from the actual points of discussion, mmmkay?
the fact is that any person that relies solely on popularized condensations of science is going to propagate the errors contained therein.
Most people would be happy with the pre-made errors. Not Davey! He puts his nose to the wheel and his shoulder to the grindstone, and he doesn't rest until he's added bizarre and spectacular errors of his own. That's the kind of plucky, can-do spirit and determination that led us into the Great Triumph in Iraq.
RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (ROE) I need to say right up front that my reasoning with respect to this "Creator God Hypothesis" DOES NOT follow the Deductive Framework. I have stated prior to giving my hypothesis, that I cannot provide a watertight proof for God and I don't believe anyone can, so people are correct in saying that my hypothesis would fail using the deductive schema. However, we CAN use Abductive Reasoning then draw an Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), and as Meyer points out below, this gives us powerful support for believing that the "Creator God Hypothesis" may in fact be true. So there is good news, O Seeker of Truth! There is massive support for the existence of God and for the literal truth revealed in the Bible. Stay with me through all of my points and I will show it to you in terms you can understand!
Quote
Chris Hyland Posted: May 01 2006,08:36 A few pointers:
To save you some time, we don't need evidence that there was an ice age.
If you could give us something that we haven't heard a hundred times before I'm sure we'd all be very grateful.
If you're going to present this theory as an alternative to current science theories using abductive reasoning you need to show why it explains the data better than current theories. Just because your hypothesis also talks about the origin of the universe it does not mean it is automatically a better theory of the origin of species than evolution. --------------------------------- Occam's Toothbrush Posted: May 01 2006,08:38 [cue smart people who should know better taking afdave's moronic bait] ------------------------------------------------- Chris Hyland Posted: May 01 2006,08:46 I know but I have a day off and im bored. ---------------------------------- afdave Posted: May 01 2006,09:01
I agree completely ... I plan on going to great lengths to show exactly that. My Ice Age info will show that it was not a million (did I get that about right from ToE?) year Ice Age, but that it was relatively short, occurred right after the Great Flood, and helps to explain dinosaur extinction.
This was the way this all started.
Dave, all we have to do is show that the earth is older than 10k years and you lose. That blows your theory and then we go looking for better ones. Yours is out and we need to find one to fill its place.
A history of science class will show you that this has already taken place. Mitochondrial DNA sequencing of sharks never even needs to enter the picture. We don't need any advanced physics measuring red shift or various decay rates. We don't need the several hundreds of volumes of geologic investigation. We don't need to know jack shit about seafloor spreading, magnetic reversals, subduction zones, fault slip zones, specific chemistry of rocks or radiometric dating techniques.We don't need to know about paleontology, archaeology, paleobotany or even biology. We don't even need to know the origin of the portuguese fuckin laguage. All we need is core samples. We need ice core samples, dendrochronology, sediment core samples and volcanic eruption core samples. When they all match and all go over 10k years, your theory goes down the toilet where it belongs. And gues what? That's what happened.
Now that everyone else knows that your theory is wrong, they are released from that particular yoke and can go about looking for other information.
If you decide to do that, you have to know where the frontiers are. And, well, you need some science education to do that. About 15 years ago, I used to teach oceanography at Community College in Washington for a few extra bucks. I had a few creationist students come in but I never had a single one of them try to do a creationist experiment in lab. I never once mentioned religion and only a few students ever did. You know why? Because it doesn't get you anywhere in science. When you are looking at data, you don't get the luxury in a real science environment to speculate on the sky daddy. Because that is the end of the conversation. There is no more science to do. You have never done it, you don't know anyone who has and you are not qualified to speculate. I might ask you about the moral implication of a particular bible verse or maybe even the best routing equipment to use in our office. I might ask you questions about your travels, your air force experience, your family, or even, if I felt particularly confident, your church. But I would not ask you questions about science. Because you have conclusively demontrated that you don't even get what science is.
But I won't ask you any of those other things now because you have proven yourself to be a liar, a bully, dangerous to kids and ridiculously stupid on top of all that.
Davey DIckhead, you are a very bad man.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
After we (laugh our asses off and) explain your unbelievable blooper to you in ten different ways, so that even a 5-year old would understand, what do you do? Do you admit your silly mistake?
A point well made since for people like AFD the only possibility they have of ever understanding it .....is AS A 5 year old.
Which is MY MISSION AFD to poison the minds of Fundy Spawn with the TRUTH.
Yes AFD THAT is my intention to further the evil athiest plot to rule the world ......oh you may fool yourself that you are winning but look at the results..... WE HAVE ALL THE SCIENTISTS .
Which means you lost.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
... just flush radiometric dating from your mind. Pretend ...
Flushing your mind is something you should do more often DDTTD.
Pretending you understand science has been exposed as a sham.
You cite EB because actual scientific articles bore you to tears. I noted that when Skeptic posted links to help you. Real science is over your head.
You're getting desperate. You're goal was much more difficult and time consuming than you thought it would be.
Beating your broken drum about how 30% of UK juveniles (or anywhere else not controlled by a fundamentalist theocracy) believe in YEC is hilarious, they are clearly the lowest those figures have ever been.
When was the last time a YEC case won in court DDTTD? 1925?
It's time, as so many others have pointed out, for you to PROVE YOUR HYPOTHESIS.
Moron, fool, willfully ignorant liar, name the place and I'll call you that in public DDTTD.
Dave, all we have to do is show that the earth is older than 10k years and you lose. That blows your theory and then we go looking for better ones. Yours is out and we need to find one to fill its place.
Well you could say that all we need to do to show that bible inerrancy is just plain silly is to show that the city of Tyre is not a barren rock. Tyre is and always been populated, and there is a nice thriving little city there. The bible is wrong, QED.
But back around 40 pages or so, Davie-D even tried to pretend that the city WAS a barren rock. This must come as a suprise to the families that have lived in Tyre for generations upon generations ...
Beating your broken drum about how 30% of UK juveniles (or anywhere else not controlled by a fundamentalist theocracy) believe in YEC is hilarious, they are clearly the lowest those figures have ever been.
Reading comprehension, Crabby. Again...
Quote
Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, who gave a public lecture on "Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong" at the time, has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. "Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist or delude themselves that they are." http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1844478,00.html
Our buddy Steve Jones is lamenting that the number of creationist students has INCREASED, Crabby. Read it several times if you need to.
Crabby ...
Quote
Moron, fool, willfully ignorant liar, name the place and I'll call you that in public DDTTD.
OK. My church. As soon as possible. When will you be here?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
OK. My church. As soon as possible. When will you be here?
Yeah Crabby ...H3ll's Teeth Church run by Cyclops Dave.... I think you should show up.
When they herd the sheep in, all you have to do is gut one and put it's skin over you to get out and your scott free.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
HOW ARE THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE DATED ... REALLY?
I have claimed that the PRIMARY means for dating the layers of the Grand Staircase is ... FOSSILS. You can quibble all you want to about what EB meant by the word "Primary," the fact is, FOSSILS ARE PRIMARY in every sense of the word as I will illustrate again today.
This claim is getting more and more support with each new article I read, in spite of the twisting of my quotes by Faid, the funny pictures posted by OA and others, and the latest tactic of trying to discredit Encyclopedia Britannica! Nice try, Deadman! Are you getting desperate? Backed into a corner, perhaps?
Today I will give you an inside look into attempts to date a layer radiometrically ... this is a particularly relevant example because it involves sedimentary layers and, volcanic deposits and fossils -- just like the situation we have with the Grand Staircase.
Here is a summary of the surprising things I learned from this story ... (actually I was not surprised, but YOU should be) ...
* Richard Leakey found a very modern looking human fossil (KNM-ER 1470) - the oldest yet he hoped. * Initial dating attempts of the KBS Tuff (a layer containing ash just above skull 1470 gave an incredible 212 - 230 my! Yeah, Richard that would be pretty old! Of course, this would never do ... everyone knows humans didn't exist 230 mya!! * So ... the ones who came up with this date, Fitch and Miller, requested new samples and came up with 2.61 my. This was later confirmed with around 4 additional "independent" studies * This caused a great ruckus because the Paleos wanted Skull 1470 to be younger. Why? Because 2.61 my didn't fit their Human Evolution Fairy Tale--the date was too old. Also because they considered Richard Leakey to be a 2nd rate Paleo since he didn't go to college and learned his trade from his parents. They didn't want him getting all the recognition that comes with being the discoverer of the world's oldest human fossil. * So there was a 10 year controversy and finally a whole new round of samples were dated. What date they come up with? 1.87 my. 800,000 years younger!! That's like 30 - 40 % different results depending on how you calculate your % !!! * During all this, Ian McDougall in Nature reported "a distressingly large range of ages" when considering previous dating. He reported Fitch and Miller got everything from 0.52 to 2.64my on one set of concentrates and 8.43 to 17.5my on another clast before settling on the 2.62 my figure. He also accused Curtis et. al. of disregarding results of 2.01-6.9my before settling on 1.6my - 1.8my. * After "calling the other kettles black" then, the "pot" -- Ian McDougall--then stated how remarkably concordant his own dates were at 1.9 Myr after removing from consideration samples that gave ages of 4.11 and 7.46 Myr. !!!!!!!!!!!!! * With this clear victory of philosophy over observation, they then used the concordance of their results and agreement with the results of the study by Gleadow to give validity to their date for the KBS Tuff.
Now you can go read ALL of Marvin Lubenow's excellent article explaining this hilarious "Evobot Story" here ...
Now my question to you all ... would I discover a similar story if I dug into Deadman's supposed radiometric dates of various layers of the Grand Staircase? I bet I would! I bet I would find, first of all, that MANY discordant dates have been obtained for those layers and the ones that were not "right" (defined as fitting in with the currently accepted evolutionary fossil sequence) were simply rejected with some scientific sounding explanation. I can tell you this ... I intend to keep digging and it will be interesting to see what I find!!
******************************
Where are we in My Hypothesis? We are on The Flood and I am in the process of showing that the conventional explanation for rock layers like the Grand Staircase is woefully wrong. The better explanation is ...
THE GREAT FLOOD OF NOAH
Stay tuned for more!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
A little mythology may be of use here Crabby Cyclops (play)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Prediction: Faid or Aftershave will come with trumpets and say "You can't even do math ... see? Your whole hypothesis is a joke!" So let me correct my little irrelevant math error ... 2.61my - 1.87my = 740,000 year difference (I said 800,000 and in doing so committed the horrendous atrocity of approximating)
Also, did everyone catch the main point of my post? Let's clearly state it again ...
WITH THE DATING OF THE KBS TUFF, FOSSILS WERE KING AND THE ACCEPTED HUMAN EVOLUTION TIME SCALE WON THE DAY AFTER A TEN-YEAR ARGUMENT. THE EVOLUTION FAIRY TALE IS ALWAYS KING. ALL DATING RESULTS ARE JUDGED IN REFERENCE TO THE EVO-FANTASY TIME SCALE.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So is it easier to win debates when you get to be the one to define words? Cause I notice that seems to be a popular tactic. I mean, there's the whole "just a theory" bullshit that gets thrown around by people who don't understand the scientific use of the word 'theory". And now we've got Davipoo here still not quite able to grasp the geologic use of the word "primary" it would seem.
So therefore, I've decided that two can play at this game.
I choose to define the phrase "Stay tuned for more!!!" as "I'm a completely ignorant, disingenuous, and dishonest person and my ideas have been destroyed several times over."
Prove what you just said, if you have the guts and you're not just a whiny coward, or kindly STFU.
PROVE it, liar. Back up your big mouth with some guts. Show me that you have not used the phrase "the initial, or primary, age" from your quotes to say that the rocks are dated PRIMARILY by fossils (an assertion that only reveals your immense ignorance on these things). Show me how I "twisted" your quote when I pointed that out.
Are you man enough to do it, dave?
Well?
Or are you intent on proving to everyone here that you are a lying coward instead?
All you can do is squeak a few more "I bet..." non-arguments, and bail out of the issues you yourself brought up, now that the heat got too much for you, crying "ooh ooh we were talking about the FLUD, why not get back to it, shall we?"
But I won't let you get away with it this time.
Come on, dave. Act like a grownup for once, and PROVE your ridiculous accusations against me.
And if you can't, be a man and admit for once in your life that you were WRONG.
You think you're up to that extreme challenge?
Your (supposed) Christian honesty and humility, against your overbloated EGO... I wonder who will win?
(um, not really, I don't.)
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
* Richard Leakey found a very modern looking human fossil (KNM-ER 1470) - the oldest yet he hoped. * Initial dating attempts of the KBS Tuff (a layer containing ash just above skull 1470 gave an incredible 212 - 230 my! Yeah, Richard that would be pretty old! Of course, this would never do ... everyone knows humans didn't exist 230 mya!! * So ... the ones who came up with this date, Fitch and Miller, requested new samples and came up with 2.61 my. This was later confirmed with around 4 additional "independent" studies * This caused a great ruckus because the Paleos wanted Skull 1470 to be younger. Why? Because 2.61 my didn't fit their Human Evolution Fairy Tale--the date was too old. Also because they considered Richard Leakey to be a 2nd rate Paleo since he didn't go to college and learned his trade from his parents. They didn't want him getting all the recognition that comes with being the discoverer of the world's oldest human fossil. * So there was a 10 year controversy and finally a whole new round of samples were dated. What date they come up with? 1.87 my. 800,000 years younger!! That's like 30 - 40 % different results depending on how you calculate your % !!! * During all this, Ian McDougall in Nature reported "a distressingly large range of ages" when considering previous dating. He reported Fitch and Miller got everything from 0.52 to 2.64my on one set of concentrates and 8.43 to 17.5my on another clast before settling on the 2.62 my figure. He also accused Curtis et. al. of disregarding results of 2.01-6.9my before settling on 1.6my - 1.8my. * After "calling the other kettles black" then, the "pot" -- Ian McDougall--then stated how remarkably concordant his own dates were at 1.9 Myr after removing from consideration samples that gave ages of 4.11 and 7.46 Myr. !!!!!!!!!!!!! * With this clear victory of philosophy over observation, they then used the concordance of their results and agreement with the results of the study by Gleadow to give validity to their date for the KBS Tuff.
Now you can go read ALL of Marvin Lubenow's excellent article explaining this hilarious "Evobot Story" here ...
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Faid, I prove all kinds of things to you every day with good quotes from reputable sources and you simply take them and twist them beyond recognition ... now why would I waste the time to prove that you do that when I've already seen that you won't accept any proof I give you no matter how solid it is?
I've got an agenda here ... to find out the truth about various issues for myself ... and that agenda is proceeding nicely!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Today I will give you an inside look into attempts to date a layer radiometrically ... this is a particularly relevant example because it involves sedimentary layers and, volcanic deposits and fossils -- just like the situation we have with the Grand Staircase.
Here is a summary of the surprising things I learned from this story ... (actually I was not surprised, but YOU should be) ...
* Richard Leakey found a very modern looking human fossil (KNM-ER 1470) - the oldest yet he hoped. * Initial dating attempts of the KBS Tuff (a layer containing ash just above skull 1470 gave an incredible 212 - 230 my! Yeah, Richard that would be pretty old! Of course, this would never do ... everyone knows humans didn't exist 230 mya!! * So ... the ones who came up with this date, Fitch and Miller, requested new samples and came up with 2.61 my. This was later confirmed with around 4 additional "independent" studies * This caused a great ruckus because the Paleos wanted Skull 1470 to be younger. Why? Because 2.61 my didn't fit their Human Evolution Fairy Tale--the date was too old. Also because they considered Richard Leakey to be a 2nd rate Paleo since he didn't go to college and learned his trade from his parents. They didn't want him getting all the recognition that comes with being the discoverer of the world's oldest human fossil. * So there was a 10 year controversy and finally a whole new round of samples were dated. What date they come up with? 1.87 my. 800,000 years younger!! That's like 30 - 40 % different results depending on how you calculate your % !!! * During all this, Ian McDougall in Nature reported "a distressingly large range of ages" when considering previous dating. He reported Fitch and Miller got everything from 0.52 to 2.64my on one set of concentrates and 8.43 to 17.5my on another clast before settling on the 2.62 my figure. He also accused Curtis et. al. of disregarding results of 2.01-6.9my before settling on 1.6my - 1.8my. * After "calling the other kettles black" then, the "pot" -- Ian McDougall--then stated how remarkably concordant his own dates were at 1.9 Myr after removing from consideration samples that gave ages of 4.11 and 7.46 Myr. !!!!!!!!!!!!! * With this clear victory of philosophy over observation, they then used the concordance of their results and agreement with the results of the study by Gleadow to give validity to their date for the KBS Tuff.
Now you can go read ALL of Marvin Lubenow's excellent article explaining this hilarious "Evobot Story" here ...
When biostratigraphic and radiometric dating conflict, one or both is wrong, and real scientists dig in and find the error(s). That's not circular reasoning, it's the scientific method.
The KBS Tuff story is a fascinating one, illustrating how scientists continually cross-check results, require replication, don't give up on problems, and won't accept anything without strong evidence. Lubenow's presentation is eroneous and misleading.
Skull KNM-ER 1470 wasn't a real problem; 2.61 million years (not 2.3 million years, Davie-pie) was just barely possible with what we knew then, although it seemed unlikely. Pigs were the problem. We had (and have) lots and lots of East African pig fossils, correlated with each other and strata and radiometric dates. And the pig fossils below the KBS Tuff didn't fit. Yet, when multiple labs performed the dating, they mostlykept coming out with 2.61 million years (one lab came up with 1.8 or 1.6 million years). Creationists would give up; scientists didn't.
Scientist continued investigations, and discovered that the tuff was mixture of material that is older than the formation of the tuff and material that was formed when the tuff formed. They worked out repeatable and verifiable procedures for separating out the latter material, and dated it wih multiple independent methods in multiple labs, and found that the tuff was indeed about 1.8 million years old. They figured out and explained the errors that caused the 1.6 and 2.6 million year dates. Oh, and incidentally but not very important, skull KNM-ER 1470 was around 1.8 million years old, not 2.61 million years. All in all a triumph of science and the scientific method.
[b]Now my question to you all ... would I discover a similar story if I dug into Deadman's supposed radiometric dates of various layers of the Grand Staircase?
Nope.
Quote
I bet I would! I bet I would find, first of all, that MANY discordant dates have been obtained for those layers and the ones that were not "right" (defined as fitting in with the currently accepted evolutionary fossil sequence) were simply rejected with some scientific sounding explanation.
Nope. Nobody cares what you bet. Let's see what evidence and data you can present.
Quote
Where are we in My Hypothesis? We are on The Flood and I am in the process of showing that the conventional explanation for rock layers like the Grand Staircase is woefully wrong. The better explanation is ...
THE GREAT FLOOD OF NOAH
Stay tuned for more!!
Make sure you include your explanation of the paleosols, hardgrounds, dessication cracks, and animal trracks found throughout the Grand Staircase.
You can label it however you like, Improv. The result is the same whatever the intent, however honorable or dishonorable that may be. I would have to say that these guys probably have honorable intent and do not give much thought to how this looks to the outside world.
But the fact remains that the Dating Game is a game of falsehood -- discarding "bad" results and keeping "good" results.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You can label it however you like, Improv. The result is the same whatever the intent, however honorable or dishonorable that may be. I would have to say that these guys probably have honorable intent and do not give much thought to how this looks to the outside world.
But the fact remains that the Dating Game is a game of falsehood -- discarding "bad" results and keeping "good" results.
And again, bull. Your entire hypothesis hinges on the existence of an unsubstantiated global conspiracy to disprove the existence of God. But you are forced to assume it, becaue otherwise you would have no reason whatsoever to doubt the dating methods.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Faid, I prove all kinds of things to you every day with good quotes from reputable sources and you simply take them and twist them beyond recognition ... now why would I waste the time to prove that you do that when I've already seen that you won't accept any proof I give you no matter how solid it is?
I've got an agenda here ... to find out the truth about various issues for myself ... and that agenda is proceeding nicely!
So, all you can do is repeat your accusations of me "twisting" your quotes, when I specifically asked you to show me just how, otherwise you'd be a lying chickenshit coward?
...What can I say, then? dave, have you really no sence of decency?
Someone accuses a person of something. That person asks him to prove it. He says he doesn't have to prove anything, and repeats his claims.
dave, is this the kind of ethics you teach your children?
All your "solid proof" so far has been distortions, misconceptions, and blatant LIES... and yet you continue to degrade yourself and all you are supposed to stand for, with this slanderous, deceitful, and most of all, COWARDLY behavior?
I have no names to describe you, dave. You are beyond name-calling. You are truly pathetic.
So, I'll just have to take your refusal to back up your claims as another way of saying "My name is Dave, and I am a lying coward".
Your actions speak for you.
If that was your agenda, degrading your side with your unbelievably dishonest behavior, then congrats dave. You made your goal.
Just don't call your friends or family here to boast for your victory. Once I thought that would be funny; Now I would find it truly, truly sad.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Administer a modicum of narcissistic treatment (including verbal abuse) to the narcissist - and he/she is likely to vanish in a puff of indignant smoke. Narcissists shrivel, wither and die without Narcissistic Supply.
Humiliation, disagreement, criticism, comparison with others, mirroring the narcissist's behaviour - are all great ways of getting rid of narcissists.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Yeah, why? Because they are hard workers and Creos are lazy? No. Because 2.61my doesn't fit the "Evo Fairy Tale" ... 1.8 does.
Quote
and discovered that the tuff was mixture of material that is older than the formation of the tuff and material that was formed when the tuff formed.
Oh, oh, oh!! I see ... hmmm ... and they didn't know this before huh? In spite of the fact that multiple tests were performed and verified "independently"? Come on ... JonF! You'll go to any length, won't you!!
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They worked out repeatable and verifiable procedures for separating out the latter material, and dated it wih multiple independent methods in multiple labs, and found that the tuff was indeed about 1.8 million years old.
Yeah, I know I'm hearing that tired line a lot now that I'm really digging into this stuff--really convincing, Jon, after reading the REAL story for myself!
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They figured out and explained the errors that caused the 1.6 and 2.6 million year dates.
Yeah they sure did ... pretty funny story too ... wanna hear it again ...
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* During all this, Ian McDougall in Nature reported "a distressingly large range of ages" when considering previous dating. He reported Fitch and Miller got everything from 0.52 to 2.64my on one set of concentrates and 8.43 to 17.5my on another clast before settling on the 2.62 my figure. He also accused Curtis et. al. of disregarding results of 2.01-6.9my before settling on 1.6my - 1.8my. * After "calling the other kettles black" then, the "pot" -- Ian McDougall then stated how remarkably concordant his own dates were at 1.9 Myr after removing from consideration samples that gave ages of 4.11 and 7.46 Myr. !!!!!!!!!!!!! * With this clear victory of philosophy over observation, they then used the concordance of their results and agreement with the results of the study by Gleadow to give validity to their date for the KBS Tuff.
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Oh, and incidentally but not very important,
Hey, Jon ... "incidentally" MEANS "not very important" ... you're from MIT, right?
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skull KNM-ER 1470 was around 1.8 million years old, not 2.61 million years.
Oh .. thank you for clarifying that -- never mind that I explained that already -- nice try, though, pretending that I missed that detail ...
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All in all a triumph of science and the scientific method.
Er ... all in all a triumph of "The Evo-Fairy Tale is King of the Hill" no matter how wildly discordant the results of radiometric dating happen to be.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
trying to discredit Encyclopedia Britannica! Nice try, Deadman! Are you getting desperate? Backed into a corner, perhaps?
What I did was post a news report about a study by the peer-reviewed journal Nature about errors found in both Wikipedia and the online Encyclopedia Britannica. *I* did not try to discredit either of those, but instead raised this caution:
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the fact is that any person that relies solely on popularized condensations of science is going to propagate the errors contained therein
2. AirHead cites the well-known story of the KBS Tuff and says:
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Now my question to you all ... would I discover a similar story if I dug into Deadman's supposed radiometric dates of various layers of the Grand Staircase? I bet I would! I bet I would find, first of all, that MANY discordant dates have been obtained for those layers and the ones that were not "right" (defined as fitting in with the currently accepted evolutionary fossil sequence) were simply rejected with some scientific sounding explanation.
(A) Again, i merely reported the dates, they are not "mine." (B) You lack the requisite cognitive skills to do what you claimed above, Dave. Maybe if you found a blind, drunken and Korsakoff Syndrome-afflicted macaque, this would help you. (C ) Take up my gentleman's agreement on this matter and we will see if your macaque brain can cash the "check" written by your alligator mouth. (D) The KBS Tuff story is recounted at Talk Origins http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD031.html and is used as an example, in University classrooms today, on the difficulties in dating specific materials. Recent studies such as Brown, Francis; Bereket Haileab and Ian McDougall (2006) Sequence of Tuffs Between the KBS Tuff and the Chari Tuff in the Turkana Basin, Kenya and Ethiopia. Journal of the Geological Society Volume 163, Issue 1, January (Full Text PDF, 20 pages, 379.6 KB available here ) continue to demonstrate the unbiased accuracy of the dating arrived at during the 70's-early 1980's.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
...What can I say, then? dave, have you really no sence of decency?
I can't tell you what to say ... I can tell you what to DO ... GO AWAY if you don't like how I operate. No one forced you to come here.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Unsurprisingly, Dave takes a beautiful example of the scientific process in action (warts and all), perverts it beyond recognition through juvenile rhetoric and bluster, then presents its progressive self-correction as inferior to his rigid dogma. Is anyone really convinced?
Not bloody likely, but on the off chance, consider the following:
1. The volcanic ash (tuff) in question contains volcanic sediments of several different ages. This makes it particularly difficult to date via RM. Dave, imagine I showed you a picture of my apartment and asked you to estimate when it was taken. If you went by the Victorian writing desk, you'd be off by more than a century. The dresser would get you closer, but still off by more than fifty years. The hideous panelling in one room might lead you to suspect the '70s. But no, you're a smart guy, right? You'd realize the broad range of dates possible in apartment furniture, and you'd look for the most recent item in the room that you could ascribe a date to. That LCD monitor is a good candidate -- we're probably talking within the last two years or so. But wait. That couch looks strikingly like IKEA's new line from the Spring of this year, which would date the photo from a few months ago. Success. Except...wait, look closer...the couch is actually reupholstered, which wrecks our last data point. Best go back to the LCD estimate. This is analogous to the tuff dating -- researchers were looking for an accurate date for the most juvenile sediments.
2. Given the difficulty in dating the tuff, which is a mundane deposit in a rather unremarkable corner of Africa, why did geologists bother? Could it be that it was really, really important that we accurately dated KNM-ER 1470? Might it be that we really wanted to know the truth concerning how old that hominid fossil was? Why would us fairy-tale tellers be so concerned with that? After all, we're just making this shit up right? And we already knew what its age HAD to be, didn't we? Think about it, Dave.
3. The flury of controversy surrounding KNM-ER 1470 (not because it ruined any fairy tale, but because the incoming dates conflicted with other established data) spawned dozens of scientific papers examining the various dates provided, comparing them against other relevant observations (and no, Davey, the "rate of favorable mutations" in the hominid line never entered into it), and, when discrepancies were found, tracking down the source of these discordant results. This search uncovered mis-calibrated balances, contamination with other materials (exact sources identified), and analytical errors that needed to be corrected. Now, Dave will have you believe that, if you think you've discovered something new about the world, but if, after checking your results against what is already known about the world and finding them in conflict, you immediately look for what you might have gotten wrong, is a sign of weakness. This is why he never does anything of the sort. The idea that one result against a million established contrary observations strongly suggests that the single result is anomalous would obviously make Dave's worldview explode, so he takes the exact opposite strategy (just read through the thread). Also note that if errors in the tuff dating could not be readily identified, the controversy would probably still be continuing. Something has to give, and it's normally the anomaly that proves to be exceptional or erroneous. Sure, science is most fun when the reverse is true. But that's rare, and doesn't tend to emerge from an encyclopedia article.
4. Scientists are human. There were personalities involved here, brewing the tempest in the teapot, as there always are (look at the Pluto debacle going on now).
5. Even the most recent proposed date Davey cites for the tuff is 30,000% older than the thousands of years Dave needs it to be. Kinda puts Dave's 30-40% in perspective, eh?
Where are we in My Hypothesis? We are on The Flood and I am in the process of showing that the conventional explanation for rock layers like the Grand Staircase is woefully wrong. The better explanation is ...
THE GREAT FLOOD OF NOAH
Stay tuned for more!!
Gee, Dave, your "flood" hypothesis would be an explanation (although hardly a good one, since it leaves most of the observations unexplained), except for the minor fact that it never happened. You still think you can get away with proposing a flood without finding any evidence for a source of water.
You might be able to get away with this crap with undereducated third-graders, but you can't get away with it here.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(a) Yes, but you believe them and spout them uncritically because they fit into your "religion" (b) Oh yeah? Strong words, them. We'll see about that. (c ) I won't take you up on THAT wager b/c I wouldn't trust the reports, but I AM considering another wager ... I'll consider it and possibly present it to you soon (Hint from the "macaque-brain": put a space after your "c's" when using parens and they won't show up looking like a copyright symbol ... just a hint to help maintain your smart image here at ATBC) (d) Waaa! Waaah! Radiometric dating is difficult!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Another situation similar to "dating the KBS Tuff" was that of the Monte Verde Paleoindian site in southern Chile. Eventually what had to happen was the proponents of the site (mainly Tom Dillehay, U. of Kentucky and Michael B. Collins, etc.) having to fly down a couple of planeloads of people to see and test the site themselves. The site is firmly dated at 12,500 BCE.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
dave, let's compare you and me for a minute- in the way we both appear in your mind.
I am a poor deluded atheist soul, doing, voluntarily or not, the devils work on Earth.
You are the brave champion of the Lord, fighting for the Truth, without any regard for yourself.
Now, let's look at our discussion...
You would expect me to hiss and spout lies and deceit, while you, armed with hot courage and cold reason, dismantle them one by one.
Now what do we truly see? We see YOU, evading and sliding, jumping from one point to another in a flash, ignoring arguments and distorting others. We see you misquoting sources, and when that is pointed out to you, accusing me of dishonest twisting. And when I ask you to support your accusation, you say you don't have to and repeat it.
Seriously, who seems to be doing who's Will here?
(Oh and, I know you'll say it's the other way around. It doesn't matter. Unlike you, I'm not talking so that others can be deceived, or to rejoice in my own words; I'm talking to you dave, and we both know that's the way things are. You know you lied, and you know I know it too.)
Think about this as well: Your "primary" goof was at first, after all, a simple misconception. An extremely silly misconception, yes, but nothing more. You could have simply said "whoops, I didn't read that correctly. Oh well, I still think blah blah", and that would be it for that issue. It would be bad for your ego, but you would have maintained some sincerity.
Instead, you chose to: a) completely ignore those that pointed out your mistake, and b) When you couldn't avoid it any longer, actually deny it and accuse others for misquoting!
See what you did? You went from a mistake to a deliberate LIE.
Now, did that lie help you in doing God's work? Hardly. It made it worse, in fact, since the quotes are there for everyone to see and realize that God's defender is lying.
What that lie did was helping you keep your immense pride, by refusing to admit to a mistake. And that was all.
So, you lied for your ego, dave. You made your side (the side of GOD) look bad, because you lied in your arrogance and pride.
Give this some thought.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
(a) Yes, but you believe them and spout them uncritically because they fit into your "religion" (b) Oh yeah? Strong words, them. We'll see about that. (c ) I won't take you up on THAT wager b/c I wouldn't trust the reports,
1.) I read the reports that the dates are taken from, AirHead...have you? No. So...tell m again how this fits my "religion?" 2.) "We'll see about that?" AirHead, there's not a lurker here that hasn't seen how incompetent you are, not to mention a liar and coward, as in : 3) Yeah, you won't take me up on a gentleman's agreement (see point 2)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
But the fact remains that the Dating Game is a game of falsehood -- discarding "bad" results and keeping "good" results.
Dave, you're an idiot.
(Normally, I don't go around accusing people in discussion groups of being "idiots," but I but if Dave doesn't deserve it, no one does.)
What the "dating game" really consists of is tossing out "wrong" results and keeping "right" results. You think there's something wrong with this?
If you're doing an experiment to determine the mass of the electron, and you get a bunch of different results, using different methodologies, and you get around half a megavolt for each one, and then you get one result that's 100 MeV, do you keep that result? Then you get another one that's only 15 keV. Do you keep that result too? Or do you try to figure what the deal is with the discordant results, that are way off what theory would predict?
If you're Pinata Dave, you just assume that if the Bible doesn't mention electrons, they probably don't exist anyway.
One other thing, Dave: do you think scientists give a fig what their results look like to the "outside world"? No, they don't. They care whether their results can survive the crucible of reproducibility. Science is not a popularity contest. Not like we haven't told you that before.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Cheer up, Dave. There are lots of other people out there who don't understand radiometric dating. Just because you find it difficult is no reason to cry.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
...What can I say, then? dave, have you really no sence of decency?
I can't tell you what to say ... I can tell you what to DO ... GO AWAY if you don't like how I operate. No one forced you to come here.
And to top it all up, you get mad when we press you to stand up and be a man. Perfect.
dave, I WAS here. YOU came here, claiming you have a "scientific hypothesis" to demonstrate. You didn't say "I'm here to talk out of my ass, lie, distort and accuse you of being liars instead". If you had done so, believe me, noone would bother with you.
So we have every right to point the discordance in what you claimed you'll do and what you actually do. And we have every right to ask you to put up or shut up, if you accuse us of dishonesty.
If YOU, on the other hand, can't cope with that, the door is open. We only have our daily entertainment on the webs to miss.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Unsurprisingly, Dave takes a beautiful example of the scientific process in action (warts and all), perverts it beyond recognition through juvenile rhetoric and bluster, then presents its progressive self-correction as inferior to his rigid dogma. Is anyone really convinced?
Not bloody likely, but on the off chance, consider the following:
Incorygible IS slightly worried that I might be convincing. Thanks for the complement, Incorygible!
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1. The volcanic ash (tuff) in question contains volcanic sediments of several different ages.
Really, how do you know?
Quote
This makes it particularly difficult to date via RM.
Hmmmm ... and other sites AREN'T difficult? Wouldn't the sites in the Grand Staircase have similar difficulties?
Quote
Dave, imagine I showed you a picture of my apartment and asked you to estimate when it was taken. If you went by the Victorian writing desk, you'd be off by more than a century. The dresser would get you closer, but still off by more than fifty years. The hideous panelling in one room might lead you to suspect the '70s. But no, you're a smart guy, right? You'd realize the broad range of dates possible in apartment furniture, and you'd look for the most recent item in the room that you could ascribe a date to. That LCD monitor is a good candidate -- we're probably talking within the last two years or so. But wait. That couch looks strikingly like IKEA's new line from the Spring of this year, which would date the photo from a few months ago. Success. Except...wait, look closer...the couch is actually reupholstered, which wrecks our last data point. Best go back to the LCD estimate. This is analogous to the tuff dating -- researchers were looking for an accurate date for the most juvenile sediments.
Your analogies are TERRIBLE, Incorygible. Think about what a HUGE blunder you just made ...
YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT I WOULD SELECT THE LCD MONITOR -- WHICH I ALREADY KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT!!!!! NAMELY, THAT IT IS VERY YOUNG. NOW HOW IN THE WORLD IS THIS ANALOGOUS? WE ARE SUPPOSED TO APPROACH A TUFF WITH AN OPEN MIND ABOUT THE DATE, RIGHT? AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO JUST TAKE A SAMPLE OF THE TUFF AND LET THE RESULTS FALL WHERE THEY MAY??? WHAT IS THIS "SELECT THE MOST JUVENILE SAMPLE" NONSENSE!! GIVE ME A BREAK. YOU ARE MAKING MY POINT FOR ME!!!!
Are you really so blind as to not see this lunacy??
Quote
2. Given the difficulty in dating the tuff, which is a mundane deposit in a rather unremarkable corner of Africa, why did geologists bother? Could it be that it was really, really important that we accurately dated KNM-ER 1470? Might it be that we really wanted to know the truth concerning how old that hominid fossil was? Why would us fairy-tale tellers be so concerned with that? After all, we're just making this shit up right? And we already knew what its age HAD to be, didn't we? Think about it, Dave.
Yeah. It's a great question. I asked myself that question this morning. Now I know the answer. And it's a pretty darn embarrassing answer for Evobots!!
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3. The flury of controversy surrounding KNM-ER 1470 (not because it ruined any fairy tale, but because the incoming dates conflicted with other established data) spawned dozens of scientific papers examining the various dates provided, comparing them against other relevant observations (and no, Davey, the "rate of favorable mutations" in the hominid line never entered into it),
Oh really? Then you tell ME how the Paleos came up with 1.0 or 1.5 or 1.8my or whatever it was they came up with!! And why the uproar with the 2.61 date??
Quote
and, when discrepancies were found, tracking down the source of these discordant results. This search uncovered mis-calibrated balances, contamination with other materials (exact sources identified), and analytical errors that needed to be corrected. Now, Dave will have you believe that, if you think you've discovered something new about the world, but if, after checking your results against what is already known about the world and finding them in conflict, you immediately look for what you might have gotten wrong, is a sign of weakness. This is why he never does anything of the sort.
Actually it is EXACTLY what I am doing right this minute. I'm questioning results.
Quote
The idea that one result against a million established contrary observations strongly suggests that the single result is anomalous would obviously make Dave's worldview explode, so he takes the exact opposite strategy (just read through the thread).
You're trying to tell me that this is an isolated case? I doubt it. I'm going to keep looking.
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Also note that if errors in the tuff dating could not be readily identified, the controversy would probably still be continuing.
No. It ended when the Paleos got happy. And the Paleos got happy when the date was 1.8, not 2.6, thank you.
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Something has to give, and it's normally the anomaly that proves to be exceptional or erroneous. Sure, science is most fun when the reverse is true. But that's rare, and doesn't tend to emerge from an encyclopedia article.
Yeah. Something gave, alright. They gave all those wildly discordant results to the TRASH CAN ... that's what gave!!
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4. Scientists are human. There were personalities involved here, brewing the tempest in the teapot, as there always are (look at the Pluto debacle going on now).
Yes. That's true. And history is full of examples of huge majorities of scientists that ended up being horrendously wrong about enormous issues. This is one of those issues, my friend!!
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5. Even the most recent proposed date Davey cites for the tuff is 30,000% older than the thousands of years Dave needs it to be. Kinda puts Dave's 30-40% in perspective, eh?
Make no mistake. I do not accept the 1.8my date. With dates ranging from 230my to 1.8my, why would I be such a fool? Because "all the scientists" are fools on this issue? No thanks. I'll stick to finding the truth regardless of what the masses of scientists happen to believe.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It's on the WEB AFD your Mommy was an Alchoholic in fact I think it was in EB PROVE ME wrong.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
So, you lied for your ego, dave. You made your side (the side of GOD) look bad, because you lied in your arrogance and pride.
Just as with the sham-artistry of Dembski, Behe, Phil Johnson, Hovind, et alia, the most evident link is thier massive ego ---ego unsupported by the level of work and evidence that would justify it.
It's interesting that they all substitute bloviation and rhetorical sleight-of-hand or even outright lying...rather than show how good they are by doing the actual work needed to support their contentions.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Think about this as well: Your "primary" goof was at first, after all, a simple misconception.
What "goof" are you referring to? I think I have already admitted any goofs I have made.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What the "dating game" really consists of is tossing out "wrong" results and keeping "right" results. You think there's something wrong with this?
Yeah. There's EVERYTHING wrong with it. How can you say RM dating is objective if you only select the dates that correspond to your theory? In this case Evolutionary theory?
Eric, you are proving my point that this whole game is a huge, stinking mess ... and you don't even realize it!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Something has to give, and it's normally the anomaly that proves to be exceptional or erroneous. Sure, science is most fun when the reverse is true. But that's rare, and doesn't tend to emerge from an encyclopedia article.
Yeah. Something gave, alright. They gave all those wildly discordant results to the TRASH CAN ... that's what gave!!
And Dave comes to this conclusion not by looking at any evidence, of course, but by assuming the existence of a global atheist conspiracy. Well done, Mr. Holmes. They would have gotten away with it for sure had it not been for your keen powers of imagination.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
What the "dating game" really consists of is tossing out "wrong" results and keeping "right" results. You think there's something wrong with this?
Yeah. There's EVERYTHING wrong with it. How can you say RM dating is objective if you only select the dates that correspond to your theory? In this case Evolutionary theory?
Ok, genius. So which of the dates would you have used, and why?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Do you deny that you are deliberately obfuscating and that you have told intentional lies?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Think about this as well: Your "primary" goof was at first, after all, a simple misconception.
What "goof" are you referring to? I think I have already admitted any goofs I have made.
It's too late to play dumb, dave. You know #### well what I'm talking about: Me and many others explained your ludicrous mistake with the "primary age"- it's there for all to see. And so is your reaction when you saw it.
You had your chance to be sincere for once, to be a MAN, and you ditched it by accusing ME of twisting quotes- and when I asked you -I dared you- to show me how, you said you don't have to and repeated it.
It is too late to maintain any trace of dignity.
All you can do now is think about yourself, about who you are, and about what you are supposed to represent. Maybe then your Immense Ego will finally give way, and let a tiny bit of reason get through to you...
...But I doubt it.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
No problem, Dave, as by "complement", I presume you mean "that which provides something lacking". In this case, education.
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This makes it particularly difficult to date via RM.
Hmmmm ... and other sites AREN'T difficult? Wouldn't the sites in the Grand Staircase have similar difficulties?
Probably. For the really tricky ones, we'd want a good reason for going to the effort. Otherwise, we'd bracket the tough ones with the easy ones. What's your point again?
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Dave, imagine I showed you a picture of my apartment and asked you to estimate when it was taken. If you went by the Victorian writing desk, you'd be off by more than a century. The dresser would get you closer, but still off by more than fifty years. The hideous panelling in one room might lead you to suspect the '70s. But no, you're a smart guy, right? You'd realize the broad range of dates possible in apartment furniture, and you'd look for the most recent item in the room that you could ascribe a date to. That LCD monitor is a good candidate -- we're probably talking within the last two years or so. But wait. That couch looks strikingly like IKEA's new line from the Spring of this year, which would date the photo from a few months ago. Success. Except...wait, look closer...the couch is actually reupholstered, which wrecks our last data point. Best go back to the LCD estimate. This is analogous to the tuff dating -- researchers were looking for an accurate date for the most juvenile sediments.
Your analogies are TERRIBLE, Incorygible. Think about what a HUGE blunder you just made ...
YOU ARE TELLING ME THAT I WOULD SELECT THE LCD MONITOR -- WHICH I ALREADY KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT!!!!! NAMELY, THAT IT IS VERY YOUNG. NOW HOW IN THE WORLD IS THIS ANALOGOUS? WE ARE SUPPOSED TO APPROACH A TUFF WITH AN OPEN MIND ABOUT THE DATE, RIGHT? AREN'T WE SUPPOSED TO JUST TAKE A SAMPLE OF THE TUFF AND LET THE RESULTS FALL WHERE THEY MAY??? WHAT IS THIS "SELECT THE MOST JUVENILE SAMPLE" NONSENSE!! GIVE ME A BREAK. YOU ARE MAKING MY POINT FOR ME!!!!
Are you really so blind as to not see this lunacy??
You think about it, Dave. You're saying that because we can date the LCD, we can't use it to date the room, and the analogy doesn't apply? Yes, once you date the LCD (in this case, in advance), you know it's very young. Since it's sitting in my apartment when the picture is taken, the picture must be young. What the #### is your point, because that one's mine! Maybe yours is that we're not allowed to use that which is known to figure out that which is unknown? That maintaining an "open mind" means emptying it of everything else we have learned, and all possible points of comparison or correlation with known data? This from a guy who uses the bible as the arbiter of what constitutes evidence? That's cute, Davey.
All of the objects I describe analogously (including the LCD) are SAMPLES taken from the apartment and DATED. You have, of course, projected your inane misconceptions of knowing the dates before we begin onto the analogy (which is hardly a problem), but it works just as well if you didn’t know a thing about any piece of furniture until you examine all of it and try to place a date on it. Knowing the approximate dates of LCDs, Victorian furniture, etc., from prior experience hardly invalidates the method for dating the PICTURE. Once accurately dated, the most recent sample of everything in the room gives the best estimate of the date of the picture. In other words, the only blunder is your own, by continually projecting that we know the dates of things before we start. Also note that you have once again suggested that anything we know from other systems (for example, the relative age of older rocks in the area of the tuff) cannot be used when dating a new system without introducing bias or circularity. Might I suggest you think about this a bit harder?
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2. Given the difficulty in dating the tuff, which is a mundane deposit in a rather unremarkable corner of Africa, why did geologists bother? Could it be that it was really, really important that we accurately dated KNM-ER 1470? Might it be that we really wanted to know the truth concerning how old that hominid fossil was? Why would us fairy-tale tellers be so concerned with that? After all, we're just making this shit up right? And we already knew what its age HAD to be, didn't we? Think about it, Dave.
Yeah. It's a great question. I asked myself that question this morning. Now I know the answer. And it's a pretty darn embarrassing answer for Evobots!!
That doesn't even make any sense. You must still be a little light-headed from the seething caps-locked diatribe in the prior paragraph.
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3. The flury of controversy surrounding KNM-ER 1470 (not because it ruined any fairy tale, but because the incoming dates conflicted with other established data) spawned dozens of scientific papers examining the various dates provided, comparing them against other relevant observations (and no, Davey, the "rate of favorable mutations" in the hominid line never entered into it),
Oh really? Then you tell ME how the Paleos came up with 1.0 or 1.5 or 1.8my or whatever it was they came up with!! And why the uproar with the 2.61 date??
Because they conflicted with the DATING of other fossils, Dave. Pigs, mostly. That has ZERO to do with your "rates of mutation" bullshit. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Look it up if you're curious.
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and, when discrepancies were found, tracking down the source of these discordant results. This search uncovered mis-calibrated balances, contamination with other materials (exact sources identified), and analytical errors that needed to be corrected. Now, Dave will have you believe that, if you think you've discovered something new about the world, but if, after checking your results against what is already known about the world and finding them in conflict, you immediately look for what you might have gotten wrong, is a sign of weakness. This is why he never does anything of the sort.
Actually it is EXACTLY what I am doing right this minute. I'm questioning results.
Sure you are, Davey. You're performing an honest, objective comparison of your data against other data. We believe you. Really.
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The idea that one result against a million established contrary observations strongly suggests that the single result is anomalous would obviously make Dave's worldview explode, so he takes the exact opposite strategy (just read through the thread).
You're trying to tell me that this is an isolated case? I doubt it. I'm going to keep looking.
As it happens, it's not an isolated case in general, but the fact that you are going to "keep looking" for others suggests it was an isolated case FOR YOU when you brought it up. Yet in you came, full of piss and vinegar, ready to overturn the entire field of RM dating. No surprise (think guinea pigs, helium, etc.). You cherry-pick any anomolous case you can find that you (mistakenly) think supports your ludicrous notions, and brandish it as a weapon against millions of other data points. It's your MO, Davey.
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Also note that if errors in the tuff dating could not be readily identified, the controversy would probably still be continuing.
No. It ended when the Paleos got happy. And the Paleos got happy when the date was 1.8, not 2.6, thank you.
It ended when the anomalies were explained and previously discordant results converged on 1.8 million years. But you go ahead and believe that those jackbooted paleontologists were busy knocking down doors.
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Something has to give, and it's normally the anomaly that proves to be exceptional or erroneous. Sure, science is most fun when the reverse is true. But that's rare, and doesn't tend to emerge from an encyclopedia article.
Yeah. Something gave, alright. They gave all those wildly discordant results to the TRASH CAN ... that's what gave!!
No, Dave, that's your methodology. Every piece of data from geology, paleontology, biology, linguistics, cosmology, etc., into the trash can if it doesn't fit your worldview. Scientists actually figure out why results are anomalous, as they did in this case.
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4. Scientists are human. There were personalities involved here, brewing the tempest in the teapot, as there always are (look at the Pluto debacle going on now).
Yes. That's true. And history is full of examples of huge majorities of scientists that ended up being horrendously wrong about enormous issues. This is one of those issues, my friend!!
Perhaps (always the possiblility), but I doubt it. And I'm certainly not about to take the bald assertion of someone with your track record when it comes to being horrendously wrong about enormous issues. Nor will I take the merely slightly better track record of religious prescription concerning the natural world.
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5. Even the most recent proposed date Davey cites for the tuff is 30,000% older than the thousands of years Dave needs it to be. Kinda puts Dave's 30-40% in perspective, eh?
Make no mistake. I do not accept the 1.8my date. With dates ranging from 230my to 1.8my, why would I be such a fool? Because "all the scientists" are fools on this issue? No thanks. I'll stick to finding the truth regardless of what the masses of scientists happen to believe.
So scientists "throw out" (read: revise) a few values (after explaining why), and they're fools. You throw out all values, with no valid explanation, and you have the truth. Got it.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
What the "dating game" really consists of is tossing out "wrong" results and keeping "right" results. You think there's something wrong with this?
Yeah. There's EVERYTHING wrong with it. How can you say RM dating is objective if you only select the dates that correspond to your theory? In this case Evolutionary theory?
Eric, you are proving my point that this whole game is a huge, stinking mess ... and you don't even realize it!!
No, Dave, there's nothing wrong with it, and here's why:
Radiometric dating is not done in a vacuum, you loser. Radiometric dating is just one method of dating (we've given you half a dozen other ones, including index fossils, ice cores, lake-bed varves, stratigraphy, paleomagnetism, dendrochronology, etc). All of those dating methods must be in concordance. In case you haven't noticed, Pinata Dave, there is an external reality out there. All these dating methods are an attempt to discern what that reality is. The reason the Theory of Evolution is solid science, and Creationism isn't, is because it's an over-arching and coherent view of that reality which can account for all observation, not just a few bits and pieces here and there, tacked together in an entirely ad-hoc manner, like your Creationism.
Let's take an example. Let's say you find a fossil of an extinct therapsid. You try to date the rock it's embedded in, and you get an RM date of 335 mya. Now, you know from half a dozen entirely separate and independent methods that there were no therapsids walking around 335 mya. So you know, for a fact, without even looking any further, that your date is wrong. In the same way that you'd know a date determined for a hominid fossil of 260 (or even 60) mya is wrong.
So you have to find out why your date is wrong. Did you make unwarranted assumptions about the radiometric date being the "primary" date for that fossil (go try to figure out what "primary date" means in this context, Dave, because you still don't know). Perhaps you screwed up with your RM technique. Perhaps you didn't fully understand the geology of the area, mistakenly associated your RM sample with the fossil in question. In any event, you know, from multiple independent lines of evidence, that your RM date is wrong, at least with respect to the age of the fossil.
This is what's known as "confirming your evidence," Dave, and it is exactly what you have never gotten, and will never get, about science. Individual pieces of evidence aren't evaluated in isolation. They are evaluated is one part of a whole mosaic of data. They need to be cross-related to a huge sample of additional data (in this example, your fossil would be compared to thousands of other fossils, not just similar fossils, but other fossils with traits that are more primitive, and additional ones with traits that are more derived, from your fossil), and that additional data is given more credence, not less, if it's from a completely independent source. This is why science is self-correcting, Dave, and it's why scientists give credence to their results.
Meanwhile, your stupid (insanely, fantastically, monumentally stupid) "Global Catastrophic Flood Hypothesis" cannot be cross-correlated with any evidence whatsoever, which is why real scientists, and people like myself who are not real scientists but who at least have an inkling of how science works, know with one hundred percent certainty that your flood never happened.
And why do you think it's a big win for your side, Dave, to point out that radiometric dating is inherently difficult? Lots of things about science are inherently difficult. Do you have any idea how much effort it took to detect the Top quark? Does that difficulty lend credence to the notion that top quarks don't actually exist? Of course not! Radiometric dating is a complex and exacting process that takes years of training and research to do right. And you think that you, with your undergraduate EE, are qualified to dispute the results of radiometric dating that have been confirmed over and over again by experts in the field? Your stupidity is rivalled only by your collosal (and entirely unjustifiable) arrogance.
Its your game that's the huge, stinking mess, Dave. It's your game that is infested with lies, misrepresentations, unfounded assumptions, irrational conclusions, special pleading, and unthinking adherence to thoroughly-discredited doctrines. The fact that you give it an ounce of credence merely demonstrates the ability of faith to cloud men's minds and to get them to believe the inherently unbelievable.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I'm going to come back to your silly comments about why my analogy doesn't work, because what I wrote above probably isn't clear enough. You know, don't you, that the reason I continually feed you analogies a child could understand is because I get a chuckle when you continually fail to understand them?
So let me spell it out for you. In the analogy above, the picture of the room (unknown date) is the tuff (also unknown date). The pieces of furniture within the picture of the room correspond to the samples of rock within the tuff that can be dated via RM. Now, pay attention here...the PROCESS of dating the furniture can simply involve looking at it and ascribing an estimated date. If we wanted to be complicated, we could look at serial numbers or carpenter signatures or whatever. The PROCESS of dating the actual rock samples is RM dating at the lab. From these respective processes, we get dates on all the furniture in the room and dates on all the RM-datable rock samples. Once we have those dates, we select the most recent as the best indicator of the date of the picture/tuff, as while our room/tuff can contain older material, it can't contain material not present when it was taken/laid down. DO YOU GET IT? It really has nothing to do with what we know about LCDs, etc., nor when we know it (i.e., before or after examining the picture doesn't matter).
Beating your broken drum about how 30% of UK juveniles (or anywhere else not controlled by a fundamentalist theocracy) believe in YEC is hilarious, they are clearly the lowest those figures have ever been.
Reading comprehension, Crabby. Again...
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Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, who gave a public lecture on "Why evolution is right and creationism is wrong" at the time, has been talking about evolutionary biology in schools for 20 years. For the first 10 of those he was lucky to find one student in 1,000 expressing creationist beliefs. "Now in any school I go to I meet a student who says they are a creationist or [B]delude themselves that they are."http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,1844478,00.html
Our buddy Steve Jones is lamenting that the number of creationist students has INCREASED, Crabby. Read it several times if you need to.
Crabby ...
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Moron, fool, willfully ignorant liar, name the place and I'll call you that in public DDTTD.
OK. My church. As soon as possible. When will you be here?
What's the address DDTTD?
When are you going to finish expounding on your own "Hypothesis"?
1. The volcanic ash (tuff) in question contains volcanic sediments of several different ages.
Really, how do you know?
Real scientists identified the components and showed how they could be identified and distinguished and separated, and published the results, and other real scientists replicated the results. Tha's how.
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This makes it particularly difficult to date via RM.
Hmmmm ... and other sites AREN'T difficult?
Most aren't. That's the meaning of "particularly".
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Oh really? Then you tell ME how the Paleos came up with 1.0 or 1.5 or 1.8my or whatever it was they came up with!! And why the uproar with the 2.61 date??
Already answered, Davie. Pigs. Details at the first link I posted.
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and, when discrepancies were found, tracking down the source of these discordant results. This search uncovered mis-calibrated balances, contamination with other materials (exact sources identified), and analytical errors that needed to be corrected. Now, Dave will have you believe that, if you think you've discovered something new about the world, but if, after checking your results against what is already known about the world and finding them in conflict, you immediately look for what you might have gotten wrong, is a sign of weakness. This is why he never does anything of the sort.
Actually it is EXACTLY what I am doing right this minute. I'm questioning results.
But you are going no further than questioning and then flaunting ignorance. Unlike the real scientists who investigated the KBS Tuff.
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The idea that one result against a million established contrary observations strongly suggests that the single result is anomalous would obviously make Dave's worldview explode, so he takes the exact opposite strategy (just read through the thread).
You're trying to tell me that this is an isolated case? I doubt it. I'm going to keep looking.
Cool. Let us know when you have some data and evidence. Until then, admit you know nothing and have no reason to suspect such difficulties are common.
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Also note that if errors in the tuff dating could not be readily identified, the controversy would probably still be continuing.
No. It ended when the Paleos got happy. And the Paleos got happy when the date was 1.8, not 2.6, thank you.
No. It ended when the reasons for the disagreeing dates were found and verified, and when concordant dates were obtained with different methods in different labs and were replicated.
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Something has to give, and it's normally the anomaly that proves to be exceptional or erroneous. Sure, science is most fun when the reverse is true. But that's rare, and doesn't tend to emerge from an encyclopedia article.
Yeah. Something gave, alright. They gave all those wildly discordant results to the TRASH CAN ... that's what gave!!
Discarded results are discussed, and are only discarded when there are objective and verifiable reaons for discarding them. The KBS Tuff controversy proves that. You have no evidence of anything else.
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Yeah. There's EVERYTHING wrong with it. How can you say RM dating is objective if you only select the dates that correspond to your theory? In this case Evolutionary theory?
First you need to establish, with data, that anyone "only selects the dates that correspond to your theory". So far you're just blowing smoke. The KBS Tuff is evidence against your claim. No date was discarded without objective, verified, and replicated reasons; and the reasons were explicitly stated.
Yeah. There's EVERYTHING wrong with it. How can you say RM dating is objective if you only select the dates that correspond to your theory? In this case Evolutionary theory?
First you need to establish, with data, that anyone "only selects the dates that correspond to your theory". So far you're just blowing smoke. The KBS Tuff is evidence against your claim. No date was discarded without objective, verified, and replicated reasons; and the reasons were explicitly stated.
I think dave is just extending to science the same considerations he would to creationists. That is, that there is no problem with after the fact justifications and jury rigging to fit reality into the mold of the world view you have chosen.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Yeah, why? Because they are hard workers and Creos are lazy? No. Because 2.61my doesn't fit the "Evo Fairy Tale" ... 1.8 does.
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and discovered that the tuff was mixture of material that is older than the formation of the tuff and material that was formed when the tuff formed.
Oh, oh, oh!! I see ... hmmm ... and they didn't know this before huh?
They did know this before. From the Fitch and Miller paper:"From these results it was clear than an extraneous argon age discrpancy was present, and that it would only be possible to date this tuff by careful extraction of undoubtedly juvenile components for analysis." AFDave is wrong again.
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* During all this, Ian McDougall in Nature reported "a distressingly large range of ages" when considering previous dating. He reported Fitch and Miller got everything from 0.52 to 2.64my on one set of concentrates and 8.43 to 17.5my on another clast before settling on the 2.62 my figure.
Umm, didn't Fitch and Miller also report a distressingly large range of dates? It was their dates! McDougall was merely reading the original literature.
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He also accused Curtis et. al. of disregarding results of 2.01-6.9my before settling on 1.6my - 1.8my. * After "calling the other kettles black" then,the "pot" -- Ian McDougall then stated how remarkably concordant his own dates were at 1.9 Myr after removing from consideration samples that gave ages of 4.11 and 7.46 Myr. !!!!!!!!!!!!!
I diid not see any accusing. Nor was McDougall calling the other kettles black. That is purely your fevered imagination.
Question: How many dates of 1.9 Myr were there, compared to 4.11 and 7.46 (ON THE SAME SITE), from the other sites?
Question: What percent contamination by surrounding strata via erosion into a BASIN would cause the ages to be that large?
Question: What was the amount of argon contamination in Fitch and Miller's original samples, which led to a "a distressingly large range of ages"?
Surely you can make some more crap up to answer these questions.
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Oh, and incidentally but not very important,
Hey, Jon ... "incidentally" MEANS "not very important" ... you're from MIT, right?
Jeez, not only do you know nothing about Portugese, your inept command of language extends to English.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
AirMonkeyDave's argument is simplistic and stupid, much like AMDave in general. His claims appear to be:
1. Researchers in a relatively new region must accept the first dates they get, not attempt to determine if they fit known faunal ranges. If the initial dates are wildly discordant with any other data, tough, keep 'em.
I assume this should also apply to cops...the first suspect they see, they should arrest and prosecute only that person, even if the circumstantial evidence conflicts.
Auto mechanics should only look for the first likely cause to engine failure/problems and ignore any other indications.
Etc., etc. Basically, what AirMonkey wants is for everyone to be as brainless as he is
2. AirMonkeyDave says:
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the fact is, FOSSILS ARE PRIMARY in every sense of the word as I will illustrate again today. and , later,.....
WITH THE DATING OF THE KBS TUFF, FOSSILS WERE KING
(Note: I never cease to be amused that stupid people think bold caps make you more authoritative)
Dave says fossils take precedence over radiometric dates, yet, try as I might, I cannot think of a single family of critters that has not been re-dated since the advent of Radiometric Dating. So much for fossil stratigraphy/faunal analysis taking precedence.
3. AirMonkeyDave appears to be making lots of fallacies in his claims, but why not another? He says that if there were problems in dating the KBS Tuff, this means all other radiometric dates should have equal problems and be distrusted. Of course, none of AirMonkey's claims are reasonable or logical, but that's why we're all so amused at his antics -- our li'l pinheaded AirMonkey.
**points at AirHeadDaveHawkins and laughs and laughs**
Coward, liar and fool is a bad combo to be while going through life, boy. I hope you remember these warnings on the day one of your kids walks up to you and basically tells you that you lied to them and that you're scum.
Have a nice day.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Your objection to incorygible's analogy makes ABSOLUTELY. NO. SENSE. (Heh, trumped you there with the punctuation. That means I'm right! )
Yes, we already know the ages of the objects we use to determine the age of the room in the photo. How the #### else would you expect it to work? If you saw an indistinct mass of roughly pyramidal shape in the corner, how would that contribute to the age-determination? For all rational humans, it wouldn't. We don't know what it is; we don't know how old it is; we set it aside, pending further information.
You, on the other hand, ignore every single clearly depicted and readily identified object, seize upon that blur, declare it a shovelful from the DUNGPILE of ALL the KINDS and thus proof that THE FLOOD is documented fact and NOAH'S ARK sailed above this very point at a moment of ARK-cleaning, and therefore your Bible (an inaccurate copy of a non-existent original, as you've acknowledged) is literally and historically true, and thus all fields of scientific inquiry -- indeed, scientific method (or MENTHOL???) itself -- are null and void. You face opposition, a barrage of so-called facts ("How can it be crap from thousands of years ago when there's a 2006 calendar on the wall? No one, not even incoryigible, could be such a slovenly pig") but you are stalwart, BUTTressed by your faith and your CAPS-LOCK key.
Then, when another photograph from a different angle reveals that your sacred DUNGHEAP actually is a pile of laundry with a drycleaner's ticket from last week clearly visible, you declare that the entire foofaraw, all the detailed and well-documented counter-argument marshalled against your loopy supposition, is itself PROOF of your crackpot theory and everything associated with it.
I've never seen anything to match you, Dave, and I've taught English 101 at a land-grant university in the South. You're not simply irrational -- you're a-rational, a black hole of rationality. You are rational thought's antigen.
Stop it. For God's sake -- literally -- stop it. Your arrogance, rigidity, dismissiveness, (unwarranted) gloating, and narcissism; your preening and posturing; all your refusals to admit error, embrace humility, open yourself to others -- your performance here discredits and debases Christianity.
You're not simply irrational -- you're a-rational, a black hole of rationality. You are rational thought's antigen.
As I have discovered since the start of all this ID nonsense, AFD and the whole creo-nutcase movement are rationally irrational to the point of hyper-rationality.
If you asked AFD to do a literary analysis of say Kafka's "Metamorphosis" let alone the Flud Myth he just couldn't even begin.
His mind is physically wired only to accept objective facts, everything for him must be factualised(an internal cognitive reality that is projected onto the external world, essentially to reduce the existential pain of being...woe is me I'm going to die) and that is his weakest point.
For him the Flud IS fact, that is internal objective reality for him, the alternative for him is nihilism.
He simply is unable to trust his judgment of subjective matters, that has been removed from him by his strict adherence to worshiping his parents moral codes via the Bible. The book is his subjective measure and it is not sure about anything, to kill or not, any crazy view can be supported via the bible or any sacred text for that matter.
The sad thing is that nihilism IS the biggest single danger FROM Fundamentalists, if they can't make the world accept their view they invariably attempt to destroy it (before it destroys their reality), one way or the other. Think McVeigh and Bin Ladin at the one extreme and the attempt to destroy science education(actually... it's tests for truth) at the other.
Why? No one listened to their cries for help. When they get an audience though what do they tell us?" The whole world hates them" and they love it, for them it provides their energy source in a twisted way.
Now when all the data/evidence/external objective reality show their reality does not exist, except in their minds, they cannot make the intuitive jump required to discard their internal objective reality(such as it is) ...to do so would require them to destroy their ego's(be born again in religious psychological terms), they would literally lose their grip on reality (more than they already have), their whole identities would disappear, their personae are welded to a totally schizoid world view.
AFD had his ego destroyed as a child and refashioned into a hard core believer in the unbelievable.
That is why he cannot afford to lose his tenuous grip on what is left for him.
He must, absolutely must, find any discordant information(thruthiness) that can support his fantasy/delusion no matter how wild or insane.
Even if that means giving new meaning to words opposing his internal reality or world view.
Orwell fully realized this, he also realized language itself can be a trap and he distrusted the ability of language to properly communicate reality except in science.
AFD is physically incapable of transforming himself into a whole man, he will die as half a man.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
If a piece of wood was found that was believed to be from the Ark...and dated to when you believe the Ark existed, would you believe the dating?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
uh, yup. What you say sounds completely accurate. Only Davey knows for sure though.
No, actually I doubt very much that he knows on any conscious level.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
If a piece of wood was found that was believed to be from the Ark...and dated to when you believe the Ark existed, would you believe the dating?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
No, actually I doubt very much that he knows on any conscious level.
Ah AFD don't listen to this I have to just let the guys know something so .....ah just stand over there for a minute..thanks.
(whispering) Well guys AFD ...being a hyper-rationalist does know one thing, circular reasoning in it's true sense (begging the question) demolishes his god.
He's got that much, worked out.
Now since that is the problem for his little game he is trying to hammer that square peg into sciences data=>deduction round hole.
Now, as has been demonstrated, he hasn't quite worked out that circular reasoning doesn't actually mean connecting dots that look like a circle because he can't disassociate data from imagination...to him they are one and the same. He has no imagination, his reality (The product of some very serious brainwashing) to him is as real as the rocks in the Grand Canyon.
Rather than going to his church, which while amusing and I personally would find it very gratifying to kick his ass around it (in the nicest possible way of course) the challenge should be for AFD to work as a geologist's assistant for a month then go into a lab where they do Radio metric dating. Like Boy George cleaning up the garbage in NY.
Having said that I know having met a couple of geologists who are Christian Fundamentalists no amount of education can fix their problem.
Once they get past 5 years old they are gone, all they are waiting for is Armageddon and JC or Mohamed returning on a cloud of glory, God help us if they get the bomb.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Guys, it's time to give up talking to ShitForBrainsDave. SFBD is not a Christian interested in learning. SFBD a willfully ignorant lying moron only interested in preaching his own narrow Fundy beliefs.
SFBD was a willfully ignorant lying moron yesterday, he'll be a willfully ignorant lying moron today, and tomorrow's not looking too good either.
IMHO, best thing to do is to address comments to the lurkers. Keep pounding SFBD with scientific facts he can't explain, questions he can't answer, evidence he can't just hand-wave away. Then, when he goes into his squirming, evading tap dance, everyone can see what worthless arguments SFBD the coward is offering.
By the way, please keep heaping the ridicule on his oh-so-deserving lying ass. Those pics of the flying monkey cracked me up!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Ladies and Gentlemen, during this pause in the continuing saga of AirHeadDave, I'd like to present my new favorite FlyingMonkey claim. Let me set the stage.
Dave, talking about the radiometric dates for the Grand Staircase, calls them "deadman's dates," and I responded by saying they were not "mine," but gathered, obviously, from journal sources. Then AirMonkeyDave says:
Quote
Yes, but you believe them and spout them uncritically because they fit into your "religion"
I'm nominating this sentence as my newest favorite AirHead claim because it encapsulates, in a mere 14 words, what it is to be AirHead Dave. 1. Avoidance of the issue. He merely says "Yes, but..." 2. Lying outright about the motives and actions/behaviors of others: He actually claimed that I "spouted them uncritically" despite having no idea if I had selected them randomly, critically or in some other way. 3. Hypocrisy. By claiming I "uncritically" accepted the radiometric dates I cited...he conveniently overlooks the fact that he not only rejects them, but has done so without ever reading the papers mentioned. 4. Illogical and obvious childlike manipulation attempts --In saying "your 'religion' " Dave is attempting to put all things on a par and insult me at the same time.
So there you have it...avoidance, lying, hypocrisy and irrationality coupled with a childlike need to control others...all contained in a 14- word sentence emblematic of who Dave Hawkins really is.
The lack of ethics and Christian morality shines through and stinks simultaneously, like a rotting mackerel on a moonlit beach-- Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dave Hawkins
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
HOW ARE THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE DATED ... REALLY?
MY CLAIM RESTATED I have claimed that the PRIMARY means for dating the layers of the Grand Staircase is ... FOSSILS. You can quibble all you want to about what EB meant by the word "Primary," the fact is, FOSSILS ARE PRIMARY in every sense of the word as I will illustrate again today.
Let's repeat the summary of the surprising things I learned yesterday from the KBS Tuff story ... (actually I was not surprised, but YOU should be) ...
* Richard Leakey found a very modern looking human fossil (KNM-ER 1470) - the oldest yet he hoped. * Initial dating attempts of the KBS Tuff (a layer containing ash just above skull 1470 gave an incredible 212 - 230 my! Yeah, Richard that would be pretty old! Of course, this would never do ... everyone knows humans didn't exist 230 mya!! * So ... the ones who came up with this date, Fitch and Miller, requested new samples and came up with 2.61 my. This was later confirmed with around 4 additional "independent" studies * This caused a great ruckus because the Paleos wanted Skull 1470 to be younger. Why? Because 2.61 my didn't fit their Human Evolution Fairy Tale--the date was too old. Also because they considered Richard Leakey to be a 2nd rate Paleo since he didn't go to college and learned his trade from his parents. They didn't want him getting all the recognition that comes with being the discoverer of the world's oldest human fossil. * So there was a 10 year controversy and finally a whole new round of samples were dated. What date they come up with? 1.87 my. 800,000 years younger!! That's like 30 - 40 % different results depending on how you calculate your % !!! * During all this, Ian McDougall in Nature reported "a distressingly large range of ages" when considering previous dating. He reported Fitch and Miller got everything from 0.52 to 2.64my on one set of concentrates and 8.43 to 17.5my on another clast before settling on the 2.62 my figure. He also accused Curtis et. al. of disregarding results of 2.01-6.9my before settling on 1.6my - 1.8my. * After "calling the other kettles black" then, the "pot" -- Ian McDougall then stated how remarkably concordant his own dates were at 1.9 Myr after removing from consideration samples that gave ages of 4.11 and 7.46 Myr. !!!!!!!!!!!!! * With this clear victory of philosophy over observation, they then used the concordance of their results and agreement with the results of the study by Gleadow to give validity to their date for the KBS Tuff.
Now you can go read ALL of Marvin Lubenow's excellent article explaining this hilarious "Evobot Story" here ...
NOW SOME DISCUSSION ON ALL OF THIS We want to focus on three things this morning ... 1) Incorygible's Analogy of the Apartment with the Laptop, and ... 2) Eric Murphy's statement about throwing out "wrong" dates, and ... 3) JonF's statement earlier that discordance is the exception, rather than the rule
INCORYGIBLE'S APARTMENT PICTURE ANALOGY The reason Incorygible's analogy is terrible is not because his apartment scenario is unreasonable. Of course, this logic works perfectly if you are trying to determine the earliest date a picture of a room was made. There are at least two problems here: 1) Incorygible said that the KBS investigators threw out the older samples and kept the most juvenile samples. This is false. They actually threw out MANY dates -- everything from 0.52 to 230 my samples. So it appears that they threw out everything that didn't fit with "Accepted Evolutionary Time Scales" (i.e. the Paleos won the day). (Eric Murphy thinks this is OK, BTW -- we'll discuss that in a moment) 2) Remember what the original goal of the dating attempts was -- to determine the age of a very "human-like" fossil (KNM-ER 1470). Remember that Fossil 1470 was below the KBS Tuff. Now, following Incorygible's analogy: the picture had to be made ON OR AFTER 1999 (presuming we can identify the laptop as a 1999 model). It could have been made in 2000 or 2001, etc., but could NOT have been made PRIOR to 1999. Now warp to the Tuff. In this case Incorygible is saying we should take many samples and date them all. Fine. We do that. What do we get? Well, we get lots of dates ranging from 230my to 0.52my. So by Incorygible's logic, we take the MOST JUVENILE sample - the 0.52my one. This one corresponds to the laptop in the analogy, right? I think from this, we are supposed to know that the KBS Tuff is no older than the most juvenile sample, right? So in this case the KBS Tuff is <=0.52myo, just as the apartment picture is <=7 years old (7 yr old laptop). Here's the problem and the reason the analogy breaks down: Just as the "Old samples" could have been formed somewhere else and migrated into the KBS Tuff, thus justifying discarding them, the "juvenile samples" could also have come from somewhere else, could they not? Yes, they could have. How do you tell that they did not? You can't. Now this is not possible with the apartment picture (well, it is w/ Photoshop, but we'll assume the picture is not a Photoshop job). With the apartment picture, if the juvenile sample (laptop) is there, then this definitely places an upper limit on the age of 7 years. But not so with the Tuff. Therefore, the analogy doesn't work. Bottom line, guys, is this:
THE PALEOS WANTED 1.87my. PERIOD. AND THE PALEOS WON!
Now HOW they pulled off this victory is interesting and, yes, it does involve pigs. But you should not let the "Pig Story" distract you from the simple fact that ...
The KBS Tuff yielded many discordant dates. Everything older and younger than 2.61my was discarded. Richard Leakey won the day and the limelight for a short time, but the Paleos didn't like him or his date and eventually defeated him. 1.87my was the final winner thanks to pig evolution and that is the "accepted date" to this day.
******************************************
JONF IS NOT CONCERNED ABOUT DISCORDANT RM RESULTS If you don't think a range of dates from 0.52my to 231my is a problem, then there is something wrong with you ... either you are blind or a liar. As Lubenow points out ...
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Since the whole point of their exercise was to establish the age of the KBS Tuff, the question again must be asked, How did they know that the older dates or the younger dates were anomalous? Anomalous with reference to what? It was obvious that it had already been determined what the “proper” age should be. How was this determined? By the concept of evolution. The age of the KBS Tuff and of skull 1470 must be lowered.
The Curtis article challenged the validity of the 40Ar-39Ar technique for this particular dating situation and criticized the methodology of Fitch and Miller. It further stated that “… older pumices may also be present in the KBS Tuff horizon which could account for the 2.61 Myr date reported by Fitch and Miller.”18 Criticizing the samples used by Fitch and Miller, the dating method employed by Fitch and Miller, and the laboratory technique of Fitch and Miller left little more to be said.
All of the above-cited articles spoke of the great difficulty in getting rock or crystal samples that were not altered, weathered, or derived from older rock. Curtis et al. explained at length their efforts to extract from the whole-rock samples the portions that were suitable for dating. However, Fitch and Miller also went to great lengths to extract suitable samples. The question arises, How does one know when one has good samples for dating? The only answer to that question is that “good” samples give dates that are in accord with evolutionary presuppositions. “Bad” samples are the ones that give dates not in conformity with evolution—a classic illustration of circular reasoning.
Why should I believe that any other site--including the Grand Staircase--are any easier when it comes to selecting "good" samples for dating? I have no reason whatsoever to believe that ANY site is easy for selecting "good" samples. And if RM dating is so wonderful, why should I have to go to such great effort anyway in qualifying a sample? I should just be able to grab a sample and date it, right?
I feel a challenge coming on. Maybe for Deadman, or JonF ... maybe both. How much does it cost to get a rock sample dated? It would sure be fun to have me and Deadman fly someplace and jointly select some samples for analysis. Don't tell the lab where we got them. Just let them do a blind analysis and see how much scatter we get. Hmmmm... But I might need to bring a body guard with me to keep Deadman from strangling me or something. :-)
******************************************
ERIC MURPHY THINK IT'S OK TO THROW OUT THE DATES THAT DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR THEORY. Now this is just great. You have JonF saying that you don't get discordant results. And so I go out and find an example of WILDLY DISCORDANT results. And JonF says, "Pfft! Anomaly!" Then, incredibly, Eric comes back and says, "Big deal! What's the problem with throwing out the "wrong" dates?" Well now, wait just one minute! I see a HUGE problem with throwing out "undesirable" dates. Diogenes had an interesting comment yesterday when he said that scientists--both Creo and Evo--go out and look at data, and trumpet the data they like from the mountain tops, but disregard the data they don't like. Well ... I think this is exactly what we have with the KBS Tuff. It appears that the only reason for discarding data is that it does not fit the SACRED THEORY. Now do Creos do this too? Probably some. Separate question. Right now I am interested in the KBS Tuff and how it relates to RM dating in general. The biggest problem to me is that Radiometric Dating is SUPPOSED TO BE an INDEPENDENT confirmation of the Evolutionary Timescale, right? Isn't that what you guys throw in my face day in and day out? Well the only way for it to be INDEPENDENT is to NOT consider anything else. You should just get a rock sample, don't tell the lab anything about it and date it. Period. THEN it would be independent. Otherwise all it is is just fancy, meaningless lab work conducted to give an air of authority to the the PRE-supposed Evolutionary Time Scale. In a word, it's GARBAGE. Actually worse. It's deception. And you guys say I'M the dishonest one!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, Jon ... "incidentally" MEANS "not very important" ... you're from MIT, right?
Whoa. Just... Whoa.
dave, are you so desperate to find flaws in our arguments that you turned into a grammar nazi now?
But hey, English is not my first language, so I'm sure I make lots of mistakes... Feel free to pinpoint them all, if that makes you feel better.
That'll show us for turning your whole world upside down!
Faid...for even more amusement, Dave is not even correct regarding the English language (and Jon certainly wasn't wrong). "Incidentally" has two meanings: (1) apropos, or introducing a different topic (it serves the same purpose as the phrase, "By the way, ..."); (2) in an incidental (or minor or casual) manner.
Dave thinks he's scored a point by pointing out that definition (2) means the same thing as "unimportantly". Of course, Jon's sentence, beginning, "Incidentally, ..." is obviously using definition (1), as he is introducing a new topic.
Compare: "Incidentally, I'm an atheist. Christianity affects my life only incidentally."
Would you get the same meaning from the following: "Incidentally, Christianity affects my life. I'm an atheist."
Not at all. You would need the second "incidentally", or, "Incidentally, Christianity affects my life only in a minor way." Dave's lack of basic reading comprehension (and misguided insult) is astounding.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
INCORYGIBLE'S APARTMENT PICTURE ANALOGY The reason Incorygible's analogy is terrible is not because his apartment scenario is unreasonable. Of course, this logic works perfectly if you are trying to determine the earliest date a picture of a room was made. There are at least two problems here: 1) Incorygible said that the KBS investigators threw out the older samples and kept the most juvenile samples. This is false. They actually threw out MANY dates -- everything from 0.52 to 230 my samples. So it appears that they threw out everything that didn't fit with "Accepted Evolutionary Time Scales" (i.e. the Paleos won the day). (Eric Murphy thinks this is OK, BTW -- we'll discuss that in a moment) 2) Remember what the original goal of the dating attempts was -- to determine the age of a very "human-like" fossil (KNM-ER 1470). Remember that Fossil 1470 was below the KBS Tuff. Now, following Incorygible's analogy: the picture had to be made ON OR AFTER 1999 (presuming we can identify the laptop as a 1999 model). It could have been made in 2000 or 2001, etc., but could NOT have been made PRIOR to 1999. Now warp to the Tuff. In this case Incorygible is saying we should take many samples and date them all. Fine. We do that. What do we get? Well, we get lots of dates ranging from 230my to 0.52my. So by Incorygible's logic, we take the MOST JUVENILE sample - the 0.52my one. This one corresponds to the laptop in the analogy, right? I think from this, we are supposed to know that the KBS Tuff is no older than the most juvenile sample, right? So in this case the KBS Tuff is <=0.52myo, just as the apartment picture is <=7 years old (7 yr old laptop). Here's the problem and the reason the analogy breaks down: Just as the "Old samples" could have been formed somewhere else and migrated into the KBS Tuff, thus justifying discarding them, the "juvenile samples" could also have come from somewhere else, could they not? Yes, they could have. How do you tell that they did not? You can't. Now this is not possible with the apartment picture (well, it is w/ Photoshop, but we'll assume the picture is not a Photoshop job). With the apartment picture, if the juvenile sample (laptop) is there, then this definitely places an upper limit on the age of 7 years. But not so with the Tuff. Therefore, the analogy doesn't work.
Hey Davey, obviously you don't read too carefully before accusing others of mistakes. Go read the original analogy again. Tell me what you think I am representing by the "IKEA couch from the 2006 catalogue", which later turns out to be a red herring (i.e., a reupholstered older couch that only superficially looks like the IKEA one)? Could it be an RM date that originally establishes the tuffs as younger than they are, but on closer inspection turns out to be an easily explained false data point that extended our "upper limit" too far? Huh, Dave? What do you think?
ERIC MURPHY THINK IT'S OK TO THROW OUT THE DATES THAT DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR THEORY. Now this is just great. You have JonF saying that you don't get discordant results. And so I go out and find an example of WILDLY DISCORDANT results. And JonF says, "Pfft! Anomaly!" Then, incredibly, Eric comes back and says, "Big deal! What's the problem with throwing out the "wrong" dates?" Well now, wait just one minute! I see a HUGE problem with throwing out "undesirable" dates.
Dave, you utter, fucking moron.
Scientists don't just throw out results they don't like. They try to figure out why the results don't make sense. Remember my example with the electron? If an investigator gets a result that seems wrong, or doesn't fit in with the rest of the rest of her results, she doesn't just shrug her shoulders and toss the result out. She needs to find an explanation for the anomalous results. Often, just looking for this explanation gives added insight into the situation. Arno and Penzias and the discovery of the CMB is a good example of this. These two guys found some radiation contaminating their signal they couldn't explain. Instead of just shrugging their shoulders and moving on, they spent a lot of time trying to figure where it was coming from (heat from pigeon shit?). And lo and behold, they got a Nobel Prize for their efforts.
Now, if a paleontologist dates a fossil hominid to 55 mya, does he just shrug his shoulders and toss the result out? No. He spends a great deal of time and effort trying to figure out why he got this weird result that is almost certainly wrong because it conflicts with a tremendous amount of data already collected. Is this just tossing out data that doesn't fit with his preconceived notions? No.
This is why you'll never, ever figure anything out about the big wide world out there, Dave, and why you still can't fathom how the world could be more than a few thousand years old, a task that isn't beyond the capacity of your average bright six-year-old. It's because you haven't the faintest notion how science really works. It's simply staggering that you could have gotten into adulthood with such a primitive intellectual toolkit.
Dave, someone gives you a phone number, but for some reason only gives you six digits. Since you keep all data, without worrying about whether it fits with other data, you keep dialing this six-digit number forever, without ever getting a connection. That's because you're really, really, stupid, Dave. Dumber than some dogs I know.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hey AFD have you considered taking up something that better suits your personality, like sidewalk licking.
You would get the same attention, which you crave, people would laugh at you for being stupid, again something that fits your personality, the task would be as equally useless as the one you are engaged in now, it would be a win win situation for you and us.
Think about it....it would taste the same for you, and you KNOW you would just LOVE IT.
Really AFD, you will win an award for all this, the man most in need of a BJ north of the Mexican Border
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
blah blah blah.....PRE-supposed Evolutionary Time Scale
No AFD the Evolutionary time scale is proven fact.
Judge Jones said so and your whining, which is just a half baked attempt to disparage it, is illegal in science classes.
Go ahead try it, try to teach your BS is a science class see how far you get.
You know why AFD? ....no it's not your stupid "RM is wrong", its because your alternative is Norman had a flud ...hang on I've forgotten... how does it go again?
Noman ...yes that's it...Noman built a boat.
Your alternative AFD is illegal science and just plain old bible thumping.
How do you like that?....sucker.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Now, if a paleontologist dates a fossil hominid to 55 mya, does he just shrug his shoulders and toss the result out? No. He spends a great deal of time and effort trying to figure out why he got this weird result
What's weird about it? I'll tell you what's weird. It doesn't fit his pre-conceptions of the Evolutionary timescale.
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[continuing] weird result that is almost certainly wrong because it conflicts with a tremendous amount of data already collected.
Forget the "tremendous amount of data" for a moment, Eric. Remember? RM is supposed to be an INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION of this "tremendous amount of data." How can it be an independent confirmation if you throw out data that doesn't agree with the "tremendous amount of other data" that you are supposed to be independently confirming?
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Is this just tossing out data that doesn't fit with his preconceived notions? No.
Actually, YES.
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This is why you'll never, ever figure anything out about the big wide world out there, Dave, and why you still can't fathom how the world could be more than a few thousand years old, a task that isn't beyond the capacity of your average bright six-year-old. It's because you haven't the faintest notion how science really works. It's simply staggering that you could have gotten into adulthood with such a primitive intellectual toolkit.
Let me tell you something, Eric. You have a smart mouth and I'll put my experience in the "big wide world" up against yours any day. Why don't we begin by you telling me about your accomplishments in life so far. How about it?
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Dave, someone gives you a phone number, but for some reason only gives you six digits. Since you keep all data, without worrying about whether it fits with other data, you keep dialing this six-digit number forever, without ever getting a connection. That's because you're really, really, stupid, Dave. Dumber than some dogs I know.
This is the most ignorant analogy I've heard yet. You are becoming like "k.e" ... how in the world does this relate to the KBS Tuff?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Here's the problem and the reason the analogy breaks down: Just as the "Old samples" could have been formed somewhere else and migrated into the KBS Tuff, thus justifying discarding them, the "juvenile samples" could also have come from somewhere else, could they not? Yes, they could have. How do you tell that they did not? You can't.
Jeez, dave. You simply do not think, do you?
Do you really think geologists cannot tell one geologic feature from another, just because you can't? Can't they tell between a deposited layer and a crack or dam (the only way new material can FALL into older, already formed sediments?) Of course they can, davey.
You once said that you agree with 95% of all science... And yet, after having already disregarded or twisted fundamental principles in biology and genetics (not to mention physics and astronomy), you now completely ignore or handwave away the principles and foundations of geology. I wonder what's next?
Once again, slowly this time:
Y o u r a b y s s m a l i g n o r a n c e d o e s n o t c o n s t i t u t e a r g u m e n t a t i o n .
PS. Oh and:
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Forget the "tremendous amount of data" for a moment, Eric. Remember? RM is supposed to be an INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION of this "tremendous amount of data." How can it be an independent confirmation if you throw out data that doesn't agree with the "tremendous amount of other data" that you are supposed to be independently confirming?
RM dating is in a great part RESPONSIBLE for that tremendous amount of other data, dave. Jeez. Can't you read?
*remembers the "primary" blooper*
...Er, no, I guess you can't.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I'm not going to recount the whole thing here, but to say that all the researchers involved (over 100 in both paleanth, geology, radiometrics and fossil suid specialists as well as other paleontologists) were somehow all subconsciously or deliberately led to a particular date...is simply wrong. The fossil pig sequence was continuously being worked on during the 10 YEARS of this dating debate...so were the radiometric dates and the geology of the region.
This is the strength of science, that it is continually refined according to observed data and logic, by testing and re-testing, by creating hypotheses and testing those, by working out ways to get closer to "fact".
This continuous "change" is antithetical to the theistic view of "absolute truth" being immutable and unchanging and is regarded with suspicion and fear. It also strikes a chord in the average reader who fears change, as most animals do. Creationists play on those fears to try to indict all of science, as AirHead does.
On a non-paranoiac (non-Dave) note: a good interview with Ian McDougall, he of KBS Tuff notoriety, is available at :
This controversy was resolved satisfactorily in the early 1980s through our precise and reproducible age measurements on the KBS Tuff, but my work on the geochronology of the sedimentary sequence in the Turkana Basin continues today. Isotopic ages are now available for more than 20 horizons within the Turkana Basin, showing that deposition began about 4.2 million years (Ma) ago. The measured ages are entirely consistent with the independently determined stratigraphic order, giving further credence to the ages. These dating studies, together with similar measurements undertaken elsewhere, especially on hominid-bearing sequences in Ethiopia, have provided a robust time framework which is of considerable value when dealing with questions related to the origin and evolution of hominids. Numerical age estimates were often hotly debated in the past, but the improved dating techniques and their proper application has resulted in dating issues becoming much less contentious than previously.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Let me give AirHead another analogy he might be able to grasp: Suppose you are flying (by visual observation) at about 2000 feet, ready to land. However, your altimeter ---an independent confirmation--- reads 14,000 feet. What do you do?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
dave, straightforward question: Answer it if you think you can.
How, in your opinion, are the ABSOLUTE dates of fossils really determined? If (for the sake of argument) RM dating is just a show, What is the logic (flawed or not, it doesn't matter) behind their dating in your mind? Be precice, please. Don't blather about "MILLIONS OF YEARS NECESSARY FOR THE PALEOS" and such: EXPLAIN why, in your mind, a 2.6 Ma age for a fossil is discarded beforehand, and a 1,9 Ma one is accepted. and HOW.
I'd love to see you demonstrate your immense ignorance to us again... And maybe you'll get a glimpse of it yourself.
Aaah... The smell of conspiracy theory in the morning...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Could it be an RM date that originally establishes the tuffs as younger than they are, but on closer inspection turns out to be an easily explained false data point that extended our "upper limit" too far? Huh, Dave? What do you think?
Well obviously the scientists that threw out the 0.52my date gave some supposedly credible reason for doing so. But the fact is that ALL the dates have been thrown out for some reason or other by one party or the other. That's why this example is so interesting. We had a 5 year argument about why all the data except the 2.61 data is wrong. Then we had another 5 year war ... er ... discussion, about why the 2.61 data is wrong and 1.87 is right.
Bottom line is that with RM dating, you can explain away anything you want to depending on your goals. And if your goal is to validate the Paleoanthropologists picture of human evolution, then guess what dates you will keep? 1.87 ... not 2.61
Faid...
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RM dating is in a great part RESPONSIBLE for that tremendous amount of other data, dave. Jeez. Can't you read?
Yes, I know. Which is precisely my whole point. You've just confirmed yet another example of Evobot circularity.
RM DATING AS A METHOD CANNOT BE AN INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION OF THE VALIDITY OF THE RM DATING METHOD IN OTHER INSTANCES.
Did you follow that?
RM Dating itself must first be proven to be valid ON ITS OWN. I have never seen how this is possible, but if it ever achieves this, then you could use it to validate OTHER METHODS.
Incorygible's laptop can be verified independently to be a 1999 model. How? By means totally unconnected with picture taking. So can it be used to bracket the age of the picture? Of course.
But to use RM Dating to "independently" confirm other RM Dates which supposedly provided "independent confirmation" of fossil sequencing or whatever is ...
CIRCULARITY AT ITS FINEST
To avoid circularity is difficult, and to do it you need some "final court of appeal" for dating. RM Dating WOULD be this final court of appeal if you could simply grab ANY rock sample from a layer and date it and get concordant results.
BUT YOU CANNOT.
So RM Dating cannot be the needed "final court of appeal" by which to judge all other methods.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now, if a paleontologist dates a fossil hominid to 55 mya, does he just shrug his shoulders and toss the result out? No. He spends a great deal of time and effort trying to figure out why he got this weird result
What's weird about it? I'll tell you what's weird. It doesn't fit his pre-conceptions of the Evolutionary timescale.
No, Dave, that's not what's weird with it. What's weird with it is it doesn't fit with any of the other data—not precoceived notions, data—that places the earliest fossil hominids at slightly more than 10% of that value.
This is the part you don't get, Dave, and never will get (evidently because you have inadequate mental horsepower): scientific knowledge is cumulative. Individual pieces of evidence are not evaluated in isolation; they're seen as pieces of a whole.
It's got absolutely nothing to do with preconceived notions, unless you think that believing there's an external reality out there is a "preconceived notion." On the other hand, you, Dave, are the world champion of preconceived notions. You believe with all your heart in biblical inerrancy, and therefore any piece of evidence that contradicts the Bible in any way is automatically tossed, without even any consideration for why or how it contradicts your worldview.
Dave, I'm going to continue to repeat this until you get it: discordant RM data is not just "tossed out" because it's discordant. A great deal of effort is expended on determining why it's discordant. Is there an error in the instrumentation? Is the methodology flawed? Is there a wrong assumption about the rocks being dated? Is there sloppy lab work? This is the part you're deliberately missing, Dave, and don't think everyone else hasn't noticed: if you get weird results, you have to figure out why. You can't just "toss them out."
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[continuing] weird result that is almost certainly wrong because it conflicts with a tremendous amount of data already collected.
Forget the "tremendous amount of data" for a moment, Eric.
No, Dave, you can't just "forget" the tremendous amount of data. That's what's absolutely critical, you idiot. It's the whole point! How many times do I have to tell you that evidence is never evaluated in isolation? It's always evaluated as part of a greater whole. This is the part you simply refuse to understand, because you know that if you did understand it, it would undermine your entire argument.
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Remember? RM is supposed to be an INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION of this "tremendous amount of data." How can it be an independent confirmation if you throw out data that doesn't agree with the "tremendous amount of other data" that you are supposed to be independently confirming?
You don't just throw out data, Dave. You try to figure out why it doesn't fit with the rest of the data you have. If you can't figure out why it doesn't, then you've got a problem. If you can figure out why you've got anomalous data, you're making progress.
Which is why your "flood" is a non-starter. You have nothing but anomalous data, and you haven't the first clue what to do about it!
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This is why you'll never, ever figure anything out about the big wide world out there, Dave, and why you still can't fathom how the world could be more than a few thousand years old, a task that isn't beyond the capacity of your average bright six-year-old. It's because you haven't the faintest notion how science really works. It's simply staggering that you could have gotten into adulthood with such a primitive intellectual toolkit.
Let me tell you something, Eric. You have a smart mouth and I'll put my experience in the "big wide world" up against yours any day. Why don't we begin by you telling me about your accomplishments in life so far. How about it?
Dave, what do my accomplishments in life have to do with your utter, pathetic, moronic misunderstanding about anything whatsoever to do with science? I don't care how successful you are in business; you wouldn't last 20 seconds as a scientist. And we are, supposedly, at least the rest of us are, discussing science here, aren't we? Obviously you're not, but you claim to be, which is the whole point.
This is classic Creationist crap. You can't support your own position, so you start criticising someone else's position on a completely unrelated point. What possible relevance do my life's accomplishments have to do with your abject failure to understand the most elementary precepts of scientific investigation? You've made it abundantly clear to everyone who reads this thread that you know less about science than I know about needlepoint, but now you want to talk about who has the most money in the bank?
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Dave, someone gives you a phone number, but for some reason only gives you six digits. Since you keep all data, without worrying about whether it fits with other data, you keep dialing this six-digit number forever, without ever getting a connection. That's because you're really, really, stupid, Dave. Dumber than some dogs I know.
This is the most ignorant analogy I've heard yet. You are becoming like "k.e" ... how in the world does this relate to the KBS Tuff?
Dave, a blindingly ignorant situation requires a blindingly ignorant analogy. Your inability to understand the simplest concepts of science really strains my ability to even come up with analogies to the breaking point. The one that keeps popping into my head is, attempting to teach quantum physics to a dog.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
In a word, it's GARBAGE. Actually worse. It's deception. And you guys say I'M the dishonest one!!
Again, Dave, you are criticizing an imaginary conspiracy rather than a methodology. What is your criticism of the methodologies used to determine the dates? Which of those dates would you have chosen, and why?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Davey-dickums is looking only for disagreement between the data, since he has absolutely no evidence for his "Creator God hypothesis" and so rubbishes science in lieu of being able to comprehend or discuss scientific data.
The virtue of science is that it correlates several lines of independent evidence to come up with a conclusion, whenever possible. The Grand Canyon could not have formed quickly (the river would have to go up a dome to do so--it's a dome, not a dam, DaveTard II), the relative and absolute dates agree that the rocks of the canyon are old, and it so happens that DNA dating agrees with the ancient age of the rock layers the canyon cuts through as well. So we have any number of lines of evidence, several of which have a rather exact agreement with each other.
Geology is the study of events which are only observed by looking into the past. That is to say, we cannot constrain what has happened, we can only study the evidence and produce hypotheses until the data can be found to agree--if it ever does (which is usually, given enough study). We use methods which have proven their concordance to a high degree of confidence, while knowing that contingencies can bring them out of alignment in any number of particular cases.
But Davey-dumdum is simply against science. He's the guy on the jury who hears testimony that the time was 2:00 AM according to the clock, who notes that clocks stop and may give the wrong time, and will not accept any evidence from any clock. So he frees the rapist-murderer. Clocks are only correlated against other clocks which may themselves be wrong (in his benighted view of geological clocks, of course), so that the vast correspondence between the various clocks and watches is meaningless.
Geology is not a simple matter for simple minds, so if the geologic clocks are ever out of alignment, to the simple mind of Davey-dick they have become of no consequence. While the Bible has no evidence for its early chronology at all, so it is reliable, not something having problems that he doesn't comprehend, like geology has.
Indeed, one of the virtues of science is that it poses problems, but all of the virtues of sciences are vices in AddledFreakDave's world.
Then again, how is someone as averse to evidence like Davey-dog going to work through the difficulties of radiometric dating? Remember, he's never given us any decent evidence for his "hypothesis", after telling us that he would, and he is only opposed to our evidence, coming up with impossible claims against it (like his idiotic cut and paste which showed the Kaibab plateau, actually a dome, as a dam).
Working through the data to come up with concordances, a great virtue in science, becomes in his world a suspect activity. We know that this is how science operates, that finding contingencies that skew the data is a substantial parts of science. That we learn from seemingly discordant data, both about the dating methods themselves, and the geological contingencies in a particular set of strata. Understand, though, that Dumb Dave is only opposed to what we have found, and has absolutely no interest in working through the data that he so dimly comprehends in the first place.
Indeed, most dates found in geology agree with each other to an amazing degree. Error bars always exist, but the iridium layer only exists at one position in the sedimentary rocks, above the dinosaurs (there is some dispute over this, but only within a few hundred thousand years at most), below the great mammal and grass adaptive radiations, it's dated to around 63 million years ago, and is temporally associated with the Chicxulub crater which also dates back 63 million years. Remember, AFD, I asked you to explain those concordances, and you didn't? I asked you to explain much more, but then you couldn't even answer the problem of the Colorado going uphill without the cut-and-paste lie that the dome is a dam.
The same idiots who ask if we believe that humans are "accidental" either believe that such concordances are accidental, or that the scientists are lying. ReDaveTard seems to go for the latter, but as usual, he utterly lacks the sort of evidence required for anyone to make such claims. IOW, the same schmuck who is so stupid as to compare a watch with a bacterium, and to ask if watch articulations could be accidental, also claims that scientists are able to coordinate their false claims without producing the sorts of evidence for it that would be required in a court case over fraud.
The truly unbelievable, a massive coordinated effort to fake the dates, goes along with his unbelievable Bible claims, the people who lived for hundreds of years, and the worldwide flood which left no worldwide flood deposits. I guess that's how it is, though, that if you believe one tall tale, you fall for the next 40 as well, at least the ones that agree with the first one.
All intellectual virtue is destroyed by the one colossal lie that these people take up, because they have to fault us for correlating data to agree with what is found universally and with what happened contingently, they have to consider each claim piecemeal (AFD is remarkable for being unable to think along several lines of data at once), they have to take any one clock that is found to be off as evidence against using clocks, and they have to come up with the most egregious lies about people they do not know, scientists, in hypocritical opposition to Biblical commands to tell the truth about others.
They are totally shameless, totally dishonest, and thus are un-Christian in the ideal sense. Virtues have been overturned by them to become vices, hence they have turned their religion into a Satanic device.
Glen D
PS: This is one thing I don't like about Popper, that in his scenario coming up with one anomalous result could be construed as falsifying everything. While Popper would not be so naive as to do so, he doesn't pay adequate attention to the importance of the high levels of confirmation that, say, dating methods have achieved, vs. some putative falsifying data.
Louis ... your idea of Fundamentalist Christianity is THE INQUISITORS pictured? Notice the URL ... www.rotten.com/library/history/inquisition/inquisition2.gif
The Fundamentalist Christian was the GUY BEING BURNED!!! Ooooooooops!!!
Are you sure you didn't show us a picture of YOUR BRAIN in the lower picture?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
RM dating is in a great part RESPONSIBLE for that tremendous amount of other data, dave. Jeez. Can't you read?
Yes, I know. Which is precisely my whole point. You've just confirmed yet another example of Evobot circularity.
RM DATING AS A METHOD CANNOT BE AN INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION OF THE VALIDITY OF THE RM DATING METHOD IN OTHER INSTANCES.
Dave, you utter, fucking moron.
Radiometric dating is not "confirmed" by going out and dating rocks. It's "confirmed" because the quantum-mechanical processes responsible for it are extremely well-understood and have been confirmed beyond any possibility of doubt.
You think because you don't know how a particular methodology works, that no one knows how it works. If you want to find out how RM dating works, get your head out of the Creationist ghetto and buy some books (you seem to have no trouble spending money on Creationist books) on the subject, and learn something about it.
And when, oh when, are you going to stop with your pathetic attempts to "disprove" radiometric dating techniques, and actually come up with some evidence for your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis? We've been waiting for going on three months for you to provide the flimsiest scrap of evidence for your hypothesis (while you waste our time trying to find ways around the staggering amount of evidence for the contrary hypothesis), and by now it's long past clear that you will never, ever be able to do so.
I don't imagine you'll ever admit defeat, so ten years and 100,000 posts from now, you still will not have provided a single atom of evidence to support your own hypothesis.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The best thing for our side is to keep Dave talking, so let me contribute to that with this essay by a christian geologist annoyed by dimwits like AFDave.
RM DATING AS A METHOD CANNOT BE AN INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION OF THE VALIDITY OF THE RM DATING METHOD IN OTHER INSTANCES.
Did you follow that?
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But to use RM Dating to "independently" confirm other RM Dates which supposedly provided "independent confirmation" of fossil sequencing or whatever is ...
CIRCULARITY AT ITS FINEST
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To avoid circularity is difficult, and to do it you need some "final court of appeal" for dating. RM Dating WOULD be this final court of appeal if you could simply grab ANY rock sample from a layer and date it and get concordant results.
BUT YOU CANNOT.
dave, I started responding to that, but really I don't see the reason to. It has to be the most incomprehensible blabber from you yet.
dave, you seriously need to understand:
What RM dating really is, and how it works
What circularity means
How fossil sequencing is comfirmed
How fossil absolute dates are confirmed
What "cross-referrencing data" really means, in ALL of science
How results of ALL measuring methods are verified, in ALL of science
What "Independent confirmation" actually confirms
There is just no way to begin to show you how unbelievably illogical all that was. It's like trying to explain how the TV works to a Neanderthal Man.
Dave, if an altitude indicator in a plane can malfunction or break down, does that mean we should ditch them and fly without them, because there is no reliable way to determine the plane's altitude?
THAT"S what you're arguing for now.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Dave you dumb fuck, the Inquisition was (and indeed is) christian. Oh I know you protestant fundies don't like the catholic fundies, but from the outside your bullshit smells the same. You just kneel on a different side and don't wear a dress. Fundies is fundies.
I also know that you will whip out the no true scotsman fallacy (waaah but they're not REAL christians. Shit Davey, they say the same about you and on exactly the same basis!
Oh and the guy in the fire is a "heretic", not a fundamentalist (necessarily). Persecuting people who don't share their religious bullshit.....hmmmm sound familiar.
Dave's posts indeed demonstrate an incredible coupling of ignorance and arrogance. I don't object to calling him a dumdum, clueless, dimwit, dumbfuck, etc. He's proven he deserves it. But we don't have to make those insults in every post. Dave's own posts do a good enough job insulting him. They speak for themselves.
... the challenge should be for AFD to work as a geologist's assistant for a month then go into a lab where they do Radio metric dating. Like Boy George cleaning up the garbage in NY.
nawww, that's what rational folks do when they want to answer a question for themselves.
Davey has never demonstrated he wants answers.
he HAS demonstrated he wants to GIVE them to us though.
Davey wouldn't consider your offer a challenge, but rather a punishment.
In fact, it would be a worthwhile punishment for all the time and brain cells he has wasted to force him to do pennance in such a fashion as you suggest.
no, I doubt he would learn anything, but it sure would satisfy any rational person's sense of justice.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Once they get past 5 years old they are gone, all they are waiting for is Armageddon and JC or Mohamed returning on a cloud of glory, God help us if they get the bomb.
actually, they have to wait until everything else is in the correct "biblical" position as well.
The jews reside in the correct portion of their ancenstral homelands, etc.
they gotta work on all that stuff first, before they can kickstart armageddon.
then you can start worrying about them trying to create a nuclear holocaust.
That's a question for Dave though:
Dave do you -
a) believe in the Rapture, Armageddon, etc., b) believe that a war in the Middle East is a necessary precondition for biblical prophecy to be fulfilled, and c) think this is a good thing.
just curious.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Oh and the guy in the fire is a "heretic", not a fundamentalist (necessarily). Persecuting people who don't share their religious bullshit.....hmmmm sound familiar.
could be a witch too.
did you check to see if she has a long nose?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
To avoid circularity is difficult, and to do it you need some "final court of appeal" for dating. RM Dating WOULD be this final court of appeal if you could simply grab ANY rock sample from a layer and date it and get concordant results. BUT YOU CANNOT.
Yes, you can. If you are using the same dating method and gather samples carefully from as far apart as thousands of miles, you will get the same results, statistically. As mentioned above, this is true globally with the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary. *********************************************** To say that I should be able to grab "any" sample from a given layer might mean a lot of things, Dave, what is it that you mean when you say it?
If I am looking at K-Ar dating on a given layer, I can't grab ANY mineral for dating...this should be obvious -- obsidian is not dated the same ways as feldspar, etc..
But if i DO grab the same undamaged feldspar crystals from a given layer, they will be the same dates.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Persecuting people who don't share their religious bullshit.....hmmmm sound familiar.
Yes. It does sound familiar. I don't share the religious beliefs--Evolution--of people here at ATBC, so you try to persecute me. Name calling, stupid pictures, what have you. Someone even said they would harm me physically if they could.
Not that I care .... but how exactly does that square with what you are trying to say?
Deadman...
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Let me give AirHead another analogy he might be able to grasp: Suppose you are flying (by visual observation) at about 2000 feet, ready to land. However, your altimeter ---an independent confirmation--- reads 14,000 feet. What do you do?
You go with the observation judged to be the most reliable. In this case, since you are visual, your eyes. In the case of fossils, scientists go with what they judge to be the most accurate--the Evo Fairy Tale Dogma. So the dates which do not agree with this are pitched. Simple.
Faid...
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How, in your opinion, are the ABSOLUTE dates of fossils really determined? If (for the sake of argument) RM dating is just a show, What is the logic (flawed or not, it doesn't matter) behind their dating in your mind? Be precice, please. Don't blather about "MILLIONS OF YEARS NECESSARY FOR THE PALEOS" and such: EXPLAIN why, in your mind, a 2.6 Ma age for a fossil is discarded beforehand, and a 1,9 Ma one is accepted. and HOW.
Aren't you in bed yet? What time is it in Greece? Absolute dates of fossils are determined by Mutation Rates, apparently. The Paleos HAVE to have "X" millions of years for such and such a transition. They scream and yell (I'm using hyperbole, OK) until the geochronologists give them what they want. After all, the "geos" want to get invites to the parties, right? The public, of course, is told otherwise--that fossils are absolutely dated with RM--as we have seen from Encyclopedia Britannica, but as we have seen in the last two days, this is simply not true, whether the deception is intentional or not. (I personally don't think that scientists are sitting around making evil schemes to deceive people. I think they are very sincere. Just very sincerely wrong!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh, and as far as your offer to fly me into the Grand Canyon to do some sampling...sure, I'll go. I'll even do all the work so long as you are paying for everything else--food and lodging, etc. I have minimal standards there, since I've been long accustomed to field situations. He11, MRE's are fine. Since this is your hypothesis we're testing, I have a rock drill I can borrow and all the tools needed, including sample containers but the cost of the testing is also yours to shoulder.
However, I won't shake your hand and I won't treat you as a friend or tolerate your attempts to be such. Further, I expect to be treated with the politeness and courtesy afforded a guest-- in return, I speak to you with the politeness and courtesy given to a host. The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above.
On a lighter note, I'll also be willing to bet you on the results of the testing, should the lab chosen be one agreed-on. You name the amount or the conditions of the bet, that will suit me just fine.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
In the case of fossils, scientists go with what they judge to be the most accurate--the Evo Fairy Tale Dogma. So the dates which do not agree with this are pitched.
No, that is not how it worked, even with the example of the KBS Tuff. What you choose to forget is that some fossil sequences (proboscideans) were re-dated as a result of the continued radiometric work...others ( the suids, pigs) served to calibrate the radiometrics as the fossil work became increasingly precise.
You want to pretend that any one method has continuous precedence and in fact you said so...but you keep bouncing back and forth between methods that you say have precedence...revealing the truth of the matter: The fact is that all methods reasonably possible to use were employed. No one method took precedence.
This was a new area, with relatively unstudied geology, with relatively unstudied radiometrics, with relatively unstudied faunal sequences...so all three lines were hashed out over a ten-year span to produce credible, reproducible stratigraphy --- that can be replicably dated now by anyone willing to take into account the nature of the stratum itself.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I think they are very sincere. Just very sincerely wrong!
You have presented zero evidence of such. You have written pages and pages claiming that there is some sort of ambiguous conspiracy to establish false dates, but you have not written a single word of criticism for the dating methods themselves. You're just chasing shadows.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1) Evolution isn't a religion. I know you think it is, but Davey, as has been pointed out to you before, your ignorance is not evidence.
2) Was there lies and distortions and ignorance from you before the name calling or after? Don't lie now Davey, we have memories and records. Fair play though, we SHOULD be nicer to you. We are all, however, mere mortal humans and not perfect. Tell you what though Davey, as you're such a wonderful christian, forgive us! LOLOL Oh I'm killing me!
3) Remember who came where Davey. You came here, to us. Not the other way around. You came here telling us that you believe in 95% of all science and yet strangely you actually don't and think it's all a massive antichristian conspiracy (as if anyone cares that much about your fictional little faith. Oh do dry up).
4) If you were remotely honest, and demonstrated intellectual gifts superior to those of a house plant, then perhaps people would have some respect for you. As it is, you aren't, you haven't, and noone does. Try facing up to the facts Davey....and not the ones you make up/get from AIG/twist/misinterpret to suit your own ends. Trust me on one thing Davey, I've met people in your situation before and I actually feel sorry for you. Sadly, the way you are acting, I suspect it's a personal conflict you will never resolve to your satisfaction.Talk to ex-fundies Davey (sadly for you I never believed your brand of bunkum), they might help you through your cognitive dissonace and denial. Seek help.
And on the altimeter analogy:this is quite similar, an appropriate analogy for finding pigs and elephants at radiometric date that would place them with dinosaurs. This is something that, contrary to any creationist anecdotes you have, had never been seen bfore, hence those results were immediately questioned.
Continuing work showed flaws in the radiometric dating machinery in one case, it showed the pig sequence becoming increasingly fine-grained...it showed that the KBS Tuff had lots of layering due to multiple events (how this was determined is part of the available literature, do your own work to find out).
In short, this was a great example of how good science DOES work, rather than your bizarre imagined (witting or unwitting) conspiracy to adhere to a given bias.
What you forget ( again) is that scientists are trained to TRY to be hyper-aware of biases on their part, and other scientists will jump on you with both feet if you exhibit it. Thus, it would have been unusual to find a hominid in Triassic-dated layers, but Richard Leakey would probably have loved that since it would have made him the most famous paleontologist in history. He would have had lots of money to devote to saving African fauna and human groups.
IF all the evidence pointed irrevocably to one conclusion that overturned all of previous evolutionary theory, it would have been scrutinized beyond belief but if it held up, as Relativity did in Physics, then it becomes accepted and science would move on.
But that is not what happened, nor have you, Dave Hawkins, AirMonkey, shown the validity of your hypothesis.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Trust me on one thing Davey, I've met people in your situation before and I actually feel sorry for you.
I don't trust you an anything and no you don't. You hate my guts and all people who think like me. Which is too bad for you but oh well. Hating people turns your heart black. (not literally, guys, calm down--it's a figure of speech)
Deadman...
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Further, I expect to be treated with the politeness and courtesy afforded a guest-- in return, I speak to you with the politeness and courtesy given to a host. The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above.
So if I call you an idiot to your face, you're gonna karate kick me unconscious and then slit my throat?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Trust me on one thing Davey, I've met people in your situation before and I actually feel sorry for you.
I don't trust you an anything and no you don't. You hate my guts and all people who think like me. Which is too bad for you but oh well. Hating people turns your heart black. (not literally, guys, calm down--it's a figure of speech)
Deadman...
Quote
Further, I expect to be treated with the politeness and courtesy afforded a guest-- in return, I speak to you with the politeness and courtesy given to a host. The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above.
So if I call you an idiot to your face, you're gonna karate kick me unconscious and then slit my throat?
and that proves the earth is 6k old how exactly? perhaps you'd get a better reaction by addressing some of the outstanding points. how old do you think the Universe as a whole is Dave?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
So if I call you an idiot to your face, you're gonna karate kick me unconscious and then slit my throat?
If you did that, you would deserve whatever you get in my book -- given that I was nice enough to give you ground rules and didn't offer you insult first. But killing you? Nah, you're not worth it, unless you try to up the ante. And I don't know karate, and don't find it particularly effective in an "informal" situation. Nor do I need a knife.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What i dont understand, and please do enlighten me, is why exactly the preponderence of evidence certanly (and you must admit this, fossils etc, at least enougth to convince non-christian scientists around the world with no axe to grind or preconcieved basis on how things are, and thousands of them) points to an ancient earth yet somehow you *know* it's not. If it's really 6000 years old then why's gawd gone to all the trouble of doing it's best to make it look much older, so much so that even creationists studying rock formations originally *had* to admit they were wrong? Is it to seperate the true belivers from the non-believers or something? sorry about this to the regulars, i'm sure you are groaning, but i want to know!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Thank you Steve, for the link. As a lurker without the strong scientific backgrounds that many of you do, I found the article to be extremely easy to digest and very comprehensive in its scope. RM works. End of story. Dendrochronology works. End of story. Ice cores, varves, radiometric decay in supernova light, etc. etc.
I would be very interested (amused, is probably a more apt term) to see knucklehead critique this paper directly.
There is absolutely no way way idiot-boy can spout his crap with a hint of honesty if he takes the time to read it.
Dave, I'd like to extend to you an invitation to attend this year's Paleontological Society Short Course at the annual Geological Society of America conference in Philadelphia. The title of the free, all day course is "Geochronology: Emerging Opportunities." The course will be conducted on Saturday, 21 October at the Philidelphia Convention Center. You will find a list of the sessions here.
Dave, I'd like to extend to you an invitation to attend this year's Paleontological Society Short Course at the annual Geological Society of America conference in Philadelphia. The title of the free, all day course is "Geochronology: Emerging Opportunities." The course will be conducted on Saturday, 21 October at the Philidelphia Convention Center. You will find a list of the sessions here.
Think about it.
Michael
I doubt he'd be interested. Dave has been quite clear in telling us that he is here to argue, not learn.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You're turning into Ghosty with that projection of yours.
I don't hate you Davey, I don't even know you. Pity, yes. Contempt, yes. Hate, not my bag baby.
Whether or not you trust me is totally inconsequential. Like I and others have said many times, your ignorance is not evidence. That applies to your ignorance of science as well as your ignorance of me and others.
As for rude names Davey, I'll put it to you this way. You're a liar and a fraud. You know it, we know it. You have demonstrated it beyond reasonable doubt. If it were a matter for any jury in the world, partisan or impartial, you would be convicted in a heartbeat. In a forum where we have limited means of communication (i.e. it is difficult for us to take you the relevant museum, laboratory or library and show you the hard data, we can only show it to you one step removed) and we are using type and funny pictures you choose to obfuscate,lie , and distort. Whether or not you think so, I consider it the height of rudeness. So if I mention that you are demonstrably behaving like an intellectually subnormal week old dog turd which has been substituted for the frontal cortex of a semi conscious wardrobe, I do so merely out of amazement and exasperation at your staggering arrogance, rudeness, stupidity and dishonesty.
all we do is try to educate you to reality, and you spit and curse at us at the top of your voice (all caps).
so why do you prefer your heart to be black, Davey?
If you had no hate for us, why did you come here? You obviously didn't come here to learn.
you obviously did not come here expecting to teach us anything (we're hopeless, right?).
so that only leaves your inherent hatred of all things natural and rational, your hate of science in general because it utlizes pragmatism, and your hate of all those who would promulgate such a "lie" in your eyes.
there is nothing else. Then, to cover your own hatred, you lie over and over again; saying things like "I agree with 95% of science", when you reject the very principles on which all science operates.
YES, Dave. Your heart is far blacker than anybody elses here.
Now, OTOH, if we started off by making drive bys at your church during sunday services, you could argue we might be doing that out of spite.
but we don't do that, do we.
so where does the black heart lie? with the accuser, most oft.
think back to the inquisition you so merrily dismissed.
who's heart was black? the ones who refused to listen to reason and burned "heretics" and "witches" at the stake? Will you lie to yourself and think that the only ones persecuted were evangelical christians? did you know that your particular brand of religion DIDN"T EVEN EXIST at the time? did you know that the inquistion was used as a political tool?
yup. You should review the history, you might see some things disturbing to you. We see the parallels, hence the post. We see them every day. In every clinic bombing or car bombing. In every abortion doctor murder or murder of a woman for being "unfaithful". We see what your brand of logic results in.
Now you refuse to listen to reason, for your own personal reasons. Your heart is filled with hatred towards those who promulgate reason in the face of the kind of witch burnings those in your shoes have historically used as a tool in the past.
take a look inside yourself and see the black heart you have cultivated there.
to us, it's clear as a night sky.
"You are a very bad man."
will you peel the scales away from your own eyes and see?
doubtful.
Kids4truth? apparently you wouldn't understand what truth is if it came and swallowed you whole.
all you are doing is building walls to protect that little black heart of yours... and those walls are built using the people you pretend to care about. Just like your father did with you.
That's right. He USED you, Dave, to build up his own walls to protect his little black heart, and now you do the same. Abuse spreads thusly.
You're part of the problem, Dave, not the solution.
Pity you literally are unable to see that.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
in this case, WE picked the wrong room (at least to start with).
Dave was hanging about in the abuse room (heck he created it), hoping for some good old intellectual mortification (cause he's too chicken to accept the corporal kind), and we kept trying to get him into an argument.
he simply wants to be whipped ('cause he knows his little heart is black through and through), and I think eventually the folks here figured that out and began to oblige him.
I do think he should thank us more often for the service though. It's quite distasteful for most of us to play the role of scourge.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Y'know, while I was having my late lunch here, I was thinking that I'd be happy to meet a bunch of people from this forum in person. Hoist a pint, shoot the shite or some 8-ball, maybe some darts...I don't even come close to wanting to meet AirHead.
This is not because you're Christian, AirHead, I get along fine with people of all stripes there. It's because you have demonstrated, as Louis mentioned, that you are a person without honor or ethics or the integrity needed to pursue unfearingly intellectual matters beyond the narrow confines of your delusional ideology.
This is why I like science. It is one of the very few areas of human endeavor in which nothing else really matters but the quality of your ideas and the evidence you bring to the table. Hawking is in a wheelchair and a great physicist, Abdus Salam is Muslim and a great physicist...others are Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Agnostics and Atheists. Male and female ( I adore Fotini Kalamara in physics), from poor and wealthy backgrounds...this doesn't matter. Class doesn't really matter, nor race, or gender, or sexual orientation or anything but the quality of your ideas and evidence.
This is the precise opposite of you, Dave. Your ideology colors everything in science and everywhere else in your life, so far as I can see. This is why you will remain ignorant and an enemy of intellectual freedom. This is what ultimately puts you on a par with the fanatics of the world willing to fly planes into buildings or subjugate women or lay waste to the Earth or enter into "crusades" against open inquiry. To do so, you HAVE to abandon your honor and ethics by the roadside as you march to Armageddon. And the bad part is that fanatics like you want to drag the rest of us with you. No, thanks.
Hah, I see we were thinking along the same lines, Ichthyic. It'll be good to hoist a pint with you in NZ, bud. Cheers.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, I'd like to extend to you an invitation to attend this year's Paleontological Society Short Course at the annual Geological Society of America conference in Philadelphia. The title of the free, all day course is "Geochronology: Emerging Opportunities." The course will be conducted on Saturday, 21 October at the Philidelphia Convention Center. You will find a list of the sessions here.
Thanks! I'll consider it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The best thing for our side is to keep Dave talking, so let me contribute to that with this essay by a christian geologist annoyed by dimwits like AFDave.
I guarantee you that Dave will never, ever read this link. For to do so would puncture his delusions below the waterline. Oh, he'll say he's read it, but he'll skim over the parts that contradict his worldview without ever letting them penetrate his skull.
Dave is not, and never has been, interested in learning anything about geology, radiometric dating techniques, biology, or human evolution. He's merely looking for reasons to disbelieve in the science supporting these disciplines. It doesn't matter whether those reasons are compelling, persuasive, credible, or even rational. They can be completely mistaken, but that's okay. So long as Dave can cling to them, like a man clinging to a floating toilet seat in a storm surge, his worldview is safe.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh, in no way was I posting that to influence AFDave. I posted it so he would do what you say, then make a bunch of boneheaded remarks about it, get corrected, make some boneheaded remarks about the corrections, and so on. The more we get AFDave to talk, the more he makes our point for us.
How, in your opinion, are the ABSOLUTE dates of fossils really determined? If (for the sake of argument) RM dating is just a show, What is the logic (flawed or not, it doesn't matter) behind their dating in your mind? Be precice, please. Don't blather about "MILLIONS OF YEARS NECESSARY FOR THE PALEOS" and such: EXPLAIN why, in your mind, a 2.6 Ma age for a fossil is discarded beforehand, and a 1,9 Ma one is accepted. and HOW.
Aren't you in bed yet? What time is it in Greece? Absolute dates of fossils are determined by Mutation Rates, apparently. The Paleos HAVE to have "X" millions of years for such and such a transition. They scream and yell (I'm using hyperbole, OK) until the geochronologists give them what they want. After all, the "geos" want to get invites to the parties, right? The public, of course, is told otherwise--that fossils are absolutely dated with RM--as we have seen from Encyclopedia Britannica, but as we have seen in the last two days, this is simply not true, whether the deception is intentional or not. (I personally don't think that scientists are sitting around making evil schemes to deceive people. I think they are very sincere. Just very sincerely wrong!
Dave, you are, as usual, completely missing the point. What Faid is asking is whether you even understand what the reasoning is behind determining which RM date is accurate and which isn't. And again, don't waste our time telling us it's "because of millionsofyearsism." That's not the answer to the question. Faid is trying to find out if you even know what the rationale is, flawed or not, behind how a particular date is acceped for a fossil and another is not. And before you claim it's "mutation rates," let me warn you that you are not going to find anywhere, in any paper purporting to date a fossil radiometrically, any statement to the effect that the correct date out of a range of available dates was chosen to comport with estimated mutation rates. I invite you to try to find one, if you want to waste a few months of your time.
Let's face it, Dave. A date of 1.9 mya is just as fatal as a date of 2.6 to Creationist claims. For that matter, so is a date of 20 kya. So explain to us what you think the rationale (flawed or not) is. You don't know, do you? You have no idea. Because I can tell you this right now: "mutation rates" have absolutely nothing whatsofuckingever to do with it.
And it's a complete and utter falsehood to say that fossils are not absolutely dated using RM. You have no justification whatsoever for saying that. Again, I frankly couldn't care less what you believe about the utility of RM, because you're not competent to hold an opinion on the subject, but brandishing an inaccurate and poorly-interpreted Encyclopedia Britannica argument that doesn't on your best day even support the point you're making gets you exactly nowhere.
And while we're on the subject, Dave, why don't you favor us with your preferred method for dating fossils? Obviously you believe fossils exist, and that they were created at some point in the past. What's your method for dating them? Do you consult your Bible for guidance on dating fossil stromatolites?
And on what is an entirely separate topic: are you ever going to get around to presenting support for your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yes. It does sound familiar. I don't share the religious beliefs--Evolution--of people here at ATBC, so you try to persecute me. Name calling, stupid pictures, what have you. Someone even said they would harm me physically if they could.
After all these posts you still just don't get it, do you DumbassDave. You are not being ostracized because of your beliefs you moron, you are being ostracized because of your behavior.
When people have tried to engage you in honest debate you have totally ignored the evidence presented, refused to follow references to learn anything for yourself, lied repeatedly about what was and wasn't said, and generally acted like an arrogant shithead.
You can be the most devout YEC on the planet, and as long as you make an attempt to honestly address all the evidence and honestly repeat what was said, you'd be treated with respect.
You could be the world's biggest old Earth evolution accepting atheist, but if you behaved the way you do we'd still think you were an assho1e.
Any part of that you don't understand Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Hey, OA, you aren't supposed to be talking TO me anymore ... remember? I'm unsalvageable. Your just supposed to be talking to the lurkers!
And yes, I understand you perfectly ... I have for quite some time ... remember Stage 4? If I recall the progression correctly, that's where you are at ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, OA, you aren't supposed to be talking TO me anymore ... remember? I'm unsalvageable. Your just supposed to be talking to the lurkers!
And yes, I understand you perfectly ... I have for quite some time ... remember Stage 4? If I recall the progression correctly, that's where you are at ...
He's not really talking to you, Dave. He's apostrophizing, for the sake of lurkers and everyone else reading the thread. You really are unsalvageable, Dave, but it needs to be made clear why. It's not because you're a creationist; many creationists can be reasoned with. You can't be reasoned with, because you don't want to be reasoned with. Any use of reason at all is enough to demolish your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis.
But it's still possible to demonstrate why you're wrong, and it's useful to address you in the second person now and then, just for variety's sake.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFD Do you consult your Bible for guidance on dating fossil stromatolites?
Obviously YES.
Duetostupidy 12:5 "Thou shalt not use mass spectrometry to date elements"
Denysis 2.8 "The lord said the machine that goes ping is the devils work"
Exodust 99 "Listen to the loony, for he is truly loony"
er ....maybe not that one.
Romans 7.6 "And Elijah said unto the fossil collector thou fossils don't exist, where upon the fossil collector produced a fossil , where upon Jeremiah giggled and all the children put their hands on Elijah to tried to heal him, Elijah left for Ur and was never seen again"
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Let me tell you something, Eric. You have a smart mouth and I'll put my experience in the "big wide world" up against yours any day. Why don't we begin by you telling me about your accomplishments in life so far. How about it?
Ah yes DDTTD is playing the tough talking fighter stud with his barroom bravado. Bully DDTTD, bully!
Except, WAIT!
You're no fighter stud, you were a freaking rotary wing taxi driver at best. Your bravado is all 'net bluster, like a 14 yo troll.
You wouldn't survive 20 minutes with Kay Behrensmeyer, I know her, she'd hand you your onions and send you on your way like the prepubescent boy that you are.
Whine about Koobi Fora all you want, it has nothing to do with your UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis.
Get on with it boy. Get on topic or admit you can't bring the goods. If I wanted to read this cult bullshit I'd subscribe to AiG.
Persecuting people who don't share their religious bullshit.....hmmmm sound familiar.
Yes. It does sound familiar. I don't share the religious beliefs--Evolution--of people here at ATBC, so you try to persecute me. Name calling, stupid pictures, what have you. Someone even said they would harm me physically if they could.
Not that I care .... but how exactly does that square with what you are trying to say?
Well let's just say that rather than associating YOUR cult of YEC fundies with the Cathars (Jeez DDTTD are you a Gnostic Chrisitian?), he's saying you're more like the Puritans who claimed they were escaping religious persecution only to come to North America and commit genocide on the inhabitants who were already here.
What he's saying DDTTD is that if you and yours were in control, anyone who disagreed with you would go up in flames, (or down on a Judas Chair). Your NEED to force your cultish fundie dogma on my offspring in public schools is just the first step on the long road to theocracy and scary as h3ll to boot.
Humanity survived that (Dark Ages) period already, we don't need to do it again.
Go mentally disable your chilluns with your stupidstitious bullshit, but when you come after mine I'm gonna slap you down.
AFD Do you consult your Bible for guidance on dating fossil stromatolites?
Obviously YES.
Duetostupidy 12:5 "Thou shalt not use mass spectrometry to date elements"
Denysis 2.8 "The lord said the machine that goes ping is the devils work"
Exodust 99 "Listen to the loony, for he is truly loony"
er ....maybe not that one.
Romans 7.6 "And Elijah said unto the fossil collector thou fossils don't exist, where upon the fossil collector produced a fossil , where upon Jeremiah giggled and all the children put their hands on Elijah to tried to heal him, Elijah left for Ur and was never seen again"
Wisdom of Solomon:
[1] Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know him that is: neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the workmaster; [2] But deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the geologic dates, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world.
Remember my little picture, Dave? Talking about independent lines of evidence, why do isotopic datings of the altantic basalts confirm the current rate of expansion of the ocean, which is measured every year by satellites?
I'll be happy to put my microscope on your Atlantic basalt dating at some point, just as I am right now putting my microscope on the KBS Tuff and how it relates to the dating of the Grand Staircase.
Will you still be around? Will you hate life as much as these guys are when I put my microscope on your question? You've seen them curse and spit and call me names because they have no facts to refute my objections. We'll see what you do ... maybe you'll be more polite being from France ... we shall see ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Of course I believe in miracles. But God does not use them often. He allows natural processes to operate most of the time.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You've seen them curse and spit and call me names because they have no facts to refute my objections.
HAHA in your dreams, dave. Only in your dreams of Grandeur and Pride.
In what is widely known as the real world, the situation is much different -as you well know. It is OTHERS that bombard you with facts all the time, dave, and it's YOU that either systematically ignores them, or tries to distort and twist them into strawmen to beat... and when you fail to do even that, with unbelievable nerve, you accuse others of twisting data -and of course, you fall back to your autistic defences using silly pictures, childish mockery and any lame argumentum ad populum you can google up.
That's you in a nutshell, since page one.
It's like this last issue with the use of the term "Primary age" by you. When everyone immediately told you that your interpretation of the quote was unbelievably stupid, and only showed your complete lack of understanding of geology, you simply ignored them all and kept using it. When we really pressed you to address it, you accused us of somehow twisting quotes, and insisted on your silly interpretation. When I DARED you to show exactly how it is us that do the twisting, or kindly shut up, you simply repeated them and said you don't have to prove anything to us. And finally, when I told you how incredibly cowardly and dishonest what you did was, you said that's it's the way "you operate", and if I don't like it I can take a walk!
(oh and btw, feel free to prove me a liar by showing how the whole issue did not take place exactly as I just described it. But you can't, because unlike you, honest Christian, I do not lie.)
So, that's why people here "hiss and spit" at you dave. That's why you drive them to their limits of civility. Not because you offer "facts"- Hah! The only "facts" you managed to offer so far are silly and unsupported "I bet I'm right" assertions, that somehow represent reasoning in your world, and incomprehensible blabber in BOLDCAPS that only demonstrates your lack of any relative knowledge.
No. People get angry with you, since the beginning, because of your amazing display of combined ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty that seems to be your entire MO. And some (me included) get even more angry because you are supposed (in your mind) to stand for GOD, for the Truth. And you don't even care.
Did you think about what I told you before, dave? Is it worth lying and distorting and denying reality itself, making the side you are supposed to stand for (the side of Christianity) look bad, just to try and keep your petty pride and stroke your ego? Did you give that the least bit of thought?
...Oh, why do I even bother.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Of course I believe in miracles. But God does not use them often. He allows natural processes to operate most of the time.
I love it when these people unconsciously let 'god' speak through their own mouths.
AFD takes the chicken way out:
Of course I believe in miracles. 1. Some people may miraculously believe my lies 2. No fact is too firm not to explained by a miracle where my ignorance make me blind. 3. If I didn't my world would vanish. 4. They are very convenient when it comes to making insurance claims
But God does not use them often. 1. Otherwise that would devalue the rarity, who's gonna buy lottery tickets if the same person keeps winning them. 2. When someone else from a competing cult makes such an outrageous claim I can safely scoff.
He allows natural processes to operate most of the time.
Unless I decide them/she/he didn't.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Yeah AFD's "Primary Age" is just classic, it reminds me of argueing with a 15 year old.
"But, but, you can't say that, that's not what it means"
Why?
Because that's not what I want it to mean
It would never stand up in court
I'm only a child
Ignorance, AFD is not a defense.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
However, I won't shake your hand and I won't treat you as a friend or tolerate your attempts to be such. Further, I expect to be treated with the politeness and courtesy afforded a guest-- in return, I speak to you with the politeness and courtesy given to a host. The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above.
If that bodyguard's Russian, not only will it "help", you'll end up shining Dave's shoes after you wake up. Please look at who owns whom in Boxing, MMA, and Wrestling. So take that trash talkin' mouth elsewhere, honey.
However, I won't shake your hand and I won't treat you as a friend or tolerate your attempts to be such. Further, I expect to be treated with the politeness and courtesy afforded a guest-- in return, I speak to you with the politeness and courtesy given to a host. The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above.
If that bodyguard's Russian, not only will it "help", you'll end up shining Dave's shoes after you wake up. Please look at who owns whom in Boxing, MMA, and Wrestling. So take that trash talkin' mouth elsewhere, honey.
yawns. we can see what turns you on honey.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
I'll be happy to put my microscope on your Atlantic basalt dating at some point, just as I am right now putting my microscope on the KBS Tuff and how it relates to the dating of the Grand Staircase.
Will you still be around? Will you hate life as much as these guys are when I put my microscope on your question? You've seen them curse and spit and call me names because they have no facts to refute my objections. We'll see what you do ... maybe you'll be more polite being from France ... we shall see ...
the difficulty (well, one of them) i have with your position is how can you even trust what your microscope tells you? When you are using it to "examine" the KBS Tuff, how do you know that a miracle is not happening to alter the photons to show you something different to what is really there, as they travel from the sample to your (ID designed) eyes. If you allow miracles once, then upon what basis do you claim they are rare? their frequency in the bible? Well, alot there last time i checked, kinda the whole point in a way. So, how can you trust your microscope? How can anything be trusted if miracles abound? Are you saying that the universal "plan" is faulty and gawd has to fix it up sometimes with a miracle, like keeping a spinning top going? you cant refute facts with rhetoric. pah. refute this http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Hey, maybe Nine and Dave can thumbwrestle for bragging rights. Two out of three falls the winner. Or maybe a good game of paper/rocks/scissors? Then we'll see who the real man is (ooooh, I'm all a' tingly!)
I'll be happy to put my microscope on your Atlantic basalt dating at some point, just as I am right now putting my microscope on the KBS Tuff and how it relates to the dating of the Grand Staircase.
Will you still be around? Will you hate life as much as these guys are when I put my microscope on your question? You've seen them curse and spit and call me names because they have no facts to refute my objections. We'll see what you do ... maybe you'll be more polite being from France ... we shall see ...
You think we're "hating life," Dave? Do you think I spend as much time on this site because I hate watching you win? Does that sound likely to you? Didn't think so.
Dave, you're looking through the microscope the wrong way. If you think we laugh at you and call you names because we have no facts to refute your "objections," you're just as dumb as we think you are. Every single assertion you've ever made on this thread, no matter what the topic, has been obliterated and laughed right out of town.
And speaking of the Grand Canyon, Dave—when are you going to favor us with your methodology for dating those layers you don't think can be dated using radioisotopes or index fossils or sedimentation rates or any of the other myriad methods real scientists use?
And still, after almost 150 pages, you have yet to present a single particle of evidence to support your own hypothesis. Why do you have any "objections" at all on this thread, Dave? We supply the objections, which you're then supposed to rebut. But since you have yet to actually provide any evidence to support your conjectures, all we can do is make fun of your pathetic bumbling around with your head wedged in a pickle bucket.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Faid-- I guess your going to go chasing off on a rabbit trail for about 10 pages trying to say how stupid I am that I think EB said fossils are primary (like you did with your Portuguese bandwagon that kept crashing) ... well, go ahead because, guess what ... FOSSILS ARE PRIMARY. THE PALEOS RULE. AND RM DATING IS ... ER ... SELECTED ... TO FIT EVO "REALITY"
Oh ... and "Why do you bother?" ... beats me ... I never see you say anything on topic anymore, so I ask myself that same question too ...
Steve Story...
Quote
It's very common for pseudoscience screeds to misuse basic terminology in a field. Says "Mr. Exponential Sedimentary Layers"
Jeannot-- Before I answer your latest question, tell me ... what do think the definition of a "miracle" is ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Faid-- I guess your going to go chasing off on a rabbit trail for about 10 pages trying to say how stupid I am that I think EB said fossils are primary (like you did with your Portuguese bandwagon that kept crashing) ... well, go ahead because, guess what ...
FOSSILS ARE PRIMARY. THE PALEOS RULE. AND RM DATING IS ... ER ... SELECTED ... TO FIT EVO "REALITY"
Oh ... and "Why do you bother?" ... beats me ... I never see you say anything on topic anymore, so I ask myself that same question too ...
Steve Story...
Quote
It's very common for pseudoscience screeds to misuse basic terminology in a field.
Says "Mr. Exponential Sedimentary Layers"
Jeannot-- Before I answer your latest question, tell me ... what do think the definition of a "miracle" is ...
in the context of this thread, it would be a miracle if you presented some evidence of your own, rather then pick apart other theorys (not that you do that, you just think you do). you define miracles, you just said you believed in them. Or is this typical creo crap? you get to say "i believe in miracles, and i get to define what they are after the fact". I can see that being useful, like a +2 refutation card. handy in many situations.
how old is the universe Dave? Or shall we try a simpler one? How old is the sun?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
So, how can you trust your microscope? How can anything be trusted if miracles abound?
We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to answer this question ...
This is really not complicated at all ...
IF you believe there is a Creator (and I do since the evidence--that Eric is too blind to see and keeps droning that it isn't evidence--points toward one), then you would expect Him to interact with His creation. But you would not expect Him to necessarily interact on a second by second basis any more than a human creator would do that with one of his creations. I like the gardening analogy ... a garden is a human creation. But the gardener does not interact constantly with the garden to make it grow. He interacts briefly to till, then plant, then weed, then water, etc. But the rest of the time, he let's natural laws do their thing. See? Why should it be different with God?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I like the gardening analogy ... a garden is a human creation. But the gardener does not interact constantly with the garden to make it grow. He interacts briefly to till, then plant, then weed, then water, etc. But the rest of the time, he let's natural laws do their thing. See? Why should it be different with God?
Ah Ha!! A Kipling fan.
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
So, how can you trust your microscope? How can anything be trusted if miracles abound?
We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to answer this question ...
This is really not complicated at all ...
IF you believe there is a Creator (and I do since the evidence--that Eric is too blind to see and keeps droning that it isn't evidence--points toward one), then you would expect Him to interact with His creation. But you would not expect Him to necessarily interact on a second by second basis any more than a human creator would do that with one of his creations. I like the gardening analogy ... a garden is a human creation. But the gardener does not interact constantly with the garden to make it grow. He interacts briefly to till, then plant, then weed, then water, etc. But the rest of the time, he let's natural laws do their thing. See? Why should it be different with God?
well, because there's alot of universe out there for a start. what's so special about this bit?
and, dont you think, following your analogy, that we'd notice the interactions? and by noticing them and ruling out all other options, we could derive absolute proof of gods existence? and then where does that leave belief? it becomes unnecessary, if we have absolute proof. and of course, this also would "prove" old bee-le-ze-bub himself exists, would you not agree?
so, we're back to the old saw - why would god water the plants, and then give them cancer?
how old is the universe Dave? how old is the Sun?
and your "evidence" for the creator so far seems to be negative - by this i mean no direct evidence, but pointing out the "flaws" in other theorys. Even if you manage to destory current understandings about the ancient earth, you're still left with ZERO proof for your theory!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Your god , it planted the garden of edin and waited what? 5 ,10 years for all the trees to grow then it planted adam and waited say 25 years then ripped out a rib and planted it for Eve and waited until she grew breasts say 16 years.
Hmmmmm
Kinda throws out your time-table there old boy ..eh?
No wait it took a handfull of dirt and..and..and.
No Wait it created everything except water then night and day (no mention of dusk) when it would have much easier just to say make a sun.
Fairy tales Davey.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Not ONE SINGLE POSTER, not even the de-lurkers, ever had anything supportive to say about any of your drivel in this thread, ever.
not one.
ever.
every individual (and there are dozens) who ever posted in this thread must be just as blind to your evidence then, Dave.
Is that a logical conclusion, you think?
If you do, please feel free to post the link to this thread on your website and on the front page of Kids4Truth, so they can clearly see just how blind every single person who reads your irrational screeds really is.
by your own logic, you would be doing the kids a big favor, yes?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
And still, after almost 150 pages, you have yet to present a single particle of evidence to support your own hypothesis.
please edit your post and put "hypothesis" with the appropriate quotation marks to highlight the inappropriate usage of the term, as indicated.
Oops. Sometimes I forget, or get lazy.
Okay, from now on, whenever I refer to "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" and forget the quotes, just assume I was being lazy and read "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Wild-Ass Guess Based On Dave's Wacky Misreading of Scripture."
Also:
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 19 2006,16:31)
FOSSILS ARE PRIMARY. THE PALEOS RULE. AND RM DATING IS ... ER ... SELECTED ... TO FIT EVO "REALITY"
Dave, putting assertions in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS lends them no additional credibility. "Primary" still doesn't mean what you think it does, and fossils have never been used to assign an absolute date to any particular sediment, unless, as I've pointed out, similar fossils that are known to have a very restricted range of dates associated with them have already been assigned an absolute date through a method than can actually be used to assign absolute dates.
Do you honestly think geologists care what date evolutionary biologists think should be assigned to a particular stratum, Dave? What, do you think biologists can pull rank, or something, on specialists in other fields? Your posts get dumber and dumber as you feel the ground getting cut out from under you.
And you still haven't presented any evidence to support your own "hypothesis," "unsupported assertion," "wild-assed guess," or whatever term is most appropriate to it. "Spew" might be the winner.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
We take a break from our regularly scheduled programming to answer this question ...
This is really not complicated at all ...
IF you believe there is a Creator (and I do since the evidence--that Eric is too blind to see and keeps droning that it isn't evidence--points toward one), then you would expect Him to interact with His creation.
Gee, Dave, I don't seem to be the only one here who knows you've never posted a single scrap of evidence to support a single one of your assertions—not even your "Portuguese" assertion, which you still seem to think you proved—let alone for your "Creator." Again, I invite you to get someone else, other than yourself, to speak up and point to any "evidence" you've ever presented on any topic. As has been pointed out to you innumerable times, Dave, you wouldn't know "evidence" if it snarled and slavered and took a big chunk out of your butt.
You don't believe in a Creator because of the "evidence," Dave, because you don't have any evidence. You believe because you want to believe, and that's the only reason. If you actually did have some evidence for your "UPDATED Creator God Spasm" I'm pretty sure you would have posted it by now. You've had almost four months to do it, for crying out loud.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
It's very common for pseudoscience screeds to misuse basic terminology in a field.
Says "Mr. Exponential Sedimentary Layers"
Good thing I'm not you. I'd spend the next three months arguing that JonF was wrong while he kicked the crap out of me in public. I said it was a guess, and I dropped it when a more knowledgeable person told me it was wrong. There's a lesson in there somewhere....
oh and by the way
Quote
primary
a. Characteristic of or existing in a rock at the time of its formation; pertains to minerals, textures, etc.; original. Ant: secondary. b. Said of a mineral deposit unaffected by supergene enrichment. AGI c. Said of a metal obtained from ore rather than from scrap. Syn: virgin Source: Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms
I'll be happy to put my microscope on your Atlantic basalt dating at some point, just as I am right now putting my microscope on the KBS Tuff and how it relates to the dating of the Grand Staircase.
Will you still be around? Will you hate life as much as these guys are when I put my microscope on your question? You've seen them curse and spit and call me names because they have no facts to refute my objections. We'll see what you do ... maybe you'll be more polite being from France ... we shall see ...
That's not a microscope, Dave. It's a ViewMaster with a "Bible Stories" disc inside it.
Anyway, you've been asked the question multiple times by multiple people, but you keep avoiding it. What is your criticism of the methodology used to find the Tuff dates? And which of the dates would you have chosen, and why?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
just assume I was being lazy and read "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Wild-Ass Guess Based On Dave's Wacky Misreading of Scripture."
your devotion to accuracy in this matter is much appreciated.
I'll try not to screw up again. Dave takes enough credit for his slapped-together ad-hoc spasm he posted at the beginning of the thread without my practically inviting him to quote-mine me.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
IF you believe there is a Creator (and I do since the evidence--that Eric is too blind to see and keeps droning that it isn't evidence--points toward one), then you would expect Him to interact with His creation. But you would not expect Him to necessarily interact on a second by second basis any more than a human creator would do that with one of his creations. I like the gardening analogy ... a garden is a human creation. But the gardener does not interact constantly with the garden to make it grow. He interacts briefly to till, then plant, then weed, then water, etc. But the rest of the time, he let's natural laws do their thing. See? Why should it be different with God?
Why shouldn't it?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Man, that link hit my retrophilia right in the pleasure center. It was like an entire episode of The Venture Brothers all rolled up into one night, up in here.
(for those who don't get the last sentence, here's a clue:
is a line by Master Shake, about #### Week. The bit about Venture is that Venture is based, saturated, in retro 50's modernism, think Epcot center, and it really pushes the retro buttons, in the same way that Viewfinder link does.
BTW, a friend and myself have thought about W.W.B.S.D bracelets. What Would Brock Sampson Do. It's not a bad guiding philosophy for life. I'm eyeing a '68 Dodge Charger.
primary a. Characteristic of or existing in a rock at the time of its formation; pertains to minerals, textures, etc.; original. Ant: secondary. b. Said of a mineral deposit unaffected by supergene enrichment. AGI c. Said of a metal obtained from ore rather than from scrap. Syn: virgin Source: Dictionary of Mining, Mineral, and Related Terms
Amazing! A remarkable double meaning of an English word!
Actually, Steve, I've understood this for quite some time ... but you are missing the point. Your definition is good. But the important thing you are missing is that paleontologists date layers FIRST by the fossils according not only to EB, but also according to the KBS Tuff example I gave you. I understand your definition above and that's fine but it has little to do with the real world. What I am telling you is that the first thing they do is ask what fossils are there. Then they date the samples with RM dating if they are able so as to add "credibility" to their already-assigned-because-of-the-fossils-date.
Someone asked what objections I have to the specific dating methods used at the KBS Tuff. This is a naive question and again reveals that this person is missing the point.
The point is ... (Lord, why am repeating this? ... maybe they'll get it on their death bed! ... The Tuff yielded many wildly discordant dates (231my to 0.52my contradicting JonF's assurance that "we don't get discordance") ... Leakey "helped" the geochronologists throw out all samples except ones with the 2.61 date because he wanted to make history. But for this to happen, the paleos would have had to adjust the whole picture of human evolution, and this was grandly announced by Leakey. The paleos dug their heels in and finally won with some help from pig evolution.
Ha! Just telling this story again makes me laugh at you and cry for the kids in public school that get lied to! What a joke! We have this political battle and a charade of the scientific method and you guys are taken in hook, line and sinker apparently!
I can't wait to do a Dynamation on this subject to help public school kids see how sadly mistaken you guys are.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The hardest thing about having moderation powers is the necessary restraint. Wouldn't it be fun to disallow any post by AFDave which didn't advance his own hypothesis? I mean, delete anything which simply attacked other hypotheses? Force him to put up evidence, or shut up? Sadly, what would happen to him is what would happen to GoP. If you prohibited them from attacking real science, what would they have left? The Posts of August would fall silent, and we would all suffer.
The point is ... (Lord, why am repeating this? ... maybe they'll get it on their death bed! ... The Tuff yielded many wildly discordant dates (231my to 0.52my contradicting JonF's assurance that "we don't get discordance") Leakey "helped" the geochronologists throw out all samples except ones with the 2.61 date because he wanted to make history. But for this to happen, the paleos would have had to adjust the whole picture of human evolution, and this was grandly announced by Leakey. The paleos dug their heels in and finally won with some help from pig evolution. Ha! Just telling this story again makes me laugh at you and cry for the kids in public school that get lied to! What a joke! We have this political battle and a charade of the scientific method and you guys are taken in hook, line and sinker apparently! I can't wait to do a Dynamation on this subject to help public school kids see how sadly mistaken you guys are.
Except for a few small things. Like that's not how it happened. By all means, feel free to caricature it as such, but the facts are against you. Also, take note that if you decide to libellously portray Leakey's actions or what he "helped" in ( without you KNOWING that he did any such thing, this is defamation) I'll make sure the Leakey Foundation is notified.
Otherwise, feel free to lie about this as you wish. Eventually, some of the kids you lie to will determine the facts of the matter and resent the way that they were lied to. No worries here, bub. The truth will out, as they say.
Now, again...how does this provide any evidence for your hypothesis?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The point is ... (Lord, why am repeating this? ... maybe they'll get it on their death bed! ... The Tuff yielded many wildly discordant dates (231my to 0.52my contradicting JonF's assurance that "we don't get discordance") ... Leakey "helped" the geochronologists throw out all samples except ones with the 2.61 date because he wanted to make history. But for this to happen, the paleos would have had to adjust the whole picture of human evolution, and this was grandly announced by Leakey. The paleos dug their heels in and finally won with some help from pig evolution.
Dave, how does any of this help you? As I stated before, I don't care whether you think RM dating is accurate or not; you're not remotely competent to make a judgment on the topic. But in any event, none of these dates are remotely concordant with your requirement that the earth be some tens of thousands of years old, at most. No date for any of these sediments is anywhere near in the range it needs to be to fit in with your Biblical creation myth. You can't make any dates for anything converge on any particular date. What should that tell you?
And why do you think it's a weakness for the standard theory to use evidence from pig evolution to date fossils outlining human evolution? I can tell you why: because you still haven't grasped the concept of multiple, independent lines of evidence all mutually reinforcing each other. You think if that happens, it's a bad thing!
So again, Dave: how would you date these deposits? By reference to your Bible? You don't have a clue, do you? You have absolutely no idea how you would date any particular geological structure or paleontological find without reference to your Bible. You couldn't pick a figure within five orders of magnitude! The only way you know to date anything is to decide a priori, without reference to any external data at all, that no object on earth can date to before ~10,000 BCE.
One more time: are you ever going to give up on your pathetic and ineffectual attempts to discredit widely and thoroughly confirmed methodologies and actually work on your own "hypothesis"? Are you ever going to come up with any evidence for anything, let alone for your wacky idea that the earth is only 6,000 or so years old?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since I've told Dave several times he doesn't even begin to be competent to hold a position on the accuracy or reliability of radiometric dating, I imagine it's only a matter of time (although knowing Dave it could be a very long time) before he asks me why I think I'm competent to hold an opinion on the matter. So I'll save him the effort and ask (and answer) the question myself.
Dave, neither you nor I have the technical expertise necessary to make a judgment as to the accuracy or reliability of radiometric dating. Yet I believe that it is an effective and reliable technique for dating some mineral deposits, and you don't. Why is my opinion worth more than yours? Here's why: I rely on the expertise of those who actually are competent and qualified to make such assessments. This isn't an appeal to authority, because the weight of opinion on the matter is decisive, i.e., the entire scientific community. You, on the other hand, believe that you, personally, have the requisite knowledge to make such an assessment. Such a belief is, not to put too fine a point on it, laughable. The idea of you substituting your lamentably-poor judgment on a matter you haven't the merest clue about (and never will have the merest clue about) is like a rhesus monkey expounding on why the germ theory of disease is a fiction, or why General Relativity is wrong, or that quantum mechanics always comes up with wrong answers.
At some point, non-specialists like Dave and me have got to rely on the expertise of recognized experts in the field. The difference between Dave and me as that I recognize where that point lies. Dave, with absolutely staggering arrogance, thinks he can go head-to-head with people who have devoted decades of their lives to honing their expertise in a highly technical and demanding field.
That's why we all know you're a clown, Dave. And it's why we enjoy watching you thrash around helplessly.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Someone asked what objections I have to the specific dating methods used at the KBS Tuff. This is a naive question and again reveals that this person is missing the point.
The point is ... (Lord, why am repeating this? ... maybe they'll get it on their death bed! ... The Tuff yielded many wildly discordant dates (231my to 0.52my contradicting JonF's assurance that "we don't get discordance") ... Leakey "helped" the geochronologists throw out all samples except ones with the 2.61 date because he wanted to make history. But for this to happen, the paleos would have had to adjust the whole picture of human evolution, and this was grandly announced by Leakey. The paleos dug their heels in and finally won with some help from pig evolution.
In other words, you have no objections to the dating methods. All you have is a conspiracy theory.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Leakey "helped" the geochronologists throw out all samples except ones with the 2.61 date because he wanted to make history. But for this to happen, the paleos would have had to adjust the whole picture of human evolution, and this was grandly announced by Leakey. The paleos dug their heels in and finally won with some help from pig evolution.
DDTTD has got to have the worst case of Athletes Mouth ever and the breath to go with it.
When he can't cut and paste from AiG/ICR or when he "thinks" he understands facts well enough to expound on his own, he gets it so wrong it's hard to believe (he's just as wrong when he cuts and pastes his creo cult crap too).
DDTTD would have us believe that Leakey the Younger, a home schooled Anthropologist, pressured the Geochronolgists into caving, to make history and the Paleoanthropologists and all the other millionsofyears 'ologists dug in their heels because they DIDN'T feel obliged to adjust the whole picture of human evolution. Riiight! Adjustments were made anyhow.
Resentment (he was home schooled), peer pressure (his hypothesis didn't fit the mold) and conspiracy???, obviously drove what happened. Wrooong!
Paleos and Anthros told Leakey the Senior he was nuts when he proposed to find early hominids in Africa. Eurasia was the place to be. He proved them wrong and the model was adjusted (and adjusted and adjusted, an ongoing process that won't stop anytime soon).
We're all of us Africans and naked apes. Get over it DDTTD. Your Momma is a naked African Ape, as are you.
Leakey the Senior then said he'd find modern hominid evolution in North America and was again told he was nuts. He failed. Big deal? Nope. His hypothesis didn't pass muster. No evidence, case closed.
Meanwhile, DDTTD keeps sinking lower and lower. He keeps projecting. The evidence? He was home schooled (hunting pigs in a hollow log in the Amazon), his "hypothesis" doesn't fit the mold (Goddidit), and a "conspiracy" kept him from his seat in a FIGHTER, (General changed the rules).
DDTTD, I need an address so I can tell you what a moron, liar and willfully ignorant fool you are. Bring a Roosian bodygard if you feel the need.
Maybe GoP would volunteer there -- given that he spends so much time eyeballing those big sweaty mens, he should have picked up some skillz.
That is if you can pry him out of his mommy's basement where he lives and get him away from his...wait a minute, he doesn't have a job, that's right.
You should be free, GoP--why not volunteer to be AFDave's bodyguard should Dave need a friend? I mean, you have the courage of your convictions, don't you?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, before you come with your evidence that radiometric dating, dendrochronology, varves... are flawed, I'd like to know the methods you recommend, besides "the scripture said it was ?6000 years ago ±a few years".
Shhhhhh Deadman, don't bring up Ghosty's homoerotic fixations, he'll start accusing us of Mutt and Jeffery(whatever that is) and homophobia. He knows he likes boys, we know he likes boys. The only problem is that we have no problem with his boy loving, he is however conflicted as fuck! Mind you his confliction is amusing.
I'd love to meet Ghosty and Davey in real life. I think it would be a hoot. My guess is that they wouldn't be as bonkers as they present themselves here. He11 I'd even stand 'em a beer or two. That should make things amusing. After all, Davey's meds prevent him from drinking too much and he'd go bananas, and Ghosty's clearly an unhealthily underweight 14 year old with a muscley Russian fixation so two beers in he'd be on the floor vomiting his guts up. I guess I better make them stick to water so we can actually have a conversation. (oh I can't wait for the macho response from the boys!
It's one thing to spout bronze age bullshit as fact over tha intarwebz, it's another thing to do it in person. I've often found that the creationists I encounter here in the UK are far less fundamentalist in person and fact than their almost anonymous writings on the compuglobalmeganet indicate. They do have to function in society after all, and being blitheringly oblivious to evidence and reason doesn't serve you well.
Mind you that being said, you Americans do have some splendidly bonkers creationist fruitcakes. Maybe they'd be as frothing as they are here.
Mind you that being said, you Americans do have some splendidly bonkers creationist fruitcakes. Maybe they'd be as frothing as they are here.
Hah, I've only met ONE offline that was as nuts as online, and he was this old coot, about...ah, I'd say 60-ish that actually advanced toward James Randi onstage at a meeting at Caltech -- and before anyone could grab the nutter ( we were in the front row), Randi -- old as HE is, and small as he is, just decked this fucker. The guy was escorted out by the collar of his jacket, and a good time was had by all.
I think Kent Hovind is truly nuts, though. Never met him personally, but heard he's crazy as a basketful of weasels on crack. His e-mails while negotiating an online "debate" were illiterate as ####, too.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh he11s yeah! Hovind is crazier than a bucket full of freshly poked monkeys. But most of the creationist boys and girls are just social creationists. They don't know any better and are maintaining themselves as part of a social in-group. It's no crime, dammit, it's not even a bad thing at all, we all do similar stuff it's just that some of us know we do similar stuff and try to correct it.
Sure the planet would be better off without the Hovinds of this world, but it wouldn't be as amusing.
As for Randi decking someone, sweet! I can imagine Randi being a feisty fucker.
When Davey and Ghosty cometo the UK, I reckon my standing them a pint or two of Cripplecock cider willdo them the power of good.
Of course were any of you guys on the side of, ya know, the evidence, reason and dare I say it truth (small t, truth is provisional only, may be subject to change without prior notice), well THEN I'd stand you more than the odd pint of Cripplecock. I'd take you down to Dorset, go into the Porterhouse, beer you to the eyeballs with Ringwood 49er and pig snacks, and then we'd enjoy an evening of decent conversation and banter. Mind you, since I do all this regularly anyway, excepting the Dorset part at the moment, you guys are always welcome to join in.
Louis-- When I come to the UK, I'd be happy to look you up and have a cool one, non-alcoholic though it may be. I've never seen the sense in deadening brain cells with alcohol. I'd actually be happy to meet most of you here, except possibly Deadman ... he seems to be seething inside and my hand to hand self defense skills have declined significantly since high school ... I'd fear for my life a little with him, especially if he had a beer or two in him.
Anyway, back on topic ... this coming week, I will show you more details about the Grand Staircase and why the conventionally accepted dating of the layers is false. How does this give support to my hypothesis? You have to eliminate other possibilities in people's minds as well as provide positive support for your own. I have provided excellent support for the Flood so far--
1) the fact that most of the layers themselves have been laid by water (yes, even the Coconino SS) 2) the fact that the non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood 3) the fact that most layers contain marine fossils 4) the fact that present day mountain tops contain marine fossils 5) the fact of folded (uncracked) strata 6) the fact of incised meanders showing that sediments were soft when the meander was cut 7) the fact of two modern examples of flood waters creating very similar features to what we find in the Grand Canyon and other canyons 8) the fact of historical records which tell of a great flood and legends of such from around the world
But before we dive into the Grand Staircase again tomorrow, I have a little rabbit trail for you ... hopefully you can have some fun with it!
You know that we "wingnut" Christians believe that Jesus will return to earth at some point in the future, right? And there is this curious little verse in Revelation about "the beast" evidently a world ruler of some sort and it says "the number of the beast (also the number of man) is 666."
OK, has everyone read Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons"? In there he tells about the CERN logo and a little about masons and pentagrams and duality and the sacredness of the number five and what not. I cannot keep all the masonic stuff straight in my head, but I had never seen an instance of 5, 2 AND 666 all worked into one symbol. Take a look ...
This was from a couple years ago during the 50th anniversary and if you go to their site now, you will only see the right portion of the logo, which is the interesting part.
What you have in the logo (disregarding the big "5") is 2 circles, 5 points and the number 666 (using the long arm accelerator symbols stacked on top of each other) all contained in the logo ...
Neat, huh? Now tell me ... why would one of the premier scientific organizations in the world put masonic and Biblical numbers in their logo? A joke? A coincidence? Scientists aren't into that "nonsense" are they?
Back on track Monday! See you then!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Doesn't touch alcohol...hmmmm...mommy have two many Martini's before dinner eh davey?..did she indulge in mixed double's south of the border? Even if she didn't, it doesn't matter.
You are tighter than a fishes arsehole, and stupider than a very stupid rock.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
1) You don'tdrink because you're afraid of deadening brain cells? Dude, seriously, that ship sailed a looooong time ago. You can drink free in the knowledge that brain damage due to alcohol is the least of your worries. Creationism beat the booze to it.
2) Now, we've all had lots of fun with your diversions about dating and floods and buffs and the like. It's nice to see you are interested in science even if you misrepresent it, lie about it and don't understand it. But, we seem to have gotten off the topic by a long way. As MANY people have said to you MANY times, your negative claims about evolutionary biology and similar topics are wrong. Very wrong. Even if they were 100% right though, all they would prove AT BEST is that there is a problem with the field of science you were examining. They don't support your other claims in a positive sense.
What we need from you is the POSITIVE evidence of your creator god hypothesis. Saying something you find personally compelling doesn't do it (because anyone can counter it with equally compelling stuff for them). Appealing to scripture doesn't do it because other people can also appeal to scripture with equally justified differing interpretations. The can even appeal to OTHER religious texts with equal validity. Making things up about global floods and saying look isn't my bible correct doesn't do it. Even if your flood claims were true (and they ain't) all it would show is correlation AT BEST. Even if there were a global flood, you'd pretty much expect that people noticed and wrote about it, it doesn't follow that global flood=proof of your god.
What I am trying to get at is that it isn't that we don't accept your "evidence" it's just that your "evidence" doesn't actually support your claims, even if you were 100% correct and we were 100% incorrect. Which isn't the case as it happens! Your conclusions do not follow from either your premises or your "evidence".
Now it is entirely possible (note key word) that what you are claiming is the case, however, wouldn't you want that to be iron clad? Shown to be the case by the best available reasoning and data. At the moment it isn't, what YOU need to do (because no one can do it for you) is come up with something substantial that works. And this doesn't mean something that works in your head only.
1) the fact that most of the layers themselves have been laid by water (yes, even the Coconino SS) 2) the fact that the non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood 3) the fact that most layers contain marine fossils 4) the fact that present day mountain tops contain marine fossils 5) the fact of folded (uncracked) strata 6) the fact of incised meanders showing that sediments were soft when the meander was cut 7) the fact of two modern examples of flood waters creating very similar features to what we find in the Grand Canyon and other canyons 8) the fact of historical records which tell of a great flood and legends of such from around the world
Nonsense, YOU provided zero data on any of this, AirHead, you merely copied from AIG or ICR.
1. You say you've shown the Coconino was WATER-LAID, yet you can't answer a single question on it about how SPIDER tracks are laid on a layer in the midst of a flood and have MORE layers dumped on TOP of that...and still survive. 2. Er, no, they can't. You haven't shown how anything as simple as the Kaibab limestone can be deposited PREFERENTIALLY in the midst of a flood. Limestone IN solution ...PREFERENTIALLY laid down with little or no included material? and that is NOT the only Limestone layer, you know. As to volcanics, look at the Hawaiian islands. Follow the guyots that indicate the direction of travel for the hot spot that the islands sit on. Calculate the rate of speed for that motion and volcano formation. Also, remember that your Baumgardner scenario is, by Baumgardner's own admission , impossible without a miracle that would deal with the energy (heat) given off by such movements...movements that would boil off the oceans. 3. Many layers have marine fossils and many layers have ...DINOSAUR TRACKS in them...and DINOSAUR fossils...but no OTHER kinds of fossils that WOULD Be laid down in a raging flood 4. There are also trilobite fossils there, and dino fossils on some, and amphibians on others...but you find those mountains where? YOU DON'T FIND THE FOSSILS MIXED UP, you find mountains in orogenous zones on plates or where there are hotspots or other mountain-building geological features. Your model requires a flood during ONE year that killed off everything, but we don't find the fossils mixed up? And to try to wave your hands about that, you appeal to "well, mammals move faster than reptiles while drowning." What a hoot. 5) The fact of folded (uncracked) strata won't answer the questions I asked you about HOW the mountains folded and metamorphized, and in fact, you refused to answer it except to say you didn't know, yet modern geology DOES know, so your theory loses again 6) Repeating the "soft sediments" = "incised meanders" is typical of your lies. YOU MENTIONED ONE CITATION from a US army corps of engineers work on the MISSISSIPPI back in the 40's and not anything related to the Colorado river or a giant flood 7) Except the Toutle river examples you gave don't show the steep-sided meanders large scale, nor could the Toutle ashbeds and mud ever show that, since it goes against all laws of engineering and physics and hydrology. 8) flood legends are not evidence of a global flood, dave. Some show RIVERS flooding, others talk about seas. And how many early cultures do we know of NOT NEAR WATER? And how many myths do we have of cave origins ? To try to say that the stories of every flood represent the Biblical flood is hilarious...here's the East African Kikuyu "flood" :
"The old spirits destroyed a town by flooding it with beer, while the inhabitants took refuge in caverns nearby." (Abrahams, Roger D. African Folktales, Random House, New York, 1983.) Yeah, I'd like to be in THAT flood, but it sure doesn't sound like Noah
Oh, and why would you invite me to go to the Grand Canyon if you **now** say I am seething with "anger"? I said I would act cordially and politely, but you say that if you insult me to my face, I have to ...what? Accept it? and for you, that means i'm "seething?"
Pfft, just as you are an intellectual coward who will not answer a single question asked you , you are apparently a physical coward as well...one that wants to insult a decent human being ( me) with no repercussions. The interesting thing here is how desperately you want to play martyr...pretending that the pagans are assaulting you while you were innocent--when the truth of the matter is that you created this thread while insulting others, continued to do so when others asked you to stop, but you refused. Now you're a "victim?" You should be allowed to insult me and be immune? Hah.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Deadman-- I didn't invite you to the GC ... go back and look at what I said, and no, it's not cowardice to avoid people who threaten you physically. I am interested in intellectual and verbal debate, not physical violence from a pissed off evolutionist. You verbally insult me every day and I have never threatened you physically and I never will. Yet you threaten me physically if I insult you? No thanks ...
More on topic tomorrow ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Faid-- I guess your going to go chasing off on a rabbit trail for about 10 pages trying to say how stupid I am that I think EB said fossils are primary (like you did with your Portuguese bandwagon that kept crashing) ...
Guess what, dave: I actually am. Just like the Portuguese bandwagon that kept crashing (crashing into your ridiculous assertions, pulverizing them), I'll keep pressing you to grow a pair and admit your misquote of the EB article was a stupid mistake on your part. Maybe if someone keeps reminding you (hurts, don't it?) you will manage sometime to overcome your [Davejargon]UNBELIEVABLE ARROGANCE[/Davejargon] and get in touch with reality. Normally, I wouldn't have bothered... But it really gets to me when people so unbelievably dishonest as you have the nerve to accuse ME of argument-twisting and misquoting -and refusing to back their claims up like any MAN would do. So, as long as your ego keeps avoiding this issue, I'll be here to rub it in your face. Address it, or deal with it, dave.
As for staying on topic- did you look at your thread's title recently, dave? It's you that's off-topic. You've been off topic since page one, IMO. He11, check your last post: I mean seriously. (btw, do you know what that lil' symbol is actually supposed to represent, dave? Of course not). And even so. I still make "on-topic" posts, and what do you do? You either systematically ignore them, or you try to twist them beyond recognition. Matter of fact, that's what you've been doing in our discussions since the very beginning, as far as I can recall -remember our little "discussion" about TO's arguments against the 'fine-tuning' argument? Where I had to quote that paragraph like a dozen times, and you failed to address it on each one? Or the time when you accused me that 'I never provided links' after I had given you links in at least 7 previous posts? And when I shoved the links at your face, you said "ok, so Faid gave links. So where were we?" and you completely ignored them again?
Like I said, dave: Unlike you, I do not lie. And I have nothing but despise for those who do.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Let me remind you once again what I said long ago on this board, DAVE, YOU came on this thread that YOU created...insulting people. Long ago, say about page 50 or so, I offered to engage you in adult debate, with you actually behaving like an adult without your juvenile insults and you managed to last all of a day or so.
Furthermore, yesterday you offered me a hypothetical case where you insult me to my face, and I said you would deserve whatever you get...this despite the fact that I said I would treat you with the courtesy deserving a host. Apparently, though, you feel as though you can't control your juvenile impulses or trust your ability to stave off your petty nature long enough to behave like a man and not a 12 year old. And you say that *I'm* "seething? You apparently forget a whole bunch of things real conveniently, AirHead, and I insult you now because you never dropped your little insult game long ago , when I asked you to.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
But it really gets to me when people so unbelievably dishonest as you have the nerve to accuse ME of argument-twisting and misquoting
Then I'm going to be "getting to you a lot" I guess. And yes, I do have a lot of nerve -- I don't mind calling a spade a spade even if people get mad about it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well I've hoisted few for the true believers, not u AFD u complete bag of sheep's droppings or fertilizer whether u like it or knots.
A bag full of weasels...I like it.
So if one is given the choice of the lesser of two weasels does one choose a)The hear and know b)Or b) the inanity of nihilistic nobody-ism of the long distance creationist waiting for re-fertilization.
Personally IDGaF. The worms will get the best bits.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Except the nerve needed to answer questions honestly and directly, without avoidance and all the fallacies and rhetorical ploys you use....and apparently also lacking the nerve to try to control your own little-kid-insult-tendencies long enough to go sample some rocks in the Grand Canyon.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"calling a spade a spade (AND REFUSING TO BACK UP YOUR CLAIMS WITH PROOF, EVEN WHEN OTHERS DIRECTLY CHALLENGE YOU TO DO IT)" = Unbelievably dishonest chickenshit cowardice
Get it now, champ?
Now put up or shut up.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I have provided excellent support for the Flood so far--
1) the fact that most of the layers themselves have been laid by water (yes, even the Coconino SS) 2) the fact that the non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood 3) the fact that most layers contain marine fossils 4) the fact that present day mountain tops contain marine fossils 5) the fact of folded (uncracked) strata 6) the fact of incised meanders showing that sediments were soft when the meander was cut 7) the fact of two modern examples of flood waters creating very similar features to what we find in the Grand Canyon and other canyons 8) the fact of historical records which tell of a great flood and legends of such from around the world
But before we dive into the Grand Staircase again tomorrow, I have a little rabbit trail for you ... hopefully you can have some fun with it!
Dave, you haven't provided any evidence for 1 through 8. I can't imagine why you keep saying this, but it's completely false, and everyone here knows it.
Do you understand that asserting that something is true is not the same as providing evidence for it? If you think you've presented evidence for even one of these assertions, will you please either post it in your reply to this post, or at least tell us which in message on which thread you posted it?
Aside from your lack of evidence, many of your assertions here are flat-out false anyway. It simply is not true that "two modern examples of flood waters creating very similar features to what we find in the Grand Canyon and other canyons." We've all seen the photos, and have noted that there are significant differences between the Grand Canyon and the Toutle River and the Missoula river. It is most certainly not true that the incised meanders in the Grand Canyon show the sediments were soft when cut; in fact they show the exact opposite.
Further, almost all of your bullet points here do not support a flood geology, and in fact support and are perfectly explained by conventional geology.
So stop saying you've presented evidence for your flood "hypothesis," when you've done nothing of the sort, Dave. Everyone here is well aware of your obfuscations on this point, and they're getting you nowhere. If you want to get any further on your arguments for your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis," you'd best admit you have no evidence for your "flood," because otherwise you're never going to get past this sticking point.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, you're clearly not familiar with the scientific method (and science in general), let me help you analyse the data you provided
1) the fact that most of the layers themselves have been laid by water (yes, even the Coconino SS) => proves that sedimentation mostly occures in water
2) the fact that the non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood => is not a fact.
3) the fact that most layers contain marine fossils => proves that their are a lot of water and organisms in the ocean (using conclusion from 1)
4) the fact that present day mountain tops contain marine fossils => indicates that those layers were under the sea once
5) the fact of folded (uncracked) strata => proves that stata can be folded and remain uncraked
6) the fact of incised meanders showing that sediments were soft when the meander was cut => is wrong
7) the fact of two modern examples of flood waters creating very similar features to what we find in the Grand Canyon and other canyons => is wrong. Please, show us a recent (hystorical) river that eroded hundred of meters of granite.
8) the fact of historical records which tell of a great flood and legends of such from around the world => is not a scientific fact
6) the fact of incised meanders showing that sediments were soft when the meander was cut
SFBDave continues to lie about the GC. A river slow enough to cut meanders could not possible carry away all the sediment required to form the CG in Dave's creationist one year time frame. A flow fast enough to carry away all the sediment in one year could not possibly cut meanders. Dave is dishonest and continues to lie about this.
Quote (AFdave @ Aug. 20 2006,06:59)
7) the fact of two modern examples of flood waters creating very similar features to what we find in the Grand Canyon and other canyons
SFBDave continues to lie about the Chinese canyon cut in limestone and buried 17000 feet below today's surface. Dave lies about how long it takes a thousand feet of limestone to form. Dave lies about how long it takes water to carve a canyon in super-hard limestone. Dave lies about how 17000 feet of sediment could have been deposited after the canyon was carved.
Dave Hawkins, the cowardly egotistical anti-Christian - lying for Jesus and embarrassing real Christians everywhere.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Kudos to the regulars for your persistence, for your lucid explanations and supporting links, and for the many comments that made me LOL. I've learned a lot - thanks.
But I have to confess that I read this thread for Dave. At first I thought he was genuinely interested in learning, but it is now clear he is dishonest, arrogant, and also monumentally stupid. I have never met anyone remotely like this in person.
To Dave, I have to add my voice to the others - you have NOT provided any evidence to support any part of your "hypothesis". None. At all. Not even close.
O my dear "cak," but I HAVE learned!! I have learned much about the self delusion of the Evo-mind and I have learned that most people come to a place like this to justify their skepticism. I guess that includes you, eh? IOW ... Misery Loves Company!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Deat Jeannot ... I have a situation that requires someone who knows something about the scientific method and is very good at observing evidence ... that would be you, right?
This afternoon I came home from church and found some brown piles of smelly stuff in my front yard, some round shaped depressions and my grass was clipped in certain places close to the brown piles. Also, my neighbor is a dairy farmer and I noticed a broken section of fence ...
From this evidence can you tell me what most likely happened in my front yard? Please tell me how you would apply the scientific method in this case since you say you understand it and you say I do not ...
We shall take what we learn in this little exercise and apply it to rock layers ...
Thanks!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I have learned much about the self delusion of the Evo-mind and I have learned that most people come to a place like this to justify their skepticism. I guess that includes you, eh? IOW ... Misery Loves Company!
First you accuse others of insulting you , playing martyr as you hurl insults left and right -- and earlier in this thread were crowing about how you were used to such "rough" interactions...but then you say you were unfairly attacked when your insults are returned.
Later, you claim I "threatened you with physical harm after you asked me what I would do if you called me an idiot to my face. I responded by saying you would deserve what you get, and YOU play martyr again, pretending I had physically threatened you.
Now, despite the fact that you cannot answer questions about your "hypothesis " directly -- you claim others are deluded, yet you avoid, ignore , distract, divert, use fallacies and games to never address direct questions put to you.
All of these are standard ploys used by people like you, Dave: the "martyr" game...the avoidance game followed by " I gave you evidence "..... while you again call others names like "self-deluded" merely because they point out your faults.
This is YOUR HYPOTHESIS, dave, and part of testing hypotheses is to question them narrowly to see if they hold up in explanatory value...to see if they are in fact falsifiable, to see if they can generate testable claims...and the fact is that you have failed miserably.
On the other hand, every question of import that YOU have asked...has been answered. YOU cannot even answer simple ones about Spider tracks in the Coconino, or how the sides of the grand canyon remained vertical despite being deposited in one year.
But you call others deluded? Take a look in the mirror, boy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
This afternoon I came home from church and found some brown piles of smelly stuff in my front yard...
From this evidence can you tell me what most likely happened in my front yard?
Sure thing Davie. What happened was someone must have squeezed your head.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
O my dear "cak," but I not HAVE learned!! I have not learned much about the self delusion of the Evo-mindCreationist and I have not learned that most people come to a place like this to justify their skepticism point out the bleeding obvious. I guess that includes you, eh? IOW ... AFD Loves Misery !
AFD define circular reasoning and why it is false reasoning.
Do you know the rules of evidence AFD? Are you prepared to swear on a bible to tell the truth?
No, I thought not.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
O my dear "cak," but I not HAVE learned!! I have not learned much about the self delusion of the Evo-mindCreationist and I have not learned that most people come to a place like this to justify their skepticism point out the bleeding obvious. I guess that includes you, eh? IOW ... AFD Loves Misery !
AFD define circular reasoning and why it is false reasoning.
Do you know the rules of evidence AFD? Are you prepared to swear on a bible to tell the truth?
No, I thought not.
For those interested in a deeper analysis of circular reasoning and how AFD is undermining the meaning of lanuage have a look at this
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Trust me on one thing Davey, I've met people in your situation before and I actually feel sorry for you.
I don't trust you an anything and no you don't. You hate my guts and all people who think like me. Which is too bad for you but oh well. Hating people turns your heart black. (not literally, guys, calm down--it's a figure of speech)
You are right dave. Davey DH, I insult you because you are not important to me and I find you mildly offensive/ THat said, hate only speaks to the one who hates. But DaveyDH, wasn't it you that projected the word onto DM? I would hope that you could keep turning the other cheex. And DavieDH,
HAve you deliberately lied on this thread ?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Remember Dave's incessant posting on "abductive reasoning" at the beginning of this thread?
• See an unusual occurence.
• Propose some sort of weird thing, like an omnipotent being.
• Given the existence of this weird thing, i.e. the omnipotent being, then the unusual fact would be entirely expected.
(Yes, Dave, I know that's not how you put it, but that's pretty much what it boils down to.)
Kind of the ultimate in circular reasoning, in that it assumes its own conclusion. Sure, Dave, if you assume an omnipotent being, nothing is unexpected.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Why don't we mostly have fossils of benthic organisms in the deeper strata and fossils of planktonic organisms in the upper ones?
Why is that Dave?
And again, was it sea water?
Or just what was the salinity? Sturgeon, now they may not care, but poor STJ, ask him daveyDH, ask him what would would happen to a beautiful parrotfish in salinity of, oh, say 18 ppt. (sorry,. Icthyic) What would happen to the poor smolts? Why do the rivers run downhill?
(Having Native American's in the family helps)
Really Davey, why tf do the river's run downhill? A quick google search didn't give me one of the severaol freakin hundred creation stories I heard as a kid. Go figure it out. You have to find out a little about NW Indians, raven, coyote and salmon but ####, you don't seem to know anything about anything so wtf. \ But wtf was the salinity? The big flood? The bass, the little sunfish? Bluegill? Perch? How would they do In a salinity of 18 ppt? Davey dh, is it fresh or salt water fish that live in 18 ppt salinity?
Oh yeah, have you deliberately lied on this thread?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Not me. I can't admit my mistakes. Not unless someone points them out to me anyway. Or unless I notice them myself. But before I took a science class, I was good. I mean really really good. It's like rock & roll. Ity made me want to burn and rob, join a lynch mob, not belkieve in god.
Erg. I think I might be hung over in the morning. I hope I never get too old for this shit.
Davey DH,
Have you told a deliberate lie on this thread?
Not STJ, the right flood perhaps, but a damm good one noone the less. hic*
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Deadman-- I didn't invite you to the GC ... go back and look at what I said, and no, it's not cowardice to avoid people who threaten you physically. I am interested in intellectual and verbal debate, not physical violence from a pissed off evolutionist. You verbally insult me every day and I have never threatened you physically and I never will. Yet you threaten me physically if I insult you? No thanks ...
More on topic tomorrow ...
DDTTD, YOU invited ME to your church so I could call you a moron to your face. Give me an address and I'll be there.
I'm sure you could get Fred Phelps and his YEC Cultists to provide Security for the occasion if you can't find a Roosian to do the same.
Get back on topic and fill in the details of YOUR Updated Goddidit "Hypothesis".
what do you mean by "justify their skepticism" ... skepticism of what?
Skepticism of the Biblical worldview (in particular, the Protestant Reformation)which laid the foundation for modern western civilization, but which is being attacked and undermined by skeptics who believe in fairy tales like Darwinism.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Skepticism of the Biblical worldview (in particular, the Protestant Reformation)which laid the foundation for modern western civilization, but which is being attacked and undermined by skeptics who believe in fairy tales like Darwinism.
It's official: dave is paranoid.
dave, I live in Greece. The only contact I ever had with Protestants was with a nice old lady of the Lutheran Church in Thessaloniki, while I was studying there.
Do you seriously think I come to this website because I hate Protestants, and that's why I feel I should support the ToE? Do you really think ANY person here does so?
dave, seek help.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Faid ...How do you suppose I say SKEPTICISM OF THE BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW=HATRED OF PROTESTANTS? How do you make that connection? I do not think this, nor have I ever said this. You are twisting and distorting reality again. All I say is that you (and many here) are skeptical of the Biblical worldview.
Quote
Skepticism of the Biblical worldview (in particular, the Protestant Reformation)which laid the foundation for modern western civilization, but which is being attacked and undermined by skeptics who believe in fairy tales like Darwinism.
Did you see it clearly this time? I say you are attacking the WORLDVIEW, not the Protestant people. I'm not paranoid ... you are just dishonest (and skeptical).
Also, I do not mind verbal insults a bit. As I have said for a long time, calling people names does nothing but show that a person has no self control. It actually helps the Creationist cause for Evolutionists to act like children and call names. Keep it up! The more you do it, the faster the general public will see you for what you really are. What started the conversation about verbal insults was Louis portraying fundamentalist Christians like me as the "heretic burners" ... this is precisely backwards and I will correct this when I hear it. It was actually the fundamentalist Christians and other suspected non-Papists who were being burned at the stake during the Inquisition.
As for visiting with me in person, I have no interest in meeting in person with anyone who even hints of physical violence towards me as Deadman has done. Prior to Deadman's threat, I had no idea that there were any ATBC participants capable of stooping to that depth of quasi-criminal behavior. I really believed that you all were upstanding people with high ethics (and many of you are). My only complaint about you was that I disagreed with your worldview and I think you are rather blind to the truth.
But now everything has changed and I am very wary. I will only meet in person with people who somehow convince me that they are non-violent, law abiding people. (Crabby, does that answer your question?)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE DATING OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE
What have we learned so far? I think we have learned that ...
* Sedimentary layers (that is, the water-laid ones which comprise most of the geologic record) cannot be dated radiometrically UNLESS they contain ash, magma or metamorphic rock because RM dating can only be done on rock that has experienced a heating event, i.e. igneous and metamorphic ... am I right? * RM Datable rock can enter a sedimentary layer directly by intrusion or by airfall. It can enter a sedimentary layer indirectly by subsequent erosion of one of the above methods followed by later deposition ... please feel free to add to or correct any of this
Assuming the above is correct, what does this mean for our Dating of the Grand Staircase? Consider the lava flow in the left side of the picture. It comes up through ALL the layers and there is apparently a deposit on the Markagunt Plateau.
Now ... Deadman has stated that one of the layers that has been dated radiometrically is the Carmel. Well looking at the diagram above, it appears that the reason we can date the Carmel formation radiometrically is because some magma from the previously mentioned lava flow intruded in to the previously deposited Carmel layer. Now I may be wrong about this detail, I don't know ... maybe the RM datable material in the Carmel came from someplace else. But nevertheless, it came from somewhere either directly or indirectly as outlined above. And it began life in a heating event of some sort.
Now I have some questions ...
Assuming that we can take an undamaged feldspar crystal or zircon or obsidian or whatever from this layer and date it radiometrically, what is this date telling us? It appears to me to be telling us the date of that crystal's creation (to use EB terminology). In other words, some rock was heated beyond its melting point and this crystal was formed as a result. Now if the date we come up with by RM is the "Crystal Creation Date," how on earth is this supposed to be the same date as the "Layer Depostion Date"?? Seems to me that in your Long Age Scenario, that if we date Carmel ash beds at 165myo, that simply means that the volcano occurred 165my ago. The water deposition of the Carmel layer should have happened long before that ... 50my? 100my prior to that? Who knows? How can one ever know? Can someone explain this to me somehow that makes the dating believable?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As for visiting with me in person, I have no interest in meeting in person with anyone who even hints of physical violence towards me as Deadman has done. Prior to Deadman's threat, I had no idea that there were any ATBC participants capable of stooping to that depth of quasi-criminal behavior.
"Threat?" "quasi-criminal?" Tell you what, liar, please cite where I threatened you. You asked me what I would do if you called me a liar to my face and I said you would deserve whatever you get. I also said prior to that ...that I would treat you with the respect and courtesy given a host.
But apparently, as I said, you can't imagine yourself capable of acting like an adult long enough to gather some rock samples. Which figures, since your whole act reeks of immaturity...your taunts, your insults, your jibes at people who offered you no reason for your childish behavior....your lies, your claims that you can't back up. Now this silly attempt ( actually your third attempt at this game of martyr" and " Dave is innocent") 1.) You came into this forum insulting left and right. 2.) you were asked by several people to stop with the childish insults. 3.) You made fun of THOSE people by crowing about how you were USED to rough dialogue, and made fun of them for not being able to "take it" 4.) Now you complain about "being abused?" You're quite the nutter, AirHeadDaveHawkins. Remember, Dave, YOU you asked ME " what are you going to do, karate kick me into unconciousness, then cut my throat? "
Sounds to me like you issued your OWN threat, then tried to latch onto my response as an affirmation of your delusion.
And all I said was " you would deserve what you get, and I don't know karate and don't need a knife." That is not a physical threat, it is an awareness on MY part of the game you are playing. Keep it up, the "I'm a martyr" game isn't working for you, whiner.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Skepticism of the Biblical worldview (in particular, the Protestant Reformation) which laid the foundation for modern western civilization, but which is being attacked and undermined by skeptics who believe in fairy tales like Darwinism.
So it's you that brought Protestants (what they believe, not who they are ,stupid) into this, dave. And it's you that actually seems to believe that you have to be a filthy atheist (or a Catholic, maybe? hah) to believe in the ToE, and therefore seek the collapse of Western Civilization somehow?
Like I said, paranoid.
Oh and of course: You are a coward, dave. WHERE did I twist reality "again"? Show me WHERE. WHERE was I "dishonest", liar? show me where and HOW, if you are a man and not some whimpering brat that never grew up and had the balls to back up his claims. Is that what you teach your children, dave? "best way to get out of a tricky issue if you're cornered, son? Well, just shout out some unsupported slander, then run"? Is THAT what they teach you in your church?
I do not lie, dave. YOU do. I have explained each and every case where you were dishonest; all you can do is squeak little insults and then run away saying "I don't have to prove anything!" Like some spoiled 12yo kid. You never did grow up, did you?
But prove me wrong. Show me where I lied, and how. For the last time, dave, ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH to do it?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
As to your questions about the Grand Canyon, AirHead...no answers that I give you will help you support YOUR hypothesis. The sheer fact that you are too lazy and/or stupid to go to the library near you to find things out for yourself speaks volumes about your sheer ineptitude and impotence in this forum.
Here's a novel thought, since you can't seem to think for yourself: Why not provide evidence about the Grand Canyon that DOES support your claims, while you answer straightforwardly all questions that might falsify your claims? Oh, that's right, you can't do that.
As I said, you're an intellectual fraud and apparently so cowardly that you create paranoid mental delusions about others wanting to hurt you. I don't CARE about you enough to hurt you in person, nor would I do anything but laugh at your childish antics, as I do here. Now you can take that and twist it into a "threat" too.
Spineless, utterly spineless and without morals or ethics...that's our little Davey Hawkins. I sure hope it wasn't your daddy that taught you this weird manipulation game, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least...you learned this SOMEWHERE.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Maybe GoP would volunteer there -- given that he spends so much time eyeballing those big sweaty mens, he should have picked up some skillz.
That is if you can pry him out of his mommy's basement where he lives and get him away from his...wait a minute, he doesn't have a job, that's right.
You should be free, GoP--why not volunteer to be AFDave's bodyguard should Dave need a friend? I mean, you have the courage of your convictions, don't you?
The water deposition of the Carmel layer should have happened long before that ... 50my? 100my prior to that? Who knows? How can one ever know?
Hmm. So, even if we agree that a layer of volcanic ash fell from the sky through many sedimentation layers, and somehow managed to deposit itself in a much older (and already buried) sediment (seriously though, WHAT?)...
...What does that show, dave? that since the rocks could be much older that the measurement, they must not be old at all? How does this question the validity of an OLD date?
Get some things cleared in your head first, boy. Because for someone who's trying to prove that the Earth is younger than what we think, you sure try real hard to prove it's older.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
What started the conversation about verbal insults was Louis portraying fundamentalist Christians like me as the "heretic burners" ... this is precisely backwards and I will correct this when I hear it. It was actually the fundamentalist Christians and other suspected non-Papists who were being burned at the stake during the Inquisition.
So the people doing the burning were not christians? Forgive my obviously gaping ignorance Davey, but since when are Roman Catholics not christians?
Also seems like they're the biggest bunch of christians and the holders of the original church of St Peter and all that (I knew all this already btw, I'm just amused by your nonsense).
The Inquisition was one group of christians burning other groups of christians (and others). Bear in mind Davey that's persecution of one lot of christians by another lot. And don't (liek I said above) get all "No True Scotsman" on me, it won't wash.
Note the section on persecution of christians by christians. Also note that there's some nasty shit in there from lots of diverse groups. I guess humans are just mean to each other eh?
But of course Davey no christain has EVER burnt anyone at the stake or even wanted to, right?
Now obviously I certainly don't agree with the positions and views of everything in all those links, but the point is made. Religious fruitcakes of all stripes persecute others, it's the nature of the beast. Look at doctrines and dogmatic societies like those of communist Russia. No "religion", but a fanatical adherence to a tyrannical party line and dogma that brooked no dissent, leading to persecution and horrendous crimes against humanity. What you seem unable to grasp Davey is it's not the "christian" bit any of us have a problem with, it's the "fundamentalist" bit. You can be a fundamentalist christian, jew, muslim, sikh, buddhist, or banana toffee eater it makes not fucking difference. It's the fundamentalist fanaticism that makes people like you deny reality and desire to convert all dissenters by the sword or the stake if necessary.
Now don't tell me that you don't want your lies taught as fact Davey, because we know you do. You, GoP, and other like you want it your way or no way at all. No pluralism, no dissent, just believe as we do or die. Nice philosophy you have there buddy.
One nation under god, right? Whose? Which one? The minute you answer "Jesus" or "the one true one" etc you are immediately excluding others of differing faiths or lack of them. Oh they can practice their heathen faith, but they can't have it recognised by the state liek you want yours to be, and they better do it quietly if not eslewhere entirely right?
"Threat?" "quasi-criminal?" Tell you what, liar, please cite where I threatened you.
Right here, mister ... if you don't call this a threat, then your view of reality is warped (why should I be surprised?) ... Deadman...
Quote
Oh, and as far as your offer to fly me into the Grand Canyon to do some sampling...sure, I'll go. I'll even do all the work so long as you are paying for everything else--food and lodging, etc. I have minimal standards there, since I've been long accustomed to field situations. He11, MRE's are fine. Since this is your hypothesis we're testing, I have a rock drill I can borrow and all the tools needed, including sample containers but the cost of the testing is also yours to shoulder.
However, I won't shake your hand and I won't treat you as a friend or tolerate your attempts to be such. Further, I expect to be treated with the politeness and courtesy afforded a guest-- in return, I speak to you with the politeness and courtesy given to a host. The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above. [SORRY, BUT THAT'S A PHYSICAL THREAT IF I EVER SAW ONE]
On a lighter note, I'll also be willing to bet you on the results of the testing, should the lab chosen be one agreed-on. You name the amount or the conditions of the bet, that will suit me just fine.
So I'm not convinced I want to go sampling rocks in the GC with a guy that has criminal urges and makes them public on a forum, thanks anyway! But I would like to challenge you in dating some rocks in some way. I'll give it some thought. How much do the tests cost?
Dave...
Quote
Skepticism of the Biblical worldview (in particular, the Protestant Reformation) which laid the foundation for modern western civilization, but which is being attacked and undermined by skeptics who believe in fairy tales like Darwinism.
Faid...
Quote
dave, I live in Greece. The only contact I ever had with Protestants was with a nice old lady of the Lutheran Church in Thessaloniki, while I was studying there.
Do you seriously think I come to this website because I hate Protestants, and that's why I feel I should support the ToE? Do you really think ANY person here does so?
Now how on earth do you get "Dave says Faid hates Protestants" out of my quote?
And you guys say I twist reality ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above. [SORRY, BUT THAT'S A PHYSICAL THREAT IF I EVER SAW ONE]
So, Dave, in addition to being stupid, you're also delusional. "serious problems" might equal a lot of things, sweetie, none of which might equal physical harm. I mentioned no physical threat at all, but you inserted that. Now you call me a criminal based on your delusion ? That sounds suspiciously like libel, Dave. Care to retract that?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"Threat?" "quasi-criminal?" Tell you what, liar, please cite where I threatened you.
Right here, mister ... if you don't call this a threat, then your view of reality is warped (why should I be surprised?) ...
Of course it was a threat. Look, I live in Atlanta, so believe me, I know about such things. It's really sad.....here's a guy who's intelligent, diligent, and well-educated, yet underneath the veneer there's some stuff goin' on. Well, I gave him an opportunity to make a quick buck from his "skillz", so he should be occupied for a while.
Nine:
Quote
That sounds suspiciously like libel, Dave. Care to retract that?
Ahh, yes, the threat of a frivolous lawsuit (read up on libel law to see why). Sorry, the subtext of your message was loud and clear, so don't try to run away from it now. Besides, shouldn't you be setting up a match with Mr. Slice already? Time is money, and all that....
Because you do, dave. And no nitpicking can change that. What your quote said is that somehow only people opposed to the Bible, and especially Protestant Religion (there, happy now?) come here to defend evolution because it is in accordance with their views. I explained to you that I live in Greece, and I have little to do with (and know of) Protestants or their "worldview," and show you how trying to turn this into a religious thing is totally absurd. See what I just did? It's called a clarification. Now, can you please clarify where I have been dishonest in our conversations, LIAR? Because I sure can (and have) in your own multiple previous offences.
Well, coward?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
...What does that show, dave? that since the rocks could be much older that the measurement, they must not be old at all? How does this question the validity of an OLD date?
It questions the validity of dating a water-laid layer by dating ash samples IN the layer. It appears to me that to be consistent, the Long Age position should be something like this ...
1) Layer 1 was deposited 300 mya 2) Layer 2 was deposited 250 mya 3) Layer 3 was deposited 200 mya, etc. 4) A volcano erupted 150 mya and deposited air fall tephra (a new word I learned) on Layer 3 or lava intruded into Layer 3, or some such thing
But to say that Layer 3 is 150 myo because it contains ash from a volcano that erupted 150 myo seems wrong.
Now what I would say is that the WHOLE SCHEME is flawed as evidenced by this and other similar non-sensical reasoning patterns. I do not see how it is possible to date water-laid sedimentary layers AT ALL radiometrically in light of this type of difficulty. It appears that all you are left with is to date the layers by fossils. And we have already discussed the circularity of that.
To me, the whole Grand Staircase is better explained by a global hydraulic cataclysm in spite of the admitted difficulty I have in explaining the obvious evidence of nuclear decay in igneous rocks. I admit that I have no idea how accelerated nuclear decay could occur, but I also see layers upon layers of water-laid rock and they speak loudly of a hydraulic cataclysm.
Deadman ... YOU should be the one worried about a legal action with your obvious threat of physical harm. I'll take your quote into a court of law any day. Want me to call my lawyer?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I was well aware at the time that what you were attempting to do was to goad me into making an actual physical threat, AirHead...You wanted that so you could play martyr. I answered you in a deliberately ambiguous way, so let me illustrate:
Take the sentence I responded with...
" The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much.."
Was "serious problem" specified? DID I SAY what "serious problem " WOULD MEAN?
Now, stupid, substitute "lawsuit" for "serious problems"....is that a physical threat? No...
Yet, you feel free to accusing me of HAVING "criminal urges?"
Quote
So I'm not convinced I want to go sampling rocks in the GC with a guy that has criminal urges
This is just further evidence of how stupid and paranoically cowardly you are, Dave. Now, I suggest you retract your libel.
I *knew* what you wanted to evoke, DaveLiar...I just didn't give it to you.
But you decided to insert it yourself, then accuse me. Tsk...you're not even a good liar, Dave...but you are a demonstrable liar.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'll take your quote into a court of law any day. Want me to call my lawyer?
Why, yes, Dave Hawkins, I'd like that very much. I expect to hear from a lawyer online to ask me my particulars. My hotmail address is deadman932@hotmail.com
As for you, little GoP...don't you have some old mentally ill guys to go beat up on and throw off buses, you big tough Atlanta-livin, jobless, working-out-of -a -library fraud?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"Waaahh!! Waaaahh!! Mommie, make them stop persecuting me, the poor little Christian missionary!! Make them stop threatening me!! Nobody likes me!! Waaaahh!!"
For someone who brags about being a macho ex fighter jock, you sure are a crying little pussy Davie, you know that?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
dav, read my reply again. please. It saves the trouble of typing the same stuff again. I already explain why this is irrational, and I also explain that even so, your second assertion does not follow from the other.
It would help if you at least read other people's posts... but who am I kidding.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much, should you fail to meet my requirements above. [SORRY, BUT THAT'S A PHYSICAL THREAT IF I EVER SAW ONE]
So, Dave, in addition to being stupid, you're also delusional. "serious problems" might equal a lot of things, sweetie, none of which might equal physical harm.
So if "serious problems" is not a physical threat, then what is it? I am happy for you to clarify what you meant. And I actually wouldn't mind meeting you to do samples if I could be convinced that you are safe.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I was well aware at the time that what you were attempting to do was to goad me into making an actual physical threat, AirHead...You wanted that so you could play martyr. I answered you in a deliberately ambiguous way, so let me illustrate:
Take the sentence I responded with...
" The moment you fail to do that is the moment you wind up with some serious problems. Bring a bodyguard if you like, but that won't help either of you much.."
Was "serious problem" specified? DID I SAY what "serious problem " WOULD MEAN?
Now, stupid, substitute "lawsuit" for "serious problems"....is that a physical threat? No...
Ok, since I don't want to bring the Wrath of Wes, this is my last post on this topic.
Nine, I'm sure you're a swell guy who wouldn't harm a fly in the real world, but your post was definitely creepy, and I'm sure Dave wasn't the only one who saw it as a personal threat (I also interpreted it that way). If we're wrong, please explain what you did mean or at least apologise for the ambiguity. I shouldn't have to explain to you that your post was in extremely poor taste and does not paint a flattering portrait of your character. I will not respond to anything further. If you want to fight, there's a guy who's willing to fight you for money; if not, then drop it and move on.
4) A volcano erupted 150 mya and deposited air fall tephra (a new word I learned) on Layer 3 or lava intruded into Layer 3, or some such thing
Your posts are riddled with these types of hand-waving phrases. Whenever you use them, it just tells us that you ran across something that your mental filter couldn't handle and had to somehow reject.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
No, GoP ...what was creepy was Dave asking me if I was going to karate kick him and slit his throat. THAT was creepy. What was creepy was Dave trying to manipulate me the way he manipulates the little kids in his class, thinking he can get away with it
By the way, GoP you should indeed read up on libel law, outside of the U.S. You see, this public forum allows anyone to file suit in a jurisdiction where the forum is available...say, oh, Singapore. Now, since I will be in NZ in a short time, and it's just a hop to Singapore and I plan on going there, anyway...what do you think their laws are regarding such suits? I can tell you that they are among the harshest in the world. I've been thinking about this tactic, and there is case law in this regard. And yes, it would be enforceable in the US, as are other types of suits brought from foreign jurisdictions. Just to let you know.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ah, I see ... thanks for clarifying what "serious problems" means to you ...
A LAWSUIT
and I naively came on this site thinking that people were free here to speak their mind free of "sue happy" people ...
not so, I guess
So what do we have? Deadman can call me all kinds of names and hurl all kinds of insults ...
but then I ask what he will do if I call him an idiot to his face ... and what does he do?
Threatens a lawsuit.
Pfffft!!!
That just confirms all the more how desperate you are -- you cannot back up your Evo claims with scientific facts so you have to resort to lawsuit threats?
Dirty pool, my friend!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"Dirty pool?" after you try desperately to twist what I say? "Dirty pool " after you stupidly try to manipulate me into an *actual* threat and then pounce on what I said as confirmation? Even though it has no threat of physical harm in it? "Dirty pool" after you accuse me of criminal urges, then try to bluff your way through something you obviously know nothing about?
This is just a microcosm of your impotence and ineptitude, Dave. It illustrates perfectly just how stupid you are while you pose and preen as some authority on things you know nothing about.
The issue here is YOU supporting YOUR hypothesis, not everyone having to answer your stupid claims on the Grand Canyon that don't support your claim in the least.
What would support your claim is POSITIVE evidence for your assertion that the Earth is less than 10k years old...which you have failed to do, you stupid, lying cowardly little whiner.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
...What does that show, dave? that since the rocks could be much older that the measurement, they must not be old at all? How does this question the validity of an OLD date?
It questions the validity of dating a water-laid layer by dating ash samples IN the layer. It appears to me that to be consistent, the Long Age position should be something like this ...
1) Layer 1 was deposited 300 mya 2) Layer 2 was deposited 250 mya 3) Layer 3 was deposited 200 mya, etc. 4) A volcano erupted 150 mya and deposited air fall tephra (a new word I learned) on Layer 3 or lava intruded into Layer 3, or some such thing
But to say that Layer 3 is 150 myo because it contains ash from a volcano that erupted 150 myo seems wrong.
Now what I would say is that the WHOLE SCHEME is flawed as evidenced by this and other similar non-sensical reasoning patterns. I do not see how it is possible to date water-laid sedimentary layers AT ALL radiometrically in light of this type of difficulty. It appears that all you are left with is to date the layers by fossils. And we have already discussed the circularity of that.
To me, the whole Grand Staircase is better explained by a global hydraulic cataclysm in spite of the admitted difficulty I have in explaining the obvious evidence of nuclear decay in igneous rocks. I admit that I have no idea how accelerated nuclear decay could occur, but I also see layers upon layers of water-laid rock and they speak loudly of a hydraulic cataclysm.
Hmm...I actually overestimated Dave on this one, but he proves himself to be even more divorced from any kind of rational evidentiary reasoning than I already expected.
Dave merely handwaves that "the WHOLE SCHEME is flawed", and therefore substitutes his "global hydraulic cataclysm", which he admits can't explain nuclear decay rates (among a whole host of other things).
Now, if I was doin' some YEC dissembling of science and theology, I'd be much more inclined to let the (volcanic) rocks be old. After all, God creates the heaven and the earth some unspecified time before he lets there be light (which act creates the first day). Then He just busies himself with separating the firmament and the waters. So, as long as there is nothing actually specified in the 6,000-year-old Creation Week in dem der igneous rocks (fossils, for example), the measured age is not really a theological problem.
In other words, even if I actually believed the shit Dave shovels (as he believes it), I could at least make it fit observed data without having to tear down (this particular example of) established scientific methodology. Not our Dave, though. Stamping his feet and screeching that "it's all wrong because I don't know how it works, so I'm right" is good enough for him.
What do you think, Davey? Maybe I make a better "creation scientist" than you do?
By the way, Dave, do you not see the obvious absurdity in first claiming an established methodology is wrong, and then, second, asking questions about how it is actually practiced (e.g., finally bothering to figure out how we can be confident that the dateable samples from otherwise undateable rock are approximately the same age)? How seriously are we supposed to take someone whose PRIMARY (read: first AND foremost) interest is in discrediting knowledge, with only the slightest indication (read: pretty much just a question-mark thrown in here and there amongst the raving) that the pursuit of understanding is even on the radar?
MORE PROBLEMS WITH THE DATING OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE
What have we learned so far? I think we have learned that ...
Not that it ever was on topic, since after 4,500 posts, Dave still has not managed to provide evidence to support a single assertion he's made so far.
So let's start, Dave. Forget about trying to prove non-existent problems with radiometric dating, a subject about which you are simply not competent to comment (and please stop posting the same bandwidth-wasting graphic over and over again). So, here's what you need to do:
• Pick an age for the earth. You still haven't even done this! You can't decide if the earth is 5,500 years old, 6,000 years old, 10,000 years old, or 15,000 years old. Your error bars are something like 100%, Dave! Is that as accurate as you can get? Meanwhile, the error bars on the accepted age of the earth are more like a few percent (<5%), over an astronomically longer timespan.
• Once you've picked an actual age for the earth (I'm thinking for the timespans we're talking about you should be able to get within a decade or two, if whatever dating methods you're planning to use aren't completely worthless), you then need to show actual evidence—not conjecture, wild guesses, more "it's obvious!" or "it's reasonable to suppose" statements—showing that the Grand Canyon is no older than the earth it's part of.
When you can do that, Dave, then you can maybe move on in your discussion of your "hypothesis." Until you do, you're going to be stuck in this particular spin cycle until the cows come home, grow old, and die.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh girls, stop all this fussing and feuding! Can't we all just get along?
Davey and GoP, regardless of anyone's interpretation of Deadman's words, he did not make any explicit physical threat. Any court of law would chuck the case out. As for lawsuits over what anyone says on an internet message board....whoa, you Yanks sure are funny! Since Deadman and GoP both use net-handles and (although I could be wrong about this) aren't readily identifiable, how could anyone prove material loss or damage due to libel? Case in the bin again.
What I LOVE about internet fora is how moody everyone gets. Insulting someone for being a lying sack of shite is one thing, after all it's all we actually can do. After a while some people aren't worth much more than the abuse they deserve. You lie you get called on it. You act dumb you get called on it. End of story. We don't know if GoP and Davey or anyone else are kiddy fiddling nun rapists (I strongly suspect not), what we DO know is that they both tell whoppers and demonstrate the intellectual honesty of something particularly lacking said quality, ON THIS FORUM. Maybe it's Dembskian "street theatre", maybe they are Loki trolls out for kicks. Who knows?
The point is that we can only "abuse" and "insult" anyone for what they do here. Personally, if someone lies, I really don't think it is insulting to call them a liar. Maybe that's because I am an un-PC European.
Louis
P.S. GoP, you're an Atlantan? Sweet, I love Atlanta, nice city. I remember this huge underground mall I went to when I visited about 16 years ago. It was a little weird (from an English perspective), but the city was great fun and I liked Atlantans. Very friendly bunch I found.
P.P.S. Davey and GoP, never mistake frustration on my/our part for persecution or hatred of you or yours. Personally I don't hate a living person (or even any dead ones). I do get frustrated with people like yourselves who are blinded to the data by an agenda, but hey, that's the way of the world.
If AFD does go down to the GC to see where the teddy bears had their picnic don't forget your icepick DM.
ooooooooohhhhh.
Sick jokes aside.
Seriously now AFD IF you were truly interested in doing that I would recommend it..... if you were prepared to drop your presuppositions and learn with an open mind from someone who is trained to identify and categorize objectively.
I did a short course with an oil well logging company many years ago as a 'mud logger' and while my background is in electronics most of the people on the course had studied one of the earth sciences and had a huge advantage over me. They knew what shale and dolomite was right off the bat. You should brush up on your chemistry.
So don't expect to go there 'to be enlightened' or even 'to debunk'.
I have also worked in system support for oil companies setting up some of the software they use for seismic processing, petrochemical analysis (wire line logging), mapping, core analysis, Palynology (the study of fossilized pollen used to date core samples) and the software they use to study the 'chemical kitchens' deep under ground that make the crude from organic matter deposited millions of years ago. They only drill when all the data is in and even then there are no guarantees.
Here is a very simple explanation of how crude oil forms suitable for AFD's lies4kids site.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Ah, Louis, I was just calling little Davey's bluff. He knows he tried to manipulate me so he could play martyr and he just tried to weasel his way through it.
All I had to do was think ahead, something that DumbassDave is incapable of. Anticipating his moves is simple, since he's stupid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ghost what's going on? The girls washing their hair? Isn't that the perfect opportunity to find some new talent? Remember Opporknockity only tunes once (look it up.... also known as the cold rice pudding joke0 Loser.
On the subject of AFD and law suits wouldn't it be wonderful if a class action could be brought against creationists for libeling honest science.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
By the way, GoP you should indeed read up on libel law, outside of the U.S. You see, this public forum allows anyone to file suit in a jurisdiction where the forum is available...say, oh, Singapore. Now, since I will be in NZ in a short time, and it's just a hop to Singapore and I plan on going there, anyway...what do you think their laws are regarding such suits? I can tell you that they are among the harshest in the world. I've been thinking about this tactic, and there is case law in this regard. And yes, it would be enforceable in the US, as are other types of suits brought from foreign jurisdictions. Just to let you know.
Yes, I'm aware of the Dow Jones case. But the Yahoo case, in conjunction with my belief that an American court isn't going to kowtow to third world countries* setting the defamation bar against American citizens (and why should they? Screwing Amuricans is their responsibility, after all), makes me skeptical that you get any judgement enforced against Dave, even if the Singapore court finds in your favour. By the way, Dave, I know a fantastic lawyer who specialises in these types of cases -- email me if you want his name. Nine, your attempts to quash free speech disgust me. Do you really want our civil liberties determined by Zimbabwe's or Yemen's legal codes? Cause that's precisely what will happen if your goal succeeds.
* Yeah, I know: Singapore's neither Third World nor a country. But it doesn't matter: frivolous defamation suits in Singapore today = frivolous lawsuits in a Banana Republic tomorrow
*I* know that's what you were doing. *You* know that's what you were doing. *Most of us* know that's what you were doing.
However, Dave the Rave and GoP the FloP demonstrate conclusively that there are those out there who demonstrably don't know that's what you were doing. I apologise profusely for not making it abundantly clear in my post that it was directed at the Raves and FloPs of this world, as opposed to you! My bad.
1) Davey is a truly bad man who wants to do serious psychological damage to kids as a way to rationalize his own twisted childhood. 2) Davey DH is an idiot of the highest order of magnitude. 3) In order to disprove YEC rubbish, all we need to do is crosscheck various core samples and determine if they add up to more than, well, 6500?? years. But we could go ahead and make it 10k if the YEC morons want to move the goalposts. 4) On top of that we can demonstrate RM dating techniques and the relevant physics.
5) YECer are hamstrung by the fact that they need to have that darnded flood in there somewhere. The darnded flood however, left no evidence and would have wiped out most of the aquatic life in the world due to very narrow temperature and salinity tolerances.
6) Human nature is such that when someone lies intentionally, gets caught, lies again, gets caught again, then simply asserts they've won, the others around such a person get annoyed. Annoyance can lead to very mean thoughts. I'll admit to one or two myself but my negative thoughts are merely being brought up from an annoyed mind and they pass quickly. In the end, Dave came here to learn from us and in so doing, his lies were exposed to himself and he got crazy. His lies are obvious to most of the rest of the members of this forum and we got crazy and angry too.
But the thing is, DaveyDH, you went to the experts and challenged their information. THis is fine with Experts because that is how they refine their understanding. But when you look at the same evidence and then say yeah but, since the bible is true then there must be a problem with the evidence- it can be maddening.
DaveyDH, your provincial little set of books aren't literally true. THere was no global flood, The earth is ~4.5 byo, the universe is ~13.7 byo maybe, seawater has a salinity of over 30 ppt and fresh water typically has a salinity of under 1ppt (actually, that last number is part of a much larger set of data because there are different ways to make and store fresh water)
Also, ppt in this case is an acronym from the greek meaning christian appologists are just stupid, so pity them rather than being angry.
Now here's the deal with my input here on this thread. I have asked you to take a specific position in every case where I would have been happy to debate. In every case you have ignored me or declared the debate won before I began. THis behavior of yours is to a very small degree, frustrating. So, in the interest of being nice to me (which is right up at the top of all decent people's lists) please answer just this one direct question:
DaveyDH, Have you told a deliberate lie on this thread?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Lou: A pilsner would be good and a shot of Bushmills, thnx. He11, I'll even sing/play some Beatles later, which should really cause an international crisis. Hah!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Could it be an RM date that originally establishes the tuffs as younger than they are, but on closer inspection turns out to be an easily explained false data point that extended our "upper limit" too far? Huh, Dave? What do you think?
Well obviously the scientists that threw out the 0.52my date gave some supposedly credible reason for doing so. But the fact is that ALL the dates have been thrown out for some reason or other by one party or the other. That's why this example is so interesting. We had a 5 year argument about why all the data except the 2.61 data is wrong. Then we had another 5 year war ... er ... discussion, about why the 2.61 data is wrong and 1.87 is right.
Bottom line is that with RM dating, you can explain away anything you want to depending on your goals. And if your goal is to validate the Paleoanthropologists picture of human evolution, then guess what dates you will keep? 1.87 ... not 2.61
Just to reply to Dave's reply (since I left for the weekend soon after I posted a defense of my analogy against Dave's random charges that it was "flawed"):
That's great, Davey. Of course, obviously it doesn't change the fact that you were wrong when you accused me of a "blunder" and "flawed" analogy. THAT was the immediate topic we were discussing. Remember? You had charged that my analogy did not account for something in the apartment that appeared to post-date the picture, and, FOR THAT REASON, it was flawed. I pointed out that it most certainly did account for the apparently "young" furniture/rocks.
Your "bottom line" keeps moving, Davey, and your change of subject to evade yet another error in reading comprehension and subsequent false charge against a fellow poster is noted. Carry on doing the same with Faid, deadman, etc.
And I'm sure this escapes you, but your new "bottom line", unsubstantiated as it is, is completely vacuous. Works for any conspiracy theory or diabolical motive you want to invent. Observe: "And if your goal is to validate the [bible's] picture of human [creation], then guess what dates you will keep? [<6,000]...not [ANYTHING else]." The tricky part (for you) is substantiating it. Furthermore, even if you were right about the schemes and motives of that vocal, militant Paleoanthropology movement, Davey, who's throwing out more dates, hmm?
Dave, here's the real bottom line: you don't know how old the earth is within a factor of at least two, and you don't have any data whatsoever with which to substantiate whatever date you finally settle on (will it be 6,000, 10,000, 20,000, or 50,000 years?). You've proposed no dating methodology by which you would even in principle date anything, be it a stratum of sediment, a fossil, an ice core, a seabed, or an archaeological find of any sort or nature.
Moreover, you have been signally unable to exclude any date older than whatever date you finally pick (in what is clearly a completely arbitrary fashion), which means you end up with objects in and on the earth that are older than the earth itself is.
Until you deal with these issues, your biblical inerrancy claim, which for some reason seem to be central to your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis," is dead.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now, if I was doin' some YEC dissembling of science and theology, I'd be much more inclined to let the (volcanic) rocks be old.
I'll let you have your old volcanic rocks for the present discussion. My point remains. How on earth do you date 80 layers of sedimentary (mostly water laid) rocks with lava? I see no way that you can. Which brings us back to my contention that these 80 layers are really dated by the fossils contained in them.
The RM dating is just sciency sounding window dressing to try to add credibility to the sham.
Now how do millions of years old volcanic rocks square with a 6000 year old earth? Separate question. And a good one.
But for the moment, I am interested in exploring layers such as the Grand Staircase. From what I am learning, it appears much more reasonable to say that they were laid down rapidly by a massive flood than to say they formed gradually over millions of years.
**************************************
As for you, Deadman, if you want me to come to the GC, you are going to have to drop all your threatening talk--I will take your word for it that you were not threatening me physically--but threats of legal action are not much better. So you need to give me some assurance that there will be none of that as well before I would be interested in meeting you to do any sample work.
Since we are on the topic, let me say again very clearly, that I will never threaten anyone here physically or legally for anything you may say to me or about me. I said I have thick skin when I came here and I meant it. No amount of name calling or funny pictures or whatever you want to say will cause me to threaten anyone here physically or legally. Frankly, I get a good laugh out of many of them.
Now Deadman, let me ask you your opinion ... Is this a forum that truly allows people to speak their opinions freely, without fear of legal action or physical harm?
**********************************
BWE...
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DaveyDH, Have you told a deliberate lie on this thread?
No. Steve Story was correct when he said that he thinks I am sincere. I am sincere. I truly believe all these things that I am posting.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You keep using the word "sham" as though you belive its all part of a greater science conspiracy.
Is that what you really think...it's all a conspiracy??? To what end, for what or who's benefit???
Do you honestly think that all the scientist are involved in this conspiracy???
I imagine, no, I know how famous a person would be if he were to debunk Evolution, age of the earth...yada, yada, yada.... So, knowing all this, you actually think science has convinced all the real scientist to drink the koolaid?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
The RM dating is just sciency sounding window dressing to try to add credibility to the sham.
If so, why don't your YEC buddies keep debunking every RM dating, since they are all part of the big conspiracy?
Wonderful defense tactic you have here, Dave. Everything that contradicts your faith must be wrong. You don't even care to provide any evidence. Come on, you can do better than that. Does it hurt so bad to realize that the book of genesis is bs?
And what about the dating of altantic basalts, big conspiracy or amazing coincidence?
"Sham" is probably too strong a word. How about "honest mistake"? Just as many good scientists were honestly mistaken about geocentricity, phlogiston, ether, etc.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"Sham" is probably too strong a word. How about "honest mistake"? Just as many good scientists were honestly mistaken about geocentricity, phlogiston, ether, etc.
As usual, you have provided zero evidence to back this up. What is your criticism of radiometric dating methodology? All you can do is wave your hands and avoid answering this question.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Now, if I was doin' some YEC dissembling of science and theology, I'd be much more inclined to let the (volcanic) rocks be old.
I'll let you have your old volcanic rocks for the present discussion.
Why Dave, how humbly magnanimous of you. You [an uneducated layman] are willing to let us [and the scientific community] have our old volcanic rocks [based on voluminous data you can't begin to comprehend, much less refute]. Please send that memo along in all due haste -- we've been waiting anxiously for your permission.
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My point remains.
Not if your point is a young earth created a few thousand years ago by the Judeo-Christian God according to Genesis, it doesn't...
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How on earth do you date 80 layers of sedimentary (mostly water laid) rocks with lava?
The fact that you don't understand this is irrelevant. Do your own homework. Or read the answers already given. Maybe write Encyclopedia Britannica and berate them so that they include it in their next edition?
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I see no way that you can.
Your lack of scientific ingenuity -- actually, in this case, it's more your investigative laziness -- is noted, but wholly irrelevant.
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Which brings us back to my contention that these 80 layers are really dated by the fossils contained in them.
And even if you were right, and there are no valid RM data for this formation (wrong, as others have noted, but continuing with your "ignore everything but..." MO), and the staircase was dated only by fossils -- so what? How were those fossils dated? Think any of them were laid down BEFORE (never mind at the same time as) volcanic rock in other parts of the world that you have already stipulated as "old"?
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The RM dating is just sciency sounding window dressing to try to add credibility to the sham.
Oh, I get it. You were just setting us up for a gross non sequitur. Uh, Dave, you already stipulated the validity of RM for dating volcanic rock, which pretty much blows this claim outta the water. Even if you hadn't, this bolded point doesn't follow from your premises. If we can't date the Grand Staircase using RM, then RM dating is just "sciency sounding window dressing to try to add credibility to the sham"?! Think you missed a few steps in your argument, big guy.
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Now how do millions of years old volcanic rocks square with a 6000 year old earth? Separate question. And a good one.
Thanks. Glad you agree. Since you've already stipulated that they don't, I'll wait for you to get around to answering it. And then move on to how all the other pillars of "millionsofyearsism" are similarly erroneous. But that would require supporting your own contentions, so I won't hold my breath.
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But for the moment, I am interested in exploring layers such as the Grand Staircase. From what I am learning, it appears much more reasonable to say that they were laid down rapidly by a massive flood than to say they formed gradually over millions of years.
Colour me unconvinced, Davey. I'm not in the practice of considering scientific (or other) knowledge within arbitrary vacuums of ignorance, themselves within caveats of mythology masquerading as fact. Once you figure out that "circular reasoning" is not the same thing as the cross-association of data, please look up "special pleading", mmkay?
No offense, Dave, but you'll find your definitions of "learning" and "reasonable" (much like your definitions of "primary", "incidentally", "Portuguese", etc.) do not translate to the real world.
First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist’s work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a ‘controversy’ to teach.
It's the old catch-22, if you don't react angrily at being told lies and having good science twisted for their squalid little apologetics, they'd claim victory because obviously nothing was even bad enough for the person to have any strong objections to it.
And if you do react strongly to a constant stream of broken promises, outright lies, and a complete lack of understanding of science by the "evolution critic", then he whines and tells more lies about how his "facts" are hitting home. Slow Dave has absolutely no shame, which is why we'd miss him if he were gone, just as we missed DaveTard when he was off of UD.
Btw, fake martyr, why do you suppose that the equally uncomprehending DaveTard disagrees with your claims? IOW, why can't you guys come up with a method of determining the truth of facts, instead of disagreeing among yourselves about all sorts of issues in a display that demonstrates that anti-evolutionists have no command of the facts whatsoever? (OK, their disagreements don't by themselves demonstrate that they are wrong about evolution, but these indirectly support all of the direct evidence that we produce that they are typically ignorant fools in nearly all areas (though some few are competent except in origins issues)).
Why does Gawp agree with you about the age of the earth and evolution, but not about planetary motions? Why does Dembski agree with you that evolution couldn't happen by RM + NS +, but has actually said that life apparently has evolved (by some divine process, no doubt)?
Why is it that those of us who support science in all areas in which it is presently used, manage to agree on the age of the earth, evolutionary mechanisms, radiometric dating, etc.? And perhaps most of all, how come we know so much more about science than you, Dembski, DaveTard, and Gawp do? That is to say, can someone who denies so much science ever learn science well enough to criticize it competently?
Little thought questions for you to ignore, Slow Dave. Now get back to whining about how your stupidity and lies are treated, and try desperately to support your lying representation of scientists colluding to obscure the actual truth. You know, instead of producing evidence to back up your statements, repeat your false claims long enough to show to yourself that your idiocy is intelligence, your lies the Truth, and demonstrate to the lurkers just how warped your sense of truth is.
You are grasping at straws, the last act of a desperate man. You need to identify what you believe to be gaps so you don't feel you were duped by your religious beliefs.
You have been handily refuted but, you choose to just ignore data put in front of you. You proved nothing because you have nothing.
Time for you to move on.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
As for you, Deadman, if you want me to come to the GC, you are going to have to drop all your threatening talk--I will take your word for it that you were not threatening me physically--but threats of legal action are not much better. So you need to give me some assurance that there will be none of that as well before I would be interested in meeting you to do any sample work....Now Deadman, let me ask you your opinion ... Is this a forum that truly allows people to speak their opinions freely, without fear of legal action or physical harm?
You're older than I am, Dave Hawkins. As an adult you know the answers to these questions. You are not a naif, you are not an innocent, you are not a martyr and you are certainly not a "victim," so quit trying to portray yourself as such.
Unlike Samuel Johnson, I don't believe that patriotism is the *last* refuge of the scoundrel, I prefer Asimov's "Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
I dislike you trying to manipulate me, per your earlier assertions in this thread that you were using "psychological warfare" against people (remember, you congratulated me on pointing this out, now you act wounded). Well...no, you're using low-level childish games to avoid your responsibilites of your "hypothesis" that you never seem to support.
So you flail about , seeking any childish means of gaining some leverage, including all the usual tools of the incompetent...fallacies, rhetorical ploys, lies, gamesmanship, pretense, etc. That's what led to your stupid attempt to get me to say something that you could use to play martyr and victim. Deal with it, AirHeadDave. And don't for a minute think that you are fooling people here.
Oh, and as to your GC expedition--remember, you said you *didn't* invite me, AirHead, so...nah, I'll prefer not to deal with you. Unlike Louis, I DO dislike what I can see of you personally (and your ilk -- the kind that play victim while abusing others).
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh I *dislike* what I see of Dave and GoP here, I just don't *hate* them. I am fairly sure that in meatspace they're probably not as bad as they appear here, but I have little time for liars and people who deny the evidence (whatever it is and wherever it might lead) just because they don't like it.
Dislike is a massively different object from hate, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Hate implies a more active dislike, and possibly an automatic bias. I don;t believe, for example, that just because a creationist says something that it's automatically bullshit. I'm sure you don't either. If I hated creationists, wouldn't I be vehemently predisposed to instantly denying any claim they made regardless of the evidence? Wouldn't I in fact be doing precisely what I dislike them for doing?
Lou: Yep, you're right, I should have phrased it differently. I'll get the next two rounds.
I do hate what Dave stands for, though -- the crushing of the human spirit and intellectual freedom under the banner of a faux "loving" religious view that is a thin disguise for totalitarian Theocracy.
Someone (apologies to who it was) asked Dave earlier if he thought that these were the "end times" and that the middle east pointed towards such...personally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Dave, like many of his kind, was a "dominionist."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh I *dislike* what I see of Dave and GoP here, I just don't *hate* them. I am fairly sure that in meatspace they're probably not as bad as they appear here, but I have little time for liars and people who deny the evidence (whatever it is and wherever it might lead) just because they don't like it.
OK, this is reasonable.
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Dislike is a massively different object from hate, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Hate implies a more active dislike, and possibly an automatic bias. I don;t believe, for example, that just because a creationist says something that it's automatically bullshit. I'm sure you don't either. If I hated creationists, wouldn't I be vehemently predisposed to instantly denying any claim they made regardless of the evidence? Wouldn't I in fact be doing precisely what I dislike them for doing?
I've having a hard time reconciling these two positions. Your first statement implies that a creationist position is prima facie (if not compelling) evidence of stupidity/ignorance/dishonesty. Since stupid/ignorant/dishonest people are untrustworthy by nature, this leads to a global rejection of anything a creationist says. Thus, I can reject Ghosty's politics if I dislike his science. Or was someone impersonating you on the "Movie" thread?
"Sham" is probably too strong a word. How about "honest mistake"? Just as many good scientists were honestly mistaken about geocentricity, phlogiston, ether, etc.
when geocentricity was in vouge, how many scientists were there in the world? When phlogiston and the ether were all the rage, how many were there? How many are there now? Can you see where i'm going with this? the more honest people examining the issues, the more likely you are to approach the truth of the matter. Why did it take so long to overturn the geocentricty tendancies? Was it because proponents of a particular worldview (who also happend to be of a similar religion to you) were murdering people who disagreed? Tell me again about persecution of people who have a different view? Seem to me what happens now days is trival compared to what your lot used to get up to. pah, how old is the sun Dave? how old?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
"Sham" is probably too strong a word. How about "honest mistake"? Just as many good scientists were honestly mistaken about geocentricity, phlogiston, ether, etc.
Let's see how it sounds :
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The RM dating is just sciency sounding window dressing to try to add credibility to the honest mistakes
I do hate what Dave stands for, though -- the crushing of the human spirit and intellectual freedom under the banner of a faux "loving" religious view that is a thin disguise for totalitarian Theocracy.
Oh, the irony.
While I don't deny that religion can and has suppressed civil liberties, the truth remains that Western Christian societies have developed much of the civil right apparatuses that you take for granted. And thanks to thin-skinned litigious types like you, our freedoms are rapidly dwindling.
I do hate what Dave stands for, though -- the crushing of the human spirit and intellectual freedom under the banner of a faux "loving" religious view that is a thin disguise for totalitarian Theocracy.
Oh, the irony.
While I don't deny that religion can and has suppressed civil liberties, the truth remains that Western Christian societies have developed much of the civil right apparatuses that you take for granted. And thanks to thin-skinned litigious types like you, our freedoms are rapidly dwindling.
Right, because we all know that the ACLU is really out to put limits on our personal freedoms.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Drop it, you troll. You're not fooling anyone here.
Troll? Troll? Did you know, suh, that the word "Troll" is libel per se in Iceland (something Nordic-related, I believe)*? Just wait until I get a plane ticket and we'll see who's the fool then. Bring a bodyguard, a lawyer, four pints of blood, and a shoehorn (for removing my boot from yo' ass), and we'll have a little chat in "poison".......
*slaps GoP's muzzle* Did you want me to unzip my pants so you can stick your nose further in my crotch, GoP? Like I told you a long time ago, you remind me of a weird manic toy poodle, bouncing up and down yapping for attention. Shoo, go sniff Dave's ass again.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, when are you going to knock off your flaccid and ineffectual attempts to rebut radiometric dating techniques, about which you know essentially nothing, and actually try to support your own "hypothesis"?
You've already made it plain that you have no intention of finding evidence to support your "global catastrophic flood hypthesis," so let's see if you can come up with evidence of any sort for any of your rants. I've set out for you what you need to do:
(1) Settle on a date—any date, we're not picky—for how old the earth is. No more avoiding, evading, and dissembling. Pick a date, with estimated error ranges, and stick to it, for crying out loud! This is about as elementary a claim as you can establish for your biblical inerrancy. I don't care if your date is 6,000 years, 20,000 years, or 150 years. Just pick to a date and stick to it.
(2) Find some evidence to support that date! How hard is that going to be, Dave? You claim you're sure the earth is less than, oh, I don't know, 20,000 years or whatever figure you finally whip out. You also claim that you're convinced of this because the evidence points that way. This sort of, you know, implies that you've actually seen such evidence, so for the love of god will you post it? You shouldn't have to go hunting around for it, because supposedly you've already seen it.
This is another "put up or shut up" moment for you, Dave. So far you've done neither on any assertion you've made, so here's your chance.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Patience, Eric, patience. Wasn't it you that was yapping for several pages about moving to the Flood topic? Well now we are here. So relax.
I want to make a full display for all to see of the nonsense known as ...
"The Bogus RM Dating of the Grand Staircase Layers"
I want to make sure everyone understands from about 5 different angles and with as many supporting scenarios as possible (such as the KBS Tuff) just how vacuous Deadman's claims are that the Grand Staircase can be dated radiometrically.
They cannot be as far as I can tell.
Deadman has a wonderful ability to quote scientific papers and he displays as good a command of conventional geological wisdom as anybody I have ever read ...
But alas, his (and your) worldview clouds his otherwise sound thinking and he is spectacularly and gloriously WRONG!
The evidence simply does not support the idea of these layers being laid down over millions of years. And there appears to actually be no way to radiometrically date a water-laid sedimentary layer as Deadman led me to believe originally.
After I have spent a few more days pounding the pulpit on this topic, I will move on to the next topic of my choosing.
So relax and enjoy the ride ... and refute me if you can! Try refuting me with some of your own arguments, though. Incorygible and Deadman do a good job of being original at least, even if they are mistaken, so I respect them for that. You, however, could use some originality in your posts.
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This is another "put up or shut up" moment for you, Dave. So far you've done neither on any assertion you've made, so here's your chance.
Have you noticed that I keep "putting up" and I never "shut up"? Does this frustrate you to keep telling me to shut up and I never do?
How old is the earth? 6000 years or so, evidence given ... oh about 80 pages ago I guess ... were you sleeping that day?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So, DaveyDH says he is not lying. He honestly believes. OK, Davey, have we provided enough evidence that the Earth is over 10k years old?
Do you think that it less that 10k years?
1) Core Samples? 2) RM Dating? 3) E=mc2 ? 4) Seafloor spreading (plate tectonics and magnetic reversals)? 5) Red shift? 6) Geologic Column? 7) Archaelogical evidence? 8) The fact that all evidence, bar none, points to the same conclusion and that you doubt this because of a book written by people who didn't even know where rain came from?
I'll take you at your word , er..., well, I will, what are you guys looking at me like that for? I'll take your word that you aren't consciously lying to us. But you do understand that you are clinging to your pathetic little ideas and providing no evidence to show that they have any merit, right?
And you do understand that many people here have provided mountains of evidence that all point to the conclusion that you are wrong and you have not managed to refute even a single one, right?
So, you must be prepared to admit at this point that, even though every shred of evidence points out that your idea ab out your pathetic little sky daddy is incorrect, that you are incapable of conceding the point because you just don't posess the emotional strength to confront that particular reality. So,... um,... we're waiting....
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Patience, Eric, patience. Wasn't it you that was yapping for several pages about moving to the Flood topic? Well now we are here. So relax.
Patience? You've got to be joking! We've been waiting for you to support a single assertion you've ever made since May! Here it is, almost September, and you have to support a single statement you've ever made!
I don't care whether you belive radiometric dating is accurate or not. You've made it clear you don't begin to be competent to have an opinion on the matter, and in any event, disproving the accuracy of RM would do you absolutely no good in proving the earth is less than (pick a figure) years old.
Dave, you claim the evidence doesn't support the millions-of-years age of the Grand Canyon sediments, but you haven't even explained what that evidence is, and you're far, far away from presenting a single scintilla of evidence that it's only a few thousand years old.
I can't refute you, Dave, until you actually present some evidence! How many of us have to point out to you that you have not presented any evidence yet? Until you do so, there's nothing to refute!
I've definitely noticed that you never, ever put up, so of course it's annoying that you never shut up. Dave, you're as perfect an example of "all hat and no cattle" as I've ever seen.
So you're sticking with the claim that the earth is six thousand years old? So if it's 5,500, or 6,500, years old (to say nothing of 4.5 billion years old), then you've been proven wrong? Good. Then you've been proven wrong. Because you have provided no evidence—not 80 pages ago, not on any page on this entire thread, that the earth is 6,000 years old. If you don't believe me, ask anyone else here, poster or lurker, if they think you've provided any evidence at all for an earth 6,000 years old. Because you haven't. Not even close.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well then, we need look no farther than core samples.
first, ice core samples record the passing of years in seasonal snowfall. They go far beyond 6k years. Lest you try to jjump up and say that god made 36,000 individual snowfalls in a day or two or some other crap like that, there are numerous ways to test that.
Volcanoes leave deposits in ice core samples. They also leave traces in tree ring samples. Tree ring samples can be a dating method by finding a tree that was cut when another was young and cross referencing events recorded in the rings (which also grow in yearly cycles. The events that cross-reference in both ice and tree rings are a check each upon the other. Of course, if you allow c14 dating as valid, there are also archaelogical sites which can correspond: eg vesuvius blows, we have a real, known date. The date is also recorded in tree rings and ice core samples and c-14 dating gives the right date too. We count backwards in the tree rings untill we get past Rome and find that the years of other events still correspond to ice core samples and poof! ® we get past your 10k years and whoosh! ® out goes the wind from your skull.
That was easy.
Also, your flood doesn't have a single corresponding sediment layer over the earth. Also your flood story is a fable. Also your god story is a fable. Also your circularity argument is dumb because it assumes only one way to check dates (rm) of which I just showed you there are others. But don't take my word for it. Go out and find out!
And when you find some aig crud about dendochronology or ice core samples, go discover that sediment works the same way and cross-references yet again that the ice cores and tree rings are correct!
Then, once you are all twisted like a pretzel, go do something hedonistic, reflect on how good it feels knowing that god doesn't care.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Drop it, you troll. You're not fooling anyone here.
Troll? Troll? Did you know, suh, that the word "Troll" is libel per se in Iceland (something Nordic-related, I believe)*? Just wait until I get a plane ticket and we'll see who's the fool then. Bring a bodyguard, a lawyer, four pints of blood, and a shoehorn (for removing my boot from yo' ass), and we'll have a little chat in "poison".......
*potentially false, since I just made it up
You certainly know my definition of troll, troll.
Someone arguing for a geocentrism on a scientific discussion board is either a freak or a troll. But from your post, I'm starting to wonder... Do you prefer I call you freak?
AirHeadDave: You keep trying to test the standard geological model. That is not your model to test.
Just for fun, let's say you convinced me that the standard geological model is wrong.
The default hypothesis is not YOUR model until you show it holds up better. End of story.
So, start presenting evidence FOR your model, not against others.
Start answering questions about your claims.
Until you do that, there is no reason to even bother responding to you. You have failed to show your hypothesis has evidence to back it.
Here's a question, Dave...about YOUR hypothesis...Why are there spider tracks in the coconino sandstone when millions more tons of watery sediments covered them in the flood year?
That's not even close to the harder questions I have, but you can't even answer that. Your model fails thereby.
You can't even answer that question. Not one.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Have you noticed that I keep "putting up" and I never "shut up"?
The only thing you keep "putting up" is putting your head up your ass, Davie-doo.
Quote
How old is the earth? 6000 years or so, evidence given ... oh about 80 pages ago I guess ... were you sleeping that day?
Davie, please explain for us why there are so many independent calibration methods for C14 dating that all agree with one another, and all give dates well older than 6000 YBP? Were you sleeping for the solid month I hammered you about that Davie? I notice you're still dishonest enough to ignore that evidence, you poor little persecuted victim you.
Please explain how limestone gets deposited, and the rate it gets deposited. How long would it take to lay down a limestone bed 1000' thick?
Please explain how long it takes for a canyon to be eroded in rock-hard limestone.
Please explain how such a limestone canyon could be buried under 17000' of sediment.
And it's easy to make you selectively shut up Davie. All anyone has to do is ask you detailed technical questions about the bullshit claims you make, and you immediately shut up and change the topic.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I can't refute you, Dave, until you actually present some evidence!
OK then. So it's not evidence. Fine. How about trying to refute my "whatchamacallit" that I posted with the picture of the Grand Staircase this morning, huh? Incorygible tried. How about you? Do you even know enough to take a crack at understanding what I was talking about? Can you explain to me how on earth it is reasonable to date water-laid sedimentary layers with volcanic ash? Explain that to me, O thou wise one who knoweth more than me!!
Deadman ... your spider tracks ... I'll give it some thought, but I find it interesting that you focus on the ONE layer out of 80 or so that MIGHT not be water laid ... don't you think it's kinda unlikely that all those other layers got laid (sorry, no pun intended) by water and one dinky layer got laid by wind?
Hey Aftershave ... do your fingers ever stink?
(See if you can figure out why I ask ...)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
2) the fact that the non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood
Sorry, Davie-poo --- wrong. Hardgrounds, paleosols, dessication cracks, and many more cannot be explained thusly.
"A well-developed gleyed oxisol, similar in nature to the paleosol described in section 3.1.1, marks the base of the Monitor Butte Member immediately above the coarse-grained deposits of the Shinarump Member in White Canyon, at Jacob’s Chair (MS 19), and in Red Canyon (MS 21). At Jacob’s Chair, the paleosol is fine-grained and nearly 6 meters thick. Color mottles found in this paleosol range from dark purple, red, grey, gold, white, green, to dark black in color (Figure AI.59). Figure AI.59. Well-developed paleosol below lacustrine deltal facies near the base of the Monitor Butte Member at MS19." From SEQUENCE STRATIGRAPHY OF FLUVIAL AND LACUSTRINE DEPOSITS IN THE LOWER PART OF THE CHINLE FORMATION, SOUTH CENTRAL UTAH, UNITED STATES: PALEOCLIMATIC AND TECTONIC IMPLICATIONS.
"The top of the Monitor Butte is a sequence boundary, marked either by an erosional surface at the base of the discontinuous Moss Back Member sandstone where it is present, or a well-developed paleosol characterized by distinctive red coloration and carbonate nodules (Figure 9). Figure 9. Interfluve paleosol near edge of Moss Back incised valley. Note well-developed pedogenic carbonate horizon. At Jacob's Chair (JAC1 on Figure 3)." From SEQUENCE STRATIGRAPHY OF A FLUVIAL-LACUSTRINE SUCCESSION IN THE TRIASSIC LOWER CHINLE FORMATION, CENTRAL UTAH, USA
And there's lots more of 'em that you haven't explained, Davie-doodles.
Well then, we need look no farther than core samples.
first, ice core samples record the passing of years in seasonal snowfall. They go far beyond 6k years. Lest you try to jjump up and say that god made 36,000 individual snowfalls in a day or two or some other crap like that, there are numerous ways to test that.
Volcanoes leave deposits in ice core samples. They also leave traces in tree ring samples. Tree ring samples can be a dating method by finding a tree that was cut when another was young and cross referencing events recorded in the rings (which also grow in yearly cycles. The events that cross-reference in both ice and tree rings are a check each upon the other. Of course, if you allow c14 dating as valid, there are also archaelogical sites which can correspond: eg vesuvius blows, we have a real, known date. The date is also recorded in tree rings and ice core samples and c-14 dating gives the right date too. We count backwards in the tree rings untill we get past Rome and find that the years of other events still correspond to ice core samples and poof! ® we get past your 10k years and whoosh! ® out goes the wind from your skull.
That was easy.
Also, your flood doesn't have a single corresponding sediment layer over the earth. Also your flood story is a fable. Also your god story is a fable. Also your circularity argument is dumb because it assumes only one way to check dates (rm) of which I just showed you there are others. But don't take my word for it. Go out and find out!
And when you find some aig crud about dendochronology or ice core samples, go discover that sediment works the same way and cross-references yet again that the ice cores and tree rings are correct!
Then, once you are all twisted like a pretzel, go do something hedonistic, reflect on how good it feels knowing that god doesn't care.
Dipshit. You lose. Why are you picking out complicated stuff when your theory is disproven by very simple evidence?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
My point remains. How on earth do you date 80 layers of sedimentary (mostly water laid) rocks with lava? I see no way that you can. Which brings us back to my contention that these 80 layers are really dated by the fossils contained in them.
Hmm.
"How on earth do you manage to get tons and tons of iron not just to reach escape velocity, but actually get them to the Moon? I see no way that you can. Which brings us back to my contention that the moon landings were really faked."
"How on earth do you get to build such an architectural and engineering marvel as the Pyramids when you're a primitive Egyptian? I see no way that you can. Which brings us back to my contention that the Pyramids were really built by ancient astronauts."
"How on earth do you come up with such a new revolutionary technology as optical storage devices alluva sudden? I see no way that you can. Which brings us back to my contention that CDs were really retro-engineered by UFO technology."
...See how that works, dave?
Oh and, Occam's right: You ALWAYS shut up, and you never, EVER put up. And you know it. Deep down, under all your denial and defense mechanisms, you know that you have no way to back up your claims, and you have to keep twisting and sliding and ducking and dodging. And it stings.
But feel free to prove me wrong.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
But to say that Layer 3 is 150 myo because it contains ash from a volcano that erupted 150 myo seems wrong.
And, as has been pointed out many times, it is is wrong. It is correct to say that layer 3 is greater than 150 myo. Then we go and look for some other information that tells us what age layer 3 is less than
I can't refute you, Dave, until you actually present some evidence!
OK then. So it's not evidence. Fine. How about trying to refute my "whatchamacallit" that I posted with the picture of the Grand Staircase this morning, huh? Incorygible tried. How about you? Do you even know enough to take a crack at understanding what I was talking about? Can you explain to me how on earth it is reasonable to date water-laid sedimentary layers with volcanic ash? Explain that to me, O thou wise one who knoweth more than me!!
Dave, it's not my job to defend the dating of the Grand Canyon layers of sediment. Don't you get that? It's your job to present evidence that a) all those layers were laid down within a one-year timespan, and b) that all—every single one—of those layers is less than 6,000 years old. Stop trying to make me defend someone else's hypothesis, and start trying to defend your own "hypothesis."
Posting pictures of the Grand Canyon does you absolutely no good, and certainly doesn't lend the slightest amount of support to your claim that the Grand Canyon, let alone the earth, is only 6,000 years old.
It's completely irrelevant to your "hypothesis" whether it's reasonable to date water-laid sedimentary layers with volcanic ash. It could be completely unreasonable, but without affirmative evidence that the Grand Canyone specifically, and the earth in general, is 6,000 years old, you lose.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I can't refute you, Dave, until you actually present some evidence!
OK then. So it's not evidence. Fine. How about trying to refute my "whatchamacallit" that I posted with the picture of the Grand Staircase this morning, huh? Incorygible tried. How about you? Do you even know enough to take a crack at understanding what I was talking about? Can you explain to me how on earth it is reasonable to date water-laid sedimentary layers with volcanic ash? Explain that to me, O thou wise one who knoweth more than me!!
Aaah, how nice... dave uses one of the old "Proofs of God's Existence", that are famous around the internets, to fit his purpose. In case anyone's interested, here's the original (as far as I can recall):
I was gonna say "just the middle one - ask your wife" but that wouldn't be fair to her. She's not the assho1e in your household, all she did was marry one.
Now, please show the lurkers some Christian honesty and quit avoiding these questions:
Please explain for us why there are so many independent calibration methods for C14 dating that all agree with one another, and all give dates well older than 6000 YBP?
Please explain how limestone gets deposited, and the rate it gets deposited. How long would it take to lay down a limestone bed 1000' thick?
Please explain how long it takes for a canyon to be eroded in rock-hard limestone.
Please explain how such a limestone canyon could be buried under 17000' of sediment.
See Davie, an honest Christian would say "I admit I have no rational explanation for all those scientific facts that directly contradict my YEC claims", but we all know you're not an honest Christian, right? Better to squirm and evade to avoid embarrassment, right? What's one more Lie for Jesus among the many lies you've already told?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Is it just me, or is everyone getting sick of AF Dave insisting on everyone backing up their claims, when it's hishypothesis [sorry, Icthyic] claim that is under discussion here. This isn't "Wesley's UPDATED It All Happened By Accident" thread, or "Occam's UPDATED Naturalistic Processes Can Account for It" thread, or "DeadMan's UPDATED Geologic Processes Over Deep Time Did It" thread, or "Eric's UPDATED Slow Processes Working Over Billions of Years Is Sufficient" thread: it's "AF Dave's Completely Evidence-Free Claim of Biblical Inerrancy Proves There's a God" thread.
When you actually post some affirmative evidence that supports your claim that the Grand Canyon was carved in a year, and that the earth is 6,000 years old, Dave, then we can start refuting that evidence. But I think everyone here is sick of your pointless and ineffectual efforts to undermine the evidence for an old earth. Stop insisting that everyone repeat themselves endlessly in supporting their own claims (which they've done—in spades) while you think you can just slide on supporting your own.
So get cracking. And by the way, don't think I've forgotten that, among all the other evidence you've failed to present, you've also failed to provide evidence for a source of water for your flood.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Is it just me, or is everyone getting sick of AF Dave insisting on everyone backing up their claims, when it's his... claim that is under discussion here.
Yup. That's why I didn't even bother with an answer this time.
Every one of the germane questions he's asked has been answered-- but he still can't manage to answer any on his own claims. sh1t, he can't manage to present any evidence at all on HIS claims, they're just hot air and AIG/ICR vomit that everyone has already seen.
No wonder he was scared I'd simply leave him buried in the Canyon... he already IS.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Is it just me, or is everyone getting sick of AF Dave insisting on everyone backing up their claims, when it's his hypothesis [sorry, Icthyic] claim that is under discussion here.
I'm not so sure you can do one without the other. If you provide positive evidence for a young earth, then the mainstreamers are just going to say, "Oh yeah, but what about this and this..." while rattling off all the old earth evidence (so-called). Dave's simply following the Bugliosi conjecture, which holds that it's better to show that your model is necessary before you lay out the details. Otherwise, everyone's planning their response instead of listening to your argument. A corollary is that you have to anticipate and address the other side's evidence when presenting your theory. And ya know, ya can't argue with the man's won-loss.....
Also (and this is a mild criticism compared to what I could say about your peers), you do occasionally come across as a salesman making a pitch for a product. In this, you remind me of Ken Miller. Keep in mind that successful people are constantly listening to sales pitches, so when they come across that attitude (however unconscious), they react with a little more hostility than the average man. That's my take....do with it as you will.
This is, of course, far beyond the intellectual capabilities of Davie-dip ... but it may be of interest to others. The well-known physicist Steve Carlip recently posted a very interesting message about how we know that radioactive decay rates are and were constant [or so close to constant as makes no difference to the YECs). Re: Age dating question.
Eric: I'm not so sure you can do one without the other. If you provide positive evidence for a young earth, then the mainstreamers are just going to say, "Oh yeah, but what about this and this..." while rattling off all the old earth evidence (so-called). Dave's simply following the Bugliosi conjecture, which holds that it's better to show that your model is necessary before you lay out the details. Otherwise, everyone's planning their response instead of listening to your argument. A corollary is that you have to anticipate and address the other side's evidence when presenting your theory. And ya know, ya can't argue with the man's won-loss.....
Here's the way I see it, Bill: there's a tremendous amount of evidence that shows the earth is billions of years old (in fact, all of the evidence that even touches on the subject shows that). Dave has not been able to effectively rebut any of that evidence, and shows every sign that he will never be able to do so. Every attempt he has made has been obliterated, despite Dave's transparently pathetic attempts to claim otherwise.
But without any evidence to support his claims of a young earth, his criticisms of the evidence of an old earth are essentially without merit. All of the evidence for an old earth could be wrong, but that still wouldn't mean the earth is young. The earth could still be old. The only way Dave can proceed ŕ la Bugliosi is to show that it is impossible for the earth to be old (the contrary evidence does indeed show that it is impossible for the earth to be young). If he could show that, he could argue that his model is necessary, and then begin to lay out the evidence supporting it. But without demonstrating the impossibility of an old earth, he can't skip step one and go on with his argument.
Quote
Also (and this is a mild criticism compared to what I could say about your peers), you do occasionally come across as a salesman making a pitch for a product. In this, you remind me of Ken Miller. Keep in mind that successful people are constantly listening to sales pitches, so when they come across that attitude (however unconscious), they react with a little more hostility than the average man. That's my take....do with it as you will.
Actually, Bill, I'm not selling anything. As you've no doubt noted, I don't say much about the evidence in favor of an old earth, because I don't need to. I'm not defending an hypothesis.
What I've been hammering Dave with, pretty much since the start of his thread, is his failure to provide any affirmative support for his own "hypothesis." He's spent virtually all of his 700 posts attempting to rebut the evidence for an old earth (or some other unrelated evidence, like the evidence supporting the relatedness of great apes), and none of it actually presenting evidence for his own hypothesis.
I'm frankly not that concerned about whether Dave believes in evolution, or geology, or astronomy, or quantum physics, or paleontology, or anthropology, or biology—I'm not selling anything like that. He's made it more than clear at this point that he is unpersuadable, despite his assertions to the contrary. What I am concerned with is his ability to support his own claims. So far, he hasn't, and that's why I find his inability to concede any ground, on any subject, pretty fascinating.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Also, I do not mind verbal insults a bit. As I have said for a long time, calling people names does nothing but show that a person has no self control. It actually helps the Creationist cause for Evolutionists to act like children and call names. Keep it up! The more you do it, the faster the general public will see you for what you really are. What started the conversation about verbal insults was Louis portraying fundamentalist Christians like me as the "heretic burners" ... this is precisely backwards and I will correct this when I hear it. It was actually the fundamentalist Christians and other suspected non-Papists who were being burned at the stake during the Inquisition.
As for visiting with me in person, I have no interest in meeting in person with anyone who even hints of physical violence towards me as Deadman has done. Prior to Deadman's threat, I had no idea that there were any ATBC participants capable of stooping to that depth of quasi-criminal behavior. I really believed that you all were upstanding people with high ethics (and many of you are). My only complaint about you was that I disagreed with your worldview and I think you are rather blind to the truth.
But now everything has changed and I am very wary. I will only meet in person with people who somehow convince me that they are non-violent, law abiding people. (Crabby, does that answer your question?)
The only question you have answered DDTTD is that you are indeed a coward.
How many die hard rabid Evos killed and maimed those they disagreed with or burned and bombed churches and clinics in the last 20 years?
You're scared of Deadman? Reading comprehension DDTTD.
I offered to come to your church to offer you my opinion of you and you're scared of me? My calling you names like liar, moron and willfully ignorant or Dilettante Dave the Taxi Driver makes me look bad compared to whom? Neal Horsely, Randall Terry, Fred Phelps, Clayton Waagner, Ann Coulter etc. etc ad nauseum?
Here's a purty pitcher for ya DDTTD
'Splain to me which ones is the Fundies DDTTD. One of the churches in that there pitcher is just down the road from where I graduated from high school.
Now, get back on topic supporting your thesis or admit you can't do any such thing.
Deadman and others, I'd be proud to hoist a few, toss a few arrows and discuss some of the pre Clovis sites with you even though I'm sure you'll disagree with me about some of them.
The only question you have answered DDTTD is that you are indeed a coward.
How many die hard rabid Evos killed and maimed those they disagreed with or burned and bombed churches and clinics in the last 20 years?
You're scared of Deadman? Reading comprehension DDTTD.
I offered to come to your church to offer you my opinion of you and you're scared of me? My calling you names like liar, moron and willfully ignorant or Dilettante Dave the Taxi Driver makes me look bad compared to whom? Neal Horsely, Randall Terry, Fred Phelps, Clayton Waagner, Ann Coulter etc. etc ad nauseum?
I am happy to meet Deadman in person if he can convince me that he is safe ... meaning that he will not attack me physically or legally. This is not cowardice, friend, it's common sense. His threat sounded like a physical one to me, but I am taking his word for it that it was not. He says it was a legal threat which to me is not much better. Do you realize that companies in America have literally shut down whole divisions because of thin-skinned, greedy, litigious people? Cessna Aircraft Company is one of them. People like this are helping to destroy America. You are also right to condemn those people that burned churches in the South. I condemn them also. When I invited you to my church, the possibility of someone here on this forum physically assaulting me or suing me merely for a verbal insult had not entered my head. If you can convince me that you have never assaulted anyone and have never sued anyone and can somehow convince me that you are not planning on starting with me, then fine. You can start convincing me by sending me a PM with all your personal information and a picture.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hmmm interesting misreading on your part. I think I made it quite clear that something a creationist says is not made bullshit by the mere fact that a creationist says it. I'll clarify further, it's not automatically bullshit if it even refers to creationism. What makes what a creationist says bullshit (or indeed anyone) is whether or not it matches up to the evidence (i.e. whether or not it is in fact bullshit). Creationism is bullshit because it doesn't match the data, not because it is said by creationists, christians, or conservatives. End of story.
The reason I use creationists in this example is because, well, you and Davey are creationists. Simple really.
I also don't agree that stupid or ignorant people are inherently untrustworthy. Dishonest people are less trustworthy this is true, but I judge each case on its merits. A raving kleptomaniac might be an honest person in every other sense, whilst a compulsive liar might be trusted with my collection of Ferraris and my daughter (not that I actually have either! ). I've even been known to be nice to.......estate agents (realtors to you Yanks). Eurgh I feel dirty just saying it.
As for your politics, the reason I reject them (at least the bits I have rejected) is again, nothing to do with where those politics are coming from. It's everything to do with the fact that more often than not they aren't anything more than superficially "evidence" based (and often dishonestly so, quote mines etc), they usually contain at least one non sequitur or glaring logical fallacy, they at least appear to be based on obvious prejudice, and seem to link nicely with various comments you have made (i.e. you are picking the politics you think supports your pre-existing dislikes of various groups/things).
I couldn't give a shit if you are a creationist or a biological scientist, a liberal or a conservative, a christian or an atheist, white or black, male or female, young or old, or any possible dichotomous baloney. It's WHAT you say and do that matters, and WHAT it is based on, not which "team" you belong to.
Oh and by the way a creationist position in 2006 ISprima facie evidence of stupidity, misguidedness, ignorance or dishonesty, at least regarding the relevant science. The bit I disagree with is your non sequitur that all of these traits make someone untrustworthy. Nice try though Gopsteriser. I'd give it a D+ must try harder.
Like I said above, one of them DOES make someone untrustworthy in some limited sense, possibly even in a broader sense. The others are perfectly correctable, and extremely common. I'm ignorant or misguided about LOADS of stuff. #### I'm probably even stupid too. And? The trick is I recognise it and try to correct it all as best I can. I am fallible and I don't have the same "team" identity problems you appear to have.
What I do care about is "just the facts, ma'am". I care about that last group, the dishonest ones. Those I'll fight to my last breath, and dammit boy if you ain't a shining example! Like I have said many times before, you're either a Loki troll or you are severely mentally ill. The possibility that you are ignorant of the science went out the window when you showed you could find the science. You might be stupid, but that's not my place to say because you don't appear to be stupid, so I'll give you a by there. I'm also pretty certain you aren't misguided, as you appear to know what you are doing with regards to shoehorning reality to fit your biblical beliefs, so I'm left with dishonest. Sorry, it's the least excusable, and least flattering of all four options.
I see the same in Davey if it helps sooth your nerves, except Davey ain't as (apparently) bright as you are. The level of cognitive dissonance that you two exhibit is simply staggering. But I guess you'll have to find that out for yourself.
As it stands, please stop trying to impose the views of your fictional bogeyman arbitrary groups onto people like me who don't share them.
He says it was a legal threat which to me is not much better.
I merely substituted the word "lawsuit" for "serious problems" in a sentence...to illustrate that your claim of a "physical threat" was erroneous.
When you decided to test me by asking if I wanted you to call your lawyer, I called your bluff, too.
My history of lawsuits is non-existent, AirWhinerDave. Nor do I think "lawsuits" is even among the top 50 things I would list as destructive to America -- given the legal/legislative protections that corporations/companies can and do buy. Frivolous lawsuits still exist, certainly, but the evidence is that there are filters for such and most never see the light of day.
More importantly, try providing evidence for your silly unsupported hypothesis.
Crabby: Yeah, that would be fun. The whole southern mound culture "Snake Cult" would be neat, too, I have a buddy down in Fla/Georgia working on that. Cheers!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I merely substituted the word "lawsuit" for "serious problems" in a sentence...to illustrate that your claim of a "physical threat" was erroneous.
When you decided to test me by asking if I wanted you to call your lawyer, I called your bluff, too.
My history of lawsuits is non-existent, AirWhinerDave.
Backpedalling now are we? Don't want to become known on the forum as a "thin-skinned, litigious" type? How about explaining your statement about consideration of using Singapore law to sue people as one of your "tactics"??
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Looking at X as a tactic is not the same as using X as a tactic. And as far as backpedalling is concerned, you better check your drawers for when you sh1t yourself yesterday, boy. I don't give a flying fukc what other people on a board think if they are as dense as you, AirHead...and they would have to be to arrive at your conclusions
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Deadman ...this is what you sound like talking about your consideration of using Singapore law to sue people as a tactic ..."Oh, I was just LOOKING at the AK-47 at that gun show the other day. Never mind my red neck shade, the camo pants, and my published statements of hatred for feds. I would NEVER actually USE an AK-47 on anyone. I just think they are neat!! Ha, ha!"
So why don't you just clarify yourself once and for all and I will leave you alone ... would you, or would you not sue me for calling you an idiot to your face? Have you, or have you not ever sued anyone for verbal insults?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Deadman ...would you, or would you not sue me for calling you an idiot to your face? Have you, or have you not ever sued anyone for verbal insults?
Er...Davey...not to point out your deficiencies in reading comprehension yet again or anything, but you're now beating up on one more strawman from your endless supply. Deadman's (oh-so-serious-and-threatening) references to potential libel had nothing to do with calling him an "idiot". They had to do with calling him "criminal". Nice try.
Deadman's (oh-so-serious-and-threatening) references to potential libel had nothing to do with calling him an "idiot".
Yes it did. Go back and research it yourself if you like. He responded with his "serious problems" threat as a direct answer to my question of what he would do to me if I called him an idiot to his face. You are the one with reading comprehension problems in yet another area.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
SFBDavie, your feeble attempts at shifting the focus from your ignorance and lack of evidence for YEC is noted.
Just for the sake of argument, let's assume
1. Poor Davie really is the victim of Christian persecution. 2. There really is an Evil Atheist Conspiracy, Science Division that goes around the world and deliberately hides all positive evidence for YEC. 3. Davie's "common sense" is better evidence that the work of thousands of experts in the fields of geology, biology, physics, etc.
NOW DAVE: how about answering these questions just to show the lurkers how sincere you really are about finding the TROOTH.
Please explain for us why there are so many independent calibration methods for C14 dating that all agree with one another, and all give dates well older than 6000 YBP?
Please explain how limestone gets deposited, and the rate it gets deposited. How long would it take to lay down a limestone bed 1000' thick?
Please explain how long it takes for a canyon to be eroded in rock-hard limestone.
Please explain how such a limestone canyon could be buried under 17000' of sediment.
C'mon Davie, show us your Christian honesty and sincerity. ADDRESS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS for once in your cowardly life.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Deadman ...this is what you sound like talking about your consideration of using Singapore law to sue people as a tactic ..."Oh, I was just LOOKING at the AK-47 at that gun show the other day. Never mind my red neck shade, the camo pants, and my published statements of hatred for feds. I would NEVER actually USE an AK-47 on anyone. I just think they are neat!! Ha, ha!"
Exactly. The fact that Nine had researched the issue to the point where he could rank countries/city states on the harshness of their defamation laws reveals more than he intended, I think.
Look, I've been around poor people all my life and let me tell you, the "lawsuit lottery" racket is no right-wing opium dream. Many poor people have told me that they look for any excuse to file a lawsuit so that they can make enough money to retire early. They told me about how they (and their relatives) staged accidents in stores and people's homes in order to sue for an unsafe environment. I know one person who had an allergy to shrimp, but ate some anyway and then tried to sue a restaurant for food poisoning. I've already discussed the coworker that nobody dared touch because she would dive to the floor and claim she was assaulted. And yes, wealthy charlatans like Uri Geller and David Irving use British defamation law to stifle criticism of their ideas. So now an individual or a business can get shaken down by all social classes. Now that's progress!
Once someone has indicated they're eager to sue, I avoid them as much as possible. I don't shake hands, I don't invite them over to my house, I don't chat with them (this doesn't include internet fora, of course). And I certainly don't appease them. Uncivilised behavior must never be rewarded or validated.
Paley, Dave could be arguing that 2 + 2 = 4, but he'll quote an article that says it's 3, and say that we're wrong.
But 2 + 2 does = 3, for very small values of 2.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Once someone has indicated they're eager to sue, I avoid them as much as possible. I don't shake hands, I don't invite them over to my house, I don't chat with them (this doesn't include internet fora, of course). And I certainly don't appease them. Uncivilised behavior must never be rewarded or validated.
Exactly. Deadman wanted to meet me in the GC to do samples and I was willing ... right up until he started threatening me. (Or pretending he was threatening me ... or whatever.) You can forget it now, Deadman. I have no interest in associating with litigious people. And I will remind you that it was YOUR idea to go sampling in the GC, not mine. I said I was considering a challenge to you or JonF regarding some rock sampling. I did not invite you to go to the GC with me. If I want to do some rock sampling, I'll find a way, thank you.
OA...
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SFBDavie, your feeble attempts at shifting the focus from your ignorance and lack of evidence for YEC is noted.
You are the one shifting focus. Our focus is on the Grand Staircase and how the layers are supposedly dated radiometrically. JonF had a nice sciency sounding comeback which I am in the process of anlyzing and Incorygible tried as well.
How about you? Don't know anything about that topic?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Let’s take a look at some of the statements Dave has made within the past week. They’ve come fast & furious, and I don’t like to leave them stand without comments. Also, it paints a pretty picture of a man descending farther and farther into paranoia.
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Louis ... your idea of Fundamentalist Christianity is THE INQUISITORS pictured? Notice the URL ... www.rotten.com/library/history/inquisition/inquisition2.gif
The Fundamentalist Christian was the GUY BEING BURNED!!!
Geez, Dave, read your Encyclopćdia Britannica! Most of the people burned at the stake were Jews, Masons, or people who had made comments against the Church. The Inquisition began nearly 370 years before Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the church and jump-started the Protestant Reformation. You don’t even know the history of your own faith??!?!? Read the EB for more information. But the concept of a “Fundamentalist Christian”, much less the term, was completely unknown at the time. And your current beliefs are far, far removed from those of Martin Luther. I should know – I’m a Lutheran, and my church’s belief statements don’t echo yours in the slightest.
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Louis... I don't trust you an anything and no you don't. You hate my guts and all people who think like me. Which is too bad for you but oh well. Hating people turns your heart black. (not literally, guys, calm down--it's a figure of speech)
Now we see the paranoia coming to the fore. “You hate […] all people who think like me.” Yeah, arguing about scientific data easily translates into “hate.” This is a typical creationist tactic – those who use data to support ToE “hate” those who won’t look at it objectively.
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Yes. It does sound familiar. I don't share the religious beliefs--Evolution--of people here at ATBC, so you try to persecute me. Name calling, stupid pictures, what have you. Someone even said they would harm me physically if they could.
If evolution was a “religious belief”, why aren’t there churches dedicated to it? Where do I send my tax-deductible contribution? Where are my hymns? Which high holy days do I celebrate? What am I supposed to wear to show my support?
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Will you still be around? Will you hate life as much as these guys are when I put my microscope on your question?
Now those of us who disagree with Dave (oops – I should have said all of us) “hate” life? I hadn’t noticed. I’m pretty well happy with my life almost all of the time.
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You've seen them curse and spit and call me names because they have no facts to refute my objections. We'll see what you do ... maybe you'll be more polite being from France ... we shall see ...
Again, Dave claims we have no facts. I don’t know what his definition of “fact” may be, but he’s still blind when it comes to all the scientific results he’s been shown.
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I can't wait to do a Dynamation on this subject to help public school kids see how sadly mistaken you guys are.
Yes, Dave, and all the little public school kids will glom onto your site, see your tidy little "Dynamation”, the scales will fall from their eyes, and they will viola! become instant YCE believers….all because of your work. You must be super-spectacular to cause this major shift in knowledge all by yourself!
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What you have in the logo (disregarding the big "5") is 2 circles, 5 points and the number 666 (using the long arm accelerator symbols stacked on top of each other) all contained in the logo ...
Neat, huh? Now tell me ... why would one of the premier scientific organizations in the world put masonic and Biblical numbers in their logo? A joke? A coincidence? Scientists aren't into that "nonsense" are they?
Ah, the Illuminati! How curious he throws this out, trying to shift the topic away from the increasingly irritating calls for proof and evidence. Thank you, thank you, for not falling for this stupid question.
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Skepticism of the Biblical worldview (in particular, the Protestant Reformation) which laid the foundation for modern western civilization, but which is being attacked and undermined by skeptics who believe in fairy tales like Darwinism.
Now, it seems to me that the worldview which passed away was the one which was Biblical. The Protestant Reformation helped start the Age of Enlightenment, which led to modern western civilization. The attack against the modern worldview is by people like Dave.
Dave, you need to read more history books.
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What started the conversation about verbal insults was Louis portraying fundamentalist Christians like me as the "heretic burners" ... this is precisely backwards and I will correct this when I hear it. It was actually the fundamentalist Christians and other suspected non-Papists who were being burned at the stake during the Inquisition.
Yes, Dave, the non-Papists were burned. They were mostly Jews, members of the Masons, and some Protestants. Again, read a history book!! There were no “fundamentalist Christians.” There were Protestants, Jews, Muslims, non-believers, and those who spoke out against the Church and the king. No one was tortured and killed because they believed in the flood and Noah’s ark.
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That just confirms all the more how desperate you are -- you cannot back up your Evo claims with scientific facts so you have to resort to lawsuit threats?
(I can’t think of any way I can respond to this statement without name-calling, so I’ll just state that my 8th grade students with reading disabilities knew what the lawsuit discussion was about.)
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So relax and enjoy the ride ... and refute me if you can! Try refuting me with some of your own arguments, though. Incorygible and Deadman do a good job of being original at least, even if they are mistaken, so I respect them for that. You, however, could use some originality in your posts.
I guess Dave is tired of people using other scientists’ research papers for their arguments.
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Do you realize that companies in America have literally shut down whole divisions because of thin-skinned, greedy, litigious people? Cessna Aircraft Company is one of them. People like this are helping to destroy America.
This really intrigued me, because it seemed like a completely outrageous claim to make. Being the intelligent person that I am, I Googled it. Here’s what I found:
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$480 million - The largest aviation verdict awarded to plaintiffs in history. (Cassoutt vs. Cessna) 2002 This verdict arose from an accident that was a repeat of a well-known problem with Cessna aircraft. When the pilot applied power for takeoff, the seat came out of its latch and rocketed the pilot suddenly rearward while he was holding onto the control yoke. The sudden pull back resulted in an upward pitch of the aircraft, an aerodynamic stall, and an inevitable crash. In this accident, the pilot suffered third degree burns, his wife had third and fourth degree burns, and a passenger sustained crippling injuries that caused bowel and bladder dysfunction. The jury found $80 million in compensatory damages and $400 million in punitive damages against the Cessna Aircraft Company.
Thin-skinned, greedy, litigious people my ass. I’m guessing here that Dave might have lost a pot of money if he invested in Cessna.
I found the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder on-line. To be formally diagnosed, a person only needs to exhibit five of the nine characteristics:
· has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements) · is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love · believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by other special or high-status people (or institutions, eg: Harvard and other Ivy League institutions) · requires excessive admiration · has a strong sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations · takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends · lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others · is often envious or believes others are envious of him or her · has arrogant affect, haughty behaviors or attitudes
But, being narcissistic, Dave will fail to see himself in any of these descriptions.
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
Having worked for a NPD type, I particularly liked this comment:
Individuals with NPD believe that their presumption of superiority is sufficient proof of its existence
A counselor once told me another side of their character was to be able to change reality (in their minds) to fit their perceptions. AKA they lie a lot
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
He responded with his "serious problems" threat as a direct answer to my question of what he would do to me if I called him an idiot to his face. You are the one with reading comprehension problems in yet another area.
Look, idiot, I just repeated (above) that my response THERE was an illustration of WHY "serious problems" =/= (does not equal) "physical threat."
The whole issue of me musing about a suit in Singapore (and thereby scaring the diapers off you ) concerned your libel of me as a "criminal", remember?
I state clearly I have no history of suing anyone, and you still rant off on it...indicating to me that the real problem is not that you're bothered by the thought of a lawsuit, but the fact that you curled up like GoP getting slapped around at a Girl Scout Jamboree
Incorygible was right and you are (In no particular order) a liar, idiot, coward and incapable of backing your hypothesis.
Did the Air Force conduct some mysterious forbidden experiments on you to make you this way?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh, and by the way, I also stated clearly previously that I had no intention of being anywhere near you. As soon as a mosquito or raindrop landed on you in the Grand Canyon, you'd run screaming for the hills, convinced I was "attacking" you, you freakin' eunuch.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Wow, notta, what an essay! Luther is summed up in my mind with the phrase Sola Scriptura ... I take this to mean Scripture, not the Pope, is the ultimate authority. It is in this that I identify with him.
I don't think you know when the term "Fundamentalist Christian" was first used. I certainly don't. My point to Louis was, and is, that he was completely wrong to identify the "heretic burners" with people like me. The truth is that it was far more likely that the one being burned in the picture was someone with similar beliefs to mine, rather than the other way around. William Tyndale is a good example--I would call him a fundamentalist Christian. He believed in the fundamental teachings of Scripture, hence the moniker that I give him, whether he was called that at the time or not.
I say some people here HATE creationists simply because it sounds like they do. Feel free to prove me wrong. Demonstrate that you don't by sounding like you don't.
Evolutionism has many characteristics of a religious belief, but of course it has differences too. I've elaborated on these previously. I won't again here.
As for Cessna, I do not know details of which cases caused Cessna to stop small AC production. All I know is that their small aircraft division was shut down for a number of years until Congress passed tort reform legislation. Is this a good thing? I think not. Cessna aircraft are some of the best selling aircraft in history. Is it smart to allow lawyers to completely shut down a product which consumers love? No ... and apparently congress didn't think so either. I agree that companies should be incentivized to make safe products. But shut the company down? Come on.
My point remains.
Litigious people are a scourge.
And I have never invested in Cessna.
**********************************
Deadman...
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The whole issue of me musing about a suit in Singapore (and thereby scaring the diapers off you ) concerned your libel of me as a "criminal", remember?
I never libeled you as criminal and you know it. And I believed you when you clarified that your threat was not physical, but legal. But your threat of litigation was the answer to my question of what you would do if I called you an idiot.
Quote
As soon as a mosquito or raindrop landed on you in the Grand Canyon, you'd run screaming for the hills, convinced I was "attacking" you, you freakin' eunuch.
Oh really? How do explain my childhood in the jungles of Brazil where I had plenty of mosquitos, raindrops, biting gnats, foot-burrowing fleas, poisonous snakes, living in a grass hut, an outhouse for a bathroom and so on? And I was quite happy during that time. Are you saying I'm somehow soft by referring to me a "freakin' eunuch"?
I'll tell you who is soft ... YOU. We are in an INTERNET FORUM. Not a boxing ring. Not a court of law. Not the battlezones of Iraq. If I wanted to be in any of those venues, I would be.
We are in an Internet Forum. And in an Internet Forum, you spar with WORDS. And you are showing your softness in this venue by getting mad and resorting to name calling and getting worn down with my constant and untiring shining of the light of truth onto your dark lies. You are obviously getting tired. I am not.
How long can you last? Who's the soft one?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'll tell you who is soft ... YOU. We are in an INTERNET FORUM. Not a boxing ring. Not a court of law. Not the battlezones of Iraq. If I wanted to be in any of those venues, I would be.
But you're still a coward that refuses, daily, to even answer the least questions regarding your claims. Like what I asked on the Coconino spider tracks yesterday ( for the ..what? 50th time? You simply avoided it again, thereby showing your intellectual cowardice.
Your physical cowardice is irrelevant to me, but also apparent from your comments -- your "I was a jungle boy" fantasies notwithstanding.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
We are in an Internet Forum. And in an Internet Forum, you spar with WORDS. And you are showing your softness in this venue by getting mad and resorting to name calling and getting worn down with my constant and untiring shining of the light of truth onto your dark lies. You are obviously getting tired. I am not.
How long can you last? Who's the soft one?
Okie dokie. That pretty much clarifies AF Dave's measure of success (and "truth") in this venue. It is a war of words, but not how you, or I, or any rational person would interpret that phrase. Because to Dave, it is a question of quantity, not quality. He reduces this debate to endurance in the face of opposition: who can repeat the same thing the longest?
In his game, which more closely resembles those stamina-testing win-a-car contests than the intellectual boxing match we expect, Dave can win. All he has to do is stick around until we get tired of landing blows. Like Homer Simpson, he will absorb them all without throwing back, then declare his empty victory. And by refusing to step in the ring with the full weight of reality (i.e., evidence), he can stick to the boxcar circuit and avoid his Drederick Tatum. Thus, his only real opponent in this contest is himself: he is simply testing his faith, and our presence is incidental.
Behold our Dave, the martyr of the digital age. Marvel at how many bold-caps assertions his faith provides him. See how the slings and arrows of rational argument do not touch him. Glory in the impermeability of his mind and the resolve of his keyboard. Halllelujah!
I say some people here HATE creationists simply because it sounds like they do. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Many people here -- including Louis and myself yesterday -- said they don't "hate" creationists personally, but the fanaticism that drives the creationist agenda. For myself, I don't *hate* you, but I do despise you for being a liar, coward, fraud, etc.
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How do explain my childhood in the jungles of Brazil where I had plenty of mosquitos, raindrops, biting gnats, foot-burrowing fleas, poisonous snakes, living in a grass hut, an outhouse for a bathroom and so on?
Oh, my. Mosquitos. Fierce fleas. Terrifying gnats. Snakeses that bites. Sheee-it, boy. That MUST have been a real trial for you, being around those big scary things in your frilly pink dress.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, is this going to be "another day, another failure on AF Dave's part to provide the tiniest bit of affirmative evidence for his UPDATED Creator God 'Hypothesis'" kind of day? We've had about a hundred of them in a row now. You're burning up pages at a record rate, trying to dance around the fact that you have no evidence for:
• a young earth; • biblical inerrancy; or • your claims that evolution is false.
These are the same claims that I said you hadn't presented any evidence for back in May. (And if you think you have presented such evidence, I invite you to find someone else to agree with you that you have.) Here we are, four months later, and you're complaining about fundamentalist Christians being burned at the stake in the 15th century, and about how unfair libel lawsuits are.
Are you ever going to get on-topic?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I don't think you know when the term "Fundamentalist Christian" was first used. I certainly don't.
From Wikipedia: "Fundamentalist Christianity, or Christian fundamentalism is a movement which arose mainly within American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by conservative evangelical Christians, who, in a reaction to modernism, actively affirmed a "fundamental" set of Christian beliefs: the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the authenticity of his miracles." (emphasis added)
See, Dave, when I don't know something, and I want to learn more, I either (a) look it up in a reputable source, or (b) ask someone who has more education in the subject than I do.
The first protestants were rebelling against the corruption of the Catholic Church and the bureaucracy it developed since Constantine declared it the "official" religion of the Roman Empire. Luther was attempting to return the church to its roots - the message and humility of Christ. Nothing was said about believing in the flood and Noah's ark or the literal truth of Genesis. To say that "Christian fundamentalists" were burned at the stake is a mistaken idea of what the first Protestants actually stood for. As a Protestant and a Lutheran, I am offended by your characterization of the earliest ones as "fundamentalists". Read the history of your own religion!!!
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
Like what I asked on the Coconino spider tracks yesterday ( for the ..what? 50th time? You simply avoided it again, thereby showing your intellectual cowardice.
It's a good question and I don't know the answer ... at least not yet. I have never said I have all the answers. There are many things I do not have the answers for. This is not cowardice. This is intellectual honesty.
Where I differ from you is that I have (and have given many of them) much better answers for the BIG questions than you do. Like how did all this sedimentary rock get deposited? Neither of us will be able to answer all the small questions. Such is the nature of historical geology.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Where I differ from you is that I have (and have given many of them) much better answers for the BIG questions than you do. Like how did all this sedimentary rock get deposited?
Er, no, you don't. Nor can you answer any questions on the big problems your hypothesis faces. The multiple layers of the Grand Canyon are the product of multiple freshwater and sea water deposition. This is why you see Spider tracks in the Coconino that could not have been formed without long periods of dryness , rather than your imaginary " it allgot deposited in one year" scenario.
There are obvious deep-sea deposits, like the limestone that cannot form in any other way. There are near-shore deposits that cannot form in any other way. Your whole scenario cannot account for any of these, nor the paleosols or evaporites. Your hypothesis loses every time, because it cannot deal with significant questioning of it.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I say some people here HATE creationists simply because it sounds like they do. Feel free to prove me wrong. Demonstrate that you don't by sounding like you don't.
Suure thing, dave... We hate your guts, we hate life, we hate creationists... And to think you made such a fuss when I erroneously stated that you seem to accuse us of hating Protestants, when I should have said that you accuse us of hating the Protestant worldview instead. Sheesh.
dave, I know a creationist (an OEC, but still) who is a great person. He is an Anesthesiologist in the hospital where I work for, and also an Orthodox priest. We have discussed a lot (in a way much more civil and reasonable than the way you use), and finally simply agreed that we disagree. Do I resent him or dislike him, because of his flawed perceptions? No. I actually like the guy. Do I hate him? Certainly not. I do not easily hate people, dave, not even those that have tried to do me harm. Now, I must say you get me angry, because of your amazing ability to disregard arguments, twist them, evade them- and most of all, your unbelievable nerve in unjustly accusing others of doing so, without feeling the need to back up your claims in the slightest. All that does make me angry (which I'm sure your childish mind perceives as a sign of victory, but who cares). But hatred? No. Hate is a strong word: If you didn't use that word like candy in your mouth, you might understand that.
Dave, here's a newsflash: We don't hate you. I know that feeling hated is essential to your delusions, because it feeds your martyr complex and reinforces your faith in your holy cause ("shining the light of truth onto your dark lies"? COME ON DUDE), but unfortunately, reality is once again quite different to your fantasies.
Some of us might dislike you, some despise you perhaps, all as a result of your silly and dishonest behavior here. But in my opinion, the most common feeling this forum has for you is Pity.
We feel sorry for you dave. And for your children. And for the ones you teach.
That is all.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
From Wikipedia: "Fundamentalist Christianity, or Christian fundamentalism is a movement which arose mainly within American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by conservative evangelical Christians, who, in a reaction to modernism, actively affirmed a "fundamental" set of Christian beliefs: the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the authenticity of his miracles." (emphasis added)
Of course, this is the modern definition, but I don't think you have any idea if the term was used in prior eras or not, which was my point. Do you know if the term was used on Tyndale, for example? I do not and I don't think you do. Yet he was a fundamentalist Christian in a very real sense. You may not like the term because the modern usage is associated with beliefs you do not like, but Martin Luther most definitely WAS a fundamentalist Christian in a very real (admittedly different than the modern usage) sense. He believed in returning the church to the FUNDAMENTALS of the Christian faith. Where you and I differ is on just what those fundamentals happen to include.
Sorry the truth offends you!
*******************************
Faid ... I wasn't referring to YOU as hating Christians. Are you feeling guilty or something?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Your physical cowardice is irrelevant to me, but also apparent from your comments -- your "I was a jungle boy" fantasies notwithstanding.
<Yawn>..... Once again, here's an opportunity to prove yer street cred and pocket an easy Chase in the process:
Mr. Slice is willing to meet you in your backyard if you wish. C'mon Dude, fund that next dig! You've claimed that bodyguards don't frighten you...well this guy is a bodyguard and he's willing to pay you money to kick his a$$!! Why are you wasting time baiting Dave? Don't give it away when you can get paid!
Unless, of course, you're nonviolent....in which case Dave can't be a coward....cause who's afraid of a pacifist? Right, Dude?
Let me give you a small example of the explanatory value that your hypothesis lacks:
Quote
The Redwall "Limestone" is divided into four members: the Whitmore Wash, Thunder Springs, Mooney Falls, and Horseshoe Mesa members. The Whitmore Wash is nearly pure calcium carbonate (98% pure). The Thunder Springs member consists of alternating layers of chert and carbonate. The Mooney Falls member is once again almost totally pure calcium carbonate (99.5%). The Horseshoe Mesa member consists of thinly-bedded carbonate with occasional chert lenses.
Beus writes:
"Deposition of the Redwall Limestone sediments occurred in a shallow, epeiric sea that produced a submerged continental shelf across northern Arizona. Deposits formed during two major [west-east] transgressive-regressive pulses, as demonstrated by McKee and Gutschick (1969). Detailed facies analysis by Kent and Rawson (1980) and Bremner (1986) have confirmed and refined this interpretation. The basal part of the Whitmore Wash Member records intitial deposition during the first transgression under nearshore, shallow, subtidal conditions where high-energy currents produced oolitic shoals. As the transgression proceded, more offshore deposits of skeletal grainstone and packstone accumulated under quieter water and more open-marine conditions. The Thunder Springs Member accumulated in increasingly shallow conditions as the sea regressed westward." (p. 128). http://vishnu.glg.nau.edu/rcb/mispaleo.html
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Some of us might dislike you, some despise you perhaps, all as a result of your silly and dishonest behavior here. But in my opinion, the most common feeling this forum has for you is Pity.
We feel sorry for you dave. And for your children. And for the ones you teach.
That is all.
Well said. I cannot agree more.
Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
"Deposition of the Redwall Limestone sediments occurred in a shallow, epeiric sea that produced a submerged continental shelf across northern Arizona. Deposits formed during two major [west-east] transgressive-regressive pulses, as demonstrated by McKee and Gutschick (1969). Detailed facies analysis by Kent and Rawson (1980) and Bremner (1986) have confirmed and refined this interpretation. The basal part of the Whitmore Wash Member records intitial deposition during the first transgression under nearshore, shallow, subtidal conditions where high-energy currents produced oolitic shoals. As the transgression proceded, more offshore deposits of skeletal grainstone and packstone accumulated under quieter water and more open-marine conditions. The Thunder Springs Member accumulated in increasingly shallow conditions as the sea regressed westward."
Yes, I know. I read this kind of stuff when I'm having insomnia, but not when I want to find out the truth about how the layers got there. I know, Deadman, there are mountains of mumbo-jumbo like this out there. And in most scientific disciplines, it is very good and factual. But in the strange world of historical geology, it is largely mumbo jumbo and fantasy simply because historical geologists bought into a lie at the outset. The sciency sounding language that only the few, the "elite" can understand doesn't make it any more true than the theology texts which went on and on about Purgatory, Indulgences and the like in Martin Luther's day.
******************************
What's the story on this guy that wants to fight Deadman? ... I haven't heard this yet. Somebody fill me in.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I read this kind of stuff when I'm having insomnia, but not when I want to find out the truth about how the layers got there... The sciency sounding language that only the few, the "elite" can understand
Oddly enough, the great strength of science is that it is both understandable to anyone willing to crack a dictionary and textbook...and it is not elitist in the least, except to those too lazy and inept ( like you, AirHead) to bother. So...how did those 800-foot thick layers of limestone get deposited in your scenario, dave?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Web definitions for paleosol An ancient, buried soil whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found. college.hmco.com/geology/resources/geologylink/glossary/p.html - Definition in context http://www.google.com/search?....+Search
For those of you mere mortals who, like me, didn't know what a "paleosol" was ...
JonF likes to flaunt big words in the hope that people will say "Oooo! Aaaah! This guy's from MIT and he uses big words ... he MUST know what he is talking about!"
So my first question is "How does this relate to my questioning of radiometric dating of the layers in the Grand Staircase?"
So there are some PALEOSOLS. IOW, there are ancient, buried soils whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found.
I already knew that. I have been saying for a long time that the climate was different prior to the Great Flood of Noah.
I will have more questions as I analyze JonF's post more.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You avoided my direct question again, "intellectually honest" Dave.
Oh, and by the way, look at where the paleosols are found in the layers. Kinda hard to form a paleosol in the midst of that raging flood, eh?
P.S. Congratulations on learning how to use a dictionary. Now, if only you had actually read any non-creationist geology books or maybe strained your frilly pink self to take a class or two, you might be able to speak competently on the subjects.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I read this kind of stuff when I'm having insomnia, but not when I want to find out the truth about how the layers got there.
Now maybe we're getting somewhere. So what do you read when you want to find out how the layers got there? And why do you choose it over the "mumbo-jumbo" sciency stuff?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
C'mon, Dave, you said your hypothesis answers the big questions better than any other, yet I still see no response on how the limestones formed in your flood. Show me that vaunted "intellectual honesty" you possess.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
More definitions for mere mortals so as to de-mystify the High, Noble Religion of Millionsofyearsianism
Web definitions for paleosol An ancient, buried soil whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found. college.hmco.com/geology/resources/geologylink/glossary/p.html - Definition in context
Web definitions for Lacustrine Pertaining to, produced by, or inhabiting a lake or lakes digsfossils.com/fossils/footprints_glossary.html - Definition in context
Web definitions for facies the aspect, appearance and characteristics of a rock, usually reflecting the conditions of its origin. www.shearminerals.com/s/Glossary.asp - Definition in context
Web definitions for Interfluve The area between two adjacent streams flowing in the same direction. www.soil.ncsu.edu/publications/BMPs/glossary.html - Definition in context
Now that we have that behind us, JonF ... would you care to enlighten us as to what on earth are you trying to say? And how does this strengthen your case that the Grand Staircase layers were laid over millions of years thus refuting my better--that is, more parsimonious (Hey, I've got that big word down now), more intuitive, more consistent with the evidence from known events--explanation that they were deposited in a Global Flood?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'm amused at how you switch roles, AirHead. Earlier in this thread you compared yourself to Newton and Maxwell, then started yapping about your engineering degree while talking about the intellectual rigors of the Air Force....now all of a sudden, you want to pose as "Dave Hawkins, ordinary guy baffled by the "mysteries" of elitist science" ....while you ignore what I asked you directly, in favor of addressing a person that isn't even active on the board at the moment.
It's been over 30 minutes, Dave, and you still haven't answered me with details from your hypothesis that is better than any other. How did that limestone form in your scenario?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Yeah, Jon, why DIDN'T you change the wording of the quotes you cited so Dave would find them more palatable and convincing? You KNOW that's the type of treatment he expects from his sources of "truth"! In the future, please alter all original sources and strip them of context, or at least paraphrase them in a simplistic manner that Dave can hoist up as his next strawman. Thank you.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Web definitions for paleosol An ancient, buried soil whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found. college.hmco.com/geology/resources/geologylink/glossary/p.html - Definition in context http://www.google.com/search?....+Search
For those of you mere mortals who, like me, didn't know what a "paleosol" was ...
JonF likes to flaunt big words in the hope that people will say "Oooo! Aaaah! This guy's from MIT and he uses big words ... he MUST know what he is talking about!"
So my first question is "How does this relate to my questioning of radiometric dating of the layers in the Grand Staircase?"
So there are some PALEOSOLS. IOW, there are ancient, buried soils whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found.
I already knew that. I have been saying for a long time that the climate was different prior to the Great Flood of Noah.
I will have more questions as I analyze JonF's post more.
in my field, there are many many words and concepts that you would never have heard of, i can speak to somebody for an hour and a 3rd party would be lost in seconds.
so what's your point? If you have to look up a word it's part of the evilouninitsts consipricy? How old is the sun dave?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
If anyone's interested: "paleo-sol" just means "old soil". The neat thing here is that soils (as opposed to sediments that are laid by water or wind...have specific attributes. Look outside and you'll see soils getting affected by plants and animals, microbes, etc., which results in those attributes.
Paleosols are found (among other places) IN the layers of the Redwall Limestone, the Supai Formation, and the Hermit Formation. Paleosols are also found in the Chinle, Morrison, and Dakota Layers.
Jon raised this, so ...it's his to slap Dave around with later.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Faid ... I wasn't referring to YOU as hating Christians. Are you feeling guilty or something?
Well, let's see what I said:
Quote
Suure thing, dave... We hate your guts, we hate life, we hate creationists... And to think you made such a fuss when I erroneously stated that you seem to accuse us of hating Protestants, when I should have said that you accuse us of hating the Protestant worldview instead. Sheesh.
So no you didn't, and neither did I. I was referring to myself as an example of those who come here, dave. That's what it was about, remember? The real reason people come to this board?
Oh and, just in case your "feeling guilty" comment actually implies that I really hate Christians (I can never be sure with you, since you don't even know what your next claim's gonna be), I already answer that in my previous post. Try, TRY to read it this time.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Hey guys, you can bash Dave all you want, but would you deny that this thread is the greatest of all time? I mean, the "Uncommon Descent" thread is just a bunch of Panda's Thumbers whaling on The Wizard and his minions, but what other thread contains:
1) Alfonso I and a linguistic comparison between Portuguese, Spanish, French and other Romance languages
2) The Theory of Relativity
3) Higher Criticism and Biblical Prophesy, with a discussion of Tyre's history thrown in for good measure
4) Radiometric Dating and Grand Canyon geology
5) The Wai-Wai's culture and history
6) Plate tectonics
7) International Defamation Law
8) A photo of Kimbo Slice.
And I'm sure I left out a lot. What can compare to that?
DM can you post that link to the ex fundy geologists paper that talked about the worm holes in various layers of sediment again?
I've tried to find it but there is too much to search thru.
If it's not to hand don't worry.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Well then, we need look no farther than core samples.
first, ice core samples record the passing of years in seasonal snowfall. They go far beyond 6k years. Lest you try to jjump up and say that god made 36,000 individual snowfalls in a day or two or some other crap like that, there are numerous ways to test that.
Volcanoes leave deposits in ice core samples. They also leave traces in tree ring samples. Tree ring samples can be a dating method by finding a tree that was cut when another was young and cross referencing events recorded in the rings (which also grow in yearly cycles. The events that cross-reference in both ice and tree rings are a check each upon the other. Of course, if you allow c14 dating as valid, there are also archaelogical sites which can correspond: eg vesuvius blows, we have a real, known date. The date is also recorded in tree rings and ice core samples and c-14 dating gives the right date too. We count backwards in the tree rings untill we get past Rome and find that the years of other events still correspond to ice core samples and poof! ® we get past your 10k years and whoosh! ® out goes the wind from your skull.
That was easy.
Also, your flood doesn't have a single corresponding sediment layer over the earth. Also your flood story is a fable. Also your god story is a fable. Also your circularity argument is dumb because it assumes only one way to check dates (rm) of which I just showed you there are others. But don't take my word for it. Go out and find out!
And when you find some aig crud about dendochronology or ice core samples, go discover that sediment works the same way and cross-references yet again that the ice cores and tree rings are correct!
Then, once you are all twisted like a pretzel, go do something hedonistic, reflect on how good it feels knowing that god doesn't care.
Dipshit. You lose. Why are you picking out complicated stuff when your theory is disproven by very simple evidence?
Y'know, all this sciency stuff is gettin me down. DaveyDH, you lost. The earth is more than 6000y. Core samples prove it. Nuff said.
Go ahead, try to poke holes. I'll fill em, patch em and paint em. You got nothing. Anybody here think I'm wrong?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Hey guys, you can bash Dave all you want, but would you deny that this thread is the greatest of all time? I mean, the "Uncommon Descent" thread is just a bunch of Panda's Thumbers whaling on The Wizard and his minions, but what other thread contains:
1) Alfonso I and a linguistic comparison between Portuguese, Spanish, French and other Romance languages
2) The Theory of Relativity
3) Higher Criticism and Biblical Prophesy, with a discussion of Tyre's history thrown in for good measure
4) Radiometric Dating and Grand Canyon geology
5) The Wai-Wai's culture and history
6) Plate tectonics
7) International Defamation Law
8) A photo of Kimbo Slice.
And I'm sure I left out a lot. What can compare to that?
Well Ghost, I gotta admit I actually agree with you... And you left out all the exciting info on Biology and Genetics we had in this thread and the other dead one...
But wait, there's also 8). Crap.
Oh well, whatever floats your boat.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Only one peice of the geological evidence is needed to disprove AFD's claim.
The most devestating disproof is his alternative, a mere myth.
The more he trys, the more fantastic his myth becomes.
He turns a childrens story which warns them to obey the higher powers on morality , their parents and their parents ancestors, into a crude delusional cartoon.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
k.e.: I think you mean Glenn Morton, and I don't have the specific website or paper on hand, no, sorry. TalkOrigins, of course has a bunch of his stuff, and ASA here: http://129.82.76.41:591/FMPro?-....&-find=
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
So my first question is "How does this relate to my questioning of radiometric dating of the layers in the Grand Staircase?"
Nothing, Davie-dork. I know you're slow, but make some effort to keep up. I was responding to your claim:
Quote
2) the fact that the non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood
Paleosols can't be explained that way, and paleosols aren't "water laid". There's a good explanation of paleosols and their implications for your fantasies at PALAEOSOLS. You brought up the claim that "non water-laid sediments can be explained as short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood". I know that it's embarassing to have to admit that you were so wrong, and you'd like to duck the issue, but your brought it up ... now you need to justify it.
Quote
So there are some PALEOSOLS. IOW, there are ancient, buried soils whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found.
I already knew that. I have been saying for a long time that the climate was different prior to the Great Flood of Noah.
Prior to your fludde is irrelevant, Davie-pie, your hypothesis is that the paleosols were laid down during the fludde. Try to keep track of your own fantasies. The paleosols are in between "water-laid" sedimentary layers that you claim were laid down by a fludde, so they were laid down in your fludde time. I have been saying for some time that paleosols in between sedimentary layers that you claim were laid down by your alleged fludde cannot be explained as flood layers (because they are not "water-laid") and cannot be explained as "short duration volcanic/tectonic processes during and after the Flood". So how do you explain the many distinct paleosol layers in between layers in the Grand Staircase?
Until you have an explanation for how the paleosols came to be there, you got nothing. (Of course, even with such an explanation you'd have nothing; there's so much that needs to be explained that you've ignored).
Where I differ from you is that I have (and have given many of them) much better answers for the BIG questions than you do. Like how did all this sedimentary rock get deposited? Neither of us will be able to answer all the small questions. Such is the nature of historical geology.
Dave, you don't have any answers, good or bad, for the "BIG" questions. You have a lot of assertions, which are just hanging there in mid-air, with no visible (or invisible) means of support.
You think your "flood" explains the Grand Canyon better than the standard geological models do, which is laughably absurd. Your "flood" cannot explain a single characteristic of the Grand Canyon at all, let alone better. You can't even explain how the water you say, without evidence, was in underground reservoirs actually got to the surface, let alone carved the Grand Canyon.
You can't answer the big questions, Dave, and you can't answer the small questions either. Pulling assertions out of your ass without any support whatsoever isn't "answering" anything.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Loads of burrows in the Coconino. Many different levels.
oooooo! I've got this one. During The Flud there were massive whirlpools caused by those continents zooming through the water at 100 mph. The whirlpools would capture gophers and fling them toward the muddy bottom at high velocity. The gophers would shoot like a bullet through several layers. Then when a continent drove over the area the unbelievable heat from friction ossified everything.
Your physical cowardice is irrelevant to me, but also apparent from your comments -- your "I was a jungle boy" fantasies notwithstanding.
<Yawn>..... Once again, here's an opportunity to prove yer street cred and pocket an easy Chase in the process:
Mr. Slice is willing to meet you in your backyard if you wish. C'mon Dude, fund that next dig! You've claimed that bodyguards don't frighten you...well this guy is a bodyguard and he's willing to pay you money to kick his a$$!! Why are you wasting time baiting Dave? Don't give it away when you can get paid!
Unless, of course, you're nonviolent....in which case Dave can't be a coward....cause who's afraid of a pacifist? Right, Dude?
I thought pictures of half-naked wrestlers were more your cup of tea, Paley.
So, Paley. Ever like to hang out at the gymnasium?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Yes, I know. I read this kind of stuff when I'm having insomnia, but not when I want to find out the truth about how the layers got there. I know, Deadman, there are mountains of mumbo-jumbo like this out there. And in most scientific disciplines, it is very good and factual. But in the strange world of historical geology, it is largely mumbo jumbo and fantasy simply because historical geologists bought into a lie at the outset. The sciency sounding language that only the few, the "elite" can understand doesn't make it any more true than the theology texts which went on and on about Purgatory, Indulgences and the like in Martin Luther's day.
Dave, your capacity to astonish knows no bounds.
Have you ever tried to read a technical paper on, say Bell's Theorem? Or the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? Or stellar nucleosynthesis? Or models of galaxy formation?
You think Deadman's geology quote is full of "mumbo-jumbo"? Have you read any scientific papers lately? God, Dave, do you realize how idiotic you sound? Virtually any paper on any scientific topic is full of technical terms that don't mean squat to a layman such as yourself. But for some reason you think you're entitled to dismiss "historical geology," whatever that means, why? Because it conflicts with your worldview, that's why.
And what do you read when you want to find out about geology, Dave? Your Bible? Because there ain't nothin' about geology in the Bible. Do you just make up your "knoweldge" in your own head? Because of course the last place anyone would look for information on highly technical subjects is, well, papers written by experts in the field.
The fact is, Dave, you don't understand any other science any more than you understand geology. You just have a bigger issue with geology because it demolishes your worldview. Your complaints about "mumbo jumbo" and "fantasy" would carry a little more weight if you had the vaguest understanding of any science.
So, Dave: for the thousandth time, when are you going to stop whining about how hard geology is to understand and actually try to support your own baseless assertions? Sometime this decade?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
More definitions for mere mortals so as to de-mystify the High, Noble Religion of Millionsofyearsianism
Web definitions for paleosol An ancient, buried soil whose composition may reflect a climate significantly different from the climate now prevalent in the area where the soil is found. college.hmco.com/geology/resources/geologylink/glossary/p.html - Definition in context
* * *
Now that we have that behind us, JonF ... would you care to enlighten us as to what on earth are you trying to say? And how does this strengthen your case that the Grand Staircase layers were laid over millions of years thus refuting my better--that is, more parsimonious (Hey, I've got that big word down now), more intuitive, more consistent with the evidence from known events--explanation that they were deposited in a Global Flood?
Dave, soils cannot form in the middle of a raging flood. There are paleosols interspersed throughout the layers in the Grand Canyon that you claim were all laid down within a year's time or so, as sediment precipitating out of floodwaters.
Aside from all the other impossibilities your "flood" requires, it requires the formation of layers of soilsunderwater.
Could it get any clearer why your "hypothesis" is a joke?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I've learned quite a bit from this thread, including:
it's a waste of time to try to get the delusional to acknowledge reality.
If AFDave was standing next to an elephant, and he wanted to deny it's existence, there is nothing you could do or say that would make him change his mind; even if you stuck his head up the elephant's arse.
Seriously guys, you've been astoundingly patient with this idiot, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I'm sure that the time you spend trying to educate him could be used in a better way?
And Dave, I really do pity you. Whether you realise it or not, you have problems, so get some help, yeah? Maybe a brain-scan; I've heard that tumors can cause serious mental retardation. I'm not trying to be hurtful, I'm just concerned for you, and those around you.
If AFDave was standing next to an elephant, and he wanted to deny it's existence, there is nothing you could do or say that would make him change his mind; even if you stuck his head up the elephant's arse.
Your hypothesis is intriguing, but I'm not convinced. I think a series of lab tests is in order. Who can bring the elephant?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
The whirlpools would capture gophers and fling them toward the muddy bottom at high velocity. The gophers would shoot like a bullet through several layers. Then when a continent drove over the area the unbelievable heat from friction ossified everything.
the ICR will soon be proving this thesis. And poor steve will be left to shake his fist at the injustice of it all. I still laugh at those whizzing continents..Wh0oOsh!! "What the he11 WAS that, Martha?!?!" "I think that was South America, dear"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What you have in the logo (disregarding the big "5") is 2 circles, 5 points and the number 666 (using the long arm accelerator symbols stacked on top of each other) all contained in the logo ...
Neat, huh? Now tell me ... why would one of the premier scientific organizations in the world put masonic and Biblical numbers in their logo? A joke? A coincidence? Scientists aren't into that "nonsense" are they?
Dave, I know you're deep into some "Geo for Creos" rubbish ("Spine-tingling! Action-packed! No big words!"), or wondering why everything is suddenly so dark and smelly and elephant's-colonesque even though there is no elephant, at all, anywhere, and no amount of sciency talk will lure you into the hate-filled, boring-article abyss of "getyourheadoutofthatelephant'sarse-ism."
So, sorry to intrude. But since you're such a stickler for up-to-date research, you'll want to know that 666 is no longer operative when trying to reach the Beast.
Quote
A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, dating to the Third century, gives the more mundane 616 as the mark of the Antichrist.
FYI, 616 is the area code for Grand Rapids, Michigan. Perhaps your ministry is more urgently needed there.
Also -- I'm having chicken for dinner tonight, Dave. If I took a cellphone pic and emailed it to you, could you read the entrails for me? The harvests here seem okay but I'm really wondering if it's going to be a hard winter or not.
there is nothing you could do or say that would make him change his mind; even if you stuck his head up the elephant's arse.
actually I think that's the problem. Dave has his head so far up his own arse he simply can't see anything but darkness, and smells something really bad.
He MUST project onto reality, as he literally is incapable of seeing it for himself.
We keep telling him to pull his head out, but it's been in there so long i don't think he even knows how to do so any more.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
So, sorry to intrude. But since you're such a stickler for up-to-date research, you'll want to know that 666 is no longer operative when trying to reach the Beast.
ahh, that explains why he hasn't been returning my calls lately.
I thought maybe he thought i was some kind of stalker or something.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
FYI, 616 is the area code for Grand Rapids, Michigan.
That would explain why Amway is based there.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Well then, we need look no farther than core samples.
first, ice core samples record the passing of years in seasonal snowfall. They go far beyond 6k years. Lest you try to jjump up and say that god made 36,000 individual snowfalls in a day or two or some other crap like that, there are numerous ways to test that.
Volcanoes leave deposits in ice core samples. They also leave traces in tree ring samples. Tree ring samples can be a dating method by finding a tree that was cut when another was young and cross referencing events recorded in the rings (which also grow in yearly cycles. The events that cross-reference in both ice and tree rings are a check each upon the other. Of course, if you allow c14 dating as valid, there are also archaelogical sites which can correspond: eg vesuvius blows, we have a real, known date. The date is also recorded in tree rings and ice core samples and c-14 dating gives the right date too. We count backwards in the tree rings untill we get past Rome and find that the years of other events still correspond to ice core samples and poof! ® we get past your 10k years and whoosh! ® out goes the wind from your skull.
That was easy.
Also, your flood doesn't have a single corresponding sediment layer over the earth. Also your flood story is a fable. Also your god story is a fable. Also your circularity argument is dumb because it assumes only one way to check dates (rm) of which I just showed you there are others. But don't take my word for it. Go out and find out!
And when you find some aig crud about dendochronology or ice core samples, go discover that sediment works the same way and cross-references yet again that the ice cores and tree rings are correct!
Then, once you are all twisted like a pretzel, go do something hedonistic, reflect on how good it feels knowing that god doesn't care.
Dipshit. You lose. Why are you picking out complicated stuff when your theory is disproven by very simple evidence?
Y'know, all this sciency stuff is gettin me down. DaveyDH, you lost. The earth is more than 6000y. Core samples prove it. Nuff said.
Go ahead, try to poke holes. I'll fill em, patch em and paint em. You got nothing. Anybody here think I'm wrong?
hi davey.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Paleosols: digging deeper buries ‘challenge’ to Flood geology by Tas Walker
Summary Paleosols are a favourite objection used against the global Flood and the 6,000-year biblical age of the earth. Uniformitarians believe that paleosols (ancient soil horizons) are common throughout the stratigraphic record. Soils are believed to take hundreds to thousands of years or more to form and represent periods of earth history when the area was not covered with water. Thus, it is argued, paleosols could not have formed in the midst of a global flood. However, when two examples of alleged paleosols are examined, one in Missouri, USA and the other in Queensland, Australia, they do not stand up to scrutiny. The loose, friable horizons do not have the diagnostic characteristics of soils and the interpretation of a paleosol is inconsistent with the sequence of geological events required. Instead, the field evidence fits the biblical framework much better than the uniformitarian one. The soils examined did not form by subaerial weathering over a long time but by in situ ‘weathering’ during and after the global Flood.
Hey JonF-- Do me a favor and do a search in the Creatonist Tech Journals before you spout non-sensical long ager blather, ok? Save me some time. Thanks!
Also, Deadman, how on earth do you suppose that spider tracks could possibly be preserved in dry sand?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Paleosols: digging deeper buries ‘challenge’ to Flood geology by Tas Walker
Summary Paleosols are a favourite objection used against the global Flood and the 6,000-year biblical age of the earth. Uniformitarians believe that paleosols (ancient soil horizons) are common throughout the stratigraphic record. Soils are believed to take hundreds to thousands of years or more to form and represent periods of earth history when the area was not covered with water. Thus, it is argued, paleosols could not have formed in the midst of a global flood. However, when two examples of alleged paleosols are examined, one in Missouri, USA and the other in Queensland, Australia, they do not stand up to scrutiny.
Hey JonF-- Do me a favor and do a search in the Creatonist Tech Journals before you spout non-sensical long ager blather, ok? Save me some time. Thanks!
Dave, do you have any idea how many paleosols there are in the Grand Canyon alone? To say nothing of how many there are worldwide? Here we're looking at how many paleosols? Which the author doesn't think actually are fossil soils? Well, does he believe there are no paleosols? Then how does he know these particular examples do not have features diagnostic of former soils?
Note also that neither of these samples are in the Grand Canyon, and therefore help your point not at all.
Why does this remind me of so many of your other attempted rebuttals of widely-held and well-supported sets of geophysical evidence? Could it be that they always seem to look at two examples out of hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of counter-examples? Brings to mind dendrochronology and zircons, for sure.
Dave, do us all a favor and do in search in the real scientific literature before you waste our time with crap like this.
And in the meantime, do you think disproving that paleosols exist somehow amounts to affirmative evidence that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, or that your "flood" ever happened? As I pointed out to Bill Paley yesterday, all of the evidence for an old earth could be wrong, and the earth could still be old. You haven't even presented any evidence that the earth is young. The best that can be said about your efforts so far as that you can come up with some sort of flaccid explanation of an observation that might be consistent with a young earth. That is a long, long, long way from providing affirmative evidence that the earth is young.
Put up or shut up, Dave. Which is it gonna be? Neither? Thought so.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, do us all a favor and do in search in the real scientific literature before you waste our time with crap like this.
Our ShitForBrainsDave research the actual scientific literature? NEVER! It's just filled with that technical mumbo-jumbo and big sciency words that little Davie can't understand. Probably written by those evil Atheist scientist deceivers anyway, right SFBDavie?
It's much easier for SFBDave to do a quick search in his favorite Creationist shit-piles, then C&P something so ridiculously wrong it makes everyone here LOL. Of course SFBDavie doesn't have the reasoning skills to figure out why it’s comically wrong though, so he'll declare victory and go back to humping his Bible for satisfaction. I wonder if he has the one with the Teflon cover so it's smoother, and doesn't stain?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I read this kind of stuff when I'm having insomnia, but not when I want to find out the truth about how the layers got there.
Now maybe we're getting somewhere. So what do you read when you want to find out how the layers got there? And why do you choose it over the "mumbo-jumbo" sciency stuff?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I am happy to meet Deadman in person if he can convince me that he is safe ... meaning that he will not attack me physically or legally. This is not cowardice, friend, it's common sense. His threat sounded like a physical one to me, but I am taking his word for it that it was not. He says it was a legal threat which to me is not much better. Do you realize that companies in America have literally shut down whole divisions because of thin-skinned, greedy, litigious people? Cessna Aircraft Company is one of them. People like this are helping to destroy America. You are also right to condemn those people that burned churches in the South. I condemn them also. When I invited you to my church, the possibility of someone here on this forum physically assaulting me or suing me merely for a verbal insult had not entered my head. If you can convince me that you have never assaulted anyone and have never sued anyone and can somehow convince me that you are not planning on starting with me, then fine. You can start convincing me by sending me a PM with all your personal information and a picture.
What a steaming load of road apples DDTTD.
No one here has been able to convince you of anything, so how are DM, myself or anyone else to convince you we are "safe"?
Never assaulted anyone? DDTTD, I was a GMG2 River Rat, no can do. Never killed anyone, no can do, see above, but both were done in service to this country (Well, maybe a few of the assaults weren't, but I had an extremely low tolerance for dumbasses and sh!t talkers at the time). Never sued anyone, nope never did that but I can't imagine how I would convince you of that. Send you ALL my personal info, insert hearty guffaw here, you are a dumbass DDTTD.
I was the one taking a chance with my offer to come to your church without asking any questions about my safety, considering what is known about the fundy tendencies to commit acts of violence.
But you refused to give up the address to your church, as I knew you would, before the "DM threatened me with violence" incident.
Is Milquetoast your middle name DDTTD?
I could do something cynical like saying here's my picture DDTTD
but you wouldn't get the joke.
So now I get to add pussy to moron, liar and willfully ignorant DDTTD.
Crabby: Yeah, that would be fun. The whole southern mound culture "Snake Cult" would be neat, too, I have a buddy down in Fla/Georgia working on that. Cheers!
Hey DM, can't say I know anything about the ssSnake Cult (I'm Great Lakes Neshnabe) but the Mound Building cultures interest me greatly.
Earlier I let the misinterpretations of threats, real or imagined, go because I thought it'd quickly die down. I use adult language around here too, I know, but this thread is getting too full of words like sh*t, pussy, assault, etc. Everyone cut it out and get back to discussing AFDave's pseudoscience.
Earlier I let the misinterpretations of threats, real or imagined, go because I thought it'd quickly die down. I use adult language around here too, I know, but this thread is getting too full of words like sh*t, pussy, assault, etc. Everyone cut it out and get back to discussing AFDave's pseudoscience.
Everyone cut it out and get back to discussing AFDave's pseudoscience.
Agreed.
So here we stand, Dave. You came onto this thread claiming that you believe (among other things) in biblical inerrancy because the evidence supports it. But this is clearly a falsehood (I'm sure others will call it a lie; I guess that's a judgment call). How do I know this? Simple: for you to be led to a belief in biblical inerrancy because of the evidence supporting it, you must at one point have actually seen such evidence. If you had, it beggars belief that you would not by now, nearly four months later, have posted some of it. Even if you'd forgotten where you'd seen it, you've had more than sufficient time to find it again.
Therefore, your failure to post any such evidence leads to one inevitable conclusion: that you have never seen any such evidence. Therefore, whether such evidence exists or not, you were essentially lying when you said you were led to your belief in biblical inerrancy because the evidence supported it. How could you possibly know that, Dave, if you've never seen any such evidence?
Or, there's an alternative hypothesis, which personally I subscribe to. Dave believes he's seen evidence for biblical inerrancy, but that's because he's mistaken unfounded argument, baseless assertion, unwarranted conclusion, and outright misrepresentation for "evidence." Technically, "lying" requires knowledge (or deliberate ignorance) of the falsity of one's claims. I believe that Dave thinks he's seen evidence for biblical inerrancy, when in fact he's seen no such thing.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Earlier I let the misinterpretations of threats, real or imagined, go because I thought it'd quickly die down. I use adult language around here too, I know, but this thread is getting too full of words like sh*t, pussy, assault, etc. Everyone cut it out and get back to discussing AFDave's pseudoscience.
Sorry!
It's not about you, or anybody else in particular. It's us as a crowd right now. It's hard to deal with a guy who thinks the continents were zooming around like speedboats, without uncontrollably thinking up all kinds of mean responses, but we have to cool it a bit. I'm not saying we have to drive straight down the road, but we're on the rumble strips right now.
Come on, Steve, let me out...this prison is so confiiiiiining. -st
No Stevetard, no! You stay down in the basement for now.
Everyone cut it out and get back to discussing AFDave's pseudoscience.
Agreed.
So here we stand, Dave. You came onto this thread claiming that you believe (among other things) in biblical inerrancy because the evidence supports it. But this is clearly a falsehood (I'm sure others will call it a lie; I guess that's a judgment call). How do I know this? Simple: for you to be led to a belief in biblical inerrancy because of the evidence supporting it, you must at one point have actually seen such evidence. If you had, it beggars belief that you would not by now, nearly four months later, have posted some of it. Even if you'd forgotten where you'd seen it, you've had more than sufficient time to find it again.
Therefore, your failure to post any such evidence leads to one inevitable conclusion: that you have never seen any such evidence. Therefore, whether such evidence exists or not, you were essentially lying when you said you were led to your belief in biblical inerrancy because the evidence supported it. How could you possibly know that, Dave, if you've never seen any such evidence?
Or, there's an alternative hypothesis, which personally I subscribe to. Dave believes he's seen evidence for biblical inerrancy, but that's because he's mistaken unfounded argument, baseless assertion, unwarranted conclusion, and outright misrepresentation for "evidence." Technically, "lying" requires knowledge (or deliberate ignorance) of the falsity of one's claims. I believe that Dave thinks he's seen evidence for biblical inerrancy, when in fact he's seen no such thing.
Yeah, this is interesting. I was struck the other day, right after people were asking him, you know, stop attacking our hypothesis, start putting up your own hypothesis, becuase that's what this thread's supposed to be about, and somebody puts up paleosols, and asks him to deal with them, and he says shortly afterwards:
Quote
For those of you mere mortals who, like me, didn't know what a "paleosol" was ...
JonF likes to flaunt big words in the hope that people will say "Oooo! Aaaah! This guy's from MIT and he uses big words ... he MUST know what he is talking about!"
So my first question is "How does this relate to my questioning of radiometric dating of the layers in the Grand Staircase?"
Aside from the obvious point that nobody around here particularly cares where JonF or anyone's degree is from, many of us have an MA in biology from Cal State or a PhD in geology from DePaul or a BA in physics from NCSU or whatever, take a look at that bolded bit. The first thing that springs to mind is, how can I use it to bash the existing model, and by the way what is that so I can point out what I imagine are flaws. It doesn't even occur to him at first to explain it via his model. Later he gets around to cut and pasting some gibberish from AiG. The guy doesn't have a model, he's got genesis, and he imagines the science he doesn't know should bear it out in the end. He doesn't know our model, he doesn't know AiG's model, he really doesn't know anything.
Crabby: ahh, we might know some people in common, then. Possibly. Both from the ####-hole and Potawatomi. Even if not, I'd be glad to buy the drinks.
GoP: I found that picture early on doing a search for "gay gladiators" then "gay warrior" on a lark...and there it was, labelled : " Is this totally gay or what?!?!" And yeah, this thread has the advantage of AirHead wanting to walk through every Creationist claim.
steve: Aye-aye, Cap'n Even if i like driving by braille, this is a bit much, agreed.
AirHead: (1)That article you posted ( it's not "research") cherry-picks two paleosol layers and the author "Tas Walker" examines them via photograph in one case (Missouri)...and by some other unidentified means which he does not cite (Queensland Australia). The cherry-picked paleosols have nothing to do with the Grand Canyon at all. Try again. Not all paleosols are alike, nor does each have the same level of evidence available. Address the Grand Canyon paleosols. Address the Grand Canyon evaporites. (2) You asked me how spider tracks form in the coconino sandstone...while avoiding what I asked you multiple times yesterday, before you ran off.
And yes, you fled while knowing that I had asked for a specific response to a specific question, AirHead. This was deliberate on your part. Look at the time stamps on the postings and that much is clear.
I'll tell you precisely how they were formed, AirHeadDave...after you answer what I asked you yesterday.
So far, your "model that is better than any other" cannot account , by your own admission, for the metamorphic changes in the Vertebrae Ridge photo you yourself posted. You simply said " I don't know."
Your model cannot account for the spider tracks I mentioned. You simply said "I don't know"
If you were honest, you'd just admit that your "hypothesis" cannot account for the 800-foot thick limestone deposits that are up to 99% pure in the Grand Canyon. Your answer here , if you were honest, would be to simply say: " I don't know"
If you were honest about the Grand Canyon (not missouri or australia) paleosols and the features they exhibit, your answer to how they were formed would be to simply say: " I don't know"
If you were honest about how the evaporite layers (halites and more) formed IN the layers of the Grand Canyon, your correct and honest response would be to simply say: " I don't know"
I could go on and on about the questions you have refused to answer regarding the Grand Canyon and your "theory that is better than any other and answers all the big questions"...No. Your theory fails in big questions and small. It fails at all levels.
This is why you keep trying desperately to AVOID dealing directly with questions about YOUR MODEL...because it fails at all levels of scrutiny.
The fact is that you yourself or any lurker can go back in this thread and try to find any major questions.. about modern geology ...that were NOT answered by people here. Go do it yourself, Dave. See how many you can find. Bring them to the attention of people here and they will be answered.
If I ask you questions directly, as I did yesterday. You avoid. You divert. You pretend to address Jon, who wasn't even on the board at the time...rather than deal with the question I asked you while I was present...then, most amusingly, you left...and returned...and left....while never addressing what I asked. Now, today, you seem to have forgotten my question again, so I'll ask it again: How did the multiple layers of Limestone found in the Grand Canyon stratigraphy form in your Model? Be precise and detailed. show how many parts per million were needed in solute, and the origin of those suspended materials. Show the deposition rate, and why there are layers that are 99% pure calcium carbonates. Take into account this fact, confirmed by generations of chemists and others -- Minerals precipitate out of solution in the reverse order of their solubilities, such that the order of precipitation is: (1)Calcite (CaCO3) and dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) (2)Gypsum (CaSO4-2H2O) and anhydrite (CaSO4). (3)Halites (4)Potassium and magnesium salts
In short, Airhead...to show that your "theory " REALLY IS BETTER THAN ANY OTHER...you have to be able to answer these questions...which you cannot, of course...and you're still too dishonest to simply say the magic words : "I don't know"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Hey JonF-- Do me a favor and do a search in the Creatonist Tech Journals before you spout non-sensical long ager blather, ok? Save me some time. Thanks!
HAHA Indeed, Jon. Do look at creo's "tech journals" (read: Indoctrination sites) for us; it provides great amusement. And we wouldn't have to thank dave for it.
You didn't even read the article, dave, now did you? Of course not- it was enough that your mentors had something to say on the palaeosol issue. Well, guess what: In that article, an Electrical Engineer ( ) first admits that paleosols create a serious problem for the flood fairyt... "geology". Then, he tries to examine a low quality PICTURE of one of those layers, and concludes more or less, "well it don't look like paleosol to me"... That's right, FROM THE PICTURE. He then produces some pseudoscientific (and still inconsistent with the data) "more plausible" scenario for the forming of this SPECIFIC layer by the Floooooood, and concludes that the paleosol problem in general is therefore solved.
Reeeeeel seienzy.
Amd the funniest part: When, in his responce here, the article's author proceeds to methodically and thoroughly kick his arse, our engineer responds (in his Addendum) with:
a) Distorting arguments: "He changed the letters in his picture! he's backing away!" (When in fact all the author does is to give a more detailed explanation of the layer to the puzzled engineer, who couldn't see paleosol features in it, and also provide details in a zoom of the picture our friend somehow neglects to mention).
b) Irrelevant Nitpicking: "He admits the picture is no good!" (It wasn't meant to be -And as if that makes the paleosol not good, or his claims more credible: It's HIM that relied on the goddarn picture)
c) Tons of Handwaving and Denial: "Well it's still not a paleosol! Because I say so!" (As if even if that were true -and it's not, as he has failed to demonstrate how- that would somehow magically disprove ALL paleosols on the planet)
d) And, of course, sheer Cowardice (by 'neglecting' to provide a link to the original article, or the author's response).
So what do we have here? just your typical preaching to the choir from our creo con artists... The usual unsupported claims, lies and disrortions, carefully and cunningly served to the sheepish minds of their followers to keep them happy.
And yes, I mean you, dave.
To the words of a person I'm sure you admire:
"This is too easy. Next!"
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Do you think that anything from answersingenesis would be straight up unbiased science research?
You keep posting links to biased data. Why not try to back up your beliefs with real-world, peer-reviewed data?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Earlier I let the misinterpretations of threats, real or imagined, go because I thought it'd quickly die down. I use adult language around here too, I know, but this thread is getting too full of words like sh*t, pussy, assault, etc. Everyone cut it out and get back to discussing AFDave's pseudoscience.
Yes. Keeping things civil is the last thing Dave wants us to do. He really believes we are like the blustering science teacher in that Chick tract. I guarantee that his favorite thing in the world (besides lying to children, of course) is showing his church buddies how emotional "Darwinists" can get.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Steverino: obviously, AirHeadDave would say it's a great conspiracy formed of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Agnostic and Atheist scientists of all backgrounds, origins, preferences...that are seeking to undermine holy creationists and preventing them from publishing their cutting, devastatingly scientificalicious articles.
On that note, and in the spirit of AirHeadDave-tardery, I'd like to offer up this little ditty, with apologies to the Simpsons episode 2F09 (Homer the Great). Sung to the tune of "We do!" (The Stonecutters Song) ********************************************** The Scientist Song Who hides all the proof of God? Who perpetrates the fossil fraud? We do, we do!
Who hates God and Jesus too? Who says evolution's true? We do, we do!
Who expands the age of Earth? Who denies the Virgin Birth? We do, we do!
Who snuck Chuck Darwin into schools, Who mocks believers all as fools?...We do, we do!
Who denies the fact of creation? Who will destroy the Christian nation? We do, we will!
What does Satan like to see? ATHEIST scieeeence... CONSPIRACY!!! *********************************************
Thank you , thank you, I'll be in the lounge all this week.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OK. SO YOU DIDN'T READ THE PALEOSOL ARTICLE VERY WELL ... SO I WILL "HELP" YOU READ IT
LONG AGERS BLINDLY EXTRAPOLATE PRESENT PROCESS INTO THE DISTANT PAST (Except for some who have now realized that Creationists were right all along and have become "Closet Catastrophists" -- "closet" because they still want to be accepted at the cocktail parties. Quotes from these people were given, oh, 60 pages ago or so ... Derek Ager and others, for example)
Quote
Now, with regard to ancient soils in the fossil record, it is understandable that Meert believes paleosols are found throughout the geologic column because the concept of paleosols is firmly entrenched in uniformitarian thinking. It is simply a logical application of the uniformitarian framework which takes the processes we see happening today and extrapolates them into the past without discrimination. (From Tas Walker's Paleosol article)
Undiscriminating buggers, those Long Agers!
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A REAL PALEOSOL, BUT THESE ARE SIMPLY SOILS FORMED AT THE END OF THE FLOOD
Quote
Soils that formed at the end of the Flood and at the beginning of the post-Flood period could have been buried by subsequent geological processes such as flooding, volcanism, and wind blown processes. These would be true paleosols. In fact, the whole idea of paleosols was first developed by geomorphologists and soil scientists to explore soils in the Quaternary. The study of these post-Flood soils was then extended throughout geologic time to more ancient rocks based on the assumption of uniformitarianism.22
A good place to look for a true paleosol is where a landslide has occurred at a road cutting. Because the government builds and maintains roads, money is readily available to clear away the debris, and the slide makes the news, so it is well documented. At such a location we can see the soil profile in section where the road crews have cut away the debris. However, the colluvium (slide debris) needs to be thick enough to isolate the former surface from modern soil-forming processes, typically a couple of metres or more. One important point to make about such paleosols is that their status as a paleosol has been historically established.
THE LONG AGER PICKED THE PHOTOGRAPH, NOT THE CREATIONIST Deadman, desperate as usual to come up with something to refute me, complains that Tas Walker examines the Missouri pseudo-paleosol by photograph, but fails to notice that it was Meert that produced the photo, not Walker. Try again, Deadman.
Walker even says right in the article ...
Quote
Look more closely at the outcrop photographed by Meert along Missouri State Highway 67. Of course, it is not possible to positively identify rocks from a photo at such a distance. One can’t clearly see minerals or textures, or easily discriminate between rock, lichen, mould and shadow. It would be preferable to visually inspect the outcrop.
Did you just not read that part, Deadman? I know ... it's easier to just spout nonsense and hope no one will notice.
Keep it up though. I notice.
Remember? I have my "searchlight' and I'm shining it on your dark lies!
WHERE ARE THE ROOT TRACES, THE EVIDENCE OF SOIL PROFILE DEVELOPMENT, AND THE SOIL STRUCTURE? You all say there are paleosols all through the Grand Canyon? Fine. Show them to me and show me the above characteristics. Earlier you agreed with me that most of the layers of the Grand Canyon (and the Grand Staircase) were laid down by water. Maybe it's time we start nailing that down exactly ... how about it?
MEERT'S MAGIC: HOW IN THE WORLD COULD THE MISSOURI PALEOSOL BE FORMED? (Ans: It couldn't the way Meert proposes except by magic)
Quote
Rock sequences Apart from the three main field features discussed, there are other complications that need to be considered and these have to do with the way paleosols fit into the rock sequences.28 When we consider the sequence of events imposed on the geology of the area by Meert’s claim we can see that the idea of a paleosol is even more problematic. This is because of the types of rocks involved. Let’s think of the implications of Meert’s idea. The sequence of steps required under a uniformitarian framework is illustrated in Figure 3 and outlined below:
Figure 3. Sequence of geological processes needed to produce and preserve a paleosol on Precambrian granite within a uniformitarian framework.
1. Granitic magma intruded the country rock (which is now no longer present) forming and filling a large magma chamber, which eventually cooled to form a granite pluton. (Uniformitarians generally believe plutons form at considerable depth within the continental crust and took millions of years to cool. These misconceptions have been addressed in a number of articles about the formation of granites.29–32)
2. The overlying country rock (perhaps tens of kilometres thick) was slowly and completely eroded away by normal subaerial weathering processes until the granite pluton was exposed. For the whole of this period of weathering, a soil layer was continuously being produced at the surface and continuously being removed.
3. The land was then inundated by water which deposited sand (which later turned into sandstone) on top of the soil layer. The bedding in the sandstone indicates that the water was flowing and very energetic.
4. Finally, the sandstone was weathered away by subaerial processes until the small metre-thick section observed in the road cut today is all that is left.
Step 3 is the one that presents a major problem for Joe Meert’s paleosol claim. How could flowing water, energetic enough to carry volumes of sand and produce horizontal flat bedding not remove the soil—a thin surface layer, which is friable and loose? Why wasn’t the granite washed clean like the rock outcrops we see jutting into the sea at the coast? What sort of amazing process could have preserved this soil layer on the granite in the midst of fast-flowing current of water? It seems that Meert’s choice of an ‘excellent example of a well developed paleosol’ is not helpful for his argument.
HOW DID MEERT'S "PALEOSOL" REALLY FORM? Glad you asked! And Walker has a great answer. (wasn't there someone here yammering about Creationists who never have positive explanations for anything? All they do is bash Long Agers? Who was that?)
A Flood interpretation How did the loose, friable layer form beneath the sandstone under the granite as shown in Meert’s photograph? Can Flood geology provide a plausible answer? Of course. This friable layer of material is not a ‘troubling’ problem for young-earth geology. One simple Flood scenario is illustrated in Figure 5 and described as follows:
Figure 5. Sequence of geological processes needed to produce and preserve a paleosol on Precambrian granite within a biblical Flood framework.
During the first half of the global Flood, as a consequence of tectonic movements, granitic magma intruded the country rock (which is now no longer present) forming and filling a large magma chamber and eventually cooling to form a granite pluton. The intrusion need not have been particularly deep, nor did it need to cool slowly to produce the granitic texture.29,32
Later, still during the first half of the Flood, water flowing rapidly over the land eroded the country rock, exposed the granite, and deposited the sandstone on the granite.
In the second half of the Flood, water receding from the continent eroded the sedimentary strata leaving only the thin sandstone layer in this area.34–36
After the Flood, the granite at the interface decomposed as a result of water pooling at the interface.37 The sandstone would be permeable and readily allow precipitation to flow through it to the interface. The granite would act as an impermeable barrier and cause the water to pool. Perhaps underground channels formed in particular areas as routes for the removal of the water from the landscape. Also, oxygen and organic acids would penetrate to the interface because the sandstone layer is so thin at this point. These are particularly aggressive in breaking down the minerals in the rocks, especially the more susceptible minerals in the granite such as biotite and amphibole, leaving the more resistant minerals such as quartz and feldspar.
This is a simple, plausible model and does not invoke any miraculous processes to keep the ‘soil’ layer intact as needed in Meert’s paleosol hypothesis. A similar model can be applied to the loose, friable layers between the basalts on the Mapleton-Maleny plateau. In fact, the disintegration of the basalt in situ would have been much more rapid because heat from the basalt flows would have accelerated the chemical reactions. Thus, these two examples of paleosols are not troubling to Flood geology. Instead of paleosols, the friable horizons only have a superficial appearance of soil—they are pseudosols.
Again, you guys are reading the wrong books and articles. If you want to REALLY understand the record of the rocks, try this and similar articles from creationists ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Tas Walker examines the Missouri pseudo-paleosol by photograph, but fails to notice that it was Meert that produced the photo, not Walker.
1. The Missouri paleosol and Queensland one are not in the Grand Canyon. 2. Tas Walker "diagnosed " the Missouri paleosol by photograph. He COULD have gone to look at the actual site...but didn't, preferring the "creationist" style of "research" 3. You can repaste all of the AIG article and it still won't pertain to the Grand Canyon paleosols at hand. 4. Once again, per your usual intellectual cowardice, you failed to address what I asked about limestones in the Grand Canyon.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
1. The Missouri paleosol and Queensland one are not in the Grand Canyon. 2. Tas Walker "diagnosed " the Missouri paleosol by photograph. He COULD have gone to look at the actual site...but didn't, preferring the "creationist" style of "research" 3. You can repaste all of the AIG article and it still won't pertain to the Grand Canyon paleosols at hand. 4. Once again, per your usual intellectual cowardice, you failed to address what I asked about limestones in the Grand Canyon.
1) So what? All the points made about Paleosols in general are valid. What do you have to say about the general points made? Nothing. Thought not. 2) Meert was the one trying to prove a point with a photograph. Walker simply pointed out the fallacies in Meert's work. 3) This article by Walker pertain to Paleosols in GENERAL. Go ahead and show me one of your "paleosols" from the GC. I'll be glad to look at it. But please show the 3 required characteristics in any picture you post. Thanks in advance! 4) I will cover limestones when I get ready to. Don't try to dodge the bullet. The problem with you at the moment is that YOU cannot answer MY questions.
You still have not been able to refute my objections to the supposed RM dating of the layers of the Grand Staircase. My belief is that they CANNOT be dated radiometrically. I showed you why. Refute me if you can.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I read this kind of stuff when I'm having insomnia, but not when I want to find out the truth about how the layers got there.
Now maybe we're getting somewhere. So what do you read when you want to find out how the layers got there? And why do you choose it over the "mumbo-jumbo" sciency stuff?
Ok, Dave has indirectly answered the first part. AIG is what he reads when he wants to find "the truth about how the layers got there". So the question remains, Dave, out of all of the different possible resources you could use to find this information, why are you going to AIG?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1) So what? All the points made about Paleosols in general are valid. What do you have to say about the general points made? Nothing. Thought not.
1. What general points, AirHead? Everything in the article pertains only to Meert's examples. Show me a sentence that extends specifically to all paleosols.
2. Did you bother to read Meerts' response that was posted above? Let me quote it: [QUOTE]Furthermore, any geologist would also realize the importance of actually visiting the outcrop before writing up a "scientific" article on the subject. However, Walker is not just any geologist, he's an electrical engineer with a goal of proving that the Noachian flood actually took place. Facts, field work and research have little meaning when you've already reached a conclusion. [QUOTE]
3. No, it doesn't, Dave, and you cannot show that it does. Walker says "However, when two examples of alleged paleosols are examined, one in Missouri, USA and the other in Queensland, Australia, they do not stand up to scrutiny. "...but fails to address the paleosols in the Grand Canyon. As to posting a photo of the paleosols, that's up to Jon, I don't want to step on his line of slapping you around.
What counts is actual research on the paleosols in question, and YOU supporting your model here. Which you have once again failed to do.
You can claim that this examination-by-distance of paleosols in Missouri and Queensland has something to do with those in the Grand Canyon, but this is just another example of your willingness to lie.
4. Of course you can't address what I asked over half a dozen times now, Dave.
Even though you keep claiming your hypothesis has better value than any other, you still can't manage to address direct questions specifically about the Grand Canyon. You avoid, you post meaningless articles by electrical engineers on layers unrelated to the Grand Canyon, you refuse to look at peer-reviewed research ON the Grand Canyon layers, you distract, tap-dance, lie -- anything to avoid scrutiny of your claims directly.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
My belief is that they CANNOT be dated radiometrically. I showed you why.
No you didn't. You were asked specifically and repeatedly to show us why, but you refused to do so. All you did was show us your unsubstantiated conspiracy theory.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
So I'm going to post it here, it cuts to the quick about the lying ways of creationist geologists.
Quote
One of the more important details that creationists are loathe to provide is a detailed explanation of flood boundaries within the rock record. Creationists, like Walker, deal in vagaries. Why? According to ye-creationist dogma, the Noachian flood is THE defining event in Earth history. Creationists claim it is responsible for much of the geologic column. Since the flood was a short-duration event and creationists have been studying the rock record for 200+ years, it is surprising that none of them will supply the answers to the following questions: a. Where can a geologist find, on a global basis, the pre-flood/flood boundary? You will not find a continent-by-continent listing of formational names and type sections for this boundary in the creationist literature.
b. Where can a geologist find, on a global basis, strata laid down during the peak of the global flood (i.e. globally correlatable strata all deposited under water)? You will not find a continent-by-continent listing of formational names and type sections for these rocks in the creationist literature.
c. Where can a geologist find, on a global basis, the flood/post-flood boundary? You will not find a continent-by-continent listing of formational names and type sections for this boundary in the creationist literature. To be fair, creationists have a little more leeway in defining this boundary since the flood waters receded over a slightly longer time interval, but it still should be possible to provide considerable detail. There is a reason that creationists will never provide such detailed information. If creationists ever provide these answers, they will also have to explain the many anomalies that cannot be fit into a global flood (e.g. paleosols, desert deposits and glacial deposits for example).
See, Dave, they're just like you. Avoid, distract, lie, pretend...but they never deal with actual meaningful research on matters that would really support their claims. But boy, do they sell books to the stupid like yourself.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Do you think that anything from answersingenesis would be straight up unbiased science research?
You keep posting links to biased data. Why not try to back up your beliefs with real-world, peer-reviewed data?
Yes, my data is biased. AIG is biased. As Rush Limbaugh says in response to people whining about giving liberals "equal time" on his show ... "I AM EQUAL TIME" ... "AIG IS EQUAL TIME" ... in other words, BOTH conventional literature and AIG/ICR are biased. The question is "in which direction"??
Very few people out there write unbiased literature. I have not read ANY conventional literature which does not have the assumption of Long Ages or Evolution sprinkled heavily throughout. This is why I have gotten quite bored reading them. They all sound the same.
So yes, AIG and ICR are biased toward the ID/Theisic (whatever you want to call it) Wolrdview. But this worldview is far more plausible that the Materialistic Worldview, so for the most part, I read stuff written by people with the correct worldview.
There is some good info in conventional literature no doubt about it. But you have to sift through it and throw away a lot to get to the good stuff. AIG authors do that for me quite nicely.
Deadman...
Quote
1. What general points, AirHead?
Did you not read that the whole Paleosol idea began in the "Quaternary" and then was extrapolated through all lower layers? On what basis? Uniformitarianism ... which is DEFUNCT! Read it again, Deadman.
LONG AGERS BLINDLY EXTRAPOLATE PRESENT PROCESS INTO THE DISTANT PAST (Except for some who have now realized that Creationists were right all along and have become "Closet Catastrophists" -- "closet" because they still want to be accepted at the cocktail parties. Quotes from these people were given, oh, 60 pages ago or so ... Derek Ager and others, for example)
Quote
Now, with regard to ancient soils in the fossil record, it is understandable that Meert believes paleosols are found throughout the geologic column because the concept of paleosols is firmly entrenched in uniformitarian thinking. It is simply a logical application of the uniformitarian framework which takes the processes we see happening today and extrapolates them into the past without discrimination. (From Tas Walker's Paleosol article)
Undiscriminating buggers, those Long Agers!
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A REAL PALEOSOL, BUT THESE ARE SIMPLY SOILS FORMED AT THE END OF THE FLOOD [quote]Soils that formed at the end of the Flood and at the beginning of the post-Flood period could have been buried by subsequent geological processes such as flooding, volcanism, and wind blown processes. These would be true paleosols. In fact, the whole idea of paleosols was first developed by geomorphologists and soil scientists to explore soils in the Quaternary. The study of these post-Flood soils was then extended throughout geologic time to more ancient rocks based on the assumption of uniformitarianism.22
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So yes, AIG and ICR are biased toward the ID/Theisic (whatever you want to call it) Wolrdview. But this worldview is far more plausible that the Materialistic Worldview, so for the most part, I read stuff written by people with the correct worldview.
So there we have it. Dave evaluates his information sources based on whether or not they agree with his literal interpretation of the bible.
As we've been trying to explain, Dave, this is your entire problem. You automatically reject something if it doesn't mesh with your religion.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
a. Where can a geologist find, on a global basis, the pre-flood/flood boundary? You will not find a continent-by-continent listing of formational names and type sections for this boundary in the creationist literature.
This is because we are honest. We do not lie about stuff we cannot prove. Historical geology is not like some of the other sciences where you can go out and repeat events of the past in a lab. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If there really was a global hydraulic, tectonic cataclysm, how on earth is anyone supposed to be able to identify an exact boundary? The only reason conventional geologists have all these nice neat layers is because they are lying (or grossly mistaken). The conventional demarcations are simply made up based upon the assumption of Long Ages. Period.
Quote
b. Where can a geologist find, on a global basis, strata laid down during the peak of the global flood (i.e. globally correlatable strata all deposited under water)? You will not find a continent-by-continent listing of formational names and type sections for these rocks in the creationist literature.
Of course not. This is impossible. Stop and think about the nature of a Global Flood. Pretty chaotic bugger. Use that good brain God gave you.
Quote
c. Where can a geologist find, on a global basis, the flood/post-flood boundary? You will not find a continent-by-continent listing of formational names and type sections for this boundary in the creationist literature. To be fair, creationists have a little more leeway in defining this boundary since the flood waters receded over a slightly longer time interval, but it still should be possible to provide considerable detail.
Isn't this like the same as (a) and (b)? Or at least the same as (a).
Is there some reason, Deadman, why you post the same question 3 different ways? Desperate to refute me in some way, but really have nothing substantive to say?
***************************
Improv...
Quote
So there we have it. Dave evaluates his information sources based on whether or not they agree with his literal interpretation of the bible.
As we've been trying to explain, Dave, this is your entire problem. You automatically reject something if it doesn't mesh with your religion.
The proper approach to any truth search is to select the most plausible Fundamental Assumptions first. I call this a Worldview. The Theistic Worldview is far more consistent with the evidence ... I have presented much of this evidence previously. After the most plausible worldview is selected, then and only then can one set about evaluating data.
If one selects a false worldview, as you have done, the whole house falls down, so to speak, because it is built on a faulty foundation.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Thank you , thank you, I'll be in the lounge all this week
Clap......Clap.
I was humming along to your song DM ....then hit you MCing yourself with ...er humility. LOL. Very Dennis Potter. (UK Pennys from Heaven and The Singing Detective)
...almost up with there with your (sadly ..deleted by you) imaginary James Bondesque seduction of DOL... which I still think was your best post, the science isn't bad too.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
1) So what? All the points made about Paleosols in general are valid. What do you have to say about the general points made? Nothing.
And what does Dave have to support this claim? One sentence that he says indicts all paleosols across the world. That study of the paleosols began ...well, Dave puts it stupidly by saying this:
"Did you not read that the whole Paleosol idea began in the "Quaternary" and then was extrapolated through all lower layers? On what basis? Uniformitarianism ... which is DEFUNCT! "
Dave: the idea of paleosols began in the Holocene...the geological period in which you exist now. If you mean That paleosols found IN the quaternary were the first subjects of research, sure, so?
How does this paper pertain to all paleosols? Just because it says " Paleosol research first dealt with Quaternary layers" doesn't mean that paper...article...uh, bit of creationist drivel...is about all paleosols, stupid. Nor can it be extrapolated to all paleosols, since the author, the famed electrical engineer who got his ass handed to him, Taz Walker...only mentioned the Missouri and Queensland examples.
Your lack of even basic logic is pretty funny, stupid.
I just noticed AirHead's post above. Apparently he thinks PRE-flood boundary PEAK-flood layers and POST-flood boundary are all the same: " Is there some reason, Deadman, why you post the same question 3 different ways? Desperate to refute me in some way, but really have nothing substantive to say?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Let me fix your projection and denial there... lies4kids AFD:
Quote
Noahist's BLINDLY EXTRAPOLATE PRESENT PROCESS INTO THE DISTANT PAST THE BIBLE INTO a 6000year EARTH (Except for some who have now realized that CreationistsDarwinists were right all along and have become "Closet CatastrophistsEvolutionists" -- "closet" because they still want to be accepted at the cocktail parties. Quotes from these people were given, oh, 60 pages ago or so ... Glenn Morton and others, for example)
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
The Theistic Worldview is far more consistent with the evidence ... I have presented much of this evidence previously. After the most plausible worldview is selected, then and only then can one set about evaluating data.
Your "worldview" is only consistent with your evidence because you filter and shape the evidence based on your "worldview". YOU are the one making the unsupportable assumptions in this case.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Dave: the idea of paleosols began in the Holocene...the geological period in which you exist now. If you mean That paleosols found IN the quaternary were the first subjects of research, sure, so?
Very good! You finally caught something I said wrong. Too bad it was just an instance of communicating my thought in a poorly worded way. I see you caught my meaning in spite of it and your childish tactics are noted.
Quote
I just noticed AirHead's post above. Apparently he thinks PRE-flood boundary PEAK-flood layers and POST-flood boundary are all the same:
Substantively, they are all three the same question. He's looking for boundaries. He just wants to expand it as much as he can to make it look like three separate issues, thus making creationists look as stupid as he possibly can.
This is what you do also and I always see right through it.
It's all ONE issue, Deadman.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFD loads for duck, fires, blows foot off, then aims:
Quote
THERE IS SUCH A THING AS A REAL PALEOSOL, BUT THESE ARE SIMPLY SOILS FORMED AT THE END OF THE FLOOD
Quote
Soils that formed at the end of the Flood and at the beginning of the post-Flood period could have been buried by subsequent geological processes such as flooding, volcanism, and wind blown processes. These would be true paleosols. In fact, the whole idea of paleosols was first developed by geomorphologists and soil scientists to explore soils in the Quaternary. The study of these post-Flood soils was then extended throughout geologic time to more ancient rocks based on the assumption of uniformitarianism.22
NO problems .....which palesol on what layer MARKS the FLUD AFD AND WHAT IS THE DATE OF THAT LAYER
Over to you
Noahist's BLINDLY EXTRAPOLATE PRESENT PROCESS INTO THE DISTANT PAST .....FLUD IS NOW BELOW PALEOSOLS ON GEOLOGICAL COLUMN.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Here, AirHead, let me put this in childlike terms so you understand it.
1. PRE-flood boundary. Where is a layer in the grand canyon that represents the **start** of the flood depositing layers on that landscape? Everything UNDER it would be PRE-Flood. Name that layer, AirHead.
2. PEAK-flood layers: show me where the peak deposition rates occurred, when the "flood" actions were greatest.
3. POST-flood: Show me the last layer deposited by the flood in the Grand Canyon. Point to it, name it, use your crayons to draw it, child. Any of those would be nice.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
He just wants to expand it as much as he can to make it look like three separate issues, thus making creationists look as stupid as he possibly can.
And you know what AFD ? You are doing a fantastic job of that yourself.
That's all flying fart, carry on .
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Note to AirHead: if you can't use the Grand Canyon to name the last layer deposited by the flood in that geographical area, point to anywhere in the US that has the last layer. Name it.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"Yes, my data is biased. AIG is biased. As Rush Limbaugh says in response to people whining about giving liberals "equal time" on his show ... "I AM EQUAL TIME" ... "AIG IS EQUAL TIME" ... in other words, BOTH conventional literature and AIG/ICR are biased. The question is "in which direction"??
Very few people out there write unbiased literature. I have not read ANY conventional literature which does not have the assumption of Long Ages or Evolution sprinkled heavily throughout. This is why I have gotten quite bored reading them. They all sound the same. "
NO, Wrong answer. You still do not get it. Science is not biased. It does not identify the destination and then cherry picks or misrepresents data to support the idea or theory. It researches ,evalutes and tests evidence. It discards ideas when found to be incorrect or when new evidence is more supported by fact.
ID/Creation is just the opposite. They have identified the destination and will only acknowledge information that brings them to their destination.
Flush Windblow is no more "equal time" than David Duke is equal time on issue of race. Limbaugh misrepresents and tells outright lies to convince the sheeple of what he speaks.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Oh, and thank you , k.e., I appreciate the compliment and LOVED " The Singing Detective." I'm very partial to music from that period, esp. big band and blues. Killer script, too.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The conventionalBIBLICAL GLOBAL FLUD demarcations are simply made up based upon the assumption of Long AgesCREATIONISTS. Period.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Heh, AirHead's childlike squawk about "it's all the same thing" is like me talking to a buddy about his cross-country trip and asking him where he started, where he ended and where he drove through...and having the person say "It was all one trip, those things are irrelevant." ( A la Dumbski's : "I don't have to match your pathetic level of detail !!!!
Oookayyyyy...(and yeah, that person would be quickly off my mental list of friends)
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, did you neglect to read my post from last night? Because you didn't even attempt to address it. And here we go, another flurry of posts from you, not one of which presented the merest smidgen of affirmative evidence for a young earth. Yet more desperate, failed attempts to rebut evidence for a young earth, attempts that are as usual dissected by Deadman and others with a glittering array of scalpels.
We're going to be talking about Grand Canyon sediments from now til doomsday (which is going to be more than a few years from now), unless you can actually get your head out of the creationist ghetto and come up with some actual support for your "hypothesis." Or, simply admit what we all know anyway, which is that you have no support for it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ...
He he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he ...
Oooooh! My sides hurt! This is classic!
Would you like me to cut and paste some stuff just to illustrate how biased conventional historical geology is?
********************************
Oh and Deadman-- If I go offline today, say, for lunch or to do something else ... it's not because I'm running from your arguments, K?
Just another one of your kindergarten tactics you have to use because your Beloved Theory is crumbling and you have no facts with which to hold it up ..
Let's see ...
1) Twist his words 2) Pretend I'm going to sue him 3) Call him all kinds of childish names 4) Say he's "running from my arguments" because he doesn't spend the entire day online with me
I see how you operate ...
*****************************
Hint to Eric-- Say something new. You just say the same thing every post, so I don't even read them any more. At least Deadman and others say new stuff even if they are wrong. Or if you cannot think of something new, at least insult me in a creative, funny way. Give me a reason to read your posts. Entertain me if you cannot "teach" me.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave not only can't produce evidence for his young-earth creationism; he can't even see plainly-visible evidence for old-earth geology.
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 23 2006,10:03)
Historical geology is not like some of the other sciences where you can go out and repeat events of the past in a lab. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If there really was a global hydraulic, tectonic cataclysm, how on earth is anyone supposed to be able to identify an exact boundary? The only reason conventional geologists have all these nice neat layers is because they are lying (or grossly mistaken). The conventional demarcations are simply made up based upon the assumption of Long Ages. Period.
No, Dave, the reason real geologists have these nice, neat layers is because they are plainly visible in the rocks. So are the boundaries between them! How does your "flood" account for them, Dave? You can't deny their existence; you yourself have posted numerous photographs and diagrams of them! You say your "flood is too chaotic" to have laid down layers, and yet the layers exist! Doesn't that amount to affirmative evidence that your "flood" cannot have happened?
Real scientists are quite capable of identifying boundaries between layers all over the earth. The KT boundary is visible in rock all over the world. Why is it that creationists cannot identify boundaries between pre-flood, flood-contemporaneous, and post-flood layers anywhere, ever, when the "flood" supposedly happened less than 5,000 years ago? Because they're honest, or because they're looking for something that isn't there?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'll attempt an answer for Dave, sans the stupid-ass boldings:
No one can name the Pre-flood boundary and neither can you. (imagine bold here)
Baumgardner gives us an complete theory that has continents whizzing about and diving under the crust like mighty dolphins in the sea, or sandworms in that great Creationist epic, "Dune."
It is only your millionsofyearistic blinders that has kept you from dealing with his most excellent scientificalicious evidence.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Yeah. DM great shows and great music. Potter was a genius. Here in the antipodes we are just getting 'Extras' by Ricky Gervais more understated British side splitting hilarity.
AFD provides a pathological hilarity unparalled in the universe, and the REALLY funny thing is HE doesn't get it. It's like a cornucopia stupidity.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Speaking of the "big" phenomena that a model should explain, the prevailing model doesn't need any extra water in the past, but the creobot model does. So where'd this big phenomenon come from?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ...
He he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he ...
Oooooh! My sides hurt! This is classic!
Would you like me to cut and paste some stuff just to illustrate how biased conventional historical geology is?
Your notion that there exists an irrational bias towards "long ages" is a nothing more than a paranoid figment of your diseased mind. You will never be able to support this delusion with factual evidence.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Real scientists are quite capable of identifying boundaries between layers all over the earth.
Of course I can SEE those layers. But it's quite another matter to make the FLYING LEAP that Long Agers do to give them meaningful names and assign dates to them. The thing you can HONESTLY do is what creationists do which is ...
1) Recognize that water-laid sediments were laid down by water (not rocket science, folks) 2) Recognize that we were not there so we cannot say exactly HOW they were laid down. To do so would be like trying to describe the detailed workings of a train wreck. We know the train wreck happened, we can see the devastation. But we cannot say why this particular piece of metal bent in the way it did except in a general way.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So...in your "theory that is better than any other...you can't name a layer that represents the start of the flood deposition...or the end of it, even in one geographical location like the southwest.
You say you can SEE the layers...but you can't name them? You can't use any name to describe them? So...can you point to one in person? YOU say you can see them...well, have you? What's the name us "long agers" would give to one? Remember, I am asking for specific layers demarcating the beginning and end of flood deposition in a geographical area...anywhere in the world. Name one, using any method you choose, or show a picture or draw one, or describe the attributes of it and the area in which it is found.
Remember, you said you could SEE them. So describe one, post a pic of one or anything else that would serve to define it.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Real scientists are quite capable of identifying boundaries between layers all over the earth.
Of course I can SEE those layers. But it's quite another matter to make the FLYING LEAP that Long Agers do to give them meaningful names and assign dates to them.
There is no leap. It's a robust chain of evidence and logic. What point in the methodology do you think constitutes a "leap"?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Yes, my data is biased. AIG is biased. As Rush Limbaugh says in response to people whining about giving liberals "equal time" on his show ... "I AM EQUAL TIME" ... "AIG IS EQUAL TIME" ... in other words, BOTH conventional literature and AIG/ICR are biased. The question is "in which direction"??
Very few people out there write unbiased literature. I have not read ANY conventional literature which does not have the assumption of Long Ages or Evolution sprinkled heavily throughout. This is why I have gotten quite bored reading them. They all sound the same.
So yes, AIG and ICR are biased toward the ID/Theisic (whatever you want to call it) Wolrdview. But this worldview is far more plausible that the Materialistic Worldview, so for the most part, I read stuff written by people with the correct worldview.
There is some good info in conventional literature no doubt about it. But you have to sift through it and throw away a lot to get to the good stuff. AIG authors do that for me quite nicely.
...which just goes to show that arguing with Dave is as worthwhile as arguing with an schizophrenic alcoholic with advanced Alzheimers disease.
To do so would be like trying to describe the detailed workings of a train wreck. We know the train wreck happened, we can see the devastation. But we cannot say why this particular piece of metal bent in the way it did except in a general way.
So you're saying that this entire industry is, what, imaginary?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Hurry and find a diversion, Dave. Make sure you avoid answering what I asked directly. Wave your hands and point to some meaningless AIG drivel then try to get everyone to post on it so you can avoid longer.
How long can you avoid direct questioning of your "theory that is better than any other," AirHead?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ...
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ...
He he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he ...
Oooooh! My sides hurt! This is classic!
Would you like me to cut and paste some stuff just to illustrate how biased conventional historical geology is?
Your notion that there exists an irrational bias towards "long ages" is a nothing more than a paranoid figment of your diseased mind. You will never be able to support this delusion with factual evidence.
Really???
Case in point???...post it, link to it...back up your babble.
You believe EVERYTHING from AIG without question based upon your religious beliefs/biased.
Your sides hurt because you are so full of shit, you will explode misinformation and ignorance all over the children you pretend to "tell the truth" to.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Hint to Eric-- Say something new. You just say the same thing every post, so I don't even read them any more. At least Deadman and others say new stuff even if they are wrong. Or if you cannot think of something new, at least insult me in a creative, funny way. Give me a reason to read your posts. Entertain me if you cannot "teach" me.
Dave, I'll say something "new" when you post something that requires it. The principal reason for the monotony of my posts is the content-free nature of your posts. You swagger around this thread, proclaiming victory every couple of weeks, bragging about how you've defeated the claims of the evilutionists, while failing to acknoweldge the fact that your own "hypothesis" cannot even explain or account for the most elementary observations that can be made about geological reality, such as the layers of sediment that the standard models can explain, account for, and yes, even date. Your own model can do none of these things, and yet you claim your UPDATED Creator God "Hypothesis" is somehow a better explanation for observation than the standard models!
I'll stop posting endlessly about your lack of evidence when you start providing some. Until then, you'd better get used to it, Dave, because I'm not going to go away. And whether or not you read my posts, others will.
And as to why I'm not trying to teach you anything: you've made it abundantly clear to everyone who reads this thread that you are fundamentally unteachable. Kudos to Deadman, Occam, JonF and others who attempt to anyway (and are certainly educating the rest of us), but that doesn't change the fact that you, personally, are no more teachable than a sea cucumber is.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I'll say something "new" when you post something that requires it. The principle reason for the monotony of my posts is the content-free nature of your posts.
Content free? You're asleep. Didn't I see Ghosty and Faid yesterday agreeing on a topic (a miracle in itself)? And the topic they were agreeing on was that MY THREAD is the Greatest Thread Ever because of its varied content! Come on, Eric. You can come up with something creative. Show us a picture of yourself riding a unicycle in a tutu or something if you can't think of anything sciency.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Real scientists are quite capable of identifying boundaries between layers all over the earth.
Of course I can SEE those layers. But it's quite another matter to make the FLYING LEAP that Long Agers do to give them meaningful names and assign dates to them.
So, your "hypothesis," which explains observation better than the "long-agers'" theory does, can't even assign a name or a date to those clearly-visible layers, Dave?
You've got a strange idea of what the word "better" means.
Quote
The thing you can HONESTLY do is what creationists do which is ...
1) Recognize that water-laid sediments were laid down by water (not rocket science, folks) 2) Recognize that we were not there so we cannot say exactly HOW they were laid down. To do so would be like trying to describe the detailed workings of a train wreck. We know the train wreck happened, we can see the devastation. But we cannot say why this particular piece of metal bent in the way it did except in a general way.
Let's see; the planet is about 70% covered by water, Dave. Numerous regions that are now dry land were once covered with water, and vice versa. So we need a "global catastrophic flood" to explain why water-laid sediment is laid by water? And could you explain why that is?
Dave, when a plane crashes, or a train crashes, accident investigators can usually, not always, but usually, explain exactly what went wrong, and exactly why this or that piece of metal was bent or crumpled in exactly this or that way. Even though they weren't there to witness it! Imagine that!
And given the unreliability of eye-witness testimony (ask any police officer), I'm frankly astonished that you hold it in such high regard.
Now, as to that "evidence" you claim you've seen that leads you to believe in biblical inerrancy…?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Varied topics on your part. The actual content is provided by others. And you didn't answer what I asked, Dave (but you did find a diversion). Gosh, that's a surprise.
Point to a layer or describe it. Use numbers and say "number 12 from the uppermost stratum is the pre-flood basement" Or you can try answering the limestone question I've been asking for oh...about 2 months now. You say you'll get to it, but that has never happened, despite the conversations being about the Grand Canyon.
You refuse to answer any questions on your "theory that is better than any other," except to admit that it is flawed and you don't know the answers.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Eric... Content free? You're asleep. Didn't I see Ghosty and Faid yesterday agreeing on a topic (a miracle in itself)? And the topic they were agreeing on was that MY THREAD is the Greatest Thread Ever because of its varied content! Come on, Eric. You can come up with something creative. Show us a picture of yourself riding a unicycle in a tutu or something if you can't think of anything sciency.
Dave, I didn't say the thread was content-free. I said your posts were content free. Wake up, Dave, and pay attention. As everyone who reads this thread is well aware, you have yet, after over 700 posts, to provide a single atom of evidence to support your "hypothesis." You've posted tens of thousands of words trying to undermine the evidence for an old earth, to absolutely no effect; you haven't persuaded a single lurker (or at least a lurker who isn't so embarrassed by you that he won't come out and admit you've persuaded him) that you've even posted such evidence, let alone that such evidence was probative of anything.
Meanwhile, there's tons of fascinating and educational content on this thread, but none of it, not one word of it, was posted by you.
My job isn't to post entertaining pictures for your amusement, Dave. My job is to expose you for the fraud you are. When you first came here, you claimed that you were open to persuasion. As it turns out, that was pretty much the first lie you told. No one who wasn't completely close-minded like you could possibly remain unpersuaded under the avalanche of evidence for an old earth that you've been provided. And that's not even the purpose of this thread! The purpose of this thread was to allow you an opportunity to lay out the evidence supporting your "hypothesis." I'm not sure what the purpose of this thread is now, other than to do what Wesley established this site for in the first place: demonstrate the intellectual bankruptcy of creationist claims.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well-said, eric. After stripping away all of AirHead's posturing and bravado, his fallacies and games...after stripping away the deceptive coverings of his "hypothesis that is better than any other," the creationist lies that covered that...there is a core to Dave's claims.
That core is hollow, but it has a little image of Dave inside it. That is what Dave worshipped all along.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Paleosols: digging deeper buries ‘challenge’ to Flood geology by Tas Walker
Summary Paleosols are a favourite objection used against the global Flood and the 6,000-year biblical age of the earth. Uniformitarians believe that paleosols (ancient soil horizons) are common throughout the stratigraphic record. Soils are believed to take hundreds to thousands of years or more to form and represent periods of earth history when the area was not covered with water. Thus, it is argued, paleosols could not have formed in the midst of a global flood. However, when two examples of alleged paleosols are examined, one in Missouri, USA and the other in Queensland, Australia, they do not stand up to scrutiny. The loose, friable horizons do not have the diagnostic characteristics of soils and the interpretation of a paleosol is inconsistent with the sequence of geological events required. Instead, the field evidence fits the biblical framework much better than the uniformitarian one. The soils examined did not form by subaerial weathering over a long time but by in situ ‘weathering’ during and after the global Flood.
Hey JonF-- Do me a favor and do a search in the Creatonist Tech Journals before you spout non-sensical long ager blather, ok? Save me some time. Thanks!
Let's see your detailed, step-by-step analysis of how each of the many palelosols in the Grand Staircase formed. Don't forget that they must be formed sequentially, and there's lots of root traces in 'em! Taz's claims of root traces being from plants trransported by the fludde is especially amusing ... love to see you try to replicate that in the lab!
3) This article by Walker pertain to Paleosols in GENERAL. Go ahead and show me one of your "paleosols" from the GC. I'll be glad to look at it. But please show the 3 required characteristics in any picture you post. Thanks in advance!
Ah, so now we're shifting the goalposts from the Grand Staircase to the Grand Canyon only, hum? Won't work, Davie-doodles, we're discussing the entirety of Southwestern geology.
Pictures, and links to lots more, were posted at Paleosols, a mere two days ago. Do make some effort to keep up, Davie-pie, there's a good lad.
If you don't think the pictures show appropriate details, do your own research to come up with appropriate data. Remember, you're the one who claimed to have explanations for all the Grand Staircase layers, and that those explanations are better than those of conventional geology. (Of course, you don't have an explanation for the paleosols and root traces and what-not, but you're frantically trying to make one up). It's your responsibility to produce those explanations, with requisite SUPPORTING EVIDENCE (unsupported fantasies need not apply), and explain in detail why your explanation is better than that of mainstream geology.
Quote
You still have not been able to refute my objections to the supposed RM dating of the layers of the Grand Staircase. My belief is that they CANNOT be dated radiometrically. I showed you why. Refute me if you can.
Already done. Your pathetic misunderstandings of how dating is done, puerile insults substituted for substantive discussion, and refusal to acknowledge your ignorance don't change reality.
Tell you what. You prove you have some idea what you're talking about by coming up with an accurate description of how mainstream geologists date sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon, and I'll be glad to discuss it further with you. BTW, accurate descriptions have already been posted by me and others in this thread. You don't have to go far to learn ...
Ah, so now we're shifting the goalposts from the Grand Staircase to the Grand Canyon only, hum? Won't work, Davie-doodles, we're discussing the entirety of Southwestern geology.
I'm not shifting goalposts. I think you guys just say that every now and then because you can't think of anything else to say.
I've been talking about the Grand Staircase for a long time now and I intend to continue until I'm done.
JonF brought up paleosols and now I have shown why most of the formations he THINKS are paleosols ...
ACTUALLY ARE NOT.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No, Airhead, you cited a paper from an electrical engineer that was soundly refuted by an actual geologist. The paper had nothing to do with any Grand Staircase paleosols and in fact, as you were shown above...had nothing to do with anything but some claims on paleosols in Missouri and Queensland. And then there is, of course, your refusal to answer my direct questions on the flood strata.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A lesson in logic for little AirHead Dave: You say your paper by an electrical engineer showed why most paleosols are not in fact paleosols. Good. Now, other than the ones mentioned in that paper...name one that is shown *not* to be a paleosol BY that paper. Name just one.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
(Ok, Let's put this in AFDave Jargon, in case he gets it eventually... Sorry guys)
DAVE'S LATEST POSTCARD FROM LA-LA LAND: "ALL'S WELL HERE, NO PALEOSOLS FORMED, KISS KEN HAM FOR ME"
Davey, davey, davey...
Copy/pasting the entire article of your favorite electrical engineer won't help you in the slightest, I'm afraid. Didn't you get the memo? The article's author RESPONDED to his drivel, champ. I know you didn't read it, because the engineer was not MAN enough (same way you are not, dave) to provide a link to either the aeticle or the response... And well, we already know that you NEVER read our links... but try to read it, if you have at least a shred of honesty, otherwise kindly STFU.
Because you see, he doesn't SIMPLY respond... He addresses EACH AND EVERY ONE of your electrical engineer's non-arguments... And KICKS 12 KINDS OF SH1T OUT OF IT...
And how does your all-knowing scientist respond? With unbelievable EVADING, DISTORTING AND HANDWAVING OF THE ISSUES... "Nyah nyah he changed the picturz... Nyah nyah he admitted the pictur's no good... Nyah nyah it's still not a paleosol, because I say it's not... Nyah Nyah them evil backpedalling geologists.... Phhhhhhrrrrt!"
Doubt my interpretation of his "response"? Check it out in his addendum... AFTER you read Meert's response. The comparison is DEVASTATING.
</DaveJargon>
But then again, so is the comparison between your views and reality, dave. So I can only hope you'll at least get a glimpse of how dishonest your mentors are... But I won't hold my breath.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Oh and: Yes dave, I did agree with ghost that this thread has provided much exciting info on many aspects of science... But don't flatter yourself. It is others who are responsible for providing all that knowledge. You're in charge of the entertainment department. Hey, it's as good a job as any!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
JonF brought up paleosols and now I have shown why most of the formations he THINKS are paleosols ...
ACTUALLY ARE NOT.
Dave, you've done no such thing. You posted an article, written by an electrical engineer with no discernable training in geology, about photographs of two paleosols, one in Missouri, one in Australia for crying out loud.
You've presented not a scintilla of evidence that any of the alleged paleosols in the Grand Staircase are anything other than paleosols. Once again, you swagger in, claiming victory in a fight you haven't even fought.
Get real.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, I didn't say the thread was content-free. I said your posts were content free. Wake up, Dave, and pay attention. As everyone who reads this thread is well aware, you have yet, after over 700 posts, to provide a single atom of evidence to support your "hypothesis."
I don't think this is quite fair. Dave did bring up the Fenton Hill Zircon evidence. Now it's true that there are different possible interpretations to the results, as well as questions of cherry-picking, replicability, etc.; nevertheless, JonF admitted that the results, if validated, do pose an "interesting anomaly" to the old-earth model. Also, didn't Dave bring up Gentry's Polonium Haloes? Odom, Rink, and Collins have proposed alternative hypotheses and pointed to a few gaps in his model, but my understanding is that no one has discredited Gentry's observations in the scientific literature. Doesn't that count as "positive" evidence for a young earth?
Dave didn't bring up the "polonium haloes" that I recall. The Fenton Hill samples were especially tragic for Dave, given that he was lied to directly by Humphries and some unnamed "assistant" or something there, demonstrating the ...bah. It's gotten to the point that I'm sorry to even say I belong to the same species as these people. I'd be really sorry to have these kinds on my "side," so to speak. In fact, I wouldn't...I'd just disavow them and move on.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
To do so would be like trying to describe the detailed workings of a train wreck. We know the train wreck happened, we can see the devastation. But we cannot say why this particular piece of metal bent in the way it did except in a general way.
As an someone with experience in exactly this sort of area, I call shenanigans on this little bit of bullshit.
Engineers and analysts routinely analyze catastrophic failures like train wrecks and can indeed explain why a particular piece of metal bent (or cracked or split or what-have-you), in the way it did, with very high accuracy.
More to the point, they can quickly and conclusively rule out those scenarios that are utterly incompatible with the weight of evidence. Just like geologists, biologists, cosmologists, etc. have done with the notion that the Earth is any less than billions of years old.
Doubt my interpretation of his "response"? Check it out in his addendum... AFTER you read Meert's response. The comparison is DEVASTATING.
You're forgetting one very important thing: Meert's worldview is blasphemous, so he loses automatically.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Also, didn't Dave bring up Gentry's Polonium Haloes? Odom, Rink, and Collins have proposed alternative hypotheses and pointed to a few gaps in his model, but my understanding is that no one has discredited Gentry's observations in the scientific literature. Doesn't that count as "positive" evidence for a young earth?
Were Gentry's observations ever submitted for review? I thought he just put them in a book. But please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Your statement would seem very misleading if his model were never "in the scientific literature" to begin with.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Odom, Rink, and Collins have proposed alternative hypotheses and pointed to a few gaps in his model, but my understanding is that no one has discredited Gentry's observations in the scientific literature
Not that it matters: dave didn't mention Po-haloes yet (as I know you're well aware of, Ghost), but he will get to them eventually (in a few years or so, the way this goes), and we'll be all over them then.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Walker annihilated Meert with facts. Just a friendly reminder. The sun is about 6000 years old as far as we know ... I think somebody asked.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I don't think this is quite fair. Dave did bring up the Fenton Hill Zircon evidence. Now it's true that there are different possible interpretations to the results, as well as questions of cherry-picking, replicability, etc.; nevertheless, JonF admitted that the results, if validated, do pose an "interesting anomaly" to the old-earth model. Also, didn't Dave bring up Gentry's Polonium Haloes? Odom, Rink, and Collins have proposed alternative hypotheses and pointed to a few gaps in his model, but my understanding is that no one has discredited Gentry's observations in the scientific literature. Doesn't that count as "positive" evidence for a young earth?
They're not really interesting, Bill, because they're an inconsequential assemblage of inconsequential results that don't even begin to call into question the tremendous volume of countervailing evidence. Dave's "hypothesis" requires that nothing in the universe be more than 6,000 years old, but it turns out that practically everything in the universe is more than 6,000 years old.
So I would say, no, neither of these itmes count as "positive evidence for a young earth." Positive evidence for a young earth would be evidence that nothing is more than 6,000 years old, not evidence that some things are less than 6,000 years old. There are plenty of things out there that aren't 6,000 years old. I'm not that old, just to pick one obvious example. Dave can spend the next hundred years pointing to all sorts of things that are less than 6,000 years old. What he needs to do, in order to demonstrate his "hypothesis," is that nothing is more than 6,000 years old, and what would really drive home the point would be evidence that nothing can be more than 6,000 years old.
After all, all anyone needs to do to sink Dave's "hypothesis" is to find one single thing anywhere that's more than 6,000 years old.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The sun is about 6000 years old as far as we know ... I think somebody asked.
Dave, do you know how long it takes a photon to get from the center of the sun, where it's created in the process of nucleosynthesis, to the surface, where it can radiate out to the earth?
No?
Didn't think so.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Walker annihilated Meert with facts. Just a friendly reminder.
OK, is this where we're supposed to go
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho
He he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he he
right dave?
dave, read Meert's response. Come on champ, you can do it!
And when you do, read your engineer's whining and the "facts" he provides in response, and tell me whose arse got whooped.
Well ok, I know you won't admit it... I know you pretty well by now, dave. But guess what? It's enough for me that you'll see it, and that it will make all those DANGER / DON'T THINK, BELIEVE / DANGER sirens go off in your head again.
Who knows? maybe sometime you'll get bored of listening to them, and ignore them for a change. It might be your only hope.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
After all, all anyone needs to do to sink Dave's "hypothesis" is to find one single thing anywhere that's more than 6,000 years old.
I remember telling Stupid that a while back -- that in logic, all that is needed to counter the claim "all geese are white" is to show one naturally black goose...a standard dictum in logic. Did it matter? Hellz no, that's why he's Stupid.
By the way, Stupid, you have quite a few questions from the last few pages to answer about the Grand Staircase and your "theory that is better than any other."
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Were Gentry's observations ever submitted for review? I thought he just put them in a book. But please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Your statement would seem very misleading if his model were never "in the scientific literature" to begin with.
It's my recollection that they were -- that's part of the reason for his notoriety in the evo community. CreoWiki lists his publications, and this list supports my memory:
Quote
Publication in secular journals
Gentry, Robert V. 1968. Fossil Alpha Recoil Analysis of Variant Radioactive Halos. Science 160, pp. 1228-1230. Gentry. Robert V. 1971. Radiohalos: Some Unique Pb Isotope Ratios and Unknown Alpha Radio Activity. Science 173, pp. 727-31. Gentry, Robert V. 1973. Radioactive Halos. Ann. Rev. Nuc. Sci, 23, pp. 347-362. Gentry, Robert V. 1974. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Science 184, pp. 64-66. Gentry, Robert V. 1975. Response to J.H. Fremlin’s Comments on "Spectacle Haloes." Nature 258, p. 269. Gentry, Robert V. 1979. Time: Measured Responses. Eos 60, p. 474. Gentry, Robert V. 1984. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Proceedings of the Sixty Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1. Part 3. pp. 38-65. Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1973. Ion Microprobe Confirmation of Pb Isotope Ratios and Search for Isomer Precursors in Polonium Radiohaloes. Nature 244, pp. 282-283. Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1974. "Spectacle" Array of 210Po Halo Radiocentres in Biotite: A Nuclear Geophysical Enigma. Nature 252, p. 564. Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1976. Radiohalos in Coalified Wood: New Evidence Relating to the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification. Science 194, pp. 315-318. Gentry, Robert V. et al.., 1982a. Differential Lead Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment. Science 2l6, pp. 296-298. Gentry, Robert V., Clish, Gary L., and McBay, Eddie H. 1982b. Differential Helium Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment. Geophys. Res. Lett. 9, pp. 1129-1130.
Faid:
Quote
Yeah, about that...
Not that it matters: dave didn't mention Po-haloes yet (as I know you're well aware of, Ghost), but he will get to them eventually (in a few years or so, the way this goes), and we'll be all over them then.
Now Faid, you know I could never be so devious. It was an innocent mistake, really.....
JonF brought up paleosols and now I have shown why most of the formations he THINKS are paleosols ...
ACTUALLY ARE NOT.
Nope, Davie-dork, you posted a a link to a paper in which Taz Walker indulged in some fantasies. No data, no evidence.
Let's start by you explaining the many paleosols in the Grand Saircase using Taz Walker's "model".
And don't forget the details of how those root trails were actually plants deposited by a fludde that just happened to drop 'em all right side up with their roots in growing position!
I remember telling Stupid that a while back -- that in logic, all that is needed to counter the claim "all geese are white" is to show one naturally black goose...a standard dictum in logic. Did it matter? Hellz no, that's why he's Stupid.
And, I suspect at some point Bill will complain about my trying to force Dave to "prove a negative."
What can I say, Bill? It's Dave's "hypothesis," not mine.
Let's say, hypothetically, that the scientific community had decided (I don't know, maybe they held a convention) that the earth is 4.15 by old +/- .075 by. Obviously, anyone who could find anything that could be reliably dated to 4.3 by old would have disproved that particular hypothesis. Them's the breaks.
But that's not how dating the earth and the universe works. Scientists, unlike Dave, don't have a particular agenda, or preferred value for the age of the earth and of the universe. Even 10 years ago, ages for the universe were given as anything between ~10 by and ~20 by. The currently-accepted figure, which is only contingent on further data not contradicting it, is only a few years old. The figure for the age of the earth has only been stable for a few decades.
By contrast Dave does, in fact, have an agenda, and he does in fact have a preferred value for the age of the earth (and, by implication, the age of the universe). Dave's agenda is his desire to prove the Bible is inerrant, and consequently his preferred age for the earth (and by implication the universe) is ~6,000 years. I can't help it if the only way Dave can prove that is to prove a negative, i.e., that nothing on or in the earth or in the universe is more than 6,000 years old. He picked his "hypothesis," not me.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
eric: yep. The funny part to me is that Stupid has to basically invoke a trickster God...one that creates stars with distance and ages in the Hertzsprung-Russell "diagram" that give a "fake" age, according to Stupid. Same with the sun. And radioactive decay, etc., etc.
By the way, Stupid, this is why rational Christians view your absolutist/literalist/creationist crap as ultimately damaging to faith. It's why the RCC basically gave up that stupidity...as science advances and shows your claims wrong, it diminishes the credibility of your stance. Not that you care--after all, for you , it's really not about truth, honesty, faith -- it's all about Daaaavey. Freakin' eunuch.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
It's why the RCC basically gave up that stupidity...
I'm assuming by RCC you mean Roman Catholic Church?
Given a few of the fundies I have met, I'd be willing to bet that Dave would categorically state that Roman Catholics are not True Christians™ as defined by his church. Rather, they are blasphemers, idolators, Pope-and-Mary worshippers who deny the supremacy of scripture and instead substitute heretical sacraments.
Rational or not, given the typical fundy view of RCC they are discounted by their worldview, just like the atheist science conspiracy (ASC).
Given a few of the fundies I have met, I'd be willing to bet that Dave would categorically state that Roman Catholics are not True Christians™ as defined by his church. Rather, they are blasphemers, idolators, Pope-and-Mary worshippers who deny the supremacy of scripture and instead substitute heretical sacraments.
I know this has nothing to do with anything else, but when I saw these pajamas the other day, I immediately thought that Dave would probably buy these and dress his children in them as they go to sleep at night. Armor of God
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
I know this has nothing to do with anything else, but when I saw these pajamas the other day, I immediately thought that Dave would probably buy these and dress his children in them as they go to sleep at night. Armor of God
BWAHAHAHA!!* That's the perfect gift for our little Davie-doo. We should take up a collection and buy SFBDavie a pair to protect him from all those evil Christian-hating scientists I'd be willing to kick in $5 to the pot.
How about it SFBDavie - what size jammies do you wear?
* Note to self: NEVER read ATBC comments with a sip of wine in my mouth - the spew factor is too high!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
AFDave, why do you keep ignoring me? You respond to (almost) everyone else's questions, but not mine. Which is puzzling, because unlike everyone else here, I'm another non-scientist. Even worse, I have an MA in CompLit. I struggle mightily to comprehend not just those soporific articles in the links but even some of the comments, so I can't possibly challenge you on the sciency front.
So my questions are all about basic logic stuff -- inherent contradictions or conflicts within your own declarations.
I'd hate to think that you're avoiding me because you can't google up an answer.
Look more closely at the outcrop photographed by Meert along Missouri State Highway 67. Of course, it is not possible to positively identify rocks from a photo at such a distance. One can?t clearly see minerals or textures, or easily discriminate between rock, lichen, mould and shadow. It would be preferable to visually inspect the outcrop.
Did you just not read that part, Deadman? I know ... it's easier to just spout nonsense and hope no one will notice.
Keep it up though. I notice.
DDTTD, do you remember way back when I made a joke at your expense about you doing 30,000ft/Mach one geology over the Grand Canyon?
No, of course you don't. It goes back to a joke a friend of mine likes to tell about doing 50/50 geology, identifying formations 50 meters away while driving 50 mph. Believe it or not it can be done.
What you do after spotting what you're looking for is pull over and positively identify the formation.
I've found tons of fossils using this method.
I would be happy to show you how it's done in KC, there are some pretty good roadcuts that expose quite a few layers in your area. They have index fossils too.
a "conspiracy" kept him from his seat in a FIGHTER, (General changed the rules).
If you look at his "Kis4Truth" site, you'll see this written about AirHead in the "who are we" section http://www.k4t.com/donate/davehawkins.htm : "During his Air Force years, he wrote thought-provoking Christian articles and flyers for distribution to co-workers." Meaning they probably sat his ass down because they thought he was a whackjob who might go blow up the Vatican or something.
And remember that Dave said he wasn't going to try to make any money off this? The yearly cost per child for the Kids 4 Truth clubs is $35.95. (plus you get to buy their crap, ranging from baby jammies -- to little "awards" to give your perfectly programmed kiddies.)
Oh and oddly enough, he already has an endorsement from "Answers in Genesis" ...looks like I DID hit it on the head two months back or whatever it was. He was planning alllll along to scam the kiddies' parents. Yeah, he wants their approval and built-in consumerbase. But he said he wasn't aiming for their approval...*snort* Whadda Eunuch.
*waves* Hi Stupid!!!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Put your hand down DM, let's give him enough rope.
I said a long time ago you need to stop doing his homework for him.
But I will stand you for a couple of pitchers (not DDTTD's pitchers) if you promise to bring your arrows. You don't stand a chance, I learned how to toss from Conrad Daniels Dad and lil' brother.
And remember that Dave said he wasn't going to try to make any money off this? The yearly cost per child for the Kids 4 Truth clubs is $35.95. (plus you get to buy their crap, ranging from baby jammies -- to little "awards" to give your perfectly programmed kiddies.)
Yep, and I feel like an old man because it took me a couple more posts to catch on than it did you.
Thanks DM, all I need is to feel older than I actually am.
I'll still buy the pitchers. Kansas City Boulevard Pale Ale for everbody!
Hah..yeah, you're old. And as soon as you stop dancing on the table and pinching the waitress, I'll shoot you a game. Go easy on me, I'm just learning!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave is not only a liar, he's been implicated in a scam.
See, I already know what church DDTTD attends. It ain't no lil' fundy haven of the faithful.
What "scam" would that be, Crabby? You know what church I attend? So what Sunday shall I look for you? Are you going to post a picture so I can recognize you?
Jupiter-- what is your question? I didn't mean to avoid you.
Quote
Oh and oddly enough, he already has an endorsement from "Answers in Genesis" ...looks like I DID hit it on the head two months back or whatever it was.
Where do you see that? I'm glad ... I just was not aware that we have an endorsement from them. I have personally never spoken to anyone at AIG except a customer service lady when I was ordering. Also, how do you equate charging for stuff at K4T with AFD getting paid from K4T? Is this Evo-logic? Like there are different colored rock layers ... therefore the layers took millions of years to get deposited? (even though we cannot really date any of them absolutely as we have now seen) Again, I have never been paid by K4T, but I have donated large amounts and continue to do so. My plans are to NEVER take a salary from K4T even if I were to take a full time position with them. I make my money the old fashioned way ... I work for it. You know ... selling products and services that real customers want to buy. How do you make YOUR money, Deadman? Crabby? Anyone else? Any Government handouts out there?
Bing ... you hit on one of my favorite topics ... the Roman Catholic Church. The answer to your question is that I think the RCC began losing their way when Constantine legalized Christianity. Since that time, the Catholic Church hierarchy became very corrupt, although there continued to be a great many members and some leaders of the church who were true Christians. There are many Catholics who I admire -- Martin Luther being one of them. The same situation is true today. While the hierarchy is much less corrupt than they were in medieval times, the official church doctrine is in many ways very far from the teachings of Christ, especially touching on things like the mass, adoration of Mary, authority of church tradition over Biblical authority, purgatory, etc. However, individual Catholic people are just like anyone else in that they can read the Bible for themselves and know the truth about Christ and his teachings. So I'm sure there are many who have done this and are genuine Christians. Anyone could look at some Baptist or Methodist or whatever organization and make the accusation that "those people aren't genuine Christians." Well, true ... some are not. But many are. I cannot see a person's heart. Only God can do that.
The only valid definitions we have for a Christian in the first place necessarily comes from the 4 gospels and the apostolic writings. You have to find out what Christ taught, then follow it if you want to be called a Christian. And I suppose that the degree to which you follow those teachings corresponds to the degree of genuineness of your Christianity. Jesus said many things.
And I for one am not a perfect follower although this is my goal.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
My plans are to NEVER take a salary from K4T even if I were to take a full time position with them.
So, as "Treasurer" of Kids4Truth, you get no compensation? If true, how noble of you to forego monetary gain while you shill crap items. Somehow, though, I doubt that.
Now, Stupid, you seem to have overlooked some questions during the last few pages. Try screwing up what little courage you can muster as a eunuch...and address them.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Were Gentry's observations ever submitted for review? I thought he just put them in a book. But please correct me if I'm wrong about that. Your statement would seem very misleading if his model were never "in the scientific literature" to begin with.
It's my recollection that they were -- that's part of the reason for his notoriety in the evo community. CreoWiki lists his publications, and this list supports my memory:
Quote
Publication in secular journals
Gentry, Robert V. 1968. Fossil Alpha Recoil Analysis of Variant Radioactive Halos. Science 160, pp. 1228-1230. Gentry. Robert V. 1971. Radiohalos: Some Unique Pb Isotope Ratios and Unknown Alpha Radio Activity. Science 173, pp. 727-31. Gentry, Robert V. 1973. Radioactive Halos. Ann. Rev. Nuc. Sci, 23, pp. 347-362. Gentry, Robert V. 1974. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Science 184, pp. 64-66. Gentry, Robert V. 1975. Response to J.H. Fremlin’s Comments on "Spectacle Haloes." Nature 258, p. 269. Gentry, Robert V. 1979. Time: Measured Responses. Eos 60, p. 474. Gentry, Robert V. 1984. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Proceedings of the Sixty Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1. Part 3. pp. 38-65. Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1973. Ion Microprobe Confirmation of Pb Isotope Ratios and Search for Isomer Precursors in Polonium Radiohaloes. Nature 244, pp. 282-283. Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1974. "Spectacle" Array of 210Po Halo Radiocentres in Biotite: A Nuclear Geophysical Enigma. Nature 252, p. 564. Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1976. Radiohalos in Coalified Wood: New Evidence Relating to the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification. Science 194, pp. 315-318. Gentry, Robert V. et al.., 1982a. Differential Lead Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment. Science 2l6, pp. 296-298. Gentry, Robert V., Clish, Gary L., and McBay, Eddie H. 1982b. Differential Helium Retention in Zircons: Implications for Nuclear Waste Containment. Geophys. Res. Lett. 9, pp. 1129-1130.
Which of those publications argue that the Earth is young because of radiohalos? Gentry has several mainstream publications, that's well known, but I am not aware of any that argue for a young Earth.
Which of those publications argue that the Earth is young because of radiohalos? Gentry has several mainstream publications, that's well known, but I am not aware of any that argue for a young Earth.
Yeah, I looked through some of them and noticed the same thing. They all just seem to be along the lines of "there doesn't seem to be an explanation yet for these things".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Every time I start looking at the history of Christianity and the teachings of Jesus and the corruption in the Christian church and so forth, I am reminded of my own shortcomings in this regard, so I'll take care of that first this morning ...
JonF ... you can use whatever big words you want and I won't make fun of you ... my apologies! And I'll quit poking you about being from MIT.
Steve Story ... I'll leave you alone about the atmosphere thing ... that wasn't nice!
Whew ... now I feel better!
Now ... back to picking apart your Theory and establishing the superiority of the Biblical Model! (I won't apologize for that ... this is actually GOOD AND HELPFUL for you because it is helping you see the truth, which, when you see it will make you free)
Where are we with Paleosols? JonF brought them up because I said that the layers in the Grand Staircase are either water laid or volcanic in their origin. JonF responded by saying "Oh no that's not right. How about paleosols? (And evaporites)." My answer then, as we have seen is that the "paleosols" I have been shown are not paleosols at all. You might call them "pseudo-paleosols" because they in fact are simply water laid sediments which Long Agers ASSUME are paleosols, but cannot truly be this for the reasons given by the Tas Walker article.
JonF also had an objection about Tas Walker's view of root traces which I did not follow. Here is Walker's quote ...
Quote
The first point about the alleged paleosol in Figure 1, which Meert described as an ‘excellent example of a well developed paleosol’, is that there is no reference to any root traces. The photo is too distant to distinguish them and their existence or otherwise is not mentioned in the text. In other words, the first and ‘most diagnostic feature’25 of a paleosol is not addressed. However, even when root traces are described for claimed paleosols (ones clearly from Flood deposits) the roots are often simply interpreted from plant fragments, or even from empty tubular cavities interpreted as root trace fossils.26 These features can be just as easily interpreted as the product of processes consistent with the Flood framework, such as plant material being transported into place, or water escape cavities.
What was your objection?
Going back to the Grand Staircase shown above, we have seen that some of you have already agreed with me previously that MOST of the layers were laid down by water. Before paleosols were brought up, I was under the impression that you meant what you said. If you are now changing this, feel free to point out which layers are supposedly paleosols and I will be happy to analyze them.
To review ... my reason for studying the Grand Staircase is to find out why conventional geologists date the layers as they do. I was told by Deadman and others that we cannot use radiometric (or any other kind of absolute dating) on layers deposited by water, but that we can "bracket" the layers by using RM dating on volcanic ash, magma and some metamorphic rock within the layers.
I countered with two key objections ...
1) RM "DATING" IS INFLUENCED BY FOSSILS. I used the KBS Tuff example to show that RM dating of volcanic ash is a very tricky business and in fact yields wildly discordant ages. I cannot prove, but strongly suspect (and you should too) that the "absolute dates" assigned to the Leakey skull in the KBS Tuff were heavily influenced by the desires of the paleoanthropology community. Dates ranging from 0.52 my to 230 my were thrown out with the ultimate consensus being about 1.87 my. This should make any reasonable person question the validity of the whole radiometric dating system. How can you just throw out dates you don't like? Eric Murphy says this is OK. Diogenes admits that Evos do this but contends that Creos do too. Others say they had good reason for throwing them out. Oh really? Like what? Like ... there's a human fossil there?
2) HOW CAN YOU USE LAVA OR ASH TO DATE WATER-LAID DEPOSITS? I am not questioning the reality of parent/daughter ratios within individual grains of material. I'm sure there really are certain real ratios that the labs have measured accurately. My biggest question here is how on earth is volcanic ash--which originated deep in the heart of the earth, intruded up through many layers, shot ash high into the air, spilled magma out onto the ground, then hardened, eroded, washed away and God-only-knows-what-else--how can a thinking person believe this ash is useful in dating a layer of water-laid sediment which contains a human-like skull? Please. Explain this to my "kindergarten" mind. It seems to me that the best you can hope for is to say "this little grain of feldspar or obsidian or whatever was created 10 myo because of the parent daughter ratios blah blah blah." This means that the sedimentary layer you are attempting to date WAS ALREADY THERE for the little grain to be deposited in AFTER the layer was there or at the same time the layer was deposited. You simply can't tell me that a 10 myo grain in a water-laid sediment means that layer was deposited 10 mya. It can only mean one of two things ... (a) the grain was deposited AFTER the layer was deposited or (b) the grain was deposited WITH the layer. In case (a) we know that the layer is OLDER than the grain. How much older? We haven't a clue. In case (b) we still only know about the supposed "RM date" of the GRAIN, not the date of deposition of the "datable" grain and the other particles. So what do we really know? Only that MAYBE the layer is older than the grain, but we cannot be sure. And this does not even get into the problems of excess argon, etc, etc that call into question the dating of that little grain in the first place.
Now I do admit that radioactive decay has occurred. We see fission tracks, we see daughter products, etc, but my point is that ...
NO ONE HAS GIVEN ME ANY CONVINCING CASE FOR BELIEVING THAT THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE CAN BE DATED (OR EVEN BRACKETED) RADIOMETRICALLY, WHICH SERVES TO CONFIRM THAT THE WHOLE IDEA OF SEDIMENTATION OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS IS UNCONVINCING.
And of course the main reason why my Creator God Hypothesis is better is because water-laid sediments are best explained by LOTS OF WATER. Where do we find an account of lots of water?
THE FLOOD OF NOAH ... GENESIS CHAPTER 6
I think one reason you guys think I have no positive scientific evidence for the Flood is because you are looking for me to give you long, detailed analyses of this and that layer and so on and so forth. Well, my answer to this is ... long detailed analyses are great and necessary. But they are not necessary to prove that there WAS A GLOBAL FLOOD. All that's necessary to show this is that there are "Millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth." You think this is just a neat child's ditty, but the truth is, it really is true. One needs nothing more than this simple fact to know that a Global Flood quite probably did occur.
Now I cannot answer conclusively WHERE the water came from. Walt Brown and John Baumgardner have some educated guesses, and there is some good evidence supporting their guesses, but the FACT that there was a Global Flood is indisputable, regardless of the source of the water.
BTW ... Has anyone tried to explain to me why the layers pictured above are curved, but there is no cracking? My explanation is that they were still soft when they were bent by continental movements. How do you explain it?
NO, Wrong answer. You still do not get it. Science is not biased. It does not identify the destination and then cherry picks or misrepresents data to support the idea or theory. It researches ,evalutes and tests evidence. It discards ideas when found to be incorrect or when new evidence is more supported by fact.
ID/Creation is just the opposite. They have identified the destination and will only acknowledge information that brings them to their destination.
Sorry for laughing initially. I'll try to contain myself. You are correct that science generally does this. But historical geology and evolutionary speculation should not be categorized as "science." Either they are religion or philosophy, or, if you want to keep them in the "science camp" then theology should also be a science. Theology actually used to be called a science and I still think it should be. And if this were the case, I wouldn't have a problem calling Evolutionism or Historical Geology a science.
Improv...
Quote
Your "worldview" is only consistent with your evidence because you filter and shape the evidence based on your "worldview". YOU are the one making the unsupportable assumptions in this case.
Everyone filters evidence and data through their worldview. You do too. You just don't admit it. I do because I am being honest. The real question is "Which worldview is more plausible?" A Materialistic Worldview? Or an ID/Theistic Worldview?
Deadman...
Quote
So, as "Treasurer" of Kids4Truth, you get no compensation? If true, how noble of you to forego monetary gain while you shill crap items. Somehow, though, I doubt that.
Well, it's true. Call them up if you like and ask. I don't tell lies. You may think the stuff I say on this forum is lies. But it's not. There is the logical possibility that I am mistaken or out of my mind, but I assure you, I am sincere when I say I believe something is true.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dates ranging from 0.52 my to 230 my were thrown out with the ultimate consensus being about 1.87 my. This should make any reasonable person question the validity of the whole radiometric dating system. How can you just throw out dates you don't like? Eric Murphy says this is OK. Diogenes admits that Evos do this but contends that Creos do too. Others say they had good reason for throwing them out. Oh really? Like what?
This has been answered. You dismissed the answer given as being "too sciencey" or something. Your only objection to the dating method is that you think there was a conspiracy. This is not evidence, Dave. It is your imagination.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Your "worldview" is only consistent with your evidence because you filter and shape the evidence based on your "worldview". YOU are the one making the unsupportable assumptions in this case.
Everyone filters evidence and data through their worldview. You do too. You just don't admit it. I do because I am being honest. The real question is "Which worldview is more plausible?" A Materialistic Worldview? Or an ID/Theistic Worldview?
There's nothing to admit. None of our evidence has anything to do with a "Materialistic Worldview".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You dismissed the answer given as being "too sciencey" or something.
I think you are confusing this with the paleosol thing. Yes, I thought the paleosol thing sounded very "sciency". There were about 5 words I had never heard before. But I learned what they mean, studied up on the whole issue and to me it appears that the Creos have a much more plausible explanation for "paleosols" -- which aren't really.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You dismissed the answer given as being "too sciencey" or something.
I think you are confusing this with the paleosol thing.
Ok, sorry, you're right. You dismissed the dating methods by saying "come on".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You dismissed the dating methods by saying "come on".
Well how about it? Come on! Convince me in your own words how it is reasonable to toss out all these wildly discordant dates and keep the ones that just happen to fit with your pre-conceptions about human evolution.
I have gone to a lot of trouble to try to understand the whole process and explain what I see as difficulties. Can you not counter with the same level of effort?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You dismissed the dating methods by saying "come on".
Well how about it? Come on! Convince me in your own words how it is reasonable to toss out all these wildly discordant dates and keep the ones that just happen to fit with your pre-conceptions about human evolution.
You've already told us that we can't convince you of anything. You'll dismiss whatever we tell you because we aren't YECs.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You've already told us that we can't convince you of anything. You'll dismiss whatever we tell you because we aren't YECs.
Not so. I will dismiss it if it doesn't make any sense. But if it is reasonable, I will accept it. In fact, I will become an evolutionist if I can become convinced that the evidence warrants it. Try me.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Going back to the Grand Staircase shown above, we have seen that some of you have already agreed with me previously that MOST of the layers were laid down by water. Before paleosols were brought up, I was under the impression that you meant what you said.
I have no trouble believing that most layers anywhere were laid down by water. The majority of the earth is covered with the stuff. That doesn't mean there aren't layers NOT laid down by water interspersed throughout the "staircase" where they could never be if all those layers came from the FLUD.
Most people aren't serial killers. That doesn't mean there's not one in your back yard exactly where you don't want one.
And of course the main reason why my Creator God Hypothesis is better is because water-laid sediments are best explained by LOTS OF WATER. Where do we find an account of lots of water?
THE FLOOD OF NOAH ... GENESIS CHAPTER 6
WATERWORLD (COSTNER 1995) MOBY DICK (MELVILLE 1851) GILGAMESH (SIN-LIQE-UNNINNI, 1000-1300 BCE) SHATAPATHA BRAHMANA (VEDIC SANSKRIT, 800-1800 BCE) THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF PAPERS ON PALEOGEOGRPAHY/GEOLOGY (SCIENTISTS, ~1800-PRESENT) ETC. And my personal favourite: THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER (COLERIDGE 1798)
Water, water everywhere Which drop will you drink, Davey?
Uh, really? So you "studied up on paleosols"...but need someone to tell you where the paleosols are in the Grand Canyon/Staircase? You cited one article by an engineer --who looked at pictures of paleosols and made an uninformed pronouncement...that was devastated by the response of an actual geologist.
You earlier stated that none of the Grand Staircase layers were directly dated...yet on page 138 of this thread alone, you say : "It's as I suspected. There are radiometric dates available for the Chinle, the Morrison, and the Carmel" At that time, I offered you a gentleman's agreement, saying that you were given much more than that, even...and I offered to leave this forum if I was wrong. I even made this offer:
"I'll not only leave this forum, but I'll pay for my plane ticket to your church and proclaim in front of them how I was wrong...IF I am wrong. In return--if you are wrong, you will get in front of your group at church and film it while you say you were wrong, begging my forgiveness, and post it on the internet here. "
Yet you refused that. Just as you refused every other gentleman's agreement on not just the number of radiometric dates, but the layers that HAD been dated. Did you refute a single one of those dates? No...but now you insist that there are NO DIRECT Radiometric dates for the Grand Staircase? Anyone here can go to page 132-139 of this thread and follow your lie. JonF notes on page 136 of this thread that you were given an "Absolute minimum sixty-six radiometric dates posted in the past few days, Davie-dip. With a minimal amount of effort. Think of what someone who was really researching the field could find!"
You continue to use this lie:
Quote
I was told by Deadman and others that we cannot use radiometric (or any other kind of absolute dating) on layers deposited by water
despite me telling you on three separate occasions that I said no such thing and in fact gave you examples of datable materials in water-laid sediments. The last time you tried this was on page 130 of this thread. I resonded by posting what I DID say (for the third time, then, I repeated what I DID say). This makes FOUR TIMES that I have repeated myself, Dave. You acknowledged it before, but you KEEP USING THE SAME LIE. WHY?
Quote (deadman_932 @ Aug. 06 2006,09:17)
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 06 2006,06:14)
2) I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically.
Dave repeats another lie, again, that has been refuted. . . . This is what I posted on Page 109 of this thread
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On p.108, AirHead Dave says/asks:
Quote
I thought sedimentary rocks could not be dated radiometrically ... Deadman told me that this is true of the GC layers that contain fossils. But this article says you CAN date sedimentary layers radiometrically. What's up with that?
AirHead, you're an adult, allegedly. Your claim above implies I said you couldn't date *any* sedimentary layers. The context of my statement was on the Coconino quartz and the Hermit mudstones/shale. You asked on p.106 of this thread:
Quote
the Hermit Shale is dated at 280 million years by "index fossils" and the Coconino at 270 my, presumably by the same method. Has anyone dated this radiometrically? Does it agree? ... Bwahahahaha!
And I responded by asking (p.107) you how you would radiometrically date the Hermit and Coconino layers : " How would you radiometrically date the siltstone of the Hermit and the fine, rounded, pitted, frosted Quartz grains of the Coconino?" If a layer of shale/mudstone contains ilite, or bentonite or other minerals, it's possible to date it. If it has feldspars, great. I specifically asked YOU how you would date the layers mentioned, idiot---I didn't say you could *never* date sediments. Get your lies straight. You're older than I am, AirHead, but you're a joke in terms of any kind of emotional or cognitive maturity.
So, Dave, why are you once again repeating an utter lie, which you have been reminded of twice?
Well, it's because you ARE a liar, like you lied aobut "knowing I had never worked with "jungle tribes" as you put it....like you LIED about "knowing" my religious views....like you LIED about a dozen other topics..actually far more, I'm sure. So, yeah, I'm safe in saying you're a liar.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You've already told us that we can't convince you of anything. You'll dismiss whatever we tell you because we aren't YECs.
Not so. I will dismiss it if it doesn't make any sense. But if it is reasonable, I will accept it. In fact, I will become an evolutionist if I can become convinced that the evidence warrants it. Try me.
No. You said quite clearly that you evaluate evidence based on the worldview that you think is attached to it:
Quote
The proper approach to any truth search is to select the most plausible Fundamental Assumptions first. I call this a Worldview. The Theistic Worldview is far more consistent with the evidence ... I have presented much of this evidence previously. After the most plausible worldview is selected, then and only then can one set about evaluating data.
If one selects a false worldview, as you have done, the whole house falls down, so to speak, because it is built on a faulty foundation.
Therefor, whatever we tell you is always going to be wrong in your mind because we do not share your YEC worldview. You will simply NOT accept evidence that conflicts with your worldview.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Another lesson in logic for Stupid: Dave says "most" paleosols are "pseudo-paleosols" Dave says the ones in the Grand Canyon are pseudo-paleosols. Dave says he doesn't know where they are, despite me having said where they are Dave is an idiot...because he is claiming that X (which he has never seen and has not looked at) MUST BE Y...even though he admits X MIGHT BE Y OR Z. But he says he "knows" beforehand...why? Because no matter what evidence is shown that the paleosols are real, contain all the attributes of a paleosol...he will ignore it....then later ( like with the radiometric dates given on layers in the Grand Staircase) ...say he "never saw it".
Why didn't you answer what I asked on the formation of limestones in the GC? Or what I asked long ago on the Barringer meteor crater? or any of the questions asked you? Because you are in fact...a liar and a fraud...easily evident to anyone reading this thread from page 130 onwards...####, I showed it on this page alone.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Bing ... you hit on one of my favorite topics ... the Roman Catholic Church. The answer to your question is that I think the RCC began losing their way when Constantine legalized Christianity.
around what 350-550ce
....Fucking priceless.
Geez louise.....Oh man I can't go on.
What next 1500 year old Baptists, Calvinists, Whatsits, Whyfores, Wherethefuckarewe's.
AFD you have the floor proceed, waitress bring me more beer ...WTF.... bring me the entire output of Con's Byzantium Brewery's for 200 years ..if you please.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave says this about evidence negating his YEC view:
Quote
I will dismiss it if it doesn't make any sense. But if it is reasonable, I will accept it. In fact, I will become an evolutionist if I can become convinced that the evidence warrants it. Try me.
On page 133 of this thread, you say:
Quote
Deadman ... you're just going to SNORT at my refusal to bet you? OK. Here's what I'll bet you on ... you show me a good comprehensive case that macroevolution has in fact happened and that Genesis is a fairy tale and I will promise never to teach kids about the Book of Genesis again. OK? (This is basically what you guys have been trying to do since I started here)
And as soon as I asked you to define macroevolution, then start posting up evidence on speciation, particularly that of Cichlids, you ran away. Liar
When you are confronted with data, like the Barringer meteor crater, dated by multiple lines of evidence...you don't consider it and deal with the realities of it. You ignored it. You continue to ignore, lie, shift goalposts.
Notice that THIS little episode on the GC started when you decided that you were all confident and wanted to deal with ONE aspect of the GRAND CANYON...the KAIBAB limestone--you said it was not dated, that it could not be. I offered you that bet that it was bracketed by absolute dates, and showed you it was.
You then shifted your claim to " well, there's not enough dates on the Grand Canyon layers...you were given multiple exaples that you acknowledged
You then shifted THAT to " well, there's not enough on the Grand Staircase" and were again shown wrong.
Then it was just more of the same avoidance and lies up to now...where you dismiss paleosols in the Grand Canyon...even though you don't even KNOW where they are, despite me TELLING you.
"Intellectually honest Dave Hawkins?"
Hah, more like intellectually challenged, gonadally neutered, ethically and morally bereft Dave Hawkins.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I have no trouble believing that most layers anywhere were laid down by water. The majority of the earth is covered with the stuff. That doesn't mean there aren't layers NOT laid down by water interspersed throughout the "staircase" where they could never be if all those layers came from the FLUD.
Can you name one that is NOT (besides the Coconino, which I think IS)?? Why do you guys spell the Flood "FLUD" or "fludde" ... is there some insult in there that I am supposed to get?
Quote
You cited one article by an engineer --who looked at pictures of paleosols and made an uninformed pronouncement...that was devastated by the response of an actual geologist.
I showed you in detail with pictures and commentary why Meert's case is a poor one. You have not explained to me how this is rebutted.
Quote
"I'll not only leave this forum, but I'll pay for my plane ticket to your church and proclaim in front of them how I was wrong...IF I am wrong. In return--if you are wrong, you will get in front of your group at church and film it while you say you were wrong, begging my forgiveness, and post it on the internet here. "
At that time, I didn't know enough to be comfortable with the deal, but now I do. Deal. Get crackin'. And so you don't confuse the deal ... you have to prove to me that the Radiometrically Determined Dates of Deposition of Water-laid Sediments are accurate. I'm not talking about Dates of Creation of Sand Grains. Got it? Also, I will not stand up in front of my church and make announcements because my Pastor would not allow it ... he would not allow you either, so I will simply agree to post my most humble apologies here on the forum if I am wrong. I also don't expect you to leave the forum if you are wrong. You can simply post a humble apology. Maybe buy me a drink. Maybe shake my hand. Now ... let's see if you can do it.
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Therefor, whatever we tell you is always going to be wrong in your mind because we do not share your YEC worldview. You will simply NOT accept evidence that conflicts with your worldview.
Sooooo ... convince me that my worldview is wrong and yours is correct.
Quote
Dave says he doesn't know where they are, despite me having said where they are
You said where they are? Fine. I missed it. Wanna tell me again? Or are you afraid to now that I know too much? I'll cover limestone when I get ready to. We're covering other topics now.
k.e...
Quote
Bing ... you hit on one of my favorite topics ... the Roman Catholic Church. The answer to your question is that I think the RCC began losing their way when Constantine legalized Christianity. around what 350-550ce ....Fucking priceless. Geez louise.....Oh man I can't go on. What next 1500 year old Baptists, Calvinists, Whatsits, Whyfores, Wherethefuckarewe's.
What? You mean you don't realize that it was Ignatius of Antioch who died c. 108 AD that first applied the term "Catholic" to the Christian church? Oxygen, k.e.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And of course the main reason why my Creator God Hypothesis is better is because water-laid sediments are best explained by LOTS OF WATER. Where do we find an account of lots of water?
THE FLOOD OF NOAH ... GENESIS CHAPTER 6
I think one reason you guys think I have no positive scientific evidence for the Flood is because you are looking for me to give you long, detailed analyses of this and that layer and so on and so forth. Well, my answer to this is ... long detailed analyses are great and necessary. But they are not necessary to prove that there WAS A GLOBAL FLOOD. All that's necessary to show this is that there are "Millions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth." You think this is just a neat child's ditty, but the truth is, it really is true. One needs nothing more than this simple fact to know that a Global Flood quite probably did occur.
Now I cannot answer conclusively WHERE the water came from. Walt Brown and John Baumgardner have some educated guesses, and there is some good evidence supporting their guesses, but the FACT that there was a Global Flood is indisputable, regardless of the source of the water.
Dave, I know you think this is "evidence" for a "global catastrophic flood," but let me try one more time to explain why it's not.
Your "millions of dead things buried under water-laid sediment" would only be evidence for a global "flood" if you had evidence they were all laid down at the same time. You don't begin to have evidence that they were all laid down at the same time, and in fact the evidence that they were laid down over hundreds of millions to billions of years is mountainous, overwhelming, and unassailable. It really is as simple as that, we've given you a million reasons why there's no way around it, and yet you still persist in your delusion that the mere existence of millions of fossils worldwide is "evidence" of a flood. It simply isn't.
Move onto something else, Dave; there's nothing to see here. And I'm not going to let you slide on your lack of water for your flood either. A huge amount of water is what we call a "condition precedent" to your flood. Without the tiniest smidgen of evidence for all this water, nor any kind of explanation for where it came from or where it went, you simply cannot claim that there ever was a flood. End of story.
The number of points on this thread that you're failing to address is swelling ominously, Dave. You're not going to get any further in defending your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" until you've answered them, which will probably take you a century or two at the rate you're going.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Sure, Dave, what's the terms of the deal and the evidence needed to convince you? Which layers? any of them? If multiple lines of evidence as in the Barringer meteor crater are used, that is not a "grain" so you're going to have to be much more concise, ...oh, and you didn't say "Daddy may I?" You better learn your place.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Therefor, whatever we tell you is always going to be wrong in your mind because we do not share your YEC worldview. You will simply NOT accept evidence that conflicts with your worldview.
Sooooo ... convince me that my worldview is wrong and yours is correct.
That's the whole point. As you said, whatever evidence is presented to you gets weighed against your worldview. Therefor it is impossible for you to be convinced of anything that contradicts your worldview. Anything suggesting that your worldview is wrong gets rejected without further consideration.
Basically, you're stuck in a loop.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Rocinante rider.... that post on pandagon was just what the doctor ordered..
Quote
Dr. Squid Aug 21st, 2006 at 11:49 pm
First thing I thought of was temple garments for kids. Or more derisively, magic underpants.
Second thing I was reminded of was when someone up there mentioned a washcloth, and that’s the Moonie Holy Cumrag.
Autistic Flud Dave doesn't do normal.
Quote
Why do you guys spell the Flood "FLUD" or "fludde" ... is there some insult in there that I am supposed to get?
Quote
Also, I will not stand up in front of my church and make announcements because my Pastor would not allow it ... he would not allow you either, so I will simply agree to post my most humble apologies here on the forum if I am wrong.
yes the the good "Rev Doc." Lovejoy can smell craziness with a big C.
Quote
Sooooo ... convince me that my worldview is wrong and yours is correct.
Don't have to ....it just is ......after almost 200 hundred pages.
Quote
You said where they are? Fine. I missed it. Wanna tell me again? Or are you afraid to now that I know too much? I'll cover limestone when I get ready to. We're covering other topics now.
hahahaha avoid avoid avoid
ah..ha you can't see me I'm AFD super liar.
geez .....lies4kids AFD didn't you ever grow up?
Quote
What? You mean you don't realize that it was Ignatius of Antioch who died c. 108 AD that first applied the term "Catholic" to the Christian church? Oxygen, k.e.
Now observe everyone...
Hey pizzle dik.......lies4kids AFD .......what was Ignatius of Antioch a Baptist, Calvinist, Whatsit, Whyfore or a Wherethefuckarewe.??
Now I predict lies4kids AFD will NOT answer this question.
Prove me wrong AFD
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
You cited one article by an engineer --who looked at pictures of paleosols and made an uninformed pronouncement...that was devastated by the response of an actual geologist.
I showed you in detail with pictures and commentary why Meert's case is a poor one. You have not explained to me how this is rebutted.
dave... Why do you act like you're alone on this forum?
Is it because battling the imaginary opponents of your worldview, in your delusions of grandeur, proved to be much easier than having to deal with actual people who disagree with you?
Once again, reality check: Like we have all repeated ad nauseum to you already, your engineer's silly claims were 'rebutted' already my Meert's response.
Whoops, did I say 'rebutted'? I meant PULVERIZED.
Didn't you get it when we told you to go read it?
Of course you did.
Will you read it?
Of course not. Because you are as much a coward as Walker himself.
But please, unless you specifically refer (not with handwaving, but with arguments -hah!- ) to Meert's response and your engineer's pathetic attempt to reply, Please kindly stop referring to the paleosol issue; You embarrass yourself even more each time you do.
Not that that has stopped you before.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
And as soon as I asked you to define macroevolution, then start posting up evidence on speciation, particularly that of Cichlids, you ran away. Liar
I am not. Didn't run. I'll take you on any day on macroevolution. Actually ... not any day. When I get ready. I get to choose the topics. It's my thread. The Greatest Thread of All Time. Remember?
Quote
At this point, Dave, I own you psychologically and in terms of every aspect of debate.
If this were a bar, I'd have you up on a table dancing in pink panties to the delight of the crowd laughing at you. You are, in short, my "bitch."
You may call me "Daddy."
Oh PALEEEZ. In your dreams. If this is true, how come I'VE been picking the topics and you have been responding to ME?
Speaking of calling you "daddy", didn't you say you don't want to belong to my species? My answer? You don't. Didn't you say you are related to a gorilla? Or a chimp? Or something?
Mark it down ... p. 160 ... Deadman declares that he owns me psychologically. Hilarious!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Ignatius of Antioch was an Apostolic Father and a Matryr, dave.
His definition of the Church as "catholic" does not refer to the Catholic Church alone: it exists in the Symbol of Faith. "One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church".
Just FYI.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I want YOU to post the parts you think are relevant and "pulverizing" HERE with YOUR commentary ... as I did for you. Can you do it? Didn't think so.
DM...
Quote
Sure, Dave, what's the terms of the deal and the evidence needed to convince you?
Did you suddenly lose your ability to read English? It's right there. Right on this page.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Also, let me point out for the lurkers the ludicrous, square-wheeled way Dave's alleged "mind" works:
He finds an article in the same place he finds everything, in the creationist ghetto, written by an engineer, with no training in geology, who analyzes two low-resolution photos he found on the web, of paleosols, one in Missouri and one in Australia (neither of which, it should be pointed out, is in or anywhere near the Grand Canyon), and determines, based on his extensive lack of knowledge of the surrounding geology, that they are not in fact paleosols. From this one article, our own Pinata Dave determines that there is no such thing as a paleosol.
Man, you can't write comedy like that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hahaha. The issue is why you're afraid to deal with things as they come up, Davey-pookies. The issue is your lack of manhood, as shown in several episodes here along with your unwillingness to simply directly respond to things...like now.
You can't answer on the kaibab limestone, even though that was your first item that you were going to "dissect."
I showed on the previous page your childlike inability to process language and data, much less logic. Your claim on the paleosols...that you NEVER examined or researched shows this. Your childlike insistence that the photograph-examination of a paleosol by an electrical engineer who has never seen that actual formation...is "better" than the fieldwork of a geologist who dug through it...further exemplifies this.
Yes, Dave, no doubt you can always rely on being able to say " you didn't convince me!!" but that is not really the issue here.
You see, this is your hypothesis...and hypotheses have to be "falsifiable" in order to BE science at all. This is a basic tenet, shown by people from Bacon to Einstein and beyond.
So, despite you being able at any point to say " you didn't convince me!!!" like the eunuch you are...you, panty-boy, are required to show HOW your hypothesis can be falsified IN DETAIL, not just hand-waving.
Any nut like yourself can say "I believe the Earth was created yesterday," and then demand you disprove it, then say " you didn't convince me." But...this is YOUR hypothesis and you have to lay out the criteria...IN DETAIL (not just vague references to "convince me"). You have to say PRECISELY how your hypothesis may be falsified. If you cannot say that in precise detail, then you don't have a hypothesis at all...because it ain't science, stupid. Now, get up on the table and dance for everyone.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
His definition of the Church as "catholic" does not refer to the Catholic Church alone: it exists in the Symbol of Faith. "One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church".
Do you think I don't know that Ignatius was an church father and martyr? (not an "apostolic" father ... church father) In my quote, he is referring to the Christian church. (Smyr. 8:2)
Quote
He finds an article in the same place he finds everything, in the creationist ghetto, written by an engineer, with no training in geology,
It's too bad that engineers are having to fix glaring errors that geologists should have fixed themselves. This should be an embarrassment to you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
His definition of the Church as "catholic" does not refer to the Catholic Church alone: it exists in the Symbol of Faith. "One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church".
Do you think I don't know that Ignatius was an church father and martyr? (not an "apostolic" father ... church father) In my quote, he is referring to the Christian church. (Smyr. 8:2)
Precicely. So, since we agree, what was the context of your response to k. e.? What does the Catholic Church have to do with it?
And yes, it is Apostolic Father, dave.at least for ignatius. Unless it's not a term your sect aknowledges, in which case I fold. Orthodox Church uses the term, if not with as much a weight as Catholics do.
And these people are proud to be transferring the fruits of their ignorance onto kids? It's obvious that they don't understand evolution at all!
Dave, you do realise that evolution is more than randomness, yeah? What am I saying; he believes that the world is 6000 years old, doesn't he.
Mental ill health is sad, particularly when there are victims. Dave, I was going to congratulate you on your (well deserved) award, but now I'm just going to ask you if you are very, VERY ashamed of yourself? You certainly should be.
Sooooo ... convince me that my worldview is wrong and yours is correct.
Dave, your worldview is deadly wrong as long as you don't adress our objections.
Even you are convinced that it's wrong, it's just that you can't admit it in public. You are a dishonest coward, and a liar. Or, if you haven't realized yet that the book of genesis is BS, then you are the stupidest man I've ever seen.
Ladies and gentlemen, AirHoseDave will be swivelin' and gyrating to your amusement and delight soon. He's had a slight "wardrobe malfunction" and appears to have stained his thong. Your patience is appreciated and please, enjoy the complimentary nuts in honor of our little eunuch.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Faid...go for it. Please try your best to make a fool of me. I love it when you guys try this because it always backfires.
Deadman-- You'd better get cracking on your deal you made. I made it less painful on you if you lose. Did I hear you say you want to meet me in a bar? Think you can get me to dance on the tables or some such thing? Come on then. Why don't you come with Crabby? We'll go to church ... then the bar.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Falsifiability is one of the defining characteristics of science. Falsifiability makes possible the refutation of an idea or theory thus giving way to growth and development. If your hypothesis/theory is unfalsifiable, it ain't science. I am not talking about anything else but your hypothesis, Stupid, so DO try and not go off on tangents...I am asking for detailed, concise, PRECISE means by which your hypothesis can even in theory be shown wrong.
If you cannot do that, you have no hypothesis, because it ain't science, stupid. now...details, swivel-hips.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Falsifiability is one of the defining characteristics of science. Falsifiability makes possible the refutation of an idea or theory thus giving way to growth and development. If your hypothesis/theory is unfalsifiable, it ain't science.
I covered this long ago. Like on page 3 or something. *Yawn*
BTW does anyone have a Master Index of this, The Greatest of All Threads? I think DM started on one. Did you continue it, DM?
DM ... you have other work to do also. Remember?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Faid...go for it. Please try your best to make a fool of me. I love it when you guys try this because it always backfires.
Dave, who's your supplier?
If you think any attempt on this thread to make a fool of you has ever backfired, you're strongly hallucinating.
Once again I'll extend my challenge to you: please indicate which posters and/or lurkers you believe you have persuaded with a single argument you've ever made here. Extra points if you can them to agree with you. Points taken away, of course, if they disagree with you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
WatusiDave wants to make a bet about "disproving" his claim that he says is "science" Dancin'Dave cannot lay out precise criteria by which his claim may be negated. BugalooDave wants to **always** be able to say "I'm not convinced." Go-GoSweetcheeksDave doesn't HAVE a scientific hypothesis that can be falsified. He has a faith.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I come here to laugh at you and DM beats you hands down.
He's craking me up and you?
WTF photo geology AFD? ... piss weak
give us some Dueterstupidity 900 proof.
WHAT IS GOING ON MAN
please please please get me some real denial going here ...you are backsliding, you are on a slippery slope, DANGER DANGER.
Don't listen to those weak kneed counter creobots ...get me some hard core stuff.
AIG?.... bah.... what a bunch of pussies.
Get me the real stuff AFD, you freak.
Go on ....fludless you say? ...pah I've smoked better.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Falsifiability is one of the defining characteristics of science. Falsifiability makes possible the refutation of an idea or theory thus giving way to growth and development. If your hypothesis/theory is unfalsifiable, it ain't science.
I covered this long ago. Like on page 3 or something. *Yawn*
Yes, Dave rejected methodological naturalism at almost day 1. I think it conflicted with his worldview.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
AFDave: Ha! Face to foot style, how do you like it? Deadman: I'm sure on some planet your style is impressive, but your weak link is: this is Earth. AFDave: Oh yeah? Then try my nuts to your fist style!
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Oh I can just see it now ....sad AFD at the laundramat, 3 in the morning at some cheap skanky low rent doss house feeding in coins and friss reducers for his satin dancin' gear before having to get up for the 1pm fat businessmens show at the AIG clip joint....where he gets cash tucked into his frilleys by the little children......to be continued.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
1) Hi there; I'm rational christian AirHeadDave ; I'm here to support my "Creator God Hypothesis". By the way, I FLEW JETS. 2) Uh...well, science doesn't say *that* 3) Where? Where did you demonstrate that? Well, that's out of context. 4) Yes it is. 5) Look, that's not supported by **good** science. So...maybe you can tell me how we got here. You don't believe you came from monkeys, do you? 6) I already told you why that was out of context and I don't have to be able to falsify my hypotheses... don't change the subject. 7) Yes I did; scroll up. 8) Why can't you just believe in God? 9) John 3.16 says Jesus died for your sins, you selfish bastards! 10) Yeah, whatever, Fools; I'll laugh at you from heaven while you burn in he11 with your monkey parents LOL! 11) Therefore, I'm right.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Once again I'll extend my challenge to you: please indicate which posters and/or lurkers you believe you have persuaded with a single argument you've ever made here. Extra points if you can them to agree with you.
I might be convinced to do this for money. How much are you willing to pay?
k.e. ...
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He's craking me up and you?
How do you "crake" someone up? Oxygen, k.e
DM...
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WatusiDave wants to make a bet about "disproving" his claim that he says is "science" Dancin'Dave cannot lay out precise criteria by which his claim may be negated.
What was not precise about it? Quote me and show me.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Sweetcheeks, it is up to you to detail a means ...a PRECISE means by which your hypothesis may be negated. Look at your own post, you blithering idiot.
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you have to prove to me that the Radiometrically Determined Dates of Deposition of Water-laid Sediments are accurate. I'm not talking about Dates of Creation of Sand Grains. Got it?
That's the SUM of your "bet" criteria.
HOW would I show that, stupid...DETAIL a means. SHOW how your hypothesis can be negated even in principle. Not all radiometric dates are by "sand grains." there are well over 3 dozen radiometric methods. You need to show which ones WOULD show you wrong. Or Any other means that would show your hypothesis wrong.
Again, you're just hoping to hold on to your one card of saying " nope, I don't believe that." It is up to YOU to detail the means, PRECISELY, not me...but you can't...because you NEED to keep it nebulous. Now, dance some more, stupid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
He's craking me up and you? How do you "crake" someone up? Oxygen, k.e
Say 'part' backwards AFD ...yes it's a taarp.
But pole dance away there boy.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
gees, I was all set to make some pithy comments about Dumbass' support of Martin Luther, especially in light of the hitler-darwin crap that Kennedy is repeatedly spewing.
but that was already over 2 pages of posts ago!
I just can't keep up with you guys any more.
Seems I'm two pints behind and continuing to fall farther behind as I write this.
I do know now that I would never challenge Deadman to a drinking contest.
I would end up wearing purple panties and dancing on the table.
....and I really don't look good in panties any more.
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Once again I'll extend my challenge to you: please indicate which posters and/or lurkers you believe you have persuaded with a single argument you've ever made here. Extra points if you can them to agree with you.
you should exclude gawp from that, as every one of his entries was merely an attempt to troll.
on second thought, it's easy enough to see that Dave didn't convince gawp of anything, as nobody can do that anyway.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Where are we with Paleosols? JonF brought them up because I said that the layers in the Grand Staircase are either water laid or volcanic in their origin. JonF responded by saying "Oh no that's not right. How about paleosols? (And evaporites)." My answer then, as we have seen is that the "paleosols" I have been shown are not paleosols at all.
A Taz Walker speculation about some photographs of paleosols is not evidence that any or all paleosols were "water laid", Davie-doodles. What evidence you got for your speculation?
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You might call them "pseudo-paleosols" because they in fact are simply water laid sediments which Long Agers ASSUME are paleosols, but cannot truly be this for the reasons given by the Tas Walker article.
Er, there's no reasons in the Taz Walker article other than "Da Bible tol' me so".
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JonF also had an objection about Tas Walker's view of root traces which I did not follow. Here is Walker's quote ...
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The first point about the alleged paleosol in Figure 1, which Meert described as an ‘excellent example of a well developed paleosol’, is that there is no reference to any root traces. The photo is too distant to distinguish them and their existence or otherwise is not mentioned in the text. In other words, the first and ‘most diagnostic feature’25 of a paleosol is not addressed. However, even when root traces are described for claimed paleosols (ones clearly from Flood deposits) the roots are often simply interpreted from plant fragments, or even from empty tubular cavities interpreted as root trace fossils.26 These features can be just as easily interpreted as the product of processes consistent with the Flood framework, such as plant material being transported into place, or water escape cavities.
What was your objection?
The root traces are nothing like "water escape cavities"; they're obviously palces whre roots grew. I also highlighted the funniest part; are you seriously proposing that your fludde transported plants and carefully placed them upright in growing position with the roots exactly as they grew into the original soil? And did this over and over and over again, repeatedly, every time the same? Come on, Dave, I want to see you agree to that crazy idea of Taz's. Or do you have a different explanation for 'em? If so, trot it out.
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Going back to the Grand Staircase shown above, we have seen that some of you have already agreed with me previously that MOST of the layers were laid down by water. Before paleosols were brought up, I was under the impression that you meant what you said. If you are now changing this, feel free to point out which layers are supposedly paleosols and I will be happy to analyze them.
Alrady done, twice, Davie-dido, and waiting for your analysis.
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You simply can't tell me that a 10 myo grain in a water-laid sediment means that layer was deposited 10 mya.
And nobody does. That's only a product of your fevered imagination.
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only mean one of two things ... (a) the grain was deposited AFTER the layer was deposited or (b) the grain was deposited WITH the layer. In case (a) we know that the layer is OLDER than the grain. How much older? We haven't a clue. In case (b) we still only know about the supposed "RM date" of the GRAIN, not the date of deposition of the "datable" grain and the other particles. So what do we really know? Only that MAYBE the layer is older than the grain, but we cannot be sure.
Obviously, Davie-diddles, and that's why nobody tries to date sediments by dating the grains in them. This has been explained umpteen times. Are you ever going to get it?
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Now I cannot answer conclusively WHERE the water came from. Walt Brown and John Baumgardner have some educated guesses, and there is some good evidence supporting their guesses, but the FACT that there was a Global Flood is indisputable, regardless of the source of the water.
There's no evidence that is consistent with or for a global flood.
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BTW ... Has anyone tried to explain to me why the layers pictured above are curved, but there is no cracking?
Yes, many times, dumbo-Davie.
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My explanation is that they were still soft when they were bent by continental movements. How do you explain it?
As has been explained many times, but you're too stupid to remember: subduction, heat, pressure, time. All observed and all but subduction demonstrated in the lab.
Sediments bent while soft don't look like that. Evidence provided already, and ignored by you.
HOW would I show that, stupid...DETAIL a means. SHOW how your hypothesis can be negated even in principle. Not all radiometric dates are by "sand grains." there are well over 3 dozen radiometric methods. You need to show which ones WOULD show you wrong. Or Any other means that would show your hypothesis wrong.
I don't have any idea how you would show that. That's YOUR problem, buddy. YOU were the one that wanted to have a gentleman's agreement. Now's your chance. Are you going soft now? A little afraid of having to produce the goods, now are we?
The truth is YOU CANNOT radiometrically date water-laid sediments in the Grand Staircase or anywhere else and you know it. Why don't you admit it and save yourself the trouble?
And you say I wear the pink frillies! :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Once again I'll extend my challenge to you: please indicate which posters and/or lurkers you believe you have persuaded with a single argument you've ever made here. Extra points if you can them to agree with you.
I might be convinced to do this for money. How much are you willing to pay?
Really, Dave? Is that what motivates you? I thought you were here in a search for truth, not to make a little beer money. I'm not going to waste my time setting up some sort of wager with you; I've seen how that always ends up. (A) you'll never admit you've lost; and (B) since you'll never admit you've lost, you'll never admit you have to pay.
But are you concerned with betting money for the dog-track, or are you in a search for the truth? Based on your proposed wager, I think I know which. In any event, you said, at the very beginning of this thread, that you believed in your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" because you were convinced by the evidence. It's pretty clear that was a falsehood, because you've never seen any such evidence. If you think you have, tell us where you posted it (not "a few dozen pages back," Dave; I want a page number. I've read every single page on this thread, and if was there, I'd have seen it). Further, if you think you've convinced anyone here with your evidence, give me a name, and let me ask them myself (note: Bill Paley doesn't count; he was a YEC before he ever came to this thread).
And in the meantime, since you've never presented any evidence in support of your "Global Catastrophic Flood Hypothesis," would like to give us a time-frame as to when you might start?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have no trouble believing that most layers anywhere were laid down by water. The majority of the earth is covered with the stuff. That doesn't mean there aren't layers NOT laid down by water interspersed throughout the "staircase" where they could never be if all those layers came from the FLUD.
Can you name one that is NOT
Off the top of my head, the many paleosol layers (a couple of which I posted pictures of, and posted links to more). You keep offering to analyze those layers, Davie-piddle-poo, but you never do it.
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(besides the Coconino, which I think IS)??
We know you think it is, but you have never posted any reasons why or explanations of the Coconino features. I know you claimed to have posted explanation, but you didn't. If you want to claim that you did, include a link to the post in which you did so.
Here's a list of most (not all) of the features you need to explain, from Claim CC365.1:
The extent and homogeneity of the sand body.
The tabular-planar and wedge-planar type and large scale of cross-stratification. The common high-angle deposits are interpreted as slipfaces on the lee sides of dunes, and the relatively rare low-angle cross-strata that dip toward the opposite quadrant apparently represent deposits of windward slopes.
Slump marks of several varieties preserved on the steeply dipping surfaces of lee-side deposits. These are distinctive of dry sand avalanching.
Ripple marks which are common on surfaces of high-angle crossbedding suggest eolian deposition both by their high indexes (above 15) and by their orientation with axes parallel to dip slope.
The local preservation of a distinctive type of rain pit. Such pits illustrate the cohesion of sand grains with added moisture and a reorientation of the crater axes with respect to bedding slopes.
Successions of miniature rises or steps ascending dip slopes of crossbeds.
The preservation in fine sand of reptile footprints and probable millipede trails with sharp definition and clear impression.
The consistent orientation of reptilian tracks up (not down) the steep foreset slopes.
The presence of grain-fall bedding and lamination.
Additional types of terrestrial trace fossils, paleosols, and other distinctive eolian sedimentary structures.
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Why do you guys spell the Flood "FLUD" or "fludde" ... is there some insult in there that I am supposed to get?
Yes, Davie-pootles. Medieval spelling. Think about it.
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You cited one article by an engineer --who looked at pictures of paleosols and made an uninformed pronouncement...that was devastated by the response of an actual geologist.
I showed you in detail with pictures and commentary why Meert's case is a poor one. You have not explained to me how this is rebutted.
Nope, Davie, you posted no pictures or commentaary, just a link to Taz's article and picture.
I know you're not two years old, Dave. I know that you are in fact older than me. And the fact is that you act like you're ...maybe 6 emotionally. YOU are required to set out precise criteria, pointing to the layers and dating methods that would negate your claims. Then you send me out to find examples of such, or you yourself try to negate your claim ( this is called "testing" your hypothesis).
But like just now, you won't lay out those precise criteria...despite this being YOUR hypothesis. As I said, you want desperately to be able to say " that's not good enough, I don't buy it" to ANYTHING that is raised as countering your claims.
This alone is what makes your hypothesis faith and not science. You cannot show how it MIGHT be falsified in detail that would negate your claim.
End of story, sweetcheeks, you lose.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
HOW would I show that, stupid...DETAIL a means. SHOW how your hypothesis can be negated even in principle. Not all radiometric dates are by "sand grains." there are well over 3 dozen radiometric methods. You need to show which ones WOULD show you wrong. Or Any other means that would show your hypothesis wrong.
I don't have any idea how you would show that. That's YOUR problem, buddy. YOU were the one that wanted to have a gentleman's agreement. Now's your chance. Are you going soft now? A little afraid of having to produce the goods, now are we?
Dave, it's your hypothesis. Do you get that? It's your responsibility to come up with criteria that would falsify it, not someone else's.
You just don't get how this game is played, Dave. You swagger in here, blurt out your "hypothesis," and then spend the next 700 posts trying to attack other hypotheses. Why did you even bother proposing a "hypothesis" if you had no intention of ever defending it? What, you thought we were just going to believe you? It's like you say your "flood" is a fact, and we're just supposed to believe you, because you can't come up with any evidence whatsoever to support it, and can do nothing about all the evidence that contradicts it.
Further, even if it were true that you can't date sediments radiometrically, that wouldn't help your "hypothesis" about biblical inerrancy, because you sure can date igneous deposits, and the majority of them worldwide are quite a bit older than 6,000 years. Are you planning on disproving all radiometric dating of all rocks everywhere that are more than 6,000 years old? Because we only need one rock older than that to sink your "hypothesis."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Further, even if it were true that you can't date sediments radiometrically,
... which it is ... you cannot, thus burying Deadman's and your claim that you can. Cha-ching!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'm sure that you'll just try to repeat in various ways that it is somehow MY responsibility to come up with a specified means by which your claims COULD in theory be negated, SweetcheeksDavePantyDancer.
This is called "special pleading" and it's a fallacy. Again, this negates your particular claim until you correct it. Deal with it, kid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What you forgot is that you came in to this forum already wearing pink panties and dancing for us, and Deadman is just taking credit for it, since you refused to take credit yourself.
You should take credit for that yourself! Don't let DM steal your thunder, flyboy!
let those panties fly!
haul 'em up the flagpole and salute!
oh i forgot:
Ling: "You think losing is winning."
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Way back on page 109 of this thread, I told this idiot:
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If a layer of shale/mudstone contains ilite, or bentonite or other minerals, it's possible to date it.
He was given multiple dates on sediments in the Grand Canyon. Examples on bentonite include dates on the Brushy Basin of the Morrison, etc. etc.
But...none of that will be "believable" for AirPAntyDave...because he has not and cannot lay out a specified means of negating his hypothesis. He can't DO that because it would mean giving up that "I don't believe it" card.
The fact that he also kept repeating 4 times that I had "told " him that sediments could NOT be dated (even though I objected to that blatant falsehood each time)....shows his willingness to lie.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Further, even if it were true that you can't date sediments radiometrically,
... which it is ... you cannot, thus burying Deadman's and your claim that you can. Cha-ching!!
Folks, while discussing actual research is no doubt the best part of this thread, we should all be clear in understanding that it will have no effect on Dave. The only possible way to reach him is to make him aware of the Strange Loop in which he is trapped. No amount of facts and logic can possibly reach him while he is operating in his loop.
You see, Dave? THIS is your paradox. Your belief is that we cannot date sediments radiometrically. If we could, it would conflict with your worldview. Therefor, accurate radiometric dating must be impossible. Now, if someone comes along and shows you exactly how RM dating works, you know that he is wrong, since RM dating is clearly impossible to you.
No amount of evidence can convince you otherwise.
I'm sure this all just comes up as fnord to you, but contemplating the paradox is, as far as I can tell, your only hope of connecting with reality.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Folks, while discussing actual research is no doubt the best part of this thread, we should all be clear in understanding that it will have no effect on Dave. The only possible way to reach him is to make him aware of the Strange Loop in which he is trapped. No amount of facts and logic can possibly reach him while he is operating in his loop.
You see, Dave? THIS is your paradox. Your belief is that we cannot date sediments radiometrically. If we could, it would conflict with your worldview. Therefor, accurate radiometric dating must be impossible. Now, if someone comes along and shows you exactly how RM dating works, you know that he is wrong, since RM dating is clearly impossible to you.
No amount of evidence can convince you otherwise.
I'm sure this all just comes up as fnord to you, but contemplating the paradox is, as far as I can tell, your only hope of connecting with reality.
"Believing strongly, without evidence, they have kicked themselves loose of the world." Sam Harris. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.
There can be no doubt whatsoever that Dave's strategy is an effective one, putting him well beyond the reach of us, reason, and the world itself.
(What a coincidence -- my favourite representative picture from a quick Google Image search points me to the Center for Innovations in Education and a file named "hawkins-2.gif". Tee hee.)
Is there a qualitative difference between the picture of Dave covering his ears with his hands, and the picture of Dave with his head up his ass?
just wondering.
Well, in my opinion, the former connotes blithe ignorance and a love of the smell of your own shit, whereas the latter connotes willful, petulant refusal. But Dave somehow finds the elbow room to do both at the same time.
Further, even if it were true that you can't date sediments radiometrically,
... which it is ... you cannot, thus burying Deadman's and your claim that you can. Cha-ching!!
You're wrong, Dave, and if you'd actually read Deadman's and JonF's posts, you'd know (although you'd never admit) that you're wrong.
And besides, the mere fact that at least one rock somewhere on the planet can be dated to more than 6,000 years old kills your entire "biblical inerrancy" claim.
Ka-ching!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ichthyic: I would never try to get you to table-dance! Well, okay, MAYBE. But I wouldn't tell you in the morning:)
Improvious: Yeah, that's basically what I was trying to get at by re-introducing the "falsification" aspect. The interesting thing was his immediate reversal of it as the responsibility of others, signalling his fear of it.
Oddly enough, Fractatious deals with children's psych and we were just discussing cognitive loops and how they affect people. Like the housewife who stays in an abusive relationship, or the weird one that most of us have run into or caught ourselves at : He(She) doesn't *really* love me >>He can't love me because I'm not good enough >>I'm not good enough because I screw up all the time >>I screw up all the time because I'm not good enough >>He can't love me because I'm not good enough >>He doesn't *really* love me
Dave's cognitive loop ...well...his IDENTITY is based on one segment of that loop. That's why we have to deal with two "Daves": the "adult" Dave who was in the AF, has a degree, wife, kids, etc.... and the weird kid in Incory's .gif
In many ways Dave sees asking him to drop this loop as akin to handing him a gun and saying "kill yourself." He magnifies it to that degree. Scares the crap out of him, he reverts to that kid. I doubt anything we provide will make a dent at all, as you say.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Which of those publications argue that the Earth is young because of radiohalos? Gentry has several mainstream publications, that's well known, but I am not aware of any that argue for a young Earth.
I got held up today so I'll be here for another hour or so. Lucky you! Anyhoo, I wasn't claiming that his scientific publications were specifically advocating for a young Earth, but I do remember that his heterodox data and observations did get published, and that the geologists at the time considered his work a more serious challenge because of it. If memory serves, those publications were pinpointed to the mid-to-late 70's, so my best guess is:
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Gentry, Robert V. 1974. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Science 184, pp. 64-66.
Gentry, Robert V. 1984. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Proceedings of the Sixty Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1. Part 3. pp. 38-65.
Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1974. "Spectacle" Array of 210Po Halo Radiocentres in Biotite: A Nuclear Geophysical Enigma. Nature 252, p. 564.
Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1976. Radiohalos in Coalified Wood: New Evidence Relating to the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification. Science 194, pp. 315-318.
The second source may not have been peer reviewed, but that leaves three good candidates.
THE WITNESS: He has proposed that it is either a theory or a hypothesis that he says can be falsified.
THE COURT: What's the basis for the proposal? How does he come up with that?
THE WITNESS: Well, basically what he has found is there is a series of radioactive haloes within minerals in the rocks. Many minerals like mica include very tiny particles of other minerals that are radioactive, little crystals of zircon and things like that, that have a lot of uranium in them.
And as the uranium decays, the alpha particles will not decay, but travel outward through the mica. And they cause radiation damage in the mica around the radioactive particle. And the distance that those particles travel is
478
THE WITNESS: (Continuing) indicated by these radioactive haloes. And that distance is related directly to the energy of the decay. And from the energy of the decay, it is thought that we can identify the isotopes.
That's the kind of work that Gentry has been doing.
And what he has found is that he has identified certain haloes which he claims are from Polonium-218. Now, Polonium-218 is one of the isotopes intermediate in the decay chain between uranium and lead.
Uranium doesn't decay directly from lead. It goes through a whole series of intermediate products, each of which is radioactive and in turn decays.
Polonium-218 is derived in this occasion from Radon 222. And what he has found is that the Polonium haloes, and this is what he claims to have found, are the Polonium-2l8 haloes, but not Radon-222 haloes. And therefore, he says that the Polonium could not have come from the decay of Radium, therefore it could not have come from the normal decay change.
And he says, how did it get there? And then he says that the only way it could have gotten there unsupported Radon-222 decay is to have been primordial Polonium, that is Polonium that was created at the time the solar system was created, or the universe.
Well, the problem with that is Polonium-2l8 has a
479
THE WITNESS: (Continuing) half-life of only about three minutes, I believe it is. So that if you have a granitic body, a rock that comes from the melt, that contains this mica, and it cools down, it takes millions of years for body like that to cool.
So that by the time the body cooled, all the Polonium would have decayed, since it has an extremely short half-life. Therefore, there would be no Polonium in the body to cause the Polonium haloes.
So what he is saying, this is primordial Polonium; therefore, the granite mass in which it occurs could not have cooled slowly; therefore, it must have been created by fiat, instantly.
And the experiment he has proposed to falsify this is that he says he will accept this hypothesis as false when somebody can synthesize a piece of granite in the laboratory.
And I'm claiming that that would be a meaningless experiment. [...] Q: Why, in your opinion, would the test proposed by Mr. Gentry not falsify his hypothesis?
A: Let me read specifically first what his proposal is. He said, "I would consider my thesis essentially falsified if and when geologists synthesize a hand-sized specimen of a typical biotite barium granite and/or a similar sized crystal of biotite."
And if I understand what he's saying there, he's saying that since his proposal requires that granite form rapidly, instantly, by instantaneous creation, that he does not see any evidence that these granites, in fact, cool slowly; his evidence said they cool rapidly. And he would accept as evidence if somebody could synthesize a piece of granite in the laboratory.
There are a couple of problems with that. In the first place, we know that these granites did form slowly from a liquid from the following evidence: These rocks contain certain kinds of textures which are only found in rocks that cool from a liquid. And we can observe that in two ways, these textures. They are called igneous and crystalline textures.
We can observe these textures by crystallizing compounds
481
Page is missing.
482
A: (Continuing) a liquid. There is no other way that they could have formed.
The other problem with Gentry's proposal is that the crystallization of granite is an enormously difficult technical problem, and that's all it is. We can't crystallize granite in the laboratory, and he's proposing a hand-sized specimen. That's something like this, I presume.
In the first place, the business of crystallizing rocks at temperatures, most of them crystallize at temperatures between seven hundred and twelve hundred degrees centigrade. The temperatures are high. And in the case of granites and metamorphic rocks, sometimes the pressures are high, many kilobars. So it takes a rather elaborate, sometimes dangerous apparatus to do this.
And the apparatus is of such a size that usually what we have to crystallize is very tiny pieces. I don't know of anyone who has developed an apparatus to crystallize anything that's hand-sized.
So he's thrown down a challenge that's impossible at the moment, within the limits of the present technical knowledge.
The second thing is that the crystallization of granite, the reason we have not been able to crystallize even a tiny piece in the laboratory that I know if, unless there
483
A: (Continuing) has been a recent breakthrough, is essentially an experimental one. It's a kinetic problem.
Anyone who has tried to grow crystals in a laboratory knows that it's very difficult to do if you don't seed the melt. That is, you have to start with some kind of a little tiny crystal to begin with. And when the semi-conductor industry, for example, grows crystals to use in watches like this, they always have to start with a little tiny seed crystal. And once you have that tiny seed crystal, then you can get it to crystallize.
So it's basically a problem of getting the reaction to go, it's a problem of nucleation, getting it started, and it's a problem of kinetics, getting the reaction to go on these viscous melts that are very hot under high pressure.
And what I'm saying is that even if we could crystallize a piece of hand-sized granite in the laboratory, it would prove nothing. All it would represent would be a technical breakthrough. All of a sudden scientists would be able to perform experiments that we cannot now perform.
But in terms of throwing down a challenge to the age of the earth, that's a meaningless experiment. So he's thrown down a challenge that has no meaning, hand-sized crystallized granite. And he's saying, `If you don't meet it, then I won't accept your evidence.' Well, it's a meaningless challenge. It's not an experiment.
484
Q: Doctor Dalrymple, if I understand correctly, Polonium-218 is the product of the radioactive decay of Radon-222, is that correct?
A: Yes, that's correct.
Q: And does Polonium-218 occur through any other process?
A: Not as far as I know. I suspect you could make it in a nuclear reactor, but I don't know that. I'm not sure, but I don't think Polonium-2l8 is a product of any other decay chain.
Q: So if there were Polonium-218 in a rock which did not have any previous Radon-222 in that rock, then that existence of Polonium-218 would mean that the laws of physics as you understand them would have had to have been suspended for that Polonium to be there; is that correct?
A: Well, if that were the case, it might or it might not. But there are a couple of other possibilities. One is that perhaps Gentry is mistaken about the halo. It may not have been Polonium-218. The second one is that it's possible that he's not been able to identify the Radon-222 halo. Maybe it's been erased, and maybe for reasons we don't understand, it was never created.
This is why I say It's just a tiny mystery. We have lots of these in science, little things that we can't quite explain. But we don't throw those on the scale and
485
A: (continuing) claim that they outweigh everything else. That's simply not a rational way to operate.
I would be very interested to know what the ultimate solution to this problem is, and I suspect eventually there will be a natural explanation found for it.
Q: Does Mr. Gentry's data provide scientific evidence from which you conclude that the earth is relatively young?
A: Well, I certainly wouldn't reach that conclusion, because that evidence has to be balanced by everything else we know, and everything else we know tells us that it's extremely old.
The other thing that I should mention, and I forgot to make this in my previous point, if I could, and that is that Mr. Gentry seems to be saying that the crystalline rocks; the basic rocks, the old rocks of the contents were forms instantaneously. And he uses granite.
But the thing that he seems to overlook is that not all these old rocks are granites. In fact, there are lava flows included in those old rocks, there are sediments included in those old rocks. These sediments were deposited in oceans, they were deposited in lakes. They are even pre-Cambrian glacial deposits that tells that the glaciers were on the earth a long, long time ago.
So it's impossible to characterize all of the old crystalline rocks as being just granite. Granite is a
486
A: (Continuing) very special rock type, and it makes up a rather small percentage of the pre-Cambrian or the old crystalline rocks that formed before the continents.
[my emp]
This testimony is very old, of course, and since then evos claim to have made substantial progress in explaining this “tiny mystery”, but even in 1981 a leading geologist could not refute Gentry's work.
demonstrating his stock in trade, irrelevancy, gawp states:
Quote
and since then evos claim to have made substantial progress in explaining this “tiny mystery”,
one, it wasn't a mystery among the vast majority of geologists, as I'm sure you could find out if your public library has a large enough section of actual peer reviewed literature on the subject.
two, why on earth would evolutionary biologists be wasing time on investigating this? what does it have to do with "evos"?
oh, that's right, it's that big umbrella, libera-commie-nazi-evo thing you invented.
and you wonder why i think you an idiot.
*sigh*
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I do look forward to some NZ pub crawls in the relatively near future.
That should be fun -- the ones I've been to were all really comfortable and pleasant, even the ones that were "workman's pubs." People are just *nice.* Scary.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Further, even if it were true that you can't date sediments radiometrically,
... which it is ... you cannot, thus burying Deadman's and your claim that you can. Cha-ching!!
What the heck is your point Dave? Any object that is more than 6000 years old (more or less) debunks your "theory". Who gives a sh*t whether it's a sediment or a basalt?
You don't even know how to formulate an hypothesis, don't even try to make a valid objection. For instance, once you refer to speciation, then you say macroveolution never occurred...
one, it wasn't a mystery among the vast majority of geologists, as I'm sure you could find out if your public library has a large enough section of actual peer reviewed literature on the subject.
Mr. Potato Head, if you knew who G. Brent Dalrymple was, you wouldn't be talking such trash. (Look him up.... and here's a hint: why do you think he was selected to testify for the geologists?) If there was a good explanation at the time, he would have uncovered it; but there wasn't, so he didn't. His opinion might be different now, but he sure couldn't explain it then. In fact, I suspect his testimony still holds today, although alternative expectations have been proposed since the trial.
you forgot to put your own eyes on this morning, Mrs. Potato head.
actually, I'm very surprised given how your peurile brain "categorizes" things, that you didn't take the opportunity to take this and equate it to Behe's testimony on the stand in Kitzmiller.
well, i suppose you still can...
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
yeah, but what do they think of dancing on tables?
I bet they'd be amused! No panty-dancing, though, that would just cause yet another unfortunate international incident, like my singing. We just can't invite Dave
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I personally only get so much amusement out of yapping terriers.
it wears on one's nerves quickly, as everyone's posts here clearly attest.
In fact, I have a new theory about what keeps this thread afloat.
coffee.
people addressing dave directly are using him as a cheap adrenaline rush.
the things he says are so ungodly stupid that it sparks some center of any thinking person's brain to cause a release of hormones that further causes a release of adrenaline.
kind of like jumping off a cliff with a parachute.
While we appear to be doing Dave a service by entreating his idiocy at all, he does others a service by serving as a cheap source of stimulation.
I notice the same rush of adrenaline whenever i see footage of GW speaking, about almost anything, really.
serves as a late day pick-me-up whenever i see chimpy mcgrin's face on the news these days.
so be proud dave!
you're a better stimulant than coffee for a lot of folks here, panties or not.
You should take up a profession as a motivational speaker and go on tours.
er, just be sure to put yourself in a bullet-proof glass container before you begin to speak anywhere.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Which of those publications argue that the Earth is young because of radiohalos? Gentry has several mainstream publications, that's well known, but I am not aware of any that argue for a young Earth.
I got held up today so I'll be here for another hour or so. Lucky you! Anyhoo, I wasn't claiming that his scientific publications were specifically advocating for a young Earth, but I do remember that his heterodox data and observations did get published, and that the geologists at the time considered his work a more serious challenge because of it. If memory serves, those publications were pinpointed to the mid-to-late 70's, so my best guess is:
Yeah, he makes an argument in the 2nd piece, which appears to be just the record of his speech. The published pieces don't say much other than "I don't know how these things got here."
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
This testimony is very old, of course, and since then evos claim to have made substantial progress in explaining this “tiny mystery”, but even in 1981 a leading geologist could not refute Gentry's work.
I'm not sure what you mean. It looks like he refuted it pretty well to me.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Dating sedimentary rocks (This is from one of the two major reference works on radiometric dating). SHRIMP Uranium-Lead Dating of Diagenetic Xenotime in Siliciclastic Sedimentary Rocks SHRIMP U/Pb geochronology of authigenic xenotime and its potential for dating sedimentary basins New dating technique with sand grains On the evaluation of glauconite and illite for dating sedimentary rocks by the potassium-argon method The potential for U-Pb Dating of Coprolites, Hartford Basin, Connecticut Fission-track dating of volcanically derived sedimentary rocks Moron. Cha-ching!!!!
Nice links Jon. They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon. Let me say this really slow, Jon ...
S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N ... However, the Creation Date of these grains has NOTHING to do with the Deposition Date of these layers.
Repeat that to yourself over and over tonight as you go to sleep and maybe it will sink in :-)
Deadman has run away from his challenge to me because he knows this is true and that he will lose.
Nighty, night, boys. Sleep tight!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh and Jonnny ... I'll explain the root thing to you tomorrow. It's pretty simple.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
gees, i can just imagine poor davey pounding away on his keyboard when he typed that last loud missive.
did you break your keyboard Dave?
I guess my theory as to what keeps this thread going works for you as well, huh?
did you run out of coffee?
(psst):
Quote
However, the Creation Date of these grains has NOTHING to do with the Deposition Date of these layers.
did you stop to think for even a moment that it doesn't matter to the argument YOU were trying to make originally (Young Earth, remember), regardless as to whether you are correct (or incorrect actually), on this particular point?
of course you didn't. glad i could point it out for you.
I bet you have to buy the keyboards with the overly large, heavy set keys, right dave?
well, if you broke your current one, here's some replacements for you:
Nice links Jon. They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin
Oh so you agree RM dating proves IGNEOUS rocks are older than 6000 years.
Why didn't you just say that?
When did the big bang happen AFD.?
How old are the 20k-35k year old cave paintings in France?
Why didn't the more than 100,000 year old Greenland icecap melt when your super heated hidrawlick fludde water covered it ?
Where did all the excess water go?
What geologic layer marks your fludde and why did the processes (over time) after that layer change with respect to the layers before.
IF your fairy tale fludde took place at the layer you pick then that dates every other layer both above AND below .......AFD, so be very careful.
WHAT LAYER MARKS THE Fairy Tale Fludde?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
did anybody ever answer Dave's incredibly important question as to why many of us refer to the noachian flood fairytale as "the flud" or fludde, or what have you?
or did i just essentially answer it without intending to?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Deadman has run away from his challenge to me because he knows this is true and that he will lose.
I think you twisted the challenge around so that he would have to convince you. I don't think those were his original terms. And in any case, as I and others have clearly demonstrated, you are incapable of being convinced of anything that conflicts with your own worldview.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Nice links Jon. They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon. Let me say this really slow, Jon ...
S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N ... However, the Creation Date of these grains has NOTHING to do with the Deposition Date of these layers.
Repeat that to yourself over and over tonight as you go to sleep and maybe it will sink in :-)
Deadman has run away from his challenge to me because he knows this is true and that he will lose.
Nighty, night, boys. Sleep tight!
Dave, did you read the freaking links? Are you ever going to learn that "difficult" is not the same as "impossible"? Are you ever going to give up trying to refute everyone else's theories and start trying to support your own claims?
I doesn't matter how much bold, e x t e n d e d, A L L - C A P S tripe ya type, Dave; you still lose.
Even if it were impossible to date sedimentary rock, it sure as shit ain't impossible to date igneous rock, and guess what? Every single rock out there that dates to even 6,500, to say nothing of 650,000 or 650,000,000 years, obliterates your young-earth creationism.
Loser.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hah..yeah, you're old. And as soon as you stop dancing on the table and pinching the waitress, I'll shoot you a game. Go easy on me, I'm just learning!
If I was dancing on a table it was because we needed rain and dang it the waitress pinched me first so it was quid pro quo!
you have to prove to me that the Radiometrically Determined Dates of Deposition of Water-laid Sediments are accurate. I'm not talking about Dates of Creation of Sand Grains. Got it?
PantyDancerSweetcheeks was given articles long ago on dating sedimentary layers. He shifts his claim from "sediments cannot be dated" to " dates on sediments aren't accurate (see above) because it's dating igneous stuff IN the sediments"
Unfortunately, Dave says above...sand grains. "Sand" is a generalized term for granulized rock of many types, generally silicates like quartz and feldspar...which has a size range from 0.0625 to 2 millimeters. Stuff smaller than that is "silt"( 0.0625 mm down to 0.004 mm ). No one dates *just* an individual grain of "sand" when dating sediments. No one. "Sand" can also contain minerals like magnetite , chlorite , glauconite or gypsum, olivine or basalt, etc. etc.
His implication is that the dates cannot then be trusted, because you don't know how old the grains of formerly igneous material are. This is why geologists don't use one single grain. This is why geologists are careful to associate dated sedimentary materials with known events.
Yes, sedimentary rocks are quite often composed of ...materials originally igneous. Which can be and is...accurately dated.
Dave is stupid, so I'll tell him in detail why this is important, using small words so he can understand. I will assume Stupid knows the meaning of some words..like "igneous"
Imagine a volcano like Mt. Saint Helens, or Pinatubo in the Phillipines. Except it is 100 million years ago. One day it belches forth a great quantity of hot air/gas, like Dave. In that gas is ash. The ash spreads out over the land, forming ...ash layers. This is igneous, yes. Dave says it can be dated.
The ash mixes with water and other material near the volcano and forms a mud. The mud forms layers. IT is a sediment. Apparently Dave thinks this is somehow a "fake" sediment because it has igneous material.
Anyway, this layer can be dated, too. Why do we know such dates are accurate? I will give Stupid an easy example. Complicated ones will hurt his tiny brain.
The first task in the evidentiary order is to date the volcanic event that produced the igneous material. Dave already says we can do this. We date "pure" igneous layers.
Now we go to the sediments containing materials like bentonite,(Na,Ca)0.33(Al,Mg)2Si4O10(OH)2·(H2O)n. which is igneous in origin, found in igneous ash layers ....and sediments associated with the dated igneous event.
We take samples, knowing that radiometric dating is a statistical process. We separate out targeted minerals ...like bentonite. We date the samples. We find them to be the same date (statistically) as the "pure" igneous ash layers. We can also ( if we wish) analyze the materials chemically to determine if it has the same signature as the igneous layers. (volcanic events produce unique ratios of the constituents of the elemental materials) We have dated the sediment.
Dating sediments is tricky, yes. But when properly done, it is tied to a known volcanic event which in turn dates the sediments. This is how , for instance...the Morrison formation can be dated using careful methods and sediments.
I have described only one simple method of dating sediments, not from individual grains, but from minerals like bentonite that are found in sediments. Biotite can be dated. Illite can be dated, etc. etc. These minerals are found in sediments. Sediments can be and are accurately dated.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, when you have sediments between two layers of basalt (lavas) for instance, don't you think one can infer that those sediments were laid some time between both volcanic events?
The next question becomes: will StupidPantyDancer honor his "bet?" The answer is no, because Dave will always be able to say "I don't believe you." I can show him detailed reports ( they are available) outlining procedures, theory, method, whatever. I can give him chemical analyses. I can point to the dates and the samples. Dave will **always** be able to say " I don't believe you..or the people that did the dating, or that they "got it right." Dave will always have an "out" Why?
His ignorance and intellectual dishonesty are his shield. He will not detail methods by which his "hypothesis " can be negated...because he **needs** desperately, to always be able to say " I don't believe you." But he has a dilemma...by not detailing how his hypothesis can be shown "false" he has no scientific hypothesis.
His personal identity is tied to his faith. If that is in danger, he flees, using every possible trick he can muster because he cannot bear to be wrong. This is where it ties to his ego. This is where "baby" Dave emerges. Taunting, flinging fallacies, feigning childlike stupidity, "not seeing" data given to him, etc, etc.
Of course Dave will raise a host of objections. Of course he will insist that everyone else is wrong and he is "right." His ego/identity depends on it, so he will use any trick he can, no matter how dishonest.
The bottom line here is that Dave will not be shown wrong, ever, because he refuses to name any detailed means by which he CAN EVER be shown wrong. As we have seen, he will in extremes ( like with the age of stars) simply say "a miracle of God did that." While saying he never has to provide evidence of that miracle actually occuring. This is why Baumgardner uses a "miracle" to explain where the heat goes in his "flying hydroplates" theory.
This is why... whatever Dave has...it ain't science.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
One day Dave uses some RM dating to prove a young earth. The day after, he argues that RM dating is flawed. Then he argues that one can’t safely date sediments. (So is the flawed RM dating still a problem for him?) He seems to ignore the dating of volcanic layers (remember my Atlantic basalts Dave?).
Dave, at least try to remain coherent with your bullshits.
Dave is not only a liar, he's been implicated in a scam.
See, I already know what church DDTTD attends. It ain't no lil' fundy haven of the faithful.
What "scam" would that be, Crabby? You know what church I attend? So what Sunday shall I look for you? Are you going to post a picture so I can recognize you?
Jupiter-- what is your question? I didn't mean to avoid you.
Quote
Oh and oddly enough, he already has an endorsement from "Answers in Genesis" ...looks like I DID hit it on the head two months back or whatever it was.
Where do you see that? I'm glad ... I just was not aware that we have an endorsement from them. I have personally never spoken to anyone at AIG except a customer service lady when I was ordering. Also, how do you equate charging for stuff at K4T with AFD getting paid from K4T? Is this Evo-logic? Like there are different colored rock layers ... therefore the layers took millions of years to get deposited? (even though we cannot really date any of them absolutely as we have now seen) Again, I have never been paid by K4T, but I have donated large amounts and continue to do so. My plans are to NEVER take a salary from K4T even if I were to take a full time position with them. I make my money the old fashioned way ... I work for it. You know ... selling products and services that real customers want to buy. How do you make YOUR money, Deadman? Crabby? Anyone else? Any Government handouts out there?
Bing ... you hit on one of my favorite topics ... the Roman Catholic Church. The answer to your question is that I think the RCC began losing their way when Constantine legalized Christianity. Since that time, the Catholic Church hierarchy became very corrupt, although there continued to be a great many members and some leaders of the church who were true Christians. There are many Catholics who I admire -- Martin Luther being one of them. The same situation is true today. While the hierarchy is much less corrupt than they were in medieval times, the official church doctrine is in many ways very far from the teachings of Christ, especially touching on things like the mass, adoration of Mary, authority of church tradition over Biblical authority, purgatory, etc. However, individual Catholic people are just like anyone else in that they can read the Bible for themselves and know the truth about Christ and his teachings. So I'm sure there are many who have done this and are genuine Christians. Anyone could look at some Baptist or Methodist or whatever organization and make the accusation that "those people aren't genuine Christians." Well, true ... some are not. But many are. I cannot see a person's heart. Only God can do that.
The only valid definitions we have for a Christian in the first place necessarily comes from the 4 gospels and the apostolic writings. You have to find out what Christ taught, then follow it if you want to be called a Christian. And I suppose that the degree to which you follow those teachings corresponds to the degree of genuineness of your Christianity. Jesus said many things.
And I for one am not a perfect follower although this is my goal.
OK DDTTD, Tri City Baptist Church, Independance MO. www.tri-city.org
A wonderful lil' haven of fundamentalism. How's Herbster doing these days DDTTD? Are you still his taxi driver of choice?
Remember when I compared Jim Bakker and Bob Bakker? No?
Guess who is a huckster and who is a scientist? Guess which one you and yours resemble?
Here's my pic Dave,
I hope you don't mind if I drop in unannounced, I'm sure you'll understand considering what a celebrity you are.
Gov't Handouts DDTTD? Geez I wish I could afford to buy the influence you and your compatriots do.
Now we get to the Roman Catholic Church. Dang DDTTD a couple of months ago you were crowing about how Constantine making Christianity the state religion was the breakthrough point for Christianity, NOW it's the point where Christianity starts it's decline.
Try to apologise for that dichotomy and explain how the target has shifted.
We also have to put up with DDTTD making an analogy between paleosols and wrecks and how to explain them. Do we NEED another reason to doubt why DDTTD never got a seat in a fighter?
I don't. You have to ask yourself how many pilots DDTTD trained are flying over YOUR house at any particular time to be scared.
I can't believe the moderators here haven't forced DDTTD to DEFEND HIS THESIS but I also said a long time ago DDTTD would have to display an amazing degree of insanity to achieve his goal. Bravo Steve and others.
Also, I will not stand up in front of my church and make announcements because my Pastor would not allow it ... he would not allow you either, so I will simply agree to post my most humble apologies here on the forum if I am wrong. I also don't expect you to leave the forum if you are wrong. You can simply post a humble apology. Maybe buy me a drink. Maybe shake my hand. Now ... let's see if you can do it.
Herbster won't allow it DDTTD?
Steaming heaps of road apples.
Who do we need to get a dispensation from to allow you to stand up in front of your congregation and admit you're wrong DDTTD?
I don't see the position of taxi driver associated with this church.
does dave do this under the table?
shame on you Dave! I bet you don't even put the income from that on your tax return.
makes me wonder what else dave does for the clergy "under the table"...
ya know since Ron White is on staff there (check the page, and you'll see his name), you'd think the first thing he would have pointed out to our little Davey is:
Deadman-- You'd better get cracking on your deal you made. I made it less painful on you if you lose. Did I hear you say you want to meet me in a bar? Think you can get me to dance on the tables or some such thing? Come on then. Why don't you come with Crabby? We'll go to church ... then the bar.
I offered to come to your church, sans anyone else, yet you've done nothing but avoid me or make completely unreasonable demands to meet you.
I haven't been in a bar in years but I'd be happy to change that in your case.
Do we have to get Herbsters permission to call you a moron, liar, pussy and willfully ignorant in your church?
Dating sedimentary rocks (This is from one of the two major reference works on radiometric dating). SHRIMP Uranium-Lead Dating of Diagenetic Xenotime in Siliciclastic Sedimentary Rocks SHRIMP U/Pb geochronology of authigenic xenotime and its potential for dating sedimentary basins New dating technique with sand grains On the evaluation of glauconite and illite for dating sedimentary rocks by the potassium-argon method The potential for U-Pb Dating of Coprolites, Hartford Basin, Connecticut Fission-track dating of volcanically derived sedimentary rocks Moron. Cha-ching!!!!
Nice links Jon. They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon. Let me say this really slow, Jon ...
S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N ... However, the Creation Date of these grains has NOTHING to do with the Deposition Date of these layers.
Oh, Davie, Davie, Davie, Davie. You are such a moron. You didn't even read the freakin' titles!!!! And, Lord knows, you didn't actually read the links, especially the first one; all the links refute your claim. Maybe a few BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS with W I D E S P A C I N G will succeed in penetrating the incredible thickness of your skull.
No, Davie, they do not show how to date grains of igneous origin. I told you already, several times, they don't do that (at least, they don't do that to date the sedimentary rock; they may do it for other reasons). If you would stop trying to pretend you have even some vague idea of how dating works, and pay attention to what I and others write, you might actualy learn somthing.
AS I said, they show how to date "WATER LAID" SEDIMENTARY ROCKS. They did this, NOT BY DATING THE IGNEOUS-ORIGIN GRAINS IN THE ROCKS, but rather by D A T I N G P A R T S O F T H E R O C K S T H A T F O R M E D O R H O M O G E N I Z E D W H E N T H E R O C K S L I T H I F I E D. (I know "lithified" is an awfully big word for one as stupid as you, so I'll explain that it means "changed from loose sediments into solid rock"; that is, when the layer of sediment became a sedimentary rock). Mostly they dated things in the "cement" that formed between the igneous-origin grains and held the rock togehter as a rock. In some cases they dated xenotime that grew on the outside of igneous-origin zircons when the sedimentary rock lithified such as in the second and third links. And I haven't completely figured out what they did in the second-to-last link, but it appears to be dating whale poop, so I threw it in for grins.
Davie-pootles, we know that the creation date of those grains has nothing to do with when the sediment was laid down (except that the grains were created before the sediment was laid down). We have stated many times that the creation date of those grains has nothing to do with when the sediment was laid down. You keep claiming that the direct radiometric dating of sedimentary rocks involves finding the creation date of the grains of the rock. D I R E C T R A D I O M E T R I C D A T I N G O F S E D I M E N T A R Y R O C K S D O E S N O T I N V O L V E D A T I N G T H E G R A I N S T H A T M A K E U P T H E R O C K. Direct radiometric dating of rocks does involve dating structures that formed or homogenized when the rock lithified and the date of these structures is the date of the sedimentary rock layer.
did anybody ever answer Dave's incredibly important question as to why many of us refer to the noachian flood fairytale as "the flud" or fludde, or what have you?
Which of those publications argue that the Earth is young because of radiohalos? Gentry has several mainstream publications, that's well known, but I am not aware of any that argue for a young Earth.
I got held up today so I'll be here for another hour or so. Lucky you! Anyhoo, I wasn't claiming that his scientific publications were specifically advocating for a young Earth, but I do remember that his heterodox data and observations did get published, and that the geologists at the time considered his work a more serious challenge because of it. If memory serves, those publications were pinpointed to the mid-to-late 70's, so my best guess is:
Quote
Gentry, Robert V. 1974. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Science 184, pp. 64-66.
Gentry, Robert V. 1984. Radiohalos in a Radiochronological and Cosmological Perspective. Proceedings of the Sixty Third Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Volume 1. Part 3. pp. 38-65.
Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1974. "Spectacle" Array of 210Po Halo Radiocentres in Biotite: A Nuclear Geophysical Enigma. Nature 252, p. 564.
Gentry, Robert V. et al.. 1976. Radiohalos in Coalified Wood: New Evidence Relating to the Time of Uranium Introduction and Coalification. Science 194, pp. 315-318.
The second source may not have been peer reviewed, but that leaves three good candidates.
So, IOW, he did not argue that the Earth is young in those publications. Only in creationist tracts did he argue thus.
This testimony is very old, of course, and since then evos claim to have made substantial progress in explaining this "tiny mystery", but even in 1981 a leading geologist could not refute Gentry's work.
Thank You, Jon (excellent show, allow me to buy you a beer)
And now for a few dates that substantiate and correlate to the dating given. Some Dating Citations Relating to the Morrison/Brushy Basin
Bazard, David R. and Robert F. Butler (1994) Paleomagnetism of the Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation: Implications for Jurassic apparent polar wander. Journal Of Geophysical Research, V. 99, No. B4, p. 6695–6710. A total of 200 samples were collected from 25 sedimentary horizons at Norwood Hill in southwest Colorado. At Montezuma Creek in southeast Utah, 184 samples were collected from 26 sites. Magnetic dating is at 147 Ma (Tithonian) to 160 Ma
Bilbey, SA (1992) Stratigraphy and sedimentary petrology of the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous rocks at Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaw Quarry with a comparison to the Dinosaur National Monument Quarry, Utah [PhD thesis] Salt Lake City Umv Utah. (see K-Ar biotite dates below)
Chronic, 1990. Roadside Geology of Utah. Mountain Press Publishing. p. 90. "Layers of volcanic ash just above the Morrison formation radiometrically dated (K-Ar) to 147 Ma"
J. Pálfy, P.L. Smith, and J.K. Mortensen (2000) A U-Pb and 40Ar/39Ar time scale for the Jurassic. Can. J. Earth Sci./Rev. can. sci. Terre 37(6): 923-944 Dates on the Morrison ranging from 148-156 Ma
Kowallis, Bart J. and Julia S. Heaton (1987) Fission-track dating of bentonites and bentonitic mudstones from the Morrison Formation in central Utah. Geology: Vol. 15, No. 12, pp. 1138-1142. "Fission-track ages from a section through the Morrison Formation in central Utah show that most of the Morrison Formation is Late Jurassic or perhaps earliest Cretaceous, ranging in age from 130 to 157 Ma." (Fission Track has large error margins)
Kowallis, B J , J S Heaton, and K Braghurst (1986) Fission-track dating of volcanically derived sedimentary rocks Geology, 14, 19 22.
Kowallis, B J , E H Christiansen, and A L Demo (1991) Age of the Brushy Basin Member of The Morrison Formation, Colorado Plateau, western USA Cretaceous Res , 12, 483-493 152.9 ± 1.2 Ma Ar-Ar date
Kowallis, Bart J., Eric H. Christiansen, Alan L. Deino, Fred Peterson, Christine E. Turner, Michael J. Kunk and John D. Obradovitch (1998) Modern Geology, 1998, Vol. 22, pp. 235-260 "The Brushy Basin Member, at the top of the formation, gives single-crystal, laser-fusion and step-heating, plateau- Ar/ Ar ages on sanidine that range systematically between 148.1 ±0.5 at the top of the member to 150.3±0.3Ma near the bottom. The Tidwell Member, at the base of the Morrison Formation, contains one ash bed about 3 m above the J-5 unconformity thai occurs in al least two widely separated sections. This ash has been dated by Ar/ Ar dating of sanidine and gives ages of 154.75 ±0.54 Ma (Deino NTM sample, laser-fusion), 154.82±0.58Ma (Deino RAIN sample, laser-fusion), 154.87±0.52 (Kunk NTM sample, plateau), and 154.8±1.4Ma (Obradovich NTM sample, laser-fusion). The Morrison Formation, therefore, ranges in age from about 148 to 155Ma "
Lee, M J and D G Brookms (1978) Rubidium-Strontium minimum ages of sedimentation, uranium mineralization, and provenance, Morrison Formation (Upper Jurassic), Grants Mineral Belt, New Mexico Amet Assoc Petr Geol Bull, 62, 1673 1683 (148±9Ma Clay Rb-Sr)
Steiner, M.B., S.G. Lucas, and E.M. Shoemaker (1994) Correlation and age of the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation from magnetostratigraphic analysis. In Caputo, M.V., J.A.Peterson, and K.J. Franczyk (Eds.) Mesozoic Systems of the Rocky Mountain Region, USA. Denver: Rocky Mountain Section SEPM, 315-330. "the magnetic reversal correlates with the Kimmeridgian reversal seen in sea-floor data"
Trujillo, Kelli C. , Kevin R. Chamberlain and Ariel Strickland (2006) Oxfordian U/PB Ages from SHRIMP Analysis for the Upper Jurassic Morisson Formation of Southeastern Wyoming With Implications for Biostratigraphic Correlations. Paper Presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of The Geological Society of America, Rocky Mountain Section. Gunnison Co. 17-19 May 2006 "U/Pb SHRIMP analyses yielded a weighted mean 206Pb/238U date of 156.3 +/- 2 Ma" *********************************************
Age ± Error (1a) Material Method Location & Member (Brushy Basin unless noted)
Lee and Brookins. 1978 148±9Ma Clay Rb-Sr New Mexico Bilbey. 1992 147.2±1.0Ma Biotite K-Ar Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry Bilbey, 1992 146.8±1.0Ma Biotite K-Ar Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry Kowallis and others, 1986 144±8Ma Zircon Fission Track Notom, Utah Kowallis and Heaton, 1987 142-195±9Ma Zircon Fission Track Notom, Utah Kowallis and Heaton, 1987 157 ±7 Ma Zircon Fission Track Notom. Utah (Tidwell Member) Kowallis and Heaton, 1987 145±13Ma Apatite Fission Track Notom, Utah Kowallis and others, 1991 147.6 ± 0.8 Ma Plagioclase Ar-Ar laser-fusion Montezuma Creek Kowallis and others, 1991 147.0±0.6Ma Plagioclase Ar-Ar laser-fusion Montezuma Creek Kowallis and others, 1991 145.2 ±1.2 Ma Plagioclase Ar-Ar laser-fusion Montezuma Creek Kowallis and others. 1991 147.8±O.6Ma Plagioclase Ar-Ar laser-fusion Montezuma Creek Kowallis and others, 1991 149.4±0.7Ma Plagioclase Ar-Ar laser-fusion Montezuma Creek Kowallis and others, 1991 152.9± 1.2Ma Plagioclase Ar-Ar laser-fusion Dinosaur Natl. Mon.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
First of all, thanks, Deadman for clarifying the terms "sand" and "silt" ... quite interesting. Let me also clarify a point for people like Jeannot who think I like RM dating one minute, then I don't like it the next. You have misunderstood. I have many questions about RM dating, true. But for the present discussion of "RM Dating of Grand Staircase Layers" I am content to give you the benefit of the doubt that small particles of igneous material can be dated radiometrically. This does not mean "Dave agrees that RM Dating is valid". It simply means that I am willing to table that controversy for the moment. Do you see, Jeannot?
Now, let's start our analysis ...
First, the volcano erupting 100 myo is a wonderful HYPOTHETICAL example. The problem with it and the reason it won't work for fulfilling Deadman's challenge to me is that it is HYPOTHETICAL. It is true that when ash falls onto the ground, it is a sediment. And it is true that rain will come and wash the ash away and re-deposit it somewhere. Where? And how? Well, just like any other loose sediment, it will get washed into small creeks which feed larger creeks which feed rivers which flow into oceans. Some of the ash, then will get deposited in creek bottoms, river botoms and river deltas. Now ... what does this hypothetical example have to do with the layers of the Grand Staircase? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING as far as I can tell. What do we have in the Grand Staircase? We have MASSIVE WATER-LAID DEPOSITS over huge areas of N. America. These are not small creek and river deposits. They can only be deposits from large bodies of water--shallow seas as Long Agers say, or from the Global Flood of Noah--what I say. But they most certainly are not deposits made by Deadman's Hypothetical Volcano Scenario. Some of them contain volcanic material, true. BUT! Is any layer composed entirely of ash that fell while the volcano was erupting thus telling us the date of eruption? NO! It is either (a) mixed with other sediments and deposited by water LATER (how much later?) or it (b) intruded directly into the layers as the volcano erupted. Now from the picture and what Deadman says about trying to date the Morrision formation (just above Carmel and below Dakota in the picture-unlabeled), it looks to me like some volcanic material intruded into the Morrison layer ... case (b). If this is true, think what that means. It means that ALL of the layers WERE ALREADY IN PLACE when that volcano erupted. The volcano erupted right through ALL the layers and you can see obvious intrusions of magma into several of the layers. Now if (a) is the case, then we have some ash in a WATER-LAID sediment. What does this mean? Well it means that a volcano somewhere erupted and some ash from it got mixed with other sediments, then deposited in what we now call the Morrision formation. It DOES NOT mean that the RM date of the ash gives you the Deposition Date of the Morrison layer.
Do you see? The question of "Can we RM date such and such igneous material reliably?" and "If yes, does this mean we can determine the Date of Depostion of a layer?" are two separate questions. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt on the first question for the moment, but I still fail to see how the answer to the second is answered with Deadman's latest information.
Also, this sentence from Deadman is troubling ... "This is why geologists are careful to associate dated sedimentary materials with known events." I take this to mean that they say "The volcanic material in the Morrison Formation came from this volcano over here that erupted "X" mya." OK on the "X" mya for the moment. I'll give you that for now. But how do they make this association? And even if the association is reasonable, how do they know how much time elapsed and what events took place in between the volcano erupting and the ash getting mixed, eroded, carried away and redposited? You see ... the devil is in the details and I'm just not seeing how you connect all these dots and come away with "Therefore the Morrison Formation is "X" myo."
Here is Deadman's info again for reference ...
Quote
Unfortunately, Dave says above...sand grains. "Sand" is a generalized term for granulized rock of many types, generally silicates like quartz and feldspar...which has a size range from 0.0625 to 2 millimeters. Stuff smaller than that is "silt"( 0.0625 mm down to 0.004 mm ). No one dates an individual grain of "sand" when dating sediments. No one. "Sand" can also cotain minerals like magnetite , chlorite , glauconite or gypsum, olivine or basalt, etc. etc.
His implication is that the dates cannot then be trusted, because you don't know how old the grains of formerly igneous material are. This is why geologists don't use single grains. This is why geologists are careful to associate dated sedimentary materials with known events.
Yes, sedimentary rocks are quite often composed of ...materials originally igneous. Which can be and is...accurately dated.
Dave is stupid, so I'll tell him in detail why this is important, using small words so he can understand. I will assume Stupid knows the meaning of some words..like "igneous"
Imagine a volcano like Mt. Saint Helens, or Pinatubo in the Phillipines. Except it is 100 million years ago. One day it belches forth a great quantity of hot air/gas, like Dave. In that gas is ash. The ash spreads out over the land, forming ...ash layers. This is igneous, yes. Dave says it can be dated.
The ash mixes with water and other material near the volcano and forms a mud. The mud forms layers. IT is a sediment. Apparently Dave thinks this is somehow a "fake" sediment because it has igneous material.
Anyway, this layer can be dated, too. Why do we know such dates are accurate? I will give Stupid an easy example. Complicated ones will hurt his tiny brain.
The first task in the evidentiary order is to date the volcanic event that produced the igneous material. Dave already says we can do this. We date "pure" igneous layers.
Now we go to the sediments containing materials like bentonite,(Na,Ca)0.33(Al,Mg)2Si4O10(OH)2·(H2O)n. which is igneous in origin, found in igneous ash layers ....and sediments associated with the dated igneous event.
We take samples, knowing that radiometric dating is a statistical process. We separate out targeted minerals ...like bentonite. We date the samples. We find them to be the same date (statistically) as the "pure" igneous ash layers. We can also ( if we wish) analyze the materials chemically to determine if it has the same signature as the igneous layers. (volcanic events produce unique ratios of the constituents of the elemental materials) We have dated the sediment.
Dating sediments is tricky, yes. But when properly done, it is tied to a known volcanic event which in turn dates the sediments. This is how , for instance...the Morrison formation can be dated using careful methods and sediments.
I have described only one simple method of dating sediments, not from individual grains, but from minerals like bentonite that are found in sediments. Biotite can be dated. Illite can be dated, etc. etc. These minerals are found in sediments. Sediments can be and are accurately dated.
Jeannot...
Quote
Dave, when you have sediments between two layers of basalt (lavas) for instance, don't you think one can infer that those sediments were laid some time between both volcanic events? Duh.
It depends on a lot of things. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Give me very specific example.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If I was dancing on a table it was because we needed rain and dang it the waitress pinched me first so it was quid pro quo!
Yeah Crabby, waitresses find me ireeseestable as well.
Pity I'm across the Pacific, you guys could do with some serious mischief.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
The thick upper part of the Brushy Basin Member consists largely of mudstone, although sandstone beds occur locally, especially at or near the top. The mudstone beds tend to be grayish green with red beds locally significant near the top or throughout the unit on the west side of the Colorado Plateau. The finer-grained fraction consists largely of swelling or smectitic clays derived from the alteration of volcanic ash that was carried onto the Colorado Plateau region by winds from a continental margin volcanic arc several hundred kilometers west and southwest of the Plateau region. This part of the formation contains numerous altered volcanic ash beds. The layer is over 100 meters thick across wide portions of the Rocky Mountain and Colorado Plateau regions, and altered volcanic ash in the form of smectitic clay is its dominant component. Sedimentary bedforms indicate airfall tephra settled into water and, in some cases, formed into an ash-water suspension that flowed with considerable energy before coming to rest.... Chemical and isotopic composition of the Brushy Basin Member appear to match granitic plutons in the Sierra Nevada Batholith, as well as rocks of the Independence dike swarm in the eastern Sierra and Mojave region. The Morrison Formation is incompatible with the flood model in several ways. First of all, there is abundant evidence that the Morrison deposits are continental, lake and stream deposits, rather than open marine deposits. Some of the thin limestone beds contain abundant charophyte fossils, a type of algae that lives only in fresh-water lakes. In the east-central part of the Colorado Plateau, the upper part of the Brushy Basin Member was deposited in a large saline alkaline lake (Lake T'oo'dichi' that graded laterally into mudflat, fluvial, and overbank floodplain environments. Freshwater lake deposits occur locally in this interval to the north and east of the saline, alkaline lake deposits and are represented by mudstone and limestone beds containing charophytes, ostracodes, scarce conchostracans, and gastropods. The Morrison preserves well-developed paleosols, complete with: abundant carbonate nodules , "pseudo-microkarst" and microkarst features with vadose and internal sediment fills; root traces, columnar and stacked rhizoconcretions, and Microcodium; desiccation, horizontal, and septarian cracks; brecciation and grainification; and rare "blackened pebbles" . Some sections also contain bedded gypsum. Lastly, the Morrison is unconformable with the strata above and below it
What I want to know is what you disagree with and why. Be specific. Tell me why you disagree, and support your claims.
I've given up on getting you to show how you would falsify your hypothesis, since you DONT have the intellectual honesty needed to do so. This is to remind you that your "hypothesis" simply isn't science.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
EXCELLENT!!! I SEE THAT I'VE KILLED THIS ERRONEOUS NOTION ONCE AND FOR ALL. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
Here below, we have JonF admitting that you cannot date water-laid sedimentary rocks by dating the igneous grains. Whew! That was tiring!
But now he's on a new track ... (Deadman? Are you with him on this new track?)
DATING THE "CEMENT" THAT BINDS THE GRAINS TOGETHER
OK. Fair enough. I'll have a look at THAT now. What will we discover?
(May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
JonF...
Quote
D I R E C T R A D I O M E T R I C
D A T I N G O F S E D I M E N T A R Y R O C K S D O E S N O T I N V O
L V E D A T I N G T H E G R A I N S T H A T M A K E U P T H E R O
C K. Direct radiometric dating of rocks does involve dating structures that
formed or homogenized when the rock lithified and the date of these structures is
the date of the sedimentary rock layer.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now you misconstrue entirely what Jon HAS said. He just gave you examples that didn't involve dating the actual igneous material. This still means that igneous materials found in sediment and tied to a specified event can be dated accurately. Re-read what he said, stupid.
Now, back to MY example of igneous materials found in sediments that CAN be tied to a date range drawn from distant igneous formations.
I'm going to show you a map first.
The large map shows an "arc" of volcanics along the west coast, where california would be later. This is the arc basin/subduction zone where there would be lots of volcanic activity. The map is a bit too "young" but it'll do. You can also see the saline lake I just spoke of.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Now, Dave,i'd like you to refer back to my earlier post, just above. I asked you what you thought was wrong , specifically with the scenario and data it contains. You didn't answer that, choosing instead to congratulate yourself, stupidly.
Take a look at the first statement in bold.:
Quote
Chemical and isotopic composition of the Brushy Basin Member appear to match granitic plutons in the Sierra Nevada Batholith, as well as rocks of the Independence dike swarm in the eastern Sierra and Mojave region.
Guess who wrote that, SweetcheeksDave?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
"The gigantic Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation stands as mute testimony of this violence. Three observations, including super-cracks, super-deposits, and widespread soft-sediment deformation, suggest a violent rending of fissure vents in the Sierra region that was the source for the Brushy Basin ash." by Steven A. Austin and William A. Hoesch
I don't like you, AirHead. I don't hate you, because that would mean that you were somehow important enough to hate. You're not. You're just a lying a-hole.
Now get up on the table and dance for Daddy.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Geology & Chemical Analyses Aubrey, W.M., 1992, New interpretations of the stratigraphy and sedimentology of the uppermost Jurassic to lowermost Upper Cretaceous strata in the San Juan Basin of Northwestern New Mexico: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1808-J, 17 p. ----- Ducea, M., 2001, The California arc: thick granitic batholiths, eclogitic residues, lithospheric-scale thrusting, and magmatic flare-ups: GSA Today, v. 11, no. 11, pp. 4-10. ----- Dunne, G. C., Garvey, T. P., Osborne, M., Schneidereit, D., Fritsche, A. E., and Walker, J. D., 1998, Geology of the Inyo Mountains Volcanic Complex: implications for Jurassic paleogeography of the Sierran magmatic arc in eastern California: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 110, no. 11, pp. 1376-1397. ----- Carl, B. S., and Glazner, A. F., 2002, Extent and significance of the Independence dike swarm, eastern California, in Glazner, A. F., Walker, J. D., & Bartley, J. M., eds., Geologic Evolution of the Mojave Desert and Southwestern Basin and Range: Boulder, Colo., Geological Society of America Memoir 195, pp. 117-130. ---- Carl and Glazner, p. 117. Schermer, E. R., and Busby, C., 1994, Jurassic magmatism in the central Mojave Desert: implications for arc peleogeography and preservation of continental volcanic sequences: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 106, pp. 767-790. ------ Christiansen, E.H., Kowallis, B.J., and Barton, M.D., 1994a, Temporal and spatial distribution of volcanic ash in Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of the Western Interior: An alternative record of Mesozoic magmatism; in, Caputo, M.V., Peterson, J.A., and Franczyk, K.J., (eds.), Mesozoic Systems of the Rocky Mountain region, USA: Rocky Mountain Section SEPM, Denver, Colorado, p. 73-94 ------ Currie, B.S., 1993, Sequence Stratigraphy of the Jurassic-Cretaceous Morrison and Cedar Mountain Formations, NE Utah-NW Colorado: Geological Society of America, Abstracts With Programs, v. 25, no. 5, p. 26-27. ------ Currie, B.S., 1994, "Back-bulge" to foredeep evolution of the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous Cordilleran foreland basin: Evidence from the Morrison and Cedar Mountain Formations, central-eastern Utah: Geological Society of America, Abstracts With Programs, v. 26: 6, p. 9. ------ Currie, B.S., 1997a, Sequence stratigraphy of nonmarine Jurassic-Cretaceous rocks, central Cordilleran foreland-basin system: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 109, no. 9, p. 1206-1222. ------ Currie, B.S., 1997b, Jurassic-Cretaceous evolution of the central Cordilleran foreland-basin system : Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, 239 p. ------ Currie, B.S., 1997, Jurassic-Cretaceous accommodation development in the Western Interior United States: Linking basin subsidence with oceanic plate subduction. Geological Society of America Abstracts With Programs, v. 29, no. 6, p. A-202. ------- Currie, B.S., 1998, Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous Morrison and Cedar Mountain Formations, NE Utah-NW Colorado: Relationships between nonmarine deposition and early Cordilleran foreland-basin development: Journal of Sedimentary Research, v. 68, no. 4., p. 632-652. ------- Currie, B.S., and DeCelles, P.G., 1996, Middle Jurassic-Eocene sediment accumulation in the Cordilleran foreland basin system: Reconciling stratigraphic and tectonic records of mountain building: Geological Society of America, Abstracts With Programs, v. 28, no. 7, p. A-251. -------
**note: I deleted about 2/3 of the citations here. If anyone wants them, give me a PM. I just thought it was overkill.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
aaah dave, for a spiritual man like you, you really seem obsessed with dough...
davesy, once and for all: Your inability to understand what people are saying to you does not constitute victory. Not in the real world you keep shying away from, at least.
It has been explained to you in twelve different ways, how: Sediments can be dated INDIRECTLY (by "bracketing", something you disputed but never managed to disprove) And also DIRECTLY in some cases (using special methods involving events that are demonstratably contemporary with the sediment's forming. And all those HYPOTHETICAL examples you try to handwave away are not hypothetical at all, as both JonF and Deadman have shown (with links). The fact that you JUST figured it out (or should I say, were forced to admit?) doesn't pay off at the stand, dave. It's not our fault if you bet on a mule.
Now, about our Paleosol thing... remember that? You said that we always embarrass ourselves, trying to prove you wrong... OK then champ, let's raise the stakes a bit, now that you say you got the green to play. You claimed I could not do what you (say you) did: Quote Meert's response, and also show you where it answers to your engineer (you somehow seem to think copy/paste is a method only you are familliar with). You dared me to do so. Well, here's the double-dare: If I do it, you will of course be free to respond and refute those claims. BUT, you will have to address them in the same way everyone else here does: with ARGUMENTS and REASONING. You will provide arguments and evidence that, in your opinion, refute them. There will be NO EVADING ("whoops, I forgot to address point A, silly me"), NO DISTORTING ("how can you actually insist on (A), when I can easily refute (A'?"), NO HANDWAVING ("haha, Faid, if you think you have proved anything you are way wrong, oh well where were we with the FLUD?")
IF you fail to do so, If you resort to any dishonest tactic such as the ones above, you must admit beforehand (that is, NOW) that you will have lost this issue, because you were unable to participate in it in a reasonal and honest way.
You think you're up to the challenge? After all, I don't ask for much: A chance to embarrass myself in exchange for a truly honest debate... For someone carrying the Torch of Truth, like you, it should be a win-win situation!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
IF you fail to do so, If you resort to any dishonest tactic such as the ones above, you must admit beforehand (that is, NOW) that you will have lost this issue, because you were unable to participate in it in a reasonal and honest way.
You think you're up to the challenge? After all, I don't ask for much: A chance to embarrass myself in exchange for a truly honest debate... For someone carrying the Torch of Truth, like you, it should be a win-win situation!
Not a chance, Faid. Dave doesn't have nearly the intellectual honesty to comply with rules like that. Dave's entire argument vis ŕ vis old-earth geology is based on personal incredulity; he simply cannot believe that dating techniques that come up with dates older than ~6,000 years can possibly be correct.
And, it should be pointed out, Dave has managed to fill up another half dozen pages or so in the last couple of days with his posts, and others' detailed rebuttals of his posts, including vast quantities of supporting documentation, and yet he has failed even to discuss his own "hypothesis," let alone provide supporting evidence for it.
We really should get Steve to change the title of this thread to "AF Dave's OUTDATED and Pathetic Attempts to Refute Conventional Scientific Theories."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Faid ... I'm not interested in your money (or Eric's) ... sometimes I throw monetary bets out there though to see if someone is really serious with their challenge. I'll be glad to take up paleosols again soon ...
But right now I'm smack in the middle of a great debate on dating water-laid sedimentary layers which is of great interest to me.
JonF says you cannot date them by dating the igneous grains. Deadman has not given that up yet. JonF says you can date the "cement" binding the grains. And Deadman has pointed out that the Morrison Formation CAN be associated with certain granitic plutons.
So as you can see ... I am smack in the middle of sorting all this information and processing and anlayzing it. I DO read people's posts ... and I read the links IF the premise seems to be sound which the link purportedly supports.
And there ARE other things I do besides debate you guys, so no promises how soon I can get to your topic.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
JonF says you cannot date them by dating the igneous grains.
I'll repeat this: Learn to read, jerkoff. He gave you examples that were not dating any igneous materials. I know you're both stupid and dishonest, but Do try to at least pretend to be *sometimes*
This doesn't mean that igneous materials tied to specific events and laid down in lake sediments far away...cannot be dated accurately.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Aaah... I see. Fine then. As long as you realize that you cannot gloat about how you "answered" the paleosol issue in the meantime, because I will immediately call you out on it... I'm sure you understand.
Oh and btw: It seems you do not read posts, dave. You just browse absent-mindedly through them.
I did not offer a money bet. Just a chance to finally, for once, conduct an honest debate in this thread, with pre-agreed and plain rules to follow. Like I said, a win/win situation.
Hey, I'll be here.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Faid: Hah, you'll kill the chump on paleosols. They're all over the place in the Grand Staircase, with root traces, rhizoconcretions, and Microcodium, etc. etc. (not that root traces are needed for identifying/diagnosing paleosols.) He's just too stupid to know. In a bar, he'd be dancing on the table in his panties long ago. Except he'd run from that, too.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
But right now I'm smack in the middle of a great debate on dating water-laid sedimentary layers which is of great interest to me.
JonF says you cannot date them by dating the igneous grains. Deadman has not given that up yet. JonF says you can date the "cement" binding the grains. And Deadman has pointed out that the Morrison Formation CAN be associated with certain granitic plutons.
Dave, will you read the freaking posts? That's not what JonF said. It's not the only way to date sediments, but if you think the sum and substance of what Jon said is that you cannot date sedimentary rock by dating the igneous grains they're composed of, your reading comprehension is not up to the task of carrying on a debate on these topics.
And what I'd really like to know is what your point is. It's beyond dispute that sedimentary rock can, in fact, be dated, through one method or another (and often using multiple methods to confirm each other). Even if they couldn't, igneous rocks most certainly can be dated. Most of the time, those dates turn out to be in excess of 6,000 years old, which completely annihilates your young-earth creationist claims.
You really are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic of your claims, Dave.
And one more thing: mixed in with all the other questions you've never answered is this very simple, easy-to-find one: how long does it take a photon to get from the core of the sun, where it is produced in nucleosynthesis, to the photosphere of the sun, where it can travel unimpeded to the earth?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And one more thing: mixed in with all the other questions you've never answered is this very simple, easy-to-find one: how long does it take a photon to get from the core of the sun, where it is produced in nucleosynthesis, to the photosphere of the sun, where it can travel unimpeded to the earth?
Oooo, nice one. I no longer remember how to calculate that, but I remember what the answer is.
Oooo, nice one. I no longer remember how to calculate that, but I remember what the answer is.
Supposedly it's difficult to calculate to an exact value (especially for a specific photon), because there are a lot of variables involved (and, the sun is a mildly variable star), but you can estimate a minimum value, and that minimum value kills Dave's guess about how old the sun is. Of course, any value above, say, 7,000 years would kill his guess.
One of the bad things about guessing that the earth is 6,000 years old is that, in order not to be completely laughable, your error bars need to be pretty narrow, I'd say within 600 years. If you can't estimate an age that recent within 10%, what kind of theory are you working with?
As it happens, based on what Dave's said in the past, his error bars are more like 150%
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, when you have sediments between two layers of basalt (lavas) for instance, don't you think one can infer that those sediments were laid some time between both volcanic events? Duh.
It depends on a lot of things. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Give me very specific example.
"maybe yes maybe no..." So you don't have the answer, an expert in geology like you? Disappointing.
I'm pretty sure you'd find a specific example in the references you've been given, if you care to read them.
But since you apparently can't read...
This is another way to date a sediment in relation to a granitic intrusion. The green sediment are older than the granite. Understood?
Supposedly it's difficult to calculate to an exact value (especially for a specific photon), because there are a lot of variables involved (and, the sun is a mildly variable star), but you can estimate a minimum value, and that minimum value kills Dave's guess about how old the sun is. Of course, any value above, say, 7,000 years would kill his guess.
I did it in an undergrad physics class. There were several approximations made, the result was actually off by an order of magnitude according to Zelik & Gregory. But it was still shocking.
Yet another question, Dave, you've never found the time to answer: how would you date the layers in the Grand Staircase? You've told us the methods you wouldn't use; how about the methods you would use? Would you just look it up in your Bible and count up the "begats," or would this project actually require some field work?
Please try to be specific.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
Since we're back to the KBS Tuff for a second, might I once again call "bullshit" on Dave's ridiculous claim that "paleos kept the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my". If we were to envision an authoritative bunch of paleo-fascists busting in on geologists with their obscene evolutionary demands, who would be at their helm? Probably Richard Leakey himself, right? He'd be the one with a date invested in his KNM-ER 406/407 hominid fossils, no?
But, after investing in the new-fangled Ar-Ar dating of Fitch and Miller, who sold him on it as "intrinsically more elegant than conventional K-Ar dating" and told him the (more expensive) results would be "intcontrovertible", Leakey was perhaps the most staunch supporter of the Fitch and Miller dates (2.61 my, later revised to 2.42 for technical reasons).
We can further conjecture that, if Leakey had any interest at all in the dating of KNM-ER, he wanted it to be OLD, and 2.6 my would make it by far the oldest Homo fossil. As Lewin puts it, "In paleoanthropology in general, and perhaps in the Leakey tradition in particular, such a discovery was extremely important."
So, at the 1973 Nairobi conference, when 41 different age determinations (samples) of the KBS Tuff were presented, varying from 0.91 my to 223 my, 7 of which gave the 2.6 value, and 8 of which gave the 1.9 my value, Leakey remained steadfast in his public support of Fitch and Miller's 2.6. In fact, he only abandoned it in the late 1970s, when further work in the controversy made it VERY unlikely to be accurate.
In other words, your caricature of Leakey and his ilk storming in and demanding 1.87 my is a joke. Quite the opposite occurred -- 1.87 was settled upon despite the support (and probable wishes) of the paleo gastapo.
Dave, just to point out your inability to comprehend standard written English, let me point something out here. You say:
Quote
Here below, we have JonF admitting that you cannot date water-laid sedimentary rocks by dating the igneous grains.
Here we have what JonF actually said:
Quote
DIRECT RADIOMETRIC DATING OF SEDIMENTARY ROCKS DOES NOT INVOLVE DATING THE GRAINS THAT MAKE UP THE ROCK. Direct radiometric dating of rocks does involve dating structures that formed or homogenized when the rock lithified and the date of these structures is the date of the sedimentary rock layer.
Do you understand that saying dating sedimentary rocks "does not involve dating the grains that make up the rock" is not the same thing as saying "you cannot date water-laid sedimentary rocks by dating the igneous grains"?
And what conceivable point are you making here, Dave? It is beyond cavil that sedimentary rocks can be dated, and the vast majority of those dates exceed the maximum date your young-earth creationism can accommodate. That pretty much invalidates your "hypothesis," Dave, no matter how you want to spin it.
And just so you know how difficult salvaging your "hypothesis" will be: you have to prove that every single rock on the planet is less than 6,000 years old. Along with every other object on the planet.
Finding just one object, anywhere, that dates to more than 6,000 years is enough to sink your hypothesis. Let me know when you've found a way around this little conundrum.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Is it my imagination, or is Dave exhibiting more and more disconnect from reality as we go on?
where will it end, I wonder?
Will he overdo his corporal mortifications?
Will his family finally check him into the looney bin?
any other projections?
Hard to say if he's gotten worse, he was pretty disconnected when he showed up. For my money, I don't think anything will happen. Whether or not Dave understands modern science w/r/t these topics in geology, nuclear physics, biology, astrophysics, etc, doesn't affect his life one way or the other. Combine that with the ego rewards he gets from his religious activities, and my bet is that his beliefs will never change.
Is it my imagination, or is Dave exhibiting more and more disconnect from reality as we go on?
I think what Dave's trying to do here is quibble about the mote in standard geology's eye while trying to divert attention from the beam in creationist geology's eye.
He's making a big fuss over whether you can date sedimentary rock absolutely by using RM on igneous grains embedded in the sedimentary matrix, rather than RM dating the matrix itself, while the real problem is that there's overwhelming evidence of all sorts of things laying around that are much, much more than 6,000 years old.
Sure, there are controversies over the dates assigned to this or that fossil, or this or that layer of sediment in a gorge somewhere. Dave's trying to focus everyone's attention on these minor disputes in hopes that they'll forget about the fact that his "hypothesis" underestimates the age of the earth by almost 6 orders of magnitude. And he's no closer to addressing that tremendous discrepancy now than he was back in May when I first pointed it out to him.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Is it my imagination, or is Dave exhibiting more and more disconnect from reality as we go on?
where will it end, I wonder?
Will he overdo his corporal mortifications?
Will his family finally check him into the looney bin?
any other projections?
As I was working on one of my current projects, I ran across these science content standards from (*drum roll*) Tah-Dah!! Georgia! A *well-known* state for rigorous scientific inquiry. However, these standards are for students in grades 9 - 12 (15 - 18 year olds). This is the stuff Dave can't do:
SCSh1. Students will identify and investigate problems scientifically. a. Suggest reasonable hypotheses for identified problems. b. Develop procedures for solving scientific problems. c. Collect, organize and record appropriate data. d. Graphically compare and analyze data points and/or summary statistics. e. Develop reasonable conclusions based on data collected. f. Evaluate whether conclusions are reasonable by reviewing the process and checking against other available information.
Instead, when the rest of us here are thinking in terms of scientific inquiry and the scientific method, this method is what Dave has been using:
The Scientific Method
o Take as a given fact all those parts of the Bible we tell you to. o Use not the null hypothesis; make no attempt to disprove any creationist hypothesis; report not any negative findings. o Quote as authoritative anything a fellow creationist writes, regardless of his qualifications or subsequent discrediting of his methods or results. o Misquote or quote out of context famous "evolutionists" so that they appear to admit evolution isn't real. o Continue to repeat your old “evidence,” long after you’ve been publicly shown to have the facts dead wrong. Your new marks—oops, faithful followers—won’t know that you were proven wrong and that you’re now lying. o Don't waste your time with actual laboratory or field experiments. All the answers are in the Bible.
Dave has always been disconnected from reality. He's just more open about it now. (Is this the part where I say "Ka-ching!" ??)
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
aaah dave, for a spiritual man like you, you really seem obsessed with dough...
davesy, once and for all: Your inability to understand what people are saying to you does not constitute victory. Not in the real world you keep shying away from, at least.
It has been explained to you in twelve different ways, how: Sediments can be dated INDIRECTLY (by "bracketing", something you disputed but never managed to disprove) And also DIRECTLY in some cases (using special methods involving events that are demonstratably contemporary with the sediment's forming. And all those HYPOTHETICAL examples you try to handwave away are not hypothetical at all, as both JonF and Deadman have shown (with links). The fact that you JUST figured it out (or should I say, were forced to admit?) doesn't pay off at the stand, dave. It's not our fault if you bet on a mule.
Now, about our Paleosol thing... remember that? You said that we always embarrass ourselves, trying to prove you wrong... OK then champ, let's raise the stakes a bit, now that you say you got the green to play. You claimed I could not do what you (say you) did: Quote Meert's response, and also show you where it answers to your engineer (you somehow seem to think copy/paste is a method only you are familliar with). You dared me to do so. Well, here's the double-dare: If I do it, you will of course be free to respond and refute those claims. BUT, you will have to address them in the same way everyone else here does: with ARGUMENTS and REASONING. You will provide arguments and evidence that, in your opinion, refute them. There will be NO EVADING ("whoops, I forgot to address point A, silly me"), NO DISTORTING ("how can you actually insist on (A), when I can easily refute (A'?"), NO HANDWAVING ("haha, Faid, if you think you have proved anything you are way wrong, oh well where were we with the FLUD?")
IF you fail to do so, If you resort to any dishonest tactic such as the ones above, you must admit beforehand (that is, NOW) that you will have lost this issue, because you were unable to participate in it in a reasonal and honest way.
You think you're up to the challenge? After all, I don't ask for much: A chance to embarrass myself in exchange for a truly honest debate... For someone carrying the Torch of Truth, like you, it should be a win-win situation!
Faid, DDTTD is very much concerned with money, it's his major yardstick for success, as it is for the Tri City Ministries and it's spiritual leader Carl Herbester (Political Power is the other yardstick for the TCM boys).
The Prayer of Jabez, twisted out of context, is very much a guiding force for the TCM boys. DDTTD as a deacon of the TCM boys has been called on several times as an apologist for their convoluted business practices. Some have even dared to call TCM an empire.
I'm surprised anyone here still offers DDTTD a gentlemans agreement of any nature after he failed so pitifully to allow me to come to his church and call him names.
He can't be bothered with anything outside his "agenda". That's why whenever someone calls him out he changes the subject. He can't be bothered explaining how limestone forms even though
Quote
... right now I'm smack in the middle of a great debate on dating water-laid sedimentary layers which is of great interest to me.
DM, you got to dumb down all those technical papers, all the mumbo jumbo puts him to sleep don'cha know?
He can't understand how multiple massive beds of ash with different point sources differ from igneous intrusions, especially when you throw around terms like smectitic clay and airfall tephra. It all reads like ba ba ba ba ba ba to him as his eyes slowly close.
Heck, he could drive up the road to the Ashfall Beds of Nebraska and see some beds with his own bare naked eyeballs. But he won't.
On a lighter note, I look forward to giving you some darts lessons DM, I'll take it easy on you if you promise to bring that Divine outfit I've heard rumors of and do a little table dance for us too! <Climbs up on the table and shouts "High gravity Pale Ale for everyone!"
Y'know, I wish I could say I gave a crap about whether or not AirHeadPantyDancer changes his views or not...but I don't. I figure he's doing more damage to his cause as it is. He's one big self-inflicted wound.
Setting him up is easy, though. This is the second time in a week that he's bent over to take a high hard one.
One thing I **will ** say -- it was nice to shove that ICR crap article up his well-travelled gaping sphincter.
WHY he regards them as holy warriors, I have no idea, since the scam-artists lied to him directly about the Fenton Hill zircon crap. The guy's a chump. If he was a Looey on the ground, somebody would've just fragged his ass.
Crabby: Ever shoot pool? I'm just learning at that, too
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Whether or not Dave understands modern science w/r/t these topics in geology, nuclear physics, biology, astrophysics, etc, doesn't affect his life one way or the other
I'm not sure I buy that argument.
Look how desperate he is that his view of these subjects is the correct one.
No, for some reason, these things DO affect his life in quite a meaningful fashion.
I can think of some reasons why, like proving to his masters that he can hold his own (oops),
or making himself look somehow more valuable to "the cause" (oops).
or maybe, just maybe, the doubts in his own mind have been troubling him for a while now, and this is his attempt to have us "scourge" those doubts from him in some "intellectual mortification" type fashion.
lots of possibilities, but the sheer amount of time and effort Dave has put into "debunking" the various aspects of science highly suggests this stuff is at least somewhat important to him.
also there is the gorilla-pounding-on-keyboard aspect to dave's posts that seems to be getting more and more common as time goes by, and he is shown to be oh so wrong over and over again.
DM:
Quote
WHY he regards them as holy warriors, I have no idea, since the scam-artists lied to him directly about the Fenton Hill zircon crap.
I'll go out on a limb and blame his father, just as his kids will blame him.
brainswashing is a terrible thing; maybe someday his kids will point out to Dave just how much like child abuse his attempts at "education", and his fathers, were.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Look how desperate he is that his view of these subjects is the correct one.
No, for some reason, these things DO affect his life in quite a meaningful fashion.
I can think of some reasons why, like proving to his masters that he can hold his own (oops),
or making himself look somehow more valuable to "the cause" (oops).
or maybe, just maybe, the doubts in his own mind have been troubling him for a while now, and this is his attempt to have us "scourge" those doubts from him in some "intellectual mortification" type fashion.
lots of possibilities, but the sheer amount of time and effort Dave has put into "debunking" the various aspects of science highly suggests this stuff is at least somewhat important to him.
also there is the gorilla-pounding-on-keyboard aspect to dave's posts that seems to be getting more and more common as time goes by, and he is shown to be oh so wrong over and over again.
I'm not sure he's here to prove anything to himself. He might really be lunatic enough to think he's actually winning arguments and making progress, and close to converting some of us.
I admit, that doesn't explain the whiffs of frustration that I seem to sniff around his comments lately.
Just for fun, I wanted to see how far Dave's gotten so far in supporting his "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis." Here's a post I did back in May, about four days after Dave started what almost immediately turned into "AF Dave's ANTIQUATED Attempted Criticisms of All of Science":
Quote (ericmurphy @ May 04 2006,13:09)
Dave, you've posted another great big long post on defintions, methods, etc., when what everyone here really wants to see is evidence. I cannot fail to point out that you have not yet presented any evidence for the following claims:
1. The Bible is inerrant; 2. The earth (and presumably the rest of the universe) is less than 10,000 years old; and 3. Evolution cannot account for the origin of species (and higher-level taxa).
You've been admonished several times that you'll wear out everyone's patience if you don't get down to supporting these three assertions.
Here we are, almost four months later, and Dave has not even begun to lay out any evidence to support any of these three core assertions of his "hypothesis." He's had more than 700 posts in which to do so, and I predict that after 7,000, 70,000, or 700,000 posts from now, he still will not have been able to provide any supporting evidence for any of these assertions.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yep, I shoot some stick too. Dads pool table is still down in the rec. room.
Hmmm.. I think I'm being set up. HELP!! Bah, FINE, I'll just buy the beer and whiskey. By the way, I'm 5 feet tall and 380 lbs, so you're not gonna even SEE a thong if you win too much. Just folds. And those better be damm strong tables.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Yep, I shoot some stick too. Dads pool table is still down in the rec. room.
Hmmm.. I think I'm being set up. HELP!! Bah, FINE, I'll just buy the beer and whiskey. By the way, I'm 5 feet tall and 380 lbs, so you're not gonna even SEE a thong if you win too much. Just folds. And those better be damm strong tables.
Jesus god. You are a deadman if you don't do something about that.
'Course, I've been to the liquor store 4 times this week, so maybe I should just STFU.
Young people arriving at Tri-City Ministries Thursday morning for vacation bible school were greeted by a swarm of news cameras and a storm of controversy over allegations of sexual misconduct by a former deacon and high-level embezzlement by a former employee.
In an interview Thursday afternoon, Pastor Carl Herbster said the church is trying to stay focused on its mission and prepare for the upcoming school year.
"We want our families to feel safe bringing their children here," Herbster said. "I want to emphasize that none of this (sexual) activity happened on church grounds or during church activities."
John M. Logan, 41, of Independence, was charged late Thursday with felony sexual misconduct involving a child, two counts of use of a child in sexual performance and one misdemeanor count of sexual misconduct. He surrendered to police voluntarily on Thursday afternoon and was in custody this morning awaiting arraignment. Bond is set at $500,000. http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.46/aid.43382/column.htm
Maybe they didn't read C.S. Lewis
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, you promised an explanation for root traces in paleosols today. In fact, you wrote:
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 24 2006,22:20)
Oh and Jonnny ... I'll explain the root thing to you tomorrow. It's pretty simple.
Pretty simple, hum, Davie-diddles? Why haven't you posted your explanation yet? I'm really looking forward to it. Do you agree with Taz that the root traces may be due to plants transported by the fludde and carefully stuck into the sediments rightside-up with the roots carefully fanned out into growing position?
And remember your offer:
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 24 2006,08:48)
feel free to point out which layers are supposedly paleosols and I will be happy to analyze them
This is the third time I've asked you to analysze these paleosols; where's your analysis?
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 25 2006,09:37)
EXCELLENT!!! I SEE THAT I'VE KILLED THIS ERRONEOUS NOTION ONCE AND FOR ALL. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.
Here below, we have JonF admitting that you cannot date water-laid sedimentary rocks by dating the igneous grains. Whew! That was tiring!
Davey-moron, we killed your erroneous notion. We only had to tell you a few dozen times before you figured it out. It was indeed tiring trying to shove that notion into your thick moronic skull.
However, you neglected to acknowledge and apologize for your major error, repeated so many times:
Quote
S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N
Scientists do not attempt to date water laid sedimentary layers by dating grains of igneous origins and you, Afdavie-poo, were wrong each and every time you claimed they did, and each and every time you ignored us telling you they don't.
And, of course, another error you didn't acknowledge:
Quote
They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon
They {my links} don't show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Davie-piddles. You were wrong again.
Quote
But now he's on a new track ... (Deadman? Are you with him on this new track?)
DATING THE "CEMENT" THAT BINDS THE GRAINS TOGETHER
Or, as I wrote, dating other materials that formed when the rock lithified, such as xenotime that grew on the outside of igneous-origin zircons when the sedimentary rock lithified. Or materials that were isotopically homogenized when the just before the rock formed, such as the illite deadman has already discussed.
Quote
(May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
Go ahead, mention it, doofus. It's just another example of yur ignorance and stupidity.
Tuffs are not sedimentary, moron. Tuffs are igneous, idiot.
And, no, they didn't keep the dates they liked. They figured out what was going on and kept the dates that were replicable by several methods at several labs, whether they liked the dates or not.
My statements were explicitly relevant only to sedimentary rocks, so obviously they don't apply to dating tuffs. Dolt.
"I DO read people's posts ... and I read the links IF the premise seems to be sound which the link purportedly supports."
This got me to wondering what, for afdave, constitutes a "premise [that] seems to be sound." This statement also, to me at least, grants us further insight into afdave's, um, thinking process, and how anti-scientific it is. For afdave to take the time to read an article from, say, Nature, it must first provide him with what HE considers a "sound premise." If, in afdave's self-considered infinite wisdom, the article lacks the proper "soundness" in its "premise," then that article is, de facto, persona (articula?) non grata in afdave's Whacky World o' Creationy Science n' Stuff. However, give afdave an article with a title like "Millionsofyearsism done et up mah Maw!" and afdave will nod sagely and say, "Ah, yes. A most cogent and articulate article this is, with a sound premise, well-supported argument, and a conclusion firmly grounded in the peer-reviewed literature of the Creation Sciences."
"We want our families to feel safe bringing their children here," Herbster said. "I want to emphasize that none of this (sexual) activity happened on church grounds or during church activities."
I knew Dave was doing something unseemly under the table with those clergy fellas.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
JONF SAYS THAT THE NOTION OF DATING SEDIMENTARY ROCK LAYERS BY DATING IGNEOUS MATERIAL WAS NEVER BELIEVED BY ANYBODY EXCEPT "DAVIE-POOTLES."
Well, then I guess we have a disagreement between JonF and Deadman. Also, Eric apprently thinks JonF didn't say that. He thinks I am "reading challenged."
For those who think I am "reading-challenged", let me give you JonF's quote again ...
Quote
No, Davie, they do not show how to date grains of igneous origin. I told you already, several times, they don't do that (at least, they don't do that to date the sedimentary rock; they may do it for other reasons). ... D I R E C T R A D I O M E T R I C D A T I N G O F S E D I M E N T A R Y R O C K S D O E S N O T I N V O L V E D A T I N G T H E G R A I N S T H A T M A K E U P T H E R O C K. Direct radiometric dating of rocks does involve dating structures that formed or homogenized when the rock lithified and the date of these structures is the date of the sedimentary rock layer.
Now that's pretty clear, but I'll translate for the really slow folks ...
JonF says they don't date sedimentary rocks (I assume he means the water-laid ones) by dating the grains. But they do date the "cement" that holds the grains together.
In case Eric still doesn't get it, JonF clarifies yet again ...
Quote
Scientists do not attempt to date water laid sedimentary layers by dating grains of igneous origins and you, Afdavie-poo, were wrong each and every time you claimed they did, and each and every time you ignored us telling you they don't.
OK. Fine Jon. Tell that to Deadman and Eric for me please.
Now Deadman has not conceded that point yet and he has hopped on the "horse" called the Brushy Basin member of the Morrison Formation and is riding it hard. He thinks I am destroyed because ICR said you can associate the Brushy Basin member with certain granitic plutons. Of course, I'm not destroyed at all ... I admitted the possibility of associating events when I said ...
Quote
And even if the association is reasonable, how do they know how much time elapsed and what events took place in between the vocano erupting and the ash getting mixed, eroding, carried away and redposited? You see ... the devil is in the details and I'm just not seeing how you connect all these dots and come away with "Therefore the Morrison Formation is "X" myo."
Now, let's look at the Morrison Formation ...
Quote
Morrison Formation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the Colorado Plateau region, the Morrison Formation is further broken into four sub-divisions, or members. From the oldest to the most recent, they are:
Windy Hill Member: The oldest member. At the time, the Morrison basin was characterized by shallow marine and tidal flat deposition along the southern shore of the Sundance Sea.
Tidwell Member: The Sundance Sea receded to Wyoming during this member and was replaced by lakes and mudflats.
Salt Wash Member: The first purely terrestrial member. The basin was a semi-arid alluvial plain, with seasonal mudflats.
Brushy Basin Member: Much finer-grained than the Salt Wash Member, the Brushy Basin Member is dominated by volcanic ash-rich mudstone. Rivers flowed from the west into a basin that contained a giant, saline alkaline lake called Lake T'oo'dichi' and extensive wetlands that were located just west of the modern Uncompaghre plateau.
Now I don't know about you ... but last time I checked mudstone requires ... [drum roll] ... MUD ... profound, yes I know.
And can anyone here name one essential component for making MUD?
Faid? Crabby? Deadman? Oh yes ... this hand over here ...
WATER !!!! Very good! Yes, it's true ... MUD requires WATER to form.
And if WATER deposited the Brushy Basin Member (the quote below says it was), then we are simply back to what I was saying earlier today that ....
1) associating ash material with granitic plutons is great, and ... 2) dating that material radiometrically may be wonderful -- we'll give you that for now ...
BUT THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DATE OF DEPOSITION OF THE BRUSHY BASIN MEMBER.
Come on, guys. It's got mudstone in it. How many millions of years elapsed until the ash was eroded, turned into mud, carried away and re-deposited according to your Long Age time-scale? It supposedly got deposited by streams and rivers (hilarious in itself! la la-la la-la! the tiny little *cough* Morrison formation which covers like 8 states(?) *choke* got deposited by dinky little streams and rivers?) according to this (the source where apparently Deadman got his picture) ...
Quote
The sediments that comprise the Morrison Formation are believed to have been deposited about 150 million years ago, during Late Jurassic time. They were carried by streams and rivers from ancient highlands (sometimes called the "Ancestral Rockies") far to the west and deposited here in swampy lowland environments. [URL=http://town.morrison.co.us/geology/morrform.html
Is anyone starting to get my point? I am doubtful that this ash can really be reliably dated to 148 my in the first place. But even if you could, you have no way of knowing how many millions of years elapsed until the ash was deposited in the Morrison Formation.
Sorry guys! Not buyin' it.
Streams and rivers over millions of years? Pish posh! Why don't you read the article Deadman alerted me to for yourself ... here's the summary ...
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Supervolcanoes on a scale unlike any in recorded human history once shook western North America. The gigantic Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation stands as mute testimony of this violence. Three observations, including super-cracks, super-deposits, and widespread soft-sediment deformation, suggest a violent rending of fissure vents in the Sierra region that was the source for the Brushy Basin ash. The same watery catastrophe that buried dinosaurs in Utah was accompanied by super-size volcanism from sources in the west. The record is best interpreted in durations of days or weeks, not millions of years. The Genesis Flood provides the historical framework used to understand supervolcanoes. http://www.icr.org/article/2830/
The Morrison Formation was depostied by a ... **warning: sacry word approaching ** ... by a [b]CATASTROPHE!![b] ... A WATER catastrophe!! Hmmm... where have I heard about one of those before?
Now while we are on the subject of Radiometric Dating, I want to point out something very interesting in Incorygible's post. He says something quite revealing I think without even realizing it while trying to refute a point of mine which he didn't get right. ...
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Quote (afdave @ Aug. 25 2006,09:37) (May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
Since we're back to the KBS Tuff for a second, might I once again call "bullshit" on Dave's ridiculous claim that "paleos kept the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my". If we were to envision an authoritative bunch of paleo-fascists busting in on geologists with their obscene evolutionary demands, who would be at their helm? Probably Richard Leakey himself, right? He'd be the one with a date invested in his KNM-ER 406/407 hominid fossils, no?
No. Leakey wanted the 2.61 my date b/c of the fame he hoped to receive by being the discoverer of the oldest yet human fossil. No paleo-fascists. No theatrics needed. Scientists have ways of fighting their wars quietly, with their keyboards and in meetings, in a sophisticated, suave manner, which is what occurred. Don't paint a goofy picture that no one including me believes.
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But, after investing in the new-fangled Ar-Ar dating of Fitch and Miller, who sold him on it as "intrinsically more elegant than conventional K-Ar dating" and told him the (more expensive) results would be "intcontrovertible", Leakey was perhaps the most staunch supporter of the Fitch and Miller dates (2.61 my, later revised to 2.42 for technical reasons).
We can further conjecture that, if Leakey had any interest at all in the dating of KNM-ER, he wanted it to be OLD, and 2.6 my would make it by far the oldest Homo fossil. As Lewin puts it, "In paleoanthropology in general, and perhaps in the Leakey tradition in particular, such a discovery was extremely important."
Yes. This is what I said. WHy did you want to portray me as saying Leakey wanted the 1.87 date?
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So, at the 1973 Nairobi conference, when 41 different age determinations (samples) of the KBS Tuff were presented, varying from 0.91 my to 223 my, 7 of which gave the 2.6 value, and 8 of which gave the 1.9 my value,
Stop the tape! Did you hear that? 41 different samples! Ranging from 0.91 to 223 my. Folks ... I'm sorry but this again just highlights the goofiness of this whole game. How on God's green earth are we supposed to justify buying this type of snake oil?
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Leakey remained steadfast in his public support of Fitch and Miller's 2.6. In fact, he only abandoned it in the late 1970s, when further work in the controversy made it VERY unlikely to be accurate.
In other words, your caricature of Leakey and his ilk storming in and demanding 1.87 my is a joke. Quite the opposite occurred -- 1.87 was settled upon despite the support (and probable wishes) of the paleo gastapo.
In other words, you don't read what I write carefully, and secondly, radiometrically dating the layers close to this fossil is a JOKE! I said very clearly that Leakey wanted 2.61, but the "paleos" won with their 1.87. Go read it again ... if you are REALLY honest, post a retraction for misquoting me.
And last but not least ... AFD ...
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(May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
and JonF responds with ...
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Go ahead, mention it, doofus. It's just another example of yur ignorance and stupidity. Tuffs are not sedimentary, moron. Tuffs are igneous, idiot.
Where did I say that a tuff was sedimentary? I don't think I have EVER said that anywhere ... certainly not in this quote. Actually, I recall YOU saying something like "tuffs are sedimentary" when you tried to chastise me for referring to water-laid sedimentary rock simply as sedimentary rock. You said something like "hey, doofus, lava is a sediment." So, I guess if someone is a doofus for thinking tuffs are sedimentary, that would be you, not me. But nice try. Keep trying. Maybe you will show me up yet.
Crabby...
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Money, (Political) Power, (Underage) Sex! It's starting to sound Bob Dobbsian.The Herbster worked for P & G.
Wow. Are you bored or what! When are you coming to visit, Crabby? Maybe you can take Herbster to lunch and set him straight on everything.
Crabby...
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I'm surprised anyone here still offers DDTTD a gentlemans agreement of any nature after he failed so pitifully to allow me to come to his church and call him names.
Failed to allow you? No one can stop you from coming to church, Crabby. Unless you're armed and dangerous or something. Then our security would haul you off. They actually hauled off a guy one time that was making threatening gestures at the Pastor while he was speaking. But I thought you said you were going to come anyway. I haven't quite got straight what your plans are when you get here, though. I think you wanted to make a grand announcement during a church service, yes? For that, you would need to talk to the Pastor. One time you said you just want to call me a moron to my face, but then you said you weren't going to meet me so I'm not sure how that will work. Maybe you could just yell at an usher and ask them to relay the message to me in person. Just some ideas for you :-)
JonF wanted to know about roots ...
Here you go ... this is a drawing which corresponds to a sonar print of trees deposited in Spirit Lake near Mt. Saint Helens ...
From "Footprints in the Ash" by Austin and Morris. Jon, Jon, Jon. If you would just go out and buy a few creationist books, you'd understand things so much better!
So you see, many trees got deposited right side up with the roots down ...
Not so silly after all is it now, Jon?
(Oh but but but but but ... I can hear him coming after me)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Are trees not plants? They were last time I checked. Are you saying that small plants would somehow be different from trees in that none of them would get re-deposited in an upright position? Why would you think that?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
tens of million's of plants all deposited upright ?- unlikey.
or do you not agree? i thought the point was that the root traces were found as if the plants were grown there, in-situ.
i.e the roots were all found "pointing" in the same direction. in your example, you would expect to find the roots in all directions, including "downwards" - i.e some as if they were grown there, and all in random orintations. So in a mega-flood situation it'd be essentially all random orintations. Now, i understand from what i've read here that they were found upright. all of them.
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none of them would get re-deposited in an upright position?
so, im not saying that in a random mega-flood enviroment that NONE would be deposited upright, i'm saying that NOT ALL would be, and this disproves your premise (i.e if we look and see all are deposited upright, this rules out your flood).
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
"hypothesis A implies observation B" doesn't no equal to "observation B validates hypothesis A". Since you probably don't get this, here is a example : "Geocentrism implies that the sun crosses the sky every day. Thus, the sun crossing the sky every day validates geocentrism." Got it?
Introduction to the scientific method, to which AFDave isn't familiar: Hypothesis H1 true -> observations or results A H0 true (=H1 false) -> observations or results B
Global Flud => some water-laid sediments <---- correct statement no Flud => no water-laid sediment <---- WRONG statement! Therefore, the existence of water laid sediments does NOT prove a global flood.
But I have another test,
A global Flud => kms of sediments laid in a few weeks => benthic organisms quickly buried => fossils of floating plantonic organisms in the upper strata, fossils of benthic organisms in the lower strata, everywhere. Prediction observed? => no => no global Flud. Simple as that.
Can your little brain assimilate this? Probably not.
But with their roots all fanned out like they're growing? That's pretty silly, even for you, Dave.
Oh come on, guys. I think you're thinking of those bare root plants you get from Spring Hill and you're thinking about how nice and tidy the roots are. Well, I'll tell you what ... take one of those and dip it in water and watch what happens. Now imagine it's in raging, swirling water with a bunch of sediments--sand, silt, what-have-you. Not very difficult to imagine many of these plants getting "planted" in an upright position.
Come now!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But with their roots all fanned out like they're growing? That's pretty silly, even for you, Dave.
Oh come on, guys. I think you're thinking of those bare root plants you get from Spring Hill and you're thinking about how nice and tidy the roots are. Well, I'll tell you what ... take one of those and dip it in water and watch what happens. Now imagine it's in raging, swirling water with a bunch of sediments--sand, silt, what-have-you. Not very difficult to imagine many of these plants getting "planted" in an upright position.
Come now!
all in the same direction? unlikely.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
But with their roots all fanned out like they're growing? That's pretty silly, even for you, Dave.
Oh come on, guys. I think you're thinking of those bare root plants you get from Spring Hill and you're thinking about how nice and tidy the roots are. Well, I'll tell you what ... take one of those and dip it in water and watch what happens. Now imagine it's in raging, swirling water with a bunch of sediments--sand, silt, what-have-you. Not very difficult to imagine many of these plants getting "planted" in an upright position.
Come now!
I can imagine them upside down, too. How many upside down trees are there?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
No. Didn't say that. I'm sure they were deposited in many orientations.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That's the card he always wants to carry. "not buying it" will always be his defense -- until he has to whip out that " well, God made it that way" defense-- Like with the apparent ages of stars.
His responses are more shrill, more incoherent and more desperate, though. So that's nice.
If you look above, you'll notice that the illite and bentonite doesn't have grains like sand, Sweetcheeks. Oh, and the Ash layers of the Morrison are not all laid by water. I know your reading "skills". aren't that good, so do try to read more slowly, looking up the big words as you go.
I like how rivers comparable to the Colorado are "almighty rushing rivers" in Stupid's eyes one day, but become "dinky rivers and streams" the next.
There's no honor or honesty in this little liar at all. Get back up on the table, sweetcheeks.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Come on, guys. It's got mudstone in it. How many millions of years elapsed until the ash was eroded, turned into mud, carried away and re-deposited according to your Long Age time-scale? It supposedly got deposited by streams and rivers (hilarious in itself! la la-la la-la! the tiny little *cough* Morrison formation which covers like 8 states(?) *choke* got deposited by dinky little streams and rivers?)
And once again dave proves to us that he does not just deny RM dating and all the "evilutionist" conspiracies that dominate the scientific world; he denies the basic principles of Geology. Just another field of science that is totally invalid in dave's la-la land.
See dave, if you can get these 3 points: A. You assume that the ash was first hardened, THEN "eroded, turned into mud and deposited" and you conclude that that was impossible, because of the extent of the formation, and because of the time it would take... But you completely neglect to think of the other option: that the ash bed actually FELL and was embedded onto the soft sediment. And THAT is a contemporary event. B. But say it didn't happen that way, somehow.You assume that geologists cannot tell when it happened, and there you completely disregard the science of geology. If the sediment was way older and there was a prolonged break in the rate of sedimentation, there would be an uncomformity: signs of erosion, burrowing, chemical signatures of prolonged oxidation- NOT a smooth sequence, and certainly not embedment. This is Geo 101, based on it's Principles; another "evilutionist" science to get rid of when you reconstructionists take over, I guess. C. And even if, for some reason, you really cannot tell how old the sediment is, it will STILL be older then the ash bed (and don't even think of blabbering something about "erosion of older volcanic rocks": That does NOT form extensive ash BEDS). Principle of Supraposition, dave. So sorry but you lose, champ, no matter how you look at it: you have a layer inside your supposed FLUD deposits that is millions of years old, and the sediment below it is either the same age or OLDER- and that spells disaster for you either way. That's why all your blather above is quite meaningless, if you want to prove your flud fairytale.
As for your ridonculous blabber about Leaky? what can I say? If you really think that all scientists do not evaluate their results before discarding them, but instead submit them to the Evo Commissar and he decides whether to keep or leave them, then have it your way. I have learned long ago not to discuss with conspiracy theorists: It's pointless, and it fits perfectly to the "wrestling a pig" metaphor.
Oh and, thanks for telling us what your patron sites tell you about the roots in the layers, dave. It's quite revealing of the way they do things, and of how much they value their flock's intelligence.
dave, uproot a tree (or any plant). be careful and keep its roots, even to the tiniest ends, maybe by washing the ground away (and that's not how a "raging, swirling water with a bunch of sediments" would do it, but just for the sake of the argument).
Now, find a thick layer of mud, and shove the plant upright in it.
What do you think will happen, dave? will all the tiny ends of the roots pierce the mud like microdrills, and take the actual position they held when the tree was growing normally -or will the roots get crushed to a lump as the plant sinks in the mud?
Try it and let us know, OK? Or, if you are bored, ask a gardener. I'm sure he'll tell you (after he stops laughing).
You see how it is dave? It's like that other thing, about the walls of the GC, made of MUD, standing vertical for hundreds of feet like some gigantic slab of magical jello.
To be right, your magical world does not just have to "disagree with only 5% of science". It doesn't just have to disagree with Biology, Genetics, Geology, Physics and Astronomy, either. It has to completely disregard Common Sense.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
A few more Dave-logic punches and these evilutionists will be crying "no more, please, no more! Your superior intellect has smashed our unfounded beliefs in the religion of Darwinism. Please have mercy on us Dave, oh wise one. Lead us to salvation. Show us the way to our Lord, who we can now see is responsible for everything in the past, present and future. Forgive us Dave, we beseech you"
And you will respond with "rise, oh children who have been misled. I am not angry with you. I am all merciful, because the truth is, I AM GOD."
Then you will shine like the Sun, and everyone will worship and adore you.
JONF SAYS THAT THE NOTION OF DATING SEDIMENTARY ROCK LAYERS BY DATING IGNEOUS MATERIAL WAS NEVER BELIEVED BY ANYBODY EXCEPT "DAVIE-POOTLES."
Well, then I guess we have a disagreement between JonF and Deadman. Also, Eric apprently thinks JonF didn't say that. He thinks I am "reading challenged."
You are reading-challenged, Davie-pootles, but in this particular case a misunderstanding is understandable.
Deadman and I are using "dating" in slightly different meanings. I tried to make my writing more clear by using "direct dating". And some of what I wrote could easily be misunderstood if you ignore (or can't understand) context.
My statements apply to dating the layer using only measurements of the layer itself. Deadman's statements apply to dating the layer using measurements of the layer itself and/or other information. All our statements are correct and do not conflict; nobody tries to date a layer measuring only the date of igneous grains in the layer and using no other information. Nonetheless, dating of sedimentary layers is possible (despite your claim that it is not) and some of those dating methods involve measuring only things that formed when the layer lithified and are unquestionably the same age as the layer.
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And last but not least ... AFD ...
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(May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
and JonF responds with ...
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Go ahead, mention it, doofus. It's just another example of yur ignorance and stupidity. Tuffs are not sedimentary, moron. Tuffs are igneous, idiot.
Where did I say that a tuff was sedimentary? I don't think I have EVER said that anywhere ... certainly not in this quote. Actually, I recall YOU saying something like "tuffs are sedimentary" when you tried to chastise me for referring to water-laid sedimentary rock simply as sedimentary rock. You said something like "hey, doofus, lava is a sediment." So, I guess if someone is a doofus for thinking tuffs are sedimentary, that would be you, not me. But nice try. Keep trying. Maybe you will show me up yet.
Davie, moron, you brought up tuffs in the context of dating sedimentary rocks in the middle of a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks and no other kinds of rocks; you obviously thought they were sedimentary. And I did point out once that not all sediments are water-laid, and included some examples such as loess, but I never wrote anything that even an idiot like you could take as meaning that lava or tuffs are sedimentary.
Sorry, Davie-doodles, whimper all you want but you didn't even know what class of rock tuffs are!
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So you see, many trees got deposited right side up with the roots down ...
We're not talking "many" here, davie-dork, we're talking "all". ALL, Davie-poo. And we're talking about all kinds of plants, most of which do not have the structural integrity or density of trees.
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Not so silly after all is it now, Jon?
Getting sillier by the minute.
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Not very difficult to imagine many of these plants getting "planted" in an upright position.
I'm having a really difficult time with that. Try dropping your plant into any moving water and let us know whether it floats upright or sideways. Sideways is my bet. I can't see anything but maybe a few plants getting deposited upright .... but we're talking about all the plants getting deposited upright. Millions of 'em. Trees, bushes, tumbleweeds, dandelions, lilies, marigolds, all kinds of plants.
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I'm sure they were deposited in many orientations.
Then why are they always found upright, with roots in growing position, in paleosols, Davie-diddles? You are supposed to be explaining this observed fact. If "they were deposited in many orientations" then you are admitting the your fludde cannot explain the observed facts.
Dave, what's your point? You don't seem to be claiming that sedimentary rock cannot be directly dated radiometrically anymore, which was what your original claim was. Now you have some sort of hair-splitting quibble with how sedimentary rock is directly dated radiometrically?
And let's look at this statement from you:
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 26 2006,07:25)
Is anyone starting to get my point? I am doubtful that this ash can really be reliably dated to 148 my in the first place. But even if you could, you have no way of knowing how many millions of years elapsed until the ash was deposited in the Morrison Formation.
Even if your point was well-taken, and I can't imagine that it is, do you realize that merely having millions of years to elapse annihilates your young-earth creationism? Or have you tacitly admitted that the earth is more than 6,000 years old and that your Bible is not inerrant, or even very accurate?
And why do you jump up and down anytime water is involved in any geologic process? In case this isn't clear to you, the mere presence of water is not evidence for a "global catastrophic flood"! Violent geological events in the past are likewise not evidence for a "global catastrophic flood."
I just don't get what you think you're proving here, Dave. But your posts are sounding increasingly desperate.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now while we are on the subject of Radiometric Dating, I want to point out something very interesting in Incorygible's post. He says something quite revealing I think without even realizing it while trying to refute a point of mine which he didn't get right. ...
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Quote (afdave @ Aug. 25 2006,09:37) (May this humble "macaque brain" be so bold as to point out that the "dating" of the KBS Tuff apparently violated this latest statement by JonF? Didn't they date the grains of igneous material and keep the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my ultimately? N n n n n n no! Don't mention that.)
Since we're back to the KBS Tuff for a second, might I once again call "bullshit" on Dave's ridiculous claim that "paleos kept the dates they liked, thus coming up with 1.87my". If we were to envision an authoritative bunch of paleo-fascists busting in on geologists with their obscene evolutionary demands, who would be at their helm? Probably Richard Leakey himself, right? He'd be the one with a date invested in his KNM-ER 406/407 hominid fossils, no?
No. Leakey wanted the 2.61 my date b/c of the fame he hoped to receive by being the discoverer of the oldest yet human fossil. No paleo-fascists. No theatrics needed. Scientists have ways of fighting their wars quietly, with their keyboards and in meetings, in a sophisticated, suave manner, which is what occurred. Don't paint a goofy picture that no one including me believes.
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But, after investing in the new-fangled Ar-Ar dating of Fitch and Miller, who sold him on it as "intrinsically more elegant than conventional K-Ar dating" and told him the (more expensive) results would be "intcontrovertible", Leakey was perhaps the most staunch supporter of the Fitch and Miller dates (2.61 my, later revised to 2.42 for technical reasons).
We can further conjecture that, if Leakey had any interest at all in the dating of KNM-ER, he wanted it to be OLD, and 2.6 my would make it by far the oldest Homo fossil. As Lewin puts it, "In paleoanthropology in general, and perhaps in the Leakey tradition in particular, such a discovery was extremely important."
Yes. This is what I said. WHy did you want to portray me as saying Leakey wanted the 1.87 date?
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So, at the 1973 Nairobi conference, when 41 different age determinations (samples) of the KBS Tuff were presented, varying from 0.91 my to 223 my, 7 of which gave the 2.6 value, and 8 of which gave the 1.9 my value,
Stop the tape! Did you hear that? 41 different samples! Ranging from 0.91 to 223 my. Folks ... I'm sorry but this again just highlights the goofiness of this whole game. How on God's green earth are we supposed to justify buying this type of snake oil?
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Leakey remained steadfast in his public support of Fitch and Miller's 2.6. In fact, he only abandoned it in the late 1970s, when further work in the controversy made it VERY unlikely to be accurate.
In other words, your caricature of Leakey and his ilk storming in and demanding 1.87 my is a joke. Quite the opposite occurred -- 1.87 was settled upon despite the support (and probable wishes) of the paleo gastapo.
In other words, you don't read what I write carefully, and secondly, radiometrically dating the layers close to this fossil is a JOKE! I said very clearly that Leakey wanted 2.61, but the "paleos" won with their 1.87. Go read it again ... if you are REALLY honest, post a retraction for misquoting me.
Okay, so Leakey was NOT a part of your jackbooted, influential "paleos" who "won" with their 1.87 million years. On your word, I will apologize for being mistaken in my interpretation of your fantasies. Maybe I was led astray by your repeated claims that this date was necessary for "rates of favourable mutation" in the human line? In any case, you weren't bothered to find the original post in your demand for a "retraction", and I'll be similarly lazy in stipulating that you never suggested that the most influential paleoanthropologist was seeking the younger date that was later arrived at. I'm really just trying to figure out exactly who, in your paranoid scheme, wielded the power and influence here in dating the tuff to 1.87 million years.
It seems, therefore, that the "paleos" you keep referring to were the ones who recognized that the pig (and horse) fossils found below the tuff, which were found nowhere else in Africa older than 2 million years, suggested a younger date. So the notorious "paleos" were the ones fighting for a date under 2 million years, while others wanted older? You can obviously see the confusion inherent in your fevered phrasing. Anyhow, since I obviously do not understand the specifics of you delusions, please fill us in on who these evil "paleos" are in your paranoid ramblings -- the ones who barge in and make dates conform to YOUNGER ages.
So there can be no doubt, I will enshrine this in bold for you: I, incorgyible, freely admit that I was mistaken in my identification of the "paleo" boogeymen, of Dave's conspiracy theory, that were clandestinely responsible for the dating of the KBS tuff (and other geological formations). Richard Leakey is not among their number, and I retract my suggestion that Dave implied he was (or should have been). Insomuch as this grievous error in an obvious point of "fact", as can be verified by reliable sources (read: Dave's fevered imaginings and their written product), damages my credibility, I accept the consequences and humbly apologize.
There.
And Dave, if you think I wasn't aware that you would jump all over the 41 samples from the Nairobi conference, you're pretty thick. I knew you'd come back with a little hissy fit about that. So what would you have me do, Dave? Not be completely complete and open in my treatment of information that is freely available? Cover up these data (if only because you mistakenly believe they pose a problem for us evos)? Those are your tactics, Dave, not mine. This is further indicated by your implication that I unknowlingly let something slip by mentioning them. What does that tell you? Because it tells me that if you came across freely available information that you thought might present a problem for your hypothesis if we found out about it, you would hide it for fear of "revealing" it to us. I thought you were honest, Dave?
In any case, why should the Nairobi conference results come as a surprise: you researched the KBS tuff controversy, didn't you? And have you not just spent pages arguing that many types of rocks contain all kinds of material of different ages? Unfortunately for you, geologists knew this well before you figured it out (as JonF and deadman keep telling you). Unfortunately for you, they figured out exactly where all the dates for those 41 samples came from. Most commonly, they are feldspars that date to either 2.6 or 1.9 my. I think it is now recognized (after Cooke) that the 2.6 my comes from feldspar in the wall surrounding the magma chamber, wherease the 1.9 comes from the erupting magma itself (or somesuch). Then there is all the other stuff, whose sources (wash from other known rock formations, lab errors, contamination, etc.) have been accounted for.
I really don't care that you don't like the fact that science is messy and requires real work to narrow down results from data that often makes no sense when first collected. I really don't care that you think we should just throw our hands up in defeat and go back to simpler tales that we don't question. This is how science works, and it's how discoveries are made. If you actually bother to test theories against the real world, you find messy contradictions that have to be resolved. But you wouldn't know anything about that.
don_quixote has it right in regard to how SweetcheekDave's ego pervades his entire line of bull. Very similar to Dembski, etc., except Dave's even dumber than Dembski. There's some underlying psych commonalites there that others just don't have. Something about these topics makes them manic, irrational, obsessive. I think it's ego, too. stevestory mentioned yesterday that it's unlikely any evidence would alter Stupid's views, and I think that's true. His entire identity is tied to it, intimately. He's mentally cast himself as a Knight of Truth®, warring against the infidel hordes. Never mind that he has to lie, cheat or use underhanded tactics...his God™ will forgive him, as Martin Luther once claimed his god would forgive him for "a good, strong lie" therefore, there is no tactic that he will *not* sink to--he has no morals, ethics, or honor that bind him.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
We've shown you up many times, Davie-pie. Such as when you wrote:
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S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N
W R O N G, Davie -pootie. And one of my favorites:
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They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon
You didn't even read the freakin' titles of the links I posted Davie-lad, and do you know what, Davie-dork? You were W R O N G, Davie-dip. THe links I posted did not "show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin", as anyone who even read the titles could tell.
No. Didn't say that. I'm sure they were deposited in many orientations.
well, it seems you are wrong about that. unless you can show us some proof? so, we're done here then? or rather, you are.
if not, why not? You've just provided a way of testing your own flood theory, like it or not.
and now all you have to do is show mutiple root traces in random directions. please go ahead......you said you were sure about that. so show us some proof.
it should be easy, if true.
and, if the sun is 6000 years old, does that mean that the light from stars 6001 light years away is being generated by god in realtime? or what?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
No. Didn't say that. I'm sure they were deposited in many orientations.
Wow, I think this is the closest Dave has ever come to a testable hypothesis!
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Dave, you're the one who's supposed to be selling something here, not us. You're supposed to be selling your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis." Isn't that the title of your thread? You've been whining and complaining about how the science is so hard, and it doesn't make sense, and you don't believe it. Like we care?
Quit the blubbering, Dave, and start setting forth your evidence. This is ridiculous! We're going on four months here, and you still haven't provided any evidence to support a single one of your contentions. The obvious reason is that you cannot, and that's not the only thing you can't do. You can't admit that you're wrong, that there's no evidence to support your "hypothesis," your "hypothesis" doesn't even make any sense, and the only reason you even believe in it is because you've been brainwashed by your loser religion.
He says he's convinced of biblical inerrancy because of the evidence, despite the fact that he's never seen any such evidence. That's because he's a dupe.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
DDTTD, I thank you done got your stank bone kicked again.
I did tell you to look to Nebraska Ash Fall beds to help you conceptualize how ash beds are formed. Where do you think the ash in those beds comes from and how did it get there? Why aren't there dino fossils in those ash beds or modern animals or dad gum it DDTTD, some freakin' ocean living fossil type thingys?
It's similar to how the beds at Koobi Fora formed except the sources of the ash were a lot farther away. And NO ocean living fossil type thingys in Koobi Fora either DDTTD!
Water had nothing to do with it Cletus.
In the Morrison (and other Fms in the GS), water moved some of the ash around but you have to be playing stupid (or you really are that stupid) not to understand the huge areas covered by the multiple eruptions, that the ash blew there or that the eruption sources can be identified and dated.
Now dealing with your trees washing in and creating the appearance of a paleosol. Wrong again yahoo. Turns out we have a very nice example here in NA of just what you propose happening, massive trees transported in a huge flood and deposited half a continent away. They sure as heck didn't end up looking like they grew there and nobody confuses the matrix they're found in with paleosols. Where is it DDTTD?
Another gaping hole in your "hypothesis" the AiG/ICR Creidiots ain't gonna help you on DDTTD, multiple beds of loess with different parent sources.
Dang DDTTD, the Herbster needs a security force? Is it because of the widows who were coerced into purchasing church securities, his previous work for those notorius satanists at Proctor & Gamble or because the Herbster isn't Fundy enough (How fundy is fundy enough?)? Or did he not deliver on some promise he made (I hear the Bluntster is giving him the cold shoulder)?
I don't think I'll be visiting you and the Herbster till I'm sure I'm not gonna get burned or bombed by Fundies more Fundy than you, man handled by the Herbsters Leibstandarte, or coerced into buying TCM Securities. Your church is starting to look Papist to me (not that that is a "bad" thing).
Please note DDTTD that although I didn't provide you with purty pitchers in the previous post, I DID refrain from using those soporific sciency terms you have such a problem dealing with!
DM do you know what a pen holder grip is (darts)? It's awkward at first but it leads to greater precision.
This is how fossil confirmation of radiometric dating works, Sweetcheeks....given that there are dates on the morrison of about 145-158 mya, what kind of fossils can we expect to find in those layers?
Why are there no modern mammal fossils mixed in the layers as your 2350-5000 BC flood would require?
Let me repeat this very slooowly, stupid. WHY ARE THERE ...NO MODERN MAMMALS IN THE MORRISON?
NOT ONE?!?!?!?!?!?! . Senor El Crabster: Certainement mon frere! My hands themselves are lethal weapons seeking only the projectiles that would transfer my deadly powers to the uttermost center of the target board, thus fulfilling the cosmic fate required...nay, demanded by my godlike concentration. ( I was at the world S-F con today and made THREE banks in a row to whoop the butt of some loudmouth doofus, so I'm being facetious..[he was playing a snooker-like game of "hide the cue"]) Plus I drank a bit:P
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I find copious amounts of alcohol give me all the precision i need.
oh wait... maybe that was bowling.
no... lawn darts?
what sport was i doing at the pub last night then?
whatever it was, I kicked ass.
on a more somber note, I'd like to ask for a moment of silence for Durty Nelly's, the one and only real Irish pub (or any kind of Irish pub, for that matter) in my neck o the woods. Unfortunately for all fans of real Guiness in my locale, it was closed last week for good.
so long Nelly, we hardly knew ya.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
This is how fossil confirmation of radiometric dating works, Sweetcheeks....given that there are dates on the morrison of about 145-158 mya, what kind of fossils can we expect to find in those layers?
Why are there no modern mammal fossils mixed in the layers as your 2350-5000 BC flood would require?
Senor El Crabster: Certainement mon frere! My hands themselves are lethal weapons seeking only the projectiles that would transfer my deadly powers to the uttermost center of the target board, thus fulfilling the cosmic fate required...nay, demanded by my godlike concentration. ( I was at the world S-F con today and made THREE banks in a row to whoop the butt of some loudmouth doofus, so I'm being facetious..[he was playing a snooker-like game of "hide the cue"]) Plus I drank a bit:P
So you ain't the weeble tyro stick shooter you claim to be? Bring that divine outfit anyhow (and your arrows).
Have tiswin backed with a shot of mezcal on me compadre!
FAID ENDORSES THE GLOBAL FLOOD VIEWPOINT WHILE TRYING TO REFUTE ME AND DOESN'T REALIZE IT!
Faid...
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A. You assume that the ash was first hardened, THEN "eroded, turned into mud and deposited" and you conclude that that was impossible, because of the extent of the formation, and because of the time it would take... But you completely neglect to think of the other option: that the ash bed actually FELL and was embedded onto the soft sediment. And THAT is a contemporary event.
Faid...there's one teensy-weensy problem with your analysis ...
I'M the one who believes that the ash fell into a large body of water to form the layer. YOU are supposed to believe it was deposited there slowly over millions of years by dinky little streams and rivers. Remember?
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The sediments that comprise the Morrison Formation are believed to have been deposited about 150 million years ago, during Late Jurassic time. They were carried by streams and rivers from ancient highlands (sometimes called the "Ancestral Rockies") far to the west and deposited here in swampy lowland environments. [URL]http://town.morrison.co.us/geology/morrform.html
But hey, if you want to join my camp and disavow the "streams and river deposition" theory, OK. Fine with me. My whole point has been that even if you can date material in some ash, this is not the same date as the deposition date of the layer if you are assuming that it takes millions of years to deposit this stuff.
My point in this whole discussion of course, is that I see no way, even with YOUR assumptions about radiometric dating, that you can truthfully date the layers of the Grand Staircase with anything but fossils by speculation about evolutionary history. If you change your story and say, "Well the volcanic event and the sedimentation happened at the same time" then NOW you are at least being consistent with your assumptions. But be careful! If you say that, then you are dangerously close to admitting a Global Flood. Remember how big that Brushy Basin member is? Covers something like 8 states? Your ditching the "stream and river deposition" theory in favor of the "massive quantity of ash settled directly onto a massive body of water" theory? Hey, go for it. That's mighty close to believing there was a Global Flood. My work will then be almost done because all I will have to do then is show you that that volcano really didn't erupt 148 myo. (I need to call that Berkeley lab sometime and really get some firsthand info on RM dating)
Faid..
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dave, uproot a tree (or any plant). be careful and keep its roots, even to the tiniest ends, maybe by washing the ground away (and that's not how a "raging, swirling water with a bunch of sediments" would do it, but just for the sake of the argument).
Now, find a thick layer of mud, and shove the plant upright in it.
What do you think will happen, dave? will all the tiny ends of the roots pierce the mud like microdrills, and take the actual position they held when the tree was growing normally -or will the roots get crushed to a lump as the plant sinks in the mud?
Stop talking nonsense. This is the kind of stuff that makes me think you are dishonest. No one said anything about trying to jam a tree down into mud. I've been talking about water transport of plants and sediments. I have shown you a real world example of trees getting deposited upright. Now you guys seem to have some example in mind where ALL the roots are in the right direction. Would someone care to show me an example? Then maybe this discussion could be a little more meaningful.
JonF..
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You are reading-challenged, Davie-pootles, but in this particular case a misunderstanding is understandable.
The closest I will ever get to receiving a compliment from JonF.
JonF...
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Davie, moron, you brought up tuffs in the context of dating sedimentary rocks in the middle of a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks and no other kinds of rocks; you obviously thought they were sedimentary.
Sorry, mister, but I have NEVER, EVER thought that a tuff was sedimentary. YOU are the one who was trying to make fun of me for referring to water-laid sedimentary rocks simply as "sedimentary" ... you laughed and said something like "Hey, Davie-pootles lava is a sediment too! Ha ha ha ha! You're a dolt!" Try to get me with facts, not insults based on your erroneous ideas of me.
Deadman...
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I like how rivers comparable to the Colorado are "almighty rushing rivers" in Stupid's eyes one day, but become "dinky rivers and streams" the next.
Don't make stuff up, Deadman. I know it's hard to make your lie win out over the truth without somehow lying, but you can at least try. Show me where I have ever said that the Colorado or others like it are "almighty rushing rivers."
Crabby ... Not coming after all? Didn't think you would. Oh well.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Lemme see ......k.e. takes a stupid pill and reads Genesis(giggle.... I feel like Berlinski talking about myself in the third person).
OK god invented mammals after the fludde ...er except goats, sheep and men and women (which for AFD pretty much are the same thing .....all available for milking and fleecing money from).
Just a quick question AFD what was the average life span of dinosaurs and how many begats of dinosaurs were there before the fairy fludde.
what was your time line again
Year 0 ...Genesis Year 1500....Flud.
So each dino say had say a 20 year life span and there were 75 generations of dino by fludde time. ...right?
So over the 1st 74 generations of dino .....they got buried somewhere right?
Now please date each layer of dinos before the fludde and show where the humans and other mammals were buried with those dinos.
Should be very easy AFD there were only 1500 years right.
Don't worry about those lying paleos AFD who say the dinos were wiped out 65Million years ago.
Just show us all here what year the dinos were buried and you CAN'T use RM ......remember that's wrong.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Deadman has offered you the moment...this is it in a nutshell, your moment to shine...
"Why are there no modern mammal fossils mixed in the layers as your 2350-5000 BC flood would require? "
And you answer is.....?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
My point in this whole discussion of course, is that I see no way, even with YOUR assumptions about radiometric dating, that you can truthfully date the layers of the Grand Staircase with anything but fossils by speculation about evolutionary history. If you change your story and say, "Well the volcanic event and the sedimentation happened at the same time" then NOW you are at least being consistent with your assumptions. But be careful! If you say that, then you are dangerously close to admitting a Global Flood. Remember how big that Brushy Basin member is? Covers something like 8 states? Your ditching the "stream and river deposition" theory in favor of the "massive quantity of ash settled directly onto a massive body of water" theory? Hey, go for it. That's mighty close to believing there was a Global Flood. My work will then be almost done because all I will have to do then is show you that that volcano really didn't erupt 148 myo. (I need to call that Berkeley lab sometime and really get some firsthand info on RM dating)
Dave, no one here is remotely close to admitting there was a "global flood." You are, as usual, delusional. Why do you have this idiotic idea that any large body of water is equivalent to a "global flood"? Half the western United States was underwater at one point or another, and 10 million years ago California didn't even exist—all of it was underwater.
And if you think you can disprove all of radiometric dating—which is what you'll have to do, to disprove the existence of anything more than 6,000 years old—go right ahead. But if you think you're going to succeed, you're a bigger idiot that you think we think you are.
Dave, your "hypothesis" is dead—dead and buried, and has been for over a hundred years. Your pointless quibbling over who thinks tuff is sedimentary, or whether the Morrison formation is the result of ash falling into a large body of water or not doesn't change that fact in the slightest.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(I need to call that Berkeley lab sometime and really get some firsthand info on RM dating)
Oh that's rich hhehhehehehhe.
why bother DikHedDav ?
Just go to the nearest Creationist LAB .......arsehole.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
But hey, if you want to join my camp and disavow the "streams and river deposition" theory, OK. Fine with me. My whole point has been that even if you can date material in some ash, this is not the same date as the deposition date of the layer if you are assuming that it takes millions of years to deposit this stuff.
My point in this whole discussion of course, is that I see no way, even with YOUR assumptions about radiometric dating, that you can truthfully date the layers of the Grand Staircase with anything but fossils by speculation about evolutionary history. If you change your story and say, "Well the volcanic event and the sedimentation happened at the same time" then NOW you are at least being consistent with your assumptions. But be careful! If you say that, then you are dangerously close to admitting a Global Flood. Remember how big that Brushy Basin member is? Covers something like 8 states? Your ditching the "stream and river deposition" theory in favor of the "massive quantity of ash settled directly onto a massive body of water" theory? Hey, go for it. That's mighty close to believing there was a Global Flood. My work will then be almost done because all I will have to do then is show you that that volcano really didn't erupt 148 myo. (I need to call that Berkeley lab sometime and really get some firsthand info on RM dating)
It's too bad you can't understand how sedimentary layers that took a LONG time to form could get covered by windblown ash in a matter of days or weeks, while normal deposition continued. No flud involved. Got dang it this geology stuff is just too sciency! DDTTD really is the Mayor of Simpleton.
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Stop talking nonsense. This is the kind of stuff that makes me think you are dishonest. No one said anything about trying to jam a tree down into mud. I've been talking about water transport of plants and sediments. I have shown you a real world example of trees getting deposited upright. Now you guys seem to have some example in mind where ALL the roots are in the right direction. Would someone care to show me an example? Then maybe this discussion could be a little more meaningful.
All the trees got deposited upright? Yeah right!
Do your own homework Cletus, you're the only one claiming you have a "hypothesis" that better explains the BIG PITCHER. Jeez what a lazy putz.
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Don't make stuff up, Deadman. I know it's hard to make your lie win out over the truth without somehow lying, but you can at least try. Show me where I have ever said that the Colorado or others like it are "almighty rushing rivers."
How again did the Colorado erode the GC in such a short time if it wasn't an almighty rushing river? Will this dog EVER catch its own tail?
DDTTD, you invited me, then withdrew the invitation, are you inviting me again?
In the meantime, let us pray,
O Lord, Ooh you are so big So absolutely huge Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you.
Amen.
Icthyic, do you have some Jarts? I haven't played in years but I'm up for a beer soaked Jarts Tourney!
Dave, dave, dave... Your desperation is REALLY starting to show now... Nice strawmen, but they dissolve on their own with the slightest breeze.
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The sediments that comprise the Morrison Formation are believed to have been deposited about 150 million years ago, during Late Jurassic time. They were carried by streams and rivers from ancient highlands (sometimes called the "Ancestral Rockies") far to the west and deposited here in swampy lowland environments. [URL]http://town.morrison.co.us/geology/morrform.html
Sooo dave, where does this quote say exactly that "a massive amount of water" deposited the ash? Is that what "swampy enviroment" means? And where does it say it happened over millions of years? But wait, it says nothing about the ash at all -just the sediments. But yes, your reading comprehension disability. I almost forgot. Here's a thing, dave. Your quotes are supposed to support your views. You gotta work on that a little.
And I already explained the difference by an ash bed deposited in sediment and a long term erosion of ancient volcanic rocks... and why one is more or less a contemporary event, and the other is not. But you would have to actually READ my post to get it, so...
And your non-sequitur remains anyway: When stratigraphy can easily bracket an age for a fossil as a mimimum one, and that age is in the scale of millions, how does that help you? In fact, why are you even discussing this? And once and for all, have the guts to admit that this "mutation rate" fairytale exists only in your fevered imagination, otherwise show us HOW and WHERE geologists use it. Up to that, champ?
And as for the trees: So I'm the dishonest again dave, huh? I see.Sorry though, but no dice: You can change the word "shove" with "deposit" if it makes you feel better, but your problem remains (as you well know). HOW WILL THE ROOTS OF AN UPRIGHT STANDING TREE LOOK dave, if it is "deposited" in that position? You ARE familliar with gravity, right? or is that one of your "inconvenient" fields of science too?
Here's a hint: Every time your tongue runs faster than your mind (and that happens often), read what you wrote again, before accusing others for speaking nonsense.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
A. You assume that the ash was first hardened, THEN "eroded, turned into mud and deposited" and you conclude that that was impossible, because of the extent of the formation, and because of the time it would take... But you completely neglect to think of the other option: that the ash bed actually FELL and was embedded onto the soft sediment.
Er, Davie-moron, that's the conventional geologist's viewpoint. The "hardened, THEN eroded, turned into mud and deposited" idea is your fantasy.
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Now you guys seem to have some example in mind where ALL the roots are in the right direction. Would someone care to show me an example?
That's what we've been saying all along, Davie-doodles. Don't have one from the Grand Staircase handy, but here's a great one:
Root traces in paleosols: calcareous rhizoconcretions from an Aquept of the late Eocene Birket Qarun Formation, Egypt (Bown & Kraus, 1988). From Geology 435/535 Paleopedology.
In this one, look at figures 4 and 5: Fig. 4. 1, Outcrop of the Ligorio Márquez Formation at LM01 ("Mina Ligorio Márquez"); 2, An example of lithofacies in the middle unit. Pebbly sandstone with cross-stratification overlies plant-bearing mudstone (equals to plant megafossil locality 03) with erosional surface. Middle unit. LM01; 3, Plant megafossil locality 04, showing dark gray mudstone frequently intercalated with white fine- to very fine-grained sandstone. Middle unit. LM01. Hammer for scale has a handle 30 cm long; 4, Plant megafossil locality 05, showing carbonaceous root traces (arrows). Middle unit. LM01; 5, Paleosol at middle unit of LM02, showing irregular joining and scattering organic matters. Handle of hammer is 3 cm wide; 6, Paleosol with abundant root traces. The bed probably corresponds with that reported by Suárez et al. (2000: fig. 2). Middle unit. LM04. A pen for scale is 14 cm long; 7, Upper unit of the Ligorio Márquez Formation (LM) and overlying basalt (B) at LM05; 8, Locality of a sample for K-Ar dating.LM05. Hammer handle is 30 cm long. From GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON PLANT FOSSIL LOCALITIES OF THE LIGORIO MÁRQUEZ FORMATION, CENTRAL PATAGONIA, CHILE.
Your turn, Davie, show us some photos of paleosols with upside-down and sidweways and randomly oriented root traces. You're the one with the better explanation, remember?
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JonF...
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Davie, moron, you brought up tuffs in the context of dating sedimentary rocks in the middle of a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks and no other kinds of rocks; you obviously thought they were sedimentary.
Sorry, mister, but I have NEVER, EVER thought that a tuff was sedimentary.
Ah, sure, of course, Davie-lad, we believe you, you had a real good reason for bringing up the KBS tuff in the middle of a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks, and only sedimentary rocks. If it wasn't because you thought tuffs were sedimentary, what the f**k WAS your reason for bringing up something that was and is totally irrelevant to the discussion? Huh, Davie-pie?
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YOU are the one who was trying to make fun of me for referring to water-laid sedimentary rocks simply as "sedimentary" ... you laughed and said something like "Hey, Davie-pootles lava is a sediment too! Ha ha ha ha! You're a dolt!" Try to get me with facts, not insults based on your erroneous ideas of me.
Getting you with facts is like shooting fish in a barrel, Davie-pootsie; it's too easy. I need to do the insults to keep things interesting I have indeed made fun of you for claiming that all sedimentary rocks were "water-laid", but I never wrote anything that even an idiot like you could interpret as claiming that lava or tuffs are sedimentary. Don't make claims like that without linking to the message in which you think I made that statement.
Deadman ... Are we quitting on trying to explain how the Grand Staircase layers are dated radiometrically? We are bringing up a new thing? ... fossils in the Morrison formation. Cool. I'll take a look.
Faid...I think you are still confused on who said what. Maybe you should tell me clearly ... do YOU agree with this?
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The sediments that comprise the Morrison Formation are believed to have been deposited about 150 million years ago, during Late Jurassic time. They were carried by streams and rivers from ancient highlands (sometimes called the "Ancestral Rockies") far to the west and deposited here in swampy lowland environments. [URL]http://town.morrison.co.us/geology/morrform.html
Crabby ... Oh, so you still WANT to visit? OK. Come on then. I did not recall that it was me that invited you first. I thought you invited yourself. Whatever. I'll be glad to see you. Would you like me to buy you lunch so you can insult me properly for an extended period of time? Or will you just insult me in the lobby? Or second hand via an usher? Do you want me to introduce you to the Pastor so you can schedule your announcement about how evil I am?
JonF ... looks like you want to discuss paleosols ... very good. I'll oblige you. No time to read your stuff in detail now. Church tonight again. Yes, it's true ... my church is so much fun, I go TWICE on Sundays! Then again on Wednesday night. You guys should join Crabby and come see for yourselves!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Deadman ... Are we quitting on trying to explain how the Grand Staircase layers are dated radiometrically? We are bringing up a new thing? ... fossils in the Morrison formation. Cool. I'll take a look.
No, Dave, we're not done with radiometric dating of the Grand Staircase. Well, okay, we're probably done with explaining how it's done for you, since you've made it abundantly clear that you're uneducable on the matter. But we're not supposed to be educating you on stuff like this anyway. Your job is to demonstrate that none of the layers in the Grand Staircase are more than 6,000 years old, the oldest date compatible with your "hypothesis." In other words, Dave, you need to demonstrate that every single layer in the Grand Canyon, all the way down to beneath the Vishnu Schist, dates to 6,000 years or less.
And in the meantime, are you going to unveil your method for dating the layers of the Grand Staircase? I asked you days ago, and of course you blew me off. Why? Because you don't have the first idea how you would go about it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yes I agree, dave. (Sigh.) Do you understand what it says? it talks about the way the sediments were deposited, dave. NOT about the volcanic ash layer that fell onto them. Is that SO hard to get?
About the root thing: Hey dave here's some more examples...
Bucl and Mack (1995) describe large in situ trees in fluvial deposits of the McRae Formation. The McRae Formation in south-central New Mexico is about 420m thick, and consists of two members, the Jose Creek and the Hall Lake. The formation is of latest Cretaceous age, based upon the included dinosaur fauna. The formation is rich in paleosols (at least 26), many of which contain in situ tree trunks.
14 paleosols, from 45-150m thick, are recognized in the Jose Creek Member. These are classified as argillisols. These display well-developed soil horizonation (A-E-Bt-Bc-C), and soil structures such as blocky peds and clay cutans. Downward bifurcating, downward-tapering root traces are abundant, some of which are silicified (root petrifactions).
Several of these paleosols are blanketed by ash-fall tuffs burying tree stumps up to 1.7m! in diameter, with preerved large roots penetrating and cross-cutting the underlying palesol horizons (see fig. 5).
12 paleosols are recognized in the overlying Hall Lake Member, from 70-450cm thick. These are classified as calcisols and vertic calcisols. Soil horizons and soil structures are well-developed, and at least one paleosol includes a "massive, well-indurated bed of pedogenic calcrete up to 4m thick," which indicates a very advanced stage of calcisol development. Calcisols are diagnostic of semi-arid environments.
Also, read above that for a thorough thrashing of your "upright deposition" babble.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Don't make stuff up, Deadman. I know it's hard to make your lie win out over the truth without somehow lying, but you can at least try. Show me where I have ever said that the Colorado or others like it are "almighty rushing rivers."
This is the fourth time you have accused me of lying. Each time...whether it was the Hittite references or your claims about me working with groups in "jungles"...you have been proven wrong. So will this be different? No.
StephenWells, p.134, quoting ShitforBrainsDave..note the references are to a river cutting the GC layers.
Quote (stephenWells @ Aug. 11 2006,11:54)
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 10 2006,18:23)
Quote
You'll notice a few things. First, the Kaibab is overlain by the Moenkopi...which extends into Utah, too. Those layers you see on the Utah stratigraphic columns USED to exist in the Grand Canyon, too. 5000 or so more feet of layers were washed away in the Grand Canyon, but not the Moenkopi...
5000 feet of layers washed away ... hmmmm ... did a dinky little river do that over millions of years? Or perhaps was it a Global Flood?
No, Dave, it was a river. You can tell because the river cut a typical river valley. A global flood would wash away EVERYTHING. And you can't HAVE a global flood, because there's no water to make it, and if there were, there'd be nowhere for it to go.
Now StupidLyingDave, the next page (p.135) quoting stephenWells:
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 11 2006,13:09)
Quote
No, Dave, it was a river. You can tell because the river cut a typical river valley. A global flood would wash away EVERYTHING. And you can't HAVE a global flood, because there's no water to make it, and if there were, there'd be nowhere for it to go.
I agree it was a river. A MIGHTY RUSHING river, which flowed for a very brief period (3 or 4 days maybe?) when a debris dam burst. Yes, a global flood WOULD wash everything away, which it in fact did. It then redeposited everything all over the earth in layers
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Oh and, I just couldn't help noticing how, when I offered to debate paleosols with you, but with a mutual agreement that no dishonest tactics will be used, otherwise that would mean instant forfeit, you said you were on "another subject" now, and had a life, and didn't know when you'd be back to the paleosol issue... But now that Jon is willing to discuss the same issues with you, without my terms, you jump right at it!
Reeeeeeal classy, dude.
Oh and, good job deadman!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Deadman ... Are we quitting on trying to explain how the Grand Staircase layers are dated radiometrically? We are bringing up a new thing? ... fossils in the Morrison formation. Cool. I'll take a look
Initially your "challenge" was about showing radiometrically dated layers in the Grand Canyon. You said there were none.
You were shown multiple radiometric dates.
You then switched you r claim to "well, show me dates on the Kaibab" You were then shown multiple radiometric dates.
You then switched that to " show me dates on the Grand Staircase" You were shown multiple radiometric dates.
You switched that to "I don't believe the dates are valid because radiometric dating is only good for igneous grains " (implying that the grains could be imported in and giving false dates.)
You were shown that there are multiple methods of dating the matrix in which grains are imbedded. IN fact, you were told this way back on page 109 of this thread, where JonF specifically referred to it:
Quote
However, advances have been made in reducing sample size (SHRIMP systems regularly sample a disk about 10 micrometers diameter and 1 micrometer thick: [shows photo here] ) and in studying the materials that form between grains when the rock lithifies. If we can reliably date the material that formed between grains when the rock became rock, we can date the rock. One very promising such material is xenotime , which can be dated by U-PB concordia-discordia analysis in SHRIMP instrumentation. See SHRIMP Uranium-Lead Dating of Diagenetic Xenotime in Siliciclastic Sedimentary Rocks (requires free subscription, or see BugMeNot
There are other techniques of dating sedimentary rocks, such as K-Ar dating of glauconite (which forms as part ot the "cement" in some environments) and fission track dating of any of several other minerals found in the "cement" such as These are difficult to apply to tiny samples and are constrained by some other technical issues, and are not widely used.
Anyone interested in following your dishonesty can do so by simply following the posts from about page 106 onwards.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You neglected to tell us why you brought up the KBS Tuff in the middle of a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks ... looks like an admission that you thought tuffs are sedimentary. Moron.
And, of course, you have not acknowledged your egregious errors in your claims about how sedimentary rocks are dated ("S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N") and your claim about the links I posted ("They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon") that was refuted by the titles of the links.
Quote
Faid...I think you are still confused on who said what. Maybe you should tell me clearly ... do YOU agree with this?
Quote
The sediments that comprise the Morrison Formation are believed to have been deposited about 150 million years ago, during Late Jurassic time. They were carried by streams and rivers from ancient highlands (sometimes called the "Ancestral Rockies") far to the west and deposited here in swampy lowland environments. [URL]http://town.morrison.co.us/geology/morrform.html
Wotta maroon. That's a fairly good one-sentence description of a complex formation; as with all such, it leaves out a lot that is important when you start looking at details. IOW, that does not mean that all of the Morrison was fomed in that manner, just most of it.
Quote
JonF ... looks like you want to discuss paleosols ... very good. I'll oblige you.
You just caught on that I want to discuss paleosols, hum? You're awfully slow, Davie-dork. Don't forget to include your evaluations of the particular ones for which I've posted pictures three times now, in response to your promise to discuss any particular paleosols we wanted. And, of course, the evidence for your interpretations.
AIG speculations without any evidence are not appropriate.
You switched that to "I don't believe the dates are valid because radiometric dating is only good for igneous grains " (implying that the grains could be imported in and giving false dates.)
I thought he was pretty explicit in writing that the dates of the igneous rocks, from which the sediment was derived that eventually became sedimentary rocks, were not the dates of the sedimentary rocks. In that he's close to correct; as we all know, all you learn from the date of an igneous-origin grain in a sedimentary rock is that the grain is older than the sedimentary rock, unless there's more information available for a particular case such as the Morrison ashfall that you discussed. Of course, his error was in assuming that all that we can do is date igneous grains, and that there's never any other information available. I find that this is common among creationists. E.g., they assert that we can't know the amount of initial daughter in radiometric dating, or that we can't detect open-system behavior. Davie's done that in this very thread. But they make the unstated assumption that all we can do is measure the amount of daugher and parent products in one sample and never bother to look into the real story where knowledge of crystallization restrictions, other isotopes, and multiple samples allow us to regularly do what they claim is impossible.
I found it particularly amusing when he finally realized how stupid his claim about igneous grains was, and proudly announced that "I SEE THAT I'VE KILLED THIS ERRONEOUS NOTION ONCE AND FOR ALL."
I agree it was a river. A MIGHTY RUSHING river, which flowed for a very brief period (3 or 4 days maybe?) when a debris dam burst. Yes, a global flood WOULD wash everything away, which it in fact did. It then redeposited everything all over the earth in layers
Oh, so THAT'S what you're talking about. I wasn't talking about the Colorado. SW was saying a river cut the canyon. And I responded with "yeah, a MIGHTY RUSHING river" as in a Global Flood -- one ENORMOUS river. I can see how you misunderstood. OK. I'll humbly apologize and proclaim that you are officially not a liar.
Ah ... now we're friends again ... how sweet!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And I responded with "yeah, a MIGHTY RUSHING river" as in a Global Flood -- one ENORMOUS river.
That mixed up all the Sinners, Elephants, Dinosaurs, Rats, Rabbits, Hyaenae, Unicorns, Dragons, Oxen, Giraffes, extinct trees, Trilobites (yes trilobites got trapped as well). Into one big pile at the bottom of the canyon for which AFD has the pictures.....yes folks...real photos, NO CARTOONS it true.
All running down from one huge mountain..... Mount Purgatory and disappeared down a hole in China because the inside of the earth was hollow then and now its full of water just look up EB.
God pulled out the plug and all the water went down the plug hole he put the plug back in before all the water went down the hole and that hole is now a popular tourist attraction just look up google.
No no wait the Orinoco ran backwards up hill and the Nile just stopped and waited for the Amazon to flush out all the mud which left this huge canyon...true...gods earthmoving firm 'Satan's Holy Fillers' used millions of South Americans, who he saved from the flud to fill in the Great Amazon Canyon and then he drowned them all so Noah and his sailors had the world to themselves.
No No wait all the water piled up in the middle of the Atlantic and gawrd scooped it up in his cosmic bucket an made it into Pluto. (he suspended gravity while he did this).
Hence the little know fable "The day gravity was suspended" all the writings for this floated out to space...er with the atmosphere ....the birds had to walk around while this was going on....er no no wait he just suspended gravity locally.....snicker
So AFD Dino's were on the ark eh? What happened to them?
If the frozen remains of Mastodons (20,000 years old) have been found in Siberia why not frozen Dinosaurs only 3500 years old? ...RIGHT?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Crabby ... Oh, so you still WANT to visit? OK. Come on then. I did not recall that it was me that invited you first. I thought you invited yourself. Whatever. I'll be glad to see you. Would you like me to buy you lunch so you can insult me properly for an extended period of time? Or will you just insult me in the lobby? Or second hand via an usher? Do you want me to introduce you to the Pastor so you can schedule your announcement about how evil I am?
Crabby Aug 17 pg 144
Quote
Moron, fool, willfully ignorant liar, name the place and I'll call you that in public DDTTD.
DDTTD Aug 17 pg 144
Quote
Crabby ... Quote Moron, fool, willfully ignorant liar, name the place and I'll call you that in public DDTTD. OK. My church. As soon as possible. When will you be here?
Crabby Aug 17 pg 145
Quote
What's the address DDTTD?
Crabby Aug 19 pg 148
Quote
Got that address to your church DDTTD?
He never did post an address. I had to point out that fundies have burned fundy churches (bombed judges and shot doctors, YIKES! because they weren't fundy enough, to get a rise out of him.
He insisted I give him all my personal info before we could meet. Save me Jebus.
At this point the only thing I feel the need to say is,
Coward, moron, fool, willfully ignorant PATHOLOGICAL liar. I hope your shmekel is longer than your memory.
Outstanding post Faid, paleosols, upright trees (in situ) abraded stump deposition and tuff (Why are abraded stumps significant DDTTD?) in a single link.
Outstanding post Faid, paleosols, upright trees (in situ) abraded stump deposition and tuff (Why are abraded stumps significant DDTTD?) in a single link.
BAM! DDTTD HAS BEEN KARATE KICKED UNCONCIOUS
Wow, that's a tough one for him to get out of. I'm guessing Dave is going to go with the "doctored and/or cherry-picked photos" defense.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
CLOSING THE BOOK ON GRAND STAIRCASE "FANTASY DATING"
I have spent a considerable amount of time on the Grand Staircase because it is quite important to show the vacuousness of claims that the layers can be dated radiometrically. What have we (or at least I) learned so far?
1) Most importantly, we have learned that almost all the layers of the Grand Staircase consist of WATER-LAID SEDIMENTS. Moreover, the layers have the characterisitcs of being deposited by RAPIDLY-MOVING WATER. This simple observation alone--the fact that we have 10,000 or so feet of layered, rapidly moving water-borne sediment should make every geologist on the planet sit up and take notice of the Global Flood Hypothesis. It remains as one of the wonders of the modern world that they do not.
2) Secondly, it is obvious that these layers are bent and that they were BENT WHILE THEY WERE STILL SOFT. Were they soft because they were heated AFTER lithification as JonF proposes? Impossible. If this were the case, we would have metamorphic rock, which of course, there is some, but not anywhere close to the quantity of sandstone, mudstone, shales, and other water-laid sedimentary rock. Also if they were bent after lithification, there would be massive cracking and we do not have this.
3) I have learned that the geologic column (of which the Grand Staircase is a good example) is PRIMARILY DATED BY FOSSILS. We argued a bit over the meaning of "Primary Dating" and that is all well and good, but the bottom line is that apparently Primary Dates = Fossil Dates. My EB article stated that the dating is first done with bio-stratigraphy, then layers are dated radiometrically if this is possible. This was illustrated clearly with the KBS Tuff example.
4) Now people like Deadman claim that you CAN date layers radiometrically and has given the Brushy Basin member of the Morrison Formation as an example. He has given me around 3 other examples out of some 80 or so identifiable layers, but we have focused on this one to make a point. And my point is that even if you can date volcanic material radiometrically, how can you then say that this date--the "Ash Creation Date" is anywhere close to the "Deposition Date" of the mudstone layer? Much of that ash must have lain around for millions of years before getting gradually deposited in the Brushy Basin area by "streams and rivers" if the Long Age scenario is true. So thinking about this, some logical questions to ask would be ..."Is ash at the bottom dated older than at the top?" and "If the ash is from the same volcano, top and bottom samples should be the same age, right?" But if they are, how does this square with the "Gradual Deposition by Streams and Rivers" theory? Shouldn't it take 50 my or so to deposit the entire Morrison Formation, thus requiring the top to be dated 50 my younger than the bottom? Someone help me out here.
5) JonF believes the "stream and river" theory in spite of the fact that this seems to defy all logic. Note that he says MOST of the Morrison Formation was formed slowly over millions of years by stream and river deposition.
JonF...
Quote
Quote The sediments that comprise the Morrison Formation are believed to have been deposited about 150 million years ago, during Late Jurassic time. They were carried by streams and rivers from ancient highlands (sometimes called the "Ancestral Rockies") far to the west and deposited here in swampy lowland environments. [URL]http://town.morrison.co.us/geology/morrform.html [/url]
Wotta maroon. That's a fairly good one-sentence description of a complex formation; as with all such, it leaves out a lot that is important when you start looking at details. IOW, that does not mean that all of the Morrison was fomed in that manner, just most of it.
Now ... take a look at the Morrison Formation ... I think the numbers on the side are meters ...
Remember how extensive it is ... something like 8 states or so ...
Can you honestly look yourself in the mirror and say with a straight face that this massive formation was laid down gradually over millions of years by dinky little streams and rivers? Come on, guys. We've seen this type of formation at Mt. Saint Helens. We now know how this type of formation is deposited. This stuff didn't get deposited over million of years.
TRY DAYS!!! OR MAYBE HOURS!!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
PALEOSOLS AND WHY FAID'S LINK DOESN'T HELP LONG AGERS
Quote
Now you guys seem to have some example in mind where ALL the roots are in the right direction. Would someone care to show me an example?
That's what we've been saying all along, Davie-doodles. Don't have one from the Grand Staircase handy, but here's a great one:
Looks to me like a big clump of plants that got uprooted by the rising, rushing water of Noah's Flood, floated around for a while, then came to rest and was buried with a bunch of water-borne sediment. As the water receded, the sediment got eroded so we can now see it. I've seen bunches of plants like this floating in an upright postion. It's simply a matter of center of gravity and buoyancy.
What's YOUR explanation? In detail. I know you say it's a paleosol. But tell me the whole detailed story of how you think this soil formed, how the plants go there, how they got fossilized and so on.
JonF...
Quote
Root traces in paleosols: calcareous rhizoconcretions from an Aquept of the late Eocene Birket Qarun Formation, Egypt (Bown & Kraus, 1988). From Geology 435/535 Paleopedology.
Fig. 4. 1, Outcrop of the Ligorio Márquez Formation at LM01 ("Mina Ligorio Márquez"); 2, An example of lithofacies in the middle unit. Pebbly sandstone with cross-stratification overlies plant-bearing mudstone (equals to plant megafossil locality 03) with erosional surface. Middle unit. LM01; 3, Plant megafossil locality 04, showing dark gray mudstone frequently intercalated with white fine- to very fine-grained sandstone. Middle unit. LM01. Hammer for scale has a handle 30 cm long; 4, Plant megafossil locality 05, showing carbonaceous root traces (arrows). Middle unit. LM01; 5, Paleosol at middle unit of LM02, showing irregular joining and scattering organic matters. Handle of hammer is 3 cm wide; 6, Paleosol with abundant root traces. The bed probably corresponds with that reported by Suárez et al. (2000: fig. 2). Middle unit. LM04. A pen for scale is 14 cm long; 7, Upper unit of the Ligorio Márquez Formation (LM) and overlying basalt (B) at LM05; 8, Locality of a sample for K-Ar dating.LM05. Hammer handle is 30 cm long. From GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON PLANT FOSSIL LOCALITIES OF THE LIGORIO MÁRQUEZ FORMATION, CENTRAL PATAGONIA, CHILE.
Your turn, Davie, show us some photos of paleosols with upside-down and sidweways and randomly oriented root traces. You're the one with the better explanation, remember?
I'm squinting really hard and I'm not seeing anything in Figures 4 & 5. Can I borrow your magnifying glass?
As for showing you some trees in other-than-upright positions, how about this ... didn't someone say "ALL PLANTS ARE DEPOSITED UPRIGHT" ?? Well, if you said that, I think you are sadly mistaken ...
From Faid's article ...
Quote
The YEC hypothesis that the sedimentary record originated as a result of a single, year-long global flood is directly contradicted by the presence of a variety of biogenic structures preserved within the sedimentary record which could not form in the time allotted for the flood, or under the depositional conditions associated with the flood. One type of structure that could not form via the flood is "fossil forests," containing upright trees preserved in growth position.
Why can't we have fossil forests buried by the Flood? Actually this is a prediction of the Flood Hypothesis. If a Global Flood happened, we should have all kinds of things happening to plants: plants getting uprooted, transported, redeposited; plants getting buried in situ; plants getting buried sideways and upright ... maybe even upside down! This is a naive statement.
The first paragraph from Faid's article actually confirms my statement above! See below ...
Quote
1. Eocene Fossil Forests in Yellowstone National Park
The Lamar River Formation in Yellowstone Park contains the best known example of a "fossil forest." Here we find multiple levels of in situ trees. The upright trees at Specimen Ridge are rooted in fine-grained tuffaceous sandstone and encased in conglomeratic mudflows. The grain size of the conglomerate decreases away from the location of the volcanic source areas, the East and West Absaroka belts. Also, the ratio of upright, in situ trees to horizontal trees increases away from the Eocene volcanic source areas - the eruptions and mud flows flattened whole forests proximal to the source, while many trees are preserved in growth position in more distal locations, such as at Specimen Ridge. Although it is unclear how many successive forest layers are present in the Lamar River Formation, estimates range from 9-12 for Specimen Ridge. Some of the levels have very wide and old trees trunks.
The mud flows caused by the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 provide an excellent analogue for the geologic processes which produced the Yellowstone deposits. Fritz noted that the mixture of transported of upright and transported trees found in mudflows were virtually identical to the deposits seen at Yellowstone. In fact, several 'recent' fossil forests, containing in situ trees up to 7m tall, are present in the vicinity of Mount St Helens, each buried by lahar flows and/or pyroclastics. Exposures of these were exhumed by mudflows after the 1980 eruption. Most of the forest-bearing deposits have been dated to the period 1479-1857 by tree ring analyses of buried trees. These subfossil 'fossil' forests are excellent modern analogues for the Yellowstone forests exposed at Specimen Ridge. Karowe and Jefferson note that the "striking similarity between features of of trees buried in situ by Mount St Helens mudflows and features of upright fossil trees in the Specimen Ridge section of Yellowstone National Park strongly supports a depositional model of in situ burial for the upright trees at Yellowstone" (p. 203; see also Yamaguchi and Hoblitt, 1995).
What is the author referring to? Well this, of course, which I posted previously.
Oh, and guess what. After Mt. Saint Helens, they changed the sign!!!
Again, guys, you would know all this if you would expand your minds and read some creationist books for a change. You've been propagandized all your lives that creationists are evil, lying, money hungry morons, who want to take everybody back to the Dark Ages. The truth is that creationists have many right answers. And mainstream science slowly catches up to what creationists often have been saying for a long time. Again, as I have said before, it is often the creationists who are "at the tip of the spear" in science. But to be at the tip of the spear is many times a very lonely place. It is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for people who seek approval from others. It is only for courageous, independent thinking people who want the truth about everything no matter what the cost.
Now the rest of the examples given in Faid's article are basically repeats of the Yellowstone situation, which, of course, is exactly what we would expect if there was a Global Flood. We would expect to see MANY buried forests all over the world. Many trees would be buried in situ and many would not be.
Now ... please tell me again what was your point, Faid, in giving me this link? I guess I really do not understand the Official Millionsofyearsianism Viewpoint on Paleosols. This link seems to help the case for my Global Flood Hypothesis far more than it helps any other case. But again, I really don't fully understand your case in the first place, so maybe you could clarify.
**********************************************
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Deadman...
Quote
This is how fossil confirmation of radiometric dating works, Sweetcheeks....given that there are dates on the morrison of about 145-158 mya, what kind of fossils can we expect to find in those layers?
Why are there no modern mammal fossils mixed in the layers as your 2350-5000 BC flood would require?
Let me repeat this very slooowly, stupid. WHY ARE THERE ...NO MODERN MAMMALS IN THE MORRISON?
Well, just a guess. I'll have to study this when I am done studying paleosols and the Grand Staircase. But my guess is the reason is because the mammals that ARE buried there were buried 2300+ years ago and they became extinct because of this humongous catastrophe (subliminal ad: global flood, global flood) that buried them. The only mammals left alive were those on the ark, and they in turn, reproduced and diversified after leaving the ark. We would expect them to be different from the mammals that got buried, would we not? Again, just a guess. Maybe you could fill me in with more specifics so I could analyze this better. I'm not sure if you are saying "there are no mammal fossils at all" or "there are just no MODERN mammal fossils."
Eric...
Quote
Half the western United States was underwater at one point or another, and 10 million years ago California didn't even exist—all of it was underwater.
You're getting closer to the truth. Actually, ALL of the US was underwater at one point. And you are off on your dates, but at least you are starting to recognize the role of massive quantities of water.
JonF...
Quote
Er, Davie-moron, that's the conventional geologist's viewpoint. The "hardened, THEN eroded, turned into mud and deposited" idea is your fantasy.
No. Actually this is Faid's fantasy of my supposed fantasy. Not to be confused with your fantasy about my supposed fantasy that a tuff is a sedimentary rock. Apparently I should not confuse all these with my fantasy about your supposed fantasy that you at one point said that lava was a sedimentary rock. And don't forget Incorygible's fantasy about how I said Leakey led an army of paleo-fascists on to a bloody victory. Oh ... I keep thinking of fantasies. How about the biggest fantasy of them all? MILLIONSOFYEARSIANISM. I think we need a Fantasy Librarian around here to keep all the fantasies straight. Any volunteers? :-)
Crabby-- So are you coming or not? I can't figure out from your posts if you are or aren't. Am I buying you lunch? Or are you just going to walk in and yell at us?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Where are the Amazon, Nile, Congo, Murray, Olga, Volga, Rein, Yellow, Me Kong, Ganges river canyons (all from memory DHDAVE) Canyons?
How can all the worlds Uranium which has a half life of 4.9 Billion years be half depleted?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
The YEC hypothesis that the sedimentary record originated as a result of a single, year-long global flood is directly contradicted by the presence of a variety of biogenic structures preserved within the sedimentary record which could not form in the time allotted for the flood, or under the depositional conditions associated with the flood. One type of structure that could not form via the flood is "fossil forests," containing upright trees preserved in growth position.
Why can't we have fossil forests buried by the Flood? Actually this is a prediction of the Flood Hypothesis. If a Global Flood happened, we should have all kinds of things happening to plants: plants getting uprooted, transported, redeposited; plants getting buried in situ; plants getting buried sideways and upright ... maybe even upside down! This is a naive statement.
Ok, so the fossil forests buried upright "in situ" should provide excellent eveidence of the pre-flood/flood barrier, right? Everything below formations of predominantly upright-buried plants should be pre-flood. Right, Dave?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
VERTICAL CLIFFS CUT IN HARD BASALTIC ROCK -- MILLIONS OF YEARS? NO ... TRY LESS THAN 3 YEARS!!
Again, guys ... start buying some creationist books and you would know these things. This is from "Footprints in the Ash" by Morris and Austin about Mt. Saint Helens.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
o H I gEt iT afD y o u think T r e e s GROW under G R O U N D
No problems, do birds fly underground as well?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I have spent a considerable amount of time on the Grand Staircase because it is quite important to show the vacuousness of claims that the layers can be dated radiometrically. What have we (or at least I) learned so far?
Dave's learned to use the word "vacuousness" to make it sound like he's got an argument.
Although it is unclear how many successive forest layers are present in the Lamar River Formation, estimates range from 9-12 for Specimen Ridge. Some of the levels have very wide and old trees trunks.
That means an intact, mature forest was covered, another mature forest grew over top of the covered one, then that mature forest was covered. Repeat for 9-12 cycles.
How long does it take a mature forest to grow SFBDavie?
Also, you keep forgetting to answer this
How is limestone deposited Davie? How long does it take for 1000' of limestone to be laid down?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Who was that that was yapping at me about how all those vertical cliffs in hard rock at the Grand Canyon prove that they could not have formed rapidly.
OOOOPS!!
There goes that idea out the window.
Was that you, Deadman? Or was it JonF?
Hey, BTW ... what ever happened to Occam's Aftershave? Did he get tired? Has he become a creationist? And what about Rilke? She disappeared after she got her PhD ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, what do you know ... Aftershave shows up again!! I was just wondering where you disappeared to.
To answer your question, YES, I read all of that. And I also quoted this part to you ...
Quote
Karowe and Jefferson note that the "striking similarity between features of of trees buried in situ by Mount St Helens mudflows and features of upright fossil trees in the Specimen Ridge section of Yellowstone National Park strongly supports a depositional model of in situ burial for the upright trees at Yellowstone" (p. 203; see also Yamaguchi and Hoblitt, 1995).
Predictably, the article then goes on and tries to say how Lamar River is different that Mt Saint Helens. They couldn't agree with creationists. That would never do!!! Their disagreement doesn't sound very convincing though especially considering the quote above that admits a "striking similarity" to Mt Saint Helens, and the fact that they changed the sign. Did the Mt Saint Helens trees represent successive forests? Not at all. They represented CATASTROPHISM, a word that, like it or not, you are going to have to get used to, my friend.
LIMESTONE? Hang on, hang on. We'll get there. I'm just one guy, remember, and I only have 24 hours in a day. I'm working hard on the Grand Staircase and Paleosols right now. Limestone will come though, and by the looks of it, you should be afraid. Very afraid.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
It is only for courageous, independent thinking people who want the truth only for cowardly, dependent unthinking people who want the lies about everything no matter what the cost to their sanity[/s]
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
To answer your question, YES, I read all of that. And I also quoted this part to you ...
Quote
Karowe and Jefferson note that the "striking similarity between features of of trees buried in situ by Mount St Helens mudflows and features of upright fossil trees in the Specimen Ridge section of Yellowstone National Park strongly supports a depositional model of in situ burial for the upright trees at Yellowstone" (p. 203; see also Yamaguchi and Hoblitt, 1995).
Predictably, the article then goes on and tries to say how Lamar River is different that Mt Saint Helens. They couldn't agree with creationists. That would never do!!! Their disagreement doesn't sound very convincing though especially considering the quote above that admits a "striking similarity" to Mt Saint Helens, and the fact that they changed the sign. Did the Mt Saint Helens trees represent successive forests? Not at all. They represented CATASTROPHISM, a word that, like it or not, you are going to have to get used to, my friend.
The Mt Saint Helens trees represent a single layer of trees felled by a single event. The Yellowstone trees represent 9-12 distinct layers, each representing a different mature forest felled by a different event for each layer.
How does that occur in 3-4 days Davie?
How long does it take a mature forest to grow SFBDavie?
Quote
Well, what do you know ... Aftershave shows up again!! I was just wondering where you disappeared to.
I've been here watching all along SFBDavie - it just that the others were doing such a thorough job of thrashing your dishonest ass there was nothing left for me to kick.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I have spent a considerable amount of time on the Grand Staircase because it is quite important to show the vacuousness of claims that the layers can be dated radiometrically. What have we (or at least I) learned so far?
Dave, you've been shown abundant evidence that many of the layers in the Grand Canyon can be and have been dated radiometrically. That you ignore that evidence doesn't change that fact. And once again, you've failed to provide any methodology by which you would date the layers in the Grand Canyon, nor have you provided any evidence that they're all less than 6,000 years old.
Quote
1) Most importantly, we have learned that almost all the layers of the Grand Staircase consist of WATER-LAID SEDIMENTS. Moreover, the layers have the characterisitcs of being deposited by RAPIDLY-MOVING WATER.
And where did you show this, Dave? You've "learned" no such thing. It's merely what you want to believe. You still haven't accounted for the multiple paleosols in the Grand Staircase, nor have you accounted for the layers that were not water-laid. How does it help you that "almost all" were? All of them had to be, or your "flood" story, which is already dead from multiple other stab-wounds, is dead.
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2) Secondly, it is obvious that these layers are bent and that they were BENT WHILE THEY WERE STILL SOFT. Were they soft because they were heated AFTER lithification as JonF proposes? Impossible.
And you've demonstrated this how, Dave? From your extensive lack of knowledge of geological processes? After it's pretty clear that you think volcanic tuff is sedimentary? Don't make me laugh.
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I have learned that the geologic column (of which the Grand Staircase is a good example) is PRIMARILY DATED BY FOSSILS. We argued a bit over the meaning of "Primary Dating" and that is all well and good, but the bottom line is that apparently Primary Dates = Fossil Dates. My EB article stated that the dating is first done with bio-stratigraphy, then layers are dated radiometrically if this is possible. This was illustrated clearly with the KBS Tuff example.
Still stuck on that "primary" goof you made, Dave, that you simply cannot admit you were wrong about. How many times have you been told that fossils can only provide relative dates, and how many times have you been told that igneous deposits can set upper and lower dates for sedimentary layers between them, even if those sedimentary layers cannot be dated radiometrically?
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4) Now people like Deadman claim that you CAN date layers radiometrically and has given the Brushy Basin member of the Morrison Formation as an example. He has given me around 3 other examples out of some 80 or so identifiable layers, but we have focused on this one to make a point. And my point is that even if you can date volcanic material radiometrically, how can you then say that this date--the "Ash Creation Date" is anywhere close to the "Deposition Date" of the mudstone layer? Much of that ash must have lain around for millions of years before getting gradually deposited in the Brushy Basin area by "streams and rivers" if the Long Age scenario is true. So thinking about this, some logical questions to ask would be ..."Is ash at the bottom dated older than at the top?" and "If the ash is from the same volcano, top and bottom samples should be the same age, right?" But if they are, how does this square with the "Gradual Deposition by Streams and Rivers" theory? Shouldn't it take 50 my or so to deposit the entire Morrison Formation, thus requiring the top to be dated 50 my younger than the bottom? Someone help me out here.
This has all been explained to you at length, Dave, but you're not interested. All you care about is your own little fantasy that the Grand Canyon is less than 6,000 years old and that it was carved by a global flood. Are you going to provide evidence for either one of these assertions before the sun goes out?
Dave, you don't have a flood because you don't have any water for it; you have absolutely not the slightest clue how to date any layer in the Grand Canyon, and you have not the merest smidgen of evidence that all the layers in the Grand Canyon are less than 6,000 years old. How could the ash in the Morrison have laid around for "millions of years" on a planet less than 10,000 years old, you dolt?
You dismiss the radiometric dates provided for numerous layers in the Grand Staircase for no better reason that if they were accurate, your "hypothesis" would be falsified. Well guess what, Dave? Your "hypothesis" has been falsified. It's been really entertaining watching an undergraduate EE try to falsify an entire scientific discipline, but it's not like we didn't know what the results of your attempt would be before you even got started on it.
And you still don't know where the water from your "flood" came from, do you?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have learned these things whether YOU have or not. Remember why I came here? To learn. Mission is being accomplished.
Aftershave ... what makes you think those layers represent Successive Forests. You are wrong. There are many distinct layers in the Mt Saint Helens situation as well. Different layers are caused by different waves of sedimentation, differences in particles, differences in sediment composition, different weights of sediments, etc, etc, etc.
Again, what makes you so sure those Lamar River trees are SUCCESSIVE FORESTS?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And you (AFD)still don't know where the water from your "flood" came from, do you?
or .....where it went to...AFD?
Bwhahahahahahahaha
Quote
Remember why I came here? To learn. Mission is being accomplished.
heheheheheheh
Just like schrubby landing on a carrier in the Pacific...snicker
This is free right?
Hey AFD guess what GWB HAS LOST IRAQ .........suck that down.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Holy sh*t AFD did you get away with that in your undergrad degree (barf) ?
Where did you you get it?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I do think when all is said and done, an archive of this thread should be given to geologists and any other interested scientists, maybe titled something like "Why arguing with creationists is futile"
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I have learned these things whether YOU have or not. Remember why I came here? To learn. Mission is being accomplished.
No, you said you came here to argue.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I have learned these things whether YOU have or not. Remember why I came here? To learn. Mission is being accomplished.
Dave, you can't "learn" things that ain't true, and nothing your "hypothesis" claims (with the possible exception of the existence of a god, which I told you months ago is outside the scope of science anyway) turns out to be true.
You didn't come here to learn anything, Dave. We have 170 pages of this thread to prove that beyond any possibility of doubt. You haven't "learned" anything in the whole time you've been here.
Another thing you haven't done in the past 170 pages is provide a single scintilla of evidence to support a single assertion you've ever made. Oh, sure, we've seen lots of hand-waving, and a lot of "it's obvious," and "it's reasonable to believe that," and "a plausible explanation for," but no evidence for anything you've said. We've also seen a lot of lies, prevarications, selective memory, and patent dishonesty. But we've come to expect that from young-earth creationists.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I do think when all is said and done, an archive of this thread should be given to geologists and any other interested scientists, maybe titled something like "Why arguing with creationists is futile"
Well, also you have this going for you ... you say that the more Deadman and JonF and others keep me talking, the more the cause of Evoism and Long Ageism is helped, right?
Eric ... I have learned a lot. Just not the things YOU hoped I would learn.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Half the western United States was underwater at one point or another, and 10 million years ago California didn't even exist—all of it was underwater.
You're getting closer to the truth. Actually, ALL of the US was underwater at one point. And you are off on your dates, but at least you are starting to recognize the role of massive quantities of water.
Dave, there's plenty of evidence for large shallow seas in major portions of the western U.S. Where's your "evidence" that the entire planet was under water? You don't have any, do you?
Dave, no one doubts that there's massive quantities of water on earth. In case it's escaped your notice, the earth's surface is 70% water. No one denies that water is a very powerful erosive force. But everyone else here is aware that that erosive force has operated over billions of years. You think it all happened in a year. That's because you're an idiot.
And where's your "evidence" that my dates are "way off"? You have no methodology whatsoever to date anything other than to try to shoehorn all of geological history into the last 6,000 years. And your "evidence" that the earth is only 6,000 years old? We're still waiting on that, Dave, just as we have for the past four months. You made that claim on the first page of this thread, and you still haven't presented a single scrap of evidence to support it. Lately you've repeatedly made mention of processes taking millions of years to accomplish. Should we take this to mean you've abandoned that claim? Or you unaware of the problem events taking millions of years to happen presents for your "hypothesis"?
Normally I wouldn't ask, but in your case I can't take anything for granted.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, there's plenty of evidence for large shallow seas in major portions of the western U.S. Where's your "evidence" that the entire planet was under water? You don't have any, do you?
Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
Let me put it to you another way, Eric. How much of the present land area would you say IS NOT covered by large thicknesses of water-laid sedimentary rock? Any idea? I'm not sure myself, but I think the number is probably close to ZERO. Anybody know?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, also you have this going for you ... you say that the more Deadman and JonF and others keep me talking, the more the cause of Evoism and Long Ageism is helped, right?
Eric ... I have learned a lot. Just not the things YOU hoped I would learn.
Yeah, we do have that going for us. You're acting like an idiot.
Aftershave ... what makes you think those layers represent Successive Forests. You are wrong. There are many distinct layers in the Mt Saint Helens situation as well. Different layers are caused by different waves of sedimentation, differences in particles, differences in sediment composition, different weights of sediments, etc, etc, etc.
Again, what makes you so sure those Lamar River trees are SUCCESSIVE FORESTS?
Because ShitForBrains, the layering has been thoroughly analyzed and identified as having distinct paleosols between each layer of volcanic/pyroclastic material.
"Specimen Creek": The first known map of the Gallatin Petrified Forest is found in a 1935 report, "Petrified Sequoia Trees in the Northwest Corner of Yellowstone National Park" by Dr. Paul A. Young of Bozeman. He identified and mapped 21 standing trees in the Gallatin/Specimen Creek area and noted the discovery of leaf impressions of poplar, willow, and magnolia trees. Most of the previous paleobotanical fieldwork had been conducted in the Lamar River Valley.
Andrews (1939) surveyed the Gallatin region of the park in the 1930s, collecting specimens in the Gallatin Petrified Forest in 1936. He reported at least 12 successive layers of fossil forest around Bighorn Peak, predominantly consisting of Sequoia magnifica, and fossil impressions of S. langsdorfi along Bighorn Creek. The petrified trees are preserved in the Eocene Sepulcher Formation.
Lamar Region
The Lamar Region is limited to the ridge on the south side of the Lamar River, and includes well-exposed Lamar River Formation and Langford Formation. Small exposures of Sepulcher Formation occur at the northwest end of "Specimen Ridge." Its fossiliferous exposures extend from the northwest edge of "Specimen Ridge" to Timothy Creek just south of Mirror Plateau and include "Amethyst Mountain," "Fossil Forest," and "Mirror Plateau."
"Amethyst Mountain/Specimen Ridge": This locality is 10 miles long, lies 2,000 feet above the valley, and exposes 27 successive layers of fossil forest.
"Fossil Forest": The paleontological significance of the region comes from the presence of standing fossil tree trunks and a stratigraphic succession of at least two dozen fossil forests that were first recognized by Knowlton (1914). "Fossil Forest" has been extensively studied by Dorf and other paleobotanists.
Show me where Mt Saint Helens has dozens of successive layers of soil interspaced with layers of ash/pyroclastic material.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Dave, there's plenty of evidence for large shallow seas in major portions of the western U.S. Where's your "evidence" that the entire planet was under water? You don't have any, do you?
Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
Let me put it to you another way, Eric. How much of the present land area would you say IS NOT covered by large thicknesses of water-laid sedimentary rock? Any idea? I'm not sure myself, but I think the number is probably close to ZERO. Anybody know?
Dave, "MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH" is not evidence that the earth was ever covered 100% with water, and it most certainly is not evidence that it was covered 100% with water less than 5,000 years ago. If you think it is evidence, then please explain in detail why you think it is. You keep repeating this over and over, as if somehow endless repetition will make it more true.
Why do you think it's more likely that all of those critters got buried, in exactly the order predicted by evolution, with no exceptions, in a single year, rather than over billions of years? You've never answered this simple, basic question, because it's unanswerable. I predict that you will ignore this question the same way you've ignored it all the other times it's been asked of you.
What difference does it make if every single square inch of land surface were covered with later-laid sediment, Dave? Looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to your "hypothesis," it's still far from clear that such evidence would support your contention that all that sediment was laid down at the same time. Where's your evidence of that, Dave?
And how do you explain an average of 30,000 feet of sediment covering continental basement rock? How does five thousand feet of water lay down 30,000 feet of sediment?
There's another one of those pesky questions you don't have an answer for.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, "MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH"
I think that's going to go down as one of the most ridiculous statements by Dave on this thread. You could get better science from a f*&#ing coloring book.
"Who was that that was yapping at me about how all those vertical cliffs in hard rock at the Grand Canyon prove that they could not have formed rapidly."
But Dave, you didn't prove it. Your post were dismantled point by point. You were refuted, you just chose to ignore the recognized evidence.
Again, that doesn't make you the victor, it makes you an ignorant looser.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
"Who was that that was yapping at me about how all those vertical cliffs in hard rock at the Grand Canyon prove that they could not have formed rapidly."
But Dave, you didn't prove it. Your post were dismantled point by point. You were refuted, you just chose to ignore the recognized evidence.
Again, that doesn't make you the victor, it makes you an ignorant looser.
No one can ever prove this type of thing. It was a one time event. We cannot go back in time to observe it. All I can do is show you similar instances which prove that it is very plausible. That's what I have done. Will believe it or not? That's the question.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"Who was that that was yapping at me about how all those vertical cliffs in hard rock at the Grand Canyon prove that they could not have formed rapidly."
But Dave, you didn't prove it. Your post were dismantled point by point. You were refuted, you just chose to ignore the recognized evidence.
Again, that doesn't make you the victor, it makes you an ignorant looser.
No one can ever prove this type of thing. It was a one time event. We cannot go back in time to observe it. All I can do is show you similar instances which prove that it is very plausible. That's what I have done. Will believe it or not? That's the question.
you "evidence" might have more weight to it if it was not just scanned in from some creo-tract that does not hide it's pre-dispositon to goddidit. Go do your own research! Present your own conclusions! Stop leeching off other peoples work.
Before you say that's all that other people have done here, the point is you are trying to PROVE your OWN theory and therefore you need evidence. To overturn the current thinking, you cant just point to the evidence for the current thinking and say it's wrong!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
"Who was that that was yapping at me about how all those vertical cliffs in hard rock at the Grand Canyon prove that they could not have formed rapidly."
But Dave, you didn't prove it. Your post were dismantled point by point. You were refuted, you just chose to ignore the recognized evidence.
Again, that doesn't make you the victor, it makes you an ignorant looser.
No one can ever prove this type of thing. It was a one time event. We cannot go back in time to observe it. All I can do is show you similar instances which prove that it is very plausible. That's what I have done. Will believe it or not? That's the question.
Dave, soft sediments slump when eroded. Look at the Toutle River Canyon photos you posted. Then look at the Grand Canyon walls. We thrashed this out weeks ago, and you refused to admit you were wrong. It's simply impossible for the vertical cliffs in the Grand Canyon to have formed from soft, unlithified sediments.
This is only one of the dozens of reasons we've gone through a million times already why it's impossible for the Grand Canyon to have formed in a year. It's like whack-a-mole, Dave: you make an assertion, it gets blown out of the water, you make another assertion that's also blown out of the water, lather rinse and repeat for a few weeks, and then you go back to make a previous assertion that's already been blown out of the water, evidently hoping everyone will have forgotten that it was previously blown out of the water.
It gets pretty tedious after a while. We've already demonstrated that it's impossible for the Grand Canyon to have formed in a year, we've already demonstrated that the Grand Canyon is far older than 6,000 years, and we've already demonstrated not all of the sediments in the Grand Canyon were deposited by water. In the meantime, you have not a speck of evidence for the existence of your "flood."
Find something else to talk about.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I see you haven't got any explanation of why you brought the KBS Tuff up in a discussion of sedimentary rocks. The evidence on the table is pretty conclusive that you thought the KBS Tuff is sedimentary; got any more evidence to place on the table?
And you neglected to admit your errors about dating sedimentary rocks, and the links I posted about them. Guess you just can't stand to admit when you're wrong, Davie-pootles.
Quote (af "Sedimentary Tuffs" dave @ Aug. 28 2006,09:40)
1) Most importantly, we have learned that almost all the layers of the Grand Staircase consist of WATER-LAID SEDIMENTS. Moreover, the layers have the characterisitcs of being deposited by RAPIDLY-MOVING WATER.
Flat-out lie, Davie-doodles. Most of the "water-laid" layers have the characteristincs of being deposited by SLOW-MOVING OR NEARLY STILL WATER.
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2) Secondly, it is obvious that these layers are bent and that they were BENT WHILE THEY WERE STILL SOFT.
Fllat-out lie, Davie-doodles. They do not have the characteristics of layers bent while still soft.
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3) I have learned that the geologic column (of which the Grand Staircase is a good example) is PRIMARILY DATED BY FOSSILS. We argued a bit over the meaning of "Primary Dating" and that is all well and good, but the bottom line is that apparently Primary Dates = Fossil Dates. My EB article stated that the dating is first done with bio-stratigraphy, then layers are dated radiometrically if this is possible. This was illustrated clearly with the KBS Tuff example.
Flat-out lies, several of 'em, Davie-doodles. The layers are dated by a combination of index fossils to correlate layers and radiometric dating to date layers. Primary dates equal radiometric dates. Your reading of the EB article is wrong (although the article is very poorly written and flat-out wrong in many places).
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4) Now people like Deadman claim that you CAN date layers radiometrically and has given the Brushy Basin member of the Morrison Formation as an example. He has given me around 3 other examples out of some 80 or so identifiable layers, but we have focused on this one to make a point. And my point is that even if you can date volcanic material radiometrically, how can you then say that this date--the "Ash Creation Date" is anywhere close to the "Deposition Date" of the mudstone layer? Much of that ash must have lain around for millions of years before getting gradually deposited in the Brushy Basin area by "streams and rivers" if the Long Age scenario is true.
Nope, as has been pointed out repeatedly the ash did not lie around for milions of years. It was deposited in one swell foop by a volcanic eruption.
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5) JonF believes the "stream and river" theory in spite of the fact that this seems to defy all logic. Note that he says MOST of the Morrison Formation was formed slowly over millions of years by stream and river deposition.
But JonF has already explicitly stated that the particular deposit we are discussing was not formed slowly over millions of years by stream and river deposition.
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Now ... take a look at the Morrison Formation ... I think the numbers on the side are meters ...
Remember how extensive it is ... something like 8 states or so ...
Can you honestly look yourself in the mirror and say with a straight face that this massive formation was laid down gradually over millions of years by dinky little streams and rivers? Come on, guys. We've seen this type of formation at Mt. Saint Helens. We now know how this type of formation is deposited. This stuff didn't get deposited over million of years.
We can say, and do say, that the Morrison formation was laid down in a vast inland sea and swampy area, fed by all sorts of sources from small streams to mighty rivers, with parts of it laid down in short periods by gigantic volcanic eruptions. We've seen nothing like the Morrison formation at Mt. St. Helens.
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Looks to me like a big clump of plants that got uprooted by the rising, rushing water of Noah's Flood, floated around for a while, then came to rest and was buried with a bunch of water-borne sediment. As the water receded, the sediment got eroded so we can now see it. I've seen bunches of plants like this floating in an upright position. It's simply a matter of center of gravity and buoyancy.
Not detailed enough, Davie-doodles. I haven't seen bunches of plants floating upright; let's see your evidence for it. You're the one who says the layers have "the characteristics of being deposited by RAPIDLY-MOVING WATER"; do plants float upright and get deposited upright in rapidly-moving water? Let's see your evidence for plants being buried upright by sediment in rapidly-moving water. Don't forget you've got hundreds of paleosol layers in the Grand Staircase to explain; did the fludde recede every day or two so as to deposit those paleosols?.
Let's also see your detialed discussion (that you offered to supply) of the paleosols I linked to three times now, including how your fludde formed soil horizons and characteristic microstructures that look nothing like water-deposited sediment.
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What's YOUR explanation? In detail.
Pathetic attempt to shift the burden of proof, Davie-dork This is where you present your "better explanation" in detail, Davie-diddles. Paleosols look nothing like water-borne sediments. You are the one explaining how the characteristic horizons formed, how the characteristic microstructures formed, how the root traces always wind up in growing position. If you need to know more about the mainstream explanation in order to present yours, you look it up; start with Paleosols and A Paleosol Bibliography and move on from there as you need to.
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I'm squinting really hard and I'm not seeing anything in Figures 4 & 5. Can I borrow your magnifying glass?
So, look up some photographs of your own, Davie-poo. Especially photographs of randomly-oriented root traces.
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As for showing you some trees in other-than-upright positions, how about this ... didn't someone say "ALL PLANTS ARE DEPOSITED UPRIGHT" ?? Well, if you said that, I think you are sadly mistaken ..
Nobody said any such thing, Davie-moron, I wrote that all paleosol root traces are found in positions indistinguishable from their growing position. You're the only one talking about plants being deposited ... and you just posted a photo that disproves your thesis.
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Apparently I should not confuse all these with my fantasy about your supposed fantasy that you at one point said that lava was a sedimentary rock.
I never wrote anyting that even an idiot like you could interpret as claiming that lava is a sedimentary rock, Davie-me-lad. You can't link to where I did so 'cause it don't exist. Moron.
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VERTICAL CLIFFS CUT IN HARD BASALTIC ROCK -- MILLIONS OF YEARS? NO ... TRY LESS THAN 3 YEARS!!
Er, Davie-dumbass, that "vertical cliff at lake's edge" is about a 45-degree-or-less cliff. You're totally blowing your own claims away with these postings. Do you ever actually look at what you post?
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Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
You forgot IN MANNERS THAT ARE COMPLETELY INCONSISTENT WITH A SINGLE EVENT OR EVEN A FEW EVENTS, OR DEPOSITION IN ANYTHING LESS THAN MANY MILLIONS OF YEARS.
And your claims, Dave, are absolutely fantastic. You claim that, all the mountainous evidence notwithstanding, the earth is only 6,000 years old, rather than the billions of years implied by all of the available evidence. So where's your evidence to support this claim? As has been pointed out to you several times by several different posters, all it takes is one rock more than 6,000 years old to disprove your claim. And we have millions of such rocks. The vast majority of rocks are more than six thousand years old. For your claim of 6,000 years to survive, you have to prove that every single radiometric dating to more than 6,000 years ago is wrong.
Do you have the slightest idea how difficult that's going to be, Dave?
And that's only one thing you need to prove. You also need to find a source for your water, and evidence that your flood ever happened. You need to find evidence that all the Grand Canyon layers were formed within a year of each other (and you still haven't explained how 5,000 feet of water could have laid 5,000, to say nothing of 30,000, feet of sediment in a year. Did we have a "global flood" or a "global mud"?) Are you ever going to do that? Arguments about "plausibility," or "possibility," aren't going to cut it. Every single thing you've presented as "evidence" for your flood has turned out, on even the most cursory review, to be evidence against it. I don't think you truly realize how fantastic your claim that the earth is 6,000 years old really is. And you obviously have no conception at all of the strength of the contrary evidence.
So here you are, trying to chisel away at radiometric dating techniques, or the evidence for paleosols—you still haven't supported your claim that the Coconino was deposited by water—while you have gaping holes in your "hypothesis," holes you could drive a LNG supertanker through. I'm trying to think of some observation out there that doesn't contradict the notion of a "catastrophic global flood."
Also, have you found out how long it takes for a photon to get from the center of the sun to its surface? Or is that going to be yet another question you can never trouble yourself to answer?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Also, have you found out how long it takes for a photon to get from the center of the sun to its surface? Or is that going to be yet another question you can never trouble yourself to answer?
Here AFD, I'll save you the trouble. A quick google of the phrase "how long it takes for a photon to get from the center of the sun to its surface?" lifted directly from the previous post and the first hit is for A162, Lecture 7 from Ohio State University.
And the answer they give is as follows:
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At the speed of light, it would take 2.3 seconds for a photon to go straight from the center of the sun to its surface.
But a photon in the sun can go only a short distance (about 1 centimeter) before running into an atom. It then changes direction randomly.
A path with random changes of direction is called a random walk. If each step in a random walk is length l, then it takes, on average, (d/l)2 steps to go a distance d from the starting point.
[A ``direct walk'' would take only d/l steps.]
On average, it takes a photon 30,000 years to random walk from the center of the sun to the surface of the sun.
So there's an answer, 30,000 years. Or 5 total lifetimes of the universe using AFDave's Miraculous BibleMath™.
For the Sun, radiation leaves the center, where it was generated, by a random walk process. A photon moves about 1 cm before it has a collision and is randomly redirected. Since the radius of the Sun is 10^11 (100 billion) cm, a photon must travel about 10^22 cm before it will make its way to the surface. Since the photon travels at the speed of light (3 X 10^10 cm/sec), it will take a minimum of 10^4 (a thousand) years for a photon to emerge. A much more detailed calculations give a time range of a few hundred thousand to 10^7 (ten million) years, since the mean free path of a photon is not always one centimeter throughout the Sun.
It takes a LONG time for photons produced by nuclear reactions in the core to reach the surface. In the opaque interior a photon travels only about 1 centimeter before it runs into an atom or ion and is absorbed. A measure of the gas' ability to absorb the photons is called its opacity. You cannot see into the interior of a star because the gas has a high opacity.
The photon is later re-emitted but in a random direction. It may be re-emitted in the direction it came from! So the photon travels a very zig-zag sort of path outward. It takes about a million years for a photon to travel from where it was created in the core to the surface where it is finally released into space. Along the way the photon has transferred some its energy to the gas particles, so the photon has changed from very high energy gamma rays to the lower energy visible light photons. Some of the radiation is also in the form of neutrinos. The gas has almost zero opacity with the neutrinos so they pass right on through the star's gas in just a few seconds.
I think we can all agree that all but the most naive estimates are far in excess of 6,000 years. Well, Dave won't agree, but then he's pretty naive, isn't he?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hmmm ... wanna change the subject to photons in the sun, huh? It'll be a while before I get to that topic, boys.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hmmm ... wanna change the subject to photons in the sun, huh? It'll be a while before I get to that topic, boys.
Why not, Dave? You're going nowhere with your Grand Canyon argument, you're going nowhere with your "global flood" argument, you went nowhere with your "oldest writings are 5,500 years old" argument, you went nowhere with your "all radiometric dating is wrong" argument, you went nowhere with your "biological machines" argument, and you went nowhere with your "cosmic fine-tuning" argument. You might as well start with yet another argument you'll go nowhere with.
Have you gotten anywhere with your "nothing can possibly be older than 6,000 years" argument? Just curious.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Hmmm ... wanna change the subject to photons in the sun, huh? It'll be a while before I get to that topic, boys.
Why will it take a while, has AiG not put up it's photons in the sun page yet? Not a big topic for creationist tracts?
That's because you guys presume the sun's interior is actually hydrogen gas. I find it much more plausible that the sun is filled with angels armed with flashlights. Ka-ching!
Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
So where are all the human fossils? Weren't there people living around Noah and the whole middle east? Where are those fossils, Dave? Why haven't geologists found innumerable human fossils when they've dug up all those dinosaur fossils? Andr trilobites? And saber tooth tigers? Why don't we see fossilized human skeletons somewhere in all those layers of sediments laid down by the flud?
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
Look at Stupid's claim about Spirit Lake. Read the text. It is an alpine lake in a "bowl" created by glacial and orogenic forces. The " new vertical" shoreline wasn't WORN IN THE ROCK in a few years , it was UNCOVERED BY DRAINING. IT WAS ALREADY PRESENT. It is a natural geologic feature that was simply UNDER the former lake level.
On page 129 of this thread, Dave freaks out after a hard night of whatever he was arguing about with his family, then posts on dendro, varves and radiometric. He got caught using lies and quote-mined claims. so on page 130, he decides to pick apart one aspect of the Grand Canyon. He says
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Now ... I would like to know WHICH of these layers were dated RADIOMETRICALLY. Is it correct that NONE of the layers above the Great Unconformity can be dated RM? How about the layers below the GU? I'm thinking that the only layers that CAN be dated RM are the Zoroaster Granite and the Vishnu Schist. Is this correct?
Of course, Dave shifted this around a ton of times, and on page 135 of this thread, claims he was only given dates on two layers. Then it was three (p.136), then it was five. Now StupidAssDave is back to claiming only three layers are radiometrically dated.
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4) Now people like Deadman claim that you CAN date layers radiometrically and has given the Brushy Basin member of the Morrison Formation as an example. He has given me around 3 other examples
Meteor Crater in Arizona penetrates the Permian Kaibab and Toroweap Formations and has caused shock effects on the Coconino Sandstone. Because the crater penetrates Permian strata, it is Permian or younger. And since the crater contains some Pleistocene lake deposits, it is Pleistocene or older. The Geomorphology of the crater itself indicates only a small amount of erosion.
Nishiizumi et al. (Nishiizumi, K., Kohl, C.P., Shoemaker J.R., Arnold, J.R., Klein, J., Fink, D. and Middleton, R., 1991. In situ 10Be and 26Al exposure ages at Meteor Crater, Arizona. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2699-2703.) report a minimum age of 49.2±1.7ka, based on 10Be and 26Al analyses of samples from the crater walls and ejecta blocks at the crater rim.
Phillips et al. (Phillips, F.M., Zreda, M.G., Smith, S.S., Elmore, D., Kubik, P.W., Dorn, R.I. and Roddy, D.J., 1991. Age and geomorphic history of Meteor Crater, Arizona, from cosmogenic Cl-36 and C-14 in rock varnish. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 55, pp. 2695-2698.) report a 36Cl exposure age of 49±0.7ka for dolomite ejecta on the crater rim.
Both sets of dates are in turn statistically identical to quartz thermoluminescence dates of 49±3ka reported by Sutton (Sutton, S.R., 1985. Thermoluminescence measurements on shock-metamorphosed sandstone and dolomite from Meteor Crater, Arizona. Journal of Geophysical Research 90(B5), pp. 3690-3700.) the Precambrian Cardenas basalt in the east grand canyon is dated at about 780 to 810 million years: E.H. McKee and D.C. Noble, "Age of the Cardenas Lavas, Grand Canyon, Arizona," Geological Society of America Bulletin, 87 (Aug. 1976): 1188-1190. which agrees with paleomagnetic data presented by: Radiometric dating of the underlying Vishnu Group places its metamorphosis at about 1750 million years ago. GSA Bulletin: Vol. 108, No. 9, (pp. 1167-1181). Two radiometric ages have been published for the the reworked tuff deposits found in the highest member of the Chinle, a K-Ar date of 239±9 Ma, and a U-Pb date of 207±2 Ma (Riggs, N. R., S. R. Ash, and J. M. Mattinson. 1994. Isotopic dating of a non-volcanic continental sequence, Chinle Formation, Arizona. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 26(6):61). Riggs, N.R. S.R. Ash, A.P. Barth, G.E. Gehrels and J.L. Wooden (2003) Isotopic age of the Black Forest Bed, Petrified Forest Member, Chinle Formation, Arizona: An example of dating a continental sandstone. GSA Bulletin; v.115:11; p. 1315-1323 [Using Multigrain TIMS (thermal-ionization mass spectrometry), single-crystal TIMS, and SHRIMP (sensitive, high-resolution ion-microprobe).]
Ash beds within the Carmel have yielded Ma Laser-fusion single-crystal 40Ar/39Ar dates between 166.3 and 168.0 ± 0.5 (Kowallis, et al. 2001. The record of Middle Jurassic volcanism in the Carmel and Temple Cap Formations of southwestern Utah. GSA Bulletin, Vol. 113, No. 3, pp. 373-387). Kowallis, B.J., Christiansen, E.H., Deino, A.L., Peterson, F., Turner, C.E., Kunk, M.J., and Obradovich, J.D., 1998, The age of the Morrison Formation: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 235-260. 40Ar/39 Ar on sanidine in the Brushy Basin Member in Utah and Colorado yields ages of 148 to 150 million years old Tuff from the Jurassic Morrison Formation is dated to 155-148 mya (Peterson, F., and Turner, C.E., 1998. Stratigraphy of the Ralston Creek and Morrison Formations [Upper Jurassic] near Denver, Colorado: Modern Geology, v. 22, nos. 1-4, p. 3-38).
Igneous sills on top of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale have been dated (K-Ar) at 66 million years ago, and ash layers in the Green River Shale have been dated at 50.2 +/- 1.9 mya (Buchheim, H. P., and Eugster. 1998. The Green River Formation of Fossil Basin, southwestern Wyoming. In J. Pitman, and A. Carroll, (eds.), Modern and Ancient Lacustrine Depositional Systems: Utah Geological Association. ) Smith,M. E., B. S. Singer, A. R. Carroll, and J. H. Fournelle (2006) High-resolution calibration of Eocene strata: 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of biotite in the Green River Formation. Geology, May 1, 2006; 34(5): 393 - 396. W. C. Clyde, W. S. Bartels, G. F. Gunnell, and J.-P. Zonneveld (2004) 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of the Eocene Green River Formation, Wyoming: Discussion GSA Bulletin, January 1, 2004; 116(1-2): 251 - 252. Smith M. Elliot, Brad Singer and Alan Carroll ( 2003 )40Ar/39Ar geochronology of the Eocene Green River Formation, Wyoming. GSA Bulletin; v.115:5. p. 549-565 Pietras, J.T., A.R. Carroll, B.S. Singer and M.E. Smith (2003 )10 k.y. depositional cyclicity in the early Eocene: Stratigraphic and 40Ar/39Ar evidence from the lacustrine Green River Formation. Geology; July 2003; v.31:7; p. 593-596 Hicks, F.H., Obradovich, J.D., and Tauxe, L., 1995. A new calibration for the Late Cretaceous time scale: The 40Ar/39Ar isotopic age of the C33r/C33n geomagnetic reversal from the Judith River Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Elk Basin, Wyoming, USA: The Journal of Geology, v. 103, 243-256. Obradovich, J.D., 1993, A Cretaceous time scale, in Caldwell, W.G.E., and Kauffman, E.G., editors, Evolution of the Western Interior basin: Geological Association of Canada Special Paper 39, p. 379-396. upper part of Dakota Formation -- Tropic Shale. " Bentonite Layer A dates 93.49 +/- 0.89 Ma (Obradovich, 1993). Bentonite B, which lies higher in the upper Cenomanian biozone of Neocardioceras juddii, was dated at 93.59 +/- 0.58 Ma. Bentonite C, which may lie in the lower Turonian biozone of Pseudaspidoceras flexuosum, was dated at 93.25 +/- 0.55 Ma, and bentonite D, in the lower Turonian biozone of Vascoceras birchbyi, was dated at 93.40 +/- 0.63 Ma." McIntosh, W.C., Peters, L., Karlstrom, K.E., and Pederson, J.L., 2002. New 40Ar-39Ar dates on basalts in Grand Canyon: Constraints on rates of Quaternary river incision and slip on the Toroweap fault and implications for lava dams Geological Society of America Abstracts with. Programs, Rocky Mountain Section. Joel Pederson, Karl Karlstrom, Warren Sharp and William McIntosh. 2002: Differential incision of the Grand Canyon related to Quaternary faulting-Constraints from U-series and Ar/Ar dating. Geology: Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 739-742 " We hypothesize that this differential incision is due to west-down slip on the Toroweap fault of 94 ± 6 m/m.y. based on measured offset of the newly dated Upper Prospect basalt flow, which is the major middle-late Quaternary slip evident along the river."
Carlos M. González-León et. al. (2005) New data on the lithostratigraphy, detrital zircon and Nd isotope provenance, and paleogeographic setting of the El Antimonio Group, Sonora, Mexico. Geological Society of America Special Paper 393: The Mojave-Sonora Megashear Hypothesis: Development, Assessment, and Alternatives: pp. 259-282. "Lower Jurassic El Antimonio sections are known in southern Nevada and southeastern California and include the Moenkopi, Virgin Limestone, Union Wash, Silverlake, and Fairview Valley Formations and the Kings sequence. New U-Pb geochronology on detrital zircon and Sm/Nd isotope and petrographic data from terrigenous samples of the El Antimonio Group may help to elucidate its provenance and to support this paleogeography. Zircon grains from samples of the lower, middle, and upper parts of the El Antimonio Group yielded ages that cluster ... 340, 270-240, and 190 Ma."
Those are only a few that anyone can look up.
PantyDancerDave claims that
Quote
we have learned that almost all the layers of the Grand Staircase consist of WATER-LAID SEDIMENTS. Moreover, the layers have the characterisitcs of being deposited by RAPIDLY-MOVING WATER.
Except all those that are not indicative of fast-moving water or water deposition at all. Limestones. Shales. Eolian sandstones. Halites. Paleosols. etc, etc. But, boy , does SweetcheeksDaveThe Coward love to ignore those.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
A Few Currently Unanswered Questions for Dave (1) Why can't you provide a means of falsifying your "hypothesis?" This is your job, not that of others. (2) You admit you've never seen the supposedly "inerrant" originals of the bible . So-first-how do you know they're "inerrant"? Because the admittedly flawed copies tell you so? And you believe them why? From PuckSR, p.124 (3) I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...for thirty days (from 7_Popes) p.124 (4) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (5) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (6) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (7) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (8) You claim that humans have been literate since your flood. How come none of them had anything to say about an ice age that froze most of the planet solid? How come there's no independent evidence of it from any written source? (9) Identify precisely the source for the "waters of the deep" Dave. point to any geology references that show this "layer of water" existed under the crust. (10) Why are there so many profitable companies that use the Old Earth paradigm as the basis for a successful business case? (11) Why is there not a single company anywhere in the world that uses your 6000 year old Young Earth paradigm as the basis for a business case? (12) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (13) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. (14) Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (15) Fossils of brachiopods and other sessile animals are also present in the Tonto Groupof the Grand Canyon. How could organisms live and build burrows in such rapidly deposited sediments? (16) If "Noah's Flood" transported the brachiopods into the formations, how would relatively large brachiopods get sorted with finer grained sediments? Why aren't they with the gravels? (17) Where's your evidence that those tens of millions of species radiated from the several hundred species of organisms that could possibly have fit on the ark, all in the space of a few thousand years? Ultra-mega-hyper-macroevolution, at rates millions of times faster than proposed by the Theory of Evolution? (18) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (19) Eric (p.129) notes: The continents are covered by an average of 6,000 meters of sediment. How does your 5,000-foot deep flood produce 6,000 meters of sediment? (20) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (21) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (22) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (23) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (24) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (25) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist (obviously , that is not "soft ") (26) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (27) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (28) Why isn't plutonium-239 found to naturally occur? It has a good 20,000 year half-life, or thereabout, and could easily exist from the point of creation. Certainly we have any number of radioactive elements, but other than the ones that are produced by ongoing processes, we find none that wouldn't have disappeared to undetectable levels within 4 and a half billion years (29) Please explain the Oklo natural nuclear reactor (30) Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR. (31) Why does the magnetic dating of oceanic basalts show a longer period of time than your flood claim, Dave? (32) Why is the basalt cooler the further away you move from the rift zones? Calculate rates of cooling for basalt. (33) Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (34) Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (35) Why don't we see disruption of the varves? (36) Why are mountains near each other differentially eroded if they were all formed at the same time in your "theory?" (37) Dave says that the rocky mountain- andes form a north-south chain that was created by rapid movement of the plates.
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I say they moved away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge, then stopped rather suddenly. This caused folding and thickening onthe leading edge of the plate and generated massive quantities of heat and pressure leading to metamorphism.
> This does not explain the east-west tending ranges of the Americas, Eurasia and Africa (himalayas, atlas mts., transverse ranges). Dave was asked: Did those continents STOP TWICE? IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS? IN ONE YEAR? (38) JonF noted that such rapid movements of plates and "sudden stopping" would melt the rock. Dave doesn't give a response or answer to that little problem. (39) Precisely how were the Vertebrae Ridge mountains you posted...metamorphosed? (40) Dave said that as the continents shifted the layers were folded, heated (and metamorphosed) and uplifted, all in a very short time span. He claimed "These are all very well-understood processes and this is a very plausible scenario". I asked Dave to show me references for this "well understood process " in regard to the Vertebrae Ridge gneiss. He failed to answer p.125 (41) How did the iridium layer between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary appear within flood waters... the iridium layer is especially interesting, since it is global. How could iridium segregate markedly into a single thin layer...and why does the iridium layer "just happen" to date to the same time as the Chicxulub crater? (42) The Arizona Barringer Meteor penetrates the Permian Kaibab and Toroweap Formations and has caused shock effects on the Coconino Sandstone. Because the crater penetrates Permian strata, it is Permian or younger. And since the crater contains some Pleistocene lake deposits, it is Pleistocene or older. The Geomorphology of the crater itself indicates only a small amount of erosion. The Crater is dated at 49,000 years old. Explain this, DaveStupid. (43) Did the earth cool down several hundred degrees in 6000 years or so? Please explain the thermodynamics of such a cooling process. (44) Dave, since this is supposedly your "hypothesis" we're talking about here, how do you date the Grand Canyon? (45) How was a canyon is carved in limestone and buried under 17000 feet of sediment in the Tarim Basin in far western China?That's over three miles deep of overlying rock and soil for the mathematically challenged Fundies out there. (46) I'm incredibly interested in how the Kaibab was formed in your model, Dave. Tell me how limestone was preferentially deposited in that layer. How is it that calcium carbonate was deposited in a flood, with the turbidity of a flood? (47) Dave claimed ( p.138, this thread) that only 3 radiometric dates had been given him, then that only three layers were dated. I asked: "okay, dave shithead...you said that I only provided three radiometric dates...want to make a gentleman's agreement on that? I'll bet you that I have given you much more than that. I will leave this forum and proclaim your victory if I am wrong." And: "Okay, let's switch it to your claim that only three layers have been dated, DaveShithead...want a gentleman's agreement on that? I'll not only leave this forum, but I'll pay for my plane ticket to your church and proclaim in front of them how I was wrong...IF I am wrong. In return--if you are wrong, you will get in front of your group at church and film it while you say you were wrong, begging my forgiveness, and post it on the internet here. Cowardly Dave refused to answer. (48) Explain the Paleosols we see in the Grand Staircase (49) Explain the buried vertical Yellowstone forests that have paleosols between them (50) Why do you choose to lie deliberately so much, MaggotDave?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy !!!!!!!!!I shall add that immediately. I am honored and humbled. I'd like to thank all the little people that made this possible -- StupidDave and GoP.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
…and, one more little question, just for completeness:
(51) how is it possible that the sun is shining, if it's still going to take another 25,000 years for any appreciable fraction of the photons produced by thermonuclear fusion at its core to get to the surface?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I stopped following this thread a long time ago, but seeing that there are now over 5000 posts, I have to ask: shouldn't AFDave win some sort of award for being stupid in more subjects than anyone in history?
In how many topics has he proven to be a complete moron so far? My list, no doubt highly incomplete (& please feel free to flesh it out):
What's the antonym of polymath? Whatever it is, AFDave is definitely the poster child. He is more stupid on more topics than any other ID/creationist I've ever seen. DaveScot, JAD, LarryF, GOP, BlastFromThePast, Dembski, and the rest can't hold a candle to AFDave. They are not fit to untie his sandals, if I may coin a phrase. They must be sooooo jealous.
Damm ! PolytardDave! There goes another spewed-on keyboard!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The first paragraph from Faid's article actually confirms my statement above! See below ...
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1. Eocene Fossil Forests in Yellowstone National Park
The Lamar River Formation in Yellowstone Park contains the best known example of a "fossil forest." Here we find multiple levels of in situ trees. The upright trees at Specimen Ridge are rooted in fine-grained tuffaceous sandstone and encased in conglomeratic mudflows. The grain size of the conglomerate decreases away from the location of the volcanic source areas, the East and West Absaroka belts. Also, the ratio of upright, in situ trees to horizontal trees increases away from the Eocene volcanic source areas - the eruptions and mud flows flattened whole forests proximal to the source, while many trees are preserved in growth position in more distal locations, such as at Specimen Ridge. Although it is unclear how many successive forest layers are present in the Lamar River Formation, estimates range from 9-12 for Specimen Ridge. Some of the levels have very wide and old trees trunks.
The mud flows caused by the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980 provide an excellent analogue for the geologic processes which produced the Yellowstone deposits. Fritz noted that the mixture of transported of upright and transported trees found in mudflows were virtually identical to the deposits seen at Yellowstone. In fact, several 'recent' fossil forests, containing in situ trees up to 7m tall, are present in the vicinity of Mount St Helens, each buried by lahar flows and/or pyroclastics. Exposures of these were exhumed by mudflows after the 1980 eruption. Most of the forest-bearing deposits have been dated to the period 1479-1857 by tree ring analyses of buried trees. These subfossil 'fossil' forests are excellent modern analogues for the Yellowstone forests exposed at Specimen Ridge. Karowe and Jefferson note that the "striking similarity between features of of trees buried in situ by Mount St Helens mudflows and features of upright fossil trees in the Specimen Ridge section of Yellowstone National Park strongly supports a depositional model of in situ burial for the upright trees at Yellowstone" (p. 203; see also Yamaguchi and Hoblitt, 1995).
What is the author referring to? Well this, of course, which I posted previously.
Oh, and guess what. After Mt. Saint Helens, they changed the sign!!!
Again, guys, you would know all this if you would expand your minds and read some creationist books for a change. You've been propagandized all your lives that creationists are evil, lying, money hungry morons, who want to take everybody back to the Dark Ages. The truth is that creationists have many right answers. And mainstream science slowly catches up to what creationists often have been saying for a long time. Again, as I have said before, it is often the creationists who are "at the tip of the spear" in science. But to be at the tip of the spear is many times a very lonely place. It is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for people who seek approval from others. It is only for courageous, independent thinking people who want the truth about everything no matter what the cost.
Now the rest of the examples given in Faid's article are basically repeats of the Yellowstone situation, which, of course, is exactly what we would expect if there was a Global Flood. We would expect to see MANY buried forests all over the world. Many trees would be buried in situ and many would not be.
Now ... please tell me again what was your point, Faid, in giving me this link? I guess I really do not understand the Official Millionsofyearsianism Viewpoint on Paleosols.
Crabby-- So are you coming or not? I can't figure out from your posts if you are or aren't. Am I buying you lunch? Or are you just going to walk in and yell at us?
Teehee. OA, I agree, DDTTD has usually been slaughtered so many times over by the time I get here, I have to really work to find a way to get a bitch slap in. Even when he gets corrected, he just comes back with the same bullshit.
Like his stating AGAIN, that we only have 3 RM dated layers in the GS. I actually read through some of the articles DM listed and stopped at 21 layers! I gave DDTTD 2 off the top of my head that dated the bottom and top.
or
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Moreover, the layers have the characterisitcs (sic) of being deposited by RAPIDLY-MOVING WATER.
The only thing I can call this is a pathological lie.
His claims about Yellowstone fossil forests are especially revealing because I warned him last night.
DDTTD can you explain to me what happend at Mt. St. Helens that confirms your flud theory? I was living in California when that happened and as I remember it it was a volcanic eruption, not a flud, much less a global flud.
Would I be surprised that the Mt.St. Helens eruption would leave evidence that resembled the many cases of fossil forests that were caused by volcanic eruptions that Faid linked to?
Nope. Not at all. In fact Faid gave you a boot to the head and you didn't even know it.
Do you think we don't know which trees were buried in situ and which were transported (and abraded) before deposition in any position? Volcanic eruptions DDTTD, not a flud. Paleosols, abraded trees, trees covered in situ by tuffaceous mud = volcanic eruption DDTTD.
Multiple layers of the same = Millionsofyearsism DDTTD. BAM
Volcanic eruptions contribute to the destruction of DDTTD's arguments because they are RM datable. BAM
I told you we have a perfectly good example of massive trees transported across half a continent in a massive flood (but still not proof of a global flood). Where is it DDTTD? I also told you your AiG/ICR Creidiots wouldn't/couldn't help you find it. You've ignored the question. BAM
You need to prove your claims about the National Park Service sign too, (you ever seen it with your own barenaked eyeballs DDTTD?) that scan is crap Booboo. BAM
I'll meet you DDTTD but it will be on my terms, I want to show my grandkids a new subspecies of hominid, Homo dimidium fundamentus. I hereby claim naming rights, the question is, who do I use as the Holotype? I'm not waiting for fundy on fundy violence to make DDTTD available for description. Suggestions?
DEADMAN CHANGES HIS APPROACH ... AND TAKES THE LOW ROAD
Deadman-- I see that my latest round has forced you into the sad position of "I'm Out of Answers So Let's Highlight Dave's Unanswered Questions" ... rather than take the high ethical road of "I Am Honest Enough to Admit that I Don't Have Answers to Many of Your Biggest Questions, Dave", you simply avoid the questions and publish a big list of your own questions ... many of which HAVE BEEN answered, some of which WILL BE answered in due course, and some of which CANNOT be answered at this time or I may CHOOSE not to answer some of them simply because I have learned enough of that particular topic. I am honest enough to tell you (and I have said this before) that I do not have all the answers. But I do have many answers and as I study this more and more it is becoming clearer to me why Creationism is on the rise -- even in Darwin's homeland! The reason? Creationism simply fits the evidence better than Evolution and Long Ages. It's quite simple ... and exciting!!
In contrast to the fun I am having, it is sad that there are people in the world like you who apparently are angry and bitter about the rise of Creationism--people who, in apparent frustration, lower themselves to calling creationists names like "tard", "maggot", "shit-for-brains" and the like. This only serves to confirm the desperation that evidently is felt by many evolutionists as they see their popularity and influence waning. People who are secure in the truth of their beliefs don't resort to such childish tactics.
As for you rebuttals, I see you are continuing to churn out references to some radiometric dates of some of the layers of the Grand Staircase. As I have now conclusively shown, these can in no way be taken as reliable Dates of Deposition of layers. Can they even be considered to be reliable dates of the "creation" of igneous material? I doubt it and I would like to investigate this further. I have read one Snelling paper that is quite convincing that standard assumptions of conventional RM "ages" have nothing at all to do with the "Age of Crystal Creation" (or whatever you want to call it) but simply indicate the ancestry of the magma.
But in any case, however my research goes with this question, my suspicion that RM dating of Grand Staircase layers based on igneous material that flowed with water-laid sediments is bogus, has been confirmed.
As for the vertical cliff at Spirit Lake, I think you are mistaken, but I'm not certain. I will ask ICR for some confirmation. My understanding is that the vertical cliff was formed by steam explosion (I think there are many examples of this worldwide) when the volcano erupted, but was hidden from view as Spirit Lake rose. The cliff face was then exposed when the lake was lowered. But I could be wrong. I'll check. In any case, didn't we already go over vertical cliffs which were formed rapidly at Palouse Canyon? I thought we covered this already?
Crabby...
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I'll meet you DDTTD but it will be on my terms, I want to show my grandkids a new subspecies of hominid, Homo dimidium fundamentus. I hereby claim naming rights, the question is, who do I use as the Holotype? I'm not waiting for fundy on fundy violence to make DDTTD available for description. Suggestions?
Wonderful. Classify me any way you want. Are you coming to my church? Or was all that talk just hot air?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Quote (af "Sedimentary Tuffs" dave @ Aug. 29 2006,07:03)
DEADMAN CHANGES HIS APPROACH ... AND TAKES THE LOW ROAD
Deadman-- I see that my latest round has forced you into the sad position of "I'm Out of Answers So Let's Highlight Dave's Unanswered Questions" ... rather than take the high ethical road of "I Am Honest Enough to Admit that I Don't Have Answers to Many of Your Biggest Questions, Dave", you simply avoid the questions and publish a big list of your own questions ... many of which HAVE BEEN answered, some of which WILL BE answered in due course, and some of which CANNOT be answered at this time or I may CHOOSE not to answer some of them simply because I have learned enough of that particular topic.
The open questions are for you, Davie-dork, not us. See the title of this thread?
None of the questions Deadman listed have been answered.
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As I have now conclusively shown, these can in no way be taken as reliable Dates of Deposition of layers.
You have only claimed that, Davie-doodles, and you have not yet acknowledged the many errors in your claims, such as:
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S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N
and
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Nice links Jon. They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon
Those statements were both wrong, Davie-clod, and you can't bring yourself to admit it.
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Can they even be considered to be reliable dates of the "creation" of igneous material? I doubt it and I would like to investigate this further. I have read one Snelling paper that is quite convincing that standard assumptions of conventional RM "ages" have nothing at all to do with the "Age of Crystal Creation" (or whatever you want to call it) but simply indicate the ancestry of the magma.
Sorry, Davie-poozle, Snelling's article is bull. 100% fully organic bovine excrement. He even provides the "smoking gun" proof himself:
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A representative set (50-100 g from each sample) was also sent to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts, for whole-rock potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating [60]. ...
Steiner [63] stressed that xenoliths are a common constituent of the 1954 Ngauruhoe lavas, but also noted that Battey [3] reported the 1949 Ngauruhoe lava was rich in xenoliths. All samples in this study contained xenoliths, including those from the 1975 avalanche material. However, many of these aggregates are more accurately described as glomerocrysts and mafic (gabbro, websterite) nodules [36]. They are 3-5 mm across, generally have hypidiomorphic-granular textures, and consist of plagioclase, orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene in varying proportions, and very occasionally olivine. The true xenoliths are often rounded and invariably consist of fine quartzose material. Steiner [63] also described much larger xenoliths of quartzo-feldspathic composition and relic gneissic structure.
{emphasis added}
Davie-moron, xenoliths (literally "foreign rocks") are pieces of older, unmelted material embedded in the relatively new lava. You cannot get accurate dates from a mixture of materials of different ages. Since Snelling asked for a whole-rock analysis (instead of a mineral analysis with the xenoliths removed), he got an analysis of all of each sample ground up together ... and the resultant date was an average of the date of the lava and the date of the xenoliths, weighted by how much of the sample was xenoliths. Snelling knows all this ... that's how he perpetrated this deliberate fraud, Davie-pootles.
How about reprinting all the answers to the 50 questions that ALL can be shown to support your ...er
Hypothesis that magical forces rather than well understood observable natural events manufactured your delusional rantings.
( sounds of ducks f@rking)
I thought so.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
DAVETARDWHINER CHANGES HIS TACTICS AND BEGINS SUCKING HIS MEAT PACIFIER HARDER
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In contrast to the fun I am having, it is sad that there are people in the world like you who apparently are angry and bitter about the rise of Creationism--people who, in apparent frustration, lower themselves to calling creationists names like "tard", "maggot", "shit-for-brains" and the like. This only serves to confirm the desperation that evidently is felt by many evolutionists as they see their popularity and influence waning. People who are secure in the truth of their beliefs don't resort to such childish tactics.
Let's see...I have mentioned many times how I asked you long ago to cease with the childish insults and you lasted all of two days at that. Now if anyone insults you, it's some mystic sign of "desperation" whereas if YOU do it, it's "good fun". Right. Tell me more, Mr. Hypocrite.
The use of anglo-saxonisms is always harped on by your kind, ShitHeadDave. Would you prefer if I called you "DungHeadDave?"...would "ExcretaCraniumDave" be better? the words all mean the same thing, one is merely considered vulgar at this time due to historical circumstance. This is also rapidly waning as people see that the meanings are the same, and in fact the brevity of "ShitHeadDave" is preferable. It conveys the contempt I feel for hypocrites like you while still noting that you have the mental powers of a load dropped out of a farm animal's rear exit.
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Deadman-- I see that my latest round has forced you into the sad position of "I'm Out of Answers So Let's Highlight Dave's Unanswered Questions" ... rather than take the high ethical road of "I Am Honest Enough to Admit that I Don't Have Answers to Many of Your Biggest Questions, Dave", you simply avoid the questions and publish a big list of your own questions
You seem to have ignored that not only did I respond to your claim about "only a few radiometric dates" but also on your claim about spirit lake, which you then go on to mention....while you say I have not responded?
Again, this just shows how cognitively confused ( meaning: "fucked up in the head") you are.
You have not in fact, answered any of the questions listed. Go back and choose a few that you say you have answered. Post the answers. Let's see if they ARE in fact "answers" or merely hand-waving recitation of creationist claims that are then dismantled---thereby negating them as "answers"
For instance, look at your claim here:
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As I have now conclusively shown, these can in no way be taken as reliable Dates of Deposition of layers. Can they even be considered to be reliable dates of the "creation" of igneous material? I doubt it and I would like to investigate this further.
The fact is that you were shown that some types of radiometric dating are dating the MATRIX material, not the "igneous" or other material imbedded IN the matrix. You were given also the example of ash layers isotopically identified with a volcanic origin -- also dated radiometrically -- showing the linkage of the event to the ash and the congruency of dates. Furthermore, you were given multiple other radiometric dates, paleomagnetic dates, thermoluminescence dates that all served to bolster the dating framework. One could go on to cite other supporting absolute dating methods, too.
But you say that you have "demonstrated" otherwise? Please cite that evidence. Don't tell people merely to "look back" because the fact is that it isn't there.
You go on to claim that
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my suspicion that RM dating of Grand Staircase layers based on igneous material that flowed with water-laid sediments is bogus, has been confirmed.
Despite having been shown that your claims so far have reflected merely your ignorance and inability to process words and data. IF you can show otherwise, please cite your data. Now so far you have four things to cite actual data on: (1)You claim that you have already answered questions from the list i presented...show it (2)You claim you have shown that radiometric dating of sediments dates only igneous materials...contrary to what JonF posted, eh? (3)You claim that the ash dates for the Morrison ( which ICR confirms as isotopically identical with "california" sources)....are what? wrong? can you SHOW this? (4)You claim you have shown RM dates on the Grand Staircase are "bogus" yet offer no evidence of that...show it.
Oh and on a previous post, you asked me about mammals in the morrison. You will note that I specifically stated "WHY ARE THERE NO MODERN MAMMALS IN THE MORRISON". See that word "modern?" it means "modern", thus for you to ask " I'm confused...do you mean "any" mammals?" is again indicative of your mental problems. Try answering that question, stupid. I am fully aware of the types of mammals that existed in the mesozoic and have two books just on those in my personal library...HENCE my use of the words " MODERN MAMMALS" and not ""triconodonts" or "docodonts" or "ptilodonts". Why are there no badgers, moose, skunks, porcupines, coyotes, deer, wolverines, fishers, peccaries, or any other modern mammals?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Let's see...I have mentioned many times how I asked you long ago to cease with the childish insults and you lasted all of two days at that.
What childish insults? I'm not the one who is resorting to name calling.
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The use of anglo-saxonisms is always harped on by your kind, ShitHeadDave.
Anglo-saxonisms? I don't even know what you're talking about. All I know is that you sound very frustrated with my "ilk" and it appears that one way you attempt to deal with this frustration is by goofy name calling. I simply point out that this is a sign of insecurity--a sign that you feel threatened by the truth.
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You seem to have ignored that not only did I respond to your claim about "only a few radiometric dates" but also on your claim about spirit lake, which you then go on to mention....while you say I have not responded?
I acknowledged the items that you responded to, but there were many items in yesterday's post which you avoided.
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You have not in fact, answered any of the questions listed. Go back and choose a few that you say you have answered. Post the answers.
I'm not going to re-post answers unless there is a benefit to my purposes for being here.
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But you say that you have "demonstrated" otherwise? Please cite that evidence. Don't tell people merely to "look back" because the fact is that it isn't there.
No. It's there all right. Furthermore, I have it all archived on my sytem for use in future endeavors.
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Now so far you have four things to cite actual data on: (1)You claim that you have already answered questions from the list i presented...show it (2)You claim you have shown that radiometric dating of sediments dates only igneous materials...contrary to what JonF posted, eh? (3)You claim that the ash dates for the Morrison ( which ICR confirms as isotopically identical with "california" sources)....are what? wrong? can you SHOW this? (4)You claim you have shown RM dates on the Grand Staircase are "bogus" yet offer no evidence of that...show it.
Oh and on a previous post, you asked me about mammals in the morrison. You will note that I specifically stated "WHY ARE THERE NO MODERN MAMMALS IN THE MORRISON". See that word "modern?" it means "modern", thus for you to ask " I'm confused...do you mean "any" mammals?" is again indicative of your mental problems. Try answering that question, stupid. I am fully aware of the types of mammals that existed in the mesozoic and have two books just on those in my personal library...HENCE my use of the words " MODERN MAMMALS" and not ""triconodonts" or "docodonts" or "ptilodonts". Why are there no badgers, moose, skunks, porcupines, coyotes, deer, wolverines, fishers, peccaries, or any other modern mammals?
(1) Not going to rehash for you, sorry. (2) Yes. This was my understanding prior to JonF's claim. I have not yet had time to investigate "Cement Dating" but my guess is that it no more supports millionsofyearsianism than dating of igneous materials in sediments does (3) Again, I'm not going to rehash this one. I made a very clear case over many days with detailed explanations and pictures (4) The whole discussion which ended up at the Morrison formation is representative of how other layers in the GS are dated.
As for the mammals, would you care to fill me in on what mammals ARE found in the Morrison? I understand that you say there are no modern ones.
JonF...
Quote
A representative set (50-100 g from each sample) was also sent to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts, for whole-rock potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating [60]. ...
Steiner [63] stressed that xenoliths are a common constituent of the 1954 Ngauruhoe lavas, but also noted that Battey [3] reported the 1949 Ngauruhoe lava was rich in xenoliths. All samples in this study contained xenoliths, including those from the 1975 avalanche material. However, many of these aggregates are more accurately described as glomerocrysts and mafic (gabbro, websterite) nodules [36]. They are 3-5 mm across, generally have hypidiomorphic-granular textures, and consist of plagioclase, orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene in varying proportions, and very occasionally olivine. The true xenoliths are often rounded and invariably consist of fine quartzose material. Steiner [63] also described much larger xenoliths of quartzo-feldspathic composition and relic gneissic structure.
Davie-moron, xenoliths (literally "foreign rocks") are pieces of older, unmelted material embedded in the relatively new lava. You cannot get accurate dates from a mixture of materials of different ages. Since Snelling asked for a whole-rock analysis (instead of a mineral analysis with the xenoliths removed), he got an analysis of all of each sample ground up together ... and the resultant date was an average of the date of the lava and the date of the xenoliths, weighted by how much of the sample was xenoliths. Snelling knows all this ... that's how he perpetrated this deliberate fraud, Davie-pootles.
Considered. As I said, I have not analyzed this thoroughly. But I will.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You have not in fact, answered any of the questions listed. Go back and choose a few that you say you have answered. Post the answers.
I'm not going to re-post answers unless there is a benefit to my purposes for being here.
let me fix that for you AFD
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I'm not going to re-post answersshow myself up as an inadequete fraud twice in a rowunless there is a benefit to my purposes for being here.when I can just lie my way out anyway
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
it appears that one way you attempt to deal with this frustration is by goofy name calling. I simply point out that this is a sign of insecurity--a sign that you feel threatened by the truth.
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What childish insults? I'm not the one who is resorting to name calling.
Can you say "hypocrite?" All I'd have to do is gather up a few similar quotes like that to show you engaged in "name calling" AFTER YOU WERE ASKED TO STOP. But you continued, probably just so you could trot out this "oh, i'm just an innocent christian being set upon by vulgar meanies..I'm a victim" crap again. You've tried this at least 5 times so far.
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there were many items in yesterday's post which you avoided.
Like what? Which of them were not already dealt with? YOu are asked to prove your claims about answering questions previously, and you say
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I'm not going to re-post answers unless there is a benefit to my purposes for being here.
The benefit is in showing that you are being honest. But that's hardly a real consideration for you, since you are a known liar, and proven so multiple times. Yet you say you have it "archived" and can't retrieve it to show the validity of your claims? Don't make me laugh, liar.
On the subject of dating methods that you were told about as far back as page 109 of this thread, you say
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my guess is that it no more supports millionsofyearsianism than dating of igneous materials in sediments does
Your guesses have been shown wrong consistently, Stupid, and because you are in fact ignorant of the subjects, this just goes to reinforce how illogical you are. As for me looking up mammals FOR you? Kiss my ass, stupid. This is YOUR "hypothesis" and YOU have to back it,not ask others to do your work for you. I DID mention several groups, though, which your tiny little brain can't seem to process yet.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Actually, my guesses have been proven to be right so far in many cases.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Actually, my guesses have been proven to be right so far in many cases.
bwahahahahahahahaha.
Show just ONE of your guesses THAT HAS NOT BEEN REFUTED AFD.
Were're all waiting AFD ......NOW is your chance.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
What about the stratigraphic succession of at least two dozen fossil forests in the Lamar area of Yellowstone Davie? When I showed you evidence that there were indeed distinct layers of mature forests that had been covered over by separate, distinct pyroclastic events you sure shut up quick and changed the subject.
How long does it take a mature forest to grow Davie?
How long does it take to lay down a 1000' layer of limestone Davie?
What is the mechanism for a canyon to be carved in limestone, then buried under 17,000 ft. of sediment?
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I'm not going to re-post answers unless there is a benefit to my purposes for being here.
You can't 're-post' because you never posted any answers to start with. We all know you're lying Davie, and so does Jesus - do you think you're honoring Him by lying so often?
Bonus question: What's the name and address of your church - I may want to visit too.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Actually, my guesses have been proven to be right so far in many cases.
Since you have all this "archived" I'm *SURE* you can produce a few examples of this, showing (1) your guess, including date of the "guess" and (2) that you were "proven" right. Try showing three examples.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Actually, my guesses have been proven to be right so far in many cases.
Since you have all this "archived" I'm *SURE* you can produce a few examples of this, showing (1) your guess, including date of the "guess" and (2) that you were "proven" right. Try showing three examples.
No, he's actually correct about this. Every time anyone here presents evidence that contradicts his view of reality, he says, "I'm guessing that I can find a way to reject that evidence." And, of course, he always does. The problem is that he always rejects things based on his own irrational, unsubstantiated assumptions. Maybe the evidence is tainted by atheistic bias. Or maybe it sounds too "sciencey". Or maybe he just doesn't understand it. But, in every instance, his "guess" is correct - he can always conjure up some way to reject the evidence.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
No, he's actually correct about this. Every time anyone here presents evidence that contradicts his view of reality, he says, "I'm guessing that I can find a way to reject that evidence."
Color me embarassed. You're right there, Improvius.
Of course, that would relate to his insistence on *never, ever* providing a means of falsifying his hypothesis.
AirHead is kept afloat by this, but it sinks his "hypothesis" as non-science...Still, HypocriticalStupidDave keeps hoping he can bluff his way through.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Bonus question: What's the name and address of your church - I may want to visit too.
Talk to Crabby. Maybe you and he can come together.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
DEADMAN CHANGES HIS APPROACH ... AND TAKES THE LOW ROAD
Deadman-- I see that my latest round has forced you into the sad position of "I'm Out of Answers So Let's Highlight Dave's Unanswered Questions" ... rather than take the high ethical road of "I Am Honest Enough to Admit that I Don't Have Answers to Many of Your Biggest Questions, Dave", you simply avoid the questions and publish a big list of your own questions ... many of which HAVE BEEN answered, some of which WILL BE answered in due course, and some of which CANNOT be answered at this time or I may CHOOSE not to answer some of them simply because I have learned enough of that particular topic. I am honest enough to tell you (and I have said this before) that I do not have all the answers. But I do have many answers and as I study this more and more it is becoming clearer to me why Creationism is on the rise -- even in Darwin's homeland! The reason? Creationism simply fits the evidence better than Evolution and Long Ages. It's quite simple ... and exciting!!
Dave, since when is it Deadman's job to answer your questions? It's your freaking hypothesis; it's your job to answer his questions. And, for the record, you have failed to answer a single one of the 50 questions he posted, and everyone here knows it.
If anyone here is taking the low road, it's you. You have lied, prevaricated, skirted the issue, avoided answering, claimed you've answered when you haven't. As Deadman and Occam's Aftershave have pointed out time after time after time, every question you've ever asked has been answered, with reference to real evidence provided by real scientists.
The problem isn't that you don't have all the answers, Dave. The problem is you don't have any answers.
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In contrast to the fun I am having, it is sad that there are people in the world like you who apparently are angry and bitter about the rise of Creationism--people who, in apparent frustration, lower themselves to calling creationists names like "tard", "maggot", "shit-for-brains" and the like. This only serves to confirm the desperation that evidently is felt by many evolutionists as they see their popularity and influence waning. People who are secure in the truth of their beliefs don't resort to such childish tactics.
Dave, the reason people insult you is because of your behavior. To have someone as boneheaded and ignorant as you spouting off the way you have for the past 700 posts, claiming to understand the evidence better than recognized experts in the field, wears on people's patience. But if you think we're not enjoying ourselves eviscerating your arguments again and again and again, why do you think we keep coming back? No one is forcing me to respond to your drivel.
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As for you rebuttals, I see you are continuing to churn out references to some radiometric dates of some of the layers of the Grand Staircase. As I have now conclusively shown, these can in no way be taken as reliable Dates of Deposition of layers.
You've shown no such thing. All you've present as a "rebuttal" is personal incredulity, and a demonstration that you don't have the first clue as to how the various methodologies work. What you have conclusively shown is that you're an uneducable dolt.
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Can they even be considered to be reliable dates of the "creation" of igneous material? I doubt it and I would like to investigate this further. I have read one Snelling paper that is quite convincing that standard assumptions of conventional RM "ages" have nothing at all to do with the "Age of Crystal Creation" (or whatever you want to call it) but simply indicate the ancestry of the magma.
You can investigate it all you want, but since your tutors are people who either don't understand the evidence themselves or are trying to make sure you never understand it, you don't have a prayer.
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But in any case, however my research goes with this question, my suspicion that RM dating of Grand Staircase layers based on igneous material that flowed with water-laid sediments is bogus, has been confirmed.
Confirmed for whom? Anyone other than yourself? And in the meantime, what's your proposed method for dating the Grand Staircase strata? Do you have one? Didn't think so.
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As for the vertical cliff at Spirit Lake, I think you are mistaken, but I'm not certain. I will ask ICR for some confirmation.
You're going to ask ICR for confirmation? After their lies to you have been exposed over and over again? What are you, insane?
50 questions, Dave. Not one has been answered. I think we can rest assured that none of them ever will be answered. Many of them have been outstanding for months.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Actually, my guesses have been proven to be right so far in many cases.
Wow!! So have mine!
1. I guessed that Dave would continue to post his initial comments, even after admitting he really didn't mean to say what he said. (primary fossils, no RM dating of sedimentary rocks, only 3 RM dates)
2. I guessed that Dave would ignore a list of questions and say he already answered some of them, so, by logical succession, he must have answered all of them!
3. I guessed that Dave wouldn't even acknowledge my question about human skeletons found in deposits with all the "millions and millions of dead things in sediments".
4. I guessed that Dave would ignore requests to show how to falsify his own hypothesis and keep trying others to do his work. (Real life, and real research, are not at all like your homeschooler's experience, Dave boy. In the real world, you have to do your own work instead of letting all the A students do it for you.)
5. I guessed that Dave wouldn't post the address of his church. What does he think people are going to do? Show up with ammo and anger??
6. Finally, I guessed from the very first post that Dave had no intention of learning anything. His reasons for being here have changed weekly, and he has yet to learn a thing. I, on the other hand, have learned a great deal about geology, a subject I never studied.
"Polytard" - has a nice ring to it, I must say. So does "ametacognitive", although it doesn't fall off the tongue in quite the same way...
-------------- "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
Actually, my guesses have been proven to be right so far in many cases.
Really?....You have not provd a single point. All you do is post questions and then ignore the answers when they are not what you want to hear.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
You have not in fact, answered any of the questions listed. Go back and choose a few that you say you have answered. Post the answers.
I'm not going to re-post answers unless there is a benefit to my purposes for being here.
Interesting admission, Dave.
Since the title of this thread is "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis," I'm sure we can all be forgiven for assuming that your purpose here was to support your "hypothesis." Of course, it's long since been clear that was never your purpose, but it's nevertheless surprising to have you come out and admit it.
So what, exactly, is your purpose here, Dave? I'm assuming that if you're planning to use this thread for anything, you're going to do the same thing creationists always do: quote mine it for passages that you think support your unsupportable position. I guarantee that you will never, ever post a link to this thread on any site you use for spreading your lies and propaganda. You'd have to be even more of an idiot than you already are to do so.
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But you say that you have "demonstrated" otherwise? Please cite that evidence. Don't tell people merely to "look back" because the fact is that it isn't there.
No. It's there all right. Furthermore, I have it all archived on my sytem for use in future endeavors.
No, Dave, it's not. And everyone who's read this thread knows it's not. Have you noticed a certain consistency in the reactions to your claim that you've answered even one of Deadman's and others' questions?
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(1) Not going to rehash for you, sorry.
"Rehash"? You haven't even "hashed" it, Dave. It's not there, and everyone who's read this thread knows that.
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(2) Yes. This was my understanding prior to JonF's claim. I have not yet had time to investigate "Cement Dating" but my guess is that it no more supports millionsofyearsianism than dating of igneous materials in sediments does
Dave, you've done no such thing. You haven't been able to refute a single, solitary claim regarding radiometric dating of sedimentary strata. I'm not going to ask you to repost your answer, because I know for a fact you never posted it in the first place.
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(3) Again, I'm not going to rehash this one. I made a very clear case over many days with detailed explanations and pictures (4) The whole discussion which ended up at the Morrison formation is representative of how other layers in the GS are dated.
No, you haven't shown how the dates for the Morrison formation are "wrong," Dave. You didn't make any sort of case, let alone a "clear" one. If you think I'm wrong, get any poster here to agree with you that you've proven the dates for the Morrison are "wrong."
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As for the mammals, would you care to fill me in on what mammals ARE found in the Morrison? I understand that you say there are no modern ones.
Gee, Dave, he just did so in the very post you're responding to. Did you miss it?
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JonF... Considered. As I said, I have not analyzed this thoroughly. But I will.
And you'll come to just as wrong analyses as everything else you've ever "analyzed."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I guarantee that you(AFD) will never, ever post a link to this thread on any site you use for spreading your lies and propaganda.
Stop there ...right there.
OK AFD time to pay the bill.
You have 'won'. All you have to do is link to this thread to 'prove' you have won your arguements.
No.?...you lost ....sucker!!!
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Permalink is a term used in the world of blogging to indicate a URL which points to a specific blog entry. A permalink is accessible even after the entry has passed from the front page and into the blog archives. The term is a portmanteau made by contracting the phrase "permanent link". The permanent URLs created are often simple and human-readable to ease the process of linking to a particular entry and are designed within blogging software to remain unchanged indefinitely so as to help prevent link rot. The practice is utilized by mainstream news and other types of websites as well, although the term permalink is most common within the blogosphere. Permalinks are supported in most modern weblogging and content syndication software systems, including Movable Type, LiveJournal, and Blogger.
There's one on every single post. So there's no need to re-hash your answers (or hash :L), just post the permalink to the answer. It's all done for you! So, you can go through the 50 questions, and add the permalink for the answer, simple!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Here's the deal daveyDH, (short for the childish moniker i use for you: "DaveyDickHead")
All we had to do was prove that the earth is more than 6k years old. I and others did this.
You can't get past core samples. Even though you've done an, well, amazing job of snatching fiction from the jaws of reality and moved around from one bizarre idea to another, you have not given one single positive proof of a young earth. Not one.
And that is because there isn't one.
And I've been to your church. Or one just like it. The guy on stage started by telling us ghandi is in he11. I suppose that is because ghandi said
Quote
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Mohandas Gandhi
I tend to agree with Ghandi. I do not tend to agree with you. However, you have made me think that there is a deeper truth to another ghandi quote;
Quote
Evil is, good or truth misplaced.
And:
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Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Waiting for you to continue your exposition on paleosols, Davie. I've been thinking about your fantasies. How deep was the water when these paleosols were laid down? Seems to me it would have to be a foot or a few feet deep to have deposited sediment cover the roots of the floating plants, 'cause the roots only go down a few feet. But a few feet of water can't carry enough sediment to cover the roots a few feet deep; all it could do is deposit a few inches of sediment. So, where'd the rest of the sediment come from, without disturbing the roots? Why would the water level be changing so dramatically up and down and back, over and over and over again, pausing so as to be still enough to drop its load of sediment, every time you need a paleosol in the Grand Staircase? Inquiring minds are eagerly awaiting your in-depth explanation, Davie-poo.
Quote (af "Tuffs are sedimentary" dave @ Aug. 29 2006,09:00)
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Now so far you have four things to cite actual data on: (1)You claim that you have already answered questions from the list i presented...show it (2)You claim you have shown that radiometric dating of sediments dates only igneous materials...contrary to what JonF posted, eh? (3)You claim that the ash dates for the Morrison ( which ICR confirms as isotopically identical with "california" sources)....are what? wrong? can you SHOW this? (4)You claim you have shown RM dates on the Grand Staircase are "bogus" yet offer no evidence of that...show it.
(1) Not going to rehash for you, sorry.
Translation: Dave knows he hasn't answered any of the questions.
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(2) Yes. This was my understanding prior to JonF's claim. I have not yet had time to investigate "Cement Dating" but my guess is that it no more supports millionsofyearsianism than dating of igneous materials in sediments does
Translation: Radiometric dating does not date only igneous materials. Whether or not Dave thinks radiometric dating of sedimentary matrixes supports mainstream science, no matter whether or not Davie-dip has had time to review the papers and misunderstand them, radiometric dating does not date only igneous materials. Davie-dork can't admit his error.
Remember, Davie: "S C I E N T I S T S A T T E M P T T O D A T E W A T E R L A I D S E D I M E N T A R Y L A Y E R S B Y D A T I N G G R A I N S O F I G N E O U S O R I G I N" and "Nice links Jon. They show how to date grains of IGNEOUS origin, Jon". Both flat-out lies, Davie-doofus.
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3) Again, I'm not going to rehash this one. I made a very clear case over many days with detailed explanations and pictures
But no evidence. Translation: Dave knows he hasn't presented any evidence so there's nothing to point ot.
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.(4) The whole discussion which ended up at the Morrison formation is representative of how other layers in the GS are dated.
Translation: All the layers in the GC are dated as well as the Morison, and the Morrison is extremely well and convincingly dated, but Davie ahsd his fingers in his ears and is despeartly shouting "LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!".
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JonF...
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A representative set (50-100 g from each sample) was also sent to Geochron Laboratories in Cambridge (Boston), Massachusetts, for whole-rock potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating [60]. ...
Steiner [63] stressed that xenoliths are a common constituent of the 1954 Ngauruhoe lavas, but also noted that Battey [3] reported the 1949 Ngauruhoe lava was rich in xenoliths. All samples in this study contained xenoliths, including those from the 1975 avalanche material. However, many of these aggregates are more accurately described as glomerocrysts and mafic (gabbro, websterite) nodules [36]. They are 3-5 mm across, generally have hypidiomorphic-granular textures, and consist of plagioclase, orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene in varying proportions, and very occasionally olivine. The true xenoliths are often rounded and invariably consist of fine quartzose material. Steiner [63] also described much larger xenoliths of quartzo-feldspathic composition and relic gneissic structure.
Davie-moron, xenoliths (literally "foreign rocks") are pieces of older, unmelted material embedded in the relatively new lava. You cannot get accurate dates from a mixture of materials of different ages. Since Snelling asked for a whole-rock analysis (instead of a mineral analysis with the xenoliths removed), he got an analysis of all of each sample ground up together ... and the resultant date was an average of the date of the lava and the date of the xenoliths, weighted by how much of the sample was xenoliths. Snelling knows all this ... that's how he perpetrated this deliberate fraud, Davie-pootles.
Considered. As I said, I have not analyzed this thoroughly. But I will.
It's fraud, Davie-doodles, Outright and deliberate fraud.
One more question, Dave, on top of the 50+ you haven't answered so far, and not one you haven't seen before:
How would you go about dating the strata in the Grand Staircase? Do you believe that dating these strata is in principle impossible? According to your "hypothesis," they should all have the same date, so what is that date? Without reference to anything other than observation (i.e., your Bible won't save you here), what is your methodology for dating the strata in the Grand Staircase, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I've decided on my VERY favorite AFDave comment here ( and my response to it...okay, it's my response that I think is funniest): This is from when Dave was getting all puffed up like a hoppy toad and pretending he was going to "call his lawyer" on me...and I called him a eunuch when I said if I went to the Grand Canyon, he'd freak out as soon as a mosquito landed on him, thinking I was attacking him. Anyway, BigBraveDave responds:
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How do explain my childhood in the jungles of Brazil where I had plenty of mosquitos, raindrops, biting gnats, foot-burrowing fleas, poisonous snakes, living in a grass hut, an outhouse for a bathroom and so on? And I was quite happy during that time. Are you saying I'm somehow soft by referring to me a "freakin' eunuch"?
The return comment:
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Oh, my. Mosquitos. Fierce fleas. Terrifying gnats. Snakeses that bites... That MUST have been a real trial for you...being around those big scary things in your frilly pink dress
I'm sorry, but that just cracks me up every time. I think I'll look for other people's stuff that made me laugh.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Just a quick question Davie. A number of the google hits allege some financial hanky-panky going on between the blessed pastor and someone in the local banking industry. Has the Herbster forgot that story in the bible about Jesus and his relationship with the money lenders? Or does Jesus say it's OK in today's age if it means the pastor can live in a nice neighborhood?
Well, it's good to see that I can so easily entertain Deadman ... always glad to help!
And Bing, go talk to David Martin at the Pitch about my Pastor if you like ... your kind of publication possibly? He will tell you what you want to hear ...
And thanks to all of you who have contributed to my excellent education so far here at ATBC ... I have learned a lot! Oh ... and for those who asked ... I have told many people of my activity here. None of the sites I work with make a habit of linking to anyone, but my friends do know about this site.
I'll take a look at my outline and see what I want to cover next since you guys seem to be out of gas on the GS and paleosols ... always open to suggestions though ... hmmm ... limestone, Noah's Ark, Biblical kinds ... there are a lot to choose from ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'll take a look at my outline and see what I want to cover next since you guys seem to be out of gas on the GS and paleosols ... always open to suggestions though ... hmmm ... limestone, Noah's Ark, Biblical kinds ... there are a lot to choose from ...
What do you mean we're out of gas, Dave? You're the one who hasn't been able to explain the existence of paleosols in the Grand Canyon, nor have you been able to refute any of the dating methodologies or results for the Grand Staircase, nor have you provided any methodology or results that you think is valid for the Grand Staircase strata, but you think we're out of gas?
Your whole "hypothesis" has been "out of gas" since you wheeled it out of the garage, Dave. Despite your pathetic protestations to the contrary, you've been completely unable to provide support for a single assertion made about your "hypothesis." You can't even find evidence that your "flood" ever happened, nor answer where the water for it came from, nor where it went to.
Will it be any different for "limestone," or "Noah's Ark," or "kinds"? Of course not. Why would it?
Classic Black Knight posturing, Dave. You present an argument, it gets beaten to death with a shovel over five pages of posts, then you declare victory and move on. Except you seem to have forgotten that all your posts are still available, so anyone can see exactly how your arguments were beaten to death with a shovel.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh ... and for those who asked ... I have told many people of my activity here. None of the sites I work with make a habit of linking to anyone, but my friends do know about this site
Good, then your fellow church-goers wouldn't mind a nice cleaned-up version of it (asterisks for expletives and such), outlining your exploits and honesty. I'm sure they'd be real interested in your motives and methods.
What do you think, Stupid? Of course you'll answer "yes" so that'll make it easier, given your consent.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
That reminds me of a Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley quote I love: “No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks” Of course, I'm sure some people HAVE chosen evil for its own sake, but ...it has an essential ring of general truth to it.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quote (af "Tuffs are too sedimentary!" dave @ Aug. 29 2006,15:31)
I'll take a look at my outline and see what I want to cover next since you guys seem to be out of gas on the GS and paleosols
We're not out of gas on the Grand Staircase and paleosols, but you and your bankrupt fantasies obviously are. You haven't even attempted an explanation of paleosols. Remember this post, Davie-doodles, where you wrote:
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 24 2006,08:48)
feel free to point out which layers are supposedly paleosols and I will be happy to analyze them
In response, I pointed out this message, and this is the third time I've posted a link to it ... you offered an analysis, Davie-dip, let's see you r analysis of those layers. Include the depth of water and amount of sediment deposited in each step, and don't forget to account for soil horizons and characteristic microstructures.
You can't even bring yourself to acknowledge the many lies and errors you've committed on radiometric dating. Pathetic.
Here's the deal daveyDH, (short for the childish moniker i use for you: "DaveyDickHead")
All we had to do was prove that the earth is more than 6k years old. I and others did this.
You can't get past core samples. Even though you've done an, well, amazing job of snatching fiction from the jaws of reality and moved around from one bizarre idea to another, you have not given one single positive proof of a young earth. Not one.
And that is because there isn't one.
And I've been to your church. Or one just like it. The guy on stage started by telling us ghandi is in he11. I suppose that is because ghandi said
Quote
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Mohandas Gandhi
I tend to agree with Ghandi. I do not tend to agree with you. However, you have made me think that there is a deeper truth to another ghandi quote;
Quote
Evil is, good or truth misplaced.
And:
Quote
Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.
Um...
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
You haven't even attempted an explanation of paleosols.
He thinks he did. When he said
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Looks to me like a big clump of plants that got uprooted by the rising, rushing water of Noah's Flood, floated around for a while, then came to rest and was buried with a bunch of water-borne sediment. As the water receded, the sediment got eroded so we can now see it. I've seen bunches of plants like this floating in an upright position. It's simply a matter of center of gravity and buoyancy.
He thinks that he just gave incontrovertible evidence. He can't tell the difference between evidence and empty hand-waving.
Looks to me like a big clump of plants that got uprooted by the rising, rushing water of Noah's Flood, floated around for a while, then came to rest and was buried with a bunch of water-borne sediment. As the water receded, the sediment got eroded so we can now see it. I've seen bunches of plants like this floating in an upright position. It's simply a matter of center of gravity and buoyancy.
Dave, have you ever in your life, seen any sort of intact plant floating in the water roots-down and branches-up? Because I never have, and I've lived near water my entire life. And you never have either. Plants simply don't float that way. Invariably they float horizontally. There is simply no way any sort of plant, be it a tree, a bush, or a weed, was uprooted by a flood and then placed roots-down into the mud. And you're saying it's happened tens of thousands of times in the Grand Canyon paleosols? Are you crazy?
Well, maybe not crazy. But certainly deluded.
And, of course, you never had a "flood" anyway, so your whole little scenario is moot. I told you a long time ago you couldn't use your "flood" to explain anything, since you've never been able to demonstrate it happened anyway. But did you listen to me?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I've seen trees and plants floating down the Yukon, Unalakleet, Belize, and Missouri rivers. I've seen trees floating in lakes. I've seen a tree floating offshore of Vancouver Island. I have yet to see a tree floating straight upright, other than the "old man of the lake" in Crater Lake, which is an old denuded trunk that has been floating that way for about ...100 years?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
And Bing, go talk to David Martin at the Pitch about my Pastor if you like ... your kind of publication possibly? He will tell you what you want to hear ...
What an excellent idea Dave, I might just do that.
From the pitch.com article about Pastor Carl Herbster "Blessed are the Money Makers":
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By one former member's calculation, Herbster spent $6 million to $7 million without a vote of the membership. But Herbster's presidency was never put to a vote of the congregation -- the deacons would not allow it.
In the fall of 2002, one deacon, Dave Hawkins, wrote a seven-page letter to address "common misperceptions" that members of the church might have held. Hawkins argued that Tri-City was in a sound financial position because of its land holdings. In fact, the church had two offers on the table for $15 million, according to the document (which the Pitch has obtained).
Hawkins wrote that Herbster had acknowledged that it had been "unwise" to borrow the $1.6 million without a vote of the congregation. "But we Deacons are UNANIMOUS that he IS DOING A GOOD JOB and he is no way deserving of even a reprimand," read the letter (which made frequent use of all caps).
All caps? At least you're consistent.
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Still, some investors asked for their money. Deposits fell from a peak of $2.5 million to $900,000, the Star reported.
Hawkins, who still attends Tri-City, tells the Pitch that mistakes were made. But he suggests that the more serious accusations were unfounded.
"I will admit no church is perfect, and ours is not," Hawkins says. "But, boy, you'd think from reading this Kansas City Star article that we're ripping off old ladies and we're running a bank and we're just wheeling and dealing and this kind of thing, and it's just unfair."
Hawkins says 850 to 900 people usually attend Sunday worship at Tri-City, down from the 1,050-1,100 range of a few years ago. If Hawkins' understanding of recent events is typical of those who stuck with Tri-City, Herbster has succeeded in casting away questions about his leadership as the complaints of a few disgruntled members.
Hawkins, for example, says the secretary of state's investigation into the sale of church notes found just "one little technical violation that is, in my opinion, pretty minor."
In fact, all of the deposits had to be returned. Herbster signed a consent order with the secretary of state's office last year, which directed the church to steadily refund its outstanding notes and pay a $15,000 fine to a state investor-education fund.
Consent order and fine from the sec state? That sounds like someone broke a commandment.
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One former Tri-City member calls the church deacons "enablers."
Dave Hawkins occasionally serves as Herbster's pilot.
Are you an enabler Dave? Or just Herbster's pilot?
What exactly do you mean about "your type of publication" though? Are you casting aspersions about me? The neat thing about publications you might not like is that they are extensively fact-checked and vetted by lawyers before publication. Publishers don't want libel suits creeping up, so if the evidence isn't there, it's not published. Nasty thing about that evidence, eh Davie? It doesn't care which church someone goes to, or what worldview they subscribe to. It just is.
Wow, you guys are entertaining. Please. Keep going.
PS I think Ghandi was a great guy :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Here's the deal daveyDH, (short for the childish moniker i use for you: "DaveyDickHead")
All we had to do was prove that the earth is more than 6k years old. I and others did this.
You can't get past core samples. Even though you've done an, well, amazing job of snatching fiction from the jaws of reality and moved around from one bizarre idea to another, you have not given one single positive proof of a young earth. Not one.
And that is because there isn't one.
And I've been to your church. Or one just like it. The guy on stage started by telling us ghandi is in he11. I suppose that is because ghandi said
Quote
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. Mohandas Gandhi
I tend to agree with Ghandi. I do not tend to agree with you. However, you have made me think that there is a deeper truth to another ghandi quote;
Quote
Evil is, good or truth misplaced.
And:
Quote
Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.
Um...
Ah, Davey? Core samples?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
There's more. Security Savings and Tri-City, records show, have lent millions of dollars to a for-profit development company controlled on paper by church insiders and a wealthy Pennsylvania industrialist whose former company, Graco Children's Products, recently agreed to pay the largest civil penalty in the history of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The government claimed that Graco was slow to disclose problems with its baby swings, highchairs and strollers; hundreds of kids were injured by the company's products, and some died.
Quote
On July 18, 2002, Tri-City took out a $1.6 million loan that revealed the extent to which Herbster dominated the ministry. Its financial controls, Free's plea agreement demonstrates, were clearly inadequate.
Herbster signed for the loan himself. As the church president, Herbster had the authority to conduct such a transaction. But he obtained the loan without a vote of the congregation. Only later -- and with a fair measure of skepticism -- did church members consent to the deal.
The loan did not serve a conventional church purpose. The AACS, the Christian school association over which Herbster presided, needed the money to pay mounting health-insurance claims. The AACS had self-insured the policies. The program insured about 1,600 employees and worked well for a time. But a spike in claims forced a scramble for money.
Loans leave paper trails. A group of church members discovered the $1.6 million loan a short time after Herbster borrowed the money; that prompted a more thorough inspection of church finances.
Tri-City, it turned out, was $15 million in debt.
The news came as a shock.
"Everybody was surprised," former church member Preston Smith tells the Pitch. "It was a lot of debt. We thought we were a rich church."
Apparently the kind of acumen Dave displays in science, his buddies display in accounting.
Quote
"But we Deacons are UNANIMOUS that he IS DOING A GOOD JOB and he is no way deserving of even a reprimand," read the letter (which made frequent use of all caps).
While the story is juicy, that post of mine was perhaps a little improper. This is Antievolution.org, not 60 Minutes. We should focus here on Dave's fraudulent science, and ignore whatever fraudulent financial dealings he may be involved in.
Damm. A former deacon of tri-city John M. Logan, 41, of Independence--charged with felony sexual misconduct involving a child, two counts of use of a child in sexual performance and one misdemeanor count of sexual misconduct. An accountant for Tri-City defrauded over $600,000 bucks from church coffers. And now THIS? Herbster himself?!?!?! Sounds to me like your little church is a hotbed of sin and iniquity. You really should read C.S. Lewis to them, AirHead. Do you wear kneepads while chauffeuring your master around? By the way, how's about those Limestone layers, Dave? and paleosols? And you never answered me about whether or not you think your churchgoers would like a slightly cleaned-up version of your exploits here.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Lest too much gets said that shouldn't about vertically-floating dead plants, they are relatively well known:
Quote
Then it happened. In the blink of the eye I was upside-down, headed for Davy Jones' Locker. I had seen what appeared to be a deadhead immediately in front of my speeding Caribe. Deadheads are dangerous waterlogged logs floating vertically, their upper end barely above the surface. We had seen several deadheads on this trip, and this looked like another. I threw the tiller away from me to avoid the deadhead, and at the same time stood up slightly to see that I had swung clear. The last thing I remember before going deep sea diving was, "How about that, it's just a seal."
This may not be the best source ever, but I picked about the first I could find using Google, since I know how these vertically floating deadheads do exist and are water hazards. The stump ends tend to be at the bottom, both because roots trap rocks and dirt, and also because the roots tend to be more saturated with water even when growing.
I did learn about this first from a speech by Harold Coffin, one of the more scientific and tolerable creationists. He was "explaining" the buried Yellowstone forests, and from what I can gather there is some chance that the forests did end up as they did from trees floating in.
I haven't studied into it, though, because it hardly matters. He had no plausible story for how repeated batches of trees were floated in, covered by ash, only for the same cycle to repeat itself. The whole geology involved argues against any quick succession of burials of upright trees, whether or not the specifics of the case does.
Btw, AFD is essentially using Coffin's story to "explain" the buried Yellowstone Forests, without, of course, acknowledging (no doubt without knowing) in the ARkansas case that Coffin admitted that without the Bible he could believe the earth to be millions of years old:
Quote
You have had only two articles in standard scientific journals since getting your Ph.D. in 1955, haven't you?
A: That's correct.
Q: The Burgess shale (a geological formation in the Canadian Rockies with exceptionally well preserved marine fossils) is said to be 500 million years old, but you think it is only 5,000 years old, don't you?
A: Yes.
Q: You say that because of information from the scriptures, don't you?
A: Correct.
Q: If you didn't have the Bible, you could believe the age of the Earth to be many millions of years, couldn't you?
A: Yes, without the Bible.
Selective use of sources, expected of creationists. Oh well, the deceptive practices will continue.
While the story is juicy, that post of mine was perhaps a little improper. This is Antievolution.org, not 60 Minutes. We should focus here on Dave's fraudulent science, and ignore whatever fraudulent financial dealings he may be involved in.
I respectfully disagree. I think each shows the extent to which Dave is willing to go irrespective of evidence contrary to his deeply held beliefs. Both are a measure of his character.
And Davie, we've all made the "Lying for Jesus" comments, now that we know you're Herbster's pilot, do you have a t-shirt that says, "Flying for Jesus"?
One more time, Dave. You claim that your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" is a better explanation for the evidence than the standard models are.
Great. So presumably your "hypothesis" has a mechanism for dating the Grand Staircase strata. What is that mechanism? I'm going to keep asking the question until you either answer it or admit you don't have an answer.
In order for your "hypothesis" to be a "better explanation" for the evidence, Dave, it has to perform as well as or better than the standard models in answering basic questions, such as how old the Grand Canyon strata are. The standard models have answers for these questions. Your "hypothesis" does not, not even in principle.
So in what way is your "hypothesis" better than the standard models?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Methinks DaveyDH will not return. That is pretty rough stuff he's involved with. The fundy program:
10 lie for jesus 20 change the subject when called on the lie 30 lie again and again, 40 var=get in too deep 50 if var=true goto line 70 60 goto line 10 70 go somewhere else and lie to someone new 80 goto line 10
Core samples? DaveyDH, you are a very bad man.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Quote (stevestory @ Aug. 29 2006,17:55) While the story is juicy, that post of mine was perhaps a little improper. This is Antievolution.org, not 60 Minutes. We should focus here on Dave's fraudulent science, and ignore whatever fraudulent financial dealings he may be involved in.
I respectfully disagree. I think each shows the extent to which Dave is willing to go irrespective of evidence contrary to his deeply held beliefs. Both are a measure of his character.
This AFD is a real piece of work.
He hasn't the slightest scruples.
The Church is $15m in the red and the parishioners are left holding the baby.
The honest thing to do would be to step aside.
But that wouldn't mesh with his needs as someone aflicted with NPD.
That must be some cult.
It's a pity they can't be informed that his personality makes him a patholoigical liar and he is completely untrustworthy.
I wonder if someone will sue?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
How do explain(sic) my childhood in the jungles of Brazil where I had plenty of mosquitos, raindrops...
RAINDROPS ouch! Run Momma run, they's freakin' raindrops fallin' from the sky! It's a 'nuther freakin' fludde!
DDTTD keeps showing up as CFO/COO in all the messes he's involved in. Hmmm, the guy who looks at volcanic eruptions and sees (non existant) evidence of a fludde.
In all fairness, if Davey did spend time growing up in those areas, there is a lot of scary shit down there, mostly in the parasitic realm (and there really are some nasty snake species round those parts too).
I'm sure his daddy used to terrorize him with his surroundings on a daily basis, in order to better brainwash him.
what a pity his daddy couldn't show him the real wonder of the place instead.
such are the little differences that end up making a scientist vs. an ideologue.
Your daddy did you a gross disservice, Dave.
How does that make you feel? Isn't your own anger towards your father the REAL reason you're here; the REAL reason you accused us of having black hearts, when you really want to accuse your own father, and yourself?
Can we talk to your kids and show them this thread? Show them what a disservice you are doing to them, as your daddy did to you?
show them how, very much like a person who physically abuses their kids, you have/are mentally abusing them?
show them what happens to kids that suffer abuse? show them that they typically become abusers themselves?
what do you think, Dave? Do you think your kids should see what happens to children of abusive parents?
Or is that too much reality for you?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Ohboyohboyohboy... Where to start... AllCapsDave's new delirium, where he reassures himself by posting aaaaall the absurd things he claimed he "proved" again, his complete state of denial when faced with all the proof presented to him, his arrogant refusal to demonstrate WHERE and HOW he "proved" all his old crap (mighty river. primary age, the works), because "it doesn't serve his purposes" (!!!!!!! ), and on top of it all, the whole issue with the scandals in his church (man I actually laughed out loud when I read about the "frequent use of all-caps" ).
Well, to try not to repeat myself and others (something really difficult, when talking with AllCapsDave), I'll just refer to where he addresses me:
Quote
Why can't we have fossil forests buried by the Flood? Actually this is a prediction of the Flood Hypothesis. If a Global Flood happened, we should have all kinds of things happening to plants: plants getting uprooted, transported, redeposited; plants getting buried in situ; plants getting buried sideways and upright ... maybe even upside down! This is a naive statement.
Whoa dave, that's some theory you got there! It predicts everything! Even that an entire forest can be buried in situ by volcanic eruptions, then another can grow on top of it and get buried too, and another, and another for a dozen times! All in the timespan of a YEAR and in the middle of a FLUD!
Man, don't you just love AllCapsDave's "more plausible" scenarios?
Quote
Now ... please tell me again what was your point, Faid, in giving me this link? I guess I really do not understand the Official Millionsofyearsianism Viewpoint on Paleosols. This link seems to help the case for my Global Flood Hypothesis far more than it helps any other case. But again, I really don't fully understand your case in the first place, so maybe you could clarify.
Of course you don't understand, dave my man- how could you? Even without your reading comprehension disability, your emergency defense mechanisms would do the job: *WARNING* *CRITICAL MASS OF DATA INPUT APPROACHING* *RERCEPTION OF REALITY IMMINENT* *DANGER * IMMORTAL SOUL AT RISK * DANGER* *COMMENCING FULL SENSORY SHUTDOWN AT 4... 3... *
...You know how it is...
Thing is, dave: I gave you dozens of paleosols, with chemical and geological features quite distinctive, and also abundant in root traces of plants in growing position -did you get what that means yet? or do you think it just means "upright"? Like I said, ask your church's gardener and he'll explain. Now, do you actually have ANYTHING to say about that?
But wait, judging from your take on the Yellowstone Park issue, I guess you don't:
Quote
Predictably, the article then goes on and tries to say how Lamar River is different that Mt Saint Helens. They couldn't agree with creationists. That would never do!!! Their disagreement doesn't sound very convincing though especially considering the quote above that admits a "striking similarity" to Mt Saint Helens, and the fact that they changed the sign.
Only the quote (as I'm sure you know, in spite of your reading problem) refers to the simillarity of in situ coverage of trees by volcanic eruptions in the two areas and that spells DOOM for your "upright deposition in the fludde" (of 90% of the trees! ) scenario. And it's expected that you handwave their disagreement away ("that would never do"!!!!! ) instead of addressing it: You would have to explain how another forest GREW ON TOP of the buried one, again and again and again -whoops, seems like I initialized your defense mechanisms again dave. Sorry 'bout that.
Aaand for our finale, here's AllCapsDave the LIAR:
AllCapsDave:
Quote
Come on, guys. It's got mudstone in it. How many millions of years elapsed until the ash was eroded, turned into mud, carried away and re-deposited according to your Long Age time-scale?
AllCapsDave, in response to Jonf:
Quote
JonF..."Er, Davie-moron, that's the conventional geologist's viewpoint. The "hardened, THEN eroded, turned into mud and deposited" idea is your fantasy." No. Actually this is Faid's fantasy of my supposed fantasy.
QED.
PS. As far as whether we should discuss the scandals in dave's church, I say yes- but not in relation to him. I believe we all agree that dave's nothing more than a victim in this issue: After all, impostors don't draw attention to themselves by acting like internet clowns in forums. I just think he lacks the wit to realize where he got himself and his family into- and that's sad. But the Tri-cities story is interesting in itself: Not as much because of the scandals themselves (I'd be surprised if there was ANY church that wasn't involved in scandals -I live in Greece, I should know), but as part of a greater problem: The amazing power these reconstructionist organizations have gathered, and what that means for the future of the US. Maybe it deserves its own thread? Let's not forget: this is supposed to be a FUNNY thread after all...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I dunno. I just never viewed natural surroundings as the kind of threat DT2 apparently did. Up to my teens, we lived in the NM mountains in a log cabin with no plumbing/electricity and I had a respect for things that can hurt/kill you, but I can't imagine listing those things off as evidence of non-wussitude. The other thing that struck my mind was that I doubt seriously that the other kids (non-white) in Dave's area viewed it in the same way either. Obviously, one takes precautions, but there was an element of drama in AirHead's recitation that seemed overblown. Maybe it was just me being mean, granted, there's lots of parasites there and fer-de-lance, etc.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Return? Did I leave? I didn't think I ever left. I am a little quieter today because I'm deciding what topic to talk about next.
It's also interesting just to watch how your brains work. Your latest "truth search" is my pastor and my church and it reveals a lot of how the human mind will go to great lengths to defend deeply held religious beliefs--in this case, the Religion of Millionsofyearsianism.
The funny part of these types of "truth searches" that you conduct--and this is just a repeat of similar "truth searches" regarding my AF and business careers and my jungle upbringing--is that in all these cases, I happen to have inside information ... I was there! Ken Ham always asks "Were you there?" regarding Origins and neither the Creos nor the Evos can answer in the affirmative to that question. But with the "truth searches" regarding "AFDave's Jungle Upbringing" and "AFDave's AF Career" and "AFDave's Church" this is not the case. I DO have inside info. I WAS there. So I always know if you get your facts wrong.
So keep going if you like on your "truth search" about my pastor and my church. You will no doubt come up with some real howlers as you did with the others. I find striking parallels with these types of "truth searches" to your approach to the Ultimate Truth Search of the big questions in life. Is there a God? Did he create me? Will I answer to Him one day? Just as you WANT to believe lies about my upbringing, my career, my church and what have you, you apparently also WANT to believe lies about these big questions of life.
And although I laugh at first when I see such desperate attempts to vilify my "ilk", the truth is that it is no laughing matter. You all are precious human beings, created in the image of God, yet you deny His existence, sometimes shaking your fist at Him, making up lies about His servants, walking around in a fog called "Darwinism", completely oblivious to the glorious light of truth that God has revealed to us in His Word. Living life your own way, completely unaware that you were designed. And the Designer has a perfect plan for your life which would make you happy beyond belief, if only you would acknowledge Him and let Him be the ruler of your life.
You say "I AM happy, you moron!" Really? Most of you don't SOUND very happy. It sounds like you are extremely frustrated and disgusted with "my ilk" and "fundies" in general because they're "taking us back into the dark ages" and "choking science" and "setting up a theocracy" and so on.
So if you are happy, wonderful. I'm happy that you're happy! But just look back over these 170 pages sometime. What you may find is that you are a bitter, unhappy individual. And my hope for you is that you will find the ultimate reason for ANY human being to be bitter, unhappy, empty and unfulfilled in their life: a broken or non-existent relationship with their Creator.
The truth of the matter is that ...
1) There really is a Creator of all things 2) And He has spoken 3) And He wants a relationship with the Humans He created 4) But we have rejected Him and want to be ruler of our own lives 5) The end result of this rejection would be disastrous--the Bible calls it He11 6) But God provided a way of escape 7) It's a well known story--a strange one to be sure, but well known by many in the Western world--the story of Jesus
I don't know of a better place to send you to hear the rest of the story than to a site that has become known already here at this forum ...
www.kids4truth.com
My "Watchmaker" dynamation is a good starting point and there are other Dynamations and links that are there.
Believe it or not, I consider you all to be my friends, despite the fact that I argue with you every day.
To those who have expressed an interest in coming to my church, I truly would welcome you. You think fundies are green-eyed monsters with horns? Well, maybe some are. But I'm not. And the ones at my church are not. Come and see for yourself.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
To those who have expressed an interest in coming to my church, I truly would welcome you. You think fundies are green-eyed monsters with horns? Well, maybe some are. But I'm not. And the ones at my church are not. Come and see for yourself.
And please, make a donation for Christ, for blessed are the people who bail my church out of massive debt.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Who would that be? I'm not aware that anyone has done this or has plans to. Could you be specific?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Whatever floats your boat, AllCapsDave. We cannot say anything about you and your life (although we can easily predict your behavior, like just now), because we "weren't theeeeeere"... And that's true, in a way.
But you feel you are extremely equipped to tell whether we are happy or not, somehow... and, of course, you conclude that we are poor wretched unhappy souls in need of salvation. What else could we be? We have been led astray from the road of salvation! Poor dave... "It's MY path that is the only way to happiness... How can anyone not share my beliefs and actually lead a happy life? They HAVE to be miserable! Nothing else will DO!"
...Poor dave.
I suppose it's too late for you... Too late to really appreciate the beauty of living, to understand that life itself is so unique and wonderful, that no arrogant delusion of grandeur, no imaginary tale of immortality to suppress your fears is necessary to live happily and content. Your parents and pastors saw to that, to make your life a continuous stream of anxiety and guilt and fear.
But maybe it's not too late for your children. Time will tell.
Now, about that "hypothesis" of yours...
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Just observing the evidence right here on this forum, Faid.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, you need to try and see things from where we are. I don't think it's even remotely possible for you to do this, but I'll suggest it anyway. Here's what it looks like to us:
You come in here expressing a sincere desire to learn about evolution, and welcome criticism of your own theories. Instead, you irrationally reject the information and criticism we give you. You initially told us that you were not religious. You tell us that you won't trust anything we tell you (at least with regards to evolution and the age of the planet) because we don't share your worldview. You've been spreading disinformation to your children. You were, at best, less than forthcoming about your creationist store website, which bears a striking resemlance to those of well-known con artists like Ham and Hovind. You are a deacon at a church that has, as far as we can tell, lost millions of (presumably) donated dollars through questionable investments.
These are only a few things off the top of my head. To us, these things all add up as evidence that you are not to be trusted. What else are we to think?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Dave,Dave, Dave. I'm sure you viewed that as a heartfelt and "beautiful" little homily -- but unfortunately, it was replete with all the usual canards and fallacies trotted out by theists of various sorts throughout history. I'll take them in order as they appeared in your statements. "Is there a God? Did he create me? Will I answer to Him one day?" I cannot speak for others, but I HAVE looked at these concepts as deeply as I could, and I emerged with no fear whatsoever about "answering to God" one day. None. *IF* such a "creator god" exists...I doubt sincerely that such a being would worry overmuch about my "belief" in Its existence. In fact, I feel that any god that would punish eternally for mere disbelief or doubt -- is evil, so I wouldn't be willing to be party to that god's whims, anyway. " you deny His existence, sometimes shaking your fist at Him, making up lies about His servants, walking around in a fog called "Darwinism", completely oblivious to the glorious light of truth that God has revealed to us in His Word." Au contraire. In your mind, you have created a perfect "atheist Darwinist" villain...then you impose that caricature on everyone that disagrees with your claims of "absolute truth." No one made up lies about you here...even the charges of "child abuse" were grounded in the belief that imposing this notion of a terrifying god that will send you to eternal damnation is abusing the innocence and unawareness of children. Furthermore, I believe it is ** you** who is denying the glories of the universe around you, in spite of all available evidence pointing to the richness and vastness and sheer gorgeous depth of it. Once Richard Feynman was asked (by a Christian) how he could be so blind to the wonders of the stars and reduce them to mere equations, etc., and his response was that the complete scope of science allowed him to see in FULL the wonders of WHY the stars shone, WHY they twinkled at night, how immense and wonderful the universe actually IS. Your view attacks that. Your fanatical fundamentalism-- as has been shown in the last 170 pages-- would deny the efforts of millions of honest, decent caring human beings that have sought to uncover the beauty that exists around us. Your view would reduce man to a mere homunculus, a toy created by god to worship god in some egomaniacal way. Your view would deny the evidence in a hundred different branches of science. Humans crave security and certainty. We are born selfish and "lazy" in the sense that we seek to control the environment around us and are only willing to expend ( in general) minimal amounts of energy to satisfy our desires. But we will always face uncertainty. There will always be error. Science is the BEST tool we have to attempt to reduce error, to decrease uncertainty. This is why science has built-in error-correcting aspects at its very core. This is why you are required to put forward hypotheses tentatively, why you are required to provide a means of falsifying them, why you subject them to testing and a gauntlet of criticism and attack. Contrast this with your view. You offer no means of falsifying your claims, you offer up tissues of "evidence" that are suffused with lies and fallacies, with quote-mines and rhetorical games, with fantasies and pretense. I submit that it is you that does disservice to the mysterious beauty of the world.
I'm glad that you have comfort in your God, Dave. What I am not glad about is that you seek to impose that God on others by twisting and perverting the world to suit your needs of power. I am not happy that you see fit to use patently visible lies to claim "absolute truth," I am not glad that you then turn to cheap parlor tricks like " you must be unhappy" and "you are filled with anger" and "you attack messengers of truth" and " you worship Darwin" and "science is a religion." When you do that, you reveal the full range of your depravity and willingness to denigrate others for the sake of your own egotistical desires. So, no...I don't think I'll be taking up your cause, ever.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Return? Did I leave? I didn't think I ever left. I am a little quieter today because I'm deciding what topic to talk about next.
It's also interesting just to watch how your brains work. Your latest "truth search" is my pastor and my church and it reveals a lot of how the human mind will go to great lengths to defend deeply held religious beliefs--in this case, the Religion of Millionsofyearsianism.
Nice big long post, Dave, but where are your answers to any of the unanswered questions? You know, these ones.
Actually, Dave, I have recently gone over the first hundred or so pages of this thread, and this is my observation: at first, people treated you pretty respectfully, if extremely skeptically, but as it became clear that a) you were not interested in learning anything, and b) were a pretty dishonest guy, people became increasingly short-tempered with you. Is that any kind of surprise? If you were talking to someone at a bar, and he refused to back down on any point, no matter how thoroughly wrong he was, wouldn't you find that a little frustrating? Maybe not; maybe your affectation if beatitude isn't an affectation, but it's hard for me to imagine someone so oblivious to the effects of his behavior on others.
But in any case, I don't see any evidence of the deep unhappiness you seem to ascribe to the posters here. They seem a lot more well-adjusted to me than you do. At least they can deal with reality.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh come on, Improvius, you are right about one thing ... I'm not buying your story. You guys have made it clear that there is one thing that causes you not to trust someone in the realm of science ... A Creationist Worldview. Out friend "skeptic" got nailed to the wall after about 3 posts simply because there was a slight whiff of creationism in his posts.
Quote
You come in here expressing a sincere desire to learn about evolution, and welcome criticism of your own theories.
And I have done just that. I have learned much about evolution and have welcomed and continue to welcome criticism of my own theories. Bring it on, baby!
Quote
Instead, you irrationally reject the information and criticism we give you.
You're making a judgment that my rejection of your info is irrational. That's fine. But this betrays to me that what you really wanted was to "convert" me. But you are failing and you are frustrated.
Quote
You initially told us that you were not religious.
And I maintain that position to this day. I do not consider myself to be religious because that brings to mind images of incense and candles and long robes and long faces, etc. I do none of those things. The Bible also is not a "religious book" just because you think it is. God is also not "religious." In fact, Jesus had very sharp rebukes for religious people. Think about it.
Quote
You've been spreading disinformation to your children.
Simply your viewpoint because you disagree with me. My view is the opposite--telling kids that evolution is true to me is "disinformation."
Quote
You were, at best, less than forthcoming about your creationist store website, which bears a striking resemlance to those of well-known con artists like Ham and Hovind.
I don't care for Hovind, but you have no basis for saying that he and Ham are "con-artists." This would be just as ridiculous as me saying Carl Sagan was a con-artist because he sold books on the Evolution of the Cosmos. I don't agree with the man, but he's not a con artist. I don't agree with the main writers at Panda's Thumb or Pharyngula, but con artist? I wouldn't lower myself to call them con artists. They are just mistaken. Sincere, but mistaken.
Less than forthcoming? What am I supposed to do? Post a dossier before I started my thread? I practically did that with a link to my blog. If you had known at the beginning that I was the K4T treasurer, how would that have changed anything? How long have people here known about that? Quite a while. What difference does it make? None.
Quote
You are a deacon at a church that has, as far as we can tell, lost millions of (presumably) donated dollars through questionable investments.
That is an untrue statement. You are making stuff up based on an article in a **cough** highly respectable *cough cough* publication (The Pitch--have you read through a copy?) who was fed information by a disgruntled church member. Will you seek out both sides of the story. Nooooo! Why? Because you WANT to believe that all fundies are criminals. And yet you accuse me of saying all "Evos" are conspirators, which I have never done and never will do.
No, Improv ... you didn't trust me the moment you realized I was a Creationist.
In science today, this is the Ultimate Crime.
*****************************
Deadman...
Quote
Dave,Dave, Dave.
Hmmmm...first time in how many posts(?) that he used only my real name ... very interesting.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, speaking for myself, I couldn't give a crap about what's going on in your church, and I couldn't give a crap whether you're a creationist or not. What I am interested in, and the only reason I'm on this thread, is your ability (or, as it happens, lack thereof) to back up the claims you made on the first page of this thread. Since they're right there on page one, they're easy to find (which is why I found it so irritating when you were re-posting them every couple of days), and it's easy to track which ones you've been able to back up with evidence and which ones (i.e., all of them) you haven't.
Granted, I've learned a lot of stuff from people like Deadman, JonF, Occam's Aftershave, etc.—people who really know this stuff—but that's just the educational part of this highly entertaining little clown show we've got going here. The really entertaining part is watching you trip over your own shoelaces, again and again, especially when you can't even remember what your own arguments are, and get called on it, the way Faid busted you this morning.
Just one little event like that a day is well worth the cost of the interminable page-load times on this site…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well then, we need look no farther than core samples.
first, ice core samples record the passing of years in seasonal snowfall. They go far beyond 6k years. Lest you try to jjump up and say that god made 36,000 individual snowfalls in a day or two or some other crap like that, there are numerous ways to test that.
Volcanoes leave deposits in ice core samples. They also leave traces in tree ring samples. Tree ring samples can be a dating method by finding a tree that was cut when another was young and cross referencing events recorded in the rings (which also grow in yearly cycles. The events that cross-reference in both ice and tree rings are a check each upon the other. Of course, if you allow c14 dating as valid, there are also archaelogical sites which can correspond: eg vesuvius blows, we have a real, known date. The date is also recorded in tree rings and ice core samples and c-14 dating gives the right date too. We count backwards in the tree rings untill we get past Rome and find that the years of other events still correspond to ice core samples and poof! ® we get past your 10k years and whoosh! ® out goes the wind from your skull.
That was easy.
Also, your flood doesn't have a single corresponding sediment layer over the earth. Also your flood story is a fable. Also your god story is a fable. Also your circularity argument is dumb because it assumes only one way to check dates (rm) of which I just showed you there are others. But don't take my word for it. Go out and find out!
And when you find some aig crud about dendochronology or ice core samples, go discover that sediment works the same way and cross-references yet again that the ice cores and tree rings are correct!
Then, once you are all twisted like a pretzel, go do something hedonistic, reflect on how good it feels knowing that god doesn't care.
DaveyDH
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You say "I AM happy, you moron!" Really? Most of you don't SOUND very happy. It sounds like you are extremely frustrated and disgusted with "my ilk" and "fundies" in general because they're "taking us back into the dark ages" and "choking science" and "setting up a theocracy" and so on.
So if you are happy, wonderful. I'm happy that you're happy! But just look back over these 170 pages sometime. What you may find is that you are a bitter, unhappy individual. And my hope for you is that you will find the ultimate reason for ANY human being to be bitter, unhappy, empty and unfulfilled in their life: a broken or non-existent relationship with their Creator.
The truth of the matter is that ...
1) There really is a Creator of all things 2) And He has spoken 3) And He wants a relationship with the Humans He created 4) But we have rejected Him and want to be ruler of our own lives 5) The end result of this rejection would be disastrous--the Bible calls it He11 6) But God provided a way of escape 7) It's a well known story--a strange one to be sure, but well known by many in the Western world--the story of Jesus
You've been duped. I am happy to be able to have the full range of emotional responses to your brainwashed ramblings.
I am happy to be mad. I am happy to be so depressed that all I can think about is making you unhappy so that I can share my depression.
Oh who am I kidding. DaveyDH, of course you are right. The void in my heart is shaped like a god. I want you to tell me how to fill it. I can't stand this constant pain that I feel knowing that there is only one set of footsteps in the sand for me. And DaveyDH, I am terrified of he11. I don't want to be stuck for ever in torment like what I feel now. I want to know that at the end of this tortured road there will be bliss.
DaveyDH, being as I never had any religion so now I have to choose one, and being as there are so many good ones to choose from, how should I proceed? What do I need to do to narrow the field so I can figure out which one is the one true religion? DaveyDH, I really need your help. I'm lost and I'm going to he11. I'm scared.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
a) you were not interested in learning anything, and b) were a pretty dishonest guy,
This is and interesting statement to me. I guess you think I tricked you ... made you think I didn't know anything about anything and wanted to sit at the feet of the "Masters of Evoism." Strange. I thought I simply told you the truth. I really DIDN'T know much about Evolution. I really DID want to know more about it. Not because I wanted to believe it (as I'm seeing you were hoping for), but because I have (to quote someone here) a strange fascination with ... er ... well, we won't call it brain damage--we'll call it "brain darkening." I truly am interested in finding out what it is that makes evolutionary scientists tick. How was that dishonest?
I suppose you think I'm dishonest because I "tricked" you in this way? Maybe you also think I'm dishonest because I really see *wink wink* the truth of Evoism, but I'm so committed to my worldview that I just brush all that "evidence" aside and charge ahead with my beliefs. Not the case. I truly am sincere about everything I have written here, from bacteria to chimpanzees to Portuguese to the Grand Canyon.
Anyway ... as always ... you can believe what you want to.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hah! You're a madman, BWE. The good kind. I have to respect that. As for you, Airhead, you draw mystical significance out of me calling you "Dave?" I called you "Dave Hawkins" just a few pages back, too. Then I drilled you a new anal exit. Don't read too much into things, particularly when you have the memory and cognitive abilities of a tree shrew, Stupid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
How is a 'supernatural agent' explanatory? it appears to be words strung together and declared an explanation rather than being an explanation. You do know what an explanation is, don't you?
Second question: given the examples you've provided, we must assume that God is physical and is, in fact, embodied as a matter of essential nature. Otherwise, you undercut your recourse to "it's like human intelligence but more so" -- the only examples of intelligence we have or can legitmately conceive are embodied. Intelligence is always action in the world.
Finally, please deal with the apparent fact that the world is causally closed.
You are correct that it is not explanatory in the sense that we know how the SA did it. But please note that the 'Gods of Evolution' -- i.e. Millions of Years and RM/NS also do not have any explanatory power in the sense that you use. I know you all try very hard to make it look like you have explanations, such as the stack of books displayed at the Dover trial, but these are nothing more than fancy "Alice-in-Wonderland" just so stories of how you wish it happened, or how you think it might have happened, or whatever. None of this stuff can be demonstrated experimentally and when you have tried to demonstrate evolution experimentally, we have just the opposite of what you predict, i.e. dead and damaged fruit flies, etc.
Take my Creator God Hypothesis, on the other hand. While admittedly we have no idea HOW the Creator did the things He did, at least we are honest about this and don't make up fairy tales about how we think He might have done it, unless we come across some experimental evidence that gives us a good reason to believe He did some piece of it in a certain way. My Hypothesis fits well with observed phenomena in the universe which we live in and predicts many things which actually have turned out to be true as more knowledge has been gained. My Hypothesis (the YEC has position) also has not changed over the last 140 years as yours has, and I doubt it will change. As more information turns up, the YEC position will continue to be explained more and more fully and will itself explain more and more phenomena.
I don't follow why we must assume that God is physical. I don't think I said "it's like human intelligence but more so." I think I said that my hypothesis proposes that the Mind of God is like human intelligence in some respects, but far, far more advanced and powerful in its computing ability (or something like that).
Causally closed? Please explain.
Return hugs, AFD.
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Im not sure this applies to nature. What does happen all the time is people use the principles of evolution.
For what? I hear Evos claiming that to reject ToE is to reject progress and scientific productivity. The only thing productive that I know of that comes out of ToE is Designed Adaptability and Natural Selection (which you call ambiguously ... 'evolution', i.e. we now understand that bacteria adapt to anti-biotics and develop resistance and this helps us by prompting us to develop new anti-biotics, etc. Here's a suggestion from a progressive minded YEC: instead of trying to 'stay one step ahead' of the bacteria, how about we all recognize they were designed and then chase after a smarter way to defeat them more permanently than just developing a new anti-biotic every year. That's just one suggestion. There are many more.
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You're dangerously misinformed and a perfect example of everything that is poisonous about Christianism, fundamentalism and the intelligent design movement. You don't know logic. You don't know what a scientific explanation is. And when things are explained to you they don't penetrate your mental barriers. And yet, you would have the arrogance to replace this mightly success that modern science is with your vague and backward notions of theology. I hope one day you'll become a witness in another Dover type trial.
Yes. I'm dangerous and so was Newton and Maxwell. Look out world!
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No, Dave. Wrong, Dave. Saying a "Supernatural agent did it" explains exactly nothing. In fact, it's the ultimate admission of intellectual defeat. When you ask, "What caused this particular natural phenomenon?" and answer, "A supernatural agent did it," that's exactly equivalent to saying "I have no idea whatsofuckingever what caused it."
See response to Shirley's question on this thread. I have also answered this criticism on the "Ape" thread. Please re-read it.
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You keep saying your "hypothesis" is "science," but in fact it's a "science killer." It annihilates any inquiry into how something actually happened, or what its cause was. If the answer to every question really was, "God Did It," we'd all still be living in caves.
I always think it's funny when Evos try to imply that "Their Blessed Theory" ToE is somehow responsible for all that is good in science, when in fact, the opposite is true. The General ToE is in reality a "black eye" on the otherwise beautiful face of science. Have you never read the actual writings of the founders of modern science? Do you really have no idea that most of them were theists? Many of them YECs? Living in caves! What a hoot! This is like Clinton bragging about the economy being so good when he had nothing to do with it.
Outta time. Gotta run. Tomorrow ... drum roll ...
Morality. Why do we all have a sense of it? Why do none of us live up to it perfectly? Where did it come from? How does this phenomenon give support to the Creator God Hypothesis?
Psychology ... that's science, right?
Reading assignment for tonight: Mere Chrisitanity, Part 1 - Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe, by C. S. Lewis.
See you tomorrow!
I just wanted to repost this doosie.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dave, you convinced me. I came here googling evolution verses intelligent design. I have read every post in this thread. I came here with an open mind for the most part—I had never researched the science behind the claims of evolution, ID or even creationism—but I am a life long Christian.
Coming here has led me to a number of other sites to do more reading. I have been to UD and PT and a host of blogs and educational sites.
Heck I even watched your “watchmaker” video.
While not a trained scientist, even I was able to quickly see faults in your arguments as well as your unwillingness to provide evidence to support your claims. It was also obvious you were unwilling to accept any evidence contradictory to your argument.
My first thought was “well, there are illogical ideologues all over the place—I need to go to the leaders in ID and see what they are saying.”
That’s when I realized the truth. The leaders in the ID movement are using the same ad hominem, the same quote mining, the same false analogies. It wasn’t just you, Dave, it was those held up to be “experts.”
Now, I am convinced. IDists and YECists are lying to people. And whether you accept it or not, so are you.
Dave, if you get arrested because of the dodgy-dealings that went on in your church, I suggest you plead insanity. You can submit this thread as evidence. Then, when they send you to a psychiatric hospital, you might finally get the help you need.
I would suggest that you just be honest, but you're so deluded that I don't think you know what honesty is any more.
Very, very sad.
I really hope your kids grow up to be better individuals, but I fear that you may have destroyed their chances. For that, you should be ashamed, but I know you wont be.
Hah! You're a madman, BWE. The good kind. I have to respect that.
Awww, that's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me DM. Thank you so much. *sniff..*
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
In all fairness, if Davey did spend time growing up in those areas, there is a lot of scary shit down there, mostly in the parasitic realm (and there really are some nasty snake species round those parts too).
I'm sure his daddy used to terrorize him with his surroundings on a daily basis, in order to better brainwash him.
Wow on that last sentence. Please tell me that this is not a representative viewpoint of evangelical missionaries widely shared by level headed scientists in the 21st century! What a hilarious picture! My sweet, soft spoken dad terrorizing me with stories of burrowing fleas and leeches every day so he could better indoctrinate me with his "evil Bible lies!"
BWE ... Doosie? That's a classic. What page number did it come from? I think I'll bookmark it.
BTW ... didn't Deadman publish an index to this thread some time ago? Have you kept that current?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Um... Er... DaveyDH? I'm not sure how to say this but, I wasn't exactly laughing with you.
And By the way, Core samples prove an old earth therefore your whole thing is shredded.
And, DaveyDH, does mastubation make you go blind?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
a) you were not interested in learning anything, and b) were a pretty dishonest guy,
This is and interesting statement to me. I guess you think I tricked you ... made you think I didn't know anything about anything and wanted to sit at the feet of the "Masters of Evoism."
No, Dave. I don't feel tricked. I got out of you pretty much exactly what I expected to get from you: an inability to support your own claims, and an inability (and unwillingness) to understand the claims of others.
What I find dishonest about you is your claims to open-mindedness, when it's been clear from the beginning that your mind was made up about your beliefs. And your beliefs have not been amenable to comparison with the evidence, because if they had, there's no way you could sustain them in the face of the overwhelming mountain of contrary evidence you've been provided by posters here.
I didn't expect you to "sit at the masters of evoism (whatever that is)," Dave. I expected you to at least try to back up your claims. You haven't even tried to do that. You've spent almost all your time here trying to undermine the evidence for an old earth which, even if successful, would have gotten you nowhere in your attempts to support your claims of a young earth. You need affirmative evidence for those claims, Dave, and you've failed abjectly to provide any. Your dishonesty is in claiming that you have.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I do not consider myself to be religious because that brings to mind images of incense and candles and long robes and long faces, etc. I do none of those things.
Ved wins today's award for "Most Creative Post" ... good one, Ved. You've given me a whole new idea for a Dynamation at K4T. I hope this doesn't scare you. Oh, I have so many ideas, though. How will I ever narrow them down??!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Oh I see AFD is back from lying to the congregation to come and do some more lying here.
Post a link to this thread, AFD to your lies4kids site...you know ....to prove you have 'won'..go on what's the problem. Chicken?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Well the watchmaker analogy is over 2000 years old, so i'm guessing just about any idea where be new by comparison.
OK. So why don't you guys get it yet?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Thanks, Dave. I know you like pictures. Please make your next flashy animation as pithy as possible!
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Quote
You are a deacon at a church that has, as far as we can tell, lost millions of (presumably) donated dollars through questionable investments.
That is an untrue statement.
I understand that you disagree with the second half of the sentance, but you ARE a deacon at a Christian church aren't you?
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The Bible also is not a "religious book" just because you think it is. God is also not "religious." In fact, Jesus had very sharp rebukes for religious people. Think about it.
YOU think about it, All-Caps. If you only love God and not religion, why are you even a member of any church?
No, Dave. Wrong, Dave. Saying a "Supernatural agent did it" explains exactly nothing. In fact, it's the ultimate admission of intellectual defeat. When you ask, "What caused this particular natural phenomenon?" and answer, "A supernatural agent did it," that's exactly equivalent to saying "I have no idea whatsofuckingever what caused it."
See response to Shirley's question on this thread. I have also answered this criticism on the "Ape" thread. Please re-read it.
Dave, my quote above is as true now as it ever was, and if you think you've addressed my point in any sort of satisfactory way, you're hallucinating.
Read your repost above, and tell me if you think your "hypothesis" has any explanatory power at all in light of your abject failure to answer any of the 50+ questions Deadman was courteous enough to compile for us.
See, here's the deal, Dave. You claim that the majority of geology, astronomy, biology, paleontology, etc. are just "fairy tales," what we "wish were true." Well, it's certainly possible that everything we think is true is wrong. Pretty unlikely, given the vast amounts of evidence in support of the various theories, but not impossible.
Now, on your side of the aisle, what do we have? Some extraordinarily vague claims that some sort of Creator God did, well, some stuff, that made the universe the way we experience it. But where's the explanatory power in any of that, Dave? Your "hypothesis" can't even do the most basic things, like provide dates for the Grand Staircase strata. You've picked a date out of the air (4000 B.C., give or take about 100%) for the age of the earth, but you can't point to any evidence that supports that date, nor can you rebut the libraries full of evidence that contradicts it.
But in any event, where's the explanatory power of your "hypothesis," Dave? You can't explain how stars work, how geological processes work, how galaxies evolve, how organisms evolve, how the solar system formed, or really anything whatsofuckingever, as far as I can determine. You may not believe that science is capable of knowing how these things actually happened, but at least it's made an attempt at finding out. Your "hypothesis" hasn't even done that.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
We have covered a lot of convincing evidence that the Earth was created a very long time ago. The agreement of many different dating methods, both radiometric and non-radiometric, over hundreds of thousands of samples, is very convincing. Yet, some Christians question whether we can believe something so far back in the past. My answer is that it is similar to believing in other things of the past. It only differs in degree. Why do you believe Abraham Lincoln ever lived? Because it would take an extremely elaborate scheme to make up his existence, including forgeries, fake photos, and many other things, and besides, there is no good reason to simply have made him up. Well, the situation is very similar for the dating of rocks, only we have rock records rather than historical records. Consider the following:
There are well over forty different radiometric dating methods, and scores of other methods such as tree rings and ice cores. All of the different dating methods agree--they agree a great majority of the time over millions of years of time. Some Christians make it sound like there is a lot of disagreement, but this is not the case. The disagreement in values needed to support the position of young-Earth proponents would require differences in age measured by orders of magnitude (e.g., factors of 10,000, 100,000, a million, or more). The differences actually found in the scientific literature are usually close to the margin of error, usually a few percent, not orders of magnitude! Vast amounts of data overwhelmingly favor an old Earth. Several hundred laboratories around the world are active in radiometric dating. Their results consistently agree with an old Earth. Over a thousand papers on radiometric dating were published in scientifically recognized journals in the last year, and hundreds of thousands of dates have been published in the last 50 years. Essentially all of these strongly favor an old Earth. Radioactive decay rates have been measured for over sixty years now for many of the decay clocks without any observed changes. And it has been close to a hundred years since the uranium-238 decay rate was first determined. Both long-range and short-range dating methods have been successfully verified by dating lavas of historically known ages over a range of several thousand years. The mathematics for determining the ages from the observations is relatively simple. The last three points deserve more attention. Some Christians have argued that something may be slowly changing with time so all the ages look older than they really are. The only two quantities in the exponent of a decay rate equation are the half-life and the time. So for ages to appear longer than actual, all the half-lives would have to be changing in sync with each other. One could consider that time itself was changing if that happened (remember that our clocks are now standardized to atomic clocks!. And such a thing would have to have occurred without our detection in the last hundred years, which is already 5% of the way back to the time
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of Christ.
Beyond this, scientists have now used a "time machine" to prove that the half-lives of radioactive species were the same millions of years ago. This time machine does not allow people to actually go back in time, but it does allow scientists to observe ancient events from a long way away. The time machine is called the telescope. Because God's universe is so large, images from distant events take a long time to get to us. Telescopes allow us to see supernovae (exploding stars) at distances so vast that the pictures take hundreds of thousands to millions of years to arrive at the Earth. So the events we see today actually occurred hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. And what do we see when we look back in time? Much of the light following a supernova blast is powered by newly created radioactive parents. So we observe radiometric decay in the supernova light. The half-lives of decays occurring hundreds of thousands of years ago are thus carefully recorded! These half-lives completely agree with the half-lives measured from decays occurring today. We must conclude that all evidence points towards unchanging radioactive half-lives.
Some individuals have suggested that the speed of light must have been different in the past, and that the starlight has not really taken so long to reach us. However, the astronomical evidence mentioned above also suggests that the speed of light has not changed, or else we would see a significant apparent change in the half-lives of these ancient radioactive decays.
Doubters Still Try
Some doubters have tried to dismiss geologic dating with a sleight of hand by saying that no rocks are completely closed systems (that is, that no rocks are so isolated from their surroundings that they have not lost or gained some of the isotopes used for dating). Speaking from an extreme technical viewpoint this might be true--perhaps 1 atom out of 1,000,000,000,000 of a certain isotope has leaked out of nearly all rocks, but such a change would make an immeasurably small change in the result. The real question to ask is, "is the rock sufficiently close to a closed system that the results will be same as a really closed system?" Since the early 1960s many books have been written on this subject. These books detail experiments showing, for a given dating system, which minerals work all of the time, which minerals work under some certain conditions, and which minerals are likely to lose atoms and give incorrect results. Understanding these conditions is part of the science of geology. Geologists are careful to use the most reliable methods whenever possible, and as discussed above, to test for agreement between different methods.
Some people have tried to defend a young Earth position by saying that the half-lives of radionuclides can in fact be changed, and that this can be done by certain little-understood particles such as neutrinos, muons, or cosmic rays. This is stretching it. While certain particles can cause nuclear changes, they do not change the half-lives. The nuclear changes are well understood and are nearly always very minor in rocks. In fact the main nuclear changes in rocks are the very radioactive decays we are talking about.
There are only three quite technical instances where a half-life changes, and these do not affect the dating methods we have discussed.
1. Only one technical exception occurs under terrestrial conditions, and this is not for an isotope used for dating. According to theory, electron-capture is the most likely type of decay to show changes with pressure or chemical combination, and this should be most pronounced for very light elements. The artificially-produced isotope, beryllium-7 has been shown to change by up to 1.5%, depending on its chemical environment (Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 171, 325-328, 1999; see also Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 195, 131-139, 2002). In another experiment, a half-life change of a small fraction of a percent was detected when beryllium-7 was subjected to 270,000 atmospheres of pressure, equivalent to depths greater than 450 miles inside the Earth (Science 181, 1163-1164, 1973). All known rocks, with the possible exception of diamonds, are from much shallower depths. In fact, beryllium-7 is not used for dating rocks, as it has a half-life of only 54 days, and heavier atoms are even less subject to these minute changes, so the dates of rocks made by electron-capture decays would only be off by at most a few hundredths of a percent.
page 21
2. Physical conditions at the center of stars or for cosmic rays differ very greatly from anything experienced in rocks on or in the Earth. Yet, self-proclaimed "experts" often confuse these conditions. Cosmic rays are very, very high-energy atomic nuclei flying through space. The electron-capture decay mentioned above does not take place in cosmic rays until they slow down. This is because the fast-moving cosmic ray nuclei do not have electrons surrounding them, which are necessary for this form of decay. Another case is material inside of stars, which is in a plasma state where electrons are not bound to atoms. In the extremely hot stellar environment, a completely different kind of decay can occur. ' Bound-state beta decay' occurs when the nucleus emits an electron into a bound electronic state close to the nucleus. This has been observed for dysprosium-163 and rhenium-187 under very specialized conditions simulating the interior of stars (Phys. Rev. Lett., 69, 2164-2167; Phys. Rev. Lett., 77, 5190-5193, 1996). All normal matter, such as everything on Earth, the Moon, meteorites, etc. has electrons in normal positions, so these instances never apply to rocks, or anything colder than several hundred thousand degrees.
As an example of incorrect application of these conditions to dating, one young-Earth proponent suggested that God used plasma conditions when He created the Earth a few thousand years ago. This writer suggested that the rapid decay rate of rhenium under extreme plasma conditions might explain why rocks give very old ages instead of a young-Earth age. This writer neglected a number of things, including: a) plasmas only affect a few of the dating methods. More importantly, b) rocks and hot gaseous plasmas are completely incompatible forms of matter! The material would have to revert back from the plasma state before it could form rocks. In such a scenario, as the rocks cooled and hardened, their ages would be completely reset to zero as described in previous sections. If this person's scenario were correct, instead of showing old ages, all the rocks should show a uniform ~4,000 year age of creation. That is obviously not what is observed.
3. The last case also involves very fast-moving matter. It has been demonstrated by atomic clocks in very fast spacecraft. These atomic clocks slow down very slightly (only a second or so per year) as predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. No rocks in our solar system are going fast enough to make a noticeable change in their dates.
These cases are very specialized, and all are well understood. None of these cases alter the dates of rocks either on Earth or other planets in the solar system. The conclusion once again is that half-lives are completely reliable in every context for the dating of rocks on Earth and even on other planets. The Earth and all creation appears to be very ancient.
Apparent Age?
It would not be inconsistent with the scientific evidence to conclude that God made everything relatively recently, but with the appearance of great age, just as Genesis 1 and 2 tell of God making Adam as a fully grown human (which implies the appearance of age). This idea was captured by Phillip Henry Gosse in the book, "Omphalos: An Attempt to Untie the Geological Knot", written just two years before Darwin's "Origin of Species". The idea of a false appearance of great age is a philosophical and theological matter that we won't go into here. The main drawback--and it is a strong one--is that this makes God appear to be a deceiver. However, some
page 22
people have no problem with this. Certainly whole civilizations have been incorrect (deceived?) in their scientific and theological ideas in the past. Whatever the philosophical conclusions, it is important to note that an apparent old Earth is consistent with the great amount of scientific evidence.
Rightly Handling the Word of Truth
As Christians it is of great importance that we understand God's word correctly. Yet from the middle ages up until the 1700s people insisted that the Bible taught that the Earth, not the Sun, was the center of the solar system. It wasn't that people just thought it had to be that way; they actually quoted scriptures: "The Earth is firmly fixed; it shall not be moved" (Psalm 104:5), or "the sun stood still" (Joshua 10:13; why should it say the sun stood still if it is the Earth's rotation that causes day and night?), and many other passages. I am afraid the debate over the age of the Earth has many similarities. But I am optimistic. Today there are many Christians who accept the reliability of geologic dating, but do not compromise the spiritual and historical inerrancy of God's word. While a full discussion of Genesis 1 is not given here, references are given below to a few books that deal with that issue.
As scientists, we deal daily with what God has revealed about Himself through the created universe. The psalmist marveled at how God, Creator of the universe, could care about humans: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him?" (Psalm 8:3-4). Near the beginning of the twenty-first century we can marvel all the more, knowing how vast the universe is, how ancient are the rocks and hills, and how carefully our environment has been designed. Truly God is more awesome than we can imagine! page 23
APPENDIX: Common Misconceptions Regarding Radiometric Dating Methods
There are a number of misconceptions that seem especially prevalent among Christians. Most of these topics are covered in the above discussion, but they are reviewed briefly here for clarity.
1. Radiometric dating is based on index fossils whose dates were assigned long before radioactivity was discovered.
This is not at all true, though it is implied by some young-Earth literature. Radiometric dating is based on the half-lives of the radioactive isotopes. These half-lives have been measured over the last 40-90 years. They are not calibrated by fossils.
2. No one has measured the decay rates directly; we only know them from inference.
Decay rates have been directly measured over the last 40-100 years. In some cases a batch of the pure parent material is weighed and then set aside for a long time and then the resulting daughter material is weighed. In many cases it is easier to detect radioactive decays by the energy burst that each decay gives off. For this a batch of the pure parent material is carefully weighed and then put in front of a Geiger counter or gamma-ray detector. These instruments count the number of decays over a long time.
3. If the half-lives are billions of years, it is impossible to determine them from measuring over just a few years or decades.
The example given in the section titled, "The Radiometric Clocks" shows that an accurate determination of the half-life is easily achieved by direct counting of decays over a decade or shorter. This is because a) all decay curves have exactly the same shape (Fig. 1), differing only in the half-life, and b) trillions of decays can be counted in one year even using only a fraction of a gram of material with a half-life of a billion years. Additionally, lavas of historically known ages have been correctly dated even using methods with long half-lives.
4. The decay rates are poorly known, so the dates are inaccurate.
Most of the decay rates used for dating rocks are known to within two percent. Uncertainties are only slightly higher for rhenium (5%), lutetium (3%), and beryllium (3%), discussed in connection with Table 1. Such small uncertainties are no reason to dismiss radiometric dating. Whether a rock is 100 million years or 102 million years old does not make a great deal of difference.
5. A small error in the half-lives leads to a very large error in the date.
Since exponents are used in the dating equations, it is possible for people to think this might be true, but it is not. If a half-life is off by 2%, it will only lead to a 2% error in the date.
6. Decay rates can be affected by the physical surroundings.
This is not true in the context of dating rocks. Radioactive atoms used for dating have been subjected to extremes of heat, cold, pressure, vacuum, acceleration, and strong chemical reactions far beyond anything experienced by rocks, without any significant change. The only exceptions, which are not relevant to dating rocks, are discussed under the section, "Doubters Still Try", above.
page 24
7. A small change in the nuclear forces probably accelerated nuclear clocks during the first day of creation a few thousand years ago, causing the spuriously old radiometric dates of rocks.
Rocks are dated from the time of their formation. For it to have any bearing on the radiometric dates of rocks, such a change of nuclear forces must have occurred after the Earth (and the rocks) were formed. To make the kind of difference suggested by young-Earth proponents, the half-lives must be shortened from several billion years down to several thousand years--a factor of at least a million. But to shorten half-lives by factors of a million would cause large physical changes. As one small example, recall that the Earth is heated substantially by radioactive decay. If that decay is speeded up by a factor of a million or so, the tremendous heat pulse would easily melt the whole Earth, including the rocks in question! No radiometric ages would appear old if this happened.
8. The decay rates might be slowing down over time, leading to incorrect old dates.
There are two ways we know this didn't happen: a) we have checked them out with "time machines", and b) it doesn't make sense mathematically. Both of these points are explained in the section titled, "Can We Really Believe the Dating Systems?"
9. We should measure the "full-life" (the time at which all of the parent is gone) rather than the half-life (the time when half of it is gone).
Unlike sand in an hourglass, which drops at a constant rate independent of how much remains in the top half of the glass, the number of radioactive decays is proportional to the amount of parent remaining. Figure 1 shows how after 2 half-lives, 1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4 is left, and so on. After 10 half-lives there is 2-10 = 0.098% remaining. A half-life is more easy to define than some point at which almost all of the parent is gone. Scientists sometimes instead use the term "mean life", that is, the average life of a parent atom. The mean life is always 1/ln(2) = 1.44 times the half-life. For most of us half-life is easier to understand.
10. To date a rock one must know the original amount of the parent element. But there is no way to measure how much parent element was originally there.
It is very easy to calculate the original parent abundance, but that information is not needed to date the rock. All of the dating schemes work from knowing the present abundances of the parent and daughter isotopes. The original abundance N0, of the parent is simply N0 = N ekt, where N is the present abundance, t is time, and k is a constant related to the half life.
11. There is little or no way to tell how much of the decay product, that is, the daughter isotope, was originally in the rock, leading to anomalously old ages.
A good part of this article is devoted to explaining how one can tell how much of a given element or isotope was originally present. Usually it involves using more than one sample from a given rock. It is done by comparing the ratios of parent and daughter isotopes relative to a stable isotope for samples with different relative amounts of the parent isotope. For example, in the rubidium-strontium method one compares rubidium-87/strontium-86 to strontium-87/strontium-86 for different minerals. From this one can determine how much of the daughter isotope would be present if there had been no parent isotope. This is the same as the initial amount (it would not change if there were no parent isotope to decay). Figures 4 and 5, and the accompanying explanation, tell how this is done most of the time. While this is not absolutely 100% foolproof, comparison of several dating methods will always show whether the given date is reliable.
page 25
12. There are only a few different dating methods.
This article has listed and discussed a number of different radiometric dating methods and has also briefly described a number of non-radiometric dating methods. There are actually many more methods out there. Well over forty different radiometric dating methods are in use, and a number of non-radiogenic methods not even mentioned here.
13. "Radiation halos" in rocks prove that the Earth was young.
This refers to tiny halos of crystal damage surrounding spots where radioactive elements are concentrated in certain rocks. Halos thought to be from polonium, a short-lived element produced from the decay of uranium, have been found in some rocks. A plausible explanation for a halo from such a short-lived element is that these were not produced by an initial concentration of the radioactive element. Rather, as water seeped through cracks in the minerals, a chemical change caused newly-formed polonium to drop out of solution at a certain place and almost immediately decay there. A halo would build up over a long period of time even though the center of the halo never contained more than a few atoms of polonium at one time. "Hydrothermal" effects can act in ways that at first seem strange, such as the well-known fact that gold--a chemically un-reactive metal with very low solubilities--is concentrated along quartz veins by the action of water over long periods of time. Other researchers have found halos produced by an indirect radioactive decay effect called hole diffusion, which is an electrical effect in a crystal. These results suggest that the halos in question are not from short-lived isotopes after all.
At any rate, halos from uranium inclusions are far more common. Because of uranium's long half-lives, these halos take at least several hundred million years to form. Because of this, most people agree that halos provide compelling evidence for a very old Earth.
14. A young-Earth research group reported that they sent a rock erupted in 1980 from Mount Saint Helens volcano to a dating lab and got back a potassium-argon age of several million years. This shows we should not trust radiometric dating.
There are indeed ways to "trick" radiometric dating if a single dating method is improperly used on a sample. Anyone can move the hands on a clock and get the wrong time. Likewise, people actively looking for incorrect radiometric dates can in fact get them. Geologists have known for over forty years that the potassium-argon method cannot be used on rocks only twenty to thirty years old. Publicizing this incorrect age as a completely new finding was inappropriate. The reasons are discussed in the Potassium-Argon Dating section above. Be assured that multiple dating methods used together on igneous rocks are almost always correct unless the sample is too difficult to date due to factors such as metamorphism or a large fraction of xenoliths.
15. Low abundances of helium in zircon grains show that these minerals are much younger than radiometric dating suggests.
Zircon grains are important for uranium-thorium-lead dating because they contain abundant uranium and thorium parent isotopes. Helium is also produced from the decay of uranium and thorium. However, as a gas of very small atomic size, helium tends to escape rather easily. Researchers have studied the rates of diffusion of helium from zircons, with the prediction from one study by a young-Earth creationist suggesting that it should be quantitatively retained despite its atomic size. The assumptions of the temperature conditions of the rock over time are most likely unrealistic in this case.
16. The fact that radiogenic helium and argon are still degassing from the Earth's interior prove that the Earth must be young.
The radioactive parent isotopes, uranium and potassium, have very long half-lives, as shown in Table 1. These parents still exist in abundance in the Earth's interior, and are still producing helium and argon. There is also a time lag between the production of the daughter products and their degassing. If the Earth were geologically very young, very little helium and argon would have been produced. One can compare the amount of argon in the atmosphere to what would be expected from decay of potassium over 4.6 billion years, and in fact it is consistent.
page 26
17. The waters of Noah's flood could have leached radioactive isotopes out of rocks, disturbing their ages.
This is actually suggested on one website! While water can affect the ability to date rock surfaces or other weathered areas, there is generally no trouble dating interior portions of most rocks from the bottom of lakes, rivers, and oceans. Additionally, if ages were disturbed by leaching, the leaching would affect different isotopes at vastly different rates. Ages determined by different methods would be in violent disagreement. If the flood were global in scope, why then would we have any rocks for which a number of different methods all agree with each other? In fact, close agreement between methods for most samples is a hallmark of radiometric dating.
18. We know the Earth is much younger because of non-radiogenic indicators such as the sedimentation rate of the oceans.
There are a number of parameters which, if extrapolated from the present without taking into account the changes in the Earth over time, would seem to suggest a somewhat younger Earth. These arguments can sound good on a very simple level, but do not hold water when all the factors are considered. Some examples of these categories are the decaying magnetic field (not mentioning the widespread evidence for magnetic reversals), the saltiness of the oceans (not counting sedimentation!, the sedimentation rate of the oceans (not counting Earthquakes and crustal movement, that is, plate tectonics), the relative paucity of meteorites on the Earth's surface (not counting weathering or plate tectonics), the thickness of dust on the moon (without taking into account brecciation over time), the Earth-Moon separation rate (not counting changes in tides and internal forces), etc. While these arguments do not stand up when the complete picture is considered, the case for a very old creation of the Earth fits well in all areas considered.
19. Only atheists and liberals are involved in radiometric dating.
The fact is that there are a number of Bible-believing Christians who are involved in radiometric dating, and who can see its validity firsthand. A great number of other Christians are firmly convinced that radiometric dating shows evidence that God created the Earth billions, not thousands, of years ago.
page 27
20. Different dating techniques usually give conflicting results.
This is not true at all. The fact that dating techniques most often agree with each other is why scientists tend to trust them in the first place. Nearly every college and university library in the country has periodicals such as Science, Nature, and specific geology journals that give the results of dating studies. The public is usually welcome to (and should! browse in these libraries. So the results are not hidden; people can go look at the results for themselves. Over a thousand research papers are published a year on radiometric dating, essentially all in agreement. Besides the scientific periodicals that carry up-to-date research reports, specific suggestions are given below for further reading, both for textbooks, non-classroom books, and web resources.
page 28
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Ved wins today's award for "Most Creative Post" ... good one, Ved. You've given me a whole new idea for a Dynamation at K4T. I hope this doesn't scare you. Oh, I have so many ideas, though. How will I ever narrow them down??!!
i.e. Dave has come up with new ways to market lies to kids again.
For those less familar with the more mundane elements of christianity, the position of Deacon isn't the glitz and glamer position (that's Elder). Deacons are mostly concerned with the physical care of the church, and have fairly limited scopes of ownership. This isn't to belittle the position, it is sign of respect to the individual, and a stepping stone to becoming an Elder, but for large scale money issues, that responsibility rests with the Elders. So even if there were impropriety, more than likely Dave wouldn't have had much knowledge of it.
Furthermore, while alledged frauds may be useful in questioning the honesty of a person, Dave really isn't saying much that isn't repeated by countless other creationists, so it's more useful to refute claims based on science than on the character of the person making the claim.
I'll stop the sermonizing now, back to the wheel of random science discussions.
Okay, Dave: you've been given lots and lots of information on how scientists go about dating the Grand Staircase strata, or any other geological formation, for that matter. I know you think all of it—every single last piece of it—is wrong, because otherwise your belief that the earth is only 6,000 years old would be falsified.
So—what's your proposed method for dating the Grand Staircase? You claim you're led to your belief in biblical inerrancy by "the evidence." So where's the evidence that the Grand Canyon strata are all—every single last one of them—less than 6,000 years old?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Just observing the evidence right here on this forum, Faid.
*sigh*
Whatever, dave.
Feel free to believe we are miserable and with a "darkened heart"- after all, is there any way we could covince you otherwise? Can you think of one? No, because there isn't any. We simply have to be unhappy, because otherwise your whole world theory would come crumbling down... How can anyone not follow your beliefs and still be happy, when your beliefs are the ONLY ones that bring true happiness? If that were true, all your effort, all your willing denial of reality, all your struggle to maintain your 'ideas' about the world and everything in it, in spite of the obvious, would be for nothing. And that is NOT an option.
You have my understanding, dave. And my pity. But not my respect. Because you seek to enforce the lies others have fed you to others- to innocent children no less. I can't forgive that...
But I know I can rely on the fact that your inherent lack of wit will eventually achieve the opposite effect than what your plans aspire to.
So, please, PLEASE make another "dynamation", dave. Show us how scientists are like cult priests, with their robes and their beakers. You'll get more Internet fame than the Numa Numa guy... But not for the reasons you might expect.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Try storing them in your head...it comes to a point.
That's a pretty good one too ... even if it was directed at me :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Furthermore, while alledged frauds may be useful in questioning the honesty of a person, Dave really isn't saying much that isn't repeated by countless other creationists, so it's more useful to refute claims based on science than on the character of the person making the claim.
I think the current character analysis is mainly a result of Dave not having posted any new claims lately. Despite what Dave may think he sees, any ad-hominem attacks here are presented in addition to rational, substantiated arguments - not instead of them. I haven't seen a single claim of his so far that hasn't been refuted based on science.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
perhaps the robed scientists could be shown to be making things like computers where quantum level understanding of electron tunneling helps us make faster logic gates. and if our understanding of that sort of thing is right (it's is, you are using a computer right now! and it works dunt it?) then the sun is not 6000 years old either.
and once you've done that you can illustrate in the same matter what the people you support can make using only the information found in your book (which, as im sure you dont know, new chapters are being discovered now, the number of the beast is now 616, and so on - inerrant indeed).
who had syphilis on the ark deacon dave? Did Noah bring woodworm? What happened to the woodpeckers? Were they caged the entire time? How much wood can a woodchuck chuck?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
And speaking of which, I've been waiting all day for Dave to make a substantive reply to any of the criticisms leveled at his "hypothesis." Well, technically, I've been waiting for almost four months for Dave to make a substantive reply to any of the criticisms leveled at his "hypothesis," but so far, he hasn't made any reply today, let alone a subtantive one.
So come on Dave, show us your goods. If you can't answer any of the questions Deadman listed for you yesterday, can you at least provide us with the methodology you would advocate for dating the Grand Staircase strata? Can you give us anything?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Believe it or not, I consider you all to be my friends, despite the fact that I argue with you every day.
I hope you'll understand my honesty when I tell you that I cannot say the same. It takes me a great deal of time/observation to say "this person is my friend" mainly because "friends" don't do certain kinds of things.
Malcolm Muggeridge, whom I disagree with on many issues, once said something that caught my ear: "Character is determined not merely by what you do, but by what you will NOT do," and I agree with that. Same thing holds with "friends." Friends don't use the kind of tactics you do, friends don't try the gamesmanship, etc. that you did here. I could go on, but it's of little relevance at this point.
My advice to you is to recognize a few things about your position and honestly evaluate them. Creationism attacks specific targets, as ID does...and pretends that it only seeks the elimination of those targets: materialism, evolutionary theory, etc. But the fact is that what creationism/ID represents is ultimately an attempt to "prove" God. You may disagree with this...that's fine, but I will further point out that what you teach those kids is going to be remembered. When they realize, as you have here, the weakness of your position and the folly of trying to "prove" God...**SOME** of them will resent your manipulation and misrepresentations ( to put it kindly).
Science will continue to move on, and if you are in the unwise position of having staked out a claim according to Biblical literalism -- as the Catholics once did on geocentrism -- the "openness" of science (meaning anyone can be a part of it, if they wish, regardless of religion, race, nationality, sex, etc.) ultimately degrades the authority of that religious view. They lose face and credibility, in other words.
I think most people here would recognize the name of Martin Gardner, former columnist for "Scientific American." Gardner is well-respected in math and science in general. Martin Gardner is a theist who has simply taken, as he puts it, a "Kierkegaardian" leap of faith. He believes in a kind of "prime mover" deity that simply set things into motion...including evolution, which --despite your protestations--is not antithetical to theistic belief. The only thing that holds you back from that stance is your literalism/fundamentalism, and it is that which I strongly suggest you re-evaluate.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I think most people here would recognize the name of Martin Gardner, former columnist for "Scientific American." Gardner is generally well-respected in math and science in general. Martin Gardner is a theist who has simply taken, as he puts it, a "Kierkegaardian" leap of faith. He believes in a kind of "prime mover" deity that simply set things into motion...including evolution, which --despite your protestations--is not antithetical to theistic belief. The only thing that holds you back from that stance is your literalism/fundamentalism, and it is that which I strongly suggest you re-evaluate.
That's really what I consider to be "true" faith - and not at all what Dave seems to have. Faith is something that you decide to trust when you have to go beyond the point where logic and reason can help you. It's always a "leap" in that sense, and you have to be aware of it as such. Instead of faith, Dave has some sort of mental construct that he thinks is a result of evidence (whereas conditioning is the more likely source). In Dave's mind, his "God" is an inevitable conclusion, rather than an incredibly difficult choice. Faith shouldn't be easy.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Your latest "truth search" is my pastor and my church and it reveals a lot of how the human mind will go to great lengths to defend deeply held religious beliefs--in this case, the Religion of Millionsofyearsianism.
no, Dave, it reveals how many of us are dedicated to smoking rats out of holes.
We're not miserable, Dave, we're PISSED OFF.
Tired of lying sacks of shit like yourself trying to impose your delusions on your children and neighbors.
Tired of seeing the horrid level of hypocrisy we ALWAYS find within those who create churches like those you attend.
Tired of repeatedly pointing out that the "clergy" involved with these "megaunification" churches are #### near always involved in criminal activity, and are almost always just using their "flock" in order to fleece them.
Tired of pointing out how the psychology of parents of folks like yourself messed up the thinking of their kids, in many cases permanently, so that they themselves are no longer able to tell fact from fiction, like you.
Tired of seeing the "spreading of Gospel" change to "the spreading of Lies".
Tired of seeing the arguments of the separation of church and state that is at the very basis of this democracy shifted to an imposition of religion ON the state.
Somewhere in that pathetic brain of yours, you know I'm right about all of this. You simply are too scared to admit it.
terrorized by your father, your government, and irrationality itself, you cower like little mice in your "church" and make up fairy tales to make it all go away.
So yes, Dave, "We're mad as ####, and we're not gonna take it any more."
It ain't misery, it's sheer anger at your cowardice, stupidity, and willfull ignorance.
How much longer do you think rational people will let it slide, you think?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Core samples blow your theory. If all we need to do is show that the earth is more than 6k years old, we don't need any more than simple graphing skills to blow your theory all to he11
Guys, help me out here. We can do this without all this complicated stuff like multiplication and division and particle physics and stuff. Core samples. Earth is at least 40k years and down goes DaveyDH's ship. No?
gOD, I don't want to go to he11. I repent. Oh really I do. Which god do I choose though? THere are so many. Ohhh... my head hurts. Why can't I find something to fill that god shaped hole in my heart?
Is there a god that still let's me eat pork, drink whiskey and allow my neighbors all their vagarities?
I want a new drug. one that won't hurt my head. One that...
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
uh, i think you are under the misaprehension there really IS anything Dave has presented that needs evidence to the contrary.
sure, core samples, RM dating, geology, chemistry, biology, paleontology, shit... the entire history and content of science speaks against Dave without us having to say one goddamn word.
I never got the impression anybody needed to even bother, as Dave was supposed to present positive evidence to support his "hypothesis" and instead presented nothing but fantasy.
I wouldn't take it personally if nobody runs with core samples. I'm sure as soon as Dave finds anything wrong with core sample data, the rest of the crew will pile on.
maybe you should give Dave some "ammunition" to create a false argument with?
Then watch the sparks fly.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
In the first drilling season in 1990, the drill reached a depth of 770m where the ice is 3840 years old. In 1991, the drilling continued into 40,000 year old ice at a depth of 2521m, and on 12 August 1992, the drill hit bedrock at 3029m below the surface, where the ice is 200,000 years old or more. The core is now stored in a cold house at the University of Copenhagen. The GRIP deep drill is an updated version of ISTUK (IS means ice in Danish, TUK means drill in Greenlander). ISTUK was constructed in 1978 and used successfully under the American-Danish-Swiss GISP 1 program at Dye 3 in South Greenland where it hit bedrock at a depth of 2037m in 1981.
K. Makinson Although the actual drilling was completed in 1992, there was a last short field campaign in Greenland and at Summit to measure ice sheet strain parameters and to extend upward the GRIP hole so that detailed temperature and deformation measurements will still be possible. Using the experience accumulated through GRIP and the facilities of this last campaign, the successful development and testing of a special drill for the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) was also carried out. This new European drill will be able to operate in the much harsher environmental conditions to be found at Dome Concordia in Antarctica.
Dating the GRIP Core It was possible to count annual layers in the GRIP core to obtain an excellent dating, particularly back to the Younger Dryas period. Parameters used to date the core included ECM, dust, nitrate and ammonium, which all give excellent annual layers, particularly in the Holocene period. Comparison with the previously dated Dye 3 core, using volcanic and other tie-points, provided a starting point. Numerous volcanic eruptions were documented, allowing the possibility to make comparisons with other cores. Deeper ice was dated using ice flow models.
Ok DaveyDH, go ahead and start with how a bunch of layers happened all at once. Pleeeease.
Or, oh, oh, I got it, tell us how the scientists were counting wrong, or how they faked it or how it's all wrong somehow.
To save you a little time (I bolded the part you probably want to start from):
Quote
First, volcanic ash signatures beyond about 200 years are equivocal for a number of reasons, especially because the historical record older than 200 years becomes more sketchy the older the eruption. 2,000 years seems to be the maximum for which any volcanic ash signal and the historical record can be correlated.3 Hammer, who was the first scientist to use volcanic signatures, states:
The use of volcanic reference horizons in ice cores, however, has not been widely used. The reason is twofold: First, before volcanic horizons could be used for dating purposes it was necessary to establish a time scale independent of any subjective interpretations of the volcanic signals (by seasonal variables). Second, the information on past volcanic eruptions is limited and the dating of the eruptions is not very precise, apart from certain well-documented historical eruptions.4
Second, the use of climatic cycles from the astronomical or Milankovitch ice age theory (Ross’s second and fourth indicator above) is an exercise in circular reasoning.5 Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores are tuned to the deep-sea cores, which are dated assuming the astronomical or Milankovitch ice age theory:
Taking advantage of the fact that the Vostok deuterium (δD) record now covers almost two entire climate cycles, we have applied the orbital tuning approach to derive an age-depth relation for the Vostok ice core, which is consistent with the SPECMAP marine time scale [from deep-sea cores] … The deep-sea core chronology developed using the concept of “orbital tuning” or SPECMAP chronology … is now generally accepted in the ocean sediment scientific community.6
“Orbital tuning” refers to the cycles in the astronomical theory. This quote is referring to the first two cycles in the Vostok core, but since then, glaciologists have drilled deeper at Vostok and added more cycles from Dome Fuji and Dome C—clear to the ninth cycle in Dome C. This is how the Antarctic ice cores are dated—simply by curve matching with deep-sea cores! Annual layers cannot be derived from ice cores drilled on top of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, as implied by Ross, since the snowfall rate (less than 5 cm of water equivalent per year) is too light for annual layer dating. As far as the strong oscillations in δD, presumably correlated to temperature, in these Antarctic cores are concerned, Oard suggests that they are similar to the large oscillations in the “Greenland Ice Age” portion of the cores but with higher amplitude.7
Further evidence of circular reasoning, via tuning the ice core chronology to the astronomical ice age theory, is shown in the Greenland ice cores. This was demonstrated when Deborah Meese and colleagues first dated the GISP2 core by “annual layers” down to the 2,800 meter level at 85,000 years BP (before present).8 However, the date at this level disagreed with the deep-sea cores and the astronomical theory, so the layer between 2,300 and 2,800 meters was “remeasured” to a finer resolution. They found 25,000 more annual layers in that 500-meter interval to arrive at 110,000 years at 2,800 meters, just as expected from the chronology from deep-sea cores!9
Glaciologists do measure annual layers near the top of the Greenland ice cores, but deeper down the cores they are picking up subannual layers (storm layers and other variations). The uniformitarian scientists are simply assuming the ice sheets are old, and so “old age” is what they find. Creationists have an alternative interpretation in which the post-Flood rapid Ice Age causes very thick annual layers during the Ice Age followed by a decrease to the current annual snowfall of today.2, 10–14
Of course, you could follow your tactics of just acting insane and hope we give uyp in disgust but I think this one is too easy. Hmmm... Did I really say that?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Where do bad folks go when they die? They don't go to heaven where the angels fly go to the lake of fire and fry see them again 'till the fourth of July
-the meat puppets (redone by Nirvana)
This is my personal favorite. I really don't want to go to he11. This is what happens there. I know. I've seen the paintings and read the inferno (not in italian... or portuguese for that matter). I read my 700 club:
Quote
Is #### A Real Place? By CBN.com
CBN.com -- WHAT IS #### LIKE?
There are two descriptions of #### in the Bible. One is of a burning fire. Jesus often used the word GEHENNA to describe ####. Gehenna was the refuse dump outside Jerusalem that was always on fire. Jesus said #### was a place of worms, maggots, fire, and trouble. From that we get the image of a lake of fire and the concept of perpetual burning. The evil ones there are full of remorse and torment (see Mark 9:43-48).
Jesus also said that #### would be "outer darkness." He said that some in His day "will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8:12, see also Matthew 22:13). Here the image is one of terrible loneliness. There will be separation from God and man. Those who are consigned to #### will be put out into the inky blackness of eternity, with nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to, and they will be constantly alone. They will suffer the remorse of knowing they had the opportunity to come into heaven with God but turned it down.
The Bible speaks of a lake of fire reserved for the devil and his angels (see Matthew 25:41). Human beings were never intended to go into ####. But the ones who choose to reject God will one day follow Satan right into ####.
There will be no exit from ####, no way out, no second chance. That is why it is so important in this life to receive the pardon that God extends to all men through the cross of Jesus Christ.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
What' the story on the 616? I haven't heard that one ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
turns out revelations is a political tract regarding nero.
fundies. can't live with 'em, can't feed 'em to the lions anymore.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Quote (afdave @ Aug. 30 2006,12:55) Ved wins today's award for "Most Creative Post" ... good one, Ved.
And you win everyday's award for most obvious small penis complex and general stupidity.
Congratulations DaveyDH.
That would be the MOSPC award and the GS award for those who prefer to use the acronyms at a later date.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
And Bing, go talk to David Martin at the Pitch about my Pastor if you like ... your kind of publication possibly? He will tell you what you want to hear ...
Dave Martin wrote, "Just thinking about ol' Dave gives me a headache."
Then we have this
Quote
That is an untrue statement. You are making stuff up based on an article in a **cough** highly respectable *cough cough* publication (The Pitch--have you read through a copy?) who was fed information by a disgruntled church member. Will you seek out both sides of the story.
In the Pitch article DDTTD was quoted saying it was a few disgruntled church members but it appears several hundred members left from the attendance figures. Coincidence? Heehee.
Now knowing what I know about DDTTD's creative math, 20-30 dated layers in the GS becomes 5 then 3 again, DDTTD's credentials as CFO/COO of the company he (co)founded and as Treasurer of kids4cults, should anyone trust him?
Some of us also remember the fact that DDTTD first came here and asked us to prove Evolution in 5 statements, like hundreds of years of work by thousands of individuals could be summed up as easily as his "I know Goddidit" statements. Clearly he was arrogant and antagonistic from the gitgo.
Creationism attacks specific targets, as ID does...and pretends that it only seeks the elimination of those targets: materialism, evolutionary theory, etc. But the fact is that what creationism/ID represents is ultimately an attempt to "prove" God. You may disagree with this...that's fine, but I will further point out that what you teach those kids is going to be remembered. When they realize, as you have here, the weakness of your position and the folly of trying to "prove" God...**SOME** of them will resent your manipulation and misrepresentations ( to put it kindly).
Two things chap my fundament.
First is this claim that they attack materialism. Why are so many of the leaders of the Fundies (of whatever stripe) so materialistic and how can the sheep be so blind to it? How many 6 figure priced homes does Herbster need and own DDTTD and why?
Second, the unrelenting attacks on science and the anti-science indoctrination of otherwise bright and healthy minds removes those minds from fields which the human race is most in need of.
Sorry, I was trying to explain hole theory in semiconductors to a young person AND listening to another Talking Head explain why it's neccessary for us to militarily intervene in Iran, and I've lost my train of thought.
Ah, dammit, wrong picture...ummm...HERE..Gaze upon this, O mortal, and fear!!
deadman, that picture brings up a question that has been bugging me. Aren't the devils in he11 to be punished? It looks like they are having a grand time torturing the humans!
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
deadman, that picture brings up a question that has been bugging me. Aren't the devils in he11 to be punished? It looks like they are having a grand time torturing the humans!
They just seem that way, Tracy. Just like we seem to be happy, content and mentally healthy individuals, able to love and be loved and simply enjoy life, while on the inside we cry in anguish and despair from straying away from the path of righteousness.
It's that simple.
To the words of a webcomic I like... "You'll thank me when you share my politics".
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Aren't the devils in he11 to be punished? It looks like they are having a grand time torturing the humans!
I think that the standard (Christian) response would be they *are* being tortured by their loss of heaven, a place of infinite beauty and happiness, as well as being disconnected from God, his benevolent redemptive powers and glowing loving glow. This apparently pisses them off something fierce, so they take it out on the human spirits (somehow given "form") around them. It's all a mystery, you know.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ok DaveyDH, Now that I'm in the search for the one true god ®, I'm down to number 37 and that's the christian god. I was trying to remember who I knew that knows basically anything about christianity and suddenly I remembered, "OH Yeah! DaveyDH knows about christians". You see, normally I don't associate with christians since they seem to be a dishonest myopic bunch for the most part. But I know you DaveyDH. So I figured I could ask you some questions that have me flummoxed.
1) What's with the trinity thing? Is it one god, or 3 gods? 2) Do you really have to do the whole accepting christ thing or can you just put one of those little fish thingies on your car? 3) Why again did we need a new covenant?
Thanks in advance. I appreciate all your help in this matter.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
turns out revelations is a political tract regarding nero.
fundies. can't live with 'em, can't feed 'em to the lions anymore.
Many branches of Christianity have for long believed that Revelations is allegorical, or more correctly, that apocalyptical literature is it's own genre and should be interpreted through that lens. If you've ever read the book from front to back you'll notice alot of repitious numbers popping up over and over again. As was explained to me growing up, 7 is the number of god, a symbol of completeness. 6 is 1 short of 7, meaning it is that which is not quite god. 3 is a symbol of the trinity. So while 777 would be Gods number, the devils number is 666. Another example is the 144,000 that are taken to heaven. 12 is the number of Isreal (for the twelve tribes), 12 x 12 is 144, which means not just Isreal will go to heaven, but the whole world, and 1000 just means a multitude. Decoded that means heaven is a place for the masses of the world, not just jewish converts. Now do this with the hundreds of numbers throughout the book and you get.....a quite confusing story. The one I was taught did in fact included Nero, but was more about Domitian. Nero was a lazy bigot, he used Christians as a scapegoat, and killed them to appease the masses, but Domitian was not a nice fellow. He's the one that hung Christians doused in tar on poles, and lit them on fire as street lamps. John (the historical author of Revelations) was exiled on Patmos by Domitian. So he wrote a book about how the Christians had previously provailed against Nero, and would eventually prevail against Domitian. That was probably a bit dangerous to say straight out, especially given that John was already a known disenter in exhile, so he uses the apocalyptic style of writing to mask what he's saying, and hopes that the 7 churches get the message. You may see now why many Christian prefer the 4 horsemen, dragons and trumpets version instead, because reading it allegorically may give you a headache.
And on to my personal pet peeve about the word fundamentalist. It sure got stuck with alot of negative conotations, and now is a catchall term for crazy religious people. Fundamentalism is any religious belief that rejects establish dogma outside of the primary source. Basically, the Bible is the sole source of the word of God, screw what the pope/church tradition says. While fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, that doesn't mean they treat the entire thing litterally. The Bible includes poetry, proverbs, and parables, that no one thinks are litteral. As I mentioned above, there are fundamentalists that believe that Revelations is allegorical (in fact almost all christians now believe it's allegorical, the difference is in whether it's talking allegorically about a future event or a past event), and more importantly to this audience, there are fundamentalists that believe that the creation story is allegorical (I don't know of any churches that believe Job is allegorical, but it seems to fit the mold as well). Basically, for this forum, the term YEC is probably the most appropriate, since that embodies the specific beliefs that are in conflict with science.
And so ends another edition of Diogenes' Bible Stories for Atheists.
Since we seem to have segued to the Apocalypse (\daveBarry{Segue to the Apocalypse would be a good name for a rock band}), it might be worth pointing out that one of the reasons fundies like Dave panic over the long age of the earth is that his theology relies on the earth having a short future. If you think the world only begins in ~4000 BC, then the idea of it ending after only ~6000 years almost makes sense (for certain values of "makes sense"). But if the world extends billions of years into the past, it's much harder to make sense of an imminent end. Deep time completely undercuts apocalyptic eschatology.
Science ought to bring us a certain humility, in that it tells us that we are not the centre of the universe- physically, biologically or temporally.
I love this Link on inbreeding at the Arizona/Utah border. Maybe Alabama can change it's motto away from Thank God For Mississipi, I like the way "TGFU" rolls off the tounge
Quote
"Joseph Smith was also selecting for the 'obedience gene.' He was kicking people out, too, who weren't obedient.
"I hate to talk like this about my own genealogy," Wyler says, "but, literally, they are keeping all the breeding stock -- the women, the [strictly faithful] men -- and weeding out the disobedient men."
The ultimate goal of the breeding program, Wyler says, is to create the perfect race.
"Remember how Hitler was trying to breed a perfect race?" he says. "Warren Jeffs is also trying to breed a perfect race."
The widespread presence of the fumarase deficiency gene in the bloodlines of the founding families of Colorado City is going to make reaching any such goal extremely difficult.
The few dissenters in the community say the serious genetic problems that are beginning to surface are an indication that the closed FLDS society could eventually collapse.
"Maybe it will just self-destruct," historian Bistline says of the fundamentalist church he quit 20 years ago because of a dispute over religious doctrine and property ownership. "In the meantime, the taxpayers have to pay the bills."
Are you sure you want to teach AFDave about Genetics? Apropo of nothing, great music references.. Meat puppets, Louis mentioned Social Distortion! Who thought ATBC would be a haven for greying punk rockers?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Ouch. I've been properly chastized. I just can't bring myself to be thorough in the face of DaveyDH. I just reread some of revelations a few weeks ago in light of the greek manuscript that they just deciphered. How anyone can ... oh well...
Neat info though. Thanks.
Greying punk rockers. Double ouch. God save the queen eh?
I also just watched Dawkins' "The root of all evil" and I'm a little jaded at the moment. It'll fade I suppopse.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I wonder…has Dave given up on his attempts to refute the evidence for an old age of the Grand Canyon strata and the existence of paleosols in the Grand Canyon in particular and the world in general? Is he going to move onto more absurdities? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's made a substantive post in two days.
If so, Dave, I have a question: given that you've provided no evidence for the existence of your flood, wouldn't it be a bit premature to start discussing Noah's ark? It doesn't seem like he'd need one, if there never was a flood.
And speaking of which, here's my image of the "ark": a rough-hewn raft, maybe fifty feet square, with a cow, a couple of goats, half a dozen chickens, a few bushels of grain and maybe a bale of hay for the livestock, a few clay urns full of water, and off they go, as the Jordan river floods.
Give it a few centuries playing "telephone," and you've got the ark myth. Not quite as exciting a story, is it?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I wonder…has Dave given up on his attempts to refute the evidence for an old age of the Grand Canyon strata and the existence of paleosols in the Grand Canyon in particular and the world in general? Is he going to move onto more absurdities? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's made a substantive post in two days.
If so, Dave, I have a question: given that you've provided no evidence for the existence of your flood, wouldn't it be a bit premature to start discussing Noah's ark? It doesn't seem like he'd need one, if there never was a flood.
And speaking of which, here's my image of the "ark": a rough-hewn raft, maybe fifty feet square, with a cow, a couple of goats, half a dozen chickens, a few bushels of grain and maybe a bale of hay for the livestock, a few clay urns full of water, and off they go, as the Jordan river floods.
Give it a few centuries playing "telephone," and you've got the ark myth. Not quite as exciting a story, is it?
I got outta the rock and roll business a while ago. Now I am in a nominally acoustic band doing all originals.
Fun.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I got outta the rock and roll business a while ago. Now I am in a nominally acoustic band doing all originals.
Fun.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
deadman, that picture brings up a question that has been bugging me. Aren't the devils in he11 to be punished? It looks like they are having a grand time torturing the humans!
maybe they were hippies in their former lives?
Quote
Well, I guess we'll know when we get there!
well, looking at the picture, I'm gonna get in the line to be the devil instead of the whipped. I'm closer to being a hippie anyway.
What about you, target drone Dave (yeah, I miss Rilke too)? I'm pretty sure you would pick the scourged, since that's what seems to turn you on from what we can see here.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
And so ends another edition of Diogenes' Bible Stories for Atheists.
exapted from the book:
The Idiots Guide to Creationism
thanks uncle Diogenes, for such a rambling and misinformed missive on what all of us here think of all of creationism.
do feel free to come back next week and tell us the story of how people like Dave get their heads wedged up their asses so often.
that one always manages to put me to sleep better than a cup of hot cocoa.
Quote
I also just watched Dawkins' "The root of all evil" and I'm a little jaded at the moment. It'll fade I suppopse.
I sure hope not, actually.
I personally think Dawkins conflates the religion and the psychology, but different terminology doesn't mean the problem isn't just as real, as our very own Davey aptly demonstrates.
I would highly suggest that the moment you think the images in that documentary are fading, you watch the sequence with Ted Haggerty again.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
my reaction was a combination of too much coffee, thinking about what's happening in CA, and a knee-jerk hatred of condescension.
you offered info, in your first paragraph, but gross assumption in your second as to how we view creationists, and a poor suggestion that it be limited to YEC's only, followed by a nice little bit of condescension implying that we are just ignorant atheists.
get it now?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Will you get upset if I tell you that as a child I was also told that camel humps are full of water and that columbus proved the world was round?
Don't feel too bad. My parents told me that chiggers would burrow under my skin. whenever I got chigger bites, my mom would cover them with nail polish to "smother" them.
They also fed me, among other things, Spam sandwiches.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Camel's humps AREN'T filled with water? No wonder it was so difficult trying to siphon that dromedary. ####, that's an open invitation to abusive jokes.
By the way, Dave, I really don't view you as my "enemy," I just thoroughly disagree with your ideas on some things. We're certainly not "friends" because I have my own standards on that, but we both live on the same pretty little planet (even with all those ichneumon wasps that eat their way out of poor li'l callerpitters) and I figure we should at least tolerate each other. I don't begrudge you your religion at all, I get along fine with my Catholic neighbors on one side and my Unitarian neighbors on the other, my Hindu dentist and my Muslim doctor, although she has a sadistic streak, but that has nothing to do with her faith. Anyway, I have no reason to want to harm you /damage your life in any way, I was just seeing what your reactions were. Lots of people don't like some aspects of science, and I get that. Lots of people dislike religion(s) too. I understand that. I just think it's a really, really bad idea to try to pit the two against each other in the name of literalism.
Mmmm..spam.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Apology accepted. It's not your fault that you misunderstood what I was saying, my rambling stream of consciousness style can be quite confusing. You see, in the second paragraph where I was ranting about the unfortunate fate of the word fundamentalist I was ranting against society as a whole, not the members of this forum. It went from a perfectly fine descriptive term to a generic slur, oh well (You seem to be political, so surely you've seen it used in this fashion, does it help that I lament that the same has happened to the words liberal and secular?).
The suggest to use the term YEC was a ... well .... suggestion. Feel free to disregard it, it just happens to be an approiate moniker, while fundamentalist is not.
Furthermore, since when did atheist become a bad word around here? If you checked on religion poll awhile back the majority of the posters here are atheists. So I wrote a story about the bible to a forum composed mostly of atheists, and I choose what seemed like an appropriate title.
Regardless, I've decided to add a smiley face to the end of all my post, thereby avoiding Poe's Law in the future.
But what is that I see? You have been reduced, from a dual-class mighty All-CapsFerrous Cranus, to a mere puny Me-Too wannabe? In your own thread? The Greatest Thread of All Time?
How very, very sad.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's made a substantive post in two days.
Thank you, my dear Eric, for the accidental compliment.
(Eric thinks my posts are normally substantive!! I'm so touched!! **sniff, sniff**)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think he's made a substantive post in two days.
Thank you, my dear Eric, for the accidental compliment.
(Eric thinks my posts are normally substantive!! I'm so touched!! **sniff, sniff**)
Don't misconstrue what I mean by "substantive," Dave. I don't mean your arguments are substantive. By "substantive" posts, I mean posts that have anything whatsoever to do with your "hypothesis."
So with your most recent post, you've continued your string of non-substantive, i.e., having nothing whatsoever to do with your "hypothesis," posts.
If this strikes you as a compliment, Dave, you must really be fishing for them.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yeah dave. And if my senior consultant ever tells me "Congrats, Faid- you seem to have barely managed to find your arse with both hands today", I guess I should consider it a compliment, right?
Oh no wait- Is that what you thought all your life? Whoops!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Yeah dave. And if my senior consultant ever tells me "Congrats, Faid- you seem to have barely managed to find your arse with both hands today", I guess I should consider it a compliment, right?
Oh no wait- Is that what you thought all your life? Whoops!
Thanks, Faid. I read that as "Congrats, Faid- you seem to have barely managed to fit your arse with both hands today" and got a horrible mental picture. I suppose, something like when Dave covers his ears...
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
If this strikes you as a compliment, Dave, you must really be fishing for them.
Eric ... it was a joke. :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well, hello, 7P ... glad you are still here drinking from the Fount of Creationist Wisdom :-)
I know you are getting thirsty ... it's been a couple days since I quenched your thirst ... Eric wants substance ... and substance he will get again soon ... maybe Monday or so ... I'm enjoying the change of scenery for a few days
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Just want to add my thanks to all of the good work you guys have been doing. I have just been to Steve Locks site and it has brightened my day.
It talks about de-conversions also how they are asymmetric. That is there are many cases of professional apologists/ministers/theologians deconverting and very few "professional" atheists converting. In fact he could only find two.
Reading the stories many remind me of Dave where they came to convert the heathens and got converted themselves. Dave watch out it may take a decade but the subconcious meme has already been planted.
It is interesting to read the stories. From it I believe that Dave currently believes his dribble but is stretching reality to fit his beliefs. A lot of the people said that they needed counselling after being deconverted to get over the mental gymnastics they were forced to perform to maintain their former belief.
T.O. also has a section on creationist deconversions and this was a pretty typical quote:
From Edward T. Babinski: "My belief in young-earth creationism died the death of a thousand qualifications. It didn't change overnight. I kept having to stretch it to accommodate more and more info that didn't fit with young-earth creationism until my belief in young-earth creationism and especially "Flood geology," snapped."
So bad luck Dave, your chances of converting anybody here is almost nil, in fact you are probably doing a wonderful job of deconverting the fence sitters and will probably eventually deconvert yourself.
What I would like to see is one of the kids Dave is poisoning see this thread and sue his pants off. It's one thing to unknowingly teach falsehoods but this thread showed that he was exposed to the truth and still went forward anyway.
What I would like to see is one of the kids Dave is poisoning see this thread and sue his pants off.
This one statement speaks volumes about you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Most of the scientists in the world believe in Evolution ...
The Bible is a nice Fairy Tale ... nothing more
(thrum thrum)
Most Fundy preachers are crooks ...
No one believes Genesis is literal ...
Go to sleep, my pretties!
(thrum thrum)
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
[adapted from C.S Lewis' "The Silver Chair"]
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
ERIC MURPHY HITS ON THE HEART OF THE MATTER ... WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD YOU ACCEPT AS SUPPORTIVE OF ANYTHING?
Eric ...
Quote
Dave, and you've failed abjectly to provide any.
I think I've asked this before ... what, exactly, would you accept as evidence for ... hmmm ... let's just say a Creator God? What would be one, tiny shred of evidence that you would accept that in your mind supports the Hypothesis that there is a Creator God similar to that described in the Bible? I really, really am curious.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
What I would like to see is one of the kids Dave is poisoning see this thread and sue his pants off.
SFBDave
Quote
This one statement speaks volumes about you.
What does it say Davie? That yet another lurker thinks that harming children’s development by deliberately lying to them is reprehensible and should be punished?
I'd love to see one of them sue you and your church too - but I guess you guys lining your own pockets already put the parish 15 million bucks in the red, so there's not much left. Can't get blood from a turnip, right Davie?
Maybe they could sue you for your brain and testicles Davie-poo. After all, it’s not like you ever use them.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
ERIC MURPHY HITS ON THE HEART OF THE MATTER ... WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD YOU ACCEPT AS SUPPORTIVE OF ANYTHING?
Eric ...
Quote
Dave, and you've failed abjectly to provide any.
I think I've asked this before ... what, exactly, would you accept as evidence for ... hmmm ... let's just say a Creator God? What would be one, tiny shred of evidence that you would accept that in your mind supports the Hypothesis that there is a Creator God similar to that described in the Bible? I really, really am curious.
Not so fast, Dave. You have to start with a testable hypothesis.
Besides which, you never even addressed the issue of faith. Is your relationship with God based on faith or evidence, Dave?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
It talks about de-conversions also how they are asymmetric. That is there are many cases of professional apologists/ministers/theologians deconverting and very few "professional" atheists converting. In fact he could only find two.
This isn't really fair. There are a lot more Christians than atheists in the US, professionally and otherwise. Even if the two views were equal, we would expect many more conversions to atheism than from it. Regression to the mean, ya know.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
I think I've asked this before ... what, exactly, would you accept as evidence for ... hmmm ... let's just say a Creator God?
Yes, you've asked that before, and I find it curious, as Improvious does, that you think faith "needs" proof. That aside, "proof" for me might include a public, recorded visitation. That would be nice and convincing. I mean, there's plenty of stories about God appearing in the past, the sun stopping in the sky, rains of frogs and that sort of thing...nowadays it seems God is somehow reduced to appearances in puddles, dirty windows and sweetrolls. I'd accept a whole bunch of things, but "look at that tree, there's your evidence" is not one of them.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
That aside, "proof" for me might include a public, recorded visitation. That would be nice and convincing. I mean, there's plenty of stories about God appearing in the past, the sun stopping in the sky, rains of frogs and that sort of thing...nowadays it seems God is somehow reduced to appearances in puddles, dirty windows and sweetrolls. I'd accept a whole bunch of things, but "look at that tree, there's your evidence" is not one of them.
In such hypothetical displays of power, I would probably go with one of Clarke's laws: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic [or, in this case, a 'god']."
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
ERIC MURPHY HITS ON THE HEART OF THE MATTER ... WHAT EVIDENCE WOULD YOU ACCEPT AS SUPPORTIVE OF ANYTHING?
Eric ...
Quote
Dave, and you've failed abjectly to provide any.
I think I've asked this before ... what, exactly, would you accept as evidence for ... hmmm ... let's just say a Creator God? What would be one, tiny shred of evidence that you would accept that in your mind supports the Hypothesis that there is a Creator God similar to that described in the Bible? I really, really am curious.
Dave, there may be a God, or there may not be one. Frankly, I'm not too concerned either way, since I'm pretty positive the god of the Bible doesn't exist. It simply beggars belief that the universe was created by a being who, in his pettiness, insecurity, and vindictiveness, is virtually indistinguishable from your average flawed, amoral human being.
As to the existence of a creator being, one that was capable of creating the universe? That's a tough one. It's pretty hard (in my opinion, impossible) to exclude natural causes, and besides, if there is a creator being, I'm prepared to classify such a being as a natural cause. How do we distinguish between undirected natural causes and directed natural causes? To be totally honest with you, Dave, I'm not sure how I would go about that. But I'm open to suggestion. I'm in the middle of Leonard Susskind's The Cosmic Landscape, which may give me some ideas.
Let's talk about something that actually matters here, and let me tell you what I would accept as evidence, say, that the earth is only 6,000 years old.
At this point, it would be practically impossible to find such evidence, since the evidence of an old earth is so conclusive. But at a minimum, I would expect evidence, from multiple independent sources, that all converge on a particular value, in this case 6,000 years. If you could find evidence from radiometric dating, say, along with evidence from ice cores, paleomagnetism, dendrochronology, archaeology, astronomy, etc. that all converged on that date, I'd probably be persuaded.
But at this late date, Dave, there's simply no way that can happen, because the evidence that the earth is six orders of magnitude older than that is unassailable. And the truth is, Dave, even if you could prove it, it wouldn't get you very far in proving there's a Creator God up there somewhere.
So let's deal with simple, straightforward questions, Dave. How old are the Grand Canyon strata, and by what methodology, including error ranges, do you determine that age (since it is one age, right?). This is a simple, straightforward question. You claim you've already seen the evidence that the Grand Canyon is less than 6,000 years old, so you should know what those dating methodologies are. Why is it like pulling teeth out of a great white shark's skull to get you to tell us what they are?
Also, Dave, given that we are, after all, discussing your hypothesis, how about a discussion on how you would falsify it? You seem to have given no thought whatsoever to the notion; is that because the idea of falsifying your worldview is simply too terrifying to consider?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Heh, I like s-f and in thinking about this topic I'm reminded of lots of stories, like Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God" or Ellison's "Deathbird." What would be impressive would be looking up one night and seeing the stars rearranged to say: "Hellooooo...it's Meeeee" for about a month or so. That would scare the crap out of people. Hah!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Ack, it's "deathbird" by ellison -- I was also thinking of asimov's "nightfall" and conflated them. I'll fix this later
"Deathbird": now that is one terrifying SF short story. Actually, all of "Deathbird Stories" is pretty strong stuff. I could only read one story of it at a time; each one was kind of like drinking half a bottle of absinthe.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Why all the need for a flood in the first place? I mean, if God is all knowing, all powerull and created the universe in 6 days...why the flood???
Why not just declare it a "do-over" snap his fingers, and have it all start again???
I mean, God must be logical so, it only stand to reason the he would have just done it that way.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
why the flood???...Why not just declare it a "do-over" snap his fingers, and have it all start again???
1.) It's a mystery 2.) Who are we to know the mind of God? 3.) Foul Blashphemer, how dare you question the Lord! Sieze this wretch and consign him to the flames!
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I do not put my faith (or trust) in anything unless there is ample evidence that that thing is trustworthy. Before I deposit my money in a financial institution, I want a certain amount of evidence that they are FDIC insured or have a certain financial strength or what have you. Before I trust my car to a body shop, I want some evidence that my car will not come out looking like an Earl Scheib $99 special.
I think this area is hugely misunderstood by a lot of good people. Many people say faith is fine and science is great. But don't mix the two. I cannot speak for other "fundies" but to me this is a big mistake. Some people here at this forum think that the only reason I am a Christian YEC Fundy is because my daddy propagandized me. Well, if you want to believe that, fine. I cannot help people who believe things simply because they WANT to believe them. But if you want to know the truth of the matter, I'll be glad to tell you. And the truth about my case is, yes, my dad was a YEC Fundy. But I did not accept what he taught me until I began investigating it for myself. I had the perfect opportunity to flush everything I had been taught. I was a successful AF Pilot. I flew fast jets, drove a cool red car and had plenty of girl choices. I had nothing to lose if I had wanted to flush Christianity. And believe me, I had plenty of personal, selfish reasons to try and explain away the Bible and say it was not true.
But I did not, and I am fully convinced that the reason I wound up accepting the tenets of Christianity is because of the massive amount of evidence supporting its claims. As I said, I am not a guy who puts my trust in things unless there is good assurance that the thing is trustworthy. I know some guys that do. My brother was one. He never took the time to investigate anything before he jumped in and he got burned many times. Not so with me. I have always made sure I knew what I was doing before I committed myself to something.
So Dave, if you're all about evidence, where's the faith? Oh it's there alright. It's just not as big as you think. I still have to exercise faith to select a bank account, a particular investment vehicle, a doctor ... and God. I just want to have a lot of evidence that this God I'm placing my trust in a) really is there and b) can really do what He says He can do and c) is telling the truth about the Universe and Mankind.
Now this raises a question. How does one go about finding evidence for a God who you cannot see? Very good question. How do we go about finding evidence for ANYTHING we cannot see? Some people say...
Quote
I mean, there's plenty of stories about God appearing in the past, the sun stopping in the sky, rains of frogs and that sort of thing...
Fine. Let's run with that. Are you telling me that if you saw a CNN special that said God appeared, you would then believe in Him and obey Him? How would you know which god he is? Maybe there's lots of gods. Are there not news reports of the Virgin Mary appearing at Medjugorde or something now? Have not many modern "prophets" claimed to have seen God? How would we differentiate between a "cheap parlor trick" and a real, genuine appearance of the Jehovah God of the Bible?
So you see the problem I think. You say you would accept such and such as evidence that there is a God and that He created all things. And yet I think if someone (CNN or otherwise) claimed that the such and such actually happened last week, you would explain it away somehow.
So my thought is that God has already given us much evidence and yet you find ways to explain it away. The Global Flood is just one such instance. It continues to make my head spin to think that here we have in the very rocks a message so loud and so clear validating the truth of one of the most pivotal events in the history of the world, yet most of the geologists of the world dismiss it as a fairy tale.
God has spoken (sorry, shouted) ... do you have ear plugs in?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But I did not, and I am fully convinced that the reason I wound up accepting the tenets of Christianity is because of the massive amount of evidence supporting its claims.
This is not faith.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Fine. Let's run with that. Are you telling me that if you saw a CNN special that said God appeared, you would then believe in Him and obey Him? How would you know which god he is? Maybe there's lots of gods.
Note that in my statement, I said "for ME" meaning I would have to see it, not "hear about it" and I would require other witnesses, preferably a multitude, and recordings of various sorts of the event.
And if the "message" you hear in the rocks is so loud, why can't you simply answer questions about it authoritatively, demonstrating the superiority of your model concerning geology? Why not show how it may be falsified? Why not do any of the things asked * of you in regard to supporting your hypothesis if it is in fact so clear?
*Note: I should say REQUIRED of you -- if your model is to be considered scientific at all
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 01 2006,13:01) But I did not, and I am fully convinced that the reason I wound up accepting the tenets of Christianity is because of the massive amount of evidence supporting its claims.
This is not faith.
Accepting the evidence is not, you are correct. But we do not have evidence for everything and cannot have evidence for everything, just as I cannot have ALL the evidence to prove that a particular company offering stock to me is trustworthy. There comes a point where I exercise faith and make the leap of purchasing their stock.
There is also a point where I do the same thing with God.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 01 2006,13:01) But I did not, and I am fully convinced that the reason I wound up accepting the tenets of Christianity is because of the massive amount of evidence supporting its claims.
This is not faith.
Accepting the evidence is not, you are correct. But we do not have evidence for everything and cannot have evidence for everything, just as I cannot have ALL the evidence to prove that a particular company offering stock to me is trustworthy. There comes a point where I exercise faith and make the leap of purchasing their stock.
There is also a point where I do the same thing with God.
That's not a leap. That's just shuffling your feet a few inches. Pathetic.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I will repeat this again...if you cannot fulfill the minimal requirements demanded of a scientific hypothesis, then it ain't science, much less " better than any other." To use your stock analogy, you did research shown here to be shallow, unconvincing, fraudulent and LESS explanatory than other stock-choosing models.
You want people to "buy" your idea that your methods are superior in choosing stock, but can't answer a damned thing about the details. You made that leap of faith, fine, but why should I or anyone accept your method of stock-selections when you can't even answer SIMPLE questions that are answered by OTHER models in a far more complete and demonstrable, testable way?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Why all the need for a flood in the first place? I mean, if God is all knowing, all powerull and created the universe in 6 days...why the flood???
You're asking me to explain WHY an independent, autonomous being does things a certain way? I cannot tell you that. Why did Arnold want to be a body builder? Or a movie star? Or the Governor of CA? Why did Truman decide to run for president? Why did Mother Teresa become a nun? Why did Hitler go bananas? Why? Why? Why? Because they are independent beings with the ability to choose their own path.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yet God is claimed to be an all-powerful all loving being in the bible...who DROWNS INNOCENT BABIES? Drowning is by all accounts terrifying and HURTS. Choking with a lungful of water is not "good" or loving when that baby killed did NOTHING of itself to deserve that torture. So, yeah, I don't find that convincing, either.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I'll have to look it up. But I think it can reasonably be said that a giant flood would cause some trauma just from turbulence and debris prior to drowning.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I will repeat this again...if you cannot fulfill the minimal requirements demanded of a scientific hypothesis, then it ain't science, much less " better than any other." To use your stock analogy, you did research shown here to be shallow, unconvincing, fraudulent and LESS explanatory than other stock-choosing models.
You want people to "buy" your idea that your methods are superior in choosing stock, but can't answer a damned thing about the details. You made that leap of faith, fine, but why should I or anyone accept your method of stock-selections when you can't even answer SIMPLE questions that are answered by OTHER models in a far more complete and demonstrable, testable way?
I could spend a lot of time on the details of the geologic record, and I have done so and plan to more for various reason (I like it and so on).
What I see though is that the biggest evidence for a global flood doesn't even require reading a single scientific paper. It doesn't require a geology degree. It doesn't even require any high school level science classes at all.
Guys, I don't know how to say this any more clearly. We have something like 2 miles thick (maybe I'm off a mile or two--doesn't matter for my present point) of mostly water-laid sediment on planet earth!! All you have to do is look at the abundant pictures of the Grand Canyon or any other exposed area. The evidence is there. There was a whale of a lot of water required to lay down all that sedimentary rocks, friends!
Now HOW exactly did it happen? OK ... now we need to do some scientific work and write some papers. I agree. But to show it DID OCCUR? No scientific papers required, friend.
All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eyeballs, functioning synapses and a wee bit of childhood brainwashing.
It didn't happen, everyone who has checked it out honestly has discovered this Dave. Fundies just don't happen to have honesty as one of their strong suits.
Broad generalization. Still true.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Except for a few things wrong with your claim, Dave, like no modern mammals in the Morrison, layers that are not water laid, the fact that we can see water moving transgressing and regressing today...islands sink, new ones appear, shorelines move, the plates move, etc. etc. Your claim that " there's lots of layers " is BETTER explained not by a single event, but by deep time and multiple events of varying sorts.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, how about we forget about the Why for now and get back on the subject of the How. Also, you talked alot about looking at the evidence and that is how you built your faith, think you could go over some evidence that points towards a god as outlined in the Bible? Bonus points if you can concurrently explain why there are so many other religions that seem to belief equally as strongly that they are correct.
I know you've got alot of questions in the backlog (it's got to be hard to be the lone supporter of cause here, so some leeway is in order), but could you add these to the end of the queue:
1) Give a possible reason for why God would allow his holy book to be fragmented and lost to such a degree that we cannot now be certain of the fidelity of the individual books, and furthermore why we were given no guidance on which of the large number of texts were inspired and which were not. 2) Give a possible reason for why God would write his holy book in such a manner so that it can be misinterpreted to match a plethora of different beliefs, and from that spawn 100's of different sects of christianity, some with highly divergant beliefs. How is it fair to a modern individual that even if they choose Christianity they have to play Eternal Soul Bingo with the Bible to try to figure out what everything means and what's actual expected of him/her (it seems the old testement Big Book O' Laws style is more helpful)?
Steve: the data on "near-drowning " seems better--most victims don't have water in their lungs, but experience violent air-passage spasm that breaks capillaries, at least according to one site here: http://www.postgradmed.com/issues/1998/06_98/thanel.htm and some anecdotal stuff here: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=647961
also: complications of near drowning include: Bronchospasm, Vomiting with aspiration of gastric contents, Hyperglycemia, Seizures, Hypovolemia (especially with saltwater), Fluid and electrolyte disturbances. Metabolic and lactic acidosis. Babies seem pretty delicate to me, when a rash causes discomfort, for instance...I can't imagine that it's peaceful and painless for them drowning
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses.
You forgot about something even MORE convincing: the very existence of water! If water didn't exist, then a flood would clearly be impossible. But we DO have water, therefor the flood MUST have happened. I mean, sure, the details still require closer examination, but the fact that we water exists is a dead giveaway! Don't you people get it?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Steve: the data on "near-drowning " seems better--most victims don't have water in their lungs, but experience violent air-passage spasm that breaks capillaries, at least according to one site here: http://www.postgradmed.com/issues/1998/06_98/thanel.htm and some anecdotal stuff here: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=647961
also: complications of near drowning include: Bronchospasm, Vomiting with aspiration of gastric contents, Hyperglycemia, Seizures, Hypovolemia (especially with saltwater), Fluid and electrolyte disturbances. Metabolic and lactic acidosis. Babies seem pretty delicate to me, when a rash causes discomfort, for instance...I can't imagine that it's peaceful and painless for them drowning
Based on what you've shown me there, it looks like drowning is painful. This contradicts anecdotes I'd heard, but I suppose it's true.
If I were ever in a situation where I was sure I'd drown, I'd try to induce a shallow water blackout if possible. It's a way to go unconscious before the drowning occurs.
It's a couple minutes of extreme discomfort. For a lifetime of fun? It's worth it.
I had a scary experience once in Puget sound just off lopez island where I got tangled underwater. I really wasn't sure if I could get out in time and I at first thought "why did I get into this mess?". But then I decided to just keep trying and I did get unstuck although I lost a bit of gear and a knife that my Grandfather gave me.
But the story I tell other people is that God appeared in a blaze of white light, split the bay for me and guided me to firm ground. And in payment, he accepted some of my gear and my knife. (I didn't tell that one to the folks on the boat, they would have known it was a lie.) When Jesus and the holy ghost showed up to share the loot, they flew off into the sky up to a particularly pretty cloud. It looked like a bunny.
But now all the good churches include it in their list of miracles proven by evidence.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I was floating down a river once--head gear, vest, going feet first, all the right things...hit a rock under water, spun around and smacked the side of my head against another one. My buddy Orlando (Earl) saved me, but it really wasn't Earl, it was a heavenly angel who whisked me to her bosom and planted an ethereal kiss of life upon my unconcious lips, reviving me. Earl said I should never grab his man-boobs or ever mention this to anyone, ever. Oh, and he later shared a strange cigarette with me that made clouds that looked like bunnies, so I can attest to BWE's true story.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
You see evidence for a global flood becuase that's what you want to see...that's what you need to see. You latch on to "one offs" or misquote information because, while it won't prove your case, it might cast doubt on evolution.
What you are doing is dishonest and immoral. What's even more sad is, you are dishonest to yourself.
You have yourself convinced that you have refuted the work of thousands of scientist much smarter than you or I with your misunderstandings.
What's it like to live a lie?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
I do not put my faith (or trust) in anything unless there is ample evidence that that thing is trustworthy. Before I deposit my money in a financial institution, I want a certain amount of evidence that they are FDIC insured or have a certain financial strength or what have you. Before I trust my car to a body shop, I want some evidence that my car will not come out looking like an Earl Scheib $99 special.
See, Dave, this is exactly why you're a dupe. You say you've seen massive amounts of evidence supporting your beliefs, but when we ask you to provide that evidence, you come up empty-handed. I've been asking you since the first couple of days of May to provide evidence just for one subset of your "hypothesis": evidence for a young earth. I know you think you've provided evidence for this assertion, but the fact is, you simply haven't. Ask anyone here on this thread if they think you have, and everyone will give you the same answer: no.
So what are we to make of you, Dave? In all honesty, on this point (your claim that you've provided evidence for a young earth), I hesitate to say you're lying, because you really do seem to think you have provided such evidence. But your sincerity on the issue is pretty irrelevant.
So help us out here, Dave. You claim that for you, belief in God is not a matter of faith; it's a matter of evidence. Then why is it so hard for you to present that evidence? You claim it's a "massive amount," so it shouldn't be too hard to post some of it here. But you simply haven't. Why not?
Geologists aren't dismissing your "global flood" as a fairy tale because they're scared to admit there's evidence for a god. They dismiss it because the evidence simply isn't there, and in fact the contrary evidence is truly mountainous (as I've said many times before, you have to eliminate all the evidence—every last bit of it—of an old earth for your "hypothesis" to avoid falsification). You say you have "in the very rocks a message so loud and so clear validating the truth of one of the most pivotal events in the history of the world," but it's not there. It simply isn't, and we've been around and around on this subject for long enough to have proven that.
Again, Dave: what methodology would you use to determine the age of the Grand Canyon strata? What is the date that that methodology provides? And what are the error bars on that date? Until you can present at least a methodology and the results thereof, how can you expect anyone to take seriously your claims?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What I see though is that the biggest evidence for a global flood doesn't even require reading a single scientific paper. It doesn't require a geology degree. It doesn't even require any high school level science classes at all.
Guys, I don't know how to say this any more clearly. We have something like 2 miles thick (maybe I'm off a mile or two--doesn't matter for my present point) of mostly water-laid sediment on planet earth!! All you have to do is look at the abundant pictures of the Grand Canyon or any other exposed area. The evidence is there. There was a whale of a lot of water required to lay down all that sedimentary rocks, friends!
Now HOW exactly did it happen? OK ... now we need to do some scientific work and write some papers. I agree. But to show it DID OCCUR? No scientific papers required, friend.
All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses.
Wrong, Dave. Wrong, wrong wrong.
Why do you think that evidence of a lot of water-laid sediment is evidence for a global flood? Why do I have to keep asking you over and over again this simple, basic question?
Why is it not more likely that this same sediment was laid down over millions to billions of years? The continents are covered with an average of 2,600 meters of sediment (sorry, my earlier figure of 6,000 meters was incorrect, but the error doesn't affect my argument). How much water would it take to lay 5,000 feet of sediment worldwide, Dave? A hundred thousand feet? A million feet? And where did all that sediment come from? (hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains.) You still can't explain where your water came from, how it managed to cover the entire surface of the world to a depth of 5,000 feet—not nearly enough to have deposited that amount of sediment—and where it all drained to. Why do I find myself asking you the same questions over and over again, month in and month out, without ever getting an answer from you?
Dave, the Grand Canyon strata have been assigned dates by reference to uncontrovertible evidence. You have gotten nowhere trying to discredit that evidence. Further, you have provided no methodology whatsoever, despite being asked multiple times, that you would use to date those same sediments that would result in your clearly erroneous dates.
So you're wrong when you say "All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses." A lot more than that is required, Dave. You act like science has no idea how the Grand Canyon got to be there. Actually, geologists know pretty much exactly how it go there, and your "hypothesis" not only doesn't explain how it got there, but young-earth creationists are on record admitting that your "global flood" would require the suspension of physical laws to have happened.
Yes, the Grand Canyon certainly "did occur." No disputing that. But how? Your "hypothesis" cannot explain how, without requiring the suspension of physical laws.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What I see though is that the biggest evidence for a global flood doesn't even require reading a single scientific paper. It doesn't require a geology degree. It doesn't even require any high school level science classes at all.
Guys, I don't know how to say this any more clearly. We have something like 2 miles thick (maybe I'm off a mile or two--doesn't matter for my present point) of mostly water-laid sediment on planet earth!! All you have to do is look at the abundant pictures of the Grand Canyon or any other exposed area. The evidence is there. There was a whale of a lot of water required to lay down all that sedimentary rocks, friends!
Now HOW exactly did it happen? OK ... now we need to do some scientific work and write some papers. I agree. But to show it DID OCCUR? No scientific papers required, friend.
All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses.
Let me try a little SFBDave logic (it’s gonna hurt I’m sure, but here goes):
Background:
My Holy Book teaches me that the world is populated with an abundance of invisible tree fairies. These tree fairies have teeny paint brushes, and every autumn they roam the world (the Northern hemisphere anyway) painting the leaves in their favorite colors – red, gold, orange! Then, when they tire of the colors, the tree fairies take tiny invisible pruning shears and cut the leaves off!
My Argument:
What I see though is that the biggest evidence for tree fairies doesn't even require reading a single scientific paper. It doesn't require a biology degree. It doesn't even require any high school level science classes at all.
Guys, I don't know how to say this any more clearly. Every autumn we have something like 2 million square miles of forests whose leaves change color and then fall to the ground!! I'll say it again -billions of colored leaves lying on the ground every autumn. All you have to do is look at the abundant pictures of the Appalachian Trail or any other heavily forested area. The evidence is there. There were a whale of a lot of tree fairies required to paint and cut all those leaves, friends!
Now HOW exactly did it happen? OK ... now we need to do some scientific work and write some papers. I agree. But to show it DID OCCUR? No scientific papers required, friend.
All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses.
NOW SFBDave – can you tell me what is wrong with my logic?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What I would like to see is one of the kids Dave is poisoning see this thread and sue his pants off.
This one statement speaks volumes about you.
Dave
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This one statement speaks volumes about you.
And the fact you ignored the substantive part of my post speaks volumes. The point is that in any INFORMED debate about christianity or science the conversions tend to go one direction only. What does that tell you. Ofcourse you know that's why you try and get the kids before they can get educated.
The fact that you haven't:
1. Explained why the fossil record supports common descent not a flood. Handwaving about body size or speed does not explain the sorting.
2. Explained away the high correlation between dating methods which support an old earth.
As has been noted you have plumbed the depths of AIG and have found nothing that could stand up to any examination. In fact the original thing that shows your lies is your original promise to show "new" evidence for global floods etc. Everything you presented was straight from AIG. Everything you presented was already dealt with in T.O.. *ho-hum* another boring creo.[QUOTE][/QUOTE]
H&RDave: Why can't all the expert accountants in the world understand my theory that Enron is a great investment?
oldmankenlaydidit: Uh, because it's a piece of crap, HRDave? We've pointed that out to you for 4 months now. Are you retarded?
H&RDave: I already refuted that and I won't repeat it. You're just a religious zealot. You believe in Millionsofdollarsoffraudism. You're so blind. All it takes is some neurons. I'm sure one day you'll all be Enronists.
JakeF: Look, it's been 150 pages. You have yet to show any financial analysis of Enron. We've quoted you hundreds of sources saying it's crap. Where's your evidence?
H&RDave: Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BURIED IN BANK ACCOUNTS LAID DOWN BY PROFITS ALL OVER THE MARKET
Liveman837: God, you're stupid.
H&RDave: E N R O N I S T H E G R E A T E S T C O M P A N Y S I N C E W O R L D C O M . I H A V E D E S T R O Y E D Y O U R S O C A L L E D ' R E S P E C T A B L E A U D I T S '
Steverino hits the nail on the head when he writes:
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You [afdave] have yourself convinced that you have refuted the work of thousands of scientist much smarter than you or I with your misunderstandings.
This is where the arrogance of the creationist belies the alleged humility of the alleged christian.
Woah there cowboy. Are you saying that single sentence platitudes that a 9 year old can understand aren't enough to disprove a scientific theory with 150 years of verfication that provides the backbone for hundreds of thousands of scientists' work? Because that's just elitist snobbery.
Expect some kind of fake BS humility, like "Oh, no, why li'l ol me would never try to outthink all you bright folk, nosiree...why I only know the truth cause the Lord God told me, I never coulda figured it out myssef."
H&RDave: Why can't all the expert accountants in the world understand my theory that Enron is a great investment?
oldmankenlaydidit: Uh, because it's a piece of crap, HRDave? We've pointed that out to you for 4 months now. Are you retarded?
H&RDave: I already refuted that and I won't repeat it. You're just a religious zealot. You believe in Millionsofdollarsoffraudism. You're so blind. All it takes is some neurons. I'm sure one day you'll all be Enronists.
JakeF: Look, it's been 150 pages. You have yet to show any financial analysis of Enron. We've quoted you hundreds of sources saying it's crap. Where's your evidence?
H&RDave: Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DOLLARS BURIED IN BANK ACCOUNTS LAID DOWN BY PROFITS ALL OVER THE MARKET
Liveman837: God, you're stupid.
H&RDave: E N R O N I S T H E G R E A T E S T C O M P A N Y S I N C E W O R L D C O M . I H A V E D E S T R O Y E D Y O U R S O C A L L E D ' R E S P E C T A B L E A U D I T S '
Man I love analogies! And this is one of the finest! But to make it applicable, you need to tweak it just a little ... all you have to do is rewind time 3 years (or so) to a time oh maybe 6 months or a year or so PRIOR to the Enron meltdown.
Now put yourself in the position of advocating an investment in Enron ... you know ... all the most highly educated accountants and snobbish stock brokers say its a great investment, etc., etc. Only H&RDave and a few other "anti-progressives" says it's not a good investment.
Now you have a much more realistic analogy because neither side can see the future. We both have to analyze the available evidence without the benefit of hindsight.
And to make it an even more realistic analogy, we should say that there is ample evidence readily available to anyone who wants it that Ken Lay and his buddies were stealing money.
Now you would have a good analogy to "AFDave vs. the Evos on the Genesis Flood."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You say you've seen massive amounts of evidence supporting your beliefs, but when we ask you to provide that evidence, you come up empty-handed.
Yeah ... empty handed ... forget about 2 mile thick sedimentary rock layers, 3/4 of the present globe covered by water, evidence that mountains used to be under water and sea floors have sunk ... but, yeah ... other than that little dinky minor evidence, I'm empty handed. Sure Eric.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey SFBDave, since you want to talk about evidence:
How about those six independent methods for calibrating C14 dating results that all cross-correlate with each other, and all indicates dates of a minimum of 10,500 YBP? Any explanations yet?
How long does it take 1000' of limestone to form Dave?
How long does it take water to erode a 500' deep canyon in rock-hard limestone Dave?
How could such a canyon be formed and then buried under 17,000 ft. of sediment in only 3-4 days Dave?
And what about the Yellowstone buried forests Dave? The ones you brought up that have over two dozen mature forests growing and then buried one on top of the other in distinctly identified layers? How long does it take a mature forest to grow Dave?
SFBDavie, as long as you continue to dishonestly refuse to address this factual info, you'll be both empty handed and empty headed.
Oh, I forgot. You do believe in the tree fairy religion, right? Even an idiot can see the evidence...
B I L L I O N S O F C O L O R E D L E A V E S L Y I N G O N T H E G R O U N D E V E R Y A U T U M N ! ! !
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
You say you've seen massive amounts of evidence supporting your beliefs, but when we ask you to provide that evidence, you come up empty-handed.
Yeah ... empty handed ... forget about 2 mile thick sedimentary rock layers, 3/4 of the present globe covered by water, evidence that mountains used to be under water and sea floors have sunk ... but, yeah ... other than that little dinky minor evidence, I'm empty handed. Sure Eric.
Um Dave, our "millionsofyearsism" has all that stuff too, so
You say you've seen massive amounts of evidence supporting your beliefs, but when we ask you to provide that evidence, you come up empty-handed.
Yeah ... empty handed ... forget about 2 mile thick sedimentary rock layers, 3/4 of the present globe covered by water, evidence that mountains used to be under water and sea floors have sunk ... but, yeah ... other than that little dinky minor evidence, I'm empty handed. Sure Eric.
Um Dave, our "millionsofyearsism" has all that stuff too, so
W H A T E L S E H A V E Y O U G O T ?
Oh noes! Ved, you... you just showed dave how to use bigger fonts!
ITS THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Man I love analogies! And this is one of the finest! But to make it applicable, you need to tweak it just a little ... all you have to do is rewind time 3 years (or so) to a time oh maybe 6 months or a year or so PRIOR to the Enron meltdown.
…
And to make it an even more realistic analogy, we should say that there is ample evidence readily available to anyone who wants it that Ken Lay and his buddies were stealing money.
Now you would have a good analogy to "AFDave vs. the Evos on the Genesis Flood."
No we wouldn't, Dave. And here's why: because when we ask you, why is this company a bad company to invest in, you can't give us a single reason.
Yes, Dave, it's possible (extraordinarily, fantastically, astronomically unlikely, but possible) that all of geology, biology, genetics, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, anthropology, paleontology, and archaeology are wrong. But that's not the point. The point is this: when we ask you why we should think geology, biology, etc. are wrong—you can't give us a single reason! That's the problem, Dave. The only reason you have for believing that all of science is wrong is your own personal incredulity, without reference to any supportable contrary evidence.
We've asked you time after time after time to provide evidence—any evidence at all—to support your assertions, and every time you fail. Even in the (extremely limited) cases where we know there actually is evidence, e.g., for "cosmic fine tuning," you still can't provide the evidence.
So yet again, you provide us with a completely broken, inapt, inapplicable analogy. Imagine our surprise.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Yeah ... empty handed ... forget about 2 mile thick sedimentary rock layers, 3/4 of the present globe covered by water, evidence that mountains used to be under water and sea floors have sunk ... but, yeah ... other than that little dinky minor evidence, I'm empty handed. Sure Eric.
Let me try this one more time, Dave. None of those things can be accounted for by a "global catastrophic flood" (how could 5,000 feet of water deposit two miles of sediment, Dave? Think about that for a minute.) Are you saying the mere existence of oceans implies a flood? How does that work, Dave? Have you given this any thought? Where has the excess water gone? You're talking almost double the amount of water that actually exists today. Where did it go?
I don't need to "forget" about 2,600 m of sediment, oceans, and plate tectonics, Dave. I've asked you over and over again to explain how these things do not rule out a "global catastrophic flood," but you can never come up with anything. How many times have I asked you how less than a mile of water could deposit more than a mile of sediment? I've asked you at least ten times, and you've never even acknowledged the question.
Conventional geologic theory gives a precise and interlocking explanation for every single one of those things you think is evidence for a flood, Dave, in a way that is mutiply-reinforced by multiple, independent, mutually-reinforcing lines of evidence. Not only can your "flood" not account for them; it's effectively ruled out of consideration by most of them.
So yes, as Mr. Aftershave so perceptively pointed out: you're not just empty-handed, you're empty-headed.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Don't feel too bad. My parents told me that chiggers would burrow under my skin. whenever I got chigger bites, my mom would cover them with nail polish to "smother" them.
They also fed me, among other things, Spam sandwiches.
Strangely enough the old nail polish remedy is one of the best. It doesn't smother redbugs but it does keep oxygen away from the stylostome and helps prevent the bite from turning into that nasty suppurating wound.
I swear by it anyhow.
Chigger bites are the only thing I hate worse than fire ant bites.
DDTTD, your whale of amount of water needed to lay down the sediment we see in Grand Canyon is exactly the amount of water that's always been here. No more, no less, no fludde.
I've asked you several times to identify a fossil forest that shows every sign of having gigantic trees moved across half a continent in a massive (but not world encompassing) flood.
WHY CAN"T YOU ID IT?
It would seem to support your claims but the AiG/ICR boys ain't got no answers
What would Jeshua drive? It depends, if it was a performance car it would probably be like this
On more question, Dave, to add to the four dozen or so you've never answered: how did your remarkably turbulent, chaotic floodwaters separate all their sediment (more sediment, in fact, than water) into nice neat layers, exactly the sort of layers the competing theory expects? I've never seen floodwaters lay down nice neat layers, filled with nicely organized fossils—organized according to exactly the sort of order to be expected by evolutionary theory, have you?
Is this another question you're just going to ignore?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Nice organized fossils, huh? Wanna show me an example?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Nice organized fossils, huh? Wanna show me an example?
Sure, Dave. Find one fossil of a rabbit (or, indeed of any mammal) anywhere in any Precambrian stratum, anywhere on the planet. Indeed, find me a single trilobite fossil, in Triassic sediment or later, anywhere in the world.
In other words, Dave, every single fossil you find in any sedimentary stratum anywhere on the planet is correctly ordered, in exactly the place paleontologists would expect to find it.
You want an example? Pick up a fossil in any stratum anywhere. That's your example.
Now, about that 5,000 feet of sediment laid down by 5,000 feet of water, Dave…
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Notice again how your questions get immediately answered, AirHead? Notice that you cannot do the same? The Cenozoic "Age of Mammals" extends back about 65 Million years, Stupid. The Mesozoic "Age of Reptiles" extends over roughly 3 times that expanse. Yet, in all those layers layed down over all that time, all over the world...not one modern mammal that has ever been reliably confirmed. Ever. No deposits of horse bones as we see in the Cenozoic. No bears. No elephant graveyards in 180 Million years of the Mesozoic. No Tigers. No lions, no Raccoons, no humans. All those layers...and not ONE modern mammal. Conversely...no dinosaurs in the Eocene (okay, birds count for lots of people). No angiosperms in the Silurian. No horses there, either. It all fits a long time span with evolution occuring. It doesn't fit your model, which is why you can't even answer the simple question: "Why are there no modern mammals in the Morrison? "
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
On more question, Dave, to add to the four dozen or so you've never answered: how did your remarkably turbulent, chaotic floodwaters separate all their sediment (more sediment, in fact, than water) into nice neat layers, exactly the sort of layers the competing theory expects? I've never seen floodwaters lay down nice neat layers, filled with nicely organized fossils—organized according to exactly the sort of order to be expected by evolutionary theory, have you?
We’ve already beaten PolytardDave about the head and shoulders with this, say, 70 pages ago. Dave’s "defense" was to C&P the AIG article where they showed that in a small laboratory tank under benign non-turbulent conditions, sand particles of different sizes will settle in recognizable layers
Large particles Medium particles Small particles
Of course ShitForBrainsDave can’t explain how such a process could possibly scale up to an incredibly violent flood with continents racing around at 100 MPH churning the oceans, and water moving so swiftly it would carve the Grand Canyon in just a couple of days.
SFBDave also can’t explain how his AIG hydraulic sorting BS accounts for areas like the buried Yellowstone forests, which have dozens of layers of the same materials in different strata, i.e.
Topsoil Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Mature forest buried in lahar Fine grained paleosol Bedrock
SFBDave is way too ignorant about the sciences involved, and is utterly incapable of thinking for himself. If he can’t C&P a quick answer from his favorite Creto source he’s up sh*t creek with a turd for a paddle.
Being the dishonest schmuck our Davie boy is, he’ll either completely ignore the questions, or claim he already answered in a previous post. Just watch.
How about it Davie - got any explanation for the dozens of layers of buried mature forests? How long does it take a mature forest to grow Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Although the rock strata do not represent a series of epochs of earth history, as is widely believed, they still follow a general pattern. For example, relatively immobile and bottom-dwelling sea creatures tend to be found in the lower strata that contain complex organisms, and the mobile land vertebrates tend to be found in the top layers. Consider the following factors:
Vertebrate fossils are exceedingly rare compared with invertebrate (without a backbone) sea creatures. The vast proportion of the fossil record is invertebrate sea creatures, and plant material in the form of coal and oil. Vertebrate fossils are relatively rare and human fossils are even rarer.2
If there were, say, 10 million people at the time of the Flood12 and all their bodies were preserved and uniformly distributed throughout the 700 million cubic kilometers of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers, only one would be found in every 70 cubic kilometers of rock. Thus you would be unlikely to find even one human fossil.
A global Flood beginning with the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep would tend to bury bottom-dwelling sea creatures first—many of these are immobile, or relatively so. They are also abundant and generally robust (for example, shellfish).13 As the waters rose to envelop the land, land creatures would be buried last.14 Also, water plants would tend to be buried before land-based swamp plants, which, in turn would be buried before upland plants.
On the other hand, land animals, such as mammals and birds, being mobile (especially birds), could escape to higher ground and be the last to succumb. People would cling to rafts, logs etc. until the very end and then tend to bloat and float and be scavenged by fish, with the bones breaking down rather quickly, rather than being preserved. This would make human fossils from the Flood exceedingly rare.
Further, the more mobile, intelligent animals would tend to survive the Flood longest and be buried last, so their remains would be vulnerable to erosion by the receding floodwaters at the end of the Flood and in the aftermath of the Flood. Hence their remains would tend to be destroyed. The intelligence factor could partly account for the apparent separation of dinosaurs and mammals such as cattle, for example.15
Another factor is the sorting action of water. A coal seam at Yallourn in Victoria, Australia, has a 0.5 m thick layer of 50% pollen. The only way such a layer of pollen could be obtained is through the sorting action of water in a massive watery catastrophe that gathered the plant material from a large area and deposited it in a basin in the Yallourn area.
‘Cope’s Rule’ describes the tendency of fossils (e.g. shellfish) to get bigger as you trace them upward through the geological strata. But why should evolution make things generally bigger? Indeed, living forms of fossils tend to be smaller than their fossil ancestors. A better explanation may be the sorting action of water.16 http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4419.asp
I like that last question ... "But why should evolution make things generally bigger?" I thought there was no such thing as "Upward Evolution?"
NOTE: Some of you have the idea that I am trying to become a scientist and present a hypothesis that could be published in a scientific journal or something. I have no such illusions. Here at ATBC, I am really in the role of Investigative Journalist. I write materials for kids. And I want to write accurately. So I investigate the claims of Evolutionists and the claims of Creationists. So if it frustrates you that I C&P from AIG and ICR, well ... I guess you'll just have to be frustrated. Because that is really my goal -- to weigh the claims of the Evos against the claims of the Creos.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Except your "sorting by size and movement" doesn't explain the fossil sequence at all. I like the bias of thinking that humans would be "last" to die and fossilize, though.
So, why are there only fast-moving reptilian (most dinosaurs were actually smaller than a chicken) only found below those "fast-moving" sloths? Why don't we find modern mammals of ANY SORT, EVER...in layers prior to the Cenozoic? Were ALL of them Olympic swimmers? AND ALL the dinosaurs swam like rocks? Why no mosasaurs or pleisiosaurs in the Eocene? Why no flying or gliding pteradons? NONE? BUT THEY COULD FLY!!!!!!!
What a lame-ass scenario, filled with holes. Hand-waving and hot air won't get your Creationist "Spruce Goose" off the ground, boy...you'll have to try better.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
From that list of questions you couldn't answer, AirHead: (13) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. (14) Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (15) Fossils of brachiopods and other sessile animals are also present in the Tonto Groupof the Grand Canyon. How could organisms live and build burrows in such rapidly deposited sediments? (16) If "Noah's Flood" transported the brachiopods into the formations, how would relatively large brachiopods get sorted with finer grained sediments? Why aren't they with the gravels?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Nothing, really, when you compare it to the "peanut-butter and brown sugar sandwiches" that my mom made me for lunch every OTHER day.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
I mentioned flowering plants earlier...they don't seem to have differing flotation properties or leg speed than non-flowering plants....why do they only appear after the Cretaceous? Why don't primitive mammals like Eutherians appear in later layers? Wouldn't there be at least ONE crippled, or OLD or diseased mammal that would get "caught" and sorted with the dull-witted, slow dinos? Placoderms are fish, too!!!Why don't THEY appear in more recent strata?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Nice organized fossils, huh? Wanna show me an example?
Sure, Davie-poodles, I'll show you more than one; they're easy enough to find if you get up off your duff and look ... after all, there's so many of 'em
And, of course, we're interested in ourselves; the record of hominid evolution is well presented at Hominid Species, with lots more information at Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution. I find it especially amusing that the changes in hominid evolution are so gradual that creationists who insist that each fossil is wholly ape or wholly human are all over the map on which fossils are ape and which fossils are human: Comparison of all skulls.
I write materials for kids. And I want to write accurately. So I investigate the claims of Evolutionists and the claims of Creationists. So if it frustrates you that I C&P from AIG and ICR, well ... I guess you'll just have to be frustrated.
OK Davie, how about you give us your accurate explanation for the multiple independent calibration methods for C14 dating that all cross-correlate to ages well older than 10,500 YBP.
Then give us your accurate explanation for how the dozens of stratigraphic layers of buried forests in Yellowstone formed.
Then give us your accurate explanation for how long it takes 1000' of limestone to form, and how long it would take to erode a 500' deep canyon in such limestone.
AIG and ICR can't help you here SFB - you'll have to do research and come up with answers on your own. I know that's something that a dishonest dog turd like you just can't handle, which is why you lie and evade every time these questions are asked.
How about it Davie - you gonna share your accurate answers with us? Or were you just lying about your desire for accuracy too?
What will you tell the kids when they get older and see this evidence for themselves? What will you say when they ask - "Deacon Dave, why did you lie to us?"
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
";Cope's Rule" describes the tendency of fossils (e.g. shellfish) to get bigger as you trace them upward through the geological strata. But why should evolution make things generally bigger? Indeed, living forms of fossils tend to be smaller than their fossil ancestors. A better explanation may be the sorting action of water.16 http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2/4419.asp
I like that last question ... "But why should evolution make things generally bigger?" I thought there was no such thing as "Upward Evolution?"
Yup, Davie-pie, there is no such thing as "upward evolution" in the sense of a teleological goal, or "aiming towards mankind", or any kind of goal other than short-term reproductive success. But if you can actually take a moment to think about it, the observed pattern is strong evidence for evolution and pretty strong evidence against creationism.
The ToE predicts that organisms start small, because they can't just poof into existence fully formed, and that individual changes will be small because evolution can only modify pre-existing structures, and that populations respond to their environment (e.g. you can't have big organisms until there's enough for them to eat). From these predictons it immediately follows that we should see an overall increase in complexity and size in the early parts of the fossil record (starting from small and simple there's only one direction in which to change), reaching a plateau when size and complexity get to a point beyond which the returns diminish. That's exactly what we see; another success for the ToE!
OTOH, creationism predicts that anything is possible, and has no explanation for the observed facts of tehj fossil record other than magic; the so-called "creationist explanations" for the order in the fossil record (differential escape, hydrodynamic sorting, and ecological zonation) fall apart when examined.
Let's look at grass and fern pollen. Grass and ferns grow pretty much everywhere that any plant grows on land. Grass doesn't run very fast, and ferns are famed for their lack of running ability. Grass pollen has the same hydrodynamic properties as fern pollen.
But fern pollen is found in abundance in strata from circa 400 million years ago to the present, and grass pollen is only found in strata from circa 70 million years ago to the present.
How did that grasss pollen get sorted out, Davie-diddles?
Or take plesiosaurs and dolphins. They live (or lived) in the same environment, moved the same way, and have the same hydrodynamic properties. Plesiosaur fossils are found in strata from 200-65 million years old and no more recent, dolphin fossils are found in strata from 13 million years old to the present. How did that happen, Davie-poot?
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And I want to write accurately
Don't bother with your pathetic lies, Davie-dork. You've made it painfully clear that your purpose is to promulgate your flawed ideology, no matter how many lies it takes or how much reality you have to deny.
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So I investigate the claims of Evolutionists and the claims of Creationists. ... because that is really my goal -- to weigh the claims of the Evos against the claims of the Creos.
Then you should start weighing the claims of the "evos" against the claims of the "creos". So far you haven't engaged the claims of the "evos" at all; you've just weighed the claims of the "creos" agains creationist strawmen of the "evo" positions.
Dave, your "hydraulic sorting" is a statistical mechanism, which means there should be exceptions all through the fossil record. After all, triceratops is roughly the size of a rhinoceros. Why do we never, ever see their fossils anywhere near each other? There are no exceptions to the sorting of the fossil record, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly. That's what's known as a "statistical impossibility," Dave.
In other words, you haven't answered my question: why do we see fossils neatly organized in exactly the fashion expected by standard evolutionary theory, and in no way at all the fashion one would expect from a chaotic catastrophic flood? Once again, you'll think you've answered this simple, basic question, when you have done no such thing.
And besides, how do you think you get to use your "global catastrophic flood" to explain any particular phenomenon, when as has also been pointed out to you repeatedly, you haven't yet established that your flood ever even happened.
If you honestly think, Dave (and I don't think for a minute you honestly think this), that your creationist babble from the likes of ICR and AiG is somehow more credible than standard evolutionary and geological theory, you're a much bigger idiot than I think you could possibly be. Which leaves only one explanation: intellectual dishonesty. I think everyone here (with the possible, though unlikely, exception of yourself) is well aware of your intellectual dishonesty, after witnessing countless examples of it in almost 800 posts from you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
IN DESPERATION, ALLCAPSDAVE AWKWARDLY QUOTES AN ALREADY AWKWARD AIG ARTICLE
Starting to get how desperate your mentors' efforts to prove the unprovable are, dave?
Let's see...
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Although the rock strata do not represent a series of epochs of earth history, as is widely believed, they still follow a general pattern. For example, relatively immobile and bottom-dwelling sea creatures tend to be found in the lower strata that contain complex organisms, and the mobile land vertebrates tend to be found in the top layers. Consider the following factors:
Which, since life began at sea, is entirely consistent with ToE... On the other hand, "relatively immobile" marine organisms are STILL never 'mixed' in diferrent strata, with no occurences of say, modern clams or crabs with trilobites and ammonites- or are clams faster than trilobites? Creo explanation: n/a
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Vertebrate fossils are exceedingly rare compared with invertebrate (without a backbone) sea creatures. The vast proportion of the fossil record is invertebrate sea creatures, and plant material in the form of coal and oil. Vertebrate fossils are relatively rare and human fossils are even rarer.
Also true, and also entirely irrelevant with the 'flud' and entirely consistent with ToE- in fact, the very argument shows that the people making it have absolutely no idea about how fossils are formed. And of course, the lack of mixing between modern and ancient invertebrates and vertebrates remains. Creo explanation: n/a
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If there were, say, 10 million people at the time of the Flood12 and all their bodies were preserved and uniformly distributed throughout the 700 million cubic kilometers of fossil-bearing sedimentary rock layers, only one would be found in every 70 cubic kilometers of rock. Thus you would be unlikely to find even one human fossil.
OK, this is the most absurd and laughable claim I've ever heard from a creo. Do they actually believe that humans lived so far apart from each other, for their bodies to be distributed evenly? WTF? Did every human being actually live alone in an area of about 31.5 km2, dave? Where are the cities? the densely inhabitated valleys and rivers? And why do we apparently have so many finds of "post-flud" remains, when humans were supposedly much less in numbers? Creo explanation: n/a
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A global Flood beginning with the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep would tend to bury bottom-dwelling sea creatures first—many of these are immobile, or relatively so. They are also abundant and generally robust (for example, shellfish).13 As the waters rose to envelop the land, land creatures would be buried last.14 Also, water plants would tend to be buried before land-based swamp plants, which, in turn would be buried before upland plants.
Like I said, perfectly in accordance with ToE- on the other hand: Where are the sea-dwelling creatures of simillar size and mobility? WHY are they so distinctively found in different layers? Mosasaurs and Whales? Icthyosaurs and dolphins? Not to mention modern sharks and ancient ones? Creo explanation: n/a
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On the other hand, land animals, such as mammals and birds, being mobile (especially birds), could escape to higher ground and be the last to succumb. People would cling to rafts, logs etc. until the very end and then tend to bloat and float and be scavenged by fish, with the bones breaking down rather quickly, rather than being preserved. This would make human fossils from the Flood exceedingly rare.On the other hand, land animals, such as mammals and birds, being mobile (especially birds), could escape to higher ground and be the last to succumb. People would cling to rafts, logs etc. until the very end and then tend to bloat and float and be scavenged by fish, with the bones breaking down rather quickly, rather than being preserved. This would make human fossils from the Flood exceedingly rare.
Triceratops and rhinos? Protoceratops and buffalo? Iguanodons and titanotheriums and mammoths and elephants? Creo explanation: n/a
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Further, the more mobile, intelligent animals would tend to survive the Flood longest and be buried last, so their remains would be vulnerable to erosion by the receding floodwaters at the end of the Flood and in the aftermath of the Flood. Hence their remains would tend to be destroyed. The intelligence factor could partly account for the apparent separation of dinosaurs and mammals such as cattle, for example.15
Velociraptors and cheetahs? Dromeosaurs and antelopes? Pteranodons and vultures? Archaeopteryx and pigeons? Not to mention Eohippus and modern horses? And cattle, smarter than pack-hunting large-brain carnivors like raptors? wtf? Creo explanation: n/a
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Another factor is the sorting action of water. A coal seam at Yallourn in Victoria, Australia, has a 0.5 m thick layer of 50% pollen. The only way such a layer of pollen could be obtained is through the sorting action of water in a massive watery catastrophe that gathered the plant material from a large area and deposited it in a basin in the Yallourn area.
Totally irrelevant with the issues discussed, this "argument" shows how desperately your mentors are trying to find something to fill a page, dave. And even so, this is an argument against a "massive watery catastrophe", and for a single isolated one -like a plain old river flood, or many repeated ones. How would pollen be deposited in a sediment in the middle of a raging flood with rain and upheaval that covered the entire globe, dave? How wouldn't it get dilluted? And if the deposition happened after the main "flood event" what was the pollen doing there in the first place? Creo explanation: n/a
Quote
‘Cope’s Rule’ describes the tendency of fossils (e.g. shellfish) to get bigger as you trace them upward through the geological strata. But why should evolution make things generally bigger? Indeed, living forms of fossils tend to be smaller than their fossil ancestors. A better explanation may be the sorting action of water.
It shouldn't, and it doesn't. Trilobites got to be really big at some point, dave, and ammonites too, not to mention Orthoceras (that was like a giant squid with a shell). And most modern day shellfish are still pretty small, and are yet only found in their own strata, as they should be. Big trilobites and small trilobites: together. Big Clams and small clams: together. Big trilobites and big clams: nope. Small trilobites and small clams: Nope. Creo explanation: n/a
...Aaaaand that clears off another AiG puff of smoke, dave. Got anything else?
You start to see how it is, right dave? As hard as you try to look away, as hard as you press your hands against your ears and shout "LALALALALALA", the fossil record screams at you my friend. Palaeontology, Geology, Physics, Astronomy, all Science screams at you. And what they actually say is "MILLIONS OF YEARS! MILLIONS OF YEARS! MILLIONS OF YEARS!" And all your self-inflicted autism cannot make that sound go away.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Hmmm. I wonder, if I had not taken a long break from the long break from this nonsense that I did, would I be, by now, so frustrated with afd that I would be hurling epithets like "dishonest Schmuck" and "sh!t-for-brains". Quite possibly. But I'll try not to.
Here, for instance, afd writes:
Quote
NOTE: Some of you have the idea that I am trying to become a scientist and present a hypothesis that could be published in a scientific journal or something. I have no such illusions. Here at ATBC, I am really in the role of Investigative Journalist. I write materials for kids. And I want to write accurately.
Hmmm. What to do? Be the 1000th scientifically educated person to try to get him to recognize where "accuracy" really stands among his priorities? Or just laugh?
Hmmm. What to do? Be the 1000th scientifically educated person to try to get him to recognize where "accuracy" really stands among his priorities? Or just laugh?
Ah Russell ... welcome back to the fray! Where could I get more accuracy about the True Theory of Evolution than from a highly trained group of scientists such as those at ATBC?
Thanks to you all for your prompt responses ...
I will continue to study the fossil sorting issues ... there are many questions I still have. But not just yet. I posted the AIG article in response to one of you, but I really want to stay on track.
****************************
Tomorrow I intend to begin a topic which is very much related to the topic we have been examining for several weeks ... the Grand Staircase.
We will be examining the recent article by Andrew Snelling about the volcano at Mt Ngauruhoe which JonF claims is a fraud.
Pretty strong words! Is it a really a fraud? Why? Or why not?
See you tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yet you still can't manage to answer a single question asked of you. And this is your hypothesis.
I'm glad I'm not you, I couldn't stand being the way you are. I'd much rather be a person of honor and integrity, with the honesty to simply deal with things. Maybe one day you'll be like that, but it isn't today.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
AFDave, I can confidently predict that you will not attempt to address the several objections to "hydrological sorting". In fact, I will be astounded if you even acknowledge them.
And why you will ignore these objections? Because you don't need science, or physics, or detailed microscopic analysis to see why the distribution of fossils is fatal to the flood model. You just need a smidgen of common sense and enough courage and honesty to think clearly about it for 20 seconds. But your defence mechanisms are smart enough to know that actually thinking about this question, and all the others, could endanger your faith, so you just skip right over it.
Moan. Complain. Gripe. Dave's dishonest. Dave won't answer questions. Dave this. Dave that.
Hey, someone has to pick the topics, right? Why not me since this is my thread? I do answer many of your questions. I have actually answered the sorting question twice now. Maybe not to your liking. But I've answered it. Remember also ... I'm only one guy. And can really only thoroughly research about one topic at a time.
Tomorrow ... Mt Ngauruhoe !!!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I will continue to study the fossil sorting issues ... there are many questions I still have. But not just yet.
You mean, you'll try to find a way around the mountain of evidence supporting an interpretation based on the Theory of Evolution and contradicting an interpretation based on creationism.
You know, Dave, I have to say your arrogance is nothing short of breathtaking. Tens of thousands of scientists with decades of experience and training have devoted their lives to locating fossils and coming up with an overarching explanation for how they relate to each other. And here you come, completely and utterly ignorant of the field of paleontology, who wouldn't know a brachiopod if one crept up behind you and bit you in the ass, and yet you somehow think you're qualified to dispute their results.
Good luck.
And in the meantime, the number of questions you've been completely unable to answer mounts by the day. So much for your "hypothesis," Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh, I'm sure Dave will not address the xenoliths. Or that using K-Ar to date rocks 60 years old is like Dave's wife sending her doctor goldfish bowl water as "her" urine sample. Yes, false readings would appear.
But when have lies and deception ever been alien to creationists?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Moan. Complain. Gripe. Dave's dishonest. Dave won't answer questions. Dave this. Dave that.
The truth hurts, doesn't it Davie.
Quote
Hey, someone has to pick the topics, right? Why not me since this is my thread?
Guess what SFB - You were the one who brought up the topic of the buried forests in Yellowstone looking like the single one at Mt. Saint Helens. Not us Davie, YOU. When you were pressed about the details at to how a single violent flood could produce layers of two dozen mature forests buried right atop one another with paleosols between each layer, you cowardly ran the other way.
Quote
I do answer many of your questions.
BULLSHIT Davie. All you do is C&P something from AIG when you can match the appropriate buzzword. Even with that, most times you're too stupid to even understand what is being argued. You NEVER answer any question that requires actual thought on your part.
You're a dishonest, arrogant coward Davie. And as long as you keep acting like one, you'll get treated like one.
Of course, you could easily shut me up and prove we wrong to the lurkers by actually addressing those tough questions. But we both know you won't, because you can't.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Moan. Complain. Gripe. Dave's dishonest. Dave won't answer questions. Dave this. Dave that.
Hey, someone has to pick the topics, right? Why not me since this is my thread? I do answer many of your questions. I have actually answered the sorting question twice now. Maybe not to your liking. But I've answered it. Remember also ... I'm only one guy. And can really only thoroughly research about one topic at a time.
Tomorrow ... Mt Ngauruhoe !!!
Translation:
Quote
buck buck buck buck buck buckbuuuuuck...
Yeah, you better run!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
My bet is that you won't engage the issue of xenoliths at all.
How much? And so people don't think I'm greedy, I'll donate my winnings to K4T :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Gee, Dave, will this be like your reaction to a gentleman's bet on the strata on the Kaibab Limestone, then the Grand Canyon...then the Grand Staircase, then your "bet" about dating the Morrison via methods not involving igneous "grains?" I seem to recall that you were already given methods of absolute dates *there* which you failed to honor as a bet.
Given your history there -- and given your history at getting caught in observable, demonstrable lies in the past...why should anyone believe you?
Seriously, Dave...give me one reason why I should believe you at anything, given your tactics, your sheer willingness to do anything neccessary to weasel your way through nearly 180 pages of your "hypothesis?" You don't HAVE honor...you have an absolutist, irrational ideology that leaves you just as insane as any madman that ever flew a plane into a building.
The funny part about it is that it's not really about the religion for you, though...it's really about "Dave" Like I said, we peeled apart the layers of your "hypothesis" and at the center of it was a little mirror image of Dave...pretending to speak for God. But you don't count, so I see no reason to give a crap about you and your toxic ideas about God...or your bets.
Sure, Dave, you can "bring up" xenoliths. I just did right now...but just as with everything else, you'll run from actual direct question-and-answer debate. You'll skirt the issues and then "claim victory " as you have each time, regardless of how dishonest and unChristian you had to be.
So, hey, go for it, Dave...but I wouldn't *BET* you...not because I "fear" your ability to support an argument...but because I KNOW you're ultimately dishonest and you can't be trusted to back your bets or words.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
MY BACKGROUND I was first an Electrical Engineer, then an Air Force pilot (T-38 and Huey, believe it or not), then a businessman...I was never a logician, by trade, but that does not mean I can't become one very quickly, especially when I see gross incompetence in the field. I also do not pretend to be a professional geologist, cosmologist, physicist, biologist, or Hebrew or Greek scholar. But I do know some good ones and I read voraciously. What I really am is an ordinary guy with a pretty good brain for learning most anything who is sick and tired of what appears to me to be absolute nonsense being fed to us from the Evolution Dogmatists...I may not get very far with closed minded professional scientisits, which I hope you are not, but I hope to put some truth out there in an area where I currently see a lot of error...Why does it always seem that every time the word 'God' is even mentioned, everybody runs for cover and says it's not science?
That was from the first page of this thread...you then go on to talk about how you are "scientific " and believe your hypothesis to be "scientific" and how you believe you can bring sufficient evidence to the table and back it with cogent arguments that would convince cynical "Darwinists." In short, you pretended that your hypothesis WAS "scientific" and in fact you SAID so...
BUT...now it's come down to this claim:
Quote
NOTE: Some of you have the idea that I am trying to become a scientist and present a hypothesis that could be published in a scientific journal or something. I have no such illusions. Here at ATBC, I am really in the role of Investigative Journalist.
Suddenly you're NOT a "scientific" guy, you're a "journalist" investingating both sides of the argument...but you already have your mind made up. This is shown in every page of this thread, as you weasel your way through it...avoiding, lying, diverting, distracting, refusing to deal with facts as they are or questions regarding your claims and assertions.
So...that's what it's come down to: You KNOW that in fact, you've been slapped around with each of your silly YEC claims, so now you say you're not actually presenting a "hypothesis" you're just a "journalist."
Very convenient...and a good excuse for you to never have to answer any questions that you find troubling, because suddenly you're not the Dave that made gradiose claims , you're now the Dave that got smacked around on his stupid claims and knows it.
You're reduced to a pinata for the amusement of every poster here and all the lurkers who have voiced their opinion. You're reduced to this continuing strategy of never dealing with your own "theory that is better than any other" which you can't even support. Good for you, Davey. Bravo!! You're now just a clown.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
AFDave, you answer questions only if you can come up with search terms that lead to something you find convincing in your creo databases. All the questions you ignore happen to pose basic challenges to your hypothesis. What could explain that peculiar distribution? Is it related to gravitation and mobility?
As for "move along, nothing to see here" -- sorry, sweetpea, but you don't get to manipulate this audience like you do your hapless Sunday-schoolers. You started the thread but you don't own the discussion. I've copied dead_man's list of unanswered questions and every time you try to move on, I'll add it to the comments.
As a teacher, you're sub-worthless; as a Christian, you're a disgrace.
NOTE: Some of you have the idea that I am trying to become a scientist and present a hypothesis that could be published in a scientific journal or something. I have no such illusions. Here at ATBC, I am really in the role of Investigative Journal
Nobody, and I mean nobody here that has just two neurons to rub together thinks that you're "trying to become a scientist " capable of publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, AirHead. But you certainly made claims early on about your "hypothesis " BEING scientific...which it turns out it is not...and now you say you're *really* just an "investigative jounalist" (yeah, you remind me of Denyse O'Leary at UD...equally stupid, the differences being she's female and Catholic, that's about it. ) You made claims about being a skeptic, about presenting evidence, at having a "theory that is better than any other," at being capable of presenting your arguments and data to support your claims...here's just a few of your comments from the first pages of this thread: ********************************************* A few quotes from AirHeadDave
Page 2: That's the difference between my Hypothesis and the two of yours. Yours have no evidence. Mine does.
Page 3: I have the mind of an engineer and a scientist. I, like you, am a healthy skeptic... But my real view of myself is that I am scientific, not religious. But my definition of science is ... drum roll ... more expansive than yours. I consider ALL possibilites for explaining and describing the universe, not just so called 'naturalistic ones' which we presently understand. I, in contrast to you, make allowance that there just might be some things that we don't understand yet because our science is not advanced enough
p. 6 : Science attempts to explain things in terms of current understanding. Then as new understanding comes, science modifies its descriptions. This is what I do... It is my goal of this exercise...The proper definition of science should include trying to explain the phenomena in the universe, where ever that may lead...What I am doing.. is showing everyone why MY proposed proximate cause makes more sense than YOUR proposed proximate cause for explaining the phenomena in the universe
p.9: It is my opinion that these claims are true ... however, I am not asking anyone to join me in that belief until I show my evidence supporting these claims... Creationism explains everything MUCH better than Evolution does. It explains designs in nature, it explains the human condition, it explains the fossil record, it explains coal beds and oil wells, it explains the races of mankind. It explains dinosaurs and the ice age. ************************************************ Now, after getting spanked for over 170 pages, you've dropped that charade in favor of an approach that you want to use to avoid questioning of your "theory that is better than any other." You're not even close to being a good scam artist, but you are definitely trying to sell snake-oil. Yet you don't like the way it tastes getting shoved down your throat. Too f___ing bad.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Why does it always seem that every time the word 'God' is even mentioned, everybody runs for cover and says it's not science?
Nobody's running for cover, but until you understand that saying goddidit, you just don't have a clue what science is.
DDTTD says...
Quote
And so people don't think I'm greedy...
AND
Do you realize that companies in America have literally shut down whole divisions because of thin-skinned, greedy, litigious people? Cessna Aircraft Company is one of them. People like this are helping to destroy America.
We have every reason to think you and yours are greedy.
Destroy America? Teehee. What investment did you get BURNED on to spout that nonsense? Why did that lousy socialist rag The Pitch bring up your church's involvement with Graco? (The original story was first printed by the Kansas City Star, what's wrong with their credentials DDTTD?) There's enough evidence, dubious or not, that YOUR church is involved in a LOT more than saving souls. Greed for both political and monetary power is defininatly involved. Your kids4cults site is just another mani(in)festation of that mentality.
You've told us why you're here repeatedly but the story's changed whenever you had your back to the wall (and you've taunted us by telling us we didn't REALLY know why you're here, OOPS hand me that crack pipe DM).
Now you drop these steaming heaps on us and run.
Quote
I have no such illusions. Here at ATBC, I am really in the role of Investigative Journalist. So I investigate the claims of Evolutionists and the claims of Creationists.
AND
I write materials for kids.
AND
And I want to write accurately.
AND
Because that is really my goal -- to weigh the claims of the Evos against the claims of the Creos.
DANG DDTTD I'm gonna go whack a dead skunk to get the stench outta my nose!
DDTTD, you have no illusions, you have major league delusions.
Is there any question why some have equated your behaviour with child abuse?
I picked up a copy of your Creo rag, "The Stitch" today, and I gotta tell you boy, I laughed till my stomach muscles hurt and I do 40 sit ups a day!
Dammit, I just rubbed two neurons together and the colours are fantabulous! Anybody up for some dead skunk Satay? The grill is hot! Beers are on me.
As an amateur in all this, I think that the fossil record is the most powerful piece of evidence for common descent for non-scientists. It's easy to understand and doesn't lend itself to any other interpretation.
This is the second time that Dave quoted the AIG tract and again it got the same response that the sorting has nothing to do with body size or brains or speed but follows the tree of life.
I'll bet that Dave doesn't come back to it with a theory of sorting consistant with the actual fossil record.
Spanked for 170 pages? You guys have been blown away, but you are too blind and committed to Millionsofyearsianism to see it.
1) I showed you how "whale evolution" doesn't support evolution. 2) I showed you in detail how ridiculous it is to say that apes and humans have a common ancestor. No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at. 3) I showed you the details of the RATE Helium diffusion experiment--another serious challenge to conventional earth ages, yet Deadman wants to perpetuate Henke's distortion about zircons being tested under pressure even though he was clearly shown why it is not the same as testing soft micas. 4) You were shown how geologists have been completely surprised to find too much C14 in coal and diamonds. If they are so old, it shouldn't be there. 5) You were shown how leading evolutionists already admit "apparent design" in nature, yet they are so blind they (and you) say it is only a mirage 6) You were shown how your own site which you love (Talk Origins) supports the Michael Denton observation that the cosmos is finely tuned for life, and specifically for mankind 7) You were shown how the observed phenomenon of Universal Morality supports the God Hypothesis 8) You were shown with fruit flies, bacteria and other organisms how macroevolution simply does not occur and has never been observed. 9) You were shown how the Genesis Record is not an oral tradition, but is in reality a carefully written, eye-witness account and predates the Gilgamesh Epic and other heathen distortions. 10) You were shown the most obvious and persuasive evidence ever given to any generation of the truth of a Global Flood--Millions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth. 11) You were shown how many leading geologists have now reluctantly become catastrophists because of the goading of creationists to observe the actual evidence. 12) You have been shown that your "convincing fossil record" consists of only 13% of the entire supposed geologic time. I should show you how much of that occurs in the "Cambrian Explosion" 13) We touched on the fact that there has been a new term invented -- "Punctuated Equilibrium" -- Why? Because the fossil record simply does not support the evolutionary scenario. 14) You have been shown two modern day examples of debris dams bursting and forming canyons, one of them cutting vertical walls in hard rock. 15) You have been shown how uniformitarians laughed at Harlan Bretz for 60 years before finally agreeing that he was right--that the Palouse Canyon was formed catastrophically. 16) You have been shown that incised meanders require soft sediments. 17) You have been shown these and many other things which support the hypothesis that the Grand Canyon was formed during the receding phase of the Flood. 18) You have been shown that the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase have been dated by fossils, not radiometrically as we are led to believe
And I just put this list together from memory in about 5 minutes. I will put together a more extensive list soon.
Dropped my charade? There's no charade. I am scientific though not a credentialed scientist. And I am an investigator who is investigating these issues. And I have been from the beginning. There has been no change. Only a relentless pursuit of the truth and a tireless walk through the points of my Creator God Hypothesis. We will continue to forge ahead.
My character? I have been completely honest and up front, admitting my errors when I make them. My church and its leaders are of the highest character and morals and have never defrauded anyone. My pastor is one of the hardest working, lowest paid men for his skill set that I have ever met. I challenge anyone here who wants to portray me or my church as immoral to come and see for yourself. Get both sides of the story. Only cowards sling mud when they hear just one side. Crabby and Aftershave have said they want to visit. Then come on! I'm waiting.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"(in regards to Fraud) Pretty strong words! Is it a really a fraud? Why? Or why not?"
Really, you use and imply the word with every post. The whole of science is perpetrating a fraud to convince people God does not exist. How and why else would everyone in the scientific community, with the exception of the Christian Right, believe in such theory! Such a fraud would require 10 of thousands of scientist to by lying. Do they get pay-o-la for that?
Well, it could be that the theory IS correct and that the real fraud is being committed by a hand full Christian Right, mostly non-scientists, with a proven agenda.
Logically, which do you think is the more reasonable answer?
(No prompting from our studio audience!
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
NEW TOPIC: THE RELEVANCE AND MEANING OF RADIOMETRIC DATING OF ANCIENT LAVAS.
An investigation of the 2003 paper by Dr. Andrew Snelling
Quote
THE RELEVANCE OF Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd AND Pb-Pb ISOTOPE SYSTEMATICS TO ELUCIDATION OF THE GENESIS AND HISTORY OF RECENT ANDESITE FLOWS AT MT NGAURUHOE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RADIOISOTOPIC DATING ANDREW A. SNELLING, Ph.D. INSTITUTE FOR CREATION RESEARCH PO BOX 2667 EL CAJON, CA 92021
ABSTRACT Mt Ngauruhoe in the Taupo Volcanic Zone of New Zealand erupted andesite lava flows in 1949 and 1954, and avalanche deposits in 1975. Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb radioisotopic analyses of samples of these andesites, as anticipated, did not yield any “age” information, although the Pb isotopic data are strongly linear. When compared with recent andesite flows from the related adjacent Ruapehu volcano, the Sr-Nd-Pb radioisotopic systems plotted on correlation diagrams provide information about the depleted mantle source for the parental basalt magmas and the source of the crustal contamination that produced the andesite lavas from them. The variations in both the depleted mantle Nd “model ages” and the Pb isotopes also suggest radioisotopic heterogeneity in the mantle wedge 80 km below the volcano where partial melting has occurred, contaminated by mixing with trench sediments scraped off the interface with the subducting slab. Thus the radioisotopic ratios in these recent Ngauruhoe andesite flows were inherited, and reflect the origin and history of the mantle and crustal sources from which the magma was generated. By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental to their geochemistry, characteristic of their origin and history rather than necessarily providing valid conventional “ages”.
INTRODUCTION With the development of isotope geochemistry in the last 35–40 years has come the realization that radioisotopes may not always provide reliable age measurements. It has been discovered that recent and historic lavas, particularly on oceanic islands, yield incredibly old radioisotopic “ages” [18, 22, 61]. This has led to the recognition that the radioisotopes in these lavas reflect the isotopic compositions of the mantle sources of these lavas, and of any crustal contamination the magmas may have incorporated during ascent and extrusion [18, 22, 59, 61]. The present burgeoning isotope geochemistry literature, reporting increasing numbers of ever more accurate and sophisticated radioisotopic determinations, has only refined the modeling of mantle sources and discussion of their origin, while ignoring the obvious implications for the radioisotopic “age” determinations of ancient lavas being published in the same literature. It was deemed timely, therefore, to undertake an isotope geochemical study of some recent lavas not previously investigated. There were two objectives — to explore the meaning of the radioisotopic ratios in terms of the petrogenesis of the lavas; and thus to recognise the implications for radioisotopic “age” determinations on both recent and ancient lavas.
(body of paper)
CONCLUSIONS The Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb radioisotopic ratios in these samples of the recent (1949–1975) andesite lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, as anticipated, do not yield any meaningful “age” information, even with selective manipulation of the data. Instead, these data provide evidence of the mantle source of the lavas, of magma genesis, and of crustal contamination of the parental basalt magmas. Subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Taupo Volcanic Arc has carried trench sediments with it — sediments identical in composition to the Torlesse metasediment basement underlying, and outcropping adjacent to, these volcanoes. Scraped off the subducting slab, the sediments have contaminated the basalt magmas generated by partial melting of the peridotitic mantle wedge at the mantle-slab interface. The resultant andesite magmas rose in the melt column through the mantle wedge, and then ascended through fracture conduits in the overlying crust into magma chambers below the volcanoes that erupted when full. The Sr-Nd-Pb radioisotopic systematics are thus characteristic of the depleted mantle source, modified by mixing with the crustal contaminant. Variations in the depleted mantle Nd “model ages”, which range from 724.5 to 1453.3 Ma, and which are meaningless in this recent (even in conventional terms) tectonic and petrogenetic framework, and the Pb isotopic linear arrays, indicate geochemical heterogeneity in the mantle wedge. Thus the radioisotopic ratios in these recent Ngauruhoe andesite lava flows were inherited from both the peridotitic mantle wedge and the subducted trench sediments, and are fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore only reflect the origin and history of the mantle and crustal sources from which the magma was generated, and therefore have no age significance. By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information.
What he's saying here guys is that since these flows are so recent, the "age" information--i.e. the parent/daughter ratios which indicate great age--are meaningless. This is why it is said that you cannot date recent lava flows radiometrically. The reason, supposedly, is because the amount of daughter product is so small that it cannot be measured accurately. Remember, in theory at time T=0, there should be no daughter product. However, in this case (and I assume in every case of recent flows), there is a significant amount of daughter products, thus indicating great age. Of course this is not accepted because the flow was known to have occurred in the 20th century. So he is saying that this simply indicates the origin of this recent flow, and by implication, all other recent and ancient flows.
Now JonF has said this whole study was a fraud and the reason he gave was because Snelling included xenoliths in his dating samples. However, I think Jon is missing the point of the study and thus missing the reason for why xenoliths were included. This topic is still very new to me but my understanding is that there are basically two general methods of dating igneous rock: the Whole Rock Isochron method and the Mineral Isochron method. I also understand that the majority of published RM dates involve the Whole Rock method. Jon said Snelling was being deceptive by not doing a mineral isochron analysis. Are all those published Whole Rock results frauds also? What Jon is failing to see is that Snelling isn't trying to get an exact creation date for particular minerals. Had he done so, his conclusions would have been the same ... he just would have spent more money! The exact "age" of the samples is irrelevant. He was simply showing that ANY "RM ages" determined on recent flows is irrelevant to the true age of the sample--it simply indicates its origin.
I'm not sure what JonF thinks Snelling was trying to do, but it looks like he did not read the paper very well.
**************************************
Regardless of what JonF understands or does not understand, I think I understand perfectly ... and hopefully you do as well ...
RADIOMETRIC "DATING" ON RECENT (AND BY IMPLICATION, ANCIENT) LAVA FLOWS IS MEANINGLESS
So "bye, bye" to Deadman's idea that radiometric dating of the ash mudstone of the Morrison formation has any relevance to the depositing of the layer.
Ditto for the ash beds of the Carmel.
Ditto for the tuff at Koobi Fora.
Ditto, ditto, ditto.
So now could we please stop lying to all the kids in public schools and universities by telling them that layers like the Grand Staircase can be dated radiometrically?
Thanks in advance!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Davie, Davie, Davie. You moron. My prediction is fulfilled. You didn't engage the issue of xenoliths at all. You just regurgitated Snelling's handwaving. Facts:
Xenoliths are older pieces of rock embedded in younger rock.
Dating a rock containing containing xenoliths with a whole-rock method gives a meaningless result, a weighted average of the ages of the components.
Snelling knows this.
Snelling did not mention this effect in his paper on Ngauruhoe.
This effect is the obvious reason for the results obtained.
Conclusion: fraud.
The entire quote of Snelling with your added emphasis is irrelevant to these facts and conclusion.
Deal with these facts, Davie-diddles.
(There are other problems with the study, but the fraud is the major problem).
Now for your ignorance-generated comments:
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 04 2006,07:23)
However, I think Jon is missing the point of the study and thus missing the reason for why xenoliths were included.
The reason is obvious: to fraudulently skew the results.
Quote
This topic is still very new to me ...
IOW you're just blowing smoke about another topic on which you are totally ignorant.
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... but my understanding is that there are basically two general methods of dating igneous rock: the Whole Rock Isochron method and the Mineral Isochron method. I also understand that the majority of published RM dates involve the Whole Rock method.
There are isochron methods and simple-accumulation methods (such as the K-Ar method Snelling used; he did not use an isochron method, you ignoramus) and the argon-argon method and the concordia-discordia method and a whole host of others. There is whole-rock sample selection and mineral sample selection. Most methods can be performed on either whole-rock samples or mineral samples, but the most widely used method (concordia-discordia) can only be performed on mineral samples; there is no such thing as a whole-rock concordia-discordia analysis.
The majority of the dates in the literature, and the vast majority of the dates published in the last fifteen years or so, are mineral analyses.
Quote
Jon said Snelling was being deceptive by not doing a mineral isochron analysis. Are all those published Whole Rock results frauds also?
No, they are not. There are two valid ways of performing whole-rock analysis:
(The most common) examine multiple thin-sections of the rock to determine that there are no xenoliths present or, if there are xenoliths present:
Separate the xenoliths, usually manually (a grad student with a microscope and tweezers), from the material that is to be analyzed.
Snelling's work is invalid because he did neither of these; it is fraudulent because anyone who is competent to conduct such a study knows how to do whole-rock analyses properly, and Snelling didn't do it properly.
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What Jon is failing to see is that Snelling isn't trying to get an exact creation date for particular minerals. Had he done so, his conclusions would have been the same ... he just would have spent more money! The exact "age" of the samples is irrelevant. He was simply showing that ANY "RM ages" determined on recent flows is irrelevant to the true age of the sample--it simply indicates its origin.
But the only way he could come to that conclusion was through fraud.
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I'm not sure what JonF thinks Snelling was trying to do, but it looks like he did not read the paper very well.
I read it and understood it. You may have done the former, but you failed miserably at the latter.
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RADIOMETRIC "DATING" ON RECENT (AND BY IMPLICATION, ANCIENT) LAVA FLOWS IS MEANINGLESS
Radiometric dating on such recent lava flows is meaningless because the instrumentation is incapable of resolving such small amounts of daughter product; this has no implication for dating ancient lava flows. The only way to obtain results such as Snelling's is through fraud.
So now could we please stop lying to all the kids in public schools and universities by telling them that layers like the Grand Staircase can be dated radiometrically?
No lies involved, Davie-dork. Layers like the Grand Staircase can be dated radiometrically.
(Long list of 18 GROSS DISTORTIONS AND BLATANT LIES)
OK, dave, you almost got me this time, but not quite. I was about to post a furious comment of your assertions, examine them quote by quote, show everyone how completely dishonest you are by claiming that this is the way this debate proceeded so far, and once again, DARE you to show me WHERE and HOW you managed to "show" all that to us... ...But then I stopped. A long, self-assuring list of unsupported assertions, and then we immediately rush off to another subject, dave? Hmm...
Aah, I see. AllCapsDave plays Brave Sir Robin again, but this time before his peers.
You HAVE shown this thread to some of your friends, right dave? Quite recently? Perhaps all this time when you were stalling with irrelevant posts about faith and such?
And now you are afraid they might see just how big an ass you're made in this forum, and you try to save what you can. So you post this long list of claims you supposedly "proved", and immediately head for the hills. It doesn't matter how obviously and indecently you show yourself as a LIAR by saying all these things- Your friends don't know, not unless they bother to read all 180 pages of the thread. So you try to fool them, not us. You poor, immature fellow... In a way, it's good you got involved with religion: At least you will have people to take care of you, even if they use you sometimes; it yould be impossible to survive on your own in the real world with that teenage angst attitude.
So welcome, Friends of dave! This is the thread where your buddy keeps making a fool of himself. You are free to stick around and see for yourselves... As for those previous claims of his, I might get to provide a few links and quotes from those old discussions, to show you what REALLY took place and who got spanked (and keeps getting it). But you can also check yourselves if you like, and see your friend's dishonesty. It just takes a little time, and a little willingness to see the facts and the truth. I hope that, unlike your friend here, you have both.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
As for your latest trick, I believe JonF has that covered, dave... but anyway, here's a page you might find interesting: It's even got paragraphs with titles in bold allcaps- Just the way you like it!
SCIENCE OR PROPAGANDA? Getting back to Dr. Snelling's paper, there are some points that can now be made: One must presume that Dr. S. was aware of Geochron's inability to provide reliable K-Ar dates on materials less than 2 million years old. Nevertheless he sent them samples that are less than 60 years old. And there is no mention in his paper of Geochron's limitations in this respect. Furthermore he asked for whole-rock analyses without regard for the problems arising from the presence of xenoliths. In short, Dr. Snelling 'evaluated' the K-Ar test using samples that he, not to mention everybody else in the business, would have known would produce bad results and then, on this basis alone, gave a failing grade to the K-Ar Method as a whole. But all he has really done is to generate another piece of evidence to the effect that Geochron cannot do what they explicitly say they cannot do. Dr. S. claims that the method as a whole is a failure and should be discarded, but this claim ignores large numbers of successful determinations on really old rocks that are in close agreement with other radiodating methods. From these considerations it is clear that Dr Snelling's "evaluation" is nothing more than the sheerest self-serving drivel.
The Ar-Ar method, a more precise off-shoot of the K-Ar method, recently came surprisingly close to the correct date of the Vesuvius Eruption of AD79, 1,920 years ago. This has been hailed as a triumph for the method. As indeed it was. Dr. Snelling's opus, on the other hand, is nothing more than a piece of propaganda, written not to inform scientists, but only to mislead the unknowledgeable.
How does it feel to be misled, unknowledgeable dave?
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
8) You were shown with fruit flies, bacteria and other organisms how macroevolution simply does not occur and has never been observed.
Again with the fruit flies. I don't recall you ever talking about them at length, but three or four times you mentioned them, in driveby style, as a "great failure." What are you on about there? What have you read that makes you think Drosophila research has been a failure?
Guys, you know, maybe I'm not getting this correctly (and someone please correct me if that's the case), but I think I can imagine the dialogue between those "scientists":
"Well, with this method, we're sure to get a reading that's way off."
"Hmm. How sure?"
"Well... I dunno, quite sure ?"
"Quite sure won't do... what if the wrong results are not wrong enough?"
"You mean... oh right, I see."
"Throw a fair amount of xenoliths in the sample as well, and ask for a whole rock measurement."
"Haha, good call! only, um..."
"What?"
"Well the xenoliths are too much of a giveaway... Don't you think we'll get called on it?"
"Who cares? Look, this isn't about the scientists, it's about keeping the flock happy. We're paying good money to get a grossly mistaken date, and by gawd, we will!"
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Having been a lurker since page 1 of this most wonderful of threads, and having learnt much about many things, there is one question that I don't think has been laid before our favourite creationist.
Since most of these 178 pages has been spent with Dave attempting to pick holes in accepted scientific evidence in many, many disciplines, has he ever actually presented any scientific evidence (ie not from the bible) for a ~ 6,000 yr old earth? Especially as this is supposed to be his Creator God Hypothesis.
So, rather than pick holes in our millionsofyearism, where is your scientific evidence for a ~6,000 year old earth? Where are your ice-cores? Your varves? Your dendrochronology evidence? Your paleosols? Your 40+ different radiometric dating methods?
Don't forget the subterainian rock worms Tim, that somehow managed to get down into hard rock and leave all those burrows 1000's of feet down, after the flood.
Oh .......and all the angels or were they Santa's Elves..... sorting the fossils.
And my favorite AFD where is the great cosmic bucket god used to get rid of 26,000 of feet of water (ASL) covering the the whole planet.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Since most of these 178 pages has been spent with Dave attempting to pick holes in accepted scientific evidence in many, many disciplines, has he ever actually presented any scientific evidence (ie not from the bible) for a ~ 6,000 yr old earth?
No. Occasionally he says things like
Quote
Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
He seems to think he's giving evidence. But none of us are quite sure how he thinks he's giving evidence here.
Snelling and friends have recognized that recent and historic lavas, particularly on oceanic islands, yield incredibly old radioisotopic “ages”. They cite 17 studies in the RATE Book 2000, including one as late as 1997 by Esser, et. al.) (0.7 Ma to 700 Ma on historic flows! They recognized it and confirmed it with their own samples. There is no fraud here, JonF. Why are you quibbling about xenoliths? Would the "ages" have come out younger if xenoliths were excluded? (BTW--is is not even conclusive that the supposed xenoliths are actually xenoliths at all) Maybe. Maybe not. Do we care in this case? No. Because we are not trying to get a precise "date" of creation of the lava. We are showing that the lava "dates" are not dates at all, but are merely a reflection of their parent material--the mantle source. But you want to exclude the xeonliths? OK Fine. Exclude the xenoliths. What would they have gotten then? Answer: Probably not much different. Why? Well look at the 17 other studies cited in the RATE 2000 Book. Most of them are from historic lava flows and they report everything from 0.7 Ma to 700 Ma!! Did they exclude xenoliths? Some did. Some did not.
Look here. JonF is just trying to confuse people. The truth is that there probably ARE NO xenoliths in the Snelling samples. It's debatable. If they are, so what? All this means is that instead of the samples being dated at 724.5 to 1453.3 Ma, the numbers would have been somewhat different.
But the thing is ... Millionsofyearianism is shown once again to be a joke ... either way!! Fine. Let's give you a really long rope and say the samples would have been dated at 10 Ma with the "xenoliths" excluded. You still hang yourself by the neck!
Now ... would you please repent and quit lying to schoolchildren?
Thanks again in advance!
**************************** FAID PROVES TO THE WORLD THAT HE DOESN'T EVEN READ THE PAPERS HE IS ATTEMPTING TO REFUTE.
Faid...
Quote
In short, Dr. Snelling 'evaluated' the K-Ar test using samples that he, not to mention everybody else in the business, would have known would produce bad results and then, on this basis alone, gave a failing grade to the K-Ar Method as a whole. But all he has really done is to generate another piece of evidence to the effect that Geochron cannot do what they explicitly say they cannot do. Dr. S. claims that the method as a whole is a failure and should be discarded, but this claim ignores large numbers of successful determinations on really old rocks that are in close agreement with other radiodating methods. From these considerations it is clear that Dr Snelling's "evaluation" is nothing more than the sheerest self-serving drivel.
Faid, my friend. Read Snelling's paper. His point is NOT to discredit K-Ar dating. Look at the title again ...
THE RELEVANCE OF Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd AND Pb-Pb ISOTOPE SYSTEMATICS TO ELUCIDATION OF THE GENESIS AND HISTORY OF RECENT ANDESITE FLOWS AT MT NGAURUHOE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RADIOISOTOPIC DATING
Now do you see anything about K-Ar dating anywhere there? Do you see anything in his whole paper where he criticised the K-Ar test? That's old news, friend. He's not criticising K-Ar here.
In fact, here's the relevant section from Snelling's paper ...
Quote
K-Ar ISOTOPE SYSTEMATICS Snelling [60] reported having obtained K-Ar model “ages” for these same samples of recent Mt Ngauruhoe andesite flows of <0.27 to 3.5 Ma. Such results were expected, as meaningful dates from historic lava flows are not usually obtained, which is recognised in the standard scientific literature [60, 61]. These “dates” could not be reproduced, even from splits of the same samples from the same flow. This apparent inconsistency merely indicates variation in the excess 40Ar* (radiogenic 40Ar) content. Indeed, Ar contamination at such low concentration levels is often expected, but this problem of excess 40Ar* in historic lava flows is still well documented in the literature. It was concluded that this excess 40Ar* had been inherited by these magmas during their genesis in the upper mantle, and therefore has no age significance.
So your criticism is completely irrelevant as is clearly shown above. Of course Geochron says they cannot reliably date young samples! Why? Because they have excess argon, of course. Are you really so blind as to think Snelling doesn't know this? He acknowledges it right there above. But he wanted the analysis anyway ... not because he's trying to show that K-Ar dating is flawed, but because he wants to show the correlation of the lava flow to the mantle source.
And he accomplished his goal, in spite of the fact that you and JonF apparently don't even understand what he is doing or what he is saying in the paper. Did you even read the paper?
Then you pull some irrelevant quote from some guy who ALSO does not even understand what Snelling did and accuses him of something totally bogus.
Wow, are you guys desperate or what??!!
*******************************
Bfish ... "Accelerated evolution" of fruit flies has produced
1) Dead fruit flies 2) Mangled fruit flies 3) Mutant fruit flies
No SUPER-fruit flies. No bigger, better fruit flies.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Just as a matter of interest AFD how did the flightless bird the Kiwi survive the flood?
Or the flightless parrot whose name I can't remember at the moment or the Tuatara lizard or the exstinct giant Moa Bird and the lesser spotted Moa which I believe was the size of a Mack truck motor which Noah would have needed to race down the Jordan into the Red Sea scoot across the the Indian Ocean duck around Tasmania land on both the North and South Islands of New Zealand and round up all the different species of flightless birds in dense rain forest and swamps without the help of the native Maori who were still in Taiwan 6000 years ago....by the way what about the Maori were they on the ark?
Noah didn't have them on his ark ....did he?... lies4kids AFD
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
1) I showed you how "whale evolution" doesn't support evolution.
Lie.
Quote
2) I showed you in detail how ridiculous it is to say that apes and humans have a common ancestor. No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at.
Lie. And besides, when a moron asserts that homonid fossils are just chimp and human bones mingled together, we don't waste our time to educate him.
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3) I showed you the details of the RATE Helium diffusion experiment--another serious challenge to conventional earth ages,
Lie.
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4) You were shown how geologists have been completely surprised to find too much C14 in coal and diamonds. If they are so old, it shouldn't be there.
Maybe true, but this is certainly explainable.
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5) You were shown how leading evolutionists already admit "apparent design" in nature, yet they are so blind they (and you) say it is only a mirage
"apparent design"? Not a scientific evidence.
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6) You were shown how your own site which you love (Talk Origins) supports the Michael Denton observation that the cosmos is finely tuned for life, and specifically for mankind
Opinion? Not a scientific evidence.
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7) You were shown how the observed phenomenon of Universal Morality supports the God Hypothesis
Universal morality? Not a fact.
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8) You were shown with fruit flies, bacteria and other organisms how macroevolution simply does not occur and has never been observed.
Lie. Speciation in the lab, on fruit flies.
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9) You were shown how the Genesis Record is not an oral tradition, but is in reality a carefully written, eye-witness account and predates the Gilgamesh Epic and other heathen distortions.
Lie. And this would not be a scientific evidence.
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10) You were shown the most obvious and persuasive evidence ever given to any generation of the truth of a Global Flood--Millions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth.
Doesn't support your hypothesis better than the current one.
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11) You were shown how many leading geologists have now reluctantly become catastrophists because of the goading of creationists to observe the actual evidence.
Lie. What about the numerous geologists (several reverends) who came to the conclusion that the flood never happened (before Darwin published the Origins) ?
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12) You have been shown that your "convincing fossil record" consists of only 13% of the entire supposed geologic time. I should show you how much of that occurs in the "Cambrian Explosion"
How does this support a 6000 year old Earth?
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13) We touched on the fact that there has been a new term invented -- "Punctuated Equilibrium" -- Why? Because the fossil record simply does not support the evolutionary scenario.
Lie. Read Gould and Eldredge.
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14) You have been shown two modern day examples of debris dams bursting and forming canyons, one of them cutting vertical walls in hard rock.
See 10)
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15) You have been shown how uniformitarians laughed at Harlan Bretz for 60 years before finally agreeing that he was right--that the Palouse Canyon was formed catastrophically.
See 10)
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16) You have been shown that incised meanders require soft sediments.
Lie. And see 10)
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17) You have been shown these and many other things which support the hypothesis that the Grand Canyon was formed during the receding phase of the Flood.
Lie.
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18) You have been shown that the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase have been dated by fossils, not radiometrically as we are led to believe.
There are 14 items listed on that page, each one purportedly showing 'problems' with the long-age of the earth.
None of those 14 paragraphs, not one, produces any set of data, based on research. And that research reinforced by further research, reinforced by tests on the research, and tests on the research of the research, etc. You know, science. Most of them contain vagueries and approximations, based on not very much seeing as no data sets are presented.
One of them (the sixth item, the earth's magnetic field is decaying 'too fast' ) even suggests that the age of the earth cannot be more than 20,000 yrs old. Hardly direct, precise evidence for a 6,000 year old earth now is it.
Now what I originally asked for was a direct scientific dating method showing that the age of the earth is 6,000 years old. Y'know, something simple, like an ice-core that has a number of annual rings in it, and all one has to do is count the number of rings to get an idea of the age of history.
Is there any such direct dating method, or is all there is just AIG picking holes in several of the many thousands of data points showing the long-age of the earth?
A stalagmite normally grows 0.1 to 0.3 mm per years in moderate climate zones. This means a step of 20cm needed 2,000 years of continual growth to form
Not that yet another method is needed to date teh earth older then 6000 years, but here it is.
So, 2k years = 20cm. Therefore there are no 61cm long stalagmite's then Dave? As they have not yet had time to form, right? Is that something you'd agree with? If not, why not?
Oh, and i'm sure you'll be happy to note that some can be correlated with and match tree ring growth (i.e climate changes).
Oh, and for future reference, your list of "answers" would have had somewhat more credibility if you added permalinks to each point, linking to where you "showed" the evidence for each item. Not much more, but you wont want to do that because if you start doing that it'll be even easier to see that your answers were just handwaving. Dont agree? Then go back and edit that post and add the links to where you provided the evidence in previous posts (like you SAID you have). Or was that a lie?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Snelling and friends have recognized that recent and historic lavas, particularly on oceanic islands, yield incredibly old radioisotopic “ages”. They cite 17 studies in the RATE Book 2000, including one as late as 1997 by Esser, et. al.) (0.7 Ma to 700 Ma on historic flows! They recognized it and confirmed it with their own samples.
17 studies is essentially zero compared to the number of studies that were done and agree with other methods that are not susceptible to a problem of excess initial daughter.
Quote
There is no fraud here, JonF. Why are you quibbling about xenoliths? Would the "ages" have come out younger if xenoliths were excluded?
Yes, and the error bars probably would have included zero age. (Of course, you have no idea what that means or its significance).
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(BTW--is is not even conclusive that the supposed xenoliths are actually xenoliths at all) Maybe. Maybe not.
It's conclusive, Davie-poo. All the literature on the volcanos of NewZealand acknowledges the xenoliths. And, of course, Snelling does too:
"Two modal analyses are listed in Table 3 which very closely resemble the samples collected for this study.
Steiner [63] stressed that xenoliths are a common constituent of the 1954 Ngauruhoe lavas, but also noted that Battey [3] reported the 1949 Ngauruhoe lava was rich in xenoliths. All samples in this study contained xenoliths, including those from the 1975 avalanche material.
Go tell Snelling there weren't any xenoliths, Davie-pie!
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Do we care in this case? No.
Yes. We care. Fraud is fraud, Davie-pie.
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Because we are not trying to get a precise "date" of creation of the lava.
Doesn't matter what you are trying to get, Davie-poots, doesn't matter at all. Snelling purposefullly used invalid laboratory techniques, and the only conclusion that can be drawn from that is that Snelling is a fraud.
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But you want to exclude the xeonliths? OK Fine. Exclude the xenoliths. What would they have gotten then? Answer: Probably not much different. Why? Well look at the 17 other studies cited in the RATE 2000 Book. Most of them are from historic lava flows and they report everything from 0.7 Ma to 700 Ma!!
And look at Dalrymple's table reproduced at Ar-Ar Dating Assumes There Is No Excess Argon?; 26 recent lava flows and 18 of them did not have excess argon. We know that the K-Ar method is susceptible to excess argon; that's why it's applied to carefully selected samples and cross-checked with methods that are not susceptible to such problems when possible. But K-Ar dating is well understood and low cost, so it's still useful.
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Did they exclude xenoliths? Some did. Some did not.
Prove it, Davie-poodles. Let's see your evidence that some did not exclude xenoliths. Many lavas do not contain xenoliths.
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Look here. JonF is just trying to confuse people. The truth is that there probably ARE NO xenoliths in the Snelling samples. It's debatable.
You're starting to foam at the mouth, Davie-dip; see above. There were xenoliths in the samples.
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If they are, so what? All this means is that instead of the samples being dated at 724.5 to 1453.3 Ma, the numbers would have been somewhat different.
Yup, that's the point.
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But the thing is ... Millionsofyearianism is shown once again to be a joke ... either way!! Fine. Let's give you a really long rope and say the samples would have been dated at 10 Ma with the "xenoliths" excluded. You still hang yourself by the neck!
Your fantasies about what the results of excluding xenoliths might have been are not evidence.
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Of course Geochron says they cannot reliably date young samples! Why? Because they have excess argon, of course.
No, Geochron cannot date young samples because their instruments can't resolve the tiny amount of radiogenic argon in such samples. Many young samples do not have excess argon; see Dalrymple's table linked above. Of course, nobody's instruments today can resolve the amount of radiogenic argon in Snelling's samples. But this has no implications for dating ancient flows.
You still haven't addressed the facts:
Xenoliths are older pieces of rock embedded in younger rock.
There were xenoliths in all of Snelling's samples, your rabid opium dreams notwithstanding.
Dating a rock containing containing xenoliths with a whole-rock method gives a meaningless result, a weighted average of the ages of the components.
Snelling knows this.
Snelling did not mention this effect in his paper on Ngauruhoe.
This effect is the obvious reason for the results obtained.
Spanked for 170 pages? You guys have been blown away, but you are too blind and committed to Millionsofyearsianism to see it...And I just put this list together from memory in about 5 minutes. I will put together a more extensive list soon.
Well, let's see how good your memory is. I'll just use the first three items in your list...oh, and feel free to try to compile a more detailed extensive one, since that can be just as easily shown filled with lies, too.
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1) I showed you how "whale evolution" doesn't support evolution.
Not in this thread you didn't. Please cite the relevant page number in this thread.
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2) I showed you in detail how ridiculous it is to say that apes and humans have a common ancestor. No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at.
Er, you were told genetics and fossil data. The genetic data includes studies done on the now-available complete genomes of both humans and chimps. You were told about chromosome fusion,GULO, etc., and you were told to do your own homework, too. See page 21, this thread
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3) I showed you the details of the RATE Helium diffusion experiment--another serious challenge to conventional earth ages, yet Deadman wants to perpetuate Henke's distortion about zircons being tested under pressure even though he was clearly shown why it is not the same as testing soft micas.
Beginning at page 35 of this thread and up to about page 100 at various places, JonF, myself and others didn't just **say** how how pressure affects testing, you were shown that materials harder than zircon -- such as quartz and Pyrex glass -- has higher diffusion rates of helium at high pressures. You were given multiple evidences of how flawed Humphrey's claims were: He cherry-picked data, altered it, claimed he got zircons from a depth that he could not have, he never offered a temp/pressure history of the region...you were shown he misidentified the rock in which the zircons were found, you were shown humphreys ignored high levels of external helium in the area, you were shown evidence of recent volcanic events and how helium can be transported at those times, while heat causes permeability of the zircons, which were highly damaged and "metamict" You were shown that Helium testing can detect isotopes and that Humphreys, along with the other fraud he perpetrated, lied to you about such ratio-testing being done.
As you can see, your "memory" seems a bit patchy and selective...in fact, it seems you're just lying and delusional.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The radioactive potassium-argon dating method has been demonstrated to fail on 1949, 1954, and 1975 lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, in spite of the quality of the laboratory’s K–Ar analytical work. Argon gas, brought up from deep inside the earth within the molten rock, was already present in the lavas when they cooled. We know the true ages of the rocks because they were observed to form less than 50 years ago. Yet they yield ‘ages’ up to 3.5 million years which are thus false. How can we trust the use of this same ‘dating’ method on rocks whose ages we don’t know? If the method fails on rocks when we have an independent eye-witness account, then why should we trust it on other rocks where there are no independent historical cross-checks?
Guess who wrote that, davesy? And guess where?
Nah, "guessing" would require actual brainwork on your behalf, let alone looking it up... So, there you go:
See how that article's called, dave? See who wrote it? Your friend Snelling, that's who. Now, what is it you said he didn't want to do? He didn't want to question the validity of K-Ar dating? Yup. Riiiiiight. So you see dave, nitpicking and going from one article to another won't help you, or your dishonest mentors. It's best that YOU actually read what your pal Snelling says, and try to understand the scam he tried to pull...
...But I doubt it.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
My character? I have been completely honest and up front, admitting my errors when I make them...I challenge anyone here who wants to portray me or my church as immoral to come and see for yourself. Get both sides of the story. Only cowards sling mud when they hear just one side
You lied in the very first sentence, Dave. You never admitted wrongdoing in lying about my religious views, my work with "jungle" groups, or many, many of the myriad examples of lies that you were caught in. In fact, your "list" of items you claim to have "shown" includes this:
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18) You have been shown that the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase have been dated by fossils, not radiometrically as we are led to believe
Yet you have been given over 80 radiometric dates, total, on layers in the Grand Staircase. You could be given hundreds, but you'd still lie and say "but the dates are only by fossils" And you also recently lied about your "bet" concerning "dates on the Morrison are only through igneous grains." I could go on and on, in fact, I have a list of your outright, knowing lies, including the four times you said "deadman tells me sedimentary layers can't be dated" despite me telling you each time to stop lying about what I said. FOUR TIMES....but you're not *deliberately* lying? HAHAHA.
Now, since you feel that it's important for folks to get both sides of the story...I'd like your agreement that I can print out a copy of this thread...excise the salty language and distribute it to your fellow church-goers, so they can get both sides of the story.
Would that be agreeable to you now? I said earlier that I didn't feel you important enough to damage your life, but if you'll agree to this, then I'll be quite happy to show what a liar and perverter of "truth" that you are.
Care to respond directly, Dave?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, I'm getting tired waiting for you to take your microscope out of your ***.
Should I formulate my objection again? This very image completly annihilate your young Earth, Flud, hence Goddidit hypothesis.
So Dave, how a event that occured within a few days some 5000 years ago produced basalts whose levels of radionuclids indicate ages ranging from 0 to 135+ Myears, in a coherent symetrical pattern from the ridge to the shores, and which happen to match the current rate of divergence between the continents, as measured by satellites ?
You can halt your babbling about the Grand Staircase, or about anything else actually. As long as you can't provide an explanation for this picture, your credibility remains zero. My bet is that you'll NEVER be able to answer this.
http://shurl.org/davetard It just links to this page of the thread. TinyURL seems faulty atm. But far handier to distribute on scraps of paper etc. Nobody make one like
http://shurl.org/kids4lies and put it in the small ad's now will ya? ( links to daves "you JUST DONT GET IT" froth at the mouth")
Far handier to distribute then the mighty tome this thread would be printed out deadman_932, even with the salty language expunged! think of the trees!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
6) You were shown how your own site which you love (Talk Origins) supports the Michael Denton observation that the cosmos is finely tuned for life, and specifically for mankind
Opinion? Not a scientific evidence.
And also a lie. dave has systematically and willfully ignored the third paragraph down from where he quoted, where TO explains that the hypothetical "creation" of a universe within physical parameters that would support creation of stars (and perhaps life) does NOT rely on the existence of multiple Universes. I (literally) pointed that out almost a dozen times, and he acted as if my posts didn't exist.
That was the time I started to realize he was NOT an open-minded inquisitive individual, as he proclaimed, but a dishonest and deceiving person, who wasn't going to provide anything substantial to this forum... Except entertainment, of course.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Since most of these 178 pages has been spent with Dave attempting to pick holes in accepted scientific evidence in many, many disciplines, has he ever actually presented any scientific evidence (ie not from the bible) for a ~ 6,000 yr old earth? Especially as this is supposed to be his Creator God Hypothesis.
Because writing appeared about 5000 years ago! Prehistory is inconceivable. We know that this is when writing appeared because radiometric dating tells us so. And Dave agrees, radiometric dating is reliable. Or something. Brain off, Tim. Brain off.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Dave I think you might be up for the "Wishful Thinking of the Year" award here at AtBC. "Blown away?" Right. Sure. I doubt the most partisan Young-Earth Creationist on the planet could read this thread and think you've blown anyone's arguments away. And, more to the point, you've presented exactly no support for your own "hypothesis," which supposedly was the point of this whole thread.
So let's tale your assertions one by one and see what the real story is:
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 04 2006,06:42)
1) I showed you how "whale evolution" doesn't support evolution.
Um, No. You did no such thing, Dave. In fact, I don't even remember you even discussing anything about whale evolution, let alone showing how it doesn't support evolution. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to post a link to the page where you discussed it. But even if you had, that's a long, long way from affirmative evidence in support of your "hypothesis." Even if the Theory of Evolution were totally wrong, that would say absolutely nothing about whether your "hypothesis" is right.
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2) I showed you in detail how ridiculous it is to say that apes and humans have a common ancestor. No one has ever showed me how the LCA date of 8 my was arrived at.
What, by posting pictures of chimps and humans and saying they look nothing like each other? That's "showing us in detail"? I don't think so, Dave. The evidence that humans and chimps are not only related, but more closely related than humans are to any other organisms, is conclusive. You couldn't even understand the evidence in support of that conclusion, let alone disprove it. In the meantime, Incorygible explained in exquisite detail exactly how the time back to the LCA of humans and chimps was derived, but somehow you managed to miss that whole discussion, even after he posted it twice. But even if that explanation were completely wrong, that would provide no support whatsoever for your "hypothesis."
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3) I showed you the details of the RATE Helium diffusion experiment--another serious challenge to conventional earth ages, yet Deadman wants to perpetuate Henke's distortion about zircons being tested under pressure even though he was clearly shown why it is not the same as testing soft micas.
Wrong again, Dave. JonF obliterated your claims over and over again, and showed how even if Humphreys were totally right in his claims, at most that would amount to an interesting anomaly, and wouldn't even begin to overthrow the hundreds of thousands of concordant results obtained by multiple radiometric methods worldwide. But his claims were not right, and you were shown exactly why they were wrong. But even if they were wrong, that would provide exactly no support for your young-earth creationism, because you've never been able to come up a single method that produces a date of 6,000 years ± even 3,000 years.
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4) You were shown how geologists have been completely surprised to find too much C14 in coal and diamonds. If they are so old, it shouldn't be there.
You showed no such thing, Dave. Half a dozen people explained to you exactly why you cannot date quarter of a billion year old coal seams with a dating technique that is known not to work beyond 50,000 years, and you were told exactly why it doesn't work beyond 50,000 years. And guess what? The results obtained still blow away your claim that the earth is only 6,000 years old. You have not provided any single methodology for dating anything that produces a date of 6,000 years. So even if your claims about C14 dating were correct, they would still provide exactly no support for your "hypothesis."
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5) You were shown how leading evolutionists already admit "apparent design" in nature, yet they are so blind they (and you) say it is only a mirage
Dave, are you ever going to understand the difference between "apparent design" and "designed"? What you think looks like it was "designed," I may not. Does a bat's wing look designed to you? Because it sure doesn't to me. Nor does a tree, nor does a mitochondrion. That's why argument by analogy doesn't work, and that's why when Behe said at the Dover trial, "Life looks designed because it was designed," the court was completely unimpressed.
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6) You were shown how your own site which you love (Talk Origins) supports the Michael Denton observation that the cosmos is finely tuned for life, and specifically for mankind
Dave, if the cosmos was "finely tuned for life," then why is it that, as far as we can tell, the only place in the entire universe, of which we can see almost 14 billion light years in any direction, where life can exist is right here on earth? If the universe were designed with life in mind, then why isn't there life everywhere? It looks to me as if God dislikes life so much he made it practically impossible for it to exist.
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7) You were shown how the observed phenomenon of Universal Morality supports the God Hypothesis
You didn't even begin to show this, Dave. You weren't even able to show that a universal moral code exists. You yourself admitted that under certain circumstances you would be willing to put women and children to death if ordered to do so. Is that part of your "universal moral code"? If so, how do you personally feel about abortion? Gay Marriage? Illegal drugs? Because I'm in favor of all three. I believe all three can be moral choices almost all the time. So much for your "universal moral code."
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8) You were shown with fruit flies, bacteria and other organisms how macroevolution simply does not occur and has never been observed.
Dave, macroevolution happens all the time, and overwhelming evidence that it happens is available in the fossil record. We don't see fruitflies evolving into something else within a human lifetime for reasons that any idiot can understand. You, on the other hand, clearly believe in ultra-mega-ultimo-superbo-fantasico-macroevolution, because you believe that a single monkey "kind" evolved into over two hundred species of monkeys in less than 5,000 years. So are you sure you don't believe in macroevolution? But even if macroevolution had in fact never happened, that wouldn't even begin to amount to evidence in favor of your "hypothesis."
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9) You were shown how the Genesis Record is not an oral tradition, but is in reality a carefully written, eye-witness account and predates the Gilgamesh Epic and other heathen distortions.
Dave, you made this claim. You were never able to support it with a single piece of evidence, and the contrary evidence is so overwhelming that it beggars belief that someone living in the 21st Century could possibly believe it. Genesis underestimates the age of the earth by six orders of magnitude, just to take one example of where it is wrong.
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10) You were shown the most obvious and persuasive evidence ever given to any generation of the truth of a Global Flood--Millions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth.
Right, Dave. Do you think if you tell us this often enough, we'll eventually believe it? You've given exactly no reason why it's more plausible that all these fossils, which are laid down in exactly the order expected by evolution and not even close to the order expected by "flood geology," were all laid down in one massive deluge rather than over millions to billions of years. This is just one of the more than fifty questions you've never even tried to answer. You've been asked this one question at least ten times, and so far you've acted like you've never even heard it.
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11) You were shown how many leading geologists have now reluctantly become catastrophists because of the goading of creationists to observe the actual evidence.
Dave, would you characterize an asteroid or comet strike as a typically "uniformitarian" process? Yet it was proponents of standard theories of geology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology who first compiled evidence for the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs, not creationists. The fact that you simply do not understand the difference between castrophists and uniformitarians in the context of evolutionary biology and geology lends exactly zero support to your "hypothesis."
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12) You have been shown that your "convincing fossil record" consists of only 13% of the entire supposed geologic time. I should show you how much of that occurs in the "Cambrian Explosion"
Dave, the oldest extant fossils (fossil stromatolites) go back to 3.8 billion years ago. Is that 13% of the time the earth has existed? Do you believe the earth is 30 billion years old? And what kind of fossils would you expect to find anyway from 3 billion or so years ago? Multicellular life didn't even appear until less than a billion years ago, and very little of that life would be expected to fossilize anyway.
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13) We touched on the fact that there has been a new term invented -- "Punctuated Equilibrium" -- Why? Because the fossil record simply does not support the evolutionary scenario.
Do you think "punctuated equilibrium" somehow falsified evolutionary biology, Dave? Do you even know what the term means? "Punk Eak" was propounded by, among others, Stephen Jay Gould, over 30 years ago. Do you think Mr. Gould disputes the reality of evolution?
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14) You have been shown two modern day examples of debris dams bursting and forming canyons, one of them cutting vertical walls in hard rock.
And you have been shown exactly how those canyons differ in specific and expected ways from Canyons that take millions of years to form. You simply refuse to admit that there are differences, despite the fact that everyone else here can clearly see them. But even if it were true that, say, the Grand Canyon could have formed in a year or two, that provides no support whatsoever for your young-earth "hypothesis," because you've provided no method whatsoever for dating the Grand Canyon, despite having been asked multiple times to provide one.
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15) You have been shown how uniformitarians laughed at Harlan Bretz for 60 years before finally agreeing that he was right--that the Palouse Canyon was formed catastrophically.
And that has what to do with the Grand Canyon, Dave? Even proving that some canyons can form quickly doesn't even begin to say that all canyons form quickly, and the evidence that the Grand Canyon formed over millions of years is utterly conclusive.
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16) You have been shown that incised meanders require soft sediments.
Dave, you've been shown how wrong you are on this point eight ways from Sunday. The "meanders" you're talking about were formed in soft sediments by the Mississippi. Did the Mississippi river form a canyon? Did the Mississippi form a canyon through hard metamorphic and igneous rock?
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17) You have been shown these and many other things which support the hypothesis that the Grand Canyon was formed during the receding phase of the Flood.
Dave, none of these things support the notion that the Grand Canyon was formed quickly, let alone a mere 4,500 years ago, and the contrary evidence obliterates your "hypothesis." Moreover, you've never even been able to come up with a source for water for your flood! How do you get a flood without any water, Dave? And how do you get 5,000 feet of sediment out of 5,000 feet of water? Was this a "global flood," or a "global mudslide"?
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18) You have been shown that the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase have been dated by fossils, not radiometrically as we are led to believe
Making a claim and supporting that claim are two entirely different things, Dave. You've never been able to support your claim that no Grand Staircase strata can be dated radiometrically, you've been given at least 80 sources to examples of radiometric dating of various strata, which you just ignore in the hopes that no one else will notice. And in the meantime, even if it were true that none of the Grand Staircase strata could be dated radiometrically, that would provide not the slightest ghost of a sliver of a particle of an atom of evidence in support of your "hypothesis." As I've pointed out at least a dozen times now, you have not been able to provide a single methodology to date the Grand Staircase strata at all, let alone a methodology that provides dates that converge on 4,500 years ago, or any other date for that matter.
So your "list" was just obliterated in the time it took to type this up, Dave, which admittedly was a lot more than 5 minutes, but I guarantee you it will take a lot less than five minutes to repost some, but by no means all, of the questions you have never been able to answer:
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(1) Why can't you provide a means of falsifying your "hypothesis?" This is your job, not that of others. (2) You admit you've never seen the supposedly "inerrant" originals of the bible . So-first-how do you know they're "inerrant"? Because the admittedly flawed copies tell you so? And you believe them why? From PuckSR, p.124 (3) I asked you what was equivocal about the clearly discounted Tyre prophecy, and you all you have done is ignore my questions...for thirty days (from 7_Popes) p.124 (4) How is the dendrochronology for Catal Huyuk wrong? (5) Who do you think had syphilis on the ark? (6) If Noah and his little group were the only humans left, can you calculate for me the average number of children each female would have to have in order to achieve the population levels we have today...in 4,356 years?? (7) How much water was involved in the flood, Dave? Estimate of the amount of water that was underground, and how deep was it? Was it spread uniformly under the crust, or was it in localised (and deep) reservoirs? (8) You claim that humans have been literate since your flood. How come none of them had anything to say about an ice age that froze most of the planet solid? How come there's no independent evidence of it from any written source? (9) Identify precisely the source for the "waters of the deep" Dave. point to any geology references that show this "layer of water" existed under the crust. (10) Why are there so many profitable companies that use the Old Earth paradigm as the basis for a successful business case? (11) Why is there not a single company anywhere in the world that uses your 6000 year old Young Earth paradigm as the basis for a business case? (12) How did those tracks get in the coconino sandstone in the midst of a raging flood that deposited billions MORE tons of sediment on top of the sandstone? Sandstone can't "dry" in the middle of a flood that continues to deposit layers under a "water canopy", Dave. Nor would those animals survive UNDERWATER, nor would their tracks survive the pressure of the layers above on the wet sandstone during the "flood year" (13) Layers should have SOME animals in them jumbled up *everywhere* dave. There should be dinos with modern rhinos, with deinotheriums and giant sloths, with Devonian amphibians...yet we don't see that. "Hydraulic sorting" won't do, Dave..or claims that mammals are "more mobile"-- this is utter nonsense. (14) Why are certain species of animals (fossilized trilobites) found in the lowermost layers, while others of the same approximate size and shape (fossilized clams) can be found at the top layers, even at the top of Mt. Everest? Did the clams outrun the trilobites in the race uphill from the flood waters? (15) Fossils of brachiopods and other sessile animals are also present in the Tonto Groupof the Grand Canyon. How could organisms live and build burrows in such rapidly deposited sediments? (16) If "Noah's Flood" transported the brachiopods into the formations, how would relatively large brachiopods get sorted with finer grained sediments? Why aren't they with the gravels? (17) Where's your evidence that those tens of millions of species radiated from the several hundred species of organisms that could possibly have fit on the ark, all in the space of a few thousand years? Ultra-mega-hyper-macroevolution, at rates millions of times faster than proposed by the Theory of Evolution? (18) Where did all that sediment come from? (Hint: it didn't wash down from the mountains) Where did it go? (19) Eric (p.129) notes: The continents are covered by an average of 6,000 meters of sediment. How does your 5,000-foot deep flood produce 6,000 meters of sediment? (20) Where did all that water in your ‘global flood run-off’---run off to? (21) Explain the presence of eolian and evaporite deposits between fluvial or marine deposits, carbonate and dolomite deposits, coal, and why there are clear cycles of regression and transgression present in the rock record allowing for things like sequence stratigraphy to be done. (22) Why are large shale formations consistently oxidized and red while others are consistently black and unoxidized? (23) How did the Mile-High cliffs of the Grand Canyon harden enough in ONE YEAR so that they didn't SLUMP under the weight of the deposits over them? (24) If there was extensive volcanic activity following the flood, why are there no large ash layers or igneous layers in the upper Canyon stratigraphy showing it? (25) Explain PRECISELY how the incised meanders, oxbows and the steep sides of the Grand Canyon were formed, given that these meanders are not in Mississipian-type soils, but through rock, including the igneous base schist (obviously , that is not "soft ") (26) You said that there was only one land mass before the Flood, correct? this would mean that Africa and North America moved away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer per HOUR per the Morris/Austin scenarios, Dave. What would that heat do? Where did that energy go? Why do we still have ANY oceans? (27) Why on earth do you want living dinosaurs in your timeline at the end of the flood ? When did they die out? (28) Why isn't plutonium-239 found to naturally occur? It has a good 20,000 year half-life, or thereabout, and could easily exist from the point of creation. Certainly we have any number of radioactive elements, but other than the ones that are produced by ongoing processes, we find none that wouldn't have disappeared to undetectable levels within 4 and a half billion years (29) Please explain the Oklo natural nuclear reactor (30) Why don't we see evidence of fast sea-floor spreading paleomagnetically? Remember, Africa and the Americas have to be FLYING away from each other at the rate of 1 kilometer PER HOUR. (31) Why does the magnetic dating of oceanic basalts show a longer period of time than your flood claim, Dave? (32) Why is the basalt cooler the further away you move from the rift zones? Calculate rates of cooling for basalt. (33) Why don't we see evidence of your massive flood and "tsunamis" in the deep-sea cores? (34) Why don't we see evidence of your massive volcanic activity, and carbon dioxide levels and HEAT in the ice cores? (35) Why don't we see disruption of the varves? (36) Why are mountains near each other differentially eroded if they were all formed at the same time in your "theory?" (37) Dave says that the rocky mountain- andes form a north-south chain that was created by rapid movement of the plates. Quote I say they moved away from the Mid-Ocean Ridge, then stopped rather suddenly. This caused folding and thickening onthe leading edge of the plate and generated massive quantities of heat and pressure leading to metamorphism. > This does not explain the east-west tending ranges of the Americas, Eurasia and Africa (himalayas, atlas mts., transverse ranges). Dave was asked: Did those continents STOP TWICE? IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS? IN ONE YEAR? (38) JonF noted that such rapid movements of plates and "sudden stopping" would melt the rock. Dave doesn't give a response or answer to that little problem. (39) Precisely how were the Vertebrae Ridge mountains you posted...metamorphosed? (40) Dave said that as the continents shifted the layers were folded, heated (and metamorphosed) and uplifted, all in a very short time span. He claimed "These are all very well-understood processes and this is a very plausible scenario". I asked Dave to show me references for this "well understood process " in regard to the Vertebrae Ridge gneiss. He failed to answer p.125 (41) How did the iridium layer between the Cretaceous and the Tertiary appear within flood waters... the iridium layer is especially interesting, since it is global. How could iridium segregate markedly into a single thin layer...and why does the iridium layer "just happen" to date to the same time as the Chicxulub crater? (42) The Arizona Barringer Meteor penetrates the Permian Kaibab and Toroweap Formations and has caused shock effects on the Coconino Sandstone. Because the crater penetrates Permian strata, it is Permian or younger. And since the crater contains some Pleistocene lake deposits, it is Pleistocene or older. The Geomorphology of the crater itself indicates only a small amount of erosion. The Crater is dated at 49,000 years old. Explain this, DaveStupid. (43) Did the earth cool down several hundred degrees in 6000 years or so? Please explain the thermodynamics of such a cooling process. (44) Dave, since this is supposedly your "hypothesis" we're talking about here, how do you date the Grand Canyon? (45) How was a canyon is carved in limestone and buried under 17000 feet of sediment in the Tarim Basin in far western China?That's over three miles deep of overlying rock and soil for the mathematically challenged Fundies out there. (46) I'm incredibly interested in how the Kaibab was formed in your model, Dave. Tell me how limestone was preferentially deposited in that layer. How is it that calcium carbonate was deposited in a flood, with the turbidity of a flood? (47) Dave claimed ( p.138, this thread) that only 3 radiometric dates had been given him, then that only three layers were dated. I asked: "okay, dave shithead...you said that I only provided three radiometric dates...want to make a gentleman's agreement on that? I'll bet you that I have given you much more than that. I will leave this forum and proclaim your victory if I am wrong." And: "Okay, let's switch it to your claim that only three layers have been dated, DaveShithead...want a gentleman's agreement on that? I'll not only leave this forum, but I'll pay for my plane ticket to your church and proclaim in front of them how I was wrong...IF I am wrong. In return--if you are wrong, you will get in front of your group at church and film it while you say you were wrong, begging my forgiveness, and post it on the internet here. Cowardly Dave refused to answer. (48) Explain the Paleosols we see in the Grand Staircase (49) Explain the buried vertical Yellowstone forests that have paleosols between them (50) Why do you choose to lie deliberately so much, MaggotDave?
There. That took all of a minute.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Bfish ... "Accelerated evolution" of fruit flies has produced
1) Dead fruit flies 2) Mangled fruit flies 3) Mutant fruit flies
No SUPER-fruit flies. No bigger, better fruit flies.
In a word. FAILURE.
OK, that rings a bell as what you said before. So that is the alpha and omega of your comments about Drosophila research. A bare assertion with no supporting arguments.
Unfortunately, what you have written is not enough for anyone to evaluate your argument. What experiment, or set of experiments, are you talking about here? What were the experimental objectives? What were the results. What lab or labs did the experiments?
I tell you, you unbelievers have been blown away, but you are too blind and committed to Millionsofyearsianism to see it. In the name of the One True God, my mission shall be a relentless pursuit of the truth and a tireless walk through the points of my Creator God Hypothesis. You Atheist evilutionists have been crushed like sand fleas by the camel, and run begging for God's mercy. As I have been completely honest and up front, admitting my errors when I make them, but I have made none.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
"Accelerated evolution" of fruit flies has produced....blah blah blah
Whereas evolution produced.....flies that eat fruit.
.......And pesticide resistant fruit flies.
gee AFD ......you like a good whipping don't you?
Into S&M are you?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Thanks DM I always confuse the Kakapo with the Kea.
The NZ Kea is renowned for it's complete disregard for the proper treatment of cars and camping equipment. While I was last visiting my home country, we parked at Franz Joseph Glacier on the West Coast of the South Island. A flock of friendly and cheeky Keas permanently inhabit the car park and scrounge for food. They break car antennas, pull out the rubber door seals with their beaks, are quite fearless, behave quite comically and seem to have real attitude. They will walk right up to you and peck at your shoes if you let them. I have heard stories of campers returning to their camp sites in the mountains to find their tents and sleeping bags shredded.
This from wiki.
Quote
They (Kea) are probably one of the most active, intelligent, destructive and playful parrots, making them prone to behavioral problems and boredom in captivity if not well cared for.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Dave, how far do you think Drosophila would be expected to evolve in, say, 150 years, given that they probably haven't changed much in the past 150 million years? Do you honestly think anyone other than an ignorant creationist is surprised or dumbfounded by the fact that macroevolution (meaning, as you apparently mean it, evolution beyond the genus level) has never been observed in the lab? "Why Is a Fly Not a Horse" has got to be one of the dumbest questions ever asked by a creationist. Any highschool biology student should be able to tell you why a fly cannot evolve into a horse.
And again, it's clear you actually believe (without, evidently, even realizing it) in fantastically accelerated macroevolution, whereby a single monkey "kind" evolves in a few millennia into the over 200 species that currently exist. How many "kinds" do you suppose there were on Noah's alleged ark? There are at least 10,000,000 different species of organisms currently in existence, what's left of probably a hundred times that number that have ever existed, and you evidently believe they've all evolved from—how many? yet another question you cannot answer—100? 1,000? 10,000—kinds?
This is just one of multiple examples of how incoherent, internally inconsistent and irredeemably self-contradictory your "hypothesis" really is. In order for one to believe your "hypothesis," one would have to believe that half a dozen or more mutually exclusive things would all be true.
And you somehow think your "hypothesis" is a "better" explanation for observation than orthodox theories. Obviously you have a very convoluted understanding of what the term "better" means.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Quote 18) You have been shown that the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase have been dated by fossils, not radiometrically as we are led to believe
uh, didn't dunderhead at one point (several, actually), agree that 2, no 5, no 3 (yeah, that's the ticket) layers had actually been radiometrically dated, and try to claim that since only "3" layers had been dated, this somehow supported his suppostions in some illogical fashion?
so hasn't he already countered 18 all by himself?
not that he hasn't spent lots of time contradicting himself all over the place, but that was the first to jump to mind.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
A stalagmite normally grows 0.1 to 0.3 mm per years in moderate climate zones. This means a step of 20cm needed 2,000 years of continual growth to form
Not that yet another method is needed to date teh earth older then 6000 years, but here it is.
So, 2k years = 20cm. Therefore there are no 61cm long stalagmite's then Dave? As they have not yet had time to form, right? Is that something you'd agree with? If not, why not?
Quite coincidentally, I visited Meramec Caverns in Stanton, MO this weekend. The tour, which only did a brief flyby of anything that smelled of science, was interesting nonetheless. Near the end of the tour, we were shown a stalagmite that was 28 feet tall and 500 feet around at it's base. The only reason it wasn't taller was that it basically ran into ceiling of the chamber it formed in. I'm not particularly motivated to do the math of how long that would take to form, but at 0.1 to 0.3 mm per year, it must be somewhere around "a whole bunch!"
Stanton is only about a 4-5 hour drive from Kansas City, if anyone (*ahem*) wants to see for themselves.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
I see that Faid has adopted the technique of trying to refute the conclusions of a DIFFERENT Snelling paper (1999) than the one I am currently discussing while trying to make people think he is refuting the 2003 paper. Hmmm ... interesting technique, Faid. I'll be happy to look into the 1999 paper, but kindly don't confuse my readers by pretending you are refuting the 2003 paper with supposed refutations of a 1999 paper.
JonF is still yelling "Fraud, fraud" while failing to see how completely irrelevant and silly his fraud claim is. But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ... so that leaves goofy techniques such as yelling "Fraud" just for the fun of it.
Thanks *ahem* for the hint about the Meramec Caverns. I'm always looking for fun stuff to do with the kids ... I'll go see the stalagtites.
I'm headed to the lake for two days ... sorry to disappoint! I know this will mean a quite boring Wednesday and Thursday for you!
I'll be back at it Friday morning and I will show you in detail why Snelling is right on and ...
JonF is, once again ... ALL WET!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
JonF is still yelling "Fraud, fraud" while failing to see how completely irrelevant and silly his fraud claim is. But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ... so that leaves goofy techniques such as yelling "Fraud" just for the fun of it.
Dave, why is it that everyone else here can see exactly what JonF is saying, understands his argument perfectly, and can see why it completely invalidates Snelling's argument? Is there some particular reason for your blind spot?
Of course there is: it's impossible to make a man understand something when his religious beliefs depend on his not understanding it.
And have you noticed a pattern here with your attempts to refute every single radiometric date ever obtained? Have you noticed that they all involve using a radiometric dating technique in conditions under which said technique is already known not to work? Why do you suppose that is, Dave?
And in the meantime, the number of questions your "hypothesis" cannot answer grows ominously.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I see that Faid has adopted the technique of trying to refute the conclusions of a DIFFERENT Snelling paper (1999) than the one I am currently discussing while trying to make people think he is refuting the 2003 paper.
They are the same samples in both "papers".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
ShitForBrainsDave destroys every irony meter within a cubic parsec with:
Quote
But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ...
Like the way you "honestly" dealt with fact of the two dozen sequentially buried forests in Yellowstone Davie?
Or the way you "honestly" dealt with the facts about C14 calibration?
Or the way you "honestly" dealt with time for the formation of limestone?
Davie - Everyone here knows you are a scientific nincompoop and a compulsive liar who says whatever sounds good just to prop up your Zeppelin ego. Why do you even bother pretending to be anything else?
Deacon Dave Dawkins - Lying for Jesus and embarrassing honest Christians everywhere for over 5300 posts!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
JonF is still yelling "Fraud, fraud" while failing to see how completely irrelevant and silly his fraud claim is. But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ... so that leaves goofy techniques such as yelling "Fraud" just for the fun of it.
Yes, it's "goofy" to say that old rocks mixed with young rock will result in a wrong date for the young rock...
It's goofy to tell that to AirHeadDave the PantyDancer, who admits he knows virtually nothing about the issue.
It's goofier still to mention it to AirHead when AirHead already "knows" the date MUST be "right" because AirHead thinks he speaks for God.
By the way, genius, what's a "stalagtite?" Is that related to stalagmites and stalactites? (hint: "g" for "ground" and "c' for "ceiling" ) Idiot.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Snelling and friends have recognized that recent and historic lavas, particularly on oceanic islands, yield incredibly old radioisotopic “ages”. They cite 17 studies in the RATE Book 2000, including one as late as 1997 by Esser, et. al.) (0.7 Ma to 700 Ma on historic flows! They recognized it and confirmed it with their own samples. There is no fraud here, JonF. Why are you quibbling about xenoliths? Would the "ages" have come out younger if xenoliths were excluded? (BTW--is is not even conclusive that the supposed xenoliths are actually xenoliths at all) Maybe. Maybe not. Do we care in this case? No. Because we are not trying to get a precise "date" of creation of the lava. We are showing that the lava "dates" are not dates at all, but are merely a reflection of their parent material--the mantle source. But you want to exclude the xeonliths? OK Fine. Exclude the xenoliths. What would they have gotten then? Answer: Probably not much different. Why? Well look at the 17 other studies cited in the RATE 2000 Book. Most of them are from historic lava flows and they report everything from 0.7 Ma to 700 Ma!! Did they exclude xenoliths? Some did. Some did not.
Look here. JonF is just trying to confuse people. The truth is that there probably ARE NO xenoliths in the Snelling samples. It's debatable. If they are, so what? All this means is that instead of the samples being dated at 724.5 to 1453.3 Ma, the numbers would have been somewhat different.
But the thing is ... Millionsofyearianism is shown once again to be a joke ... either way!! Fine. Let's give you a really long rope and say the samples would have been dated at 10 Ma with the "xenoliths" excluded. You still hang yourself by the neck!
Now ... would you please repent and quit lying to schoolchildren?
Thanks again in advance!
**************************** FAID PROVES TO THE WORLD THAT HE DOESN'T EVEN READ THE PAPERS HE IS ATTEMPTING TO REFUTE.
Faid...
Quote
In short, Dr. Snelling 'evaluated' the K-Ar test using samples that he, not to mention everybody else in the business, would have known would produce bad results and then, on this basis alone, gave a failing grade to the K-Ar Method as a whole. But all he has really done is to generate another piece of evidence to the effect that Geochron cannot do what they explicitly say they cannot do. Dr. S. claims that the method as a whole is a failure and should be discarded, but this claim ignores large numbers of successful determinations on really old rocks that are in close agreement with other radiodating methods. From these considerations it is clear that Dr Snelling's "evaluation" is nothing more than the sheerest self-serving drivel.
Faid, my friend. Read Snelling's paper. His point is NOT to discredit K-Ar dating. Look at the title again ...
THE RELEVANCE OF Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd AND Pb-Pb ISOTOPE SYSTEMATICS TO ELUCIDATION OF THE GENESIS AND HISTORY OF RECENT ANDESITE FLOWS AT MT NGAURUHOE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RADIOISOTOPIC DATING
Now do you see anything about K-Ar dating anywhere there? Do you see anything in his whole paper where he criticised the K-Ar test? That's old news, friend. He's not criticising K-Ar here.
In fact, here's the relevant section from Snelling's paper ...
Quote
K-Ar ISOTOPE SYSTEMATICS Snelling [60] reported having obtained K-Ar model “ages” for these same samples of recent Mt Ngauruhoe andesite flows of <0.27 to 3.5 Ma. These “dates” could not be reproduced, even from splits of the same samples from the same flow. Indeed, Ar contamination at such low concentration levels is often expected, but this problem of excess 40Ar* in historic lava flows is still well documented in the literature. It was concluded that this excess 40Ar* had been inherited by these magmas during their genesis in the upper mantle, and therefore has no age significance.
So your criticism is completely irrelevant as is clearly shown above. Of course Geochron says they cannot reliably date young samples! Why? Because they have excess argon, of course. Are you really so blind as to think Snelling doesn't know this? He acknowledges it right there above. But he wanted the analysis anyway ... not because he's trying to show that K-Ar dating is flawed, but because he wants to show the correlation of the lava flow to the mantle source.
And he accomplished his goal, in spite of the fact that you and JonF apparently don't even understand what he is doing or what he is saying in the paper. Did you even read the paper?
Then you pull some irrelevant quote from some guy who ALSO does not even understand what Snelling did and accuses him of something totally bogus.
Wow, are you guys desperate or what??!!
*******************************
Bfish ... "Accelerated evolution" of fruit flies has produced
1) Dead fruit flies 2) Mangled fruit flies 3) Mutant fruit flies
No SUPER-fruit flies. No bigger, better fruit flies.
Hee hee. Silly, silly dave. Projection can't help you now.
Read my post again. Did I say I'm refuting the specific claims Snelling the Fraud did in your quote? Nope. I said that JonF has got that part pretty well covered, and I pointed you to a relevant site that I thought you might find interesting... And you would, dave, had you read it.
You see: Your honest Christian friend says this about his measurements, in one article:
Quote
How can we trust the use of this same ‘dating’ method on rocks whose ages we don’t know? If the method fails on rocks when we have an independent eye-witness account, then why should we trust it on other rocks where there are no independent historical cross-checks?
And he says this about the same measurements in another:
Quote
This apparent inconsistency merely indicates variation in the excess 40Ar* (radiogenic 40Ar) content. Such results were expected, as meaningful dates from historic lava flows are not usually obtained, which is recognised in the standard scientific literature [60, 61].
of course, the problem here is not the excess Argon (which may or may not exist), but the overall lack of sensitivity of the method. HOWEVER, Snelling obviously shows here that he is WELL AWARE that the K-Ar method cannot obtain meaningful results in recent samples, as all the scientific community does. So, in which article was he trying to lie to you dave? And WHO is dishonest?
If you ever manage to figure that out, Come back to me with accusations of dishonesty. In the meantime, kindly shut your mouth.
Now, as for your "rebuttal" of Jon's arguments, I eagerly await your response, AllWetDave. And while you're at it, try to read the actual article yourself, as you apparently have no idea what it says (and your original claims about the importance of the apparent old age of the rocks prove it). Also, spend some time understanding what "crust contamination" means, and what "xenoliths' are.
Good luck.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
I see that Faid has adopted the technique of trying to refute the conclusions of a DIFFERENT Snelling paper (1999) than the one I am currently discussing while trying to make people think he is refuting the 2003 paper. Hmmm ... interesting technique, Faid. I'll be happy to look into the 1999 paper, but kindly don't confuse my readers by pretending you are refuting the 2003 paper with supposed refutations of a 1999 paper.
JonF is still yelling "Fraud, fraud" while failing to see how completely irrelevant and silly his fraud claim is. But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ... so that leaves goofy techniques such as yelling "Fraud" just for the fun of it.
Thanks *ahem* for the hint about the Meramec Caverns. I'm always looking for fun stuff to do with the kids ... I'll go see the stalagtites.
I'm headed to the lake for two days ... sorry to disappoint! I know this will mean a quite boring Wednesday and Thursday for you!
I'll be back at it Friday morning and I will show you in detail why Snelling is right on and ...
JonF is, once again ... ALL WET!
and what will you say to the "kids" about the stalagtites dave? What's your story on those then? How will you twist it round to supporting your viewpoint? How damaged will those kids be after a couple of years of your poison?
And what difference does "what" paper (2003/1999) make, if what's under dicussion is the methodology?
I doubt anybody's confused somehow. Nobody's "pretending" to refute anything, it's *been* refuted.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
I'm reading this article on the AiG site about a dispute involving the dating of a piece of alleged fossilized wood embedded in sandstone dated to ~225 Mya (which I found from a link from the article Faid linked to). The date Geochron labs (evidently a commercial laboratory, not a research lab) came up with was ~34,000 years for the fossilized "wood." (Strangely, it doesn't seem to occur to AiG than a 34,000 year old date hurts their 6,000 year old young-earth "hypothesis" just as much as a 225 million year old date—it's still a date five times too old for their model to explain, and all by itself would invalidate the model).
But what struck me was AiG's accusations of breach of fiduciary duty to its customers leveled at Geochron labs. Does AiG think this is how science works? AiG evidently views the situation as Geochron improperly disclosing AiG's results to its "competitors."
Now, if science were purely a commercial enterprise, I could see AiG's point. But are they doing science here, or public relations? It looks to me like AiG is trying to hide their methodologies from peer review; why else would they object to Geochron's disclosure of the results they found?
Reading nothing else about the article (which appears to be mainly a response to an e-mail from a Geochron representative), it's pretty plain that AiG is hiding something. Given what has already been demonstrated about AiG's methods here and elsewhere, imagine my utter lack of surprise.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well, AFDave is going to be away for a few days, so I'll do my part to step in and play him. Here we go:
I see that Eric is attempting to smear my BY REFERENCING AIG WHICH I HAVE NEVER WORKED FOR. Hmmm ... Nice little backfire on yourself, isn't it Eric. Don't feel bad. Darwinists have nothing else to do but add homonyms to the discussion. Also I see your "scare" quotes around the word kids. What is it about kids that scares you? The fact that they can see through your evobot lies? Kidsfortruth must be making great inroads.
Oldmandarwinlies confuses one paper with a different paper. Hey Oldman, a does not equal b, okay? Geez, you guys could have used an expert self-taught logician like me before you embarrassed yourself. Oh well ... what's a Darwinist to do?
Thanks *ahem* for the hint about the Staligmites. But you should have done your own research first. Staligmites can grow virtually instantaneously!
Quote
‘Instant’ stalagmites!
by Don Batten
The photo records a large stalagmite shawl. A shawl is a limestone formation which has formed by running down the rock, rather than being free-standing like stalactites (which ‘stick tight’ because they hang from the roof) or stalagmites (which grow up from the ground).
Guides to limestone caves usually say that such large lumps of limestone take many thousands—even millions—of years to grow. However, this specimen was found in an abandoned gold mine tunnel near Burrendong Dam in central New South Wales, Australia. This is not far from Stuart Town, the town of ‘The Man from Iron Bark’ in A.B. (‘Banjo’) Paterson’s poem by the same name. stalagmite shawl
The Australian gold rushes began not far from here at Ophir in 1851, so the tunnel dates after that. Since the tunnel cuts through solid basalt rock, it was probably blasted out with a considerable amount of explosives. Such engineering feats were not undertaken by the average gold rush fossicker and so this tunnel almost certainly dates from considerably later than 1851. In any case, the tunnel and the shawl can be no older than about 140 years.
The horizontal tunnel is about 1.6 metres (about 5 feet) high and runs 50 metres (160 feet) straight into a hill. There are no side-tunnels, so the exploratory tunnel apparently failed to reveal any worthwhile gold-bearing veins. The shawl in the photo is near the inside end of the tunnel—in the middle of the hill.
The lesson? Stalactites and stalagmites do not need a long time to form!
Quote
Caving in to reality The shrinking ’age’ of stalactites and stalagmites.
by Carl Wieland
‘But don’t stalactites and stalagmites take millions of years to form?’ This is a very common question at Answers in Genesis seminars.
Most of us have ventured underground to see spectacular limestone formations like those pictured here. Guides commonly labour the point about the alleged ‘millions of years’ of slow and gradual formation—or at least they used to. Comments from supporters around the world indicate that caverns offering guided underground tours are becoming less confident about the belief that cave decorations need long ages to form. In fact, many have become notably silent about the whole subject.
Creationist publications, like this one, have undoubtedly contributed to this by putting photographic evidence for rapid formation of limestone cave structures into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people. So the average guide must contend with a fair chance that any tour party might contain at least one informed creationist—perhaps even armed with a relevant copy of Creation magazine. For example, the issue showing the stalagmite shawl in a mining tunnel less than 150 years old;1 or the very long stalactites and fair-sized stalagmites in a disused mining shaft;2 or the host of stalactites growing under the Australian War Memorial;3 or perhaps even the Western Australian waterwheel which was frozen in limestone after only 65 years!4
The change is also happening because, it seems, reality must eventually catch up with even the most cherished myth. A delightful recent article in a secular travel magazine5 about a journey down into an Arizona cave powerfully made this point.
The article concerned a descent into a cave called ‘S.P.’ near Sierra Vista, Arizona. It featured comments by and about Jerry Trout, a cave specialist with the Arizona Forest Service. Trout has been a high-school teacher and a geologist. The writer states, ‘What geologists used to believe was fact, in terms of dating a cave, now is speculation, Trout says.’
Trout is then quoted as saying:
‘“From 1924 to 1988, there was a visitor’s sign above the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns [New Mexico], that said Carlsbad was at least 260 million years old. In 1988 the sign was changed to read 7–10 million years old. Then, for a little while, the sign read that it was 2 million years old. Now the sign is gone.”’
The article continues:
‘In short, he [Trout] says, geologists don’t know how long cave development takes. And, while some believe that cave decorations such as S.P.’s beautiful icicle-looking stalactites took years to form, Trout says that through photo-monitoring, he has watched a stalactite grow several inches in a matter of days.’
This sort of thing should not surprise us, since we have the real history of the world in the infallible Word of the God who was there, and who never lies. It couldn’t have taken millions of years to form cave decorations—there simply hasn’t been anywhere near that much time! References
1. Creation 19(4):37, September 1997. 2. Creation 10(2):5, March 1988. 3. Creation 16(1):14–15, December 1993. 4. Creation 16(2):25, March 1994. 5. Arizona Highways, pp. 4–11, January 1993.
Anybody can see that you evobots have COMPLETELY IGNORED THOSE REFERENCES I PROVIDED. What were you trying to hide, mmmm? Afraid your department heads will realize he hired some F R A U D S ? I'll be unhappy when you are fired for incompetence, for letting a little ol untrained ace fighter pilot disprove all your 'science'.
Quote
Rapid stalactites
by Stephen Meyers and Robert Doolan
Those beautiful stone ‘icicles’ you see hanging from the ceiling of limestone caves are called stalactites (they ‘stay tight’ on the ceiling). The forms you see growing up from the cave floor are called stalagmites. When they meet, the joined pair becomes a column. Sheet-like layered deposits on cave walls or floors are called flowstone.
Although these fantastic features are commonly thought to represent perhaps tens of thousands of years or more of groundwater action,1 there is much evidence that they can form rapidly under certain conditions. For example, Sequoyah Caverns, south of Chattanooga at Valley Head, Alabama, has fast-growing formations. Director of the caverns, Clark Byers, cemented a clear plastic panel in front of some stalactites in April, 1977, to prevent tourists from breaking them off. In less than 10 years the stalactites grew about 25 centimetres (10 inches or one inch per year). On the ceiling of the cave, animal tracks can be seen, and there are fossils of many marine creatures—plus a bird fossil which looks like a chicken. In an interview in 1985, cavern director Byers made no secret of the fact that he believes these fossils are a result of Noah’s Flood.
So how fast can stalactites and stalagmites form? Bat Cave
In October 1953, National Geographic published a photo of a bat that had fallen on a stalagmite in the famous Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, and had been cemented on to it. The stalagmite had grown so fast it was able to preserve the bat before the creature had time to decompose.2
Stalactites many centimetres long are sometimes seen under modern-day bridges and in tunnels. Some stalactites have formed quickly in a tunnel in Raccoon Mountain, just west of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The tunnel was blasted through the mountain’s limestone rock to build a power plant in 1977. Water from the plant’s pump-turbines dissolves the limestone, and stalactites form rapidly.
At Australia’s Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, a lemonade bottle was placed below a continually active stalactite in the ‘Temple of Baal’ in 1954. In the following 33 years a coating of calcite about three millimetres thick has formed on the bottle. The same amount of deposit has formed since development in 1932 of the Ribbon Cave in the jenolan system. At this time pathways were cut through areas of flowstone. Water flowing down the sides of these cuttings over the past 55 years has built up the current deposit.
A photograph taken in February, 1968, shows a curtain of stalactites growing from the foundation ceiling beneath the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Some of the stalactites had grown to five feet long (a metre and a half) in the 45 years since the memorial was built in 1923.3
At jenolan Caves and many other places there are examples of stalactites and stalagmites developing from man-made structures. Like the Lincoln Memorial, the jenolan structures contain cement-mortar which is highly permeable, allowing these formations to develop rapidly. The resultant formation is quite powdery and brittle however. Slow Growth?
The growth rate of stalactites and stalagmites in many caves today is of course quite slow. But even in such caves the current slow rate of growth cannot be guaranteed to have always been this sluggish. Caves and their formations in tropical areas develop much faster than those in more temperate regions because of higher annual rainfall. But many factors, apart from the obvious unknown rate of water drip in the past, influence growth rate.
Stalactites can, and do, grow quickly. A talking point at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the fact that stalactites are growing on the cement wall steps between the university’s Anderson Hall and Gladfelter Hall. Right below the stalactites, some stalagmites are forming. Although only several centimetres high, they have all formed since the concrete stairway of Gladfelter Hall was built in May, 1973.
There are a number of bridges in Philadelphia which have stalactites growing on them. Some are more than a foot long (30 cm), but many smaller examples have also formed. One bridge was built in 1931 by the City of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Railroad, so all these formations are less than 56 years old.
Formations in the hot water springs in Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park grow about 2.5 cm (one inch) per year. And there are many examples of rainwater tanks in country areas of Australia that have stalactites growing on them. Conclusion
Because of the evidence for fast-growing stalactites now becoming available, we can safely conclude that the world’s beautiful limestone cave formations may not have needed countless thousands of years to form. These spectacular formations could have formed quite rapidly in just a few thousand years—a time framework consistent with the view that they were formed during the closing stages of, and after, the worldwide Flood of Noah’s time. References
1. Encyclopedia Americana, Americana Corporation, Danbury (Connecticut), 1978, Vol. 25, p. 570. 2. Mason Sutherland, Carlsbad Caverns in Color, National Geographic, October, 1953, p. 442. 3. John C. Whitcomb, Jr, The World That Perished, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1973, pp. 114–115.
And there we have it! According to the evolutionist geologists, the Lincoln Monument must be 50,000 years old! Thank god absurdities such as this are causing an increasing number of geologists to rethink the failed theory of stalignite gradualism.
M O R E F A K E S C I E N C E R E F U T E D B Y T R U E I. E. C H R I S T I A N S C I E N C E N O T 'C H R I S T I A N S C I E N C E ' B U T S C I E N C E T H A T I S C H R I S T I A N Y O U K N O W W H A T I M E A N
[sniping all the science] 9) You were shown how the Genesis Record is not an oral tradition, but is in reality a carefully written, eye-witness account and predates the Gilgamesh Epic and other heathen distortions.
I may be misreading what you wrote here, but are you saying that Genesis was written at the time of the events it covers? Jewish tradition has always been that the Torah was written by Moses, and the events that predate him were told to him by God. If your "eyewitness" in this statement is suppose to be God, ok, but are you saying that every portion of Genesis was written down by a human alive at the time of the writing, and passed down until the days of Moses?
Silly me, when i'm looking for more information i generally avoid the links that go to AIG. DOH, i'll know to look there 1st from now on!
seriously, it is not odd how none of that article is "we did, we looked, we examined, we cut the bloody thing in two and counted the rings" it's all "they published, they changed, they said". Do these people ever do their own research? Are they just Copy/paste experts? There's a basic logic issue with these people - if they can insert the word "may" they think they've won it seems to me.
Quote
limestone cave formations may not have needed countless thousands of years to form
so some are not tens of thousands of years old - so what! How does that affect the vast majority of items under question? while looking for more info, i stumbled on the whole crystal caves thing - amazing, more hereCrystal Caves. Now, try showing me one of those that had formed on somebody's porch door!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
...but are you saying that every portion of Genesis was written down by a human alive at the time of the writing, and passed down until the days of Moses?
Yep, I distinctly remember him spouting off about 'scribes' that followed Adam, Eve and family around writing everything down on clay tablets or stone tablets or some such nonsense.
When asked about these scribes, tablets and even the tiniest speck of evidence whatsoever supporting his assertion he did what he always does. Ran away and changed the subject when he came back.
Dave's "sub-hypothesis" from the first page on this thread:
Quote
K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
AirHeadDave thinks that not only did god dictate the events of genesis prior to Adam...TO Adam, but God also gave Adam a metal tool to carve His/Her "dictation" into stone. This means the earliest known profession -- contrary to the wild speculation of evilutionists -- is actually "secretary." Furthermore, after Adam died, others were brought in from the secretarial pool to carry on this venerable tradition, as scribes that wandered about recording each event as it occurred. This is why the Bible is so perfect and flawless, except for those bits we won't talk about. Besides, it's a mystery and who are you to question Dave?...I mean God?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I wanted to further emphasize (and not for the first time) something about Dave's floundering, ineffectual attempts to refute essentially every radiometric date ever provided. It seems to have escaped the notice of Dave (and everyone else in the creationist camp) that every single date, derived from any dating methodology whatsoever (radiocarbon, Ar-Ar, K-Ar, Ur-Pb, ice cores, dendrochronology, paleomagnetism, lake varves, etc.) in excess of 6 kya disproves, in the most straighforward way imaginable, the young-earth "hypothesis" of a cosmos only 6,000 years old. Yet these guys keep pointing to dates (which they evidently accept as valid; at least they've never said they think the dates are completely wrong) in the range of 30-50,000 years. In what way do such dates not completely falsify a "hypothesis" that the earth is only 6,000 years old? 30,000 years is more than 6,000 years just as 250,000,000 years is more than 6,000 years.
Well, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume their claim really is that all dating methods are worthless. In that case, one is left to wonder by what justification do they claim the universe is only 6,000 years old? I've repeatedly asked Dave to provide a method by which he thinks things can be dated, and further to provide evidence that such methods return dates that are always and without exception younger than 6,000 years. So far I've been treated to the sound of crickets chirping.
So one more time, Dave: what method do you accept for dating the Grand Staircase strata (or anything else, for that matter)? And what dates does that method provide for the Grand Staircase strata (or anything else, for that matter)? As far as I can tell, you can't even come up with an explanation for all the dates given by various methodologies far in excess of 6 kya, or for the concordance of those dates using completely independent methodologies, other than to say they're based on "flawed assumptions," without a) saying what those assumptions are, or b) providing evidence that those assumptions are, in fact, flawed.
You claim you believe the Bible is inerrant because the "evidence" shows it to be inerrant. Actually, the real evidence shows the Bible to be grossly mistaken about virtually everything, but in any event, Dave, what methods do you use to date things independent of what the Bible says? The Bible cannot, even in principle, be self-authenticating. It has to be compared to external observation. So how do you validate the dates provided by the Bible, Dave? How do you do it?
[edit]This giant hole in creationists' reasoning reminds me of a Monty Python sketch:
Q: "I understand you claim to have written the works of Shakespeare."
A: "Yes, that is correct, I wrote the plays and my wife and I wrote the sonnets."
Q: "What year were you born?"
A: "1937."
Q: "You know that the plays of Shakespeare were performed in the reign of King James I, over 300 years before you were born?"
Q: "Ah, that is where my claim falls to the ground. I was hoping you would not make that particular point."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since AFDave won't do his homework, are there any volunteers willing to formulate a detailed hypothesis of the flood for him? It could be quite fun to match the current observations (see my theory of spacetime distortion for the age of the Atlantic basalts).
I anticipate the parts: "Noah actually had a Heavenly Shrinker, allowing him to carry millions of animals in his Arch". "Whilst continents were moving at 100 miles per hour..." "mammals were better swimmers than dinosaurs, and go burried after. Ichtyosaurs actually had difficulties because of their thick bones that made them sink, in this low-density fresh water. The stupid pterosaurs were caught by the Flood while fishing, but the more intelligent birds managed to survive a little longer..." and "just after the Arch landed and the water evaporated [...] limestones were solidifying, dinosaurs were fossilising, and thousand of african swallows sent by noah, carrying sequoia seeds to repopulate the californian forrest that has been devastated".
JonF is still yelling "Fraud, fraud" while failing to see how completely irrelevant and silly his fraud claim is. But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ... so that leaves goofy techniques such as yelling "Fraud" just for the fun of it.
Actually, and incredibly, Dave has somewhat of a point; there's more to the paper than Snelling's fraud. But not much more ... I'm going to reproduce the entire conclusions section so everyone can see exactly how bizarre it is:
Quote
The Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb radioisotopic ratios in these samples of the recent (1949-1975) andesite lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, as anticipated, do not yield any meaningful "age"; information, even with selective manipulation of the data. Instead, these data provide evidence of the mantle source of the lavas, of magma genesis, and of crustal contamination of the parental basalt magmas. Subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Taupo Volcanic Arc has carried trench sediments with it -- sediments identical in composition to the Torlesse metasediment basement underlying, and outcropping adjacent to, these volcanoes. Scraped off the subducting slab, the sediments have contaminated the basalt magmas generated by partial melting of the peridotitic mantle wedge at the mantle-slab interface. The resultant andesite magmas rose in the melt column through the mantle wedge, and then ascended through fracture conduits in the overlying crust into magma chambers below the volcanoes that erupted when full.
The Sr-Nd-Pb radioisotopic systematics are thus characteristic of the depleted mantle source, modified by mixing with the crustal contaminant. Variations in the depleted mantle Nd "model ages", which range from 724.5 to 1453.3 Ma, and which are meaningless in this recent (even in conventional terms) tectonic and petrogenetic framework, and the Pb isotopic linear arrays, indicate geochemical heterogeneity in the mantle wedge. Thus the radioisotopic ratios in these recent Ngauruhoe andesite lava flows were inherited from both the peridotitic mantle wedge and the subducted trench sediments, and are fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore only reflect the origin and history of the mantle and crustal sources from which the magma was generated, and therefore have no age significance.
By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information. Even though radioisotopic decay has undoubtedly occurred during the earth's history, conventional radioisotopic dating of these rocks therefore does not necessarily provide valid absolute "ages" for them. This is especially so if accelerated nuclear decay accompanied the catastrophic operation of those geologic and tectonic processes responsible for the mixing of the radioisotopic decay products during magma genesis.
Now, we know that Davie-doodles (the one in the corner with the dunce cap) can't see how incredibly disjointed this is, but can anyone else in the class see it? Anyone? OK, you in the back with your hand up, Maurice?
...
Absolutely correct, Maurice! The last paragraph is not supported by the data and discussions in the paper. It's actually even worse than that; the last paragraph, claiming that all radiometric dating is wrong, has absolutely no relationship to the rest of the paper!. Here, I'll summarize the paper on the blackboard so we can all see the disconnect:
A K-Ar dating test on samples known to be invalid produced incorrect results. Duh. Fraud.
Isochron analyses produced no valid age and the data clearly and objectively indicated that no valid age could be obtained.
Nd model age calculations are also meaningless since the data clearly and objectively indicates that the samples contain Nd derived from other sources than in-situ radioactive decay.
Analyses of isotope concentrations produced results consistent with those of nearby volcanoes.
The isotope concentrations are also consistent with mainstream theories of mantle-generated lava and subduction of plates.
The existing isotopic profiles of this young lava are inherited from the parent lava. (Since it's too young to have developed an age-determining isotopic profile -- jonf)
Therefore all isotopic profiles are inherited from the parent lava and all radiometric dating is wrong.
Yes, Sarah?
...
True, Sarah, it's difficult to see how anyone could fall for that, but they do. Af "sedimentary tuffs" dave swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. The major problem is that they don't understand how age-diagnostic radiometric methods work (although Snelling does, and knows that his last paragraph is bovine excrement). The secondary problem is that they immediately and unquestioningly accept anything that agrees with their preconceptions; they can't handle the easy questions, much less the tough ones. Sad, really, and kind of pathetic.
—and again, Snelling has no explanation for dates far in excess of 6 kya, other than some half-assed stab at assuming accelerated radioactive decay, which is already ruled out by evidence from quantum mechanics.
So even if it were true that no radiometric dating techniques could even in principle produce accurate dates of the rocks in question, young-earth creationists would still be stuck with trying to explain how long-lived isotopes with half-lives in the millions-to-billions of years range could have produced any detectible amounts of daughter isotopes. And more to the point, in terms of Dave defending his "hypothesis," he'd need to come up some method of dating rocks that result in dates that never, ever exceed 6,000 years.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave's "sub-hypothesis" from the first page on this thread:
Quote
K. The record of these events (except the Ice Age) was dictated to selected individuals such as Adam and Seth and their descendants and carefully recorded on stone tablets, then passed down to successive generations. Moses eventually received these stone tablets (or copies of them) and composed the book we now call Genesis by compiling these records into one written document. He then composed his own written record of the events of his own lifetime, resulting in the complete Pentateuch.
AirHeadDave thinks that not only did god dictate the events of genesis prior to Adam...TO Adam, but God also gave Adam a metal tool to carve His/Her "dictation" into stone. This means the earliest known profession -- contrary to the wild speculation of evilutionists -- is actually "secretary." Furthermore, after Adam died, others were brought in from the secretarial pool to carry on this venerable tradition, as scribes that wandered about recording each event as it occurred. This is why the Bible is so perfect and flawless, except for those bits we won't talk about. Besides, it's a mystery and who are you to question Dave?...I mean God?
Ok Dave, where on earth did you get any evidence of this what so ever? What's your explanation why the Jewish tradition has always stated that Moses wrote the Torah? Did you find some new evidence that they didn't have available? And why would an fallible human eye witness be a better source than the litteral word of God passed directly to Moses?
Deep ice cores from Antarctica reveal there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today than at any time in the last 800,000 years.
The data comes from analysis of tiny air bubbles buried 3.2km down in the Antarctic ice sheets. These provide a record of the ancient atmosphere and give insight into how climate was affected by CO2 levels in the past.
…because how could Antarctic ice cores be 800,000 years old? The can't possibly be more than 6,000 years old, and more likely they'd have to be 4,500 years old, unless Dave's "global catastrophic flood" managed to cover the Antarctic ice sheet with a mile-thick layer of water without melting most of it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ok, so it's been something like 30 pages (I ain't a goin' back and searching! since I thanked the various people who used AF "Sergeant Schultz" Dave's nose as the tee for some very interesting shots about (especially) geology and dating methods. I pointed out then that no possible lurker could gain more by watching you trying to point out to Dave that he was trying to sell a very dead parrot indeed (how unbelievably apt that sketch matches Dave's arguments here! If only he would end it by asking you to "come over to his place") but you've all kept bloody on and on.
Well, that's all of your business, but could I suggest that the thread be renamed to reflect the fact that Dave has no "Creator God Hypothesissy-thingy" any longer? Could the creative minds wasting their time (<-- opinion) presenting evidence to Mr. Whacky-a-Mole spend a few minutes and think of a title that would really reflect the content of this tread?
For you, Dave, I will quote the radar technician from Airplane:He's all over the place! 900 feet to 1300 feet!! What an a$$hole!!!
Could the creative minds wasting their time (<-- opinion) presenting evidence to Mr. Whacky-a-Mole spend a few minutes and think of a title that would really reflect the content of this tread?
How about "AF Dave's OUTDATED Miserably Ineffectual Attempts to Refute Essentially All of Science Without Presenting Even the Bare Outlines of Evidence For A Young-Earth Hypothesis"?
Granted, it doesn't have much of a ring to it...
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Since AFDave won't do his homework, are there any volunteers willing to formulate a detailed hypothesis of the flood for him? It could be quite fun to match the current observations (see my theory of spacetime distortion for the age of the Atlantic basalts).
I anticipate the parts: "Noah actually had a Heavenly Shrinker, allowing him to carry millions of animals in his Arch". "Whilst continents were moving at 100 miles per hour..." "mammals were better swimmers than dinosaurs, and go burried after. Ichtyosaurs actually had difficulties because of their thick bones that made them sink, in this low-density fresh water. The stupid pterosaurs were caught by the Flood while fishing, but the more intelligent birds managed to survive a little longer..." and "just after the Arch landed and the water evaporated [...] limestones were solidifying, dinosaurs were fossilising, and thousand of african swallows sent by noah, carrying sequoia seeds to repopulate the californian forrest that has been devastated".
Maybe god gave Noah a Stargate. He sent all the animals to Atlantis for the duration.
Oglethorp: We have successfully traveled beyond and across both space and time through the Fargate. To get free cable!
Emory: I think it's a Stargate?
Oglethorp: It's the Fargate! "F"! It's different from that movie, which I have never seen, so how would I copy it?
Emory: Chill, man. It's alright. Let's just turn it on.
Oglethorp: I just want to make sure that we are clear it's the Fargate. "Goes far." Get it? And there is no way it came from that movie or that syndicated series based on the movie.
Emory: But it sure was a good movie.
Oglethorp: Ya, yes it was. Turn on the TV, maybe it's on!
Ok, so it's been something like 30 pages (I ain't a goin' back and searching! since I thanked the various people who used AF "Sergeant Schultz" Dave's nose as the tee for some very interesting shots about (especially) geology and dating methods. I pointed out then that no possible lurker could gain more by watching you trying to point out to Dave that he was trying to sell a very dead parrot indeed (how unbelievably apt that sketch matches Dave's arguments here! If only he would end it by asking you to "come over to his place") but you've all kept bloody on and on.
Well, that's all of your business, but could I suggest that the thread be renamed to reflect the fact that Dave has no "Creator God Hypothesissy-thingy" any longer? Could the creative minds wasting their time (<-- opinion) presenting evidence to Mr. Whacky-a-Mole spend a few minutes and think of a title that would really reflect the content of this tread?
For you, Dave, I will quote the radar technician from Airplane:He's all over the place! 900 feet to 1300 feet!! What an a$$hole!!!
I have amused myself by thinking up alternate, accurate thread titles for both AFDave and Ghosty. In the end, I reject changing them for the same reason I reject inserting stupid boldface comments into someone else's comment. Since reality is already biased against the AFDaves, Ghostys, Heddles, Cordovas, why create an unfair playing field? Their humiliation derives from their content, and does not depend on our wily tricks.
(That doesn't mean we can't have a great time thinking up such alternate titles, it just means I won't implement them)
I doubt there's anything you'd reject inserting, homo. -st
I see that noone has seen fit to add *my* question to "The Boffo List o' Questions afdave Goes 'Duuuuhhhhhhh....' Over":
W H E R E DID ALL THOSE DANG BEETLE SPECIES COME FROM? W H E N C E CAME THE MULTITUDINOUS SPECIES O' BEETLE? 5! 5! 5! F-I-V-E DAYS PER SPECIE SINCE THE TIME O' TH' ARK, OR WHATEVER THAT NUMBER WAS THAT WAS CLOSE TO F-I-V-E DAYS!!!
<Mr. Burns voice>There really are a lot of beetle species on the earth, you know.</Mr. Burns voice>
Clamboy, I understand your point, but the beetle species numbers can be easily shrugged at by uninitiated. What brought the bizarrely brief time alloted by the YEC'ers into sharp focus for me was the post that there would have to be bred a new species of primate every seven years. That's a lot of smokin' hot monkey lovin'. You can't ignore that level of incense burning, Barry White listening, no-holds-barred cross species swinging.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Oh man... eric, I just had the time to read that "fossilized wood" story, and it's amazing! Like reading about all those old scams with 'evidence' for ancient astronauts and UFO's and Lemuria and whatever! An "independent researcher" finds a piece of wood inside a rock, and immediately calls Answers in Genesis? HAH! AiG sends a part of the sample saying it's supposed to be fossilized, and that part is soft and fluffy? And Walker (boy, that guy sure is something...) essentially says "well, it was a really small sample, so you can't say what it is at all... But trust us"? HAH! The Geochron guy offers to provide a part of the sample for testing and, instead of gladly agreeing, since then the Truth of the Lord would shine upon all... ...Walker starts to foam in the mouth saying this is ...unethical? and it betrays client trust? WTF? And then he says they would give a part of the sample, IF a common testing procedure is agreed upon, and a comittee approved by ALL would evaluate the results and blahblahblah... Boy, they're reeealy sure they're on the side of Truth! HAH! Heh, I can imagine all the warnings and threats of legal action Geochron received from AiG after that... Privately, of course.
And you know, if I didn't know better, after looking at the photo of the sample, where it appears like someone shoved a splinter into a crack, I'd be almost certain this was a parody... But I guess everything about YEC is, in a way.
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
Oh man... eric, I just had the time to read that "fossilized wood" story, and it's amazing! Like reading about all those old scams with 'evidence' for ancient astronauts and UFO's and Lemuria and whatever!
I like how Walker says the wood, or splinter, or whatever it was, was above the water table the whole time, so it couldn't have been contaminated by environmental carbon, forgetting that if it never had been exposed to groundwater, it could never have fossilized in the first place.
Who was it who said that with practice she could believe six impossible things before breakfast?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
JonF is still yelling "Fraud, fraud" while failing to see how completely irrelevant and silly his fraud claim is. But alas ... what's a Darwinist to do? Honest dealing with facts is impossible for many of them ... so that leaves goofy techniques such as yelling "Fraud" just for the fun of it.
Actually, and incredibly, Dave has somewhat of a point; there's more to the paper than Snelling's fraud. But not much more ... I'm going to reproduce the entire conclusions section so everyone can see exactly how bizarre it is:
Quote
The Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb radioisotopic ratios in these samples of the recent (1949-1975) andesite lava flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, as anticipated, do not yield any meaningful "age"; information, even with selective manipulation of the data. Instead, these data provide evidence of the mantle source of the lavas, of magma genesis, and of crustal contamination of the parental basalt magmas. Subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Taupo Volcanic Arc has carried trench sediments with it -- sediments identical in composition to the Torlesse metasediment basement underlying, and outcropping adjacent to, these volcanoes. Scraped off the subducting slab, the sediments have contaminated the basalt magmas generated by partial melting of the peridotitic mantle wedge at the mantle-slab interface. The resultant andesite magmas rose in the melt column through the mantle wedge, and then ascended through fracture conduits in the overlying crust into magma chambers below the volcanoes that erupted when full.
The Sr-Nd-Pb radioisotopic systematics are thus characteristic of the depleted mantle source, modified by mixing with the crustal contaminant. Variations in the depleted mantle Nd "model ages", which range from 724.5 to 1453.3 Ma, and which are meaningless in this recent (even in conventional terms) tectonic and petrogenetic framework, and the Pb isotopic linear arrays, indicate geochemical heterogeneity in the mantle wedge. Thus the radioisotopic ratios in these recent Ngauruhoe andesite lava flows were inherited from both the peridotitic mantle wedge and the subducted trench sediments, and are fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore only reflect the origin and history of the mantle and crustal sources from which the magma was generated, and therefore have no age significance.
By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information. Even though radioisotopic decay has undoubtedly occurred during the earth's history, conventional radioisotopic dating of these rocks therefore does not necessarily provide valid absolute "ages" for them. This is especially so if accelerated nuclear decay accompanied the catastrophic operation of those geologic and tectonic processes responsible for the mixing of the radioisotopic decay products during magma genesis.
Now, we know that Davie-doodles (the one in the corner with the dunce cap) can't see how incredibly disjointed this is, but can anyone else in the class see it? Anyone? OK, you in the back with your hand up, Maurice?
...
Absolutely correct, Maurice! The last paragraph is not supported by the data and discussions in the paper. It's actually even worse than that; the last paragraph, claiming that all radiometric dating is wrong, has absolutely no relationship to the rest of the paper!. Here, I'll summarize the paper on the blackboard so we can all see the disconnect:
A K-Ar dating test on samples known to be invalid produced incorrect results. Duh. Fraud.
Isochron analyses produced no valid age and the data clearly and objectively indicated that no valid age could be obtained.
Nd model age calculations are also meaningless since the data clearly and objectively indicates that the samples contain Nd derived from other sources than in-situ radioactive decay.
Analyses of isotope concentrations produced results consistent with those of nearby volcanoes.
The isotope concentrations are also consistent with mainstream theories of mantle-generated lava and subduction of plates.
The existing isotopic profiles of this young lava are inherited from the parent lava. (Since it's too young to have developed an age-determining isotopic profile -- jonf)
Therefore all isotopic profiles are inherited from the parent lava and all radiometric dating is wrong.
Yes, Sarah?
...
True, Sarah, it's difficult to see how anyone could fall for that, but they do. Af "sedimentary tuffs" dave swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. The major problem is that they don't understand how age-diagnostic radiometric methods work (although Snelling does, and knows that his last paragraph is bovine excrement). The secondary problem is that they immediately and unquestioningly accept anything that agrees with their preconceptions; they can't handle the easy questions, much less the tough ones. Sad, really, and kind of pathetic.
Got dang it Jon I had my hand up but you completely ignored me (no doubt because I'm a member of of devolved race).
The last paragraph MAKES EVERYTHING CLEAR WITH THIS STATEMENT!
Quote
Even though radioisotopic decay has undoubtedly occurred during the earth's history, conventional radioisotopic dating of these rocks therefore does not necessarily provide valid absolute "ages" for them. This is especially so if accelerated nuclear decay accompanied the catastrophic operation of those geologic and tectonic processes responsible for the mixing of the radioisotopic decay products during magma genesis.
Those continents whizzing around at great speeds obviously sped up nucular decay at the same time. How much clearer can it be?
We can trust the Naval Observatory Clock nowadays but obviously there was something going on 6000 YA to mess things up. I ain't saying goddidit but SOMEBODY did.
Now please kindly stop trying to indoctrinate me and mine into the cult of IT'SOLDERTHANMYFEEBLEBRAINCANCOMPREHENDISM
AND speaking of alphabets, which one did the lies4kids AFD's scribes use?
Any info on the language.....Portuguese by any chance?
Bwhahahahahahahaha
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Thank Steve et al. for your suggestions. I'll check back in another 30+ pages to see if I missed something interestingly accidently jarred loose by the clunking idiocy of the wretched, soulless lying jerk that began it all. I thank him not at all.
I could spend a lot of time on the details of the geologic record, and I have done so and plan to more for various reason (I like it and so on).
You only "like" the details in that you like battling it out with the Evos. You're not interested in learning what those details tell us about the universe.
Quote (afdave continues @ ,)
What I see though is that the biggest evidence for a global flood doesn't even require reading a single scientific paper. It doesn't require a geology degree. It doesn't even require any high school level science classes at all.
Dave, to see your "biggest evidence for a global flood", you absolutely must avoid all those things.
Quote (afdave continues @ ,)
Guys, I don't know how to say this any more clearly. We have something like 2 miles thick (maybe I'm off a mile or two--doesn't matter for my present point) of mostly water-laid sediment on planet earth!! All you have to do is look at the abundant pictures of the Grand Canyon or any other exposed area. The evidence is there. There was a whale of a lot of water required to lay down all that sedimentary rocks, friends!
Yeah. 3/4 of the Earth's surface covered by water multiplied by 4 billion years is way big enough to be that whale.
Quote
Now HOW exactly did it happen? OK ... now we need to do some scientific work and write some papers. I agree. But to show it DID OCCUR? No scientific papers required, friend.
We know all that rock is there, All-Caps.
Quote
All that's required is some eyeballs and some functioning synapses.
... and for those eyeballs and synapses to be buried in the bible.
Alice laughed, "There's no use trying," she said, "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Pah, the Red Queen was an amateur compared to AirPantyQueen.
The Gospel of St. Alice of Wonderland does offer an explanation of AirHead's odd thinking as well:
Quote
"That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it always makes one a little giddy ..."
Thus proving the wisdom of scripture.
On a wishful note: If AirHead is exploring a cave...where are the Mole People when you *need* them?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Everyone knows a god is measured by the size of his *ahem* universe. Dave's god has a tiny, flaccid, and boring member. And he's mean. Made in the image of some very ugly people.
Got dang it Jon I had my hand up but you completely ignored me (no doubt because I'm a member of of devolved race).
The last paragraph MAKES EVERYTHING CLEAR WITH THIS STATEMENT!
Quote
Even though radioisotopic decay has undoubtedly occurred during the earth's history, conventional radioisotopic dating of these rocks therefore does not necessarily provide valid absolute "ages" for them. This is especially so if accelerated nuclear decay accompanied the catastrophic operation of those geologic and tectonic processes responsible for the mixing of the radioisotopic decay products during magma genesis.
Of course, one of the many things that immediately and easily falsifies Snelling's claim that "[the radioisotopic ratios] therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information" is zircons; their radioisotopic ratios (which are measured in the most widely used method of radiometric dating) reflect only radioactive decay after solidification because zircons so strongly reject lead at solidification, a fact acknowledged by Humphreys et. al. (and the et. al. includes Snelling) in an excerpt I've posted several times already in this thread. But af "scientists date only igneous grains" dave is following the creationist maxim of "never, ever, look at the big picture or relationships between things; consider each item as a totally new item and consider it only in isolation".
Core samples from various annually marked things correspond and count up to more that 6500 years.
DaveyDH, figure out why the Dansgaard-Oeschger oscillations are calibrated the way they are. They are the ice record of the temperature fluctuations during the last ice age. We don't need to go back any farther than that to blow, BLOW your theory. Right?
So here is your challenge: 1) Figure out how the ice cores (just to the D-O oscillations) are calibrated. (Hint: use the oscillations in your research) 2) Figure out what a real scientist's objections to the following from AIG might be:
Quote
On the other hand, if the ice built up rapidly, as in the creationist model during the Ice Age, the annual layers would be very thick at the bottom and thin upward to the present average annual layer thickness. There would be some compression of ice during this short time, of course, but far less than the uniformitarian model suggests.2 Figure 12.4 shows these contrasting views of the annual layer thickness with depth.
The assumed thickness of the annual layers is important because it constrains the expected annual thickness in the measurements. The measurements can deviate a little from the assumed annual layer thickness but not by much. For instance, in the oxygen isotope method, uniformitarian scientists normally need eight measurements per annual cycle to pick up the “annual” signature. As an example, halfway down the GRIP Greenland ice core at about one mile (1,600 m) deep, uniformitarian scientists believe the annual layer thickness is 4 inches (10 cm).5 The measurements for oxygen isotopes would then be spaced every 1/2 inch (1 cm) apart. Figure 12.4
Figure 12.4. The thickness of annual ice layers down the GRIP ice core on central Greenland, calculated according to the uniformitarian3 and creationist4 models.
Since the creationist model postulates an annual layer thickness significantly thicker, say 12 inches (30 cm) as an example, the uniformitarians have taken more measurements than needed and are, therefore, measuring multiple cycles of oxygen isotopes within one year. This is how the number of annual layers becomes greatly exaggerated.6, 7
As already stated, the uniformitarian and creationist estimates of annual thickness are much the same at the top of the Greenland ice sheet. The difference between the two models becomes more and more significant deeper in the ice core. Because of extreme annual layer thinning at the bottom of the core in the uniformitarian model compared to the creationist model, the uniformitarian scientists may be counting 100 layers that they think are annual. These layers in the creationist model may represent only one year.
(Hint: You could probably do this using only logic but don't worry, I don't expect that of you)
And DaveyDH, what would happen if you discovered that you were wrong? You know, the only evidence that you have that the bible was written by god is that someone told you it was. No evidence was ever given.
Well, I am like that too except I'm saying you are betting on a lame horse and I have evidence.
By the way, I'm laying a trap here. Just so you know.
But if you are right and the rest of the world is wrong, then I'll be the one trapped. And, if you can show me, through evidence, that this AIG article is a better interpretation of the data and the science of core samples is a worse interpretation of the data, I'll repent. And I'll go to a church service of the demonination of your choice. And I'll report back.
I suspect you will end up simply saying "I proved it" by pointing to the AIG article. That probably won't work. Just to let you know ahead of time.
Good Luck! May the best Tard win.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
AS EXPECTED, THE MORE I STUDY RADIOMETRIC "DATING", THE MORE I FIND THAT MOST OF THE "DATES" ARE MEANINGLESS
(I'm sorry for you if you don't come to the same conclusions ... I'm doing my best to help you come out from the fog of Darwinism and Deep Time, but I can only do so much. While I hope that I can convince ATBCers of the truth, I am realisitic enough to know that I probably will not. So my goal has to be to educate myself, then help in the larger effort of educating the public, so that pressure will be applied from below on our educational systems.)
On Sep 4, I started a new topic ... a study of Snelling's 2003 paper on "THE RELEVANCE OF Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd AND Pb-Pb ISOTOPE SYSTEMATICS TO ELUCIDATION OF THE GENESIS AND HISTORY OF RECENT ANDESITE FLOWS AT MT NGAURUHOE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR RADIOISOTOPIC DATING."
BACKGROUND TO THE PAPER As soon as I posted the abstract and conclusions of this paper, JonF began yelling "Fraud, fraud" because Snelling did a whole rock analysis and did not separate the minerals for analysis. Faid brought up an older (1998) paper of Snelling's that was essentially a confirmation of the fact that the whole system of Argon dating (K-Ar and Ar-Ar) is flawed because of excess Argon, Argon loss, mixing, inheritance, etc., etc.
So let's deal with these questions, then return to the Conclusions of Snelling's 2003 paper which have huge implications for attempted radiometric "dating" of lava flows and ash beds in the Grand Staircase and elsewhere.
SNELLING'S 1998 PAPER -- ARGON "DATING" IS MEANINGLESS Unless otherwise noted, all footnotes refer to Snellings 1998 paper found here
K-Ar "dating" of rocks used to be quite common because it is cheap and simple -- about US$350 for a test using the "model age" method. K-Ar model ages are the most abundant dates published, but also are the most frequently questioned and discarded. Dalrymple and Lanphere helped popularize this method in 1969. They said in that year ...
Quote
a silicate melt will not usually retain the 40Ar that is produced, and thus the potassium-argon clock is not "set" until the mineral solidifies and cools sufficiently to allow the 40Ar to accumulate in the mineral lattice. [18, p. 46]
Yet in their study of 26 historic lava flows that same year, 5 of them contained "excess" Argon. [18] Many other whole rock K-Ar "age" studies have also found "excess Argon" including Krummenacher (1970) who reported 5 such instances, McDougall (1969), Fisher (1971), Armstrong (1978) and Esser et al (1997) just to name a few. There are many more. In spite of all this, Dalrymple as late as 1991 was still touting the K-Ar method ...
Quote
The K-Ar method is the only decay scheme that can be used with little or no concern for the initial presence of the daughter isotope. This is because 40Ar is an inert gas that does not combine chemically with any other element and so escapes easily from rocks when they are heated. Thus, while a rock is molten the 40Ar formed by decay of 40K escapes from the liquid. [17, p.91]
And the problem of "excess" Argon extends to the 40Ar-39Ar method as well ...
Quote
In a detailed 40Ar/39Ar dating study of high-grade metamorphic rocks in the Broken Hill region of New South Wales (Australia), Harrison and McDougall [48] found evidence of widely distributed excess 40Ar*. The minerals most affected were plagioclase and hornblende, with step heating 40Ar/39Ar "age" spectra yielding results of up to 9.588 Ga. Such unacceptable "ages" were produced by excess40Ar* release, usually at temperatures of 350-650C and/or 930-1380C, suggesting the excess 40Ar* is held in sites within the respective mineral lattices with different heating requirements for its release. http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_as_r01/
Snelling concludes in this paper as follows ...
Quote
The fact that there is even some excess 40Ar* in these recent andesite flows, and that it appears to have ultimately come from the upper mantle geochemical reservoir, where it is regarded as leftover primordial argon not yet fully expelled by the process of outgassing that is supposed to have occurred since the initial formation of the Earth, has very significant implications. First, this is clearly consistent with a young Earth, where the very short time-scale since the creation of the Earth has been insufficient for all the primordial argon to be released yet from the Earth?s deep interior. Furthermore, it would also seem that even the year-long global catastrophic Flood, when large-scale convection and turdecer occurred in the mantle [4], was insufficient to expel all the deep Earth?s primordial argon. Second, this primordial argon is, in part, "excess" 40Ar not generated by radioactive decay of 40K, which has then been circulated up into crustal rocks where it may continue migrating and building up to partial pressure status regionally. Because the evidence clearly points to this being the case, then when samples of crustal rocks are analysed for K-Ar "dating" the investigators can never really be sure that whatever 40Ar* is in the samples is from in situ radioactive decay of 40K since the formation of the rocks, or whether some or all of it is from the "excess 40Ar*" geochemical reservoirs in the lower and upper mantles. This could even be the case when the K-Ar analyses yield "dates" compatible with other radioisotopic "dating" systems and/or with fossil "dating" based on evolutionary assumptions. And there would be no way of knowing because the 40Ar* from radioactive decay of 40K cannot be distinguished analytically from primordial 40Ar not from radioactive decay, except of course by external assumptions about the ages of the samples. Therefore, these considerations call into question all K-Ar "dating", whether "model ages" or "isochron ages", and all 40Ar/39Ar "dating", as well as "fossil dating" that has been calibrated against K-Ar "dates". Although seemingly insignificant in themselves, the anomalous K-Ar "model ages" for these recent andesite flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, lead to deeper questions. Why is there excess40Ar* in these rocks? From where did it come? Answers to these questions in turn point to significant implications that totally undermine such radioactive "dating" and that are instead compatible with a young Earth.
PLENTY OF ARGON TO MEASURE, FAID Now Faid claims that Snelling is a fraudster because Snelling knew that Geochron labs cannot date young samples because there is not enough daughter products to detect (the instruments are sensitive, but not THAT sensitive). Sorry, mister, that argument doesn't fly simply because there just "happened" to be plenty of daughter product to measure ... sorry to disappoint you ... Geochron labs had no problem at all detecting the daughter products because there was plenty there. Remember, if the Argon dating system is sound, then young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter. Snelling did nothing different than all the other studies on historic flows cited which found excess Argon. No fraud. No foul. Just a big, giant spotlight on the complete failure of the Argon methods of "dating" rocks.
JonF, TED KOPPEL, NEW ORLEANS AND HURRICANE KATRINA Next we have JonF yelling "Fraud, fraud" about Snelling's next paper, the 2003 one which used the same samples as the 1998 paper, but focused, not on Argon "dating," but on the fact that the Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd and Pb-Pb signatures of these same lava flows have nothing to do with the dates of creation of the lava, but rather indicate their origin in the mantle. JonF claims Snelling is a fraud in this case because he includes xenoliths. But this is a little bit like saying that Ted Koppel was a fraud in reporting that "A million residents of New Orleans lost their homes today because of Hurricane Katrina." I get this funny picture in my mind of JonF yelling, "Wait a minute, Mr. Koppel! You're a fraud ... those aren't all residents of New Orleans! Some of them are foreigners! There's residents of Baton Rouge and Alexandria and Ruston and even residents from other states there in New Orleans! How dare you say that a million residents of New Orleans lost their homes! You're a fraud!" JonF is technically correct ... there are many non-residents included in Koppel's statement ... but the point is ... "Who cares?" To point this out misses the point entirely of Mr. Koppel's report which is to point out that a whole bunch of people lost their homes. In the same way, it is ludicrous to complain about Snelling not separating out xenoliths and analyzing them separately simply because that would make very little difference in the actual numbers and would have exactly ZERO effect on the conclusion of the study. Xenoliths only accounted for 2.6 and 4.5% respectively of the following flows: 1. Ngauruhoe VU 29250 [15], a 1954 flow. 2. Olivine-bearing low-Si andesite, June 30, 1954 Ngauruhoe flow [12].
So Jon, yell all you want to about Snelling's "fraud" and while you are at it, why don't you mount a campaign to expose Mr. Koppel as well.
Now that we have silenced JonF and Faid (well, I am sure they won't stay silent, so a better term would be "refuted" or "exposed"), we return to the main points of our present study ...
1) Argon dating on recent (historic) lava flows is bogus because there is often lots of easily measureable "excess" Argon. 2) All Argon dating of ancient flows is bogus for the same reason. Yes, I know it's sad that all those geologists were suckers for all those years, but then, so were the geocentrists and phlogiston people for many years, too. 3) Most of the "dates" for layers of the grand Staircase given by Deadman have been Argon dating and are thus irrelevant. So Deadman has claimed that he gave me over 80 RM "dates" for the Grand Staircase, but the fact is that these 80 "dates" apply to around 4 layers of the Grand Staircase and most of them are Argon dates.
So what I am telling you, once again, is that ...
The layers of the Grand Staircase cannot be dated radiometrically. Of the 4 or so layers that RM dates have been attempted, most of them have been shown to be bogus and we have not even begun looking at the other dating methods. Will we find that they are bogus too?
So the layers cannot be dated radiometrically and the only basis for saying they are as old as they are is, as I said in the beginning, because of the fossils they contain. And of course, assuming a layer is old because of the fossils it contains is just circular reasoning.
A much better explanation for the layers of the Grand Staircase which consists primarily of water-laid sediment is ...
THE GREAT FLOOD OF NOAH.
Have a nice day!
(JonF ... I will also deal with your claim that zircons falsify Snellings conclusions in his 2003 paper. But not today. I'm going to lunch!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
3) Most of the "dates" for layers of the grand Staircase given by Deadman have been Argon dating and are thus irrelevant. So Deadman has claimed that he gave me over 80 RM "dates" for the Grand Staircase, but the fact is that these 80 "dates" apply to around 4 layers of the Grand Staircase and most of them are Argon dates
Let's see...a guy from AIG uses flawed and fraudulent claims to argue about K-Ar dating....and this invalidates somehow all the Ar-Ar dates on GrandStaircase layers. BWAHAHAHA
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
In the same way, it is ludicrous to complain about Snelling not separating out xenoliths and analyzing them separately simply because that would make very little difference in the actual numbers and would have exactly ZERO effect on the conclusion of the study.
And how exactly do you arrive at that number? Because it sure looks like you're just making it up.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
AS EXPECTED, THE MORE I STUDY RADIOMETRIC "DATING", THE MORE I FIND THAT MOST OF THE "DATES" ARE MEANINGLESS
Dave, try to get this through your thick, brainless head: all we need is one (1) date in excess of 6,000 years to utterly disprove your young-earth "hypothesis." That's all it takes.
Do you honestly think you can somehow invalidate every single one of the hundreds of thousands of radiometric dates ever recorded that are in excess of 6,000 years? When you have neither the knowledge nor the training to do so?
So we're supposed to believe you, a layperson with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, and disregard the sum total of the last hundred years of experience in radiometric dating, because why, exactly? Because you know the URL to AiG and ICR?
Dave, how can you possibly say that the presence of xenoliths has no effect at all on the dates derived from young lavas? How mentally retarded can you be? You mix up a bunch of rock that's millions of years old with rock that's a few decades old, and think that those old rocks will have no effect on the dates you get?
And in the meantime, for not the first and certainly not the last time, what method do you propose for dating the Grand Canyon sediments, Dave? It's your freaking hypothesis; are you ever going to present some evidence to support it?
Again, what's your explanation for all the strata that were not, despite your belief to the contrary (for which you never presented the tinest bit of evidence), laid by water?
And until you provide evidence of a source for your floodwaters, Dave, you cannot claim that Noah's flood is a "better" explanation for anything. A source of water is a condition precedent to any flood, and without it, you can't just "poof" a flood into existence.
And, when are you going to explain to us how a mile of water could lay down a mile of sediment, Dave? Are you every going to answer that question? I've been asking for two months, and you haven't even acknowledged the question, let alone attempted to answer it.
One more time, in all caps and bold so you won't miss it:
HOW DOES 5,000 FEET OF WATER LAY DOWN 5,000 FEET OF SEDIMENT, DAVE?
I'm heartily sick of your refusal to even acknowledge the existence of questions you cannot answer, and which expose fatal flaws to your argument. Every time you fail to answer one of these questions, Dave, it's another nail in the coffin of your credibility. These are simple, straightforward questions, and your failure to even attempt to answer them is conclusive evidence of your intellectual dishonesty. But don't worry, I'll never get tired of asking them.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Again, what's your explanation for all the strata that were not, despite your belief to the contrary (for which you never presented the tinest bit of evidence), laid by water?
Okay, see, what would happen was, Noah would be chilling out topside, when he'd see a massive lava tsunami caused by the continents screaming around at 100 mph. He'd yell "Jesus Christ!" and throw his Mai Tai overboard while running to the engine room. There, he'd fire up the Pratt & Whitney 4000, and away they'd go. Of course, that would create some kind of mean wake, which would rip trees and plants apart. The trees and plants would then float upright in clusters, get stuck on something, and then Noah's boat would drive over them and compress them into the rock. Then the lava would create a big huge non-water-deposited layer.
I can imagine William Jennings Bryant saying the same thing.
[very small font size]
Just before he laid down in his room that fateful day at the end of the movie.
[/very small font size]
DaveyDH, you are a very bad man.
Tell me about those beetle species. Five days per? Or Monkeys? Or Core samples?
The problem with the dating debate (and no you may not) is that you are simply too stupid to have this debate. There are too many part involved with Design of Experiments that you just don't get.
We need to take this a step back. Assume that RM dating cannot be held to be accurate. (C'mon guys, work with me here) Why does evry single scientific, independent method of dating ever devised come up with counts going back more than your 6500 years?
Why is the beetle and monkey thing so hard for you to do the math? How do kinds evolve and how fast do they do it.
Davey, you have no evidence. (Actually you have every bit of evidence ever collected but it's just pointing the wrong way.)
How can your brain be so small as to not recognize how wrong you are?
As Dawkins says in a movie he made, "It must be terribly lonely to suffer the delusion thqat you are napoleon because no one will help you to support it. But imagine the feeling of support you would have if you could walk in a group of several thousand people who all shared the same delusion."
You can't get past Core Samples DaveyDH. You will hit a brick wall there, I promise.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
all we need is one (1) date in excess of 6,000 years to utterly disprove your young-earth "hypothesis." That's all it takes.
And the sad thing for you, Eric, is that you do not have a single real date in excess of 6000 years. Too bad! So sad!
Ice cores, huh? You really think you've got a humdinger for me now, do you? OK. BWE. That's what everyone else said too.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yet in their study of 26 historic lava flows that same year, 5 of them contained "excess" Argon. [18] Many other whole rock K-Ar "age" studies have also found "excess Argon" including Krummenacher (1970) who reported 5 such instances, McDougall (1969), Fisher (1971), Armstrong (1978) and Esser et al (1997) just to name a few. There are many more. In spite of all this, Dalrymple as late as 1991 was still touting the K-Ar method ...
Yup, because it's pretty reliable, well-understood, and low-cost. But it's common to verify the K-Ar results with other methods.
Note that all your references reported lots of instances without excess argon. This proves that not all K-Ar dates are affected by excess argon ... but your theory requires that all radiometric dates be wrong.
Quote
And the problem of "excess" Argon extends to the 40Ar-39Ar method as well ...
Quote
In a detailed 40Ar/39Ar dating study of high-grade metamorphic rocks in the Broken Hill region of New South Wales (Australia), Harrison and McDougall [48] found evidence of widely distributed excess 40Ar*. The minerals most affected were plagioclase and hornblende, with step heating 40Ar/39Ar "age" spectra yielding results of up to 9.588 Ga. Such unacceptable "ages" were produced by excess40Ar* release, usually at temperatures of 350-650C and/or 930-1380C, suggesting the excess 40Ar* is held in sites within the respective mineral lattices with different heating requirements for its release. http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_as_r01/
The fact that there is even some excess 40Ar* in these recent andesite flows, and that it appears to have ultimately come from the upper mantle geochemical reservoir, where it is regarded as leftover primordial argon not yet fully expelled by the process of outgassing that is supposed to have occurred since the initial formation of the Earth, has very significant implications. First, this is clearly consistent with a young Earth, where the very short time-scale since the creation of the Earth has been insufficient for all the primordial argon to be released yet from the Earth's deep interior. Furthermore, it would also seem that even the year-long global catastrophic Flood, when large-scale convection and turdecer occurred in the mantle [4], was insufficient to expel all the deep Earth?s primordial argon. Second, this primordial argon is, in part, "excess" 40Ar not generated by radioactive decay of 40K, which has then been circulated up into crustal rocks where it may continue migrating and building up to partial pressure status regionally. Because the evidence clearly points to this being the case, then when samples of crustal rocks are analysed for K-Ar "dating" the investigators can never really be sure that whatever 40Ar* is in the samples is from in situ radioactive decay of 40K since the formation of the rocks, or whether some or all of it is from the "excess 40Ar*" geochemical reservoirs in the lower and upper mantles. This could even be the case when the K-Ar analyses yield "dates" compatible with other radioisotopic "dating" systems and/or with fossil "dating" based on evolutionary assumptions. And there would be no way of knowing because the 40Ar* from radioactive decay of 40K cannot be distinguished analytically from primordial 40Ar not from radioactive decay, except of course by external assumptions about the ages of the samples. Therefore, these considerations call into question all K-Ar "dating", whether "model ages" or "isochron ages", and all 40Ar/39Ar "dating", as well as "fossil dating" that has been calibrated against K-Ar "dates". Although seemingly insignificant in themselves, the anomalous K-Ar "model ages" for these recent andesite flows at Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, lead to deeper questions. Why is there excess40Ar* in these rocks? From where did it come? Answers to these questions in turn point to significant implications that totally undermine such radioactive "dating" and that are instead compatible with a young Earth.
Based on known-invalid samples, Davie-pootles. Fraud.
Quote
PLENTY OF ARGON TO MEASURE, FAID[/b] Now Faid claims that Snelling is a fraudster because Snelling knew that Geochron labs cannot date young samples because there is not enough daughter products to detect (the instruments are sensitive, but not THAT sensitive). Sorry, mister, that argument doesn't fly simply because there just "happened" to be plenty of daughter product to measure ... sorry to disappoint you ... Geochron labs had no problem at all detecting the daughter products because there was plenty there.
Really? Exactly how much argon was measured, Davie-pie? How does that amount compare with Geochron's standard background, Davier-dork? How much of the argon was due to the xenoliths, Davie-pud?
Quote
If the Argon dating system is sound, then young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter.
Not quite true. If the Argon dating system is sound, then most young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter when rational sample selection is practiced. The statistics, including the ones you quoted aove, show that by this criterion K-Ar dating is sound.
Quote
Snelling did nothing different than all the other studies on historic flows cited which found excess Argon.
He tested smaples with xenoliths. Known to be invalid, and fraudulent.
Quote
In the same way, it is ludicrous to complain about Snelling not separating out xenoliths and analyzing them separately simply because that would make very little difference in the actual numbers and would have exactly ZERO effect on the conclusion of the study. Xenoliths only accounted for 2.6 and 4.5% respectively of the following flows: 1. Ngauruhoe VU 29250 [15], a 1954 flow. 2. Olivine-bearing low-Si andesite, June 30, 1954 Ngauruhoe flow [12].
True, but that says nothing about the argon content of those xenoliths relative to the argon content of the rest of the sample. It's well-known and widely documented that xenoliths in even such low volumetric proportions can screw up K-Ar dating.
Let's see your calculations of the effect those xenoliths had on the dates. You can't do it, and nobody can, because we don't know the amount of argon in the xenoliths and in the non-xenolithic portion.
Quote
Now that we have silenced JonF and Faid (well, I am sure they won't stay silent, so a better term would be "refuted" or "exposed")
You haven't refuted or exposed anything. Your claims about the xenoliths have been soundly refuted. Remember when you wrote that maybe there weren't any xenoliths? You haven't acknowledged that error ...
You haven't even discussed the message in which I pointed out that Snelling's conclusion in the 2003 paper is not supported or even relevant to the data and discussion. He just pulled it in out of left field.
And, of course, the fact that the isotopic composition of a recent lava flow reflects its "parentage" is not at all surprising ... but doesn't tell us anything about what the isotopic composition will be after that lava has been around for many millions of years. But you and Snelling are claiming that the isotopic composition will continue to reflect ther "parentage" except isochrons that pass the validity test will magically show up, but be wrong. Neither you nor Snelling has presented and evidence or argument for this claim.
Quote
1) Argon dating on recent (historic) lava flows is bogus because there is often lots of easily measureable "excess" Argon.
Nope. Argon dating on some recent (historic) lava flows is bogus because there is sometimes lots of easily measureable "excess" Argon. And even when there is excess argon, the Ar-Ar method often produces a valid result. See the link above.
You need something that always invalidates radiometric dating, not something that sometimes invalidates radiometric dating.
Quote
2) All Argon dating of ancient flows is bogus for the same reason.
Nope. Some argon dating of ancient flows is bogus (and it's often detected by comparison with other methods) but that doesn't help you at all.
Quote
3) Most of the "dates" for layers of the grand Staircase given by Deadman have been Argon dating and are thus irrelevant.
Really, Davie-doodles? Let's see the statistics. What percentage were K-Ar dates? What percentage were K-Ar dates that were confirmed by other methods?
Quote
(JonF ... I will also deal with your claim that zircons falsify Snellings conclusions in his 2003 paper. But not today. I'm going to lunch!
Don't forget that Snelling has acknowledged, since his 2003 paper, that the lead in zircons is not inherited from the "parent magma" but instead must be produced by in-situ radioactive decay. (Reference provided several times already in this thread).
So, we know that the lead we measure in zircons is due to radioactive decay, and Snelling acknowledges this. We know that the vast majority of isochron dates and K-Ar and Ar-Ar dates agree, Davie-poot's claims of a world-wide and incredibly expensive conspiracy for which he has no evidence notwithstanding. We therefore know that the isotopic composition of purportedly-old lavas reflects the amount of radioactive decay that has occurred in the lava, not the composition of the "parent" magma. Snelling's 2003 paper is irrelevant to radiometric dating.
(Did I post this link in this thread before? The well-known {in certain circles} Steve Carlip recently posted a list of observations which would have been different if radioactive decay rates had changed, and it's a fascinating list: Re: Age dating question.)
The Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb dates on Broken Hill were both 1680 Ma. The Ar-Ar date is 1573 Ma. Wow.
Wow. It's like magic! You just discard those samples over there that show 950 Ma and these samples over here that show 400 Ma and VOILA! Concordant dates! Ain't it great?
Quote
Note that all your references reported lots of instances without excess argon. This proves that not all K-Ar dates are affected by excess argon ... but your theory requires that all radiometric dates be wrong.
No, it doesn't. All I have mentioned is the 25% or so instances of excess Argon. If you read the entire RATE Book, you would see there are many other reasons why all Argon methods are unreliable: Argon loss, mixing, etc., etc. The supposedly "correct" results are only deemed correct because they agree with your preconceptions about Deep Time. The real reasons for the Argon concentration in rocks in reality has nothing to do with Deep Time at all. Sorry, you lose.
Quote
That proves that excess argon can be a problem in Ar-Ar dating when there is a lot of it and it totally swamps the radiogenic argon. But it has been proved that, in most cases, excess argon does not affect the Ar-Ar method,
Yeah, just like Dalrymple "proved" that the K-Ar method is just fine. We saw how that worked out.
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Based on known-invalid samples, Davie-pootles. Fraud.
Yeah ... invalid because they were submitted by a creationist. I understand. What a joke. When are you going to start your investigation of Ted Koppel also?
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Quote If the Argon dating system is sound, then young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter.
Not quite true. If the Argon dating system is sound, then most young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter when rational sample selection is practiced. The statistics, including the ones you quoted aove, show that by this criterion K-Ar dating is sound.
No. ALL. If ANY of the young flows have detectable Argon, then your whole system fails. Why do you think everybody's finally waking up to the fact that K-Ar is flawed? It's only a matter of time before everyone also wakes up on Ar-Ar. Again, the creationists are leading the way.
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Quote Snelling did nothing different than all the other studies on historic flows cited which found excess Argon.
He tested smaples with xenoliths. Known to be invalid, and fraudulent.
Most of the others had xenoliths also. Did you not notice that they were "whole rock " analyses? You really are going to ride this lame horse of xenoliths aren't you? ... even though they were less than 5% of the weight of the samples ... Incredible! Well, then ... I will just keep embarrassing you in front of God and everybody for being so stubborn and blind.
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True, but that says nothing about the argon content of those xenoliths relative to the argon content of the rest of the sample. It's well-known and widely documented that xenoliths in even such low volumetric proportions can screw up K-Ar dating.
Let's see your calculations of the effect those xenoliths had on the dates. You can't do it, and nobody can, because we don't know the amount of argon in the xenoliths and in the non-xenolithic portion.
You should have stopped at the first word ... "True." I'll tell you what JonF, let's go take some common Argon concentration numbers from some xenoliths ... take the highest ones you can find, then do the math allocating 5% to the xenoliths ... guess what you will come up with ...
VERY TINY CHANGE IN THE NUMBERS ...
And ZERO effect on the overall conclusion.
I'll even let you come up with the Xenolith Argon number ... go ahead ... find the highest number you can find, then come back to me and we'll do the math.
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You haven't even discussed the message in which I pointed out that Snelling's conclusion in the 2003 paper is not supported or even relevant to the data and discussion. He just pulled it in out of left field.
Nonsense. All you said was that his conclusion was invalidated because of zircons. And you are wrong about zircons as I will show when I will deal with zircons separately.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Avoiding those ice cores eh? And dendro ( don't try to present the stupid claims of Don Batten who only cites farmed pine trees as an excuse) and varves that are over 10k old in layers. What you will do, Dave, is the same thing that you said about light from distant stars, or from supernovae: you'll say something really stupid like "God made them with a false age built-in" This "Omphalos" ( meaning belly-button) theory was posited by Phillip Henry Gosse way back in the 1800's. In it, he explained that the belly-button of Adam was due to god "making" things with an apparent age already "built" into the structure. This makes God a liar and fraud, stupid.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
The Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb dates on Broken Hill were both 1680 Ma.
Yet those dates given by Rubidium and lead are uncontested here, except for the RATE group to say " in the past, radioactive decay rates were much greater, even though we don't see the effects today and it would melt the Earth"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Help! Help! Dave is demolishing our arguments against the Snelling papers ...
Quick! Bring up dendro and ice cores and belly buttons!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, guys ... just a reminder to start that investigation on Ted Koppel for fraudulent reporting of the Katrina disaster. Don't forget now ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, guys ... just a reminder to start that investigation on Ted Koppel for fraudulent reporting of the Katrina disaster. Don't forget now ...
Your analogy would only begin to make sense if Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jim Walton, and maybe a dozen or more other billionaires had homes in New Orleans, and if Koppel had mentioned that the average Katrina survivor would have no financial difficulites whatsoever.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
Care to explain dave? How is a populated Tyre a bare rock? I give you proof positive of a biblical mistake and you sadly call it equivocal?
I caught you in a lie, Mr. Dawkins, And I have been quite polite about it, and you have not been. I hope you can finally clear this up.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Help! Help! Dave is demolishing our arguments against the Snelling papers ...
Quick! Bring up dendro and ice cores and belly buttons!
Good gOd DaveyDH, You are simply too unaware of what constitutes rigor in science.
Ice cores and tree rings are good because the mechanics are easier for a guy like you. Remember, we don't need to prove 400k years, just more than 6500, right?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
all we need is one (1) date in excess of 6,000 years to utterly disprove your young-earth "hypothesis." That's all it takes.
And the sad thing for you, Eric, is that you do not have a single real date in excess of 6000 years. Too bad! So sad!
No, Dave, we've got hundreds of thousands of dates far in excess, some almost six orders of magnitude in excess, of 6,000 years, and you have to disprove every single one of them. Think you're up to the task? Because I know you're not.
And one more time:
HOW DO YOU PROPOSE THAT THE GRAND CANYON STRATA BE DATED, AND WHAT DATES DO YOU COME UP WITH, GENIUS?
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Ice cores, huh? You really think you've got a humdinger for me now, do you? OK. BWE. That's what everyone else said too.
And we're still saying it, Dave. No past tense required. If you think in your wildest dreams you've been able to refute a single piece of evidence you've been confronted with, you're nuts. And in the meantime, you haven't presented a single speck of evidence of your own.
And once more:
HOW DID 5,000 FEET OF WATER LAY DOWN 5,000 FEET OF SEDIMENT, GENIUS?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
all we need is one (1) date in excess of 6,000 years to utterly disprove your young-earth "hypothesis." That's all it takes.
And the sad thing for you, Eric, is that you do not have a single real date in excess of 6000 years. Too bad! So sad!
Ice cores, huh? You really think you've got a humdinger for me now, do you? OK. BWE. That's what everyone else said too.
[sheepish grin] Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a "humdinger" but... Gawsh, thanks. [/sheepish grin]
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
The Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb dates on Broken Hill were both 1680 Ma. The Ar-Ar date is 1573 Ma. Wow.
Wow. It's like magic! You just discard those samples over there that show 950 Ma and these samples over here that show 400 Ma and VOILA! Concordant dates! Ain't it great?[/quote] Your fantasies are not evidence. You want to claim there are discordant dates, produce the evidence. Don't forget the many published discordant dates, such as those for the KBS Tuff; claiming that discordant dates are swept under the rug is untenable.
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Note that all your references reported lots of instances without excess argon. This proves that not all K-Ar dates are affected by excess argon ... but your theory requires that all radiometric dates be wrong.
No, it doesn't. All I have mentioned is the 25% or so instances of excess Argon. If you read the entire RATE Book, you would see there are many other reasons why all Argon methods are unreliable: Argon loss, mixing, etc., etc. The supposedly "correct" results are only deemed correct because they agree with your preconceptions about Deep Time. The real reasons for the Argon concentration in rocks in reality has nothing to do with Deep Time at all. Sorry, you lose.
Argon loss would cause the dates to be seen as younger than they really are. No comfort for you there. If you've got evidence that mixing is a problem, trot it out.
Also explain the observed concordance between methods.
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That proves that excess argon can be a problem in Ar-Ar dating when there is a lot of it and it totally swamps the radiogenic argon. But it has been proved that, in most cases, excess argon does not affect the Ar-Ar method,
Yeah, just like Dalrymple "proved" that the K-Ar method is just fine. We saw how that worked out.
Yup, we saw exactly how that worked out ... and the result is that the Earth and life are ancient.
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Based on known-invalid samples, Davie-pootles. Fraud.
Yeah ... invalid because they were submitted by a creationist. I understand. What a joke. When are you going to start your investigation of Ted Koppel also?
Not because they were submitted by a creationist, Dave-moron, but rather because they contained xenoliths.
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If the Argon dating system is sound, then young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter.
Not quite true. If the Argon dating system is sound, then most young (historic) lava flows should not have any detectable levels of daughter when rational sample selection is practiced. The statistics, including the ones you quoted aove, show that by this criterion K-Ar dating is sound.
No. ALL. If ANY of the young flows have detectable Argon, then your whole system fails. Why do you think everybody's finally waking up to the fact that K-Ar is flawed? It's only a matter of time before everyone also wakes up on Ar-Ar. Again, the creationists are leading the way.
Sorry, Davie-doodles, wrong as usual. You ain't so good at this fancy "logic" stuff, hum? If any lava flow has no excess argon, or has excess argon that's insignificant relative to the radiogenic argon, then the K-Ar date of that sample is correct and the Earth and life are ancient.
Remember, you need something that always invalidates radiometric dating, not something that sometimes invalidates radiometric dating. And excess argon, argon loss, mixing, whatever, don't invalidate all radiometric dating unless you can show that one or more of those things always happens. And then, your opium dreams nothwithstanding, you need to address the concordance between vastly different methods.
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Snelling did nothing different than all the other studies on historic flows cited which found excess Argon.
He tested samples with xenoliths. Known to be invalid, and fraudulent.
Most of the others had xenoliths also. Did you not notice that they were "whole rock " analyses?
Yes. But you don't know what that means. "Whole rock" analyses do not necessarily include xenoliths and in fact never do contain xenolithswhen performed by honest scientists. As I posted before, including a reference, it's standard practice to inspect very thoroughly for xenoliths. Usually there are no xenoliths in the rock, and the analysis can continue; if there are xenoliths and they can be separated out, they are separated out before the analysis continues; if there are xenoliths and they can't be separated out, you don't do the analysis.
Look at a thin section of your sample! Check for weathering or alteration, calcite veins, nature and size of phenocrysts and groundmass, presence of glass, presence of inclusions (xenoliths, or material entrained during movement of flow). Basaltic glass tends not to be a very reliable material for K-Ar dating. If your sample has more than a few percent glass, even if it is very fresh, dating may not be a good idea unless your sample(s) come from an excellent, ironclad stratigraphy, in which anomalous ages have some chance of being detected. Calcite produces CO2 in the extraction system and can cause serious analytical problems. Minor amounts can be treated; major amounts suggest that the sample has been too badly altered to be worth dating. In either case, the presence or absence of calcite must be noted. Phenocrysts, especially olivine and pyroxene, may contain trapped Ar components that do not have an atmospheric 40Ar/36Ar ratio of 295.5 (MORB can have elevated values). This can lead to massive errors when dating young and/or poorly radiogenic rocks. The freshness of mafic phenocrysts can also be a good indicator of the freshness of the specimen as a whole. Zeolites, when present in anything more than trivial amounts, suggest that your sample has been substantially altered. Finally, the minerals in xenoliths may contain significant amounts of trapped Ar (mantle xenoliths; see discussion under phenocrysts) or inherited Ar (e.g., incompletely outgassed feldspars in granitoid fragments).
{Emphasis added.}
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You really are going to ride this lame horse of xenoliths aren't you? ... even though they were less than 5% of the weight of the samples ... Incredible! Well, then ... I will just keep embarrassing you in front of God and everybody for being so stubborn and blind.
You're not embarassing me in the slightest. What percentage of the argon in the whole-rock samples was in the xenoliths? That's what counts, not the volumetric or weight percentage of the xenoliths themselves.
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True, but that says nothing about the argon content of those xenoliths relative to the argon content of the rest of the sample. It's well-known and widely documented that xenoliths in even such low volumetric proportions can screw up K-Ar dating.
Let's see your calculations of the effect those xenoliths had on the dates. You can't do it, and nobody can, because we don't know the amount of argon in the xenoliths and in the non-xenolithic portion.
You should have stopped at the first word ... "True." I'll tell you what JonF, let's go take some common Argon concentration numbers from some xenoliths ... take the highest ones you can find, then do the math allocating 5% to the xenoliths ... guess what you will come up with ...
VERY TINY CHANGE IN THE NUMBERS ...
OK show me the numbers, Davie-pootle. It's standard practice to separate xenoliths, it's known that they affect analyses, let's see your evidence that they don't.
(BTW, did you notice that those concentrations of xenoliths are not for the samples that Snelling tested?)
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You haven't even discussed the message in which I pointed out that Snelling's conclusion in the 2003 paper is not supported or even relevant to the data and discussion. He just pulled it in out of left field.
Nonsense. All you said was that his conclusion was invalidated because of zircons. And you are wrong about zircons as I will show when I will deal with zircons separately.
Nope, Davie-dork, I pointed out exactly why his conclusion was irrelevant, and i noted the zircons are one of several ways to prove his error. Another way is (as I posted already and you snipped without response):
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And, of course, the fact that the isotopic composition of a recent lava flow reflects its "parentage" is not at all surprising ... but doesn't tell us anything about what the isotopic composition will be after that lava has been around for many millions of years. But you and Snelling are claiming that the isotopic composition will continue to reflect their "parentage" except isochrons that pass the validity test will magically show up, but be wrong. Neither you nor Snelling has presented and evidence or argument for this claim.
Yet another problem is that Snelling hasn't provided any evidence that all or even many lava flows are similar to the Ngauruhoe flows; yet he claims that all dating of all flows is wrong because the Ngauruhoe flows have an isotopic concentration that currently matches the "parent" concentration.
And the sad thing for you, Eric, is that you do not have a single real date in excess of 6000 years. Too bad! So sad!
Hey Shit For Brains - for the tenth or so time:
How do you explain the six independent calibration methods for C14 dating that all agree with each other, and all give a minimum age of 10,500 YBP?
Keep sinning by lying Davie, God hates liars. - Remember that God is watching you, and he's keeping score.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Do you seriously think that you are winning this argument?
Yes.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Do you seriously think that you are winning this argument?
Yes.
Well, keep dreaming Davey.
I'm afraid that, if your YEC buddies use your logic against the scientific community, they won't be able to impose their views by 2016. We'll see you there, Dave.
Do you seriously think that you are winning this argument?
Yes.
You aren't. Not one person here, poster or uncloaked lurker, not even observant Christians here, thinks you're winning anything, Dave. You are the only person who thinks you're winning, and since what you're trying to win is what's known as an "argument," then by definition you're losing.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Do you seriously think that you are winning this argument?
Yes.
So, you won't mind me copying out this thread and distributing it to your fellow churchgoers, Dave?
I can see the email now
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From Dave Hawkins To Congregation (All)
Dear friends in christ. Recently I have been under attack by EVIL RUSSIAN GANGSTERS. They pretended like I debated them and they are uh B L A C K M A L I N G M E by threatening to release A FABRICATED TRANSCRIPT....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111ONEONEONECAPSCAPSCAPS
Like you won the portuguese thing. Without making a single post in debate. Even after I offered to take either side!!
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...
You are winning if your goal is to look like an idiot.
You are winning if your goal is to demonstrate overcompensation for small penis size.
You are winning if you are delusional.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha... ouch...Hahahahahahaha!!
Core Samples. That should be easy. If you can show me that the earth is 6500 years old I'll repent. I'll go to church. I'll even start respecting religion.
And I'll tell people that you were the reason for my transformation.
Core Samples.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
How did Noah manage to carry millions of animals in his arch, since marco-evo never happened?
I suppose you mean macro-evo? I think you are confused. Noah did not have to carry millions of animals on the ark because micro-evolution does indeed occur and many varieties of animals would have developed after the Flood from just a single pair. The reason he had to carry 35,000 (Morris/Whitcomb's guess) is because macro-evo has never happened and never will happen. If macro-evo was possible, there would be no need for an ark to preserve distinct kinds.
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So, you won't mind me copying out this thread and distributing it to your fellow churchgoers, Dave?
Most of my fellow church goers are not into the Creation/Evolution controversy so they would not be interested. I have shared this site with those of my church who are interested in such things, though. As for you contacting my fellow church members, I have said you are welcome to come to my church. Are you coming? Just give me your real name and some contact info and when to expect you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
How did Noah manage to carry millions of animals in his arch, since marco-evo never happened?
I suppose you mean macro-evo? I think you are confused. Noah did not have to carry millions of animals on the ark because micro-evolution does indeed occur and many varieties of animals would have developed after the Flood from just a single pair. The reason he had to carry 35,000 (Morris/Whitcomb's guess) is because macro-evo has never happened and never will happen. If macro-evo was possible, there would be no need for an ark to preserve distinct kinds.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, Dave. There are—at minimum—10,000,000 species of organisms on earth today. Ants. Centipedes. Worms. Shrimp. Jawless Fishes. Rodents. Bats. Tubeworms. Sea Anemones. Molds. Fungi. Grasses. Orchids. Oak Trees. How many new species would you need per day if Noah had only 35,000 species on the ark? Can you do the math? That's six species a day, every day, from the time of the flood to the present. Minimum.
How many monkey "kinds" were there on the ark, Dave? How many speciation events among Platyrrhini alone since then? Do you have any concept of how much evolution must have occurred in the last 4,500 years for your "ark" story to be true? How did we get both freshwater and saltwater fish today, if either one or the other (or both) went extinct during the flood? Or did Noah maintain saltwater (or freshwater) aquaria on the ark for a year? How many beetle "kinds," Dave? How many ant "kinds"? Would you care to research how many ant species there currently are in the world? Did they all radiate from one, or ten, or a thousand ant "kinds" over the past 4,500 years?
Dave, your young-earth "hypothesis" is wrong in every particular. No matter what claim you make about it, that claim turns out to be wrong.
And here's the questions just from the last two pages:
HOW DID 5,000 FEET OF WATER LAY 5,000 FEET OF SEDIMENT?
HOW WOULD YOU DATE THE GRAND STAIRCASE STRATA?
HOW DID 35,000 "KINDS" RADIATE OUT TO TEN MILLION SPECIES CURRENTLY IN EXISTENCE?
And you say you don't believe in macroevolution. You actually believe in fantastically-accelerated evolution, far beyond anything postulated by evolutionary biology.
It's just getting worse and worse for you, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
How did Noah manage to carry millions of animals in his arch, since marco-evo never happened?
I suppose you mean macro-evo? I think you are confused. Noah did not have to carry millions of animals on the ark because micro-evolution does indeed occur and many varieties of animals would have developed after the Flood from just a single pair. The reason he had to carry 35,000 (Morris/Whitcomb's guess) is because macro-evo has never happened and never will happen. If macro-evo was possible, there would be no need for an ark to preserve distinct kinds.
[snip]
Random questions that just popped into my head:
How many of the 35k were beetles? For there to be a single pair of creatures for each Kind to microevolve into all the creatures we see today then your definition of microevolution includes speciation and large scale functional change to body plan and organs, correct? How fast did the microevolution occur, did it happen directly after (during?) the flood in a short period of time, or is it an on going process? Why do we not see large scale microevolution at a similar rate today? Did the large scale microevolution occur by naturalistic process (random mutation + natural selection + genetic drift) or was there alot of miracling going on? What is your definition of macroevolution?
We will get into this in more detail later, but I'll at least give you something to think about for tonight before resuming our study of radiometric dating ...
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A pair of dogs/wolves on Noah’s Ark couldn’t have produced all dog varieties today?
Richard A. Meiss, Ph.D., Speedway, IN, USA, who gave permission for his full name to be used. For a change from most negative feedbacks, this letter attempts to give an objection of substance. But as will be shown, it relies on the informal logical fallacy of argument from authority or Argumentum ad verecundiam (‘As a professional biologist …’) instead of performing elementary calculations, and like most evolutionists, misunderstands the vital point that evolution from goo to you via the zoo requires changes that increase genetic information content. His letter is printed first in its entirety. A response by Don Batten, Ph.D., also a professional biologist, of Answers in Genesis (Australia), immediately follows his letter (indented black text) with point-by-point responses (in dark red) interspersed as per normal email fashion. Ellipses (…) at the end of one of TM’s paragraphs signal that a mid-sentence comment follows, not an omission.
RM: “I listened to your program of 6/14/01 entitled ‘Dogs—how many on the Ark?’. As I understand it, you are contending that the whole array of canine species, from wolves to jackals to foxes to canis familiaris arose in approximately 4,000 years from the genetic potential in just two animals.
As a professional biologist, I can tell you that this is preposterous and points up the superficiality of your arguments. Since you deny the role of mutation in adding information to the genome, how do you account for the wide range of present-day traits arising from two individual genomes which could have had only two copies of each gene between them?
Such silliness will certainly not give you any credibility to those who are unconvinced (and are competent scientists), and most of your true believers lack the scientific background to assess the validity of your spurious claims.
I listened to your program of 6/14/01 [14 June 2001] entitled ‘Dogs—how many on the Ark?’. As I understand it, you are contending that the whole array of canine species, from wolves to jackals to foxes to canis familiaris [sic — I presume that a professional biologist knows that the generic name should be capitalized and this is just a typo] arose in approximately 4,000 years from the genetic potential in just two animals.
Obviously these short radio programs do not ‘cover all the bases’. I suggest that you check out the rest of our website for the details of these things—it’s easy to do using the internal search engine and the Q&A tab which hyperlinks to about 50 topic categories. Ken Ham was saying that the variety of dogs, wolves, etc., could possibly have come from one pair—that there may have been only one pair on the Ark. Evidence of inter-fertility between different species of the wolf group is good evidence that they belong to the one created kind. There is no doubt that the number of basically different kinds of animals is much less than the number of species that have been named, so that one of the common scoffers’ arguments that ‘Noah could not have fitted all the animals’, is just hot air (see Q&A: Noah’s Ark).
As a professional biologist, I can tell you that this is preposterous and points up the superficiality of your arguments.
I am a professional biologist also, so this argument from authority doesn’t impress me in the least, and nor should it impress anyone else. I do not see anything preposterous or superficial about the argument. Perhaps it is not the biology that offends you, but the worldview that we stand for and your protestations are an excuse for denying the clear teaching of the Bible regarding the Creation, Fall and Flood.
Since you deny the role of mutation in adding information to the genome, how do you account for the wide range of present-day traits …
Here we have a confusion of different issues. Do mutations contribute to the variety we see in things such as domestic dog breeds? Most certainly — see Is Your Dog Some Kind of Degenerate Mutant?. However, does this give support to belief in molecules-to-man evolution? Most definitely not. The sort of variety created by mutations (for example, hairless, pushed in face, stumpy legs, etc.) is due to loss of information, not the addition of new genetic information. This is not the stuff that would change a lizard (or a dinosaur) into a bird, for example — this requires the addition of the specifications (coded in the DNA) for making feathers (see scannning electron micrographs, left), flow-through lungs connected to hollow bones, bird-brains, etc.
As Dr Lee Spetner has pointed out in his book (above, right) and refutations of sceptics, no one has yet found a mutation that adds new complex coded heritable information to any organism. If mutations are really responsible for all the information added to a microbe to make a man, there should be plenty happening today that could be observed.
… arising from two individual genomes which could have had only two copies of each gene between them?
Actually, two genomes (male and female) could have four different alleles (variety of a given gene) between them for each gene locus, not two. Since you say you are a professional biologist, I assume you just made a simple mistake here and you actually do understand the principles of genetics.
Now, there are probably some 30,000 genes in a wolf/dog, and if every gene locus were heterozygous (two different alleles), then for each gene there are 10 possible pairs of four types of allele (if the alleles are A, B, C, D; then the possible pairs can be easily tabulated: AA, AB, AC, AD, BB, BC, BD, CC, CD, DD — for n types of allele, the number of possible pairs is n(n+1)/2).
With the recombinations due to sexual reproduction, this amounts to a potential number of different genotypes in the descendants of 1030,000 (this is 1 followed by 30,000 zeros). To put this in perspective, there are thought to be some 1080 atoms in the Universe! So, it appears that two wolves could produce quite a few descendants before the pattern would have to be repeated! Now because not every gene locus is likely to be heterozygous in the original pair, and because of recessive alleles not every gene will be expressed, so the number of animals that could actually be different in their form (‘phenotype’) would be less than the huge number above.
But let’s be ultra-generous to the evolutionist. I.e., let’s assume (as you claimed) that there were only two types of allele per locus, and that there was no co-dominance so only two phenotypes per locus, and there was only 1% heterozygosity in wolves/dogs (cf. 6.7% in humans even today, presumably much less than in Adam and Eve), the number of possible varieties would be 2300 = 10300(log(10)2) = 1090. Even with these conservative figures, this number is still so huge that it makes the number of atoms in the universe seem like a tiny smattering — 1090/1080 = 1010 (10 billion) times larger!
So it seems like there would have been plenty of genetic potential to produce all the members of the wolf kind that we see today. And if to this we add the degenerative changes due to mutations, we have more than ample capacity in two animals to produce all the varieties of dogs/wolves/jackals that we see today.
Such silliness …
Hmmm …
… will certainly not give you any credibility to those who are unconvinced (and are competent scientists), and most of your true believers lack the scientific background to assess the validity of your spurious claims.
Actually there are plenty of competent scientists, including professional biologists, who accept the Bible’s authority, including the accounts of Creation, the Fall and the Flood; and of course creationists were responsible for founding most branches of modern science, including biology. This is well documented in our creationist scientists page. And I know laymen who understand these basic issues of genetics better than some supposedly ‘professional biologists’. In fact, one Professor of Genetics at a university was shocked into reason by his wife, who has no academic qualifications — like you, he scoffed at her supposed ignorance, but God used something she said to break through his evolutionized outlook (see Jumping Ship: A geneticist tells of his ‘double conversion’).
Perhaps it is not the credibility of our teaching that is a problem but that, like other unbelievers, you are ‘wilfully ignorant’ of things the Bible teaches (2 Peter 3:5). This scoffing derision comes from a determination to follow one’s own evil desires (2 Peter 3:3) because to acknowledge the truth of the Bible would mean having to submit to the One who inspired it, admitting that you are guilty in His sight, deserving of His judgment and in need of the forgiveness He has made available through Jesus Christ. Such a profound change (conversion) would not make one the flavor of the month with one’s fellow scoffers! It would be a very difficult decision, but it needs to be done! Jesus said to follow him would be costly (John 15:18–21 cf. 2 Timothy 3:12), but He is the only way to eternal life (John 14:6, Acts 4:12).
Richard A. Meiss, Ph.D.
Sincerely Don Batten, Ph.D. Research scientist, author and editorial consultant AiG (Australia)
No problem producing the necessary number of varieties in 4000 years, Eric ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"As Dr Lee Spetner has pointed out in his book (above, right) and refutations of sceptics, no one has yet found a mutation that adds new complex coded heritable information to any organism. If mutations are really responsible for all the information added to a microbe to make a man, there should be plenty happening today that could be observed."
Drug resistant staph. From wiki "Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a specific strain of the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium that has developed antibiotic resistance to all penicillins, including methicillin and other narrow-spectrum β-lactamase-resistant penicillin antibiotics.[1] MRSA was first discovered in the UK in 1961 and is now widespread, particularly in the hospital setting where it is commonly termed a superbug."
Did you really read any of this before cutting and pasting this rubbish? edit [/tardgasm] edit [/squee]
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
No problem producing the necessary number of varieties in 4000 years, Eric ...
Wow. If you wave your hands any harder, you're gonna lift right off.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
He may be a biologist, but he aint no chemist. I particularly like this bit:
Quote
With the recombinations due to sexual reproduction, this amounts to a potential number of different genotypes in the descendants of 1030,000 (this is 1 followed by 30,000 zeros). To put this in perspective, there are thought to be some 1080 atoms in the Universe! So, it appears that two wolves could produce quite a few descendants before the pattern would have to be repeated! Now because not every gene locus is likely to be heterozygous in the original pair, and because of recessive alleles not every gene will be expressed, so the number of animals that could actually be different in their form (‘phenotype’) would be less than the huge number above.
Dave, SUDO ReadBeforePosting
I suppose there are like, what... ten of each of these?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
We will get into this in more detail later, but I'll at least give you something to think about for tonight before resuming our study of radiometric dating ...
Quote
A pair of dogs/wolves on Noah’s Ark couldn’t have produced all dog varieties today?
No problem producing the necessary number of varieties in 4000 years, Eric ...
Dave, dogs are all the same species. Dogs haven't even been domesticated for much more than 4,500 years. There are almost 12,000 species of ants, and over 35,000 species of beetles. Do you contend that one ant "kind" has radiated into 12,000 species in 4,500 years? Almost three new species of ant a year, every year? Almost 10 species of beetles every year, for 4,500 years?
How did redwoods, willows, elms, palms, and maples all radiate from one tree "kind" in 4,500 years, Dave? Redwoods can live to be almost 4,500 years old.
Why are you even discussing dogs, Dave? Dogs are the least of your problems. How about mushrooms? How many fungus "kinds" were on the ark?
Monkeys, Dave. What's the speciation rate for monkeys over the past 4,500 years?
10,000,000 species, Dave. Minimum. Explain them. Don't try to substitute one species (dogs) for ten million species.
But I'm sure you'll consider this another question you've supposedly "answered." The level of intellectual dishonesty you display continues to astound.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
LIARS who refuse to address the tons of evidence that have been placed before them.
LIARS who misrepresent and ignore what other, more knowledgeable Christians have patiently explained to them.
LIARS who have sinned by bearing false witness.
LIARS like Dave Dawkins. That's what makes Jesus angry Dave.
You know you will have to answer for these lies someday, don't you Dave? Can you feel the flames already?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
How did Noah manage to carry millions of animals in his arch, since marco-evo never happened?
I suppose you mean macro-evo? I think you are confused. Noah did not have to carry millions of animals on the ark because micro-evolution does indeed occur and many varieties of animals would have developed after the Flood from just a single pair. The reason he had to carry 35,000 (Morris/Whitcomb's guess) is because macro-evo has never happened and never will happen.
Your ridicule is fascinating Dave
Quote
Variety (biology) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In botanical nomenclature, variety is a rank below that of species: As such, it gets a ternary name (a name in three parts). A variety will have an appearance distinct from other varieties, but will hybridize freely with those other varieties (if brought into contact). Usually varieties will be geographically separate from each other.
But please, gohead and explain us how the million of *known* species of insects are only varieties of a few species. Are gorillas and macaques two varieties of the "primate kind"? In this case, you would'nt mind considering human and chimpanzee as two varieties of the "ape kind" Davey, would you?
And of course, sometimes after the flood(?), mutations rates were thousands of times higher than they are today. Is it linked to the faster rate of decay, Dave? My theorie of a space-time distortion, could be handy.
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If macro-evo was possible, there would be no need for an ark to preserve distinct kinds.
Interesting reasoning. "The Arch had to preserve 35 000 species since macroevolution doesn't happen. 'Cause if it did, Noah wouldn't have had to preserve those 35 000 kinds. Duh."
Heh, DDTTD says, "You talkin' to me, you talking to me...?
In ten years we'll see wing nuts like DDTTD from the FUDPUCKER (Fundamentalists Using Discredited Protocols to Utilise Creationist Kinderspielen for Enlisting Recruits) PROJECT spouting the same old crap, with a few corrections, because it's been force fed to them.
Like the old saw about how archaeopteryx was a fake. None of DDTTD's AiG/ICR "experts" made that claim! Es(bullshit)chew! Remember that claim DDTTD?
The YEC guys repeatedly start new organisations because they keep getting the crap whipped out of them (and arguing about whos' interpretation of the "inerrent bible" is more correct).
Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man.
Evidence for your hypothesis DDTTD??? Come on! You can do it!
Also, we covered the supposed "upward evolution" of bacteria in a separate thread a LONG time ago. Not planning on repeating this. Here's a link to help you get started understanding this issue.
Pretty periodic table ... thanks! I suppose you posted it because you think I am confused about atoms or something.
Oh ... and you wanted to know about Tyre? I beat that one to death ...oh ... about a hundred pages ago or so. Not planning on repeating. Sorry.
Hello Mr. Aftershave-- I see you're still with us ... do you know anything about Argon dating?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As Dr Lee Spetner has pointed out in his book (above, right) and refutations of sceptics, no one has yet found a mutation that adds new complex coded heritable information to any organism. If mutations are really responsible for all the information added to a microbe to make a man, there should be plenty happening today that could be observed.[/i]
I've lurked in this thread for a while (50+ pages or so) and I just wanted to say that I've never seen arguments as hopeless and misinformed as those presented by AFDave in support of his "hypothesis"; furthermore, his obstinacy in the face of the most transparent facts is quite incredible.
As Elizabeth Bennet would have it:
"Allow me to say, Lady Catherine [I'm sure she'd say the same to Dave], that the arguments with which you have supported this extraordinary application have been as frivolous as the application was ill-judged."
Can't stay too long otherwise I'll get a headache.
I've lurked in this thread for a while (50+ pages or so) and I just wanted to say that I've never seen arguments as hopeless and misinformed as those presented by AFDave in support of his "hypothesis"; furthermore, his obstinacy in the face of the most transparent facts is quite incredible.
Of course that's what you think ... this forum is a "buglight" for skeptics seeking to justify their skepticism.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I've lurked in this thread for a while (50+ pages or so) and I just wanted to say that I've never seen arguments as hopeless and misinformed as those presented by AFDave in support of his "hypothesis"; furthermore, his obstinacy in the face of the most transparent facts is quite incredible.
Of course that's what you think ... this forum is a "buglight" for skeptics seeking to justify their skepticism.
if you were talking about how people who believe in the absolute literal truth of the bible are become skeptical of that "fact" by reading this thread, then i'd agree with you 200%. C'mon Dave - even you can see your arguments are either
a) demolished instantly b) demolished after a moments pause to reflect on how best to demolish that specific argument (or cut'n'paste job, thw word argument raises the bar to a level you have not got to yet).
I suspect you take that pause as your victory.
You are doing your "side" no good at all, why do you think you are still being toyed with? Honestly, it'd be funnier if you were not twisting kids mind all the while.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
From 35,000 in 4,500 years? Is that your claim? Aside from the utter impracticality of having even 35,000 species on the ark, how does the incredible proliferation of new species in 4,500 years to the diversity clearly visible today amount to anything other than ultra-mega-macroevolution? You say it can't happen and never will happen; well, if that's true, then your "flood" never happened and your "ark" never set sail.
Or is this another one for the "List of Questions Dave Knows He'll Never Be Able to Answer"?
Oh, and as for Tyre—you got beaten to death with that one, Dave, not the other way around.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
"REST ASSURED ... OUR BRIDGE IS SAFE!! IT HAS ONLY BROKEN 4 OUT OF 20 TIMES THAT WE TESTED IT ... AND THE DRIVER RECOVERED FROM HIS INJURIES EVERY TIME!"
SUBTITLE: JONF'S FLAWED LOGIC ON ARGON "DATING"
Austin and Snelling of ICR www.icr.org have done excellent work document the numerous problems with Argon "dating" of rocks. Not only have they done extensive literature reviews which show numerous examples of excess Argon in historic lava flows. They have also done their own experiments at Mt. Saint Helens and Mt. Ngauruhoe.
Their literature reviews and their own studies have shown that "excess Argon" is a significant problem and has been well documented. "Excess Argon" violates the fundamental assumption of K-Ar and Ar-Ar dating which is that there is supposed to be ZERO Argon in the rocks when they are first formed. This is obviously not the case when testing historic lava flows so there is now no basis for believing it is true for ancient flows. JonF contends that Creationists have to show that ALL ancient flows contain excess Argon in order to invalidate the technique. Of course, this is ludicrous and shows just how desperate Deep Time Defenders are. For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time. Would you drive across a bridge that the engineers said was sound "except for those 4 out of 20 times that it broke when a truck went across it" ?? Go ahead, my friend. If you are that stupid, I have a bridge I will SELL you for a really good price. This is the exact situation we have with Argon dating and we are not just trusting Austin and Snelling (I know this is important to you becasue they are such "fraudsters"). This is also based upon the results of one of the leaders in the field, Dalrymple, who reported 20% (! of his tests on historic flows had excess Argon. Come on, guys, get a clue!
JonF also complains about xenoliths in Snellings test. First of all, the xenoliths amounted to less than 5% in virtually identical flows. JonF must realize that his "xenolith horse" is dying, so he points out that the <5% xenolith figures apply to different flows than the ones Snelling tested. Well, go look at the two charts, Jon. They are virtually identical. Secondly, Jon points out that anyone honestly trying to get an accurate date with Argon dating excludes xenoliths. Fine. Go tell that to all the geologists in the studies cited by Snelling. You say they excluded xenoliths? OK. Fine. They still got "excess Argon" and thus bogus dates. Your "xenolith horse" is dead.
Remember also that Snelling was not trying to get an "accurate date" because he's smart enough to know this is not possible with Argon "dating." All he's trying to do is confirm with his own experiment what has been shown now for many years in the literature: that excess Argon is the "Achilles heel" of Argon dating. Do you understand what that means? It means that Argon "dating" is like a chain with at least one broken link. Do you know how useful a chain with a broken link is? It's completely useless. For the method to be trusted, it needs to be shown that it is NEVER in error.
Add to this the fact that all the Argon dates out there have to be "confirmed" with other methods. Why? Because of excess Argon, Argon loss, inheritance, mixing, etc. JonF says that Argon loss doesn't help the creationists, but he is wrong again. Of course it does simply because it invalidates the technique in yet another way. Excess Argon invalidates the technique because it violates the fundamental assumption of ZERO Argon when the rock is formed. But Argon loss makes the rock appear younger than the "actual age." This also has been well documented in the literature and by the ICR RATE Group and even acknowledged by the late, great JonF himself (well, at least he acknowledged that Argon dating has to be cross-checked ... dunno if we'll ever get him to admit that Argon dating is therefore wrong).
Of course, the question remains ... what is the Actual Age of any rock? This is of course the million dollar question. Eric has asked me how I would date the layers of the Grand Staircase. Good question. I'm not quite ready to give you my answer because I want to first of all show that all the "radiometric dating methods" out there are invalid.
I, at least, have satisfied myself that the most common method for dating rocks--Argon dating is ...
... BALONEY!
Again, if it is TRUTH you are interested in, here is the link which will get you all the relevant Snelling and Austin papers ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave's funny theory also predicts that the phylogeography of his "varieties" should reveal common origins arround Mt Ararat. Well, of course that's not the case, but I wouldn't engage Dave in this discussion, since he can't undestand basic genetics.
this forum is a "buglight" for skeptics seeking to justify their skepticism
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 09 2006,10:33)
"REST ASSURED ... OUR BRIDGE IS SAFE!! IT HAS ONLY BROKEN 4 OUT OF 20 TIMES THAT WE TESTED IT ... AND THE DRIVER RECOVERED FROM HIS INJURIES EVERY TIME!"
Dave, we have the whole scientific community (expect a couple of wingnuts) on our "bridge". If you think you got evidence that its theories are flawed, why don't you send a paper to a scientific journal? If you want the YECs to take over the world within ten years, you should begin today. I'll be checking Nature and Science for the next decade.
[Their literature reviews and their own studies have shown that "excess Argon" is a significant problem and has been well documented. "Excess Argon" violates the fundamental assumption of K-Ar and Ar-Ar dating which is that there is supposed to be ZERO Argon in the rocks when they are first formed. This is obviously not the case when testing historic lava flows so there is now no basis for believing it is true for ancient flows. JonF contends that Creationists have to show that ALL ancient flows contain excess Argon in order to invalidate the technique. Of course, this is ludicrous and shows just how desperate Deep Time Defenders are. For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time.
Wrong, Davie-doodles. For example, there is no medical test that is right 100% of the time. There is no medical treatment that works 100% of the time. Do you refuse all medical tests and treatments? Do you trust any medical tests or treatments?
Wotta maroon.
If K-Ar dating, or any geological radiometric dating, is right once your entire crazy "theory " is blown out of the water. You acknowledged that fact. Therefore, in order to claim that your "theory" is correct, you must demonstrate that all radiometric dating is wrong all of the time. Basic logic, moron.
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This is also based upon the results of one of the leaders in the field, Dalrymple, who reported 20% (! of his tests on historic flows had excess Argon. Come on, guys, get a clue!
And therefore 80% of historic lava flows had no excess argon, and dating on such flows yields correct answers, and therefore dating on at least some ancient lava flows yields correct answers, and your 6,000 year old Earth is falsified. You need to demonstrate 100% wrong answers, Davie-dork.
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JonF also complains about xenoliths in Snellings test. First of all, the xenoliths amounted to less than 5% in virtually identical flows.
But we don't know how much of the argon in the samples was due to xenoliths.
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JonF must realize that his "xenolith horse" is dying, so he points out that the <5% xenolith figures apply to different flows than the ones Snelling tested. Well, go look at the two charts, Jon. They are virtually identical.
What two charts, Davie-dip? But it's a minor, parenthetical point. You still need to deal with the zircons and demonstrate that the Ngauruhoe lavas are just like all other lavas.
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Secondly, Jon points out that anyone honestly trying to get an accurate date with Argon dating excludes xenoliths. Fine. Go tell that to all the geologists in the studies cited by Snelling.
Not necessary. They know it already. They either deteremined that their samples did not contain xenoliths, or they separated the xenoliths.
I'm glad to see you acknowledge that honest K-Ar dating requires excluding xenoliths. Snelling knows it too. That's why his "dating" of the Ngauruhoe flows is fraudulent.
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You say they excluded xenoliths? OK. Fine. They still got "excess Argon" and thus bogus dates.
Nope. Some percentage of the time they got excess argon, and in some percentage of those cases the excess argon was swamped by the radiogenic argon and was therefore insignificant. The near-universal corelation between different radiometric dating methods, the truth you dare not address, shows us that errors due to excess argon are rare.
But even if half the K-Ar dates had problems with excess argon, that's no consolation for you. You need all dating to be wrong all the time.
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Your "xenolith horse" is dead.
You mean "Davie-doofus's excess-argon horse is dead". Excess argon does not affect all studies, and you need something that affects all studies.
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Remember also that Snelling was not trying to get an "accurate date" because he's smart enough to know this is not possible with Argon "dating." All he's trying to do is confirm with his own experiment what has been shown now for many years in the literature: that excess Argon is the "Achilles heel" of Argon dating. Do you understand what that means? It means that Argon "dating" is like a chain with at least one broken link.
False analogy, Davie dootles. We use techniques and tests that do not get 100% correct results in all sorts of fields all the time. And the near-universal correlation between different radiometric dating methods, the truth you dare not address, shows us that errors due to excess argon are rare.
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Do you know how useful a chain with a broken link is? It's completely useless. For the method to be trusted, it needs to be shown that it is NEVER in error.
Boy, Dave, you can always be trusted to serve up a healthy dose of stupendous stupidity. Excess argon occasionally leads to wrong answers, so almost all of the answers we get are correct. Deal with reality, Davie-poot, not your opium dreams.
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Add to this the fact that all the Argon dates out there have to be "confirmed" with other methods.
Don't have to be, but often are.
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Why? Because of excess Argon, Argon loss, inheritance, mixing, etc.
Nope. They are often confirmed because (1) real scientists always confirm everything as much as possible, and (2) we know that there are (rare) errors in K-Ar dating.
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JonF says that Argon loss doesn't help the creationists, but he is wrong again. Of course it does simply because it invalidates the technique in yet another way. Excess Argon invalidates the technique because it violates the fundamental assumption of ZERO Argon when the rock is formed. But Argon loss makes the rock appear younger than the "actual age." This also has been well documented in the literature and by the ICR RATE Group and even acknowledged by the late, great JonF himself (well, at least he acknowledged that Argon dating has to be cross-checked ... dunno if we'll ever get him to admit that Argon dating is therefore wrong).
So, you acknowledge that there are rocks on the earth that are billions of years old, and our tests of them are realy underestimating their age. First you acknowledge that honest K-Ar dating requires excluding xenoliths (implicitly acknowledging Snelling's fraud), now you acknowledge that your 6,000 year age of the Earth is false. Not a good day for you, Davie-pud.
Oh, and I'm really looking forward to your mixing evidence against K-Ar dating. I really, really want you to post it. You don't have a prayer of figuring out why I want it so much; let it be a surprise. Please post your mixing evidence against K-Ar dating, Davie-pootles!!
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east, have satisfied myself that the most common method for dating rocks--Argon dating is ...
The most common method, by far, for dating rocks is U-Pb concordia-discordia on zircons (or sometimes other minerals). All argon methods, including the widely used Ar-Ar, amount to about 30%. Gee, that reminds me; weren't you going to demonstrate how zircons, known (and acknowledged by Snelling) to contain only radiogenic lead, don't falsify Snelling's conclusion that "By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information." Why, yes, you wrote several times that you were going to do that... but there's no mention of zircons in your message! Why is that, Davie-diddles?
If you think you got evidence that its theories are flawed, why don't you send a paper to a scientific journal? If you want the YECs to take over the world within ten years, you should begin today. I'll be checking Nature and Science for the next decade.
He doesn't want to be a published scientist, he said so himself. The only evidence he gives any credence to is from AiG or ICR. Forget about Nature and Science, they're hotbeds of radical atheists for which the academic mantra of "publish or perish" becomes "publish then perish in a lake of eternal fire".
You'd be better off watching C-SPAN and reading the reports from the courts. The fundies didn't take over the GOP from the ground up just because they believed the initials stand for "God's Own Party". They believed that if they controlled the majority of elected positions from dogcatcher right on up to POTUS and the courts too then they could implement the America is a Christian Nation agenda without interference from the Damned.
If the Fundies see their power and influence waning I'd expect a last desperate gasp from them before they're consigned to the dustbin of political influence.
In criticism of the Ar-Ar dating technique, Stupid says :
Quote
For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time. Would you drive across a bridge that the engineers said was sound "except for those 4 out of 20 times that it broke when a truck went across it" ??
No actual engineer would say this--because engineers know about catastropic failure and inherent, unaccounted flaws. Bridges *have* failed. We still use bridges. Airplanes have crashed due to anomalous failures of varying sorts. But we still fly planes.
To require Ar-Ar dating to be foolproof, even when used in ways expressly antithetical to the requirements of the test...is beyond stupid, but that's typical of your bullshite, AirHead. By the way, you should look up the genetic data on dogs, wolves and jackals...####, canids in general. Four years ago, the dog lineage was examined. It continues to be examined.
In criticism of the Ar-Ar dating technique, Stupid says :
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For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time. Would you drive across a bridge that the engineers said was sound "except for those 4 out of 20 times that it broke when a truck went across it" ??
No actual engineer would say this--because engineers know about catastropic failure and inherent, unaccounted flaws. Bridges *have* failed. We still use bridges. Airplanes have crashed due to anomalous failures of varying sorts. But we still fly planes.
I had to admit, that gave me a moment's pause. I've been maintaining the belief that AFDave is not deliberately lying, he's just unable to understand basically anything that contradicts his religious beliefs. But that statement..."For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time." It's really hard to imagine someone with an engineering degree saying this and believing it. It gave me a moment's pause, but I haven't changed my mind. I think he's a True Believer. If he opened up the bible tomorrow and it said "The moon was burped up by a Cosmic MegaDonkey", by thursday he'd have a thread on an Astronomy blog titled "AFDave's UPDATED M E G A D O N K E Y H Y P O T H E S I S"
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Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF TONS OF LUNAR ROCK LAYERS BURPED UP BY A DONKEY ALL OVER THE MOON
The most common method, by far, for dating rocks is U-Pb concordia-discordia on zircons (or sometimes other minerals). All argon methods, including the widely used Ar-Ar, amount to about 30%.
Yeah, that's probably true if you consider the last 15 years or so. Wanna guess why? Think, Jon, think. Could it be that people don't trust Argon anymore? Hmmmm ... Bercause prior to that it was massively popular and was the most common method for many years.
JonF...
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Wrong, Davie-doodles. For example, there is no medical test that is right 100% of the time. There is no medical treatment that works 100% of the time. Do you refuse all medical tests and treatments? Do you trust any medical tests or treatments?
Not even a close analogy. My analogy of the bridge is perfect. You would never drive on a bridge that was known to have broken 4 out 20 times it was tested. That's nothing but Russian Roulette. This is exactly what you have with Argon dating ... complete BOGOSITY (that is ... failure ... the bridge broke) in 20% of Dalrymple's tests plus many many other documented cases in the literature.
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If K-Ar dating, or any geological radiometric dating, is right once your entire crazy "theory " is blown out of the water. You acknowledged that fact.
No I did not acknowledge it and I will not ever. You cannot ever tell if this technique is "right" because you have nothing to measure it against except other bogus "dating" techniques which I will show in the coming days are equally vapid. Or maybe you are talking about fossil dating? That is even more laughable. Argon dating is all over the map -- "too old" because of "excess Argon", "too young" because of Argon loss or mixing or what have you. The only time it's "right on" is because it happens by some sheer stroke of luck to coincide with some other system like Pb-Pb or Sm-Nd or whatever.
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And therefore 80% of historic lava flows had no excess argon, and dating on such flows yields correct answers, and therefore dating on at least some ancient lava flows yields correct answers, and your 6,000 year old Earth is falsified. You need to demonstrate 100% wrong answers, Davie-dork.
What a joke. No wonder half the public isn't buying the Millions of Years story ... your logic is terrible.
Quote
What two charts, Davie-dip? But it's a minor, parenthetical point. You still need to deal with the zircons and demonstrate that the Ngauruhoe lavas are just like all other lavas.
Read the paper ... thoroughly. The two charts are there. I will deal with zircons. But now ... Argon.
Quote
I'm glad to see you acknowledge that honest K-Ar dating requires excluding xenoliths. Snelling knows it too. That's why his "dating" of the Ngauruhoe flows is fraudulent.
Don't twist my meaning. ... I said ...
Quote
Remember also that Snelling was not trying to get an "accurate date" because he's smart enough to know this is not possible with Argon "dating."
Do you see the quotes around "accurate date"? The deal is that Snelling knows that Argon techniques are wildly in error. Why should he then care if the sample comes back as 1 Ma or 2 Ma? It simply does not matter because the point is: there is excess Argon and the results have no age significance whether they are 2 Ma or 1 Ma. There are a thousand results that could have come back and shown the invalidity of the Argon method. There's only ONE result that could have validated the method. ZERO excess Argon. Why spend extra money when you don't have to. If Snelling really was stupid enough (as many geologists are) to believe you could get a valid date from the test, then, yes, he should have excluded xenoliths. Again, my Ted Koppel analogy applies here. Ted's goal was to report that a bunch of people lost their homes. It's irrelevant that some of the people he included as "residents" were actually foreigners.
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And the near-universal correlation between different radiometric dating methods, the truth you dare not address, shows us that errors due to excess argon are rare.
This is such hogwash! The excess argon problem is enormous, which is why everyone "verifies" it with other methods. (problem is, though, the other methods are not valid either as I will show you)
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So, you acknowledge that there are rocks on the earth that are billions of years old, and our tests of them are realy underestimating their age. First you acknowledge that honest K-Ar dating requires excluding xenoliths (implicitly acknowledging Snelling's fraud), now you acknowledge that your 6,000 year age of the Earth is false. Not a good day for you, Davie-pud.
No. No. And no. Putting words in my mouth is not a good technique, Jon, just because you cannot make your case with your own positive information. The rocks are NOT billions of years old. Honest K-Ar dating is impossible, xenoliths or no xenoliths. And the earth is probably 6000 years old. Is that clear enough for you?
Bing...
Quote
He doesn't want to be a published scientist, he said so himself. The only evidence he gives any credence to is from AiG or ICR.
Interesting, isn't it ... how a handful of scientists committed to the truth (as opposed to many other agendas other than the truth) can make such an enormous difference. How is it that 10 or so PhD's at two dinky little non-profit organizations can be making such a worldwide splash and be making so many evolutionists mad!!?? And they are not even calling them names!! They are being polite!! (Hint: maybe what they are saying is true!
Deadman...
Quote
In criticism of the Ar-Ar dating technique, Stupid says : Quote For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time. Would you drive across a bridge that the engineers said was sound "except for those 4 out of 20 times that it broke when a truck went across it" ??
No actual engineer would say this--because engineers know about catastropic failure and inherent, unaccounted flaws. Bridges *have* failed. We still use bridges. Airplanes have crashed due to anomalous failures of varying sorts. But we still fly planes.
Deadman ... you are not thinking straight ... stop and think about what you are saying ... of course we drive on bridges because they NEVER ONCE failed in testing. Engineers go to great pains to make sure they never do. Of course they have once in a great while. But please tell me that you are intelligent enough to not drive on a bridge that is known to have failed when 4 out of the last 20 trucks drove over it! Imagine the engineeers saying ... "Well, the cement wasn't cured well enough ... but it is now ... we fixed it!!" then the next time ... "Oh, we forgot to put the rebar in ... but we fixed it and it's there now" and so on.
This is what you have with Argon dating ... "Oh well ... there was excess Argon from the Blah blah ..." and "Oh, there was Argon loss because of fluid transport blah blah blah ..." ... "but THIS test is accurate. (wink wink)" "We know it's a good test."
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No. No. And no. Putting words in my mouth is not a good technique, Jon, just because you cannot make your case with your own positive information. The rocks are NOT billions of years old. Honest K-Ar dating is impossible, xenoliths or no xenoliths. And the earth is probably 6000 years old. Is that clear enough for you?
Jesus Crisp DaveyDH, Are you saying that 100% of Argon dates are wrong? Are you saying that 98.2% are wrong?
If I could be allowed to guess at what you mean, I would guess one of the following: 1. Because the method has flaws that are very difficult to control for in the laboratory, all dates that have been arrived at using the method are suspect.
2. There are logical fallacies built into the test therefore the test is not able to produce accurate results ever.
3. The Bible might claim that the world is 6000 years old therefore argon dating that contradicts this info must be wrong.
Is one of these what you are trying to say?
So, I have 2 questions. What if we could RM date a series of things at over 6000 years and then verify the accuracy using several other, independent dating techniques? Assuming we could do that, would you believe the Earth is more than 6k years old?
If you looked at the evidence and decided that it shows that the Earth is actually more than 6000 years old, how would that information affect your life?
Have you had a chance to look at the AIG article I posted about ice cores? Have you tried to figure out what a scientist might object to in the article?
Remember, if you can show me just that core samples don't demonstrate more than 6000 years of earth's history, I will convert to whatever religion you want me to. And I will publicly renounce my belief in (b)illionsofyearsism.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dave, have you adressed the existence of mountains of limestone (the Jura for instance)? Cause they are not easily concealable with your young Earth and flood, you know.
I, at least, have satisfied myself that the most common method for dating rocks [sic]--Argon dating is ...
... BALONEY!
Dave, your utter vacuousness is simply astounding. Are you claiming that every lab in the world that does Ar-Ar or K-Ar dating is engaging in deliberate fraud? They're lying to their customers? Where are the lawsuits, Dave?
Your stupidity is just growing by leaps and bounds with every post, Dave. Actually, it's not stupidity (although it sure looks like it). It's actually raging, monstrous dishonesty, the kind of dishonesty I don't think I've ever experienced from anyone before. It has to be a symptom of your growing desperation; there's no possible other explanation for it.
You do realize, Dave, that there are over 40 radiometric dating techniques? And you think you're going to discredit every single one all by yourself? Why do all those techniques provide dates far in excess of your 6,000-year age for the earth, Dave? You think every single result that's ever been presented by any radiometric dating technique is wrong by anywhere from two to six orders of magnitude? Are you completely out of your mind?
In the meantime, you haven't presented any methodology for dating anything! None of your dates (using your mystery dating technique)converge on any particular value at all!
And your bogus requirement that any test be accurate 100% of time ranks up there with the stupidest statements you've ever made. I thought you were an engineer. No engineer who wasn't mentally ill would ever make an assertion so utterly laughable. Jon's right, Dave: you have to prove that every single date ever given by any dating technique anywhere in the world that's more than 6,000 years old is wrong.One accurate date kills your "hypothesis" dead.
Of course, 10,000,000 living species of organisms kills it just as dead. Along with every other bogus claim you've ever made that's been roundly refuted; they all kill it dead too.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The rocks are NOT billions of years old. Honest K-Ar dating is impossible, xenoliths or no xenoliths
Why, Stupid? Would it be because in the past, radioactive decay accellerated, though you can't show it?
Why is Argon dating and radioactive decay to specified isotopes...wrong? Because 2 out of 200 argon dates are anomalous? Bwahahaha, you're as stupid as you appear to be.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Not to mention, there's also the amount of genetic variety within each of those millions of species. That too takes time to build up again after a population crash (aka genetic bottleneck event).
The rocks are NOT billions of years old. Honest K-Ar dating is impossible, xenoliths or no xenoliths
Actually, as far as Dave can tell, any kind of honest radiometric dating is impossible, because they all return dates that he knows, in his heart of hearts, are way too old.
That's the criterion in Dave's constipated little universe: if a date is more than 6,000 years old, it is physically impossible for it to be correct.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
LOL could you imagine the expression on a peer-reviewer's face when he reads
Quote Oh, you want my evidence again? MILLIONS OF DEAD THINGS BURIED IN ROCK LAYERS LAID DOWN BY WATER ALL OVER THE EARTH
Yes, and it would be equally interesting to have seen Darwin's face when he met his Creator.
Yes, Darwin's a Creationist now!
(You will be too, one way or another)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, and it would be equally interesting to have seen Darwin's face when he met his Creator. Yes, Darwin's a Creationist now! (You will be too, one way or another)
Can you get any lower than to abuse a dead man? Tune in when AirHeadDave sinks even lower. You may as well claim you "know" he became a muslim.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
This is precisely what sickens me about your view of God, Stupid. Anything you can't lie about to promote a young-earth-literalist view, you then claim that your evil, petty God would "avenge" in the afterlife. Despite the fact that Darwin as a man was more ethical, more moral, more of a decent human being than you will ever be in your crappy lifetime. Darwin cited the essential unity of humankind. Your view would have your evil god punishing honesty and truthfulness... all for your sick view of things. This is why you claimed earlier on this thread that your god would kill children because they MIGHT do wrong in the future, you sick little twit.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Don't think so, Dave. See, the thing you don't get is, we already knew your "hypothesis" was a joke as soon as you presented it.
It's one thing for someone to state his or her believe that God exists. He11, for all I know, God does exist. Not your god, of course; no supreme being could possibly be so incompetent and clownlike. But there's every possibility that there's an actual creator god out there.
But no, that's not what you're arguing. You're arguing that every single word in the Bible (or more precisely, some bible, because you've already admitted you've never read or even seen a literally inerrant bible) is literally true. Which is more laughable than I could ever really convey to you, Dave.
The idea that some ark bobbed around in the drink for a year, carrying the ancestors of every single living thing on earth today, is truly a toddler-level story. It would be perfectly okay for a five-year-old to believe it, but to think that a guy in his forties with an engineering degree could think such horse-hockey is actually true? That's well beyond stupid, and far into the realm of the comically absurd.
Has it ever occurred to you to wonder how long it would take a 10^24 kg sphere of iron to cool down from the molten state to the point where someone could walk on it, Dave? Because it occurred to Lord Kelvin over a hundred years ago. He came up with a figure of less than a hundred million years, because he knew nothing of radioactivity. But even a figure too low by more than an order of magnitude still blew your "hypothesis" out of the water more than a century ago, Dave. Back here in the 21st Century, what's your explanation for how the earth could have cooled that much in six thousand years? Yet another of your miracles? Like your floodwaters "poofing" into existence and then "poofing" back out of existence?
And before you start protesting that you haven't gotten to that part of your "hypothesis," Dave, consider this: you haven't even gotten past your missing water for your flood, a topic I first raised with you almost four months ago. You haven't managed to establish a single point you think you've made so far, and believe me, I haven't even started presenting objections to your young-earth "hypothesis." I can keep this up until the cows come home, grow old, and die, and so can every single other poster here. You and your "hypothesis" will be getting pelted with objections from every quarter for the next century, and we'll never run out.
Dave, your hypothesis has been ruled out of consideration on all conceivable grounds. Including coffee grounds.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Well then, Eric, your job is done. I am no longer a threat to humanity since you have so soundly refuted me. I guess you can go home now.
What's Darwin doing now? I don't know. I just know that he is either in Heaven or He11 and that he is most definitely a creationist now.
And you will be too one day ... by choice or by force!
Quote
Philippians 2:5 Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. 9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hello Mr. Aftershave-- I see you're still with us ... do you know anything about Argon dating?
Yes I do Mr. Dawkins I'm not an expert, but I have a good working knowledge of the basics.
Now Mr. Dawkins, do you know anything radiocarbon dating? Do you know that there are not one, not two, not three, but at least six independent calibration methods for C14/C12 decay rates that all agree to within a few percent, and all give accurate dates to a minimum of 10,500 YBP, up to 50,000 YBP?
Did you know that when scientists do a radiocarbon dating of Catal Huyuk and get a value of 9000 YBP, that date comes from a method that has been independently verifed six different ways? And when when scientists do a radiocarbon dating of the cave art at Lascaux and get a value of 28000 YBP, that date comes from a method that has been independently verifed six different ways?
Mr. Dawkins, do you realize that ALL radiocarbon dates older than 6000 YBP kick the living snot out of your literal young Earth Genesis claim?
Do you know anything about intellectual honesty Mr. Dawkins? That means dealing with ALL the evidence that is presented, not lying and avoiding those unpleasant facts that directly contradict your views.
Do you know any honest YECs who are willing to actually discuss this C14 calibration data Mr. Dawkins? Because I sure can't find any around here.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I just know that he is either in Heaven or He11 and that he is most definitely a creationist now. And you will be too one day ... by choice or by force!
Except I don't agree to your evil God, Dave. Nor will I ever agree that a decent man should be punished eternally for mere disagreement.
Nor do I believe as you do...that innocent babies would be sent to eternal torment because they *might* do bad things in the future---which is predestination and exactly opposite to the Bible, you sick little thing.
But YOU believe that.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What's with the "Mr. Dawkins" moniker? Is that a new veiled insult of some sort?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Well then, Eric, your job is done. I am no longer a threat to humanity since you have so soundly refuted me. I guess you can go home now.
What's Darwin doing now? I don't know. I just know that he is either in Heaven or He11 and that he is most definitely a creationist now.
And you will be too one day ... by choice or by force!
Dave, this isn't work for me. It's not a job. You have no idea how much entertainment I get watching your astounding resistance to what really just amounts to common sense. Your belief in things that are on their face so absurdly ridiculous is totally worth the price of admission.
I never thought you were a threat to humanity, Dave, and I never for a minute believed you were persuadable. How could you be? You've been immersed in evidence contradicting your bible your entire life. If you've been able to ignore that evidence for the past 35 years, you can ignore anything.
You don't know what Chuck is doing these days, Dave, and you most definitely do not "know" he's in either heaven or he11. You believe he is, but that belief is based on nothing other than your own desire to believe. You have less evidence for the existence of heaven or he11 than you do for the existence of your "flood."
So who's going to "force" me to be a creationist, Dave? God? Doubt it. Certainly not you, and I'm assuming the American people will rebel before we ever get to the point of forcible indoctrination in religious cant.
And as for your quote, Dave: can you explain to me, in your own words, what God thought he accomplished by nailing his own son to a tree?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Page 16, this thread--Dave opines on children being killed by god:
Quote
IF there is a Creator God, then there are things that we do not know or understand, and how can we say that God is not good if he orders the killing of certain people groups. In the big scheme of things, maybe He knows that He is doing the world a favor by killing them off.
now, class ...can we say "predestination?"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Page 16, this thread--Dave opines on children being killed by god:
Quote
IF there is a Creator God, then there are things that we do not know or understand, and how can we say that God is not good if he orders the killing of certain people groups. In the big scheme of things, maybe He knows that He is doing the world a favor by killing them off.
now, class ...can we say "predestination?"
Dave, if god ordered you to kill someone, would you do it?
Dave, if god ordered you to kill someone, would you do it?
Dave already discussed this in terms of "authority" . Notice that he claims at one time that man has a common morality. Notice on the other that he says the same morality can be altered at any given time...meaning he has no morality.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
the answer to all these questions really boils down to an authority question. And this in turn boils down to the question of "Is there a Creator? Or is there not?" Which is precisely why I am so interested in these questions. Here's the deal. IF there is a Creator, then it follows that HE gets to make the rules, not us. IF He says "Go destroy all the Amalekites" and He was the one that created the Amalekites, then how can we say, "No, that's wrong?"
He (Dave) doesn't say explicitly that he would obey such biblical injunctions to kill kids, but I bet he would... how could he, as a believer, NOT?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
the answer to all these questions really boils down to an authority question. And this in turn boils down to the question of "Is there a Creator? Or is there not?" Which is precisely why I am so interested in these questions. Here's the deal. IF there is a Creator, then it follows that HE gets to make the rules, not us. IF He says "Go destroy all the Amalekites" and He was the one that created the Amalekites, then how can we say, "No, that's wrong?"
I would say "No, that's wrong." If morality is universal, Dave must think the same thing.
So who's going to "force" me to be a creationist, Dave? God? Doubt it.
Do you have a tongue, Eric? Did you read the verse? It said, "and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This includes you, my friend. Don't wait until it's too late.
SS...
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Dave, if god ordered you to kill someone, would you do it?
No. What Deadman is thinking of is probably the discussion about Joshua. And yes, if I were living in Joshua's day and were in Joshua's shoes, I would have, as he did.
But the divine authority structure was changed with the advent of Jesus Christ, his apostles and the completion of the canon of Scripture. There are no longer any "prophets" and "apostles" who receive direct instructions from God. Sorry, Mohammed and Joseph Smith ... you are in error. God has spoken to us in these latter times through His Son, the Living Word, and through Scripture, the Written Word, the latter portion of which was penned by the authorized agents of Jesus himself--the Apostles.
Hebrews 1 ...
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1 ¶ God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
He (Dave) doesn't say explicitly that he would obey such biblical injunctions to kill kids, but I bet he would...how could he, as a believer, NOT?
You are truly desperate to try to make me look bad aren't you? What is it that motivates you? Are you truly afraid of "religious nutjobs" like Katherine Harris (or me) running the country? What ... do you think we'd have evolutionists all executed or something? Get a grip, man.
Christians are the ones who secured the freedoms in America in the first place. It's other countries where they knock you off because they don't like you.
SS...
Quote
Really? You would disobey? Good. I guess my morality is universal after all.
Actually, this is a more complex question than meets the eye. I took the question to mean if God somehow personally ordered me to kill someone. And the answer is "NO" because God has already made His will quite clear in Scripture regarding this.
But there is another aspect ... capital punishment. God already HAS "ordered" our governments to kill for certain crimes and in times of war. Since these are lawful, God ordained "orders", I would obey them if I were in those positions, i.e. the military or the government.
BTW ... Universal Morality only applies to the Creature, not the Creator. This is a common point of confusion.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You are truly desperate to try to make me look bad aren't you? What is it that motivates you? Are you truly afraid of "religious nutjobs" like Katherine Harris (or me) running the country? What ... do you think we'd have evolutionists all executed or something? Get a grip, man. Christians are the ones who secured the freedoms in America in the first place. It's other countries where they knock you off because they don't like you.
Yeah, I'm not inclined to ideas like that, particularly since they're not true. Instead what I see out of you is insane shit like:
Quote
IF there is a Creator God, then there are things that we do not know or understand, and how can we say that God is not good if he orders the killing of certain people groups. In the big scheme of things, maybe He knows that He is doing the world a favor by killing them off.
Quote
God already HAS "ordered" our governments to kill for certain crimes and in times of war. Since these are lawful, God ordained "orders", I would obey them if I were in those positions, i.e. the military or the government.
The issue is that it's you and people like you that get to determine "certain crimes" and "lawful" and in so doing, you have no morals, Dave... your morality is dependent on what others have told you, not on what you THINK is right or wrong of YOURSELF.
Let me put it this way: if tomorrow you woke up and the bible suddenly said " kill all those chinks" you'd do it because YOU have no personal morals.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments
Justin Kruger and David Dunning Department of Psychology Cornell University
Abstract: People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.
I've posted a link to this study before but it was subsumed in the tsunami of citations refuting AddledFartDave's so-called reasoning. I'm re-posting it here, with the abstract, because AcephalicFreakDave is the platonic ideal of "unskilled and unaware of it."
Of course, he'll never "improve [his] metacognitive competence," since that would require acknowledging that the infallible* bible (i.e., his hotline to his god, his badge of authority) is in fact fallible, and the information contained therein is subject to the limitations of the physical universe, as observed by millions of scientists, with all their annoying sciencey language and picky documentation. Which would then invalidate all moral, rational, and instinctive restraints on AeratorFlinchDave's behavior; simple murder would be the least we could expect from the unleashed AgarFigmeatDave. (This, despite the fact that millions of atheists, agnostics, and unobservant believers manage to live carnage- and felony-free lives. Perhaps we should pity AnkaraFrillyDave for his weakness. Or report him to the nearest USA-PATRIOT Act law enforcement facility.)
All of which would be none of my liberal christian, anti-thought-crime bidness, if AnalFlockingDave merely indulged in "thinking" about evolution to pass the time, waiting for the Rapture. The fact that he's forcing children to accept his delusions as shut-up-and-stop-thinking truth, ratified not only by his infallible* bible but rational thinking and research -- no. No flicking way I'll let that go.
AbortiveFlaccidDave, you're free to believe whatever you want -- that the world is 6,000 years old, that Clio is the muse of history, that it's turtles all the way down. Teach your beliefs, as your beliefs, as the sacred word of the infallible* bible. That's your right. No one here, no one anywhere, could possibly care less.
But you can't legitimately claim that your beliefs are anywhere within spitting distance of scientific authority based on the shoddy documentation and anti-logical reasoning you've displayed here. If you want the imprimatur of science, you have to play by the rules of science, aka the rules of the natural world.**
You've presented a statement in the form of a hypothesis, more or less, but in all your thousands of posts in ALL CAPS AND BOLD and A L L C A P S A N D B O L D A N D E X T R A S P A C E D L I K E T H A T T R U M P S A C T U A L D O C U M E N T E D E V I D E N C E -- you've never managed to post anything that actually supports your hypothesis. Nothing.
Even worse, you've ignored many questions basic to your hypothesis, such as: * How did 5,000 feet of water deposit 5,000 feet of sediment? * Limestone isn't sedimentary -- how were those layers deposited? * How were the many and widely separated layers of rooted plants deposited? Any gardener knows that it's impossible to maintain the natural root spread in a deliberate (designed! ) transplanting, much less some random watery plunking-down. And that's just one layer. Talk to me about the one-on-top-of-the-other strata of mature, rooted plants you've ignored.
It's not rocket science. Or geology or biology or any other scientific discipline. AardvarkFeltDave can't even accept basic logic.
*You've acknowledged that your version of the bible is an imperfect copy of the infallible original. You haven't explained how you know which parts of your imperfect copy are infallible and which are errors of translation or transcription. Do you have a planchet to guide you, like a Ouija board? Or do you just let your pastor, or your daddy, tell you what to believe?
**Which was, I understand, created by your god. Why do you presume that your deity's powers are limited or determined by your imagination
The issue is that it's you and people like you that get to determine "certain crimes" and "lawful" and in so doing, you have no morals, Dave... your morality is dependent on what others have told you, not on what you THINK is right or wrong of YOURSELF.
Let me put it this way: if tomorrow you woke up and the bible suddenly said " kill all those chinks" you'd do it because YOU have no personal morals.
The opposite is actually true. The Judeo-Christian moral structure based on what we call the Bible has brought the world the most stable, humane, fair system of laws ever in the history of the world. And it is in writing. It is not in some modern day "prophet's" mind. The scary thing would be to have some system OTHER than the Judeo-Christian as some countries still have. What you wind up with then is exactly the scary scenario that you have voiced. What you would have is ... REX LEX, "the King is the Law." Saddam Hussein was the "REX" and he IS the "LEX" and thus is also above the "LEX."
What we have thanks to the Judeo-Christian system is LEX REX, or "the Law is King" and even the President is under the law. We saw this in living color with Richard Nixon ... it's a pretty good system ... the best the world has yet seen.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Sorry you're having a bad night, Jupiter. Hope it goes better tomorrow :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So who's going to "force" me to be a creationist, Dave? God? Doubt it.
Do you have a tongue, Eric? Did you read the verse? It said, "and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This includes you, my friend. Don't wait until it's too late.
Dave, you've never given me a single reason to put credence in a single word in the Bible, and plenty of reasons to put none in it. So what do you think your quote means to me? So far, of all the people I've ever discussed religion with, you're the one who's been most successful in persuading me the whole thing is a sad, pathetic joke. Your weak, insecure, vindictive and jealous god doesn't even begin to resemble an entity who could create a universe 150 billion light-years wide. Your weak, insecure, vindictive and jealous god resembles nothing so much as the invention of weak, insecure, jealous and vindictive men.
So what's your answer to my question, Dave? What did God think he was going to accomplish by nailing his own son to a tree?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What we have thanks to the Judeo-Christian system is LEX REX, or "the Law is King" and even the President is under the law.
What, have you been asleep for the last five years, Dave? What gives you the idea that the law is above the President, our god-fearing Christian President? He certainly doesn't think it is.
So about those questions, Dave? They're going on the list.
Stop the political hand-waving and get to (I can't say "get back to") finding some support—any support—for your hypothesis.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Your weak, insecure, vindictive and jealous god doesn't even begin to resemble an entity who could create a universe 150 billion light-years wide.
Lest anyone object to this part and say the universe is ~32 billion light years wide, because the age is 15.8 billion years, let me go ahead and caution you. The present width of the universe is indeed ~150 billion lightyears. It has to do with acceleration from dark energy. Unless you're a masochist, I'd recommend just saying 'okay' and moving on. :-)
Re "Lest anyone object to this part and say the universe is ~32 billion light years wide, because the age is 15.8 billion years, let me go ahead and caution you. The present width of the universe is indeed ~150 billion lightyears."
Wouldn't that just be the lower limit? (I presume that's the span occupied now by galaxies that we've observed as they were billions of years ago.)
Re "Lest anyone object to this part and say the universe is ~32 billion light years wide, because the age is 15.8 billion years, let me go ahead and caution you. The present width of the universe is indeed ~150 billion lightyears."
Wouldn't that just be the lower limit? (I presume that's the span occupied now by galaxies that we've observed as they were billions of years ago.)
The Judeo-Christian moral structure based on what we call the Bible has brought the world the most stable, humane, fair system of laws ever in the history of the world.
Yet, as I said, it calls for the killing of innocents that you HAD to say did "the world a favor by killing them off" Bwahahahaha.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
And you will be too one day ... by choice or by force!
I'm sure this type of threat/argument works well on 3rd graders who are intimidated by (pseudo) adult authority figures like yourself DDTTD, but there aren't any 3rd graders here.
This type of statement does lend itself to the earlier questions about whether what you do falls into the category of child abuse. The answer is an unqualified YES.
Statements about the ability of educated humans to reconstruct train wrecks (or plane crashes) or how systems that aren't 100% reliable aren't safely usable also call into question your education as an engineer of any type (much less a fighter stud).
Do you drive across the I-35/Paseo bridge often DDTTD?
What school did you receive your EE degree from?
It's obvious you can't defend your "hypothesis"!
DDTTD, how are you gonna 'splain Aspen tree roots that are older than your 6K "theory" of the Universe?
Do you have a tongue, Eric? Did you read the verse? It said, "and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
I see, you definitely fear that admitting the Bible might be wrong would send you directly to heII. So you've been LYING from the beginning, when you said you were ready to accept any evidence.
God already HAS "ordered" our governments to kill for certain crimes and in times of war. Since these are lawful, God ordained "orders", I would obey them if I were in those positions, i.e. the military or the government.
The issue is that it's you and people like you that get to determine "certain crimes" and "lawful" and in so doing, you have no morals, Dave... your morality is dependent on what others have told you, not on what you THINK is right or wrong of YOURSELF.
Let me put it this way: if tomorrow you woke up and the bible suddenly said " kill all those chinks" you'd do it
To put it another way, what is interesting here is that when Dave was directly if he would obey if God ordered him to kill, he said no. But, earlier, when asked if he would obey if his government ordered him to kill, he answered yes. So, it seems he is more willing to believe the voices in someone else's head than the voices in his own.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Do you drive across the I-35/Paseo bridge often DDTTD?
Ah ... you've read about this bridge. Actually, I NEVER drive across this bridge. And I don't trust Argon dating.
Carlson...
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To put it another way, what is interesting here is that when Dave was directly if he would obey if God ordered him to kill, he said no. But, earlier, when asked if he would obey if his government ordered him to kill, he answered yes. So, it seems he is more willing to believe the voices in someone else's head than the voices in his own.
Again a desperate attempt to twist reality to portray fundies like me as some kind of monster ... pathetic.
You should not be a sore loser, Carlson. Take your defeats on your evolutionary theory like a man. Don't be a wimp and resort to childish tricks like this just because you don't like me for exposing your errors.
Christians are not believing voices in someone's head like the jihadists. We have the rule of law here in America and it has its basis in a written document--the Christian Scriptures. There is a very clear distinction made between personal vengeful killing--murder, and God-ordained government killing--capital punishment and war.
Personally, I would be in much greater fear if someone like you were president because you have no moral anchor. Your ethics are not firmly outlined in a book which has been settled for 2000 years. (Actually over 3000 years if we are talking about the Mosaic code) Your ethics are decided by the whims of the age. Thankfully though, we have checks and balances in the American government and you could not do too much damage.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
The most common method, by far, for dating rocks is U-Pb concordia-discordia on zircons (or sometimes other minerals). All argon methods, including the widely used Ar-Ar, amount to about 30%.
Yeah, that's probably true if you consider the last 15 years or so.
Nope, it's true if you consider the entire history of radiometric dating.
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Wanna guess why?
I know why. You, Davie the ignoramus, don't.
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Think, Jon, think. Could it be that people don't trust Argon anymore?
Nope. If people didn't trust K-Ar anymore they wouldn't do it. There's several reasons why U-Pb dating is the most widely used. K-Ar is only good to about 2-3%, and geochronologists are looking for better and better resolution. U-Pb dating can get sub-1% errors, partly because the half-life of uranium is known better than for any other isotope (bombs and reactors, you know).
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Hmmmm ... Bercause prior to that it was massively popular and was the most common method for many years.
It may have been the most popular for a few years in the late-1940's, but it was surpassed by isochrons and U-Pb in the fifties.
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Wrong, Davie-doodles. For example, there is no medical test that is right 100% of the time. There is no medical treatment that works 100% of the time. Do you refuse all medical tests and treatments? Do you trust any medical tests or treatments?
Not even a close analogy. My analogy of the bridge is perfect. You would never drive on a bridge that was known to have broken 4 out 20 times it was tested. That's nothing but Russian Roulette. This is exactly what you have with Argon dating ... complete BOGOSITY (that is ... failure ... the bridge broke) in 20% of Dalrymple's tests plus many many other documented cases in the literature.
Your analogy of the bridge sucks; it's a single made thing, while K-Ar dating is a process that is performed over and over, and human life is involved in bridges (which automatically brings in a whole different set of standards) but not in K-Ar dating. {ABE: we also have far more control over the reliability of a bridge than we have over the reliability of K-Ar dating.}
But that all pales in comparison to the fact that you are arguing by analogy ... that's a fallacy. If you want to argue that K-Ar dating has to be perfect to be useful, or that K-Ar dating is not good enough to ever be used, you need to establish that claim independenly of how reliable any other thing or process is. The fact that bridges are very reliable (but not 100% reliable) does not mean that K-Ar dating, with an error rate somewhere under 10% (the excess argon rate in young rocks is not the overall error rate because excess argon is insignificant in older rocks) and those errors definitely not are large enough to be compatible with a 6,00 year old Earth, is not sufficiently reliable for our purposes. We know that no technique, from the technique of desgning a bridge to the techniques of testing for cancer to the technique of K-Ar dating, is 100% reliable; we decide whether or not any particular technique is reliable enough by considering the purposes to which it is put, not the reliability of unrelated items.
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If K-Ar dating, or any geological radiometric dating, is right once your entire crazy "theory " is blown out of the water. You acknowledged that fact.
No I did not acknowledge it and I will not ever. You cannot ever tell if this technique is "right" because you have nothing to measure it against except other bogus "dating" techniques which I will show in the coming days are equally vapid. Or maybe you are talking about fossil dating? That is even more aughable. Argon dating is all over the map -- "too old" because of "excess Argon", "too young" because of Argon loss or mixing or what have you. The only time it's "right on" is because it happens by some sheer stroke of luck to coincide with some other system like Pb-Pb or Sm-Nd or whatever.
Your entire rant is irrelevant. The fact remians that if O N E R A D I O M E T R I C D A T E I S C O R R E C T T H E N T H E E A R T H I S A L O T M O R E T H A N 6 , 0 0 0 Y E A R S O L D. Does the wide spacing and bolding help that fact penetrate your pointy litle head, Davie-moron?
We know that we want a low error rate in general in radiometric dating, but when it comes to testing the "hypothesis" that the Earth is 6,000 years off, a technique that is wrong 99.999999999% of the time would suffice to falsify a young earth.
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I'm glad to see you acknowledge that honest K-Ar dating requires excluding xenoliths. Snelling knows it too. That's why his "dating" of the Ngauruhoe flows is fraudulent.
Don't twist my meaning. ... I said ...
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Remember also that Snelling was not trying to get an "accurate date" because he's smart enough to know this is not possible with Argon "dating."
Do you see the quotes around "accurate date"? The deal is that Snelling knows that Argon techniques are wildly in error. Why should he then care if the sample comes back as 1 Ma or 2 Ma? It simply does not matter because the point is: there is excess Argon and the results have no age significance whether they are 2 Ma or 1 Ma. There are a thousand results that could have come back and shown the invalidity of the Argon method. There's only ONE result that could have validated the method. ZERO excess Argon. Why spend extra money when you don't have to. If Snelling really was stupid enough (as many geologists are) to believe you could get a valid date from the test, then, yes, he should have excluded xenoliths.
Gee, Davie-doodle, you're too stupid to detect what I'm replying to when it's in front of your face. I quoted what I was reponding to:
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Secondly, Jon points out that anyone honestly trying to get an accurate date with Argon dating excludes xenoliths. Fine. Go tell that to all the geologists in the studies cited by Snelling.
But you're still way off base. The result could have been zero excess argon if Snelling hadn't cheated. We don't know. It doesn't matter whether or not he thought he could get a valid date; he couldn't stand the possibility that he might actualy get a valid date, so he rigged the test so it was impossible to get a valid date. That's fraud.
Hmmm ... not only are you ignorant about the failure of Argon dating, you also have not read much of the writings of the Founders of America.
Too bad for you!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Heh. dave got all worked up again. What did you guys do now to make him quote scripture again?
Oh, nevermind. I see. He just got cornered and switched to denial again.
Sooo... We got 'silenced', dave? "defeats in evolutionary biology"? When was that exactly? You "beat the Tyre thing to death"? Oh reeeeeeally? how did you do that, if I may ask? Because in all these issues, all I can remember you doing is repeating the same refuted non-arguments and running away like Brave Sir Robin. But I may be wrong. Why don't you prove that by linking to the posts where you silenced, defeated and beat us up, dave? I'm sure your church buddies would love to see the evidence of your supreme victory...
...But something tells me they've begun to figure you out themselves by now. Quick, do another "summary"!
Boy, your arrogance reeks through your pretense of humility like mold through age-old walls... If only you had the wit to back it up. This is much easier when you do it with kids, right dave?
Now, for your latest pathetic handwaving: I like your "bridge" analogy, dave, but unfortunately it totally fails. Here's another analogy that best portrays your viiews:
OMIGOSH! If you don't triple-check your instruments and systems and indicators before you take off in a plane, you might CRASH! Not to mention how likely that is if you try to take off in THUNDERSTORMS and HURRICANES! Well, it's obvious: PLANES CAN'T FLY! Aviation is... BALONEY!
Sounds silly, dave? It is. And so are you.
If a CT scan fails to identify a small tumor in the lungs, does this mean CT scanning is "baloney"? If that tumor is hidden by a vessel of a local pneumonia, does this mean we should dump all CT scanners and get back to percussion as the most reliable diagnostic means?
You see, you're trying to argue against a scientific method -and all methods in science, from medicine to rocket technology, have margins of error and sensitivity in application. Scientists work around those, by careful selection and evaluation and correlation... And that's how science works (and you'd know that, if you REALLY were an engineer). He11, that's why science works. And it works, dave. Oh-ho, it works. And you know it. See, forget all your ridiculous rants, about how excess or less argon means that Argon is some magical element, undetected and ever-present like the anti-Ether, that screws up all datings (even not K-Ar ones? ). Or about how 4 wrong measurements out of 20 somehow mean that the other 16 out of those 20 were wrong too, and the validity of their results, cross-referenced and in accordance with other measurements, is apparently by CHANCE (just another joke of your clown version of a god, who likes to pull practical jokes on us). Or about xenoliths, that first you denied they existed in the samples and then said that "you bet" (haha) their argon will be insignificant -even though the entire geologic community knows and has demonstrated otherwise. Won't be the first time you argue against textbook knowledge in a scientific field, aided by the lies of AiG and ICR, and it won't be the first time you'd have to resort to conspiracies to justify your claims. Nothing new here.
No dave. All this is not worth our time. After all, they can all be refuted by a single word:
Have the guts to finally address that, dave. And not by claiming that The Berkeley Geo Center are impostors, and that "you bet" they hid other more discordant data: Unsupported accusations are not arguments.
But hey, it's ok if you don't. Kicking puppies is not my favorite sport. If you want to take your mind off that, here's a small logical exersise to keep you occupied:
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you're right. The world IS 6000 years old, and all radiometric dating provides false old ages because of the ever-present 'excess Argon'. Or whatever.
Now, in the Red Corner, we have the Atheist Pinko Evobot Scientists: They try to do their best to prove that the Earth is old, according to their Darwinist cult. In the White Corner, we have the Scientist Champions of the Almighty's Truth.(*) They try to open the eyes of the world to the young age of the Earth and the flaws of the APES and their dating methods.
With me so far? Good.
Now, how would you expect each side to conduct measurements? Since the APES side desperarely tries to prove an old earth, they'd just throw measurements here and there, whole rocks partially heated, xenoliths and all, to get as much excess argon and crust contamination and whatever else it is that makes the rocks seem old. They would say that "xenoliths don't really matter, the don't make that much a difference" or "no need to evaluate excess argon" and throw out their results without cross-referencing.
Our Champions, on the other hand, would try to: A) either produce an accurate (young) age for the rocks, by eliminating all contamination as much as possible, or B) if that's not possible, show that, no matter how carefully you perform the method, it is still unreliable. So, they would carefully select samples, evaluate them for obvious sources of excess Argon, exclude xenoliths, attempt to cross-reference the results with independent measurements, in order to find the REAL age of the rocks- or to at least demonstrate that, even taking all possibilities into consideration, and after copious efforts, the method still provides unreliable results.
Sounds reasonable to you, dave?
If not, why?
If yes, why do we see exactly the opposite?
Why do we see Geologists going into all the trouble of eliminating all possibilities of error in their method, by carefully selecting and evaluating and preparing and heating and measuring and cross-referencing samples, if they are looking for a FLAWED age?
Why do we see creationists being all sloppy and careless and provide stand-alone results on ambiguous samples with poor preparation and application of the method, if it is the method's essential validity that they try to discredit?
Starting to get the picture dave?
...No, of course you don't.
(*) haha, I just noticed that both acronyms work just fine!
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
You're right, I was not paying attention and I used the wrong figure. The age is 13.7 +/- .1. IIRC the 15.8 billion light years is the last figure I heard for the cosmic particle horizon. And 150 billion light years is the width thanks to dark energy.
HAHAHA Steve how could you make such a silly mistake! Are you from MIT too? BUAHAHAHAHAHA
Expect me to keep bugging you about it every time you post any thing on any subject, for the next dozen pages at least. That's all the response you'll get from me.
Then, I'll be all majestically humble in my grandeur and admit I was hard on you and apologise.
But untill then... BUAHAHA THE SILLY EVO MADE A BOOBOO WITH HIS NUMBERS NYAH NYAH
-------------- A look into DAVE HAWKINS' sense of honesty:
"The truth is that ALL mutations REDUCE information"
"...mutations can add information to a genome. And remember, I have never said that this is not possible."
To put it another way, what is interesting here is that when Dave was directly if he would obey if God ordered him to kill, he said no. But, earlier, when asked if he would obey if his government ordered him to kill, he answered yes. So, it seems he is more willing to believe the voices in someone else's head than the voices in his own.
Again a desperate attempt to twist reality to portray fundies like me as some kind of monster ... pathetic.
Umm, Dave, I was speaking figuratively. It wasn't meant to be taken literally. I find it ironic, though, that you would reject a command from an infallible diety, while blindly accepting the same command from fallible humans. It really offers some interesting insights.
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You should not be a sore loser, Carlson. Take your defeats on your evolutionary theory like a man. Don't be a wimp and resort to childish tricks like this just because you don't like me for exposing your errors.
Yes, you are right. I really should be stockpiling vaccines and anti-biotics for the coming overthrow of science.
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Christians are not believing voices in someone's head like the jihadists.
Figurative speech, Dave. Not to be taken literally. Oh, never mind.
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We have the rule of law here in America and it has its basis in a written document--the Christian Scriptures.
I believe you misspelled Enlightment philosophy and English common law. After all, only 3 of the 10 commandments are actually codified in federal law. But, one can really find most of Locke and other such thinkers in our system.
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Personally, I would be in much greater fear if someone like you were president because you have no moral anchor. Your ethics are not firmly outlined in a book which has been settled for 2000 years. (Actually over 3000 years if we are talking about the Mosaic code) Your ethics are decided by the whims of the age. Thankfully though, we have checks and balances in the American government and you could not do too much damage.
You don't know my theology. You don't know my politics. You don't know the causes I believe in. You don't know how or where I spend my time and money. In short, you don't know anything about me, Dave, except that I don't buy into your narrow worldview. That alone makes me your enemy and someone to fear? What I find so ironic is that my worldview is clearly a product of Enlightment thinking and, thus, makes me much closer philosophical kin to Jefferson, Adams, and Washington than you could ever be.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
You should not be a sore loser, Carlson. Take your defeats on your evolutionary theory like a man. Don't be a wimp and resort to childish tricks like this just because you don't like me for exposing your errors.
What are you talking about, Dave? Are you under the misapprehension that you've defeated someone in an argument on evolutionary theory? Or that you've exposed someone's errors? In evolutionary theory, or geological theory, or astronomical theory, or politics, or history, or linguistics?
Once more, I challenge you to produce one person, lurker or poster, who thinks you've won a single argument on this thread on any subject whatever. Try to get someone to post a statement that you've won an argument here, Black Knight Dave. Your "arguments" have been obliterated, devastated, annihilated, eviscerated, and terminated with extreme prejudice. I have never in my life seen anyone suffer such comprehensive intellectual defeats, over and over and over again, and yet still insist he was "winning."
I've read a lot of people's posts on the Internet in the past twelve years, Dave, but I don't think I've ever read posts from anyone so breathtakingly arrogant, with so little justification, as you, Sir Black Knight. If part of your plan here is to show the superiority of Christian intellect and morality, you're having precisely the opposite effect.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I have never in my life seen anyone suffer such comprehensive intellectual defeats, over and over and over again, and yet still insist he was "winning."
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
Care to explain dave? How is a populated Tyre a bare rock? I give you proof positive of a biblical mistake and you sadly call it equivocal?
I caught you in a lie, Mr. Dawkins, And I have been quite polite about it, and you have not been. I hope you can finally clear this up.
And now this, on page 182.
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Oh ... and you wanted to know about Tyre? I beat that one to death ...oh ... about a hundred pages ago or so. Not planning on repeating. Sorry.
Mr. Dawkins, you are clearly lying. Why?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Hmmm ... not only are you ignorant about the failure of Argon dating...
Dave, what do you expect with this remark, coming from a guy who doesn't know the first thing about science?
You obviously didn't think what you just said (which makes you a liar and a hypocrite), you've just been taunting us into losing our cool, and you succeded several times. A true honest christian should not be that arrogant, you know.
Hmmm ... not only are you ignorant about the failure of Argon dating, you also have not read much of the writings of the Founders of America.
Too bad for you!
I know far more about radiometric dating and its proven usefulness and reliability than you ever will. I've also read quite a bit of American history, including a lot of the Federalist papers, and the various lies of the Christian Nationalsim movement ... and I stand by my statement.
I've never lost my cool. I remain icy and sweet. 13.7 is good and 150 is right. And any god that requires/orders the death of little kids is pretty dammn sick.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dalrymple and Hamblin [1998] ... concluded that most of more than 60 (!! published K-Ar model ages on Pleistocene basalts in western Grand Canyon are in error ... [RATE Book 2000, p. 117] ... but you all are scientists so you can look up the original paper, right? :-)
And don't forget about the 20% (! of the results Dalrymple did himself on historic flows contained excess Argon ...
Oh ... and don't forget the wild discordance that the RATE Group themselves got with K-Ar dating.
Oh and one more thing before I head off to church ...
A thought question for you ...
If 80% of the Argon dates are "right," what exactly is your criteria for determine "right"??
************************************
Mmmm ... I see JonF wants to take up the "Christian America" debate again ... good ... I like that one too. We'll see if I can make time for two tracks at once.
Poor 7P ... will someone kindly refer him to the appropriate page for the start of the Tyre debate. I don't want to take the time to find it and I have not yet found a search feature on this forum. I guess I should figure out this Permalink thing sometime, huh ...
Carlson ... you're not my enemy, but I want as few guys with your philosophy in government as possible, thanks.
Faid and Eric ... Oh never mind.
See you guys in the morning for more fun!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So, Dave: how are we doing on coming up with a method for dating the Grand Canyon strata? You claim your "hypothesis" is a better explanation for the existence of the Grand Staircase than the standard models are, and yet your "hypothesis" can't even provide a date for those strata. So in what way is your "hypothesis" "better"?
I expect to see a list of dates for at least the lowest and highest strata, and error bars. Given how recent your earliest date is, I'd expect to see error bars in the neighborhood of a decade or so (~1%), but I also want an explanation for where your error bars come from. And please, don't just pull numbers out of your ass.
And not one word about how you think radiometric dating techniques are bad, wrong, misleading, etc. The accuracy or lack thereof of the standard techniques is utterly irrelevant to whatever techniques you think should be used.
Oh, and Dave—not one quote from the Bible. The Bible is useless in establishing your dates; i.e., saying the Grand Staircase has to be less than 6,000 years old because the Bible says so is worthless from an evidentiary perspective. The inerrancy of the Bible is what you're trying to prove. You can't assume what you're trying to prove.
This is easily the tenth time I've asked this question, Dave, and I'm going to keep asking until you either answer it or admit you have no answer.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Poor 7P ... will someone kindly refer him to the appropriate page for the start of the Tyre debate. I don't want to take the time to find it and I have not yet found a search feature on this forum. I guess I should figure out this Permalink thing sometime, huh ...
Wow, Dave. You're definitely living in your own little universe (I guess it's the one that's 12,000 light years across, right? which means estimates of the size of the Milky Way are wrong too?). We all witnessed you lose the debate on Tyre. We all know you lost that debate, just as you've lost every other debate you've engaged in here.
You claimed that Tyre is an uninhabited bare rock, but no matter how you danced around the issue, no matter how you tried to redefine "Tyre," you still couldn't change the fact that Tyre has been continuously inhabited for thousands of years.
You think I'm wrong? Fine: post the link to the post where you proved otherwise, or find someone else besides you who will back up your claim that you "won" that debate. I'm fine with either one.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
GoP's link to a completely wrong argument, that tries to weasel out of the fact that Tyre has been continuously inhabited since Nebuchadnezzar's assault. One might as well say that a prophesy that Rome would be destroyed and never rebuilt has been fulfilled, because Rome is a different city now than it was 2,000 years ago.
Dave complains that Seven Popes' refutation is wrong because it's from an infidel site. But neglects to mention what's wrong about it. He just says it's wrong.
But not to be outdone in the stupidity department, Dave once again tries to claim he's right because the ancient city of Tyre is gone. Duh. Every ancient city is gone, Dave. Is Tyre an uninhabitable rock? No. So in what way have you not lost this argument?
Once again, someone has to point out the obvious to Dave; this time it's Faid. The city that was Tyre is not a "bare rock." It's part of the modern city of Tyre. There is no portion of the old city of Tyre that is currently uninhabitable. But will we get Dave to admit he was wrong? Of course not.
Just in case we're still not convinced how wrong Dave is, Deadman posts a map.
To avoid Dave's scattershot attempt to answer every objection to his theory ever given in one post, I'll just quote the relevant bits:
Quote
JOSH McDOWELL ON TYRE Subtitle: You can pretty much justify anything you want to believe.
Ezekiel 26:8 - Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the mainland city. FULFILLED in 573, although the island city (where the inhabitants moved to) remained for several hundred years.
26:3 - Many nations against Tyre. FULFILLED. In waves: Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Antigonus, and Moslems.
26:4,5 - bare and flat, like the top of a rock. Fishermen will spread their nets on the site to dry. FULFILLED. The secular historian Philip Myers said, “Alexander the Great ... Reduced it (the island city) to ruins (332 BC) ... The larger part of the site of the once great city is now bare as the top of a rock -- a place where fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.”
Hmmmm ... secular historian ... not even a 'christofreakazoid' !!
26:14, 21 - never be rebuilt or found. FULFILLED. Nina Jidejian in “Tyre through the Ages,” Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq Publishers, 1969. -- She relates that all the wealth of Tyre disappeared to Alexandria and elsewhere” and she concludes, “Tyre's stones may be found as far away as Acre and Beirut ... Looking down into the water one can see a mass of granite columns and stone blocks strewn all over the sea bottom. Until recently the ruins of Tyre above water were few.”
Now if you guys want to weasel and squirm, I'm sure you can find a way to justify your skepticism, but you cannot avoid the fact that ...
Tyre was a great, powerful, proud city ... And it got destroyed in the exactly detailed way that Ezekiel said it would. The city that is there now is not the same city. It's about as similar to ancient Tyre as Microsoft Corporation headquarters is to Feldman's Farm Supply headquarters. The ancient Tyre of world renown is GONE!
But again, why the fascination with Tyre? There are more interesting Bible prophecies than this one. Someone mentioned Nostradamus ... please, now ... How can anyone even compare Nostradamus to Bible prophecy?
Oh, and Deadman ... you are wrong about Nechadnezzar and Babylon ... and I gave you the evidence to prove it. Go back and re-read it. See also my answer to your question at the end of this post.
As you'll note, Dave was completely unable to get around the fact that Tyre is, in fact, inhabited, and always has been. He conveniently neglects to note that "forever" means "forever." And he fails to explain how modern Tyre is different from ancient Tyre in a way that is completely different from how modern Rome is different from ancient Rome. If the Bible prophesied that Rome would be destroyed, and would be uninhabited forever, would Dave now be arguing that Rome is no longer inhabited because it's a different city?
And that's about it, folks. Dave claims the biblical prophesy that Tyre would be destroyed, and left uninhabited forever, has been fulfilled, despite the fact that Tyre is now, and always has been, inhabited. Show of hands for those who think Dave "won" this argument?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And that's about it, folks. Dave claims the biblical prophesy that Tyre would be destroyed, and left uninhabited forever, has been fulfilled, despite the fact that Tyre is now, and always has been, inhabited. Show of hands for those who think Dave "won" this argument?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Oh, and for the record, it's Dave Hawkins, not Dave Dawkins. Not to be confused with the celebrated evolutionary biologist and author Richard Dawkins, despite their similar views on evolutionary theory and the utility of religion.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dalrymple and Hamblin [1998] ... concluded that most of more than 60 (!! published K-Ar model ages on Pleistocene basalts in western Grand Canyon are in error ... [RATE Book 2000, p. 117] ... but you all are scientists so you can look up the original paper, right? :-)
Oh, and when you looked up the paper, no doubt you read this part:
"Many of the basalts contain xenoliths (primarily dunite) and carbonate and as much care as possible was taken during sample preparation to avoid incorporating either of these into the sample analyzed."
Oooh, let's see that one again, with the full paragraph and some emphasis:
"Many of the basalts contain xenoliths (primarily dunite) and carbonate and as much care as possible was taken during sample preparation to avoid incorporating either of these into the sample analyzed. Both the carbonate, which interferes with the clean-up process during Ar extraction and whose results are unpredictable, and the older inclusions, which contribute unknown and varying amounts of inherited 40Ar, would be expected to result in calculated ages that are inconsistent and, where inherited 40Ar is present, too old. Despite our precautions, the inconsistency of the results for several of the samples suggests that we were not entirely successful for several of the flows."
What was that you said about telling geologists that they need to exclude xenoliths, Davie-poodles? Seems as if Dalrymple knows already, doesn't it, Davie-dumbo? Snelling's xenolith fraud is pretty solidly established now; is Snelling a Christian?
{ABE: There certainly are a few discordant results identified and published in that paper. Weren't you claining that discordant results are discarded? Both this paper and the KBS Tuff papers thoroughly refute that silly claim.}
Quote
And don't forget about the 20% (! of the results Dalrymple did himself on historic flows contained excess Argon ...
Oh ... and don't forget the wild discordance that the RATE Group themselves got with K-Ar dating.
Oh and one more thing before I head off to church ...
A thought question for you ...
If 80% of the Argon dates are "right," what exactly is your criteria for determine "right"??
First; more than 80% of K-Ar dates are correct within identified error bars; excess argon is insignificant in older rocks.
Second: depends on your definition of "right". If you mean "refutes the idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old", then we don't need to determine which ones are right, so the question is irrelevant; we know that all of them contradict the idea that the Earth is 6,000 years old, some of them are right, and we don't need to know which ones are right.
If you mean "are correct within error bars", we determine that by cross-checking with stratigraphy, index fossils, and other radiometric dates.
Don't forget your promise to discuss why you think zircons don't refute Snelling's "By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information."
And I did ask nicely that you post your evidence that mixing affects K-Ar dating; I really need a good laugh. I hope you don't disappoint me.
Carlson ... you're not my enemy, but I want as few guys with your philosophy in government as possible, thanks.
The United States has been run by my philosophical kin since 1789. I will gladly admit to being more of a Hamiltonian federalist than a Jeffersonian democrat. But, even such avowed majoritarian democrats like Jefferson and Andrew Jackson recognized the necessity of keeping religion and government as far away from each other as possible.
In fact, in the modern political landscape, a libertarian like myself finds kindred souls more often in the GOP than the Democratic Party. Surprised?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Eric-- Many thanks for correcting the inadvertent insult on my name ... I really would rather not be Dave Dawkins!
BTW-- What do you do for a living? ... you have way too much time on your hands :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So who's going to "force" me to be a creationist, Dave? God? Doubt it.
Do you have a tongue, Eric? Did you read the verse? It said, "and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This includes you, my friend. Don't wait until it's too late.
SS...
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Dave, if god ordered you to kill someone, would you do it?
No. What Deadman is thinking of is probably the discussion about Joshua. And yes, if I were living in Joshua's day and were in Joshua's shoes, I would have, as he did.
But the divine authority structure was changed with the advent of Jesus Christ, his apostles and the completion of the canon of Scripture. There are no longer any "prophets" and "apostles" who receive direct instructions from God. Sorry, Mohammed and Joseph Smith ... you are in error. God has spoken to us in these latter times through His Son, the Living Word, and through Scripture, the Written Word, the latter portion of which was penned by the authorized agents of Jesus himself--the Apostles.
Hebrews 1 ...
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1 ¶ God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, 2 has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
In the end DaveyDH always seems to devolve into "My religion's better'n yurs."
To which I would have to answer, "No it isn't."
Core samples (in fact all the evidence presented so far) prove an old Earth.
And since the whole world of religion is open to those of us who weren't brainwashed as kids, we have much better religions to choose from so your provincial little god doesn't make much sense.
By the way, is there anyone out there who thinks dave has won a single argument? Any of your friends DaveyDH?
I have to laugh about the Portuguese thing still. You claimed victory without firing a shot.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
135 miles on your bike? This weekend? As in bicycle??!! Not a motorcycle? Wow ... you just officially obtained my respect ... not in science, but in biking! What do you do for a living?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, and it would be equally interesting to have seen Darwin's face when he met his Creator.
Yes, Darwin's a Creationist now!
(You will be too, one way or another)
So, you're absolutely sure that Darwin has and that stevestory is going to meet his maker and become a Creationist??
Quote
Did you read the verse? It said, "and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." This includes you, my friend. Don't wait until it's too late.
Dave, if there's such a thing as "too late" then it's quite possible that steve will in fact wait until it's too late, just like Darwin and Ghandi. I know I'm never going to become one- unless I'm somehow injured in the head just right, but if your god does that to me, F it, he can have me for his zombie army.
About Darwin. I'm pretty sure he was not opposed to god. And if he were to wake up in christian heaven and learned the truth that he was right about the way god made us, he'd be happy. But, if he found out that his theory that explains things so well merely describes the illusion of a cheap parlor trick, I think he'd be pretty pissed off!
135 miles on your bike? This weekend? As in bicycle??!! Not a motorcycle? Wow ... you just officially obtained my respect ... not in science, but in biking! What do you do for a living?
How condencending and rude Dave...
Quote
Poor 7P ... will someone kindly refer him to the appropriate page for the start of the Tyre debate. I don't want to take the time to find it and I have not yet found a search feature on this forum. I guess I should figure out this Permalink thing sometime, huh ...
Your information is ready, sir. You have run at least a half a dozen times from this, and are now caught in a lie.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
135 miles on your bike? This weekend? As in bicycle??!! Not a motorcycle? Wow ... you just officially obtained my respect ... not in science, but in biking! What do you do for a living?
yawn. Amazing indeed. Now, answer the goddam questions!
What do you do for a living Dave? Lie to kids cant be the only thing? Or is there more money in that nowdays then there used to be? Fleece money from the gullible? Doubt that'll go down too well on a CV.
And how are you getting on with spreading the word of your great victorys on this forum? Nobody's piped up yet with any support, unless you'd care to point us towards a permalink? Oh, you've not worked them out yet have you? not too surprising, lets just add it to the list of things you still dont understand desipte having had your hand held and it explained to you in words i'm sure even the kids whose minds you posion could understand.
Here, let me get you started. This is a permalink to where one of your oh so tyresome (heh! argument gets totally destroyed. You say you won, but anybody looking at that post (nicely done btw) can see for themselves you got whipped!.
And, unlike the kids you poison, "it's wrong" "why?" "because" is not a way to win arguments, friends and influence. Is that what you say to the kids "it just is, now believe or burn in ####".
Have you ever told Kids about #### Dave? Do tell? Does it come up often when they ask you an question you cant answer (i believe that even 8 year olds could ask you questions that would leave you stumped!
"but Dave, if all the animals were living together on the ARK why didn't the Lions eat the Zebras?"
"they just didnt, now shut up or burn in #### little girl"
Is that accurate? Is that how it goes down when you are poisoning kids minds? Dont you think that at least some of them will grow up to be scientists? Dont you think that on 2016 they'll be on this board telling you what a fool you were and how much they resent you for lying to them for all those years!?!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
135 miles on your bike? This weekend? As in bicycle??!! Not a motorcycle? Wow ... you just officially obtained my respect ... not in science, but in biking! What do you do for a living?
so you edited your own post to remove the permalink reference? I see, is this because you realised that by even mentioning it you'd have to start providing references to *where* you'd "proved" your point? And of course, you cannot and so that does not help you does it? Ha, it's nice to know even you realise that you cannot support your own "i've won" posts with THE EVIDENCE THAT YOU SAY YOU'VE PREVIOUSLY GIVEN.
which, on examination, of course would prove to be just mroe empty handwaving or quoting for AIG.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
For a technique to be trusted, it must be shown to be reliable 100% of the time. Would you drive across a bridge that the engineers said was sound "except for those 4 out of 20 times that it broke when a truck went across it" ??
So if 1 out of 20 Christians at Tri-Cities Ministries is shown to be a scientifically illiterate, egotistical, pathological liar by his actions on a C/E discussion board, then ALL Christians at Tri-Cities must be scientifically illiterate, egotistical, pathological liars.
Did I get that logic right Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
XENOLITHS OR NO XENOLITHS, ARGON DATING IS UNRELIABLE ... MAKE THAT HORRIBLY UNRELIABLE
JonF wants to make a big deal out of xenoliths ... fine ... make a big deal out of them ...
In fact, you could even forget about Snelling's own experiments completely and guess what you would have ...
Wildly unreliable Argon dating
It is my understanding that Dalrymple was one of the leading popularizers of K-Ar dating with his 1969 book on the topic ... [BOOK] Potassium-argon dating GB Dalrymple, MA Lanphere - 1969 - Freeman
It is interesting to note the increase in popularity of the method beginning in the 50's and continuing to the present from the Google Scholar searches below. I suppose this confirms Snelling's statement that continues to remain the most popular dating method. [RATE Book 1, p.37] Why? Because it's cheap I guess. I think JonF says Snelling is wrong about this too, but I'm not seeing that, Jon. From the data below, I see 2600 search returns for K-Ar vs. 391, 299, and 1150 for Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pb-Pb respectively. Maybe you could back up your statements with data?
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Results 1 - 10 of about 45 for potassium argon dates 1941-1950 Results 1 - 10 of about 164 for potassium argon dates 1951-1960 Results 1 - 10 of about 578 for potassium argon dates 1961-1970 Results 1 - 10 of about 840 for potassium argon dates 1971-1980 Results 1 - 10 of about 1,260 for potassium argon dates 1981-1990 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,600 for potassium argon dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,930 for potassium argon dates 2001-2006
Results 1 - 10 of about 391 for rubidium strontium dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 299 for samarium neodymium dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 1,150 for Pb-Pb dates 1991-2000
Also, I'm not sure where JonF gets his idea that K-Ar dating was popular in the 40's, but then, I'm not sure where JonF gets lots of his ideas ... maybe he could fill me in.
Dalrymple was a big promoter of Argon dating and wrote a book on the subject in 1969. He tested 26 historic flows in the same year and found 20% of them to have "excess Argon." In spite of this, he was still promoting Argon dating with his statement that Argon atoms are "like a bird in a cage." [Dalrymple, 1991, p.91] Yeah, some cage! ... read [Plummer and McGeary, 1996, p. 170] to see how easily that "bird" can fly right out of (or into) that cage! Then of course, we have Mr. Bird-in-the-Cage man himself throwing out 60 published K-Ar dates in the western Grand Canyon [Dalrymple and Hamblin, 1998]. JonF waves his hands wildly and says "Look! He excluded xenoliths!" OK. Great. What's your point? So he excluded xenoliths and threw out 60 dates anyway. That establishes MY point, not yours. Then the question arises ... "How do we determine if a particluar Argon "date" is "right?" Hmmmm ... good question. The answer of course, although no one here will admit it, is that it agrees with the "accepted bio-stratigraphical timescale." To put it in laymen's terms, geologists go out and date rocks for which they already have a pre-conceived idea of what the "ages" are. They throw out the "ages" that don't agree with this pre-conception and keep the ones that do. This is the "yardstick" for determining if a "date" is "right" or not. Don't think they throw out dates they don't like? Well you are mistaken as I have now shown you on the KBS Tuff and the example of Dalrymple and Hamblin [1998]. I'm sure I could spend a great deal of time and show you many, many more.
But again, my time is not well spent trying to convince skeptics of anything. My time is best spent subjecting the statements of creationist scientists to the rigors of skepticism and seeing if they survive. I have now done that with Snelling's statements on Argon dating from two of his papers and he has passed the "Skeptic Test" with flying colors! For those of you that have a shred of honesty left in your body, I would suggest that you buy or borrow the two RATE Books from ICR and read them for yourselves. On the other hand, if you are comfortable in the "Fog of Deep Time" then don't bother.
And if you think that the above mentioned problems with Argon dating are not really a problem, then you should be ashamed to call yourself a scientist. Not too many people I know want to drive across the Paseo bridge in KC that Crabby mentioned and it has NEVER dropped a car into the river. It's just been suspect. Imagine how much traffic it would get if it had dropped cars into the river in 4 out of the last 20 years! That's the situation we have with Argon dating. Actually, if the truth were known, the percentage would be much higher. Read the RATE Book Vol 2 and you will see this.
So, my friends, I have now done a thorough job of giving you a glimpse into the "rest of the story" about Argon dating. And I have shown you that in spite of this, Argon dating continues to be wildly popular as Snelling has pointed out. So tomorrow we will begin looking at some of the other popular dating methods. Surely they will "save the day" for Deep Timers, right?
I wish I had time to list some Founding Father quotes, but I'm out of time. I did notice an interesting post over on the "Necessary Education needed to debate" thread ...
Scary Facts...
Quote
I don’t know of a Christian out there—including me—who doesn’t believe “yeah, I agree. There are stupid (or bigoted, or intolerant, or illogical) Christians out there. But I’m not like that.”
Of course, we can’t all be right. I suspect that at one time or another I have been all of those things. (Heck, there was that night in Phoenix when I was ALL of those, but I digress…)
Humans act out. Christians are no exception. And I’m not going to use that bumper sticker excuse for bad behavior: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven”
But here’s the rub I have been dealing with for the last several years: What does a 21st century Christian look like? How would a Christian live in a 21st century western culture?
It seems to me that non-Christians might be the best people to ask—Christians have waaaaayyyyy too many “oughts” to get an honest answer and the non-Christians seem to have a better picture of the ways real Christ-ies act.
Christianity doesn’t have a very illustrious history (when looked at objectively.) The billion or so people who currently profess the faith have far too few notable exceptions to societal norms. In some areas Christian performance is below societal norms.
Have to agree with you there. The history of the Christian church (substitute the term Catholic for Christian for most of that time) is quite dismal. What I find interesting, however, is that a small minority of people who wanted to fix the problems have always been there and their influence has been astounding. Martin Luther is a perfect case in point. Here you have a guy who sees all the crap that Scary Facts is talking about and he's fed up. So what does he do? He risks his life and posts the 95 theses. Rome goes ballistic and tries to fry him (literally). The only thing that saves his skin is his friends in high places. He and some other leaders put their necks on the line in taking their stand for rightness and freedom and the world has never been the same since. The unprecedented freedom in England and subsequently in America is a direct result of Martin Luther and the Reformation which he started. Many posters here discount this and point to the Enlightenment as the wellspring of American freedoms. But this is only partially correct. It is true that the founders of America were "enlightened" to the errors of the authoritarian church hierarchies of Europe, but it is a serious mistake to overlook their committment to the fundamentals of Christianity and the Scriptures and there is a massive body of original writings which support the fact that America was most definitely founded as a Protestant Christian nation--not an authoritarian one as some here like to say that the GWB's of the world want, but a definitely Christian, Bible promoting one.
Scary Facts...
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I suspect there are many Christians who have lurked over the AFDave thread and have had some of the same reactions I have—that much of what our “brothers and sisters in Christ” are telling us are obvious lies. Many of the lurkers won’t ever post here. It’s a little intimidating for the non-scientist.
I am extremely interested to know what things you think are "lies." What are your top five "Christian lies?" I would be interested in others responding to this question also.
Quote
If there is one thing I respect about AFDave is his courage to take a stand for what he believes. Sure, you guys fed him his balls with gravy, but he at least put it out there. I’m actually thankful he did that. The thread is teaching me a ton.
I guess the point here is that there are Christians out there who are trying not to be ignorant church-bots. We want to learn the truth—even if it challenges our long-held beliefs. Any god who is scared of truth isn’t God*.
(*note the effective use of capitalization)
Hmmmm ... a compliment! He respects my courage.
************************************
Eric, thanks for reposting my Tyre argument for 7P ... i hope your bill of secretarial services is not too high! I had forgotten what I said, but now that you showed me, I like it! Now, "oldman," tell me how a Permalink would help me refer back to Eric's repost of my Tyre quote.
I'm not sure what "oldman" is talking about that I deleted some Permalinks. I have never even used one ... how would I even know how to delete one? I suppose I will read up on them, though. It would be nice to get some favorite links organized. I do plan on using this info in the future. And for the umpteenth time, yes, my friends at church know about this site. None of them are "forum posters" though so they don't post. [Permalink needed so as not to have to keep saying this] I think it's kinda funny that you all somehow think I would be embarrassed if they saw the stuff here. You must really not understand my fellow church goers too well. Actually, what they would be embarrassed by is all the foul language. They already have a low opinion of evolutionists ... they would really have a low opinion of them if they saw this thread.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
135 miles on your bike? This weekend? As in bicycle??!! Not a motorcycle? Wow ... you just officially obtained my respect ... not in science, but in biking! What do you do for a living?
Yes, on a bicycle.
As for what I do for a living: I'm a highschool graduate who works for a law firm doing legal research and some IT work. And yet, somehow, Dave, I'm able to riddle your "hypothesis" with holes without even really trying.
Kinda makes you think, doesn't it?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
Care to explain dave? How is a populated Tyre a bare rock? I give you proof positive of a biblical mistake and you sadly call it equivocal?
I caught you in a lie, Mr. Dawkins, And I have been quite polite about it, and you have not been. I hope you can finally clear this up.
And now this, on page 182.
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Oh ... and you wanted to know about Tyre? I beat that one to death ...oh ... about a hundred pages ago or so. Not planning on repeating. Sorry.
Mr. Dawkins, you are clearly lying. Why?
Well? How was it "beat to death"? A simple honest answer will do, sir.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Eric, thanks for reposting my Tyre argument for 7P ... i hope your bill of secretarial services is not too high! I had forgotten what I said, but now that you showed me, I like it! Now, "oldman," tell me how a Permalink would help me refer back to Eric's repost of my Tyre quote.
Yet another of my BlackKnight™ predictions has been validated. I think that puts me in front of the Bible, Dave.
Even after seeing his own blood-spattered remains from the Tyre debate on display for all to see, he still thinks he won the argument! But I wonder if any of the children he teaches would agree, especially after they've seen photos of every part of what could ever possibly have been considered to be "Tyre" is thoroughly built-up, and not remotely barren.
Further evidence that Dave lives in his own private universe.
Also, I'll save everyone the effort with the permalink thing. It's pretty clear Dave knows everything there is to know about C&Ping. So here's how it's done, Dave: go to the post you want to permalink to, click where it says "permalink" into a new window, C&P the URL, and copy it into the message you want it in.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Faid - Doctor JonF - MIT student Aftershave - EE working in the space industry Eric - Legal research and IT Incorygible - works with fish Steve Story - ankle biter
Anyone else?
How about pictures? I would sure like to see what you guys look like. (You know ... I want to see if anyone has horns or fangs or anything like that! Anyone have blogs with your picture posted? Crabby's posted his picture and there is an amazing resemblance to Mel Gibson.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
"It is true that the founders of America were "enlightened" to the errors of the authoritarian church hierarchies of Europe, but it is a serious mistake to overlook their committment to the fundamentals of Christianity and the Scriptures and there is a massive body of original writings which support the fact that America was most definitely founded as a Protestant Christian nation--not an authoritarian one as some here like to say that the GWB's of the world want, but a definitely Christian, Bible promoting one."
To the contrary, if you step away from the koolaid and read any number of books (authors) who researched the men and their beliefs, you would find that they did not intend this country or the governmnet to be "Christian or Bible promoting".
That's just a lie promoted by you and your ilk to assume the moral high ground, categorize patriotism and again, as usual, force you religious dogma on other.
Let me suggest a good book to start with:
The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Hardcover) by David L. Holmes
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
1) Methodology for dating Grand Staircase strata 2) Error bars for such metholodogy 3) Justification for such error bars
Notes:
i) No discussion of perceived shortcomings of standard techniques ii) No quoting from Bible iii) No assuming of what you're trying to prove
Have at it, Dave. Sometime this century, please. Or, to save time, you could just admit you have not the faintest notion of how one would date the Grand Staircase.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
there is a massive body of original writings which support the fact that America was most definitely founded as a Protestant Christian nation--not an authoritarian one as some here like to say that the GWB's of the world want, but a definitely Christian, Bible promoting one.
You must be on the "Original Intent" by David Barton bing again DaveyDH.
Take a bunk bed, now take the top off. What have you done? The same thing that has been done to David Barton.
He admitted to using quotes out of context, fabricating quotes and using quotes that he was aware were not from the authors he attributed them to. It's called Lying for jEsus, something you are familiar with.
Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Paine, -Not Fundies. Don't know about the rest because those are the only ones I have read works by. But I can go with John Locke or Adam Smith. Not Fundies.
Wanna do it like portuguese?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Have at it, Dave. Sometime this century, please. Or, to save time, you could just admit you have not the faintest notion of how one would date the Grand Staircase.
Actually, Eric, NO ONE has the faintest idea of how to date the layers of the Grand Staircase. It's just that many geologists play a fine game of pretending they do. More on this soon.
BWE ... I tried to view your Profile on your blog and my filter blocked it ... what do you got on there, anyway? Oh ... and why don't you substantiate your accusations about David Barton? Give me an example of where he misquoted, eh? Thanks.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
To the contrary, if you step away from the koolaid and read any number of books (authors) who researched the men and their beliefs, you would find that they did not intend this country or the governmnet to be "Christian or Bible promoting".
We've been through this before. Dave has found all he needs with David Barton and really has no interest in investigating anything that might point to contrary conclusions. I pointed him to Gregg Frazer, a literal six-day creationist who comes to a conclusion quite different than Barton's, but I am willing to bet he hasn't sought out Frazer's writings. Although, in fairness, between alot of business travel and slogging through H.W. Brands biography of Andrew Jackson, neither have I.
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The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (Hardcover) by David L. Holmes
Or "American Gospel" by Jon Meacham. I haven't read it yet, but it is in line behind "America's Constitution" by Akhil Reed Amar.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Has anyone noticed that I have never yet characterized evolution supporters as "evilutionists" or "conspirators" in any way, yet I am constantly characterized as some kind of cultist? What's up with that? Are you so insecure in your belief system that you have to try and portray people with differing views as monsters?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Has anyone noticed that I have never yet characterized evolution supporters as "evilutionists" or "conspirators" in any way,
Yeah, just people who constantly falsify data and produce fraudulent papers, and never call each other on it, even though the Truth is plain to see. But not conspirators, no!
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Paine, -Not Fundies. Don't know about the rest because those are the only ones I have read works by. But I can go with John Locke or Adam Smith. Not Fundies.
To add a few:
Washington was nominally Anglican, but never took communion. Adams was a unitarian. Madison was also Anglican, but was the most strident and eloquent of the FF about keeping religion and government apart. Jay was solidly Protestant, but virulently anti Catholic (likely due to his French Hugenuot ancestry). Gouverneur Morris was not particularly religious and was, frankly, quite the rake.
The Founders saw religion as a means to building good citizens, but bad government.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
This is a good one....Sounds like he is full of $hit too!
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
And the beauty is he still twists the truth when he appologizes.
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2. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible. -- George Washington (unconfirmed)
Followed by this, hoping to try to equate the two most dissimilar things:
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There is a very real possibility that the quotation has its origin in an 1835 biography by James K. Paulding. In a description of Washington's character, with supporting quotations, Paulding declares Washington to have said:
It is impossible to account for the creation of the universe without the agency of a Supreme Being. It is impossible to govern the universe without the aid of a Supreme Being.9
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George Washington, the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of ####) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance. From: George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)
See I can cite a source that I know nothing about also!
I especially liked this one:
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3. Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise. In this sense and to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian. --Holy Trinity v. U. S. (Supreme Court) (inaccurate)
This appears to be a classic example of a cut-and-paste typographical error. These words are not found in the Holy Trinity case. However, these same thoughts are found throughout the case and in other state and federal court rulings, primarily in the early years. After offering a general survey of America's Christian history, and speaking out against the practice of polygamy, the Holy Trinity court stated:
These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.10
I'm still trying to figure oput how it jibes with this little beauty:
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ARTICLE 11.
As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
from the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796 (3 Ramada I, A. H. 1211), and at Algiers January 3, 1797 (4 Rajab, A. H. 1211). Original in Arabic. Submitted to the Senate May 29, 1797. (Message of May 26, 1797.) Resolution of advice and consent June 7, 1797. Ratified by the United States June 10, 1797. As to the ratification generally, see the notes. Proclaimed Jane 10, 1797. http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm
And Dorky Lie for Jesus guy says this, which, if you read it twice says something a little different than he might mean.
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4. We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves . . . according to the Ten Commandments of God. -- James Madison (unconfirmed)
While these words have been the most controversial of all unconfirmed quotes, they are consistent with Madison's thoughts on religion and government. They are consistent because the key idea being communicated is self-government, not religious laws or establishments. Our future rests upon the ability of all to govern themselves according to a Biblical standard. Madison could have easily offered the thought.
Concerning a republican form of government, he spoke in the Federalist #39 of "that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." (emphasis added)13 Here we see an interesting similarity to the quote's wording, which may have led to a paraphrase that was erroneously attributed to Madison.
Speaking against direct religious taxation in his Memorial and Remonstrance, Madison wrote:
While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to them whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.14
The religion of divine origin was obviously Christianity, of which Madison said he was convinced. Therefore, it would be appropriate for Madison to refer to the Ten Commandments as a foundation for self-government. Granted, he fought to abolish religious establishments much of his life, but that is not the issue. The issue is whether Madison could have made such a statement. He could have; the questionable quote is not out of character.
In the context of America's attitude toward religious establishments (which was a State's right withheld from federal cognizance), Madison responded to an essay/sermon by Reverend Jasper Adams with these words:
Waiving the rights of conscience, not included in the surrender implied by the social state, & more or less invaded by all Religious establishments, the simple question to be decided, is whether a support of the best & purest religion, the Christian religion itself ought not, so far at least as pecuniary means are involved, to be provided for by the Government, rather than be left to the voluntary provisions of those who profess it. 15 [emphasis added]
So I dug up another one of those little quotes which are equally as good:
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James Madison, fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." "During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution." From: The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.
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6. Whosoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world. --Benjamin Franklin (unconfirmed)
Franklin knew quite well the value of Christianity to society. In the context of teaching history to the youth of Philadelphia, he said:
History will also afford the frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion, from its usefulness to the public; the advantage of a religious character among private persons; the mischiefs of superstition, &c. and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern. 18
This is not to say that Franklin was a Christian; he did not believe in the divinity of Christ. This is easily documented. However, he was well aware of the utility of religion in general and Christianity specifically. In a letter to his daughter, Franklin stated:
This one is just amazing.
I might go on but it takes too much time.
You're a Liar, an idiot, and a sucker. What a combo.
Now, about those core samples....
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Yeah, just people who constantly falsify data and produce fraudulent papers, and never call each other on it, even though the Truth is plain to see. But not conspirators, no!
Nope. Never said anything like that. I have consistently said they are simply mistaken. That's a big difference. I never have said, and I never will say they are defrauding anyone intentionally. They are sincere ... they actually believe what they are publishing.
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The Founders saw religion as a means to building good citizens, but bad government.
You are almost correct ... the first part of the statement is right on. The second, almost. You are correct that they detested the authoritarian control of European style church hierarchies (both Protestant and Catholic) controlling the government. But the revisionist portrayal that they wanted all vestiges of religion expunged from the government is absurd. This is one of the Great Modern Myths of Our Time. Prior to about 50 years ago, Christian practices were widespread through state and local governments and public schools at all manner of official functions. David Barton sells a reprint of a Bible course they used to teach in the Dallas Public School system. Go to Washington, DC and you will see Christianity and Biblical references carved in stone everywhere you look. Moses is the central figure in the U.S. House Chamber -- see my post on my blog
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
You have repeatedly accused scientists of throwing out discordant dates in order to make the various dating methods correlate. That's fraud, and every scientist knows it.
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
And becuase it is fun to prove you wrong and then see you ignore it...
"Jefferson specifically denied that Christianity is the basis of the common law and regarded efforts to declare it so as anti-separationist propaganda. In an 1824 letter to John Cartwright, Jefferson observed, "The proof...is incontrovertible, to wit, that the common law existed while the Angle- Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never heard the name Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character existed. What a conspiracy this, between Church and State!"
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Go to Washington, DC and you will see Christianity and Biblical references carved in stone everywhere you look. Moses is the central figure in the U.S. House Chamber -- see my post on my blog
Been there. I actually took a not-available-to-the-public tour of the Supreme Court. Hammurabi can be found recieving his code from the Babylonian Sun God on the south freize of the Courtroom. Furthermore, Mohammed can be found holding the Koran on the north frieze.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
GREAT HEROES OF AMERICAN HISTORY WHO PROMOTED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
(AND MADE IT A PART OF GOVERNMENT)
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, AUTHOR OF THE AMERICAN NATIONAL ANTHEM
Everyone knows the first verse of the American National Anthem, but how many know the 4th verse?
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Proclamation by George Washington Issued on October 3, 1789
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"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . . Now, therefore, I do recommend . . . that we may all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection . . . And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . . to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
Washington, Writings (1838) Vol. XII, pp. 119-120, October 3, 1789. See also James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (Published by the Authority of Congress, 1899), VOl. I, p. 64, October 3, 1789. OI-115.
Thomas Jefferson
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"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virgina (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, p. 237. MS-176.
Benjamin Franklin
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"In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir were heard, and they were graciously answered . . . I therefore beg leave to move--that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 984-986, June 28, 1787.
"We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel."
James Madison, The Papers of James Madison, Henry D. Gilpin, editor (Washington: Langtree & O’Sullivan, 1840), Vol. II, p. 985, June 28, 1787.
John Jay -- First Chief Justice of the United States
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"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p.376, to John Murray, Jr. on October 12, 1816. OI-334.
"Only one adequate plan has ever appeared in the world, and that is the Christian dispensation."
John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, editor (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893), Vol. IV, p.52, to Lindley Murray on August 22, 1794. OI-168.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Oh DaveyDH, I'm getting turned on. We should move this topic to a more intimate place. I just put it on the Portuguese thread. I thought it would be an appropriate place for this topic.
You game big boy?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
JonF wants to make a big deal out of xenoliths ... fine ... make a big deal out of them ...
Fine, Davie-doodles. Admit that Snelling committed fraud. Your pathetic attempts to excuse him have all failed miserably.
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It is interesting to note the increase in popularity of the method beginning in the 50's and continuing to the present from the Google Scholar searches below. I suppose this confirms Snelling's statement that continues to remain the most popular dating method. [RATE Book 1, p.37] Why? Because it's cheap I guess. I think JonF says Snelling is wrong about this too, but I'm not seeing that, Jon. From the data below, I see 2600 search returns for K-Ar vs. 391, 299, and 1150 for Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pb-Pb respectively. Maybe you could back up your statements with data?
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Results 1 - 10 of about 45 for potassium argon dates 1941-1950 Results 1 - 10 of about 164 for potassium argon dates 1951-1960 Results 1 - 10 of about 578 for potassium argon dates 1961-1970 Results 1 - 10 of about 840 for potassium argon dates 1971-1980 Results 1 - 10 of about 1,260 for potassium argon dates 1981-1990 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,600 for potassium argon dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,930 for potassium argon dates 2001-2006
Results 1 - 10 of about 391 for rubidium strontium dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 299 for samarium neodymium dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 1,150 for Pb-Pb dates 1991-2000
Those aren't counts of dating studies performed, Davie-doodles, they're counts of mentions of a dating technique {ABE: including references}. And they're terifically biased by the facts that the older stuff isn't all indexed on the Web, you picked a particular set of keywords (Hint: Pb-Pb dating is not U-Pb concordia-discordia dating, ignoramus), and you quite probably picked up a lot of Ar-Ar dates. I give you Ludwig, K.E., personal communication, March 3, 2003:
"... for a review of an article a few months ago I did a quick literature search of articles presenting new geochronology (excluding rocks of Pleistocene age. for which methods such as radiocarbon, uranium series, optical luminescence.... are important) in a variety of different journals (Geology, Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull., Canadian Jour. Earth Sci., Contrib. Mineralogy & Petrology) for the past 5 years. Of the 164 articles I selected at random, more than 80% were done by either U-Pb (54%) or Ar-Ar/ K-Ar (30%). with less than 5% each were done by Rb-Sr or Sm -Nd."
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Then of course, we have Mr. Bird-in-the-Cage man himself throwing out 60 published K-Ar dates in the western Grand Canyon [Dalrymple and Hamblin, 1998]. JonF waves his hands wildly and says "Look! He excluded xenoliths!" OK. Great. What's your point?
Several points, already explicitly made, but I'll repeat them:
Honest geologists do not test samples with xenoliths: they take "as much care as possible ... during sample preparation to avoid incorporating [xenoliths] into the sample analyzed". Doing otherwise, as Snelling did, is F R A U D, Davie-moron.
Real geologists do not, as you claimed they do, seize upon any radiometric date that meets their preconceptions and discard others.
Real geologists do not, as you claimed they do, sweep discordant results under the rug; they publish them and expose any problems (of which there aren't many) for the world to see.
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So he excluded xenoliths and threw out 60 dates anyway.
Nope, Davie-moron. First you claimed that "most" of the dates were "in error", now you claim he "threw out 60". Both bovine excrement. Here's the reality. Of 13 formations tested:
Six gave repeatable and consistent results and were considered reliable.
Two gave scattered and inconsistent results and were considered unreliable because of that. (For one formation, another researcher had reported a result consistent with Dalrymple's, but Dalrymple didn't consider that sufficient for claiming reliability).
Two were single-sample age determinations, and were not considered reliable because of insufficient replication on differnt flows (they didn't have the opportunity).
Three were un-datable by the K-Ar method and no result was obtained.
Of 63 total age tests, slightly less than half fell into the "not reliable" or "single-sample" categories; the rest fell into the "reliable" category. Of the slightly less than half that fell into those first two categories, 14 were on one of the formations that produced scattered results and 11 were for the other (and both were more tests than were run on any other formation). That's 40% of all the tests, Davie-dork. Obviously they ran extra tests on the problematic formations in an attempt to figure out where the problem was.
The bottom line is that at least 60% (and maybe more) of the date-able formations were reliably dated, 20% of the date-able formations yielded excessive scatter, and the reliability is unknown for 20% of the formations. This study contradicts every claim you have made about radiometric dating!
I know there's no chance you'll understand or acknowledge the above, but it's just one more demonstration of your ignorance and dishonesty, and maybe someone else will learn something interesting.
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Then the question arises ... "How do we determine if a particluar Argon "date" is "right?"
Asked and answered already, Davie-dork. The main point that you are trying to ignore is:
We know that all K-Ar dates contradict a young Earth.
We know that some those K-Ar dates are correct.
Therefore, a young Earth is falsified even if we don't know which K-Ar dates are correct.
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Don't think they throw out dates they don't like?
Nope.
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Well you are mistaken as I have now shown you on the KBS Tuff and the example of Dalrymple and Hamblin [1998]. I'm sure I could spend a great deal of time and show you many, many more.
You haven't shown any such thing, Dave-pootles; all you've shown is:
Geologists doing something you said they never do: publishing discordant dates.
Geologists doing another thing you said they never do: not accepting dates until they are verifiable, replicable, and cross-checked.
Geologists doing another thing you said they never do: discarding only dates that are proven to be wrong by multiple independent objective evaluations.
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So, my friends, I have now done a thorough job of giving you a glimpse into the "rest of the story" about Argon dating.
Are you intending to break your promise to discuss why you think zircons don't refute Snelling's "By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information."
And I did ask nicely that you post your evidence that mixing affects K-Ar dating; I really need a good laugh. I hope you don't disappoint me.
Have at it, Dave. Sometime this century, please. Or, to save time, you could just admit you have not the faintest notion of how one would date the Grand Staircase.
Actually, Eric, NO ONE has the faintest idea of how to date the layers of the Grand Staircase. It's just that many geologists play a fine game of pretending they do. More on this soon.
Actually, Dave, lots of people know exactly how to date the Grand Staircase. Virtually all professional geologists know how to do it, and JonF and Deadman right here on our own little thread know how to do it. That you think they're wrong doesn't change matters, since you haven't given anyone else here the slightest reason to think they're wrong.
But even if it were true that no one, including you, has the slightest idea how to date the Grand Staircase, and by implication anything else, then what's your justification for thinking the earth is only 6,000 years old, Dave? That the Bible says so? But how's that for circular reasoning? You say you believe the (or at least a) Bible is inerrant because the evidence points that way. But what do you use for evidence? The Bible itself!
A logical circle doesn't get any tighter than that, Dave. Tight as a noose, I would say.
And by the way, we can take this as an admission that you have no idea how to date the Grand Canyon, and therefore you have no idea how old it is, right? It could be 600 years old, or it could be six trillion years old, and you'd be none the wiser.
Glad we finally got that out of the way.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
DaveyDH, How long does it take permafrost to form and why is it an issue in global warming?
how long?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
GREAT HEROES OF AMERICAN HISTORY WHO PROMOTED THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION
(AND MADE IT A PART OF GOVERNMENT)
....OR NOT James Madison
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What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
-James Madison from Memorial and Remonstrance
Thomas Jefferson
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Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
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Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
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Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
And lastly, as member of the New York Provisional Congress, John Jay argued unsuccessfully for a prohibition on Catholics holding office. For all his contributions to American jurisprudence, Jay isn't they guy you should look to for support. Even if you are not Catholic.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
Care to explain dave? How is a populated Tyre a bare rock? I give you proof positive of a biblical mistake and you sadly call it equivocal?
I caught you in a lie, Mr. Dawkins, And I have been quite polite about it, and you have not been. I hope you can finally clear this up.
And now this, on page 182.
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Oh ... and you wanted to know about Tyre? I beat that one to death ...oh ... about a hundred pages ago or so. Not planning on repeating. Sorry.
Mr. Dawkins, you are clearly lying. Why?
Well? How was it "beat to death"? A simple honest answer will do, sir.
Still waiting, Mr. Hawkins. Just a few lines would suffice.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Re "Been there. I actually took a not-available-to-the-public tour of the Supreme Court. Hammurabi can be found recieving his code from the Babylonian Sun God on the south freize of the Courtroom. Furthermore, Mohammed can be found holding the Koran on the north frieze."
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Probably hiding behind that other great heresy, John Marshall. It has all been downhill since Marbury vs. Madison.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Has anyone noticed that I have never yet characterized evolution supporters as "evilutionists" or "conspirators" in any way, yet I am constantly characterized as some kind of cultist? What's up with that? Are you so insecure in your belief system that you have to try and portray people with differing views as monsters?
I haven't portrayed you as a cultist. Ignorant, yes; dishonest; yes; stupid; yes; seriously deluded, yes; but those are the only possible conclusions from the data.
And the strange thing is, I don't think AF Dave is actually stupid. Sure, in a fit of pique I've occasionally referred to him as an "idiot" and the like, but even smart people can often behave like idiots.
Which makes matters worse for Dave, not better. If he actually were stupid, i.e., mentally deficient, it would be more understandable that he posts the drivel that he posts. But he's not. Which means his arguments are based on dishonesty, not stupidity. Stupidity is, after all, forgivable. No one asked to be born stupid. But what's the excuse for dishonesty?
But let's get back on topic here. Dave, do you now admit that you have no way of knowing whether the Grand Canyon is 600 years old, or six trillion years old? And if you think you do know how old it is, how do you know that? You can't tell by looking at the Bible, Dave, because the Bible is not self-authenticating. If you can't find independent corroborating evidence, you have no reason (other than faith) for thinking anything the Bible says is true. And besides, you've already said your belief in the Bible's inerrancy is that the evidence supports such a belief. Well, where's the evidence?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric thinks I'm dishonest, but smart ... Steve Story thinks I'm honest, but stupid ... I think JonF agrees ... some think I'm some sort of cultist ... hmmm ... it's kinda fun seeing all the various analyses ... I'd like to hear Glen Davidson again ... he always had really long winded analyses of me.
Hey 7P ... how many nested quotes do you think you can put in a single post? Has this ever been tested?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I'd like to hear Glen Davidson again ... he always had really long winded analyses of me.
I have a better idea, Dave. Why don't you start working through some of the objections to your "hypothesis" that you've never managed to answer? If you've forgotten them, I can repost them for you.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Is Tyre the only obstacle to you believing the Bible is the Inerrant Word of the Creator?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Yes, Tyre is the only thing keeping me from believing the Bible is the Inerrant Word of the Creator.
Mmmm. except for the sheer, remarkable errancy of the rest of it. And the fact that we know what makes, oh say, seasons, rain, speciation, earthquakes, hurricanes, day and night, fire, lightning, skin color, the grand canyon, limestone, diamonds, coal, oil, velcro, the motion of the planets, sickness and disease, phosphorescence, things fall, how simple rules can lead to very complex systems, how religion is a holdout from a time when we didn't know those things, how your embarrassment of your small penis led you to pursue a life of promoting falsehoods to bolster your self-esteem and many other things too.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Dave, if you think you might be a cultist you could always take The Cult Test. Actually, lets not put it that way. I'm sorry, I should be nicer.
You could see how much like a cult's your beliefs may be. I'm pretty sure you'll never be involved in a mass suicide, but some of the questions you might score highly on, if you actually considered them, I mean your belief is the only way to heaven, right?
That's kind of shorthand. What AFDave has is an epistemological commitment to a set of wholly wrong, primitive beliefs. Over the period of the last few hundred years, most people in the christian west transitioned from that set, to a looser set of beliefs which accomodated science. The ones who keep the primitive beliefs, like AFDave, are forced to throw out whole areas of scientific study.
Is Tyre the only obstacle to you believing the Bible is the Inerrant Word of the Creator?
Hardly. Here are some the reasons I can think of not to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of the creator (in no particular order):
• The events Genesis describes are completely out of order or in inconsistent orders in different chapters of Genesis. E.g., night and day are created before the sun is, organisms that eat grass are created before grass is created, Adam is created both before Eve and simultaneously with Eve.
• The Bible underestimates the age of the earth and the universe by six orders of magnitude.
• The Bible describes a flood that cannot possibly have happened.
• Different versions of the Bibles are mutually inconsistent, and you, Dave, have admitted that you've never seen a version of the Bible that is inerrant; you've only seen a version that is "pretty close." If you've never seen a version that is inerrant, then you have no idea how close to or far away from inerrancy any version of the Bible is.
• Every statement the Bible makes about the universe is consistent with what would have been believed by humans three thousand years ago. The Bible gives every indication of having been written by humans, not by a supreme being, which means it obviously cannot be inerrant. There is nothing in the Bible that could not possibly have been written by humans.
• I have no particular reason to believe the Bible is inerrant. From what I have seen, it is riddled with inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and information that is flat-out-obviously wrong. If a document were truly inerrant, one would expect that it would be extraordinarily difficult to find instances where its inerrancy would even be equivocal. Since it's actually pretty easy to find places where it's wrong (such as this), it's impossible to believe the Bible could be inerrant.
In other words, Dave, there's no obstacle to believing the Bible is not inerrant.
See how easy it is to answer your questions, Dave? Even when I'm half-dead from oxygen-starvation after a six-hour bike ride. But you sure do have a hard time answering our questions. Like this one: if your "hypothesis" is superior to the standard theories, then why can't it answer simple questions like how old the Grand Canyon is? So, one more time: how do you know the Grand Canyon isn't only 600 years old, and how do you know it's not six billion, or six trillon, or six quadrillion years old?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Also, I should point out a parallel here to another of your claims, Dave:
You claim the earth is 6,000 years old—no older. Therefore, one date for anything anywhere in the world that's more than 6,000 years old blows this claim away.
In the same way, your claim of biblical inerrancy is blown away by one incorrect claim, even one that's very slightly incorrect, anywhere in the Bible.
In both cases, all it takes is one. Sorry, Dave, but if you're going to make extreme assertions, that's the way it's gonna be.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And core samples provide that one date. (among a few othewr things )
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
That's kind of shorthand. What AFDave has is an epistemological commitment to a set of wholly wrong, primitive beliefs. Over the period of the last few hundred years, most people in the christian west transitioned from that set, to a looser set of beliefs which accomodated science. The ones who keep the primitive beliefs, like AFDave, are forced to throw out whole areas of scientific study.
Wrong. Over the last few hundred years, most people in the Christian West bought into several profound myths including the Marxist myth, the Darwinian myth, the Freudian myth, the Keynesian myth and several lesser ones. Most of the founders of modern science were Creationists and Biblical literalists. Their science was so good that it has brought great abundance to the western world in spite of the destruction caused by the Marxist and Darwinian myths. The Marxist myth has ostensibly died with the USSR, although it seeks to live on. The Darwinian myth is in the death throes and I'm not sure what will happen with the Keynesian and Freudian myths. We shall see!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Most of the founders of modern science were Creationists and Biblical literalists
i suppose asking you to support this by providing evidence would be another in an endless series of futilities?
come to think of it, there isn't one single, accurate, statement in your entire last post.
for example, marxism not only didn't die with the soviet union, it was never "birthed" there to begin with.
the USSR was no more marxist than the US is a pure democracy.
actually even less so.
humans in general are far too greedy and lazy for a pure democracy, or pure marxism, to ever be pragmatic on a large scale.
Freudian "myth"? why doesn't it surprise me to see someone who essentially embodies half of the terminology freud used to describe cognitive dissonance speak of it as "myth"?
you should investigate the meaning of the term "projection", 'cause buddy, it's all you have workin' for ya in that last post of yours.
sorry, Davey, but you is one crazy motherfucker (doubtless Freud would even say the same thing, if he was still around).
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
The Darwinian myth is in the death throes and I'm not sure what will happen with the Keynesian and Freudian myths. We shall see!
Dave, if you think evolutionary biology (which is presumably what you mean by "the Darwinian myth") is in its "death throes," perhaps you can explain away the tens of thousands of papers that are published every year by evolutionary biologists, especially when contrasted to the (more-or-less) zero papers that are published by "creationary" biologists.
And in the meantime, will you please stop your desultory and ineffective attempts to refute standard scientific models of biology, geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, etc. and actually provide some affirmative support for your own "hypothesis"? Do you know how tedious it is to watch you trip over your own shoelaces again and again and again in your vainglorious attempts to refute hundreds of thousands of man-hours of scientific research by actual scientists who actually have a fucking clue what they're talking about?
So one more time, Dave: what evidence do you have that the Grand Canyon is not 600 years old? And what evidence do you have that the Grand Canyon is not hundreds of billions of years old? Are your error bars really nine orders of magnitude wide? If your "hypothesis" is better than the standard models, then surely you can narrow those error bars a bit more than that!
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Ummm... Please explain. I can't wait to hear this one. Has it been replaced by, oh, perhaps Milton Friedman?
Or was it "Deficits don't matter anymore" Cheney?
God DaveyDH, I'll debate you on whatever you think about that one.
SteveStory, You were wrong. He is stupid.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Not too many people I know want to drive across the Paseo bridge in KC that Crabby mentioned and it has NEVER dropped a car into the river. It's just been suspect. Imagine how much traffic it would get if it had dropped cars into the river in 4 out of the last 20 years! That's the situation we have with Argon dating.
The unprecedented freedom in England and subsequently in America is a direct result of Martin Luther and the Reformation which he started.
DDTTD, once again you expose your massive ignorance.
The I-35/Paseo bridge is the most used bridge in KC! Just because you and your clique think it's a "suspect" bridge doesn't make it so. It just exposes your prejudice and ignorance, as does the next statement I've quoted.
Martin Luther had nothing to do with "unprecedented freedom" in England... That process started 300+ years earlier with the Magna Carta Libertatum, a legal document, not a religious document.
I can understand why you won't tell us what your alma mater is seeing how it did such a terrible job of educating you.
You assumed that the education Dave got had any impact on the previous amount of brainwashing he was subjected to.
Dave was washed and dried long before he attempted to get any kind of degree.
in fact, I think we had this discussion before; getting an engineering degree appears to be one of the few degrees someone with Dave's state of mind can actually obtain, which might explain why there appears to be a preponderance of engineers among the ranks of the creobots.
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
You assumed that the education Dave got had any impact on the previous amount of brainwashing he was subjected to.
Dave was washed and dried long before he attempted to get any kind of degree.
in fact, I think we had this discussion before; getting an engineering degree appears to be one of the few degrees someone with Dave's state of mind can actually obtain, which might explain why there appears to be a preponderance of engineers among the ranks of the creobots.
You are correct, my problem is trying to understand how an accredited school (that the Air Force would accept) could produce a student as massively ignorant as DDTTD and why the majority of them are engineers.
maybe he meant "Kinseyan" as in "sexual revolution"?
Actually, I'd prefer to hear Dave take on macroeconomic theory rather than the idea of sexual liberty. Does that make me kinky?
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
HYPOTHESIS: MORE YEARS OF HIGHER ED = MORE ARROGANCE = BIGGER BLINDERS = MISSING OBVIOUS FACTS RIGHT UNDER YOUR NOSE
JonF...
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Those aren't counts of dating studies performed, Davie-doodles, they're counts of mentions of a dating technique {ABE: including references}.
If you look at the actual search results, you see that that many of the results are actual studies which include someone going out and dating the rocks. It is true that some are not, but this applies to all the methods, so the COMPARISON is much more valid than your "personal communication" selecting at random only 164 articles, huge pretty graph notwithstanding.
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Results 1 - 10 of about 45 for potassium argon dates 1941-1950 Results 1 - 10 of about 164 for potassium argon dates 1951-1960 Results 1 - 10 of about 578 for potassium argon dates 1961-1970 Results 1 - 10 of about 840 for potassium argon dates 1971-1980 Results 1 - 10 of about 1,260 for potassium argon dates 1981-1990 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,600 for potassium argon dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,930 for potassium argon dates 2001-2006
Results 1 - 10 of about 391 for rubidium strontium dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 299 for samarium neodymium dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 1,150 for Pb-Pb dates 1991-2000
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,240 for U-Pb dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 2,600 for potassium argon dates 1991-2000 Results 1 - 10 of about 11,600 for argon argon dates 1991-2000
There you go. You are refuted yet again. Actually DOUBLY refuted. I told you Argon dating is the most popular. And there is no question that it is from the above data. You tried to say my "potassium argon dates" search is meaningless because there is a lot of "argon argon" in there ... mmmm ... maybe a little, but look at the seperate results for "argon argon."
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And they're terifically biased by the facts that the older stuff isn't all indexed on the Web, you picked a particular set of keywords
Oh is that so? Old stuff isn't indexed, huh?
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Advanced Scholar Search Scholar Preferences Scholar Help
Scholar Results 1 - 10 of about 317 for author:rutherford. (0.07 seconds) Dates query: 1900 - 1950
All articles Recent articles
The Scattering of á and â Particles by Matter and the Structure of the Atom E Rutherford - Phil. Mag, 1911 - dbserv.ihep.su It is well known that the á and â particles suffer deflexions from their rectilinear paths by encounters with atoms of matter. This scattering is ... Cited by 166 - Related Articles - View as HTML - Web Search
[CITATION] Collision of Particles with Light Atoms IV. An Anomalous Eect in Nitrogen E Rutherford - Phil. Mag, 1919 Cited by 25 - Related Articles - Web Search
[BOOK] Substitutional analysis DE Rutherford - 1948 - University Press Cited by 56 - Related Articles - Web Search - Library Search
[CITATION] Ellis C Rutherford - Radiations from Radioactive Substances, 1930 Cited by 18 - Related Articles - Web Search
Transmutation Effects Observed with Heavy Hydrogen - group of 3 » MLE Oliphant, P Harteck, L Rutherford - Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, …, 1934 - JSTOR Transmutation Effects Observed with Heavy Hydrogen By MLE OLIPHANT, Ph.D. (Messel Research Fellow of the Royal Society), P. HARTECK, Ph.D., and Lord ... Cited by 16 - Related Articles - Web Search
Bakerian Lecture. Nuclear Constitution of Atoms - group of 2 » E Rutherford - Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, …, 1920 - JSTOR .page { padding: 1em; } Bakerian Lecture. Nuclear Constitution of Atoms. E. Rutherford. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. ... Cited by 15 - Related Articles - Web Search - Library Search
Experiments on the Transmutation of Elements by Protons - group of 2 » MLE Oliphant, L Rutherford - Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, …, 1933 - JSTOR .page { padding: 1em; } Experiments on the Transmutation of Elements by Protons. MLE Oliphant. Lord Rutherford. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. ... Cited by 14 - Related Articles - Web Search
The Accurate Determination of the Energy Released in Certain Nuclear Transformations - group of 2 » MLE Oliphant, AR Kempton, L Rutherford - Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, …, 1935 - JSTOR 406 The Accurate Determination of the Energy Released in Certain Nuclear Transformations By MLE OLIPHANT, Messel Research Fellow of the Royal ... Cited by 14 - Related Articles - Web Search
[CITATION] ‘The probability variations in the distribution of á particles E Rutherford, H Geiger - Philosophical Magazine, 6th series, 1910 Cited by 10 - Related Articles - Web Search
[CITATION] A radioactive substance emitted from thorium compounds E Rutherford - Philosoph Mag, 1900 Cited by 9 - Related Articles - Web Search
Also ...
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Advanced Scholar Search All articles 1900 - 1950 Scholar Results 1 - 10 of about 67,800. (0.08 seconds)
300+ articles just for "rutherford" and 67,800 total articles published from 1900 - 1950? Seems like they are doing a pretty good job of indexing old articles to me. Maybe not all, but it's pretty extensive. I would bet large money that 95% of all published studies back to the 40's have been indexed. Let me ask you something, Jon. You acted all arrogant and made some wild claim about how popular K-Ar Dating was in the 40's or something. Now you are trying to weasel out of it. Why don't you just provide support for your statements, or else be a man and retract them?
JonF...
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(Hint: Pb-Pb dating is not U-Pb concordia-discordia dating, ignoramus),
Where did I ever say that it was? Are you trying to say that because I searched Pb-Pb that I think it's the same thing or something? I just gave you U-Pb dates also above. And your claim is refuted. Argon dating is the most popular, just like Snelling said in his paper.
JonF...
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Fine, Davie-doodles. Admit that Snelling committed fraud. Your pathetic attempts to excuse him have all failed miserably.
Snelling did not commit fraud as I have meticulously explained, and your ship sinks even if Snelling had not done a single experiment.
You tried to tell me Argon dating was popular in the 40's. REFTUED. You tried to tell me U-Pb is the most popular now. REFUTED. You tell me Argon dating is not the most popular. REFUTED. You tried to say they don't index old studies. REFUTED. You keep yelling that Snelling is a fraud because of xenoliths. REFUTED. (Actually, this one doesn't even matter if I refuted you or not because there is much data BESIDES Snelling's that shows "excess Argon" ... hence unreliable dates). So what again is your point of saying Snelling is a fraudster? Even if I agreed with you, your theory is blown. So are you just trying to make noise so as to confuse people?
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The bottom line is that at least 60% (and maybe more) of the date-able formations were reliably dated,
Now, finally at the end of your post, you have said one thing I can agree with. I was wrong for saying Dalrymple threw out 60 Argon dates. I should have said he threw out "many of more than 60 Argon dates." See how easy that is, Jon? Now, your turn on your misstatements above.
So I'll just take your word for it (since I don't have access to the paper right now) that 60% of the dates are "good," meaning that they agree with some other method (which we have not investigated yet) ...
Again, my point remains ... ARGON DATING CANNOT BE TRUSTED IF IT IS "WRONG" 20 - 40% OF THE TIME
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This study contradicts every claim you have made about radiometric dating!
Jon, you were doing so good at the end there, but this one is a real howler! "Contradicts every claim I have made about radiometric dating!??" No. Just the opposite. It actually CONFIRMS the specific claims I have been making about radiometric dating which are currently ...
1) ARGON DATING IS WILDLY POPULAR BECAUSE IT IS CHEAP, BUT IT IS ALSO WILDLY DISCORDANT 2) MOST OF THE "DATES" GIVEN TO ME BY DEADMAN FOR 4 OF THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE ARE ARGON DATES 3) SO ... THE IDEA THAT THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE CAN BE DATED RADIOMETRICALLY IS ... WELL ...
We know that all K-Ar dates contradict a young Earth. We know that some those K-Ar dates are correct. Therefore, a young Earth is falsified even if we don't know which K-Ar dates are correct.
No you don't. you only know that many "dates" agree with "dates" given by other methods. I will show you here why ALL "dates" are suspect. Yes, Eric, it is true. There IS NO reliable way to physically date the layers of the Grand Staircase. I know this is a shock to your system, but over time, you'll get used to the idea.
jonF...
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Geologists doing something you said they never do: publishing discordant dates.
Geologists doing another thing you said they never do: not accepting dates until they are verifiable, replicable, and cross-checked.
Geologists doing another thing you said they never do: discarding only dates that are proven to be wrong by multiple independent objective evaluations.
I didn't say they don't publish discordant dates. I said they "throw them out." KBS Tuff is a perfect example. They explained away the ones they didn't like. All of this was published. Just explained away. There was at least one honest skeptic here who admitted this. Was it Diogenes? Why not you?
jonF...
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Are you intending to break your promise to discuss why you think zircons don't refute Snelling's "By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information."
And I did ask nicely that you post your evidence that mixing affects K-Ar dating; I really need a good laugh. I hope you don't disappoint me.
Explain to me why you think zircons refute Snelling's claim and I will be glad to discuss it. As for mixing, why is it necessary to bother with this? I've already clearly proven my point. What more proof do I need?
Crabby...
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The I-35/Paseo bridge is the most used bridge in KC! Just because you and your clique think it's a "suspect" bridge doesn't make it so.
True, because many people have no other choice. But my "clique" lives in suburbia and does not have to use this bridge very much. If we have the choice, guess what we do ... not use the bridge. Again ... my point is ... if a bridge dropped cars into the river 5 years out of the last 20, no one would trust it. And no one should trust Argon dating which is wrong at least 20% of the time, and the 80% of cases which are "right" have a fake yardstick for determining that they are "right."
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maybe he meant "Kinseyan" as in "sexual revolution"?
"Keynesian" not "Kinseyan." As in John Maynard Keynes. Don't know if I'll ever get to cover these other myths here. The Darwinian Myth is the most important one ... hence the enormous time I'm spending on it.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
maybe he meant "Kinseyan" as in "sexual revolution"?
"Keynesian" not "Kinseyan." As in John Maynard Keynes. Don't know if I'll ever get to cover these other myths here. The Darwinian Myth is the most important one ... hence the enormous time I'm spending on it.
That is a shame really. I'd love to see you take on macroeconomics. Keynes advocated governments exercising monetary and fiscal policy to control economic growth. There are two ways to attack Keynes. One, of course, is to take the Marxist approach that macroeconomic theory is a tool of the class system built on the exploitation of the majority. The other would be to advocate a hyper-extreme laissez-faire system that forbids government intervention (either active or tacit) in capital markets.
I am pretty sure I know which approach you would take and, of course, I would have to ask you to square your advocacy of unchecked capitalism with Christ's message of social justice (Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.)
You know, if you really think about it, if you want to remake the world, you would have better luck pulling down the economic system rather than attacking bug collectors and mushroom growers.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Dave, you're not refuting anything here. That radiometric dating is in fact possible, that it is reliable, that it is concordant with other non-radiometric dating methods, has been established by JonF and others (and by "others," I mean the tens of thousands of scientists who have refined radiometric dates over the last hundred years) beyond any possibility of doubt.
Given your history of dishonesty, ignorance, and illogic, one would have to be crazy to take your opinion over that of thousands of individuals who are professional geologists and who know for a fact that radiometric dating techniques are accurate and reliable. After all, you're the same guy who still thinks Tyre is a bare rock even after looking at photos that demonstrate it is nothing of the sort, and you're the guy who thinks that Portuguese is a "mixture of French and Spanish," and you're the guy who thinks humans aren't related to chimps at all. And you think you have the merest fig-leaf of credibility on the subject of radiometric dating? Think again, junior.
And one more time: you need to disprove every single dating technique that has ever produced even one accurate date older than 6,000 years. Do you have any idea how impossible that's going to be? We don't even need to know which date is accurate. For your "hypothesis" to survive, you need to invalidate every single one of several million dates, derived from any possible dating technique, that is more than 6,000 years old. Your entire "hypothesis" rests on the impossibility of anything in the universe being more than 6,000 years old. The existence of the Andromeda Galaxy invalidates your hypothesis, for crying out loud!
Now answer the question: how do you know that the Grand Canyon is older that 600 years, and younger than six trillion years? You don't know, do you, Dave? You are completely at a loss as to how to date the Grand Canyon. You claim your "hypothesis" is a better explanation for the Grand Canyon than the standard theories, and yet you can't nail down the age of the Grand Canyon within 9 (or 90, or 900) orders of magnitude!
"Better," my ass.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You're still on with that bridge analogy, huh? Here's a better version: Snelling tried to prove that you can't build a bridge a mile long. He knew that it wasn't possible already, so he didn't even really try. He built his bridge out of popsicle sticks.
Amazingly he was able to complete the bridge and he proceded to send a line of 20 trucks over it. 4 of them fell off on the way across, 'cause it was a crappy bridge, but despite this, the other 16 made it. Yet somehow Snelling is still sure that it is impossible to build a bridge a mile long.
I think the trucks must've been carrying sour grapes.
It's been a few years since I slogged through Keynes but I read "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman a couple years ago. (At the same time, an aquaintance was reporting from Chile on some environmental issues so it seemed relevant.) Cheney's quote reminded me of a line from C&F paraphrased something like "The purchasing power of the individual is always equal to his production into the economy. The number of shoes a miner will purchase will be commensurate with the amount of ore he extracts."
Let that one sink in for a moment.
I am always amused when one economist proclaims the "death" of a previous economist's ideas. It's like they define one cubic nanometer of a major phase transition and proclaim their new understanding to be the new physics of phase transition.
DaveyDH, I wonder what you think of "On Liberty" (John Stuart Mill) DaveyDH. Is it dangerous? And I would really looove to debate you on keynesian macroeconomics being a "Myth"
See, I offer up these debates all the time even though I know next to nothing about the subjects because I know a secret: You are too stupid to win a debate. Even if I were wrong I would win. (But if you take the side you begin with, I will honestly try to be right).
And you are proving your nature by A) refusing and B) claiming victory without even having 1 keystroke of a debate.
As a chicken daveyDH, are you fried, baked or broiled?
edit*** You might want to start here with the "keynseian myth". It is reasonably well done and gives you a few points you can cut and paste and call truth even though you won't be able to explain why in any meaningful way.
DumbassDavey. Now, it's DumbassDavey.
cluck, cluck, bwaaaaaak!
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
[quote=afdave,Sep. 12 2006,08:40][quote]Those aren't counts of dating studies performed, Davie-doodles, they're counts of mentions of a dating technique {ABE: including references}.[/quote]If you look at the actual search results, you see that that many of the results are actual studies which include someone going out and dating the rocks. [/quote] Some of them are; some of them are references to someone going out and dating the rocks; some of them are other things; and many studies are missed. Your methodology is invalid. [quote]It is true that some are not, but this applies to all the methods, so the COMPARISON is much more valid than your "personal communication" selecting at random only 164 articles, huge pretty graph notwithstanding.[/quote] 164 articles out of those journals is statistically significant. [quote][quote]And they're terrifically biased by the facts that the older stuff isn't all indexed on the Web, you picked a particular set of keywords[/quote] Oh is that so? Old stuff isn't indexed, huh?[/quote] Yes, it is ... but not nearly to the extent that newer stuff is. [quote]I would bet large money that 95% of all published studies back to the 40's have been indexed.[/quote] On-line and text-searchable by Google Scholar? You're on. $100. Produce your proof. [quote]Let me ask you something, Jon. You acted all arrogant and made some wild claim about how popular K-Ar Dating was in the 40's or something. Now you are trying to weasel out of it. Why don't you just provide support for your statements, or else be a man and retract them?[/quote] I don't have proof of the popularity of dating methods back then, but I've read a lot of papers form back then and my opinion is that K-Ar was not the most popular. Your stuff does not prove otherwise.
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(Hint: Pb-Pb dating is not U-Pb concordia-discordia dating, ignoramus),
Where did I ever say that it was? Are you trying to say that because I searched Pb-Pb that I think it's the same thing or something?
Yup, you got it. The claim to which you responded was "The most common method, by far, for dating rocks is U-Pb concordia-discordia on zircons (or sometimes other minerals). All argon methods, including the widely used Ar-Ar, amount to about 30%.". You attempted to refute that claim by searching for Pb-Pb and no other uranium-realated topic. Obviously you didn't know the difference.
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I just gave you U-Pb dates also above.
After I pointed out your error.
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your claim is refuted. Argon dating is the most popular, just like Snelling said in his paper.
Nope, with your particular choice of search terms you get more hits on argon. You have yet to establish a relationship between hits and nubmer of actual dating studies performed.
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You keep yelling that Snelling is a fraud because of xenoliths. REFUTED.
Nope, Davie-moron, you tried to claim that there were no xenoliths. REFUTED. You tried to claim that everybody does whole-rock dating including xenoliths. REFUTED. Sneling's a fraud.
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So what again is your point of saying Snelling is a fraudster?
Snelling is a fraudster. Proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Frauds like Snelling cannot be trusted in any area.
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The bottom line is that at least 60% (and maybe more) of the date-able formations were reliably dated,
Now, finally at the end of your post, you have said one thing I can agree with. I was wrong for saying Dalrymple threw out 60 Argon dates. I should have said he threw out "many of more than 60 Argon dates."
There were only 63 dates in the paper, Davie. Exactly how many do you think he threw out? But he didn't throw out any dates, Davie-doodles. He published them all and noted which ones were reliable and why, providing objective reasons.
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So I'll just take your word for it (since I don't have access to the paper right now) that 60% of the dates are "good," meaning that they agree with some other method (which we have not investigated yet) ...
Nope, that's not what's meant by "reliable". And you do have access to the paper, or would if you were clever enough to do a Google search. I already posted one of several links to on-line copies.
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my point remains ... ARGON DATING CANNOT BE TRUSTED IF IT IS "WRONG" 20 - 40% OF THE TIME
Argonm dating is not wrong as much as 20% of the time ... but even is it is wrong 20 - 40% of the time, T H A T R E M A I N I N G 6 0 - 8 0 % F A L S I F I E S Y O U R C L A I M O F A Y O U N G E A R T H.
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This study contradicts every claim you have made about radiometric dating!
Jon, you were doing so good at the end there, but this one is a real howler! "Contradicts every claim I have made about radiometric dating!??" No. Just the opposite. It actually CONFIRMS the specific claims I have been making about radiometric dating which are currently ...
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1) ARGON DATING IS WILDLY POPULAR BECAUSE IT IS CHEAP, BUT IT IS ALSO WILDLY DISCORDANT
Less that 20% error is not discordant at all for our purposes here.
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2) MOST OF THE "DATES" GIVEN TO ME BY DEADMAN FOR 4 OF THE LAYERS OF THE GRAND STAIRCASE ARE ARGON DATES
Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staricase) are argon dates?
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Geologists doing something you said they never do: publishing discordant dates.
Geologists doing another thing you said they never do: not accepting dates until they are verifiable, replicable, and cross-checked.
Geologists doing another thing you said they never do: discarding only dates that are proven to be wrong by multiple independent objective evaluations.
I didn't say they don't publish discordant dates.
Oh yes you did, Davie-pud. Remember that you claimed that the reason for apparent concordance is that discordant dates never get published. I pointed out that geologists don't have the money to do that, and you responded that you didn't see why they wouldn't. I suggested that you get information from the Menlo Park dating lab under the FOIA, and you said you might. How ya doin' on that investigation, hum?
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I said they "throw them out."
Even if that were true, you're still wrong. They don't throw anything out. They publish the dates for all to see, and then decide which are reliable based on objective and repeatable experiments.
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The KBS Tuff is a perfect example. They explained away the ones they didn't like. All of this was published. Just explained away.
Your fantasies notwithstanding, the KBS Tuff results were investigated and after some could be reproduced by many methods and many labs, and the reasons for the discordant dates were published and reproduced, then those dates were accepted as reliable.
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Are you intending to break your promise to discuss why you think zircons don't refute Snelling's "By implication, the radioisotopic ratios in ancient lavas found throughout the geologic record are likely fundamental characteristics of their geochemistry. They therefore probably only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis, rather than any valid age information."
And I did ask nicely that you post your evidence that mixing affects K-Ar dating; I really need a good laugh. I hope you don't disappoint me.
Explain to me why you think zircons refute Snelling's claim and I will be glad to discuss it.
Pretty obvious and basic, Davie-moron, and the required information has been ignored by you many times in this thread. It is widely known that the isotopic composition of zircons, when they form, do not reflect "the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". In particular, the U/Pb ratio is very very high, no mater what the U/Pb ratio of the source was. (This sort of thing is comon for many relevant radioisotopes, but it's most extreme and obvious for zircons). Snelling has acknowledged this, in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY: "The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth "at today's rates" of nuclear decay occurred."
Therefore the U/Pb radioisotope ratios in zircons found throughout the geologic record do not "only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". They reflect radioactive decay in-situ. And, if Snelling wants to claim that this does not indicate age, it's up to him to provide far more evidence than a few zircons with complex thermal histories and some apparently anomolous helium.
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As for mixing, why is it necessary to bother with this? I've already clearly proven my point. What more proof do I need?
You haven't proved any point .. but all I was asking for was a good laugh at your ignorance, thinking that mixing has any relevance to K-Ar dating.
Recall the original assertion by AFDave, that "It is interesting to note the increase in popularity of the method beginning in the 50's and continuing to the present from the Google Scholar searches below. I suppose this confirms Snelling's statement that continues to remain the most popular dating method. (RATE Book 1,p.37) Why? Because it's cheap I guess. I think JonF says Snelling is wrong about this too, but I'm not seeing that, Jon. From the data below, I see 2600 search returns for K-Ar vs. 391, 299, and 1150 for Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, and Pb-Pb respectively. Maybe you could back up your statements with data?JonF..."
Which JonF did do.
[quote=afdave]
Quote (JonF]Those aren't counts of dating studies performed @ Davie-doodles, they're counts of mentions of a dating technique {ABE: including references}.[/quote)
If you look at the actual search results, you see that that many of the results are actual studies which include someone going out and dating the rocks. It is true that some are not, but this applies to all the methods, so the COMPARISON is much more valid than your "personal communication" selecting at random only 164 articles, huge pretty graph notwithstanding.
Well, shouldn't a sampling of a recent journal be the appropriate way to see if K-Ar is the most popular? Your method is incompetent, just what we have come to expect.
[quote=afdave]
Quote (JonF]And they're terifically biased by the facts that the older stuff isn't all indexed on the Web @ you picked a particular set of keywords[/quote)
Oh is that so? Old stuff isn't indexed, huh?
Is there something about the meaning of "all" that confuses you?
Apparently yes. Remaining twaddle deleted - it is all the same old crap.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
You're still on with that bridge analogy, huh? Here's a better version: Snelling tried to prove that you can't build a bridge a mile long. He knew that it wasn't possible already, so he didn't even really try. He built his bridge out of popsicle sticks.
Amazingly he was able to complete the bridge and he proceded to send a line of 20 trucks over it. 4 of them fell off on the way across, 'cause it was a crappy bridge, but despite this, the other 16 made it. Yet somehow Snelling is still sure that it is impossible to build a bridge a mile long.
I think the trucks must've been carrying sour grapes.
Ved. Come on, man. Snelling has never attempted to "build a mile long bridge." He did two tiny little experiments just to confirm for himself what was obvious from the "bridge builders" in the literature. The so called "geochronologists" have tried to build that mile long bridge and have failed. They would be better named something like "Rock Composition Analysts" or something because that's really all they have accomplished. They are the ones who have "built the bridge with popsicles" and it is people like you who are naive enough to drive across it. All 20 trucks that have tried to drive across the "bridge" have fallen into the river ... 4 of them knew they did and were disappointed ... 16 of them don't even know they fell in! So their trucks are now smashed and useless, yet they are "high on the drug of Deep Time" and don't even realize it!
JonF...
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On-line and text-searchable by Google Scholar? You're on. $100. Produce your proof.
Not so easy, big guy. YOU made the statement. YOU prove to me that you are right and I am wrong and I will gladly pay you $100.
JonF...
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You attempted to refute that claim by searching for Pb-Pb and no other uranium-realated topic. Obviously you didn't know the difference.
I DO know the difference ... wanna go another $100 to prove me wrong? I searched Pb-Pb because I know it is an important method and was one of the methods used in the Snelling 2003 paper. I did fail to notice that your claim was about U-Pb, not Pb-Pb. I obviously had Pb-Pb on the brain since reading Snelling's paper. In any case, what's your point? I think you just try to jump on any little thing you can think of to try to somehow show that I am stupid. You tried to do that with the KBS Tuff also, trying to somehow say that I think volcanic tuffs are sedimentary, when the truth is that if ANYONE said anything close to that it was you. You are the one that called me on the carpet for generalizing about sedimentary layers. I committed the henious sin of referring to water-laid sedimentary rock simply as sedimentary rock and you arrogantly went off about how there's all kinds of things that can make sediment--water, wind, lava flows, etc. So be careful about arrogantly assuming that I'm stupid on some topic. You might just wind up being embarrassed. I admit that I am only just beginning to get smart in geology, but I do have some basic concepts down pretty well, and I am learning fast.
JonF...
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Snelling is a fraudster. Proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Frauds like Snelling cannot be trusted in any area.
So let's pretend Snelling's a fraud (since most ATBCers live in a pretend world anyway, why not step into that world for a moment?) How does this help you trust Argon dating? Do you discount all the other studies? Is it not a problem for you that only 20 - 40% of the Argon dates are "right"? Have you ever investigated the other methods critically to see if they serve as a good yardstick for verifying Argon dating accuracy?
JonF...
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Pretty obvious and basic, Davie-moron, and the required information has been ignored by you many times in this thread. It is widely known that the isotopic composition of zircons, when they form, do not reflect "the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". In particular, the U/Pb ratio is very very high, no mater what the U/Pb ratio of the source was. (This sort of thing is comon for many relevant radioisotopes, but it's most extreme and obvious for zircons). Snelling has acknowledged this, in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY: "The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth "at today's rates" of nuclear decay occurred."
Therefore the U/Pb radioisotope ratios in zircons found throughout the geologic record do not "only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". They reflect radioactive decay in-situ. And, if Snelling wants to claim that this does not indicate age, it's up to him to provide far more evidence than a few zircons with complex thermal histories and some apparently anomolous helium.
You are correct that Humphreys and Co. acknowledge significant radioactive decay has occurred. But this has nothing to do with Snelling's conclusion. Snelling was not focusing on zircons in the 2003 study. He simply points out that the overall geochemistry of recent lava flows is merely an indication of their origin--it is not reliable date indicator. He proposes that this is quite likely for ancient flows as well. Real simple. This does not negate what you are pointing out about zircons, and what you are saying does not negate Snelling's conclusion.
As for the mixing issue, I merely mentioned that in passing because Snelling did. I do not know what his specific claim is and I'm not sure it warrants my time to investigate it, since I have thoroughly established (if no other place than in my own mind :-) ) the unreliability of Argon dating. I am only interested in investigating things which are central to my purpose. You probably know better than I do what Snelling said in regard to this ... go ahead and refute him if you would like to and you need a good laugh.
Tracy ... I'm sure JonF appreciates your efforts to cover his unsupported assertions, but alas, they fail. The data show that Snelling is correct whether you like it or not.
He's correct about the popularity of Argon dating and, more importantly, about it's unreliability. These are two very important points and I have given you excellent supporting evidence.
JonF has been soundly refuted whether you realize it or not.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
95%? No way. It doesn't even get Reed Elsevier. Google scholar is not very accurate yet. It is popular mostly with undergrads. I would use ISI Web of Science.
Some comments made about Google Scholar in articles:
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Google has deals with several academic publishers that allow it to search the full text of many papers, whereas Web of Science and the others are largely restricted to searching abstracts. But Scholar's index is restricted to online sources — Web of Science has archives that go back to 1900. And the automated process means Scholar's citation tracking can return odd results. For example, Web of Science finds almost 14,000 citations for a 1988 Science paper on the polymerase chain reaction2, identifying it as the most highly cited paper ever to appear in that journal. Scholar finds just under 3,000.
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A closer look at Scholar search results suggests that duplication may well be occurring. One of Scholar's harshest critics, Péter Jascó, an information scientist at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, has taken the engine on numerous test drives. He has documented the results in unflattering terms on a website run by Thomson Scientific. In one extreme case, Jascó found that the first 100 results from a search for documents on 'computers' and 'intractability' returned 92 slightly different citations of a book entitled Computers and Intractability and only 8 other unique results.
wikipedia:
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A significant problem with GS is the secrecy about its coverage, its refusal to publish a list of scientific journals crawled and its updating policies. It is therefore impossible to know how current and/ or exhaustive searches are in GS.
and it's completely worthless as far as using number of hits to indicate something about dates:
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Some searchers consider GS of comparable quality to commercial databases (e.g. [5]), even though its user-interface (UI) is still in beta. Many search experts suggest that its functionality is severely hampered by poor database design. For example, when searching articles based on publication dates, GS results are unreliable, even inaccurate. The number of articles found in some searches, for example, increases when limiting to a range of years (ie. 2000-2006) instead of decreases.
Dave, JonF has made it clear, through his posts, that he has a detailed and intimate knowledge of the various methodologies applicable to radiometric dating. You have made it clear, through your posts, that you are an ignorant dillettante, who has no knowledge of the techniques at all, and are merely cutting and pasting from individuals with known and obvious axes to grind. You haven't even managed to refute the accuracy and reliability of Ar-Ar or K-Ar dating, to say nothing of the 40 or so other radiometric dating techniques, and less than nothing about other, non-radiometric techniques.
In the meantime, you haven't even hazarded a guess as to how to date anything. You have no idea how old the Grand Canyon is, other than that it must be more then 600 years old. For all you know, the Grand Canyon is 6 X 10 ^500 years old.
But let's demonstrate some of the other reasons why the earth cannot possibly be only 6,000 years old.
• There are hundreds of thousands to millions of dates derived from both radiometric and non-radiometric techniques that range from more than 6,000 years to ~4.55 billion years. Note that no object that is known to have originated on the earth has ever been dated beyond ~4.55 billion years. I.e., nothing has ever been found that dates to 10 billion years, or a hundred billion years, or a trillion years.
• The half-life of Uranium 235 is 704 million years. If the earth were only 6,000 years old, essentially none of this U-235 should have decayed by now. U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. If the earth were only 6,000 years old, it should be essentially impossible to detect any decay products of U-238.
• A sphere of iron massing 6 X 10^24 kg could not possibly cooled down from the molten state to a condition where liquid water could exist on it in less then several tens of millions of years.
• It would take at least several million years for the giant molecular cloud that birthed the sun to undergo gravitational collapse to the point of self-sustaining thermonuclear fusion.
• It would take at least another few millions years for the planets to have formed through a process of gravitational accretion.
• Photons produced in nucleosynthesis in the sun's core take a minimum of several tens of thousands of years to reach the photosphere, and an appreciable quantity would take hundreds of thousands to millions of years to reach the photosphere.
• If the universe were only 6,000 years old, there could be no stars, or galaxies, or quasars, or galactic superclusters, than are more than 6,000 light years away. But numerous methods of determining distances which all result in similar values demonstrate that the closest galaxies are several hundred thousand light years away, and the most distant visible objects are almost 14 billion light years away.
• For any of these things to have happened in 6,000 years or less would have required multiple miracles, Dave. But you say you believe in science. In fact you claim, overwhelming evidence to the contrary nothwithstanding, that you accept "90-95%" of science. So if you believe in science, Dave, why do you also believe in miracles? Isn't that just a little bit inconsistent? And a little bit useless, in that you can wave away any phenomenon with an unknown cause by appeal to miracles?
We can keep coming up with reasons why the earth cannot possibly be only 6,000 years old essentially forever, Dave. When are you going to present evidence that it cannot possibly be more than 6,000 years old?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
…and just so you know, Dave, all these questions are going on the list too. I'm thinking that by the end of the month you'll probably be up to 100 questions you cannot, and never will be able to, answer.
I'm wondering what your prize should be when you get to 100.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
1. I have not any part of the Bible which anyone has proven to be untrue. Sometimes a statement appears untrue at first, but upon closer inspection, it proves true after all. 2. I think the parts that Jesus said were true and the parts He commissioned to be written are the ones we accept as 'Inspired by God.' Jesus confirmed the inspiration of the OT and he commissioned the apostles to write the NT. So I take both to be true. 3. Greek (NT) and Hebrew (OT) if you are highly motivated. If not, try the New King James or the New American Standard. I like them both. Also get a Power Bible CD ROM from www.powerbible.com -- Adam Clarke's commentary and many others contained there are very good. 4. I don't know of any 'obvious errors' -- we went through one supposed 'error' about Tyre here and it was equivocal at best. Buy yourself a good book on Bible Difficulties.
How exactly is the Tyre prophecy equivocal? It stated that Tyre will be bare, and it's not.
Care to explain dave? How is a populated Tyre a bare rock? I give you proof positive of a biblical mistake and you sadly call it equivocal?
I caught you in a lie, Mr. Dawkins, And I have been quite polite about it, and you have not been. I hope you can finally clear this up.
And now this, on page 182.
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Oh ... and you wanted to know about Tyre? I beat that one to death ...oh ... about a hundred pages ago or so. Not planning on repeating. Sorry.
Mr. Dawkins, you are clearly lying. Why?
Well? How was it "beat to death"? A simple honest answer will do, sir.
Still waiting, Mr. Hawkins. Just a few lines would suffice.
At this point, Mr. Hawkins, I would probably be satisfied with an explanation of why you continue to lie about our discussion.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Nice essay, Steve. You're telling me that Google scholar is not even in the ballpark for the results I posted? Tell me how to search ISI Web of Science, then, and let's see those results.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Eric-- What page was that on where you re-posted my piece on Tyre. Will you kindly post that again for 7P?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I read it, Mr. Hawkins, and in it, you mentioned that the results of the prophecy were "equivocal", even though I have proven it did not come true. I would like you to address your characterization, and simply either admit that the prophecy failed, or show this forum that it was indeed never again inhabited.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Nice essay, Steve. You're telling me that Google scholar is not even in the ballpark for the results I posted? Tell me how to search ISI Web of Science, then, and let's see those results.
Maybe it would be available at the public-access computers at your nearest university. Otherwise, you might get lucky and find a review paper where someone has spent days going through the data for you. Otherwise it would take you several days at the library. I have no idea why you'd want to do that. JonF's 54 vs 30 number is good enough.
Hey, Davie-doodles, how many dates did Dalrymple "throw out" in his GC paper?
Are discordant dates published, or is the observed concordance between methods an artifact of hiding all the discordant dates? If the discordant dates are hidden, how come the program managers and accountants haven't noticed?
How's that inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab coming along?
Setting aside for the moment the issue of how many K-Ar dates are correct, how many correct K-Ar dates are required to disprove a young Earth? Does one correct K-Ar date disprove a 6,000 year old Earth? If not, why not?
Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staircase) are argon dates?
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 12 2006,13:43)
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On-line and text-searchable by Google Scholar? You're on. $100. Produce your proof.
Not so easy, big guy. YOU made the statement. YOU prove to me that you are right and I am wrong and I will gladly pay you $100.
Your statement:
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I would bet large money that 95% of all published studies back to the 40's have been indexed.
You offered a bet, I accepted:
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On-line and text-searchable by Google Scholar? You're on. $100. Produce your proof.
Weaseling out?
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You attempted to refute that claim by searching for Pb-Pb and no other uranium-realated topic. Obviously you didn't know the difference.
I DO know the difference ... wanna go another $100 to prove me wrong? I searched Pb-Pb because I know it is an important method and was one of the methods used in the Snelling 2003 paper. I did fail to notice that your claim was about U-Pb, not Pb-Pb. I obviously had Pb-Pb on the brain since reading Snelling's paper. In any case, what's your point? I think you just try to jump on any little thing you can think of to try to somehow show that I am stupid.
Maybe you do know the difference. The evidence to date indicates pretty strongly that you don't. Your assertions are obviously untrustworthy.
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You tried to do that with the KBS Tuff also, trying to somehow say that I think volcanic tuffs are sedimentary, when the truth is that if ANYONE said anything close to that it was you.
Funny, you brought up the KBS Tuff in a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks (and nothing else); why was that again? Oh, yeah, you've never even tried to produce a reason. You have accused me of saying that lava and/or tuffs are sedimentary several times .. but no evidence, just assertions.
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Snelling is a fraudster. Proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Frauds like Snelling cannot be trusted in any area.
So let's pretend Snelling's a fraud (since most ATBCers live in a pretend world anyway, why not step into that world for a moment?) How does this help you trust Argon dating?
Well, for one thing, it totally discredits his Ngauruhoe studies, decreasing by at least one the number of studies that show errors. But it says far more about YECs than it says about K-Ar. All his "publications" should be reviewed for fraud (and many of them have been; guess what's been found?). It also demonstrates the lack of appropriate review in YEC "publications"; that fraud should have been detected before publication. Finally, it illustrates lack of integrity in the entire YEC movement; if someone got caught doing that in a real university or research group, his career would be over. Then and there, no questions asked, out on the street with no reference.
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Do you discount all the other studies? Is it not a problem for you that only 20 - 40% of the Argon dates are "right"?
You have not demonstrated 20-40% errors. You have demonstrated around 20% excess argon in a few studies; 20% excess argon does not translate to 20% error, since in older rocks excess argon is swamped by radiogenic argon.
The error rate in Dalrymple's paper is not necessarily typical; rocks as young as those in the GC, and with such a fairly complex history, are notoriously difficult to date. But Dalrymple's GC paper does not demonstrate an error rate of 20-40%. I demonstrated that 20% of Dalrymple's dates in the GC paper were not considered reliable, but that's not the same as error; some of the tests in those dates may well be correct, but the scatter hides them. I demonstrated that 20% of the dates in Dalrymple's paper were not considered reliable because of insufficient confirmation; "we don't know how reliable this date is" is not the same as "this date is an error".
But all that pales in regard to the major point, which you don't dare even acknowledge: even if the error rate is 20-40%, no, I have no problem with that when the question is "Is the Earth 6,000 years old?". He11, when asking if the Earth is 6,000 years old I wouldn't have a problem with an error rate of 99%. All K-Ar dates contradict your claim about the age of the Earth ... if just one out of the many thousands is correct yuour claim is falsified. We don't even need to know whcih one is right!
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Have you ever investigated the other methods critically to see if they serve as a good yardstick for verifying Argon dating accuracy?
Yes. Extensively. I've been writing a FAQ on concordia-discordia dating for years, on and off, and maybe one day I'll put it on the Web. I'm very conversant with the major methods and their pitfalls and limitations. I've corresponded with leaders in the field and discussed these issues with them.
One of the reasons that YECs love Ar-Ar dating so much is that it is more susceptible to error than pretty much all the other methods. That doesn't mean that a lot of the dates are in error; with rational sample selection (e.g. excluding xenoliths) and appropriate procedures and cross-checking, K-Ar dating is very reliable.
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Pretty obvious and basic, Davie-moron, and the required information has been ignored by you many times in this thread. It is widely known that the isotopic composition of zircons, when they form, do not reflect "the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". In particular, the U/Pb ratio is very very high, no mater what the U/Pb ratio of the source was. (This sort of thing is comon for many relevant radioisotopes, but it's most extreme and obvious for zircons). Snelling has acknowledged this, in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY: "The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth "at today's rates" of nuclear decay occurred."
Therefore the U/Pb radioisotope ratios in zircons found throughout the geologic record do not "only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". They reflect radioactive decay in-situ. And, if Snelling wants to claim that this does not indicate age, it's up to him to provide far more evidence than a few zircons with complex thermal histories and some apparently anomolous helium.
You are correct that Humphreys and Co. acknowledge significant radioactive decay has occurred. But this has nothing to do with Snelling's conclusion. Snelling was not focusing on zircons in the 2003 study. He simply points out that the overall geochemistry of recent lava flows is merely an indication of their origin--it is not reliable date indicator. He proposes that this is quite likely for ancient flows as well. Real simple. This does not negate what you are pointing out about zircons, and what you are saying does not negate Snelling's conclusion.
Of course, it's not likely at all for ancient flows, because we know that radioactive decay changes the isotopic ratios; unless you assume your conclusion that the Earth is young.
But zircons negate his conclusion. He may not have been focusing on them, but he made a universal claim that includes them; if it's false for zircons, his entire claim is false. Same logic as "if one K-Ar date is correct, the Earth is olderr than 6,000 years", and pretty basic logic at that. One counterexample disproves any universal claim.
He didn't say overall geochemistry, and he's not talking about overall geochemisty; nobody uses overall geochemistry of lava flows as an age indicator, and often we use chemistry of tiny components of lava flows as an age indicator. If indeed he's talking about overall geochemistry; then his conclusion is vacuous and there's no point to the paper.
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As for the mixing issue, I merely mentioned that in passing because Snelling did. I do not know what his specific claim is and I'm not sure it warrants my time to investigate it, since I have thoroughly established (if no other place than in my own mind :-) ) the unreliability of Argon dating. I am only interested in investigating things which are central to my purpose. You probably know better than I do what Snelling said in regard to this ... go ahead and refute him if you would like to and you need a good laugh.
Ah, Davie, you looked up mixing and realized that not even you could try to carry that one off. I'm disappointed.
95%? No way. It doesn't even get Reed Elsevier. Google scholar is not very accurate yet. It is popular mostly with undergrads.
And those of us who don't have academic access (at least don't have it without a 25 mile drive into Cambridge and city parking fees).
I doubt that any database system can produce an answer to the question, unless it's got an incredibly powerful query language and there's a query guru available. "Boots on the ground" reading and counting seems to be the only way.
Eric-- What page was that on where you re-posted my piece on Tyre. Will you kindly post that again for 7P?
He's already read it, Dave, which is why he knows (if he didn't know already) that you were totally wrong about Tyre. No matter how many times he reads it, he's not going to come a different conclusion. He's going to come to the same conclusion that everyone else (with the notable exception of you) came to.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric-- What page was that on where you re-posted my piece on Tyre. Will you kindly post that again for 7P?
He's already read it, Dave, which is why he knows (if he didn't know already) that you were totally wrong about Tyre. No matter how many times he reads it, he's not going to come a different conclusion. He's going to come to the same conclusion that everyone else (with the notable exception of you) came to.
Thanks, Eric, but Elvis has fled the building. He bolted right after that post. I watched him log off. Shame, one would think that he might be more polite, as I have been to him.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
That paper is very near some of the questions I'm curious about. Despite having a degree in physics, I'm thinking about doing research at UNC next year on a similar topic. Social Psychology is about twice as interesting to me as physics ever was.
I'm going to cut Dave off at the pass on this one:
Quote (JonF @ Sep. 12 2006,14:24)
One of the reasons that YECs love Ar-Ar dating so much is that it is more susceptible to error than pretty much all the other methods. That doesn't mean that a lot of the dates are in error; with rational sample selection (e.g. excluding xenoliths) and appropriate procedures and cross-checking, K-Ar dating is very reliable.
I was reading an article on the PowerPC 970 microprocessor a few years ago, which noted that it is basically a cut-down version of the POWER4 processor. One of the points the article made was that the PPC 970 is quite a bit less reliable than the POWER4.
Does this mean the PPC 970 is unreliable? No. It means that the POWER4 processor has a very, very, very, very low failure rate, and the PPC 970 has a very, very, very low failure rate.
This is what JonF is saying, Dave, and if you were honest at all you'd understand it. Ar-Ar is more error-prone than other radiometric techniques, but that doesn't mean the errors can't be controlled for. This is the part you can't seem to get, because you don't want to get it, and it's why Snelling is a fraud. Snelling is deliberately not controlling for known sources of error in argon dating techniques. Is it any surprise that he comes up with anomalous results?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Nice essay, Steve. You're telling me that Google scholar is not even in the ballpark for the results I posted? Tell me how to search ISI Web of Science, then, and let's see those results.
You have better things to do than statistics on Ar dating, Dave. I won't give any credibility to your Goddidit hypothesis.
You're boring when you don't post your funny ideas about animals varieties, dinosaurs in the Arch, running continents, etc.
Nice essay, Steve. You're telling me that Google scholar is not even in the ballpark for the results I posted? Tell me how to search ISI Web of Science, then, and let's see those results.
You have better things to do than statistics on Ar dating, Dave. I won't give any credibility to your Goddidit hypothesis.
You're boring when you don't post your funny ideas about animals varieties, dinosaurs in the Arch, running continents, etc.
Yawn.
And what would your point be, Dave, even if you could demonstrate that argon dating methods are more popular today than other methods? Since you haven't been able to establish that argon methods are unreliable, your point is worthless. The best you can say is that argon methods are more susceptible to errors than other methods. So what?
You don't have any method for dating anything. You have no idea how old the Grand Canyon is. So much for your "hypothesis."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The Darwinian Myth is the most important one ... hence the enormous time I'm spending on it.
one, what myth?
two, you haven't spent ANY time addressing evolutionary theory in the last couple of months, all I've seen is your lame-ass attempts to plug your ears to geologic evidence and standard dating techniques.
or did you want to get back to your egregious errors regarding vitamin C gene relationships again?
like i said, you one crazy mofo.
every lurker who has ever spoken up in this thread agrees.
these are random folks that dropped by, saw your "arguments" and could easily see what a crazy mofo you are.
so how do you explain that?
can't be due to OUR bias, now can it.
you really are blind to the fact that your arguments consist of nothing but denials, projections, falsified data, and complete ignorance.
did you know that many of us now use you as a case example of the pinnacle of fundie dissonance?
you're famous, Dave!
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
Over at TheologyWeb Natural Science, geologist Glenn Morton (the devout Christian and ex-YEC you love to hate) has a new thread about the geological evidence that refutes YEC.
Glenn can provide dozens of examples (including the buried limestone canyon in China you already ran from) that make your pathetic YEC claims look just silly.
Here's your big chance for redemption Davie. Why don't you go register over there (it's free) and tell him yourself why his geology is all wrong?
I'd pay money to watch an honest Christian like Glenn Morton kick your lying ass up one side of the page and down the other. Do you have the balls to take on a Christian professional geologist Davie? Or is anything beyond lying to kids outside your comfort zone?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
If you read just the first page Mr. Aftershave links to, Dave, you'll see the problem with your flood "hypothesis." There are simply too many places where your 5,500 feet or so of water must have laid down tens of thousands of feet of sediment—an obvious impossibility.
I've been asking you to address this issue for going on two months now, and you've never even touched it. You can go on and on in circles trying to get around JonF's dismemberment of your radiometric dating analysis, but you can't answer this very simple question: how can a mile of water lay down two or three, or five miles of sediment? It can't Dave, and that's why we know for a fact that your "flood" never happened.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Here's your big chance for redemption Davie. Why don't you go register over there (it's free) and tell him yourself why his geology is all wrong?
I'd pay money to watch an honest Christian like Glenn Morton kick your lying ass up one side of the page and down the other. Do you have the balls to take on a Christian professional geologist Davie? Or is anything beyond lying to kids outside your comfort zone?
Everytime you pull AFDave's wind up cord, a whole mess of dumb comes out. But I have to say, after 5600 comments on this thread, it's pretty tired, no? It would be nice to hand AFDave off to a different site. Let him be Someone Else's Problem.
I doubt Dave will jump there, though. Here, he can pretend that we're all evil atheists lying to him. I don't know if he could deal with a bunch of christians pointing out where he's wrong, day after day.
I've gone from being incensed with his dishonesty and ignorance, to angry that he intends to brainwash children into his cult, to indifferent because nothing anybody EVER says to him makes the slightest difference, to realizing he makes for a very valuable tool.
I've used him in several arguments now, and have found that whenever somebody I've refered to this thread reads it, they can't BUT agree that he represents the exact pinnacle of fundie insanity, and can clearly see the danger when he references the Kids4Truth site.
that said, I can't figure how Dave could make himself look any more idiotic than he already has.
the thread should be closed and stickied for future reference, IMO.
heck, Dave thinks he's won every argument, so there's really nothing left for him to argue anyway, right?
-------------- "And the sea will grant each man new hope..."
I think it would be useful to download the thread using the new "All" feature (thanks Wes), clean it up of all the "Davey dickhead" type stuff, and preserve it as an example of YEC obliviousness. It's an object lesson in blind perseverance.
Ichthic, I respectfully disagree. Do not rob me of my daily entertainment! Yes he has been caught distorting the truth, and frankly, is at this point an proven and unrepentant liar, but at least he's consistant.
I do however advocate that unlike his thread, Dave Hawkins be closed and stickied for future reference. With a top notch cyanoacrylate.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
"You KNOW that if you ALLOW homosexuals to get married, you MUST ALLOW HIV-positive Nazis to marry whole kindergarten classes!??!?!?!?!oneonequestionmarkquestionmark"
His slippery slope was more like a vertical cliff face.
Ooooh, I hadn't noticd that. Great ... especially since the search function on this board appears to have been designed by afdave, and Google can't index it. So now I can contrast statements like today's:
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 12 2006,09:40)
I didn't say they don't publish discordant dates. I said they "throw them out." KBS Tuff is a perfect example. They explained away the ones they didn't like. All of this was published. Just explained away.
with:
Quote (afdave @ June 08 2006,08:40)
I would bet you money that the reason most conventional dates agree is because the dates that don't agree are thrown out and are not reported. I would like to speak with one of these labs (instead of the geologists) to see what THEY say about discordant dating results. How many tests are thrown out?
Hey, Dave, it's be much easier for you to stay consistent if you didn't lie so much.
Does one correct K-Ar date disprove a 6,000 year old Earth?
Just ONE, friend. Just one. And the sad thing for you ... you don't even have ONE. Why, you may ask? Because all the ones that are "right" are measured against bogus yardsticks--other methods that have just as many problems. I've spent some time on Argon dating because%2
Does one correct K-Ar date disprove a 6,000 year old Earth?
Just ONE, friend. Just one. And the sad thing for you ... you don't even have ONE. Why, you may ask? Because all the ones that are "right" are measured against bogus yardsticks--other methods that have just as many problems. I've spent some time on Argon dating because, in spite of Steve's anti-Google Scholar piece, the evidence is quite clear that Argon dating has more published dates than any other type of dating. Thursday (golfing tomorrow) we will move on to the other methods and show they are all bogus as well. Oh ... you guys are gonna hate me so bad!! (But on your deathbeds you'll love me!
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You offered a bet, I accepted:
Yup. Produce and I'll pay.
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Funny, you brought up the KBS Tuff in a discussion of dating sedimentary rocks (and nothing else); why was that again?
Here you go ...
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The KBS Tuff is part of the Koobi Fora Formation, a sequence of sediments about three hundred feet thick that crop out on the eastern shore of Lake Rudolf. These sediments cover an area about fifty miles north and south along the shore and extend about twenty miles east of the lake. The KBS Tuff itself is only about three feet thick. Two other thin layers of volcanic tuff lie above the KBS (the Karari and the Okote Tuff) and another lies below it (the Tulu Bor Tuff). The bulk of the sediments in which the fossils are found are not volcanic tuffs. The four tuffs are like the floors of a four-story building, with the fossil-bearing sediments lying between them where the rooms of the building would be.
Although the KBS Tuff is volcanic in origin, it is not a primary air-fall tuff. That is, it was not deposited directly on the land when it was ejected from the volcano. Lake Rudolf was much larger at that time. Some ash fell into the lake and then made its way to the lake bottom. Some was carried by rivers into the lake. Thus, the KBS Tuff has been transported by and deposited from water. http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0816dating-game.asp
You see, Jon. You totally misunderstood me. I have always been quite clear that the fossil skull was in sedimentary rock, sandwiched by volcanic material. Again, I was not the one who said lava flows were sedimentary. If anyone said it, it was you. The Koobi Fora Formation is interesting to discuss in the present context because it is again an futile attempt to "date" sedimentary, fossil bearing strata by "dating" layers which contain volcanic ash above and below the fossil bearing strata. As I have now shown you, this is completely ...
Say it with me now ...
BOGUS!!!!!!!!
(That means it's nonsense for you people in North Carolina)
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Well, for one thing, it totally discredits his Ngauruhoe studies,
Hmmm ... I guess you WOULD be correct that it discredits the study IF the study was intended to date the layers. But this was not the intent of the study. (Creationists do use the bogus "dating" terminology so conventional geologists will know what they are talking about, but the word "date" is almost always in quotes and has no real age significance.) Dating layers with Argon "dating" methods is impossible. And you will soon see that it is also impossible with the other methods as well. Radiometric dating is bogus and there are right now about 8 PhD's criss-crossing the country doing RATE Seminars and telling huge crowds how mistaken you all are. The next one is in Dallas on Sept 30. Maybe you could go and heckle the speakers :-)
I just think it's great that a few PhD's committed to the truth can make such an enormous splash on the world scene! I get a chuckle every time I think about it. And to think ... you guys have gotten an inside view, yet you are still blind as can be.
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But all that pales in regard to the major point, which you don't dare even acknowledge: even if the error rate is 20-40%, no, I have no problem with that when the question is "Is the Earth 6,000 years old?". He11, when asking if the Earth is 6,000 years old I wouldn't have a problem with an error rate of 99%. All K-Ar dates contradict your claim about the age of the Earth ... if just one out of the many thousands is correct yuour claim is falsified. We don't even need to know whcih one is right!
Again ... you do not even have ONE! So sad!
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One of the reasons that YECs love Ar-Ar dating so much is that it is more susceptible to error than pretty much all the other methods.
Thank you. Thank you. And you shall see that the other ones are garbage as well. In fact, maybe I'll take you through a history of the dating methods and show you how new ones pop up only to be discarded later because they don't work.
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Ah, Davie, you looked up mixing and realized that not even you could try to carry that one off. I'm disappointed.
No. I actually didn't. Maybe I will though. I may bite on Thursday.
*********************************************
Seven Popes wanted to hear me again on Tyre ... Well OK ...
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JOSH McDOWELL ON TYRE Subtitle: You can pretty much justify anything you want to believe.
Ezekiel 26:8 - Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the mainland city. FULFILLED in 573, although the island city (where the inhabitants moved to) remained for several hundred years.
26:3 - Many nations against Tyre. FULFILLED. In waves: Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Antigonus, and Moslems.
26:4,5 - bare and flat, like the top of a rock. Fishermen will spread their nets on the site to dry. FULFILLED. The secular historian Philip Myers said, “Alexander the Great ... Reduced it (the island city) to ruins (332 BC) ... The larger part of the site of the once great city is now bare as the top of a rock -- a place where fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.”
Hmmmm ... secular historian ... not even a 'christofreakazoid' !!
26:14, 21 - never be rebuilt or found. FULFILLED. Nina Jidejian in “Tyre through the Ages,” Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq Publishers, 1969. -- She relates that all the wealth of Tyre disappeared to Alexandria and elsewhere” and she concludes, “Tyre's stones may be found as far away as Acre and Beirut ... Looking down into the water one can see a mass of granite columns and stone blocks strewn all over the sea bottom. Until recently the ruins of Tyre above water were few.”
Now if you guys want to weasel and squirm, I'm sure you can find a way to justify your skepticism, but you cannot avoid the fact that ...
Tyre was a great, powerful, proud city ... And it got destroyed in the exactly detailed way that Ezekiel said it would. The city that is there now is not the same city. It's about as similar to ancient Tyre as Microsoft Corporation headquarters is to Feldman's Farm Supply headquarters. The ancient Tyre of world renown is GONE!
But again, why the fascination with Tyre? There are more interesting Bible prophecies than this one. Someone mentioned Nostradamus ... please, now ... How can anyone even compare Nostradamus to Bible prophecy?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And I proved you wrong. Do you still you deny you were mistaken? Tyre is not a bare rock forever. I showed you pictures that prove that.
You are a liar, Dave Hawkins. You are knowingly lying. It's not a difference of opinion, I have proven you wrong, and you continue to lie. I am astounded.
And you with that you logged off and ran away. Dave Hawkins, you are a liar and a shameful coward. I hope your children never see this post, it is a pathetic thing you have just done in the name of your ego.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
I love the way he proceeds to tell us where the stones of Tyre can be found, right after quoting something that says they will never be found.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
26:4,5 - bare and flat, like the top of a rock. Fishermen will spread their nets on the site to dry. FULFILLED. The secular historian Philip Myers said, “Alexander the Great ... Reduced it (the island city) to ruins (332 BC) ... The larger part of the site of the once great city is now bare as the top of a rock -- a place where fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.”
Hmmmm ... secular historian ... not even a 'christofreakazoid' !! 26:14, 21 - never be rebuilt or found. FULFILLED. Nina Jidejian in “Tyre through the Ages,” Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq Publishers, 1969. -- She relates that all the wealth of Tyre disappeared to Alexandria and elsewhere” and she concludes, “Tyre's stones may be found as far away as Acre and Beirut ... Looking down into the water one can see a mass of granite columns and stone blocks strewn all over the sea bottom. Until recently the ruins of Tyre above water were few.”
And yet we gave him proof that the city has been continuously inhabited. It's been built and rebuilt continuously since it's formation as a city, and Dave will not address that. Instead, he throws this totally refuted bit of rubbish up and scampers off.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Seven Popes wanted to hear me again on Tyre ... Well OK ...
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JOSH McDOWELL ON TYRE
[snip; we've all read this post multiple times by now]
Subtitle: You can pretty much justify anything you want to believe. Tyre was a great, powerful, proud city ... And it got destroyed in the exactly detailed way that Ezekiel said it would. The city that is there now is not the same city. It's about as similar to ancient Tyre as Microsoft Corporation headquarters is to Feldman's Farm Supply headquarters. The ancient Tyre of world renown is GONE!
What, did you just read that one post, without linking any of the other posts I linked to? Do you think everyone else just read your one post? Do you honestly think anyone other than yourself thinks you in any way "won" the debate over Tyre?
Seven Popes isn't looking for yet another regurgitation of this same post that's been proven utterly, hilariously wrong over and over and over again. He's looking for an explanation for how you could have lied about something (i.e., that you "won") that's so easy to expose.
This is why you have no credibility about anything, Dave. Even when you're caught in a flat-out lie, that's absolutely impossible to wriggle out of, you still insist that you weren't lying, that you actually did win the argument. And you continue to insist that you won after being presented absolutely unequivocal evidence that you lost.
You claimed that Tyre is an uninhabitable rock. Even after we show you photographs of anything that could ever possibly have been referred to as "Tyre," and all of it is inhabited, you still insist you "won."
It's like you're psychotic or something. But it is pretty entertaining.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Does one correct K-Ar date disprove a 6,000 year old Earth?
Just ONE, friend. Just one. And the sad thing for you ... you don't even have ONE. Why, you may ask? Because all the ones that are "right" are measured against bogus yardsticks--other methods that have just as many problems.
Do you honestly think you're getting anywhere with this argon dating tapdance you're doing, Dave? You have not the slightest clue what you're talking about, and you're trying to argue with someone who studies this stuff for a living. You're quoting people we already know have an agenda and are trying to break a methodology by using it in ways that are already known to be invalid, and then you expect us to buy that as some sort of refutation? You haven't shown us a single problem with argon-argon or potassium-argon dating, Dave. The potential sources of error you're talking about are all in principle correctable, but you're trying to persuade us that they're not! Well, as usual, you've presented exactly zero evidence that none of those potential sources of error can possibly be accounted for.
But am I surprised? Of course not. Even after you're shown photographs of buildings all over Tyre, you still insist that it's uninhabited.
And you haven't answered any of my questions yet. Like this one: if U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, then why is it possible to detect any decay products on a planet that's only 6,000 years old?
I know you think you can safely ignore me, Dave, but the other posters aren't, and they know you can't answer any of the questions I've posed to you. What do you think that does for your "hypothesis"? What do you think that does for your credibility?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Quote (stevestory @ Sep. 12 2006,20:21) the new "All" feature (thanks Wes)
How does that work?
P.S. DaveeyDickHead,,,, You also claimed you won the portuguese debate. We never started. Not post 1. Nope. Nada. I'm the only one who took the bet (and I know very little about the subject) and you never responded yet you claimed to have won.
Not even after you lost. You claimed victory without even showing up on the field.
All I'm out to do here daveyDH, is to help you see that you are a moron in whatever you attempt. I thought that once you discovered that you really can't figure out the factors of 1 or the first 3 letters of the abc's, maybe you would take a step back and see that, although you are in fact dumber than your toenail, you still have a chance to learn to come to terms with that and live a happy life without causing all the harm that a fundy wants to do by nature.
So I thought that debating a neutral subject would be a good way to help you learn that about yourself. Public service is good but when you can help an individual, well you are really being a good human then. I am doing this for you davey. I really care. I do. But we have to start at the beginning. The beginning is where you say, "oh. oh, I see. Well. Sorry about that guys. I'll come back with evidence next time. Er. I'll admit that I don't know what that means but I will try to find out."
Then maybe you can get on with your life. PS, you should use this for an avatar.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
DDTTD in his Buster Brown suit swinging his legs and licking his lolliplop says
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Nice essay, Steve. You're telling me that Google scholar is not even in the ballpark for the results I posted? Tell me how to search ISI Web of Science, then, and let's see those results.
AND
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Eric-- What page was that on where you re-posted my piece on Tyre. Will you kindly post that again for 7P?
Over at TheologyWeb Natural Science, geologist Glenn Morton (the devout Christian and ex-YEC you love to hate) has a new thread about the geological evidence that refutes YEC.
Glenn can provide dozens of examples (including the buried limestone canyon in China you already ran from) that make your pathetic YEC claims look just silly.
Here's your big chance for redemption Davie. Why don't you go register over there (it's free) and tell him yourself why his geology is all wrong?
I'd pay money to watch an honest Christian like Glenn Morton kick your lying ass up one side of the page and down the other. Do you have the balls to take on a Christian professional geologist Davie? Or is anything beyond lying to kids outside your comfort zone?
OA, as you and everyone here already knows, DDTTD isn't going to respond to questions that don't show up in searchs of AiG/ICR websites.
White Cliffs of Dover, deeply buried canyons, orogeny of mountains in places they shouldn't be (east/west mountains in North America), Tiktaalik, where the water came from and went too and Living organisms older than his magik 6000 year age of the Universe.
I especially love this statement,
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Radiometric dating is bogus and there are right now about 8 PhD's criss-crossing the country doing RATE Seminars and telling huge crowds how mistaken you all are. The next one is in Dallas on Sept 30. Maybe you could go and heckle the speakers :-)
I just think it's great that a few PhD's committed to the truth can make such an enormous splash on the world scene! I get a chuckle every time I think about it.
Reminds me of a Three Stooges bit... Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, good work Doctor, thank you Doctor, outstanding work Doctor!...(shaking hands all around)
And yet we gave him proof that the city has been continuously inhabited. It's been built and rebuilt continuously since it's formation as a city, and Dave will not address that. Instead, he throws this totally refuted bit of rubbish up and scampers off.
DDTTD would be better served reading a piece of fiction like Micheners The Source to gain some insight into the prehistoric and historic Middle East.
Maybe it would be available at the public-access computers at your nearest university. Otherwise, you might get lucky and find a review paper where someone has spent days going through the data for you. Otherwise it would take you several days at the library. I have no idea why you'd want to do that. JonF's 54 vs 30 number is good enough.
I told him about the Linda Hall Library a LONG time ago but that would require DDTTD to make a trip to the inner city!
Gasp!
The horror!
They's people down there I cain't cower with my threats of eternal damnation!
I ain't takin' my lillywhite suburban popo down to Dens of Iniquity like that!
Come on DDTTD, explain the orogeny of the St. Francois/Ozark/Ouchita complex of mountains!
Your "theory" already has North America racing, bumping and grinding around, one more fender bender shouldn't be too much of a stretch for the "great" minds at AiG/ICR to answer.
Those "dedicated PhDs" should have some sort of plausible explanation for those old, old mountains.
They's diamonds in them thar hills DDTTD! Come on! We can get rich in the name of the lord! The Prayer of Jabez guarantees it!
I would just like to de-cloak for a moment and congratulate all the contributors to this thread for their thoughtful and interesting postings. For me, this is like a freebie science course with a lot of entertainment thrown in. AFDave! Words fail me when I try to describe you. (You'll probably take that as a compliment ) Get out of this intellectual dead-end you are in. You have produced nothing to support your outlandish claims. Boldcaps not withstanding That whole business about the Portugese thingy was just dreadful. You never did get around to producing a list of loan-words. (sigh) Please, do go to www.theologyweb.com and argue with devout Christians who could possibly set you straight. I don't hold much hope that you'll finally get your eyes opened but the entertainment value would be priceless.
Go ahead and revel in the fact that no lurkers here have delurked and become creationists ... remember my goal is the World at Large ... not the little dark alley known as ATBC ... it is my expectation that no one here will ever see the error of ToE and Deep Time! ATBC is a "buglite" for skeptics.
But how are we doing in the world at large, you may ask?
Glad you asked ...
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Vatican: pope slams evolution 'Accounts about Man don't add up without God' says pontiff (ANSA) - Regensburg, September 12 - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable" .
Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable" .
The homily appeared to throw the Catholic Church's full weight behind the theory of intelligent design (ID) - a subject of massive controversy in the United States .
The Catholic Church has for over 50 years accepted Darwin's theory of random selection as the most probable cause of development, but has alway stressed God's role .
Recently, however, top theologians have clashed with Catholic scientists over so-called 'evolutionism' - that is, attempts to make evolution explain everything .
Vatican theologian Christoph Schoenborn made headlines with a New York Times article a year ago which endorsed the ID theory that has roiled US academic debate and appeared to back full-fledged Creationism, the core Bible story. Just before a brainstorming session with the pope on the eve of his Germany trip, Schoenborn admitted his NYT article had been a little too "cut-and-dried," laying it open to misinterpretation .
Supporters of ID pounced on the NYT article in their fight to win credibility for a theory many scientists see as Creationism in respectable clothing .
There's another billion plus people you can throw in the ring in favor of creationism.
So ... although I may not make any converts here, the world scene is a different story ... it's a great time in history to be a creationist! Climb on board ... I'll make room for ya' on board HMS Genesis!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As anyone with an ounce of honesty and an ability to do Google searches can see, there are many explanations available in addition to the ones I gave from Josh McDowell, which may explain the Tyre prophecy. I cannot make a water tight argument supporting ALL things in the Bible. But you as a skeptic also cannot make a watertight argument refuting anything in the Bible. Are you willing to risk your eternal future with your skepticism?
The bottom line, as I have said before is ... if you want to be a skeptic, you can find a thousand ways ... but if truth is your goal, you can find that also ...
What's your goal 7 Popes? Is it Truth? Or is it Skepticism?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Hey, Davie-doodles, how many dates did Dalrymple "throw out" in his GC paper?
Are discordant dates published, or is the observed concordance between methods an artifact of hiding all the discordant dates? If the discordant dates are hidden, how come the program managers and accountants haven't noticed?
How's that inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab coming along?
Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staircase) are argon dates?
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 12 2006,23:16)
JonF...
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Does one correct K-Ar date disprove a 6,000 year old Earth?
Just ONE, friend. Just one. And the sad thing for you ... you don't even have ONE.
OK, bet's on. But no shifting the burden of proof, the claim is yours to support: "I would bet large money that 95% of all published studies back to the 40's have been indexed." You produce your proof that 95% of all published studies back to the 40's are indexed anbd text-searchable on Google Scholar, as I specified, and I'll pay up. Otherwise, pay me.
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Well, for one thing, it totally discredits his Ngauruhoe studies,
Hmmm ... I guess you WOULD be correct that it discredits the study IF the study was intended to date the layers. But this was not the intent of the study.
Doesn't matter what the intent of the study was. The results are meaningless. The tests are a fraud.
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Radiometric dating is bogus and there are right now about 8 PhD's criss-crossing the country doing RATE Seminars and telling huge crowds how mistaken you all are. The next one is in Dallas on Sept 30. Maybe you could go and heckle the speakers :-)
Instead of actually doing research. I understand completely.
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One of the reasons that YECs love Ar-Ar dating so much is that it is more susceptible to error than pretty much all the other methods.
Thank you. Thank you.
"Susceptible to error" is not "is garbage." Far from it. No comfort for you there.
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And you shall see that the other ones are garbage as well. In fact, maybe I'll take you through a history of the dating methods and show you how new ones pop up only to be discarded later because they don't work.
Oh, I'd L O V E to see that! Pretty pretty pretty please do it, Davie-doodles!!!! That might even make up for my disappointment in not seeing you explain how mixing affects K-Ar dating!
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But again, why the fascination with Tyre? There are more interesting Bible prophecies than this one.
But that's one that is incredibly clearly and unequvocably not fulfilled.
You have not the slightest clue what you're talking about, and you're trying to argue with someone who studies this stuff for a living.
I don't do it for a living; I'm an enthusiastic and knowledgable amateur. IIRC Deadman's an archeologist, which is related to but not directly geochronology.
Of course, Davie is incredibly ignorant, and his sources are dishonest and don't care, 'cause they're preaching only to the choir and don't care that scientists see through them immediately. So it doesn't take much knowledge to shoot those fish in that teeny barrel. It does help to be familiar with the literature and be able to pull up papers that contradict Davie's calims easily.
Oh, and Davie-dipple: you neglected to respond to what's below. You said you'd be happy to discuss zircons in relation to Snelling's paper. Discuss.
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Pretty obvious and basic, Davie-moron, and the required information has been ignored by you many times in this thread. It is widely known that the isotopic composition of zircons, when they form, do not reflect "the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". In particular, the U/Pb ratio is very very high, no mater what the U/Pb ratio of the source was. (This sort of thing is comon for many relevant radioisotopes, but it's most extreme and obvious for zircons). Snelling has acknowledged this, in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY: "The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth "at today's rates" of nuclear decay occurred."
Therefore the U/Pb radioisotope ratios in zircons found throughout the geologic record do not "only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". They reflect radioactive decay in-situ. And, if Snelling wants to claim that this does not indicate age, it's up to him to provide far more evidence than a few zircons with complex thermal histories and some apparently anomolous helium.
You are correct that Humphreys and Co. acknowledge significant radioactive decay has occurred. But this has nothing to do with Snelling's conclusion. Snelling was not focusing on zircons in the 2003 study. He simply points out that the overall geochemistry of recent lava flows is merely an indication of their origin--it is not reliable date indicator. He proposes that this is quite likely for ancient flows as well. Real simple. This does not negate what you are pointing out about zircons, and what you are saying does not negate Snelling's conclusion.
Of course, it's not likely at all for ancient flows, because we know that radioactive decay changes the isotopic ratios; unless you assume your conclusion that the Earth is young.
But zircons negate his conclusion. He may not have been focusing on them, but he made a universal claim that includes them; if it's false for zircons, his entire claim is false. Same logic as "if one K-Ar date is correct, the Earth is olderr than 6,000 years", and pretty basic logic at that. One counterexample disproves any universal claim.
He didn't say overall geochemistry, and he's not talking about overall geochemisty; nobody uses overall geochemistry of lava flows as an age indicator, and often we use chemistry of tiny components of lava flows as an age indicator. If indeed he's talking about overall geochemistry; then his conclusion is vacuous and there's no point to the paper.
Here is a much less-biased account of the current Pope's position:
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Participant: Pope's closed seminar didn't focus on intelligent design
By John Thavis Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI spent a day guiding a closed-door symposium on evolution, but the U.S. controversy over intelligent design did not figure much in the discussions, a participant said.
The occasion was the annual gathering of former doctoral students of the pope Sept. 1-3; it was hosted in part by the pontiff at his summer villa in Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome.
This year's topic was "Creation and Evolution," and one of the presenters was Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, who has argued against what he called "ideological Darwinism." That prompted media speculation that the pope was considering a shift in the church's general acceptance of the theory of evolution.
But U.S. Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, who attended the symposium, said nothing was presented at the meeting that "would break new ground or that lays the foundation for a new position."
And while participants discussed the relationship among faith, reason and science, Father Fessio said that "the whole American debate on intelligent design did not occur at all here."
Father Fessio said the overall thrust of the presentations and discussion, in which the pope took an active part, confirmed the idea that the church can live with evolution as an explanation of the "how" of creation, as long as evolutionary theory does not try to exclude a divine cause.
He said the philosophical component was an important part of the symposium, which went beyond the perspectives of religion and natural science.
Some, like Cardinal Schonborn, have argued that there is a way of knowing from the scientific data that there must be a creator who is organizing life development or causing life forms to be ordered in a certain way, Father Fessio said.
Supporters of intelligent design say there are gaps in evolutionary theory, and they say those gaps can be better explained scientifically by their own theory that a design and purpose are inherent in life-forms that spring from an unnamed intelligence.
Father Fessio said the group met Sept. 1 without the pope, who had scheduled a trip to an Italian sanctuary that day, and heard presentations by Austrian molecular biologist Peter Schuster; German Jesuit Father Paul Elbrich, a professor of natural philosophy; and Robert Spaemann, a German philosopher.
On Sept. 2, with the pope in attendance, those presentations were summarized and Cardinal Schonborn spoke. A wider discussion followed in the afternoon.
Father Fessio said that "at the end, as he always does, the pope beautifully summarized some of the major points of all the presentations and our discussions."
In an unprecedented decision, the pope also encouraged the students to publish the papers and discussions in several languages, because of their high quality, Father Fessio said.
That means that eventually the world will get a firsthand look at the content of the symposium. When the papers are published, Father Fessio said, people will see that the gathering did not mark any significant shift in direction on the church and evolution, but rather a deeper understanding of the challenges it poses.
Father Fessio, who studied under the future Pope Benedict at the University of Regensburg in Germany in the 1970s, is provost of Ave Maria University in Naples, Fla., and founder and editor of Ignatius Press.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
"...according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable"
No theory derived from Darwin's work claims that the universe is the random result of evolution. Is the Pope ill-informed or lying? And apparently, he's not familiar with the scientific method. We don't deal with supernatural causes to explain observations.
"...according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable"
No theory derived from Darwin's work claims that the universe is the random result of evolution. Is the Pope ill-informed or lying?
Neither. The article Dave quotes is BS. Here's what the Pope actually said:
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We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But is such a thing still possible today? Is it reasonable? From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part, has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success - inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something doesn't add up for man, the world, the whole vast universe. So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. As Christians, we say:B I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth - I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. With this faith we have no reason to hide, no fear of ending up in a dead end. We rejoice that we can know God! And we try to let others see the reasonableness of our faith, as Saint Peter bids us do in his First Letter (cf. 3:15)!
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
As anyone with an ounce of honesty and an ability to do Google searches can see, there are many explanations available in addition to the ones I gave from Josh McDowell, which may explain the Tyre prophecy. I cannot make a water tight argument supporting ALL things in the Bible. But you as a skeptic also cannot make a watertight argument refuting anything in the Bible. Are you willing to risk your eternal future with your skepticism?
Dave, you have claimed that the Bible is inerrant.
Inerrant.
That leaves you no wiggle room. One incorrect statement is enough to refute your entire claim, just as one date, derived from any methodology, of more than 6,000 years is enough to refute your 6,000-year age of the earth claim.
The Bible claims that Tyre will be uninhabited forever. But Tyre is inhabited now, and always has been.
Therefore, the Bible is not inerrant. No one has to look any further than that to see that your claim has been blown away.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You just pulled a "My religion is better'n yours" answer to a question again.
And, for the record, mine is better because on the stupidity continuum, mine is less stupid.
In fact, I'm not sure if this is possible but if it is then you are even stupider than your religion.
How bout Macroeconomics? POrtuguese? Founding Fathers? World Religion?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
OK Dave, I'll give it to ya that I should have included differing lengths of bridges in my version of the analogy, but that's about it...
Quote (all quotes by our fabulous afdave @ ,)
ATBC is a "buglite" for skeptics.
ATBC is meant to be a place to come together and critique the claims of creationists. It is appropriately named Antievolution.org because that's pretty much all the creationists ever do- criticize evolution. Got a positive argument for your theory yet?
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But on your deathbeds you'll love me!
Riiight. Is that like the "rhythm method" of soul saving? I'm dying and I'm skeered of He11, Davey! Help me! Sorry, but I'm gonna wear my little atheist jimmy-hat on my little atheist head all the way to the end, baby. Gotta play it safe and not end up in "christian heaven" ugh!
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26:14, 21 - never be rebuilt or found. FULFILLED.
I can see it with my own eyes right here on Google Earth! Tyre is FOUND! I can see some portion of it that does indeed look like ruins, but part of that area is being filled up with a graveyard. You gotta put the bodies of all the people who have lived there over the years somewhere!
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What's your goal 7 Popes? Is it Truth? Or is it Skepticism?
Can I answer for 7? I'm only interested in learning what is the truth, with a small t. Anyone selling "capital T" Truth is most likely full of shiat, and should be considered with healthy "small s" skepticism.
Oh, and what do you care what [you wish] the Pope said about evolution? He's not even a Real Christian ™. There's lotsa room for freaks in your bigtop when you want to show how many are on your side.
Here's the deal, Dave. As everyone here knows, I am not a trained scientist (to put it mildly). However, I do have experience evaluating the testimony of experts in fields unfamiliar to me (although I do have a passing familiarity with the techniques used in radiometric dating).
Now, here's what I knew about radiometric dating before you ever starting trying to refute it:
• I knew that it has been widely accepted by the scientific community, and there is no legitimate dispute as to its accuracy and reliability, i.e., the various techniques have known limitations on their reliability and accuracy, and they are not used by responsible investigators under conditions where they are known to be unreliable.
• I know that the results of radiometric dating can be cross-referenced against non-radiometric techniques, and against other radiometric techniques, and contrary to your assertions, the concordances are striking.
Now here's what I know about you, Dave: I know that you are a religious fundamentalist, by any possible definition of the term, and I know that you have an agenda. I know that you have used dishonesty, misrepresentation, illogic, special pleading, and have ignored facts time and time again that don't fit with your beliefs.
Therefore, if I were a judge, and you and JonF were experts arguing your respective opinions in front of me, I would find that your testimony is utterly lacking in credibility, and it is clear from your own testimony that you are far from an expert in the field of radiometric dating. You have been unable to support any of your claims with actual evidence, and many of your claims (such as that 100% of all radiometric dates ever obtained are wrong, or that even one inaccurate result invalidates an entire methodology) are absurd on their face.
On the other hand, JonF has demonstrated an extensive knowledge of radiometric dating techniques, has presented credible rebuttals to every one of your assertions, and has made no absurd claims, e.g., that radiometric dating techniques are 100% foolproof and never return inaccurate or unreliable results.
For the nonspecialists here, and I'm guessing the majority of us are non-specialists when it comes to radiometric dating, it really comes down to assessments of credibility. And given your very clear history of lack of credibility, Dave, you pretty much lose this entire radiometric debate. You can continue (and I'm sure you will), but this isn't the kind of defeat you'll ever be able to salvage. As usual, you've just backed the wrong horse, and horses don't get much more wrong than young-earth creationism.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
As usual, you've just backed the wrong horse, and horses don't get much more wrong than young-earth creationism.
Isn't he backing a trojan horse?
See Davey, your inability to deal with me is the proof of what ericmurphy is saying. I'm only challenging your credibility. You need to first establish that you can make a coherent point. I am trying to give you that opportunity.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
I just think it's great that a few PhD's committed to the truth can make such an enormous splash on the world scene!
Davie, just because these people did the work at some time to earn a PhD it doesn't mean they're automatically correct in all things going forward. Take that moonie cultist Wells for example.
Would you believe your family doctor if he abandoned all pretense of working within the practice of the larger medical community? Would you take your kids to a quack and shrug it off because he has a diploma on the wall that says "MD"?
There are "doctors" like that Dave, they believe that they alone have the answer, but instead of using accepted techniques like CT and MRI and other diagnostic tests they hook patients up to a bogus galvanic skin response meter and diagnose everything from cancer to the heartbreak of psoriasis. And then they sell the patient some quack remedy that cures nothing.
And that is what it's like for your precious few PhD's committed to truth (which I take to mean your version of Biblical Truth). They're quacks, charlatans, frauds and liars. Their big splash on the world scene really amounts to nothing at all. The scientific community knows who the cranks are, and weighs their ideas appropriately.
It's the wingnuts in the bleachers like you who think the frauds are accomplishing anything. We can accept that, given your past history of taking AiG references as gospel, while at the same time discarding Nature and Science references as drivel. But really Dave, you make a bigger splash every morning, if you know what I mean.
So ... although I may not make any converts here, the world scene is a different story ... it's a great time in history to be a creationist! Climb on board ... I'll make room for ya' on board HMS Genesis!
You know, one of the interesting things about modern creationists (something that should be an oxymoron, with an emphasis on the "moron," but somehow isn't), is that they portray themselves as being on the leading edge of knowledge. It's as if flat-earthers presented themselves as being on the forefront of geography.
It would be bad enough if you were of the "Intelligent Design" strain of creationism, Dave, but you're not. You're an adherent to a preliterate worldview which hasn't changed in almost 4,000 years. Your worldview takes into account virtually nothing that's been learned about the universe since then. Your worldview was abandoned by the entire scientific community at least 150 years ago.
You don't believe that the earth is more than a few weeks (okay, a few thousand years; in the grand scheme of things, there's precious little difference) old.
You claim you don't believe in macroevolution yet clearly you do, since you believe all the 10,000,000 or so species in existence today are descended from several tens of thousands of species in the space of a few thousand years.
You claim you believe in 90-95% of science, but you clearly don't believe in anything of geology or astronomy. You are aware, are you not, that essentially the entire universe would be beyond our observational horizon if the universe were only 6,000 years old? The portion of the universe within 6,000 light years of the earth is an inifinitesimal fraction of what we can actually see. We would be able to see only a tiny fraction of the milky way, and wouldn't be able to see any galaxies at all, not even the Magellanic clouds.
If the universe were only 6,000 years old, we'd see a noticeable increase in the sun's luminosity on a yearly basis. Strangely, we see no such thing.
So enough with the crap about it being "a great time to be a creationist!" Dave. Creationism was dead and buried over a century ago, and it's only dupes like you who keep it staggering along in a zombie-like state.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Quote (stevestory @ Sep. 12 2006,20:21) the new "All" feature (thanks Wes)
How does that work?
On the page displaying the topics, http://www.antievolution.org/cgi-bin....SF;f=14 , after each topic title the word "All" appears. Click it. This thread's about 28 MB after subtracting images..
But how are we doing in the world at large, you may ask?
Glad you asked ...
...and then proceeds to post an article about the Pope and the Vatican. Then we get...
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There's another billion plus people you can throw in the ring in favor of creationism.
Only a billion? Hey, let's make it a billion, billion and I'll even throw in my big sister! (how's that for generosity! ) But how do numbers of people believing in something make that something true? Surely, your 'hypothesis' requires ***EVIDENCE*** to support it, ( not poll numbers, not surveys, not a round of applause at an ol' timey church meeting). Less blather and cute pictures. Evidence please.
You know AF Dave, you really should register at www.theologyweb.com. They need your guidance. At theologyweb they have this little gem...
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The calibration curves shown above come from CalPal - the University of Cologne Radiocarbon Calibration Program Package. It's one of the premier C14/C12 research facilities in the world.
Radiocarbon dating is an extremely well known and well researched branch of science. It is one of the backbones of archaeology, especially paleoarchaeology. The scientist who pioneered it, Willard Frank Libby, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960 for his work. Today there are over 130 labs worldwide providing radiocarbon dating services, doing millions of dollars in business. The science even has its own peer-reviewed journal, Radiocarbon, to keep up on the latest developments.
Creationists groups like AIG and ICR provide morons like Jorge with C&P fodder as they try to claim C14/C12 dating is innacurate and invalid, but they can't deal with the multiple independent lines of C14 calibration.
They can make up some unsupported fantasy about C14/C12 ratios being 100x different They can make up some unsupported fantasy about C14/C12 decay rate being not constant They can lie about trees growing 10 rings a year instead of 1 They can lie about all the ice core samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. They can lie about all the ocean core samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. They can lie about all the lake varve samples being off by greater than a factor of 10. They can lie about all the cave deposits being off by greater than a factor of 10.
But what they can't begin to rationalize away is how all these independent calibration methods agree with each other almost exactly.
Even if we accept Jorge's bellyaching about low level background C14 contamination being some sort of problem for dates older than 70,000 YBP, please note that all C14 dates up to 50,000 YBP are still accurate.
That pretty much blows Jorge's '6000 year old earth' YEC claims out of the water, doesn't it.
- Tiggy
and one of the follow-ups was very interesting...
Quote
Quote: Originally posted by Splint
But with YEC philosophy, Jorge must dismiss this result even though the evidence is overwhelming, and instead, be none the wiser. (Errr! Sorry.) All because of one misused, inappropriate or fumbled process or intentionally misinterpreted results thereof which may prove to a Young Earther that measuring the weight of Jorge’s brain is impossible.
What you are describing is the basic YEC argument technique against ANY science that supports ToE
1. Comb the scientific literature, find a single outlier among the hundreds of thousands of pieces of otherwise corroborating positive data. 2. Don't investigate the cause for the anomaly and reject any scientific reasons for the outlier. 3. Scream bloody murder that the single piece of outlier data somehow negates the other hundred thousand pieces of positive evidence.
It's old, it's boring, it's bland - but it still seems to work among the scientifically illiterate YEC mouth breathers (like Jorge) who are desperate for anything to prop up their literal Bible beliefs.
- Tiggy
Remind you of anyone you know, AF Dave? Looks like there are some Christians that are playing footsie with the Devil over there! Just imagine how many brownie points you'll get with your God if you manage to guide them away from 'millionsofyearsism'. Put your new-found 'scientific wisdom' to good use. Go get 'em Tiger, we're all pulling for you!
There's another billion plus people you can throw in the ring in favor of creationism.
Hey, Dave, the number of Muslims in the world is expected to surpass the number of Christians in a couple decades. When that happens, will Islam then become true and not Christianity?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
There's another billion plus people you can throw in the ring in favor of creationism.
Hey, Dave, the number of Muslims in the world is expected to surpass the number of Christians in a couple decades. When that happens, will Islam then become true and not Christianity?
Silly Arden. The rapture will happen long before then. Of COURSE Muslims will be the majority in 20 years, all the good Christians will be gone!
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
There's another billion plus people you can throw in the ring in favor of creationism.
Hey, Dave, the number of Muslims in the world is expected to surpass the number of Christians in a couple decades. When that happens, will Islam then become true and not Christianity?
Silly Arden. The rapture will happen long before then. Of COURSE Muslims will be the majority in 20 years, all the good Christians will be gone!
sounds good to me, any way we can speed it up?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Go do a search of this thread and count the number of times that someone on this thread besides me has said something to the effect of ...
"Dave, 95% of the scientists believe in evolution ... how can it not be true ...?"
"Dave, 95% of all the world's scientists representing all the countries of the world believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old ... how can this not be true ...?"
Etc, etc, etc ...
So ... what am I to assume but that all you guys are heavily influenced by peer pressure? I assume that you think "If everyone believes this, it must be true."
Therefore, in my little quote about the Pope, I am merely using a little bit of your own logic, which you apparently believe in, to refute you.
But I agree with you, Cedric ... we should not believe in ANYTHING just because most people do ...
But alas, most people here at ATBC do not live by this principle as they have clearly demonstrated to me in 190 pages.
As for Muslims outrunning Christians? May well happen ...
The quote I posted was making my point that a lot more people than you admit are creationists (had nothing to do with Muslims vs. Christians vs. Catholics) ... if the Pope is in the creationist ring, this is a major accomplishment.
I think most people here were trying to say things like "Look, Dave, even Christians (Catholic) believe in Evolution and Deep Time ... see? You're a fool."
Well, OK, there are many Christians, yes, who still have not been shown the light of truth on Origins, but this latest announcement by the Pope will go a long way toward fixing that problem.
As for the Pope being truly Christian or not, I cannot tell the heart of any man. I hope he is a true Christian, as I hope it for all men, but I applaud him anytime truth comes out of his mouth ... regardless of other things he may do that I do not agree with.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Go do a search of this thread and count the number of times that someone on this thread besides me has said something to the effect of ...
"Dave, 95% of the scientists believe in evolution ... how can it not be true ...?"
"Dave, 95% of all the world's scientists representing all the countries of the world believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old ... how can this not be true ...?"
I never have. I don't recall anyone posting such a thing. Except, of course, you. Several times.
So, Davie, how many times has someone on this thread besides you written something along those lines? Evidence, Davie-doodles, not vague impressions or unsupported assertions.
So ... what am I to assume but that all you guys are heavily influenced by peer pressure? I assume that you think "If everyone believes this, it must be true."
Perhaps if you rewrote it like so:
Quote
So ... what am I to assume but that all you guys are heavily influenced by evidence? I assume that you think "If the evidence indicates this, it must be true."
then you'd be onto something. Dave, so what's your take on the number of the beast and the innerant bible? I *know* you read the links about the number becoming 616 instead of 666, but you never followed up on that. Any particular reason why? Are you disputing the evidence there also? If not, then the bible is not 100% fact now is it? DING DING DING TARD TARD TARD.
how you *you* date the the grand staircase Dave? How would you date *anything* at all? if all you can say is "you cannot date anything" then you might as well crawl back under your fundie comfort blanket because you've nothing to add to any dicussion apart from "goddit, goddiddit, i cant tell you exactly how or why, but goddammit, goddidit!"
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
As anyone with an ounce of honesty and an ability to do Google searches can see, there are many explanations available in addition to the ones I gave from Josh McDowell, which may explain the Tyre prophecy. I cannot make a water tight argument supporting ALL things in the Bible. But you as a skeptic also cannot make a watertight argument refuting anything in the Bible. Are you willing to risk your eternal future with your skepticism?
The bottom line, as I have said before is ... if you want to be a skeptic, you can find a thousand ways ... but if truth is your goal, you can find that also ...
What's your goal 7 Popes? Is it Truth? Or is it Skepticism?
Uhhhh, You have the nerve to ask me about my eternal salvation? Dave, all I asked was that you explain why you lied and said you "won" the argument. I proved you did no such thing, and now this tripe? Just admit that you lied, Dave Hawkins, and we can move on. Even if you believe "the evidence is equivocal" rubbish you spout, even if you believe it was a draw, you can't honestly believe you won that argument, so give us a break, ratchet the egomaniacal rhetoric down a notch and be honest.
You are busted, Dave Hawkins. Time to tell the Truth.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Somebody posted a link from Wikipedia that ONE manuscript has it as 616 ...
Quote
The Number of the Beast is a concept from the Book of Revelation of the Christian New Testament. The Number is 666 in modern texts, although 616 and 665 appear instead in at least one ancient source.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast
Do you have any idea how many manuscripts have it as 666? A lot. This is typical of skeptic thinking ... close your eyes to the massive evidence for one position, but open your eyes to the tiny shred of contrary evidence, then loudly proclaim that your position is correct, then heap ridicule on your opponent ... hmmm.
It is not possible to "date" the layers of the Grand Staircase radiometrically or with fossils (biostratigraphy). There is no objective means by which we can know if the radiometric "clocks" are even in the right ballpark. Historical accounts are the best means that we have for dating any event of world history and this holds true for the Great Flood of Noah which undoubtedly was responsible for laying those layers.
Seven Popes ...
Quote
Uhhhh, You have the nerve to ask me about my eternal salvation?
Of course. Have you not noticed that I have lots of nerve? I did not lie about anything. And now I have asked you questions which you apparently are afraid to answer.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Somebody posted a link from Wikipedia that ONE manuscript has it as 616 ...
Quote
The Number of the Beast is a concept from the Book of Revelation of the Christian New Testament. The Number is 666 in modern texts, although 616 and 665 appear instead in at least one ancient source.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast
Do you have any idea how many manuscripts have it as 666? A lot. This is typical of skeptic thinking ... close your eyes to the massive evidence for one position, but open your eyes to the tiny shred of contrary evidence, then loudly proclaim that your position is correct, then heap ridicule on your opponent ... hmmm.
Oh, the irony.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Go do a search of this thread and count the number of times that someone on this thread besides me has said something to the effect of ...
"Dave, 95% of the scientists believe in evolution ... how can it not be true ...?"
"Dave, 95% of all the world's scientists representing all the countries of the world believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old ... how can this not be true ...?"
I never have. I don't recall anyone posting such a thing. Except, of course, you. Several times.
So, Davie, how many times has someone on this thread besides you written something along those lines? Evidence, Davie-doodles, not vague impressions or unsupported assertions.
Now hold on a minute. I think Dave is actually approaching an important point. Let's examine this thought.
It seems to me that Dave is really trying to figure out who he should be placing his trust in. Because, honestly, for laymen like Dave and me, that's what this boils down to. Neither I nor Dave is going to take the time to get an advanced degree and build our own radiometric dating lab just to determine who is right or wrong. Instead, we are forced to determine which side of the "debate" is more credible. Here are a few of the factors I've used for this purpose, in no particular order:
1) Quote mining. The creationist camp is littered with demonstrably misleading citations. This is perhaps one of the most damning features of creationism in that it is so <i>easy</i> for anyone to objectively evaluate. Creationists seem to use this tactic with remarkable frequency. And Dave's Pope article is, of course, a perfect example.
2) Motive The creationists have a clear and distinct motive for attacking evolution (and the 4.5 billion year age of the earth). In fact, they frequently state it outright. Dave stated it earlier in this thread. Quite simply, they see these things as attacks on their religious beliefs, and on the moral fabric of society as a whole. The motivation is subjective and emotional rather than objective and scientific. The evolution side has no such motive. The notion that there is an anti-theistic conspiracy in the scientific community is ludicrous. There may be a handful of people who are outspokenly hostile towards religion, but they are certainly not in the majority. The creationist movement, on the other hand, seems to be comprised almost exclusively of religiously-motivated individuals.
3) The scientific method. The science side fully embraces the logic and practicality of the scientific method. Most creationists (Dave included) do not.
There are other factor's of course, but these were the first 3 that came to mind. I think these 3 items should be obvious to anyone, regardless of their science background. It just takes the time to do a bit of research, but no additional knowledge is required other than rational thought.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
As anyone with an ounce of honesty and an ability to do Google searches can see, there are many explanations available in addition to the ones I gave from Josh McDowell, which may explain the Tyre prophecy. I cannot make a water tight argument supporting ALL things in the Bible. But you as a skeptic also cannot make a watertight argument refuting anything in the Bible. Are you willing to risk your eternal future with your skepticism?
The bottom line, as I have said before is ... if you want to be a skeptic, you can find a thousand ways ... but if truth is your goal, you can find that also ...
What's your goal 7 Popes? Is it Truth? Or is it Skepticism?
Uhhhh, You have the nerve to ask me about my eternal salvation? Dave, all I asked was that you explain why you lied and said you "won" the argument. I proved you did no such thing, and now this tripe? Just admit that you lied, Dave Hawkins, and we can move on. Even if you believe "the evidence is equivocal" rubbish you spout, even if you believe it was a draw, you can't honestly believe you won that argument, so give us a break, ratchet the egomaniacal rhetoric down a notch and be honest.
You are busted, Dave Hawkins. Time to tell the Truth.
Dave, don't be a coward.
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
There is no objective means by which we can know if the radiometric "clocks" are even in the right ballpark. Historical accounts are the best means that we have for dating any event of world history
Do you have any idea how many manuscripts have it as 666? A lot. This is typical of skeptic thinking ... close your eyes to the massive evidence for one position, but open your eyes to the tiny shred of contrary evidence, then loudly proclaim that your position is correct, then heap ridicule on your opponent ... hmmm.
Um, it's more than one. I assume you know the difference between "exactly" and "at least?" Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the oldest known manuscript say 616?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Go do a search of this thread and count the number of times that someone on this thread besides me has said something to the effect of ...
"Dave, 95% of the scientists believe in evolution ... how can it not be true ...?"
"Dave, 95% of all the world's scientists representing all the countries of the world believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old ... how can this not be true ...?"
Hmmm. I like this discussion.
95% seems pretty low but it doesn't much matter because there is a quantitative difference.
Care to make a guess?
I'll give you a hint: (one group is basing their observation on evidence, rigorously tested, and the other group is wanking in the pews)
Any guesses? What do you suppose might be the qualitative difference Davey?
By the way, core samples are a trap as I told you before but, now that ved here has let the cat a little way out of the bag, I'll let you in on the avenue I would have gone down. Core samples corroberrate each other and Rm dating. Conclusively.
AiG only deals with them individually rather than as a collection.
Earth is more than 10k years. You are wrong.
PS, You really should provide one or two pieces of evidence that the earth is 6k y/o.
Just tryin to look out for your best interests.
Cheerio
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Go do a search of this thread and count the number of times that someone on this thread besides me has said something to the effect of ...
"Dave, 95% of the scientists believe in evolution ... how can it not be true ...?"
"Dave, 95% of all the world's scientists representing all the countries of the world believe that the earth is 4.5 billion years old ... how can this not be true ...?"
Etc, etc, etc ...
Dave, whose opinion do you think carries more weight with respect to the credibility of evolutionary theory: a billion non-specialists, or a hundred thousand biologists?
Science is not a popularity contest; that much is true. But the opinion of experts in the field is important, at least for those of us who are non-specialists (and that includes you, Dave, in case that's not clear to you). I don't care how many auto mechanics, actuaries, or electrical engineers are creationists. But I do care how many zoologists are. And guess what? Practically none of them are. Your "95%" figures are comically low; the real figures are more like "five nines."
So stop ranting about the Pope's opinion on creationism, Dave, and start providing some evidence, at long last, to support even one of your assertions. At this point I'd be satisfied with some support for your "Portuguese" assertion. At least that would give some indication that you even know what the word "support" means.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
"Well, OK, there are many Christians, yes, who still have not been shown the light of truth on Origins, but this latest announcement by the Pope will go a long way toward fixing that problem."
You suffer from a severe case of cranial rectal inversion. How condescending and snarky of you to assume you actually know the Truth. I am so disinclined to believe you know anything based on your inability to critically think or acknowledge fact.
Tell me, do you believe the sun and the stars revolve around the earth?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
It is not possible to "date" the layers of the Grand Staircase radiometrically or with fossils (biostratigraphy). There is no objective means by which we can know if the radiometric "clocks" are even in the right ballpark. Historical accounts are the best means that we have for dating any event of world history and this holds true for the Great Flood of Noah which undoubtedly was responsible for laying those layers.
You mean, historical accounts like the account of the destruction of Tyre and the prophesy that the island of Tyre will be a bare rock for the rest of history, Dave?
How do you know the Bible is true, Dave? You claim it's because the evidence points that way, but now you're claiming there is no evidence! So what's your justification for saying the earth is 6,000 years old? Where are the eyewitness accounts for the creation of the earth? You're just going on what the Bible says, with absolutely no external support for anything it says?
So what were you saying earlier about "evidence"? The real reason you believe what you read in the Bible is because you believe, without a scrap of evidence to support your belief, that the Bible is the revealed word of God. In other words, your belief in the Bible is a matter of faith, not of science.
What were you saying about never telling lies? That statement in itself is a lie, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
There's another billion plus people you can throw in the ring in favor of creationism.
Hey, Dave, the number of Muslims in the world is expected to surpass the number of Christians in a couple decades. When that happens, will Islam then become true and not Christianity?
Silly Arden. The rapture will happen long before then. Of COURSE Muslims will be the majority in 20 years, all the good Christians will be gone!
sounds good to me, any way we can speed it up?
Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw the other day:
"WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES, CAN I HAVE YOUR CAR?"
Quote
Somebody posted a link from Wikipedia that ONE manuscript has it as 616 ... Quote The Number of the Beast is a concept from the Book of Revelation of the Christian New Testament. The Number is 666 in modern texts, although 616 and 665 appear instead in at least one ancient source.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast
Yes, it's '616' in THE OLDEST KNOWN MANUSCRIPT, dingbat! Yes, that does take priority over your Jack Chick tracts.
So now we have to throw out 666? All those heavy metal records, USELESS!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Anyway, correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the oldest known manuscript say 616?
I think you are correct ... this is quite interesting ... check out this article ...
Quote
The Mark of the Beast—666 or 616? By Gary DeMar
A fragment from the oldest surviving copy of the New Testament shows that the number of the Beast of Revelation 13 is 616. Ellen Aitken, a professor of early Christian history at McGill University, states that “the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor] Nero.”1 The early fragment supports the view that Revelation was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and whether the number is 666 or 616, the number is a reference to Nero and not some end-time antichrist figure. Only time will tell how this discovery will affect dispensationalism.
The first readers of Revelation were told to “calculate the number of the Beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six” (13:18). Since Revelation was written to a first-century audience, we should expect the first-century readers to be able to calculate the number with relative ease and understand the result. They would have had few candidates from which to choose. Notice that the number is “six hundred and sixty-six, not three sixes.” Tim LaHaye misidentifies the number when he writes, “The plain sense of Scripture tells us that it comprises the numbers: six, six, six.”2 The three Greek letters that make up the number represent 600, 60, and 6.
Ancient numbering systems used an alpha-numeric method. This is true of the Latin (Roman) system that is still common today: I=1, V=5, X=10, L=50, C=100, D=500, M=1000. Greek and Hebrew follow a similar method where each letter of their alphabets represents a number. The first nine letters represent 1–9.3 The tenth letter represents 10, with the nineteenth letter representing 100 and so on. Since the Book of Revelation is written in a Hebrew context by a Jew with numerous allusions to the Old Testament, we should expect the solution to deciphering the meaning of six hundred and sixty-six to be Hebraic. "The reason clearly is that, while [John] writes in Greek, he thinks in Hebrew, and the thought has naturally affected the vehicle of expression."4
When Nero Caesar's name is transliterated into Hebrew, which a first-century Jew would probably have done, he would have gotten Neron Kesar or simply nrwn qsr, since Hebrew has no letters to represent vowels. “It has been documented by archaeological finds that a first century Hebrew spelling of Nero's name provides us with precisely the value of 666. Jastrow's lexicon of the Talmud contains this very spelling.”5 When we take the letters of Nero's name and spell them in Hebrew, we get the following numeric values: n=50, r=200, w=6, n=50, q=100, s=60, r=200 = 666. “Every Jewish reader, of course, saw that the Beast was a symbol of Nero. And both Jews and Christians regarded Nero as also having close affinities with the serpent or dragon. . . . The Apostle writing as a Hebrew, was evidently thinking as a Hebrew. . . . Accordingly, the Jewish Christian would have tried the name as he thought of the name—that is in Hebrew letters. And the moment that he did this the secret stood revealed. No Jew ever thought of Nero except as ‘Neron Kesar.’”6
The fragment supports the reading of some Greek New Testament manuscripts that read 616 instead of 666. Why would someone making a copy of the Revelation scroll make such a number change? “Perhaps the change was intentional, seeing that the Greek form Neron Caesar written in Hebrew characters (nrwn qsr) is equivalent to 666, whereas the Latin form Nero Caesar (nrw qsr) is equivalent to 616.” A Latin copyist might have thought that 666 was an error because Nero Caesar did not add up to 666 when transliterated into Latin. He then changed 666 to 616 to conform to the Latin rendering since it was generally accepted that Nero was the Beast. In either case, a Hebrew transliteration nets 666, while a Latin spelling nets 616. Nero was the “man” and either 666 or 616 was his number.
1 Quoted in Chris Wattie, “Beast’s real mark devalued to ‘616’: Revelation fragment,” National Post www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/toronto/story.html?id=702d14ee-4847-4c3d-90ce-46e933232df0
3 The Greek letter stigma (ů) is no longer used, but it was the sixth letter in the Greek alphabet when the New Testament was written. The Greek letter iota (3) was the tenth letter. Today, because of the absence of stigma, it is now the ninth letter.
4 R.H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), 1:cxliii.
5 Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Beast of Revelation, rev. ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2001), chap. 3. Also see Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, 1:367.
6 Frederic W. Farrar, The Early Days of Christianity (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1882), 471.
7 Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (London: United Bible Societies, 1971), 751–52.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. His latest is Myths, Lies, and Half Truths. http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/05-10-05.asp
And I might add that when you study other Scriptures, Nero appears to be a prototype of the much greater "beast" often called the Antichrist who is yet to come.
Now, once again ... anyone want to hazard a guess as to why CERN appears to use "666" in their logo? (I honestly have no idea ... I just find it interesting)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But Dr. Aitken said that translation was drawn from much later versions of the New Testament than the fragment found in Oxyrhynchus. "When we're talking about the early biblical texts, we're always talking about copies and they are copies made, at best, 150 to 200 years after [the original] was written," she said.
Right, Dave. You're going to go by copies of copies of translations of translations, made hundreds of years after the fact, and use that as your "inerrant" guide to the natural world.
I guess we can add "gullible" in front of your "liar" moniker.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Now, once again ... anyone want to hazard a guess as to why CERN appears to use "666" in their logo? (I honestly have no idea ... I just find it interesting)
Has it occurred to you that it might be the shape of the main accelerator ring at CERN, Dave? And maybe you're just seeing something that isn't really there? Is an upside-down six still a six, or is it perhaps some other number?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
What does it matter who uses 666 in their logos? 616 is the New Beast, remember?
This also means that the area code of Grand Rapids, Michigan is 616. This clearly proves that Amway is Satanic.
Well. 'Proves' in a AFDave-type way.
PS: Okay, Dave, you're right. Revelations proves that Emperor Nero was wicked. Thank you very much. I can't tell you how incredibly important that realization is to my spiritual life.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Now, once again ... anyone want to hazard a guess as to why CERN appears to use "666" in their logo? (I honestly have no idea ... I just find it interesting)
CERN doesn't use 666 in its logo, you idiot. The circle in the logo represents a cyclotron, and the straight lines represent particles being emitted.
Sheesh....
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Now, once again ... anyone want to hazard a guess as to why CERN appears to use "666" in their logo? (I honestly have no idea ... I just find it interesting)
CERN doesn't use 666 in its logo, you idiot. The circle in the logo represents a cyclotron, and the straight lines represent particles being emitted.
Sheesh....
I think Dave is exhibiting the Southern Baptist equivalent of seeing the Virgin Mary in a tortilla.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I think Dave is exhibiting the Southern Baptist equivalent of seeing the Virgin Mary in a tortilla.
Actually, Dave's reaction to the logo gives a great insight into his paranoid schizophrenic personality.
In Dave's mind, he's the persecuted Christian warrior who sees the evil hand of Satan EVERYWHERE! - CERN logos, Proctor & Gamble lables, grilled cheese sandwiches, you name it. He HAS to battle Satan’s Minions™ to save his mortal soul! That’s why he keeps coming back to ATBC despite getting his ass kicked up one side and down the other. It’s his destiny.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
CERN doesn't use 666 in its logo, you idiot. The circle in the logo represents a cyclotron, and the straight lines represent particles being emitted.
Well of course we know that. That part is quite obvious. I guess I assumed too much from my audience. OK, I'll explain again. You may recall that I was alerted to this logo by Dan Brown in his novel "Angels and Demons" ... now if you are observant, you will notice that there are 2 cyclotrons. There are also 2 short emission "arms" and 3 long ones totalling 5 emission arms. The cyclotron with 3 long arms forms 3 sixes stacked on one another, so you have 666. Coincident? Or some clever guy's plan? I don't know. Dan Brown thought it was interesting and I do too. Dan Brown also pointed out some interesting stuff about the significance of 5's and 2's and so forth.
Now do you understand, OA?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
As anyone with an ounce of honesty and an ability to do Google searches can see, there are many explanations available in addition to the ones I gave from Josh McDowell, which may explain the Tyre prophecy. I cannot make a water tight argument supporting ALL things in the Bible. But you as a skeptic also cannot make a watertight argument refuting anything in the Bible. Are you willing to risk your eternal future with your skepticism?
The bottom line, as I have said before is ... if you want to be a skeptic, you can find a thousand ways ... but if truth is your goal, you can find that also ...
What's your goal 7 Popes? Is it Truth? Or is it Skepticism?
Uhhhh, You have the nerve to ask me about my eternal salvation? Dave, all I asked was that you explain why you lied and said you "won" the argument. I proved you did no such thing, and now this tripe? Just admit that you lied, Dave Hawkins, and we can move on. Even if you believe "the evidence is equivocal" rubbish you spout, even if you believe it was a draw, you can't honestly believe you won that argument, so give us a break, ratchet the egomaniacal rhetoric down a notch and be honest.
You are busted, Dave Hawkins. Time to tell the Truth.
Well, Dave Hawkins?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
The cyclotron with 3 long arms forms 3 sixes stacked on one another, so you have 666.
How do you know it's not 999, or qqq?
Are the black helos hovering over your house now Davie?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I guess I assumed too much from my audience. OK, I'll explain again. You may recall that I was alerted to this logo by Dan Brown in his novel "Angels and Demons" ... now if you are observant, you will notice that there are 2 cyclotrons. There are also 2 short emission "arms" and 3 long ones totalling 5 emission arms. The cyclotron with 3 long arms forms 3 sixes stacked on one another, so you have 666. Coincident? Or some clever guy's plan? I don't know. Dan Brown thought it was interesting and I do too. Dan Brown also pointed out some interesting stuff about the significance of 5's and 2's and so forth.
Now do you understand, OA?
No it doesn't, Dave. An upside-down "six" is no longer a "six"; it's a "nine." So where does that fit in with your numerology?
Now do you understand, Dave? If I look at Cern's symbol, the only numbers I see other than the "5" in the 50-year commemorative are nines. If you want to see sixes there, that's fine, but they're not really there. Looks like just another example of Dave seeing what he wants to see, not what's actually there.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
OK, I'll explain again. You may recall that I was alerted to this logo by Dan Brown in his novel "Angels and Demons" ... now if you are observant, you will notice that there are 2 cyclotrons. There are also 2 short emission "arms" and 3 long ones totalling 5 emission arms. The cyclotron with 3 long arms forms 3 sixes stacked on one another, so you have 666. Coincident? Or some clever guy's plan? I don't know. Dan Brown thought it was interesting and I do too. Dan Brown also pointed out some interesting stuff about the significance of 5's and 2's and so forth.
Now do you understand, OA?
Sure! It means CERN is complaining about Nero, right?
Guess they didn't get the memo about 616, though...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Okay then ... this crowd has no imagination at all ... I'll go back to feeding you info you can handle ...
(not that you are handling the sciency stuff any better, but at least you seem to enjoy it more)
Arden, Mr. Language Man, how did you like my 666 article I posted?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Now do you understand, Dave? If I look at Cern's symbol, the only numbers I see other than the "5" in the 50-year commemorative are nines.
Speak for yourself. I see one 6 and two 9's.But them together and you get 699. 6.99 is the price of a package of Pampers diapers. Pampers is made by none other than Proctor and Gamble. Coincidence?
Don't even get me started on the crop circle in Blaine, Missouri.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
How could one know that 666 or 616 is in the autograph of Revelation? Simple, we just use a little evolutionary biology. The same thought processes that allow us to build cladograms of species let's textual critics build cladograms of changes in the biblical text. Now Revelation is the lest well represented book of the bible. The sources are so thin that when Erasmus, working in the 16th century, was compiling the Textus Receptus (which became the source for the King James Bible), he had no manuscript that contained the ending to Revelation, so he had to backtranslate the ending from Latin into Greek (that's a flame war for a different board though). So think of Revelations as a Family with a sparse fossil record. There are three large branches (we could consider each a Genus) of the text, Byzantine, Alexandrian, and Vulgate (latin, which would usually exclude it from these kind of discussions, but it's about a number so it seems valid). All 3 disagree about numerous things, but they all have 666 as the number of the beast.
So, to bring it back around to the biology example, we have fine a new fossil. It dates from around the time when the 3 Genus would have a common ancestor (but in a grey area), but it has a feature that is not common to any of the future texts. How do we know if the feature is an evolutionary parent or cousin?
Furthmore we have the second century writings of Irenaeus that mention both the 616 and 666 versions (he thought the 616 was in error). This would be akin to finding more fossil evidence, suggesting that both versions were alive at the same time. My understanding is this would usually be enough to swing the varient in the cousin category most likely (or if it is a parent "species" it "mutated" very early on).
Regardless, there are more errors in our various versions of the Bible than there are words in the Bible. This example isn't even a very good one (IMO). If people hadn't of latched on to the number symbolically no one would even care that there is a 2nd century scrap of Revelations with a different number on it.
Shoulda known better than to play Mozart on MTV ...
OK ... back to the realm you know something about ...
SCIENCE
Here's a science test for you regarding Isochrons ...
You all know about them I hope so I don't have to do remedial instruction?
Given the 3 charts above, what would be the most obvious and most defensible conclusions we can make about the 6 hypothetical samples represented in the graph on the far right?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Okay then ... this crowd has no imagination at all ...
No, it's just that you have TOO MUCH imagination. That's our whole point.
Quote
Arden, Mr. Language Man, how did you like my 666 article I posted?
I think it's a lot of superstitious numerological nonsense with no relevance to anyone's lives since the Roman Empire imploded, but that aside, I think if you insist on taking this stuff seriously, you have to go with the oldest manuscripts, as any educated historian of ANY religion would tell you.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
And what logo are you guys looking at? I see one with 2 circles and 5 lines. If you count those as 6's then there are either 2 of them or 5 of them. I don't see 3 of anything in the logo.
Do the sun, stars and planets revolve around the earth?
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
Yeah, for making millions selling books to gullible boobs.
That's not chopped liver.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
(not that you are handling the sciency stuff any better, but at least you seem to enjoy it more)
You criticize our handling of the "sciency" stuff, Dave, when you're the one who claims it's impossible to date the Grand Canyon, or anything else, for that matter, and therefore scientists should be forced to rely on written versions of legends composed by pre-literate tribesman with a third millennium-B.C. understanding of the cosmos? You think we're the ones with the problem with science?
Give me a break.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I think it's a lot of superstitious numerological nonsense with no relevance to anyone's lives since the Roman Empire imploded, but that aside, I think if you insist on taking this stuff seriously, you have to go with the oldest manuscripts, as any educated historian of ANY religion would tell you.
Thanks. I should have been more specific. What did you think of the CONCLUSION of the article? Do you agree or disagree?
Quote
And what logo are you guys looking at?
There are 3 long arms and 2 short arms. The long arms could be viewed as 3 stacked sixes by someone with not even a very active imagination.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
There are 3 long arms and 2 short arms. The long arms could be viewed as 3 stacked sixes by someone with not even a very active imagination.
I asked before in jest, now I'll ask seriously:
What makes you think they're 666, not 999 or qqq? Could it be you are predisposed to see 666? Give me a good reason why a neutral observer (i.e. someone who had never heard of 'the number of the beast' ) would conclude 666 instead of the other possibilities.
Think about it Dave, and give me a serious answer.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
What makes you think they're 666, not 999 or qqq? Could it be you are predisposed to see 666?
Of course I'm predisposed to see a 666. Where have you been? Is it not obvious that I think Revelation is a book inspired by God himself? But, contrary to what you may think, I have not made up my mind that it IS, in fact, intended to be a 666 ...
I simply asked the question ... I like asking questions no one else does ... and I think there is the possibility that the answer could be surprising, but I don't know if I will ever spend the time to try to get the true answer from the designer of the logo.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Just can't admit you were wrong when you claimed victory in our Tyre discussion, eh Dave? The information is all there, indexed for you. Why are you running from your own words, Dave?
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Is it not obvious that I think Revelation is a book inspired by God himself?
Yes Dave that is obvious. You think that the bible is the word of God.
A question or 2.
Why wouldn't God talk to us directly?
Do you not consider it a tiny bit suspicious that people claim authority from God in a revelationary manner?
If God wanted a tribe/prople/group/whatever to do something, wouldn't it be more convincing if God apeared and spoke to them all rather than have a private chat with a "prophet"?
Have you never considered the possibility that organised religion is a scam?
I am curious. Also, why haven't you answered the question about which body is orbiting which? Or did I miss that reply?
I think it's a lot of superstitious numerological nonsense with no relevance to anyone's lives since the Roman Empire imploded, but that aside, I think if you insist on taking this stuff seriously, you have to go with the oldest manuscripts, as any educated historian of ANY religion would tell you.
Thanks. I should have been more specific. What did you think of the CONCLUSION of the article? Do you agree or disagree?
You mean this part?
Quote
A Latin copyist might have thought that 666 was an error because Nero Caesar did not add up to 666 when transliterated into Latin. He then changed 666 to 616 to conform to the Latin rendering since it was generally accepted that Nero was the Beast. In either case, a Hebrew transliteration nets 666, while a Latin spelling nets 616. Nero was the “man” and either 666 or 616 was his number.
I think it's extremely risky to disregard the oldest manuscript of a text, esp. one that predates the others by over a century. I also find it dubious that a Roman copyist, no doubt a Christian himself, would have taken such liberties with the interpretation of the text, and would have changed something that conspicuous based on his mathematic/linguistic hunches. Copyists were supposed to copy, not interpret, esp. with religious texts. 'Simple boneheaded copying error' rings a lot more true for me, in my experience.
Either way, I don't know any Hebrew, so I can't comment further on the linguistic aspect.
But these kind of revisions happen ALL THE TIME when older texts of a religion are found.
But of course the ultimate question is unanswered, which is why on earth should we care about this, when it's clear it was all just someone living long after Jesus sending a coded message about a Roman emperor?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Yes Dave that is obvious. You think that the bible is the word of God.
A question or 2.
Why wouldn't God talk to us directly?
Do you not consider it a tiny bit suspicious that people claim authority from God in a revelationary manner?
If God wanted a tribe/prople/group/whatever to do something, wouldn't it be more convincing if God apeared and spoke to them all rather than have a private chat with a "prophet"?
Have you never considered the possibility that organised religion is a scam?
I am curious. Also, why haven't you answered the question about which body is orbiting which? Or did I miss that reply?
You seem polite enough ... OK, I'll bite ...
1) Why God does the things He does the way He does is beyond me. I certainly would have done things differently if I was God (but I'm not and that's a good thing). But not understanding why God does things in certain ways does not any more negate his existence that not understanding how DNA compacts information negates the fact that it does. 2) Yes. It's very suspicious. God has made it clear that in these latter times, He has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus, and through his authorized agents, the apostles. Note that there is no such thing as a modern "apostle." It was a very high priority in Old Testament times to verify the credentials of a true prophet, and during the times of the early church this "credential verification process" was equally important for verifying a true apostle. 3) I do not know which would be more convincing. I can tell you that I have personally observed the wonders of nature and find them very convincing that there is, in fact, a Creator GOd. 4) Not only have I considered the possibility, I believe it to be true and detest it. This is why I say often that, in a very real sense, i am not religious.
Arden...
Quote
But of course the ultimate question is unanswered, which is why on earth should we care about this, when it's clear it was all just someone living long after Jesus sending a coded message about a Roman emperor?
Good question. Long answer needed. Outta time now.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I think it's a lot of superstitious numerological nonsense with no relevance to anyone's lives since the Roman Empire imploded, but that aside, I think if you insist on taking this stuff seriously, you have to go with the oldest manuscripts, as any educated historian of ANY religion would tell you.
Thanks. I should have been more specific. What did you think of the CONCLUSION of the article? Do you agree or disagree?
Quote
And what logo are you guys looking at?
There are 3 long arms and 2 short arms. The long arms could be viewed as 3 stacked sixes by someone with not even a very active imagination.
Do you know what they do at cern?
That logo is showing you.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
Here's a science test for you regarding Isochrons ...
You all know about them I hope so I don't have to do remedial instruction?
Given the 3 charts above, what would be the most obvious and most defensible conclusions we can make about the 6 hypothetical samples represented in the graph on the far right?
Dave, before you launch into yet another completely wrong assault on an entire discipline of science (you know, that area of human experience that you claim to believe 95% of), can you explain to me and the rest of your audience what possible relevance any of this has to your UPDATED Creator God "Hypothesis"? Even if you were to achieve the impossible, i.e., disprove every single date ever obtained by radiometric dating in excess of 6,000 years, that would provide exactly no support whatsoever for your "hypothesis." Why? Because you have no support whatsoever for your assertion that the earth is only 6,000 years old, other than a book that you yourself admit contains numerous errors.
You can't support your hypothesis by trying to find holes in someone else's theory, Dave. You're exactly like every single other idiot creationist out there. Unable to provide the tiniest scrap of evidence to suppory your own "hypothesis," you're reduced to trying somehow to repudiate the work of millions of man-hours of scientific research in extremely well-supported areas of science. You have not the slightest prayer of succeeding, but of course that doesn't stop you.
But I wish you'd at least come up with some new stupidity. Watching you flounder around in the weeds of radiometric techniques, being wrong over and over and over again, is starting to get tedious. Maybe we can talk about how Noah managed to cram the ancestors of all ten million currently-existing species of organisms into an ark less than 5 miles long.
Or you could discuss how a mile of floodwaters managed to deposit three miles of sediment? That could be entertaining too.
Maybe you could explain how your "hypothesis" accounts for the fact that we can see M31, or M87, or anything else that's more than 6,000 light-years away? Here you are, wasting your time and ours trying to find pinpricks in radiometric dating techniques, while in the meantime your "hypothesis" fails to account for virtually every observation of the world there is.
Good to know you're in for the long haul, though. We'll be able to laugh at your "hypothesis" for the next fifty years, the way you're going.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Yes Dave that is obvious. You think that the bible is the word of God.
A question or 2.
Why wouldn't God talk to us directly?
Do you not consider it a tiny bit suspicious that people claim authority from God in a revelationary manner?
If God wanted a tribe/prople/group/whatever to do something, wouldn't it be more convincing if God apeared and spoke to them all rather than have a private chat with a "prophet"?
Have you never considered the possibility that organised religion is a scam?
I am curious. Also, why haven't you answered the question about which body is orbiting which? Or did I miss that reply?
You seem polite enough ... OK, I'll bite ...
1) Why God does the things He does the way He does is beyond me. I certainly would have done things differently if I was God (but I'm not and that's a good thing). But not understanding why God does things in certain ways does not any more negate his existence that not understanding how DNA compacts information negates the fact that it does. 2) Yes. It's very suspicious. God has made it clear that in these latter times, He has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus, and through his authorized agents, the apostles. Note that there is no such thing as a modern "apostle." It was a very high priority in Old Testament times to verify the credentials of a true prophet, and during the times of the early church this "credential verification process" was equally important for verifying a true apostle. 3) I do not know which would be more convincing. I can tell you that I have personally observed the wonders of nature and find them very convincing that there is, in fact, a Creator GOd. 4) Not only have I considered the possibility, I believe it to be true and detest it. This is why I say often that, in a very real sense, i am not religious.
1) I am not trying to negate the existence of God. It might be true. Actually I think that Gods existence is more likely than not. However, I do not know. I just consider it the most likely explanation.
2)In what way has God made it clear?
3) I kinda agree. However I am open to doubt.
4) Yet you sound like a religious organiser. You are preaching here as though you know God's will as a fact. I find that disturbing.
Kali Maa then devoured the slain bodies of the asuras and danced a fierce dance to celebrate the victory. This dance of destruction began by Kali and her attendants continued for long and none could stop her. To stop her, Shiva himself mingled among the asuras whom she was annihilating. Shiva allowed himself to be trampled upon by her in this dance of victory because this was the only remedy left to bring her to senses and to protect the world from total annihilation. When Kali Maa saw that she was dancing over the body of her husband, she put her tongue out of her mouth in sorrow and surprise. She remained stunned in this posture and this is how Kali is shown in images with the red tongue protruding from her mouth.
Durga Maa then fought the demon Nishumbhu who was slain in no time. Now Shumbhu decided to take on the Goddess (Durga Maa) himself. Reaching the battlefield, he said to the Goddess: "You take pride on others' strength. Why don't you show your own power!"
The Goddess replied with a smile: "Fool! The whole world is just Me. All Creation is my form in a variety of dimensions. I am the cause and effect of everything: all things emerge from me only and ultimately' enter me only. The whole world is in harmony with My Being."
Then after the nine celestial powers (Kali Maa being one of them) which had emerged from the Goddess (Durga Maa) went back into her and she single handedly killed the demon Shumbhu.
Give me that old time religion!
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
Kali, destroyer of worlds. ..... Give me that old time religion!
Wow, cool, you are serious! I was just making an offhand reference to Robert Oppenheimer being reminded of the line from the Bhagavad Gita where Vishnu spoke to the Prince.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
God has made it clear that in these latter times, He has spoken to us through His Son, Jesus, and through his authorized agents, the apostles.
No he hasn't. You're still laboring under the misapprehension that you can accept anything in the Bible as literally true, Dave, but you've presented absolutely no evidence to support that assumption. As far as I can tell, the Bible was written by multiple different humans, all with their own faults, foibles, and axes to grind, and there's no reason at all to think the Bible is anything more than historical fiction. And even if you do think the Bible is literally true and the revealed word of God, it's utterly laughable to assert that God has made anything "clear" in it. It appears that there are multiple interpretations of virtually every single passage in the Bible. Clear as mud, in other words.
By the way, those "authorized agents": do they have exclusive contracts with God? Do they have different territories, or do they all have to share? And what kind of commission do they get?
Quote
Not only have I considered the possibility, I believe it to be true and detest it. This is why I say often that, in a very real sense, i am not religious.
Oh come off it, Dave. You claim you detest organized religions, but at the same time you're a deacon with one of the largest churches in America! How do you square those two concepts, Dave? Is your church not "organized"? Or not a "religion"? Is Southern Baptism not a religion anymore? What is it, a chamber of commerce or something?
Do you see why you have zero credibility around here? For God's sake, man, at least try to be consistent.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I am going to try to be polite from now on. I am curious about one thing especially:
What is your evidence that Earth is 6500 years old? How might you design an experiment to prove it?
And, not doggin on you here but Rm dating isn't your thing. Let's just all make an assumption that Rm dating is a secondary method anyway. We have to establish methods to verify Rm dates. Let's please move on (if you are going to persist in destroying all of sciences advancements) to other, more obvious techniques.
My question is this: If we could demonstrate that Earth is 10k y/o, would that make you wrong?
Let me be very clear with this. If we can find a way to count annual events and show that there is not methodological problems with the technique at least up to 10k years, would that do it?
Seriously, I would appreciate a reply.
Thank you in advance.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
u may recall that I was alerted to this logo by Dan Brown in his novel "Angels and Demons"
well, that explains Dave's fascination for being whipped on a daily basis; he reads too much Dan Brown.
do you dream of joining Opus Dei?
I think you would like it, Dave. I hear they are eager for new members.
Except Opus Dei is Catholic and I think Dave's one of those Baptists who think the Catholic Church is the Antichrist.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Hey, Davie-dipper, how many dates did Dalrymple "throw out" in his GC paper?
Are discordant dates published, or is the observed concordance between methods an artifact of hiding all the discordant dates? If the discordant dates are hidden, how come the program managers and accountants haven't noticed?
How's that inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab coming along?
Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staircase) are argon dates?
Is Snelling's inclusion of xenoliths in his Ngauruhoe dating study fraud? If not, would it have been fraud to inject argon into the samples? Is there any difference between the two scenarios?
I guess you've finally caught on how stupid your attempt to shift the burden of proof on that bet was. Personally, I'm amazed that, when I accepted the bet, you didn't just respond "Don't be silly, I was speaking figuratively". Ah well, it was mildly amusing proving once more that you can't expect rational or reasonable behavior from our Davie.
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 14 2006,09:37)
There is no objective means by which we can know if the radiometric "clocks" are even in the right ballpark.
Oh, there's lots of ways, Davie-doodles. There's the 80% of Dalrymples' surveyed recent lavas in which the right answer came out. There's the BGC Ar-Ar dating of Pompeii, which you've ignored several times. And here's another. Dating of King Hezekiah's Tunnel verified by scientists or the Nature article at Radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem. They dated a leaf in the plaster of the Siloam tunnel by 14C at 700-800 BCE and a stalactite by U-Th disequilibrium dating at 400 BCE, confirming the Biblical chronology (but that doesn't mean that all Biblical chronology is correct). Gosharootie, Davie-doodles, when we exclude creationist frauds all the evidence indicates that radiometric dating is spot-on!!
Quote
Quote
And you shall see that the other ones are garbage as well. In fact, maybe I'll take you through a history of the dating methods and show you how new ones pop up only to be discarded later because they don't work.
Oh, I'd L O V E to see that! Pretty pretty pretty please do it, Davie-doodles!!!! That might even make up for my disappointment in not seeing you explain how mixing affects K-Ar dating!
Still waiting, Davie-dip ...
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 14 2006,13:21)
Given the 3 charts above, what would be the most obvious and most defensible conclusions we can make about the 6 hypothetical samples represented in the graph on the far right?
That there's insufficient information to draw any defensible conclusion, Davie-doofus. Isochron graphs are fine for presenting an overview, but we need to know the details of how good the straight line fit is and the method for fitting the line. Especially since sample 3 is far off the line, and the axis units appear to be non-standard. No geochronologist would draw any conclusion from that graph alone.
Of course, many of us know that on the standard graph of a valid isochron study with good line-fitting the slope indicates the time elapsed since the samples were last isotopically homogenized (usually but not always the time of solidification) and the Y-intercept indicates the ratio of radiogenic daughter isotope to non-radiogenic daughter isotope when that homogenization was "broken" (Again usually but not always the time of solidification).
I am going to try to be polite from now on. I am curious about one thing especially:
What is your evidence that Earth is 6500 years old? How might you design an experiment to prove it?
And, not doggin on you here but Rm dating isn't your thing. Let's just all make an assumption that Rm dating is a secondary method anyway. We have to establish methods to verify Rm dates. Let's please move on (if you are going to persist in destroying all of sciences advancements) to other, more obvious techniques.
My question is this: If we could demonstrate that Earth is 10k y/o, would that make you wrong?
Let me be very clear with this. If we can find a way to count annual events and show that there is not methodological problems with the technique at least up to 10k years, would that do it?
Seriously, I would appreciate a reply.
Thank you in advance.
BWE, you are possessed of absolutely limitless reserves of patience.
I hope your spouse appreciates it.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Of course I'm predisposed to see a 666. Where have you been? Is it not obvious that I think Revelation is a book inspired by God himself? But, contrary to what you may think, I have not made up my mind that it IS, in fact, intended to be a 666 ...
OK Dave, but you didn't answer this part of the question:
Give me a good reason why a neutral observer (i.e. someone who had never heard of 'the number of the beast' ) would conclude 666 instead of the other possibilities of 999 or qqq, or see NO alpha-numeric pattern.
The only way I see 666 is if I turn the logo upside down - rightside up I get 999 or qqq. Why should anyone turn the logo upside down?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
I am going to try to be polite from now on. I am curious about one thing especially:
What is your evidence that Earth is 6500 years old? How might you design an experiment to prove it?
And, not doggin on you here but Rm dating isn't your thing. Let's just all make an assumption that Rm dating is a secondary method anyway. We have to establish methods to verify Rm dates. Let's please move on (if you are going to persist in destroying all of sciences advancements) to other, more obvious techniques.
My question is this: If we could demonstrate that Earth is 10k y/o, would that make you wrong?
Let me be very clear with this. If we can find a way to count annual events and show that there is not methodological problems with the technique at least up to 10k years, would that do it?
Seriously, I would appreciate a reply.
Thank you in advance.
BWE, you are possessed of absolutely limitless reserves of patience.
I hope your spouse appreciates it.
I forwarded that comment to her.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
The only way I see 666 is if I turn the logo upside down - rightside up I get 999 or qqq. Why should anyone turn the logo upside down?
It actually really does say '999' -- it is in fact, a tribute to these guys.
Wow, we're solving lots of mysteries today!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The only way I see 666 is if I turn the logo upside down - rightside up I get 999 or qqq. Why should anyone turn the logo upside down?
It actually really does say '999' -- it is in fact, a tribute to these guys.
Wow, we're solving lots of mysteries today!
Wow, that takes me back. I had no idea these guys were still around. I used to DJ when I was in college - one of my shows was called "Homicide", and I used theirs as the theme song. Most of their songs were crap, but they had a few good ones. I always liked their version of "Little Red Riding Hood".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Find the devil sign! (Arden, did you intentionally pick teh gheyest pic of the lot?) If we collectively sponser the bands UK/US tour, they might headline as the "Church Burning Ebola Brothers". Love to see the lab coats fly in that mosh-pit. {edit: just remembered the finest 999, the Ducati by that name!}
-------------- Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.
ISOCHRON DATING -- WHOLE ROCK AND MINERAL VERSIONS
JonF...
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That there's insufficient information to draw any defensible conclusion, Davie-doofus.
We have been discussing Argon dating which falls into the general category of "model age dating." Now we move to the second general category of dating methods called the Whole Rock Isochron method. Both this method and the Mineral Isochron method can be represented by the generalized charts above. Let's talk about Whole Rock Isochron "dating" first. Sometimes it can be very confusing to separate data from conclusions, so let's start with the data first. The data is shown in the chart on the far right. You can see that this represents 6 samples from a "cogenetic suite." Now I am not too clear about the criteria for "cogenetic" (maybe JonF can help me here), but I would assume it means, for example, that you might have a 1 meter thick layer of igneous rock and you take 6 samples that are fairly close to one another in the same layer. Now if you do this and send the samples off to the lab, the lab crushes them and does a chemical analysis. What do you get from the lab? In our example above, we get particular concentrations of parent and daughter (we'll call them "units" for simplicity and ignore the ratios).
So here is our data from the lab (I just eyeballed the charts) ...
where P stands for Parent ratio, D stands for Daughter ratio ...
We have not made any assumptions yet (other than that the lab can do a good chemical analysis) ... all we have done is grab some rock samples from a "cogenetic suite" and done a chemical analysis, right?
Now before I jump off and make some bold statements ... is everyone with me? Don't fret yet ... I have not yet shown the problems with Isochron Dating (going to, but haven't yet) ... I just want to make sure that we are all on the same page for now (a rare event admittedly :-) )
*****************************
JonF...
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And here's another. Dating of King Hezekiah's Tunnel verified by scientists or the Nature article at Radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem. They dated a leaf in the plaster of the Siloam tunnel by 14C at 700-800 BCE and a stalactite by U-Th disequilibrium dating at 400 BCE, confirming the Biblical chronology (but that doesn't mean that all Biblical chronology is correct).
Are you not aware that creationists have no problem with C14 dating for post Flood events? I think I have said that several times before. The problem with pre-Flood C14 dating is the uniformitarian assumptions of carbon levels. Deep Timers dismiss the Global Flood and thus render their assumptions invalid for any "dates" older than the Flood.
I'll try to read up on Pompeii sometime and see what the story is there ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Are you not aware that creationists have no problem with C14 dating for post Flood events? I think I have said that several times before. The problem with pre-Flood C14 dating is the uniformitarian assumptions of carbon levels. Deep Timers dismiss the Global Flood and thus render their assumptions invalid for any "dates" older than the Flood.
Tsk tsk tsk...Davie, you're lying again.
We've already been through the data on this very thread Dave. The whole point of doing *independent calibration* of C14/C12 ratios is because scientists don't assume uniform C14/C12 levels. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows that at times the atmospheric C14/C12 ratio has varied by up to 20% off of what it is today.
I showed you multiple calibration curves going back as far as 50,000 years Dave. They all precisely cross-correlated to within a few percent, and NONE of them show any trace of the Flood caused 100X C14/C12 level 'spike' you claim. Do I need to rub your nose in the cal curves again Davie? Last time I pointed this out to you, you shut up and refused to discuss it anymore. Why was that Dave? Are you finally willing to discuss the data now?
It's said that the most important thing a liar need is a good memory. Well Davie, you'd better start working on yours ASAP, because you're already forgetting the lies you've told.
We, however, won't forget them Dave, and we won't let you forget them either.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
(Arden, did you intentionally pick teh gheyest pic of the lot?)
Not intentionally, but that's what they get for most of their albums sucking.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
All I can say at this point, is DDTTD has been given way more leeway to produce evidence of his "hypothesis" than he would have been at any other forum I ever visited, without doing anything of the sort.
It's time to spank DDTTD, like the bad widdl' boy he is and move his non relevant posts to the place they belong.
I realise this could mean moving ALL his posts there but I'd say just move his new posts that don't actually deal with "AF Dave's UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis" to that place.
It might tighten him up intelectually, but I doubt it.
The titular purpose of the thread is his hypothesis. But it's never actually been about his hypothesis, because he has no evidence. The de facto purpose is, AFDave tries to tear down all of modern science. The metapurpose of this thread is to explore the question "Are there limits to how oblivious a guy can be?" w/r/t the metapurpose, everything he's ever said is on-topic, including the Satanic CERN bits. Those are especially on-topic.
"Tearing down all of modern science" ... You have a more active imagination than me! No I'm just tearing down Deep Time and Evolution which has very little to do with science (it does have a little to do with science ... for example, microevolution is perfectly legitimate and chemical analyses of rocks is also legitimate, to name two). How does tearing down Deep Time and Evolution help establish my Creator God Hypothesis? It helps in a very large way. How can you build a beautiful mansion on the very site where a dilapidated hovel stands?
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SFBDave the liar resurfaces with:
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Are you not aware that creationists have no problem with C14 dating for post Flood events? I think I have said that several times before. The problem with pre-Flood C14 dating is the uniformitarian assumptions of carbon levels. Deep Timers dismiss the Global Flood and thus render their assumptions invalid for any "dates" older than the Flood.
Tsk tsk tsk...Davie, you're lying again.
We've already been through the data on this very thread Dave. The whole point of doing *independent calibration* of C14/C12 ratios is because scientists don't assume uniform C14/C12 levels. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows that at times the atmospheric C14/C12 ratio has varied by up to 20% off of what it is today.
Whooppee! 20% huh? I thought your "calibration curves" were supposed to validate you 20,000 year old cave paintings and such, thereby refuting by 6000 year old earth. I never heard you mention this 20%. But maybe you did. In any case, like I said, it is my understanding that C14 is valid for POST-Flood events, but not for pre-Flood events. I would like to talk about this more and about limestone at some point. Remind me after I get through the RM "dating" methods and I'll try to do that, OK?
Interesting that you think I'm a liar because I supposedly said "Deep Timers assume constant C14/C12 ratios" when what I really said was
Quote
The problem with pre-Flood C14 dating is the uniformitarian assumptions of carbon levels. Deep Timers dismiss the Global Flood and thus render their assumptions invalid for any "dates" older than the Flood.
And did you forget (or ignore?) that the reason for my post was to show JonF that creationists have no quarrel with post-Flood C14 dating? Hence the tangent about your "calibration curves"?
Are we obfuscating again because we have no answer to hard questions about radiometric dating?
*********************************
I think it was Stephen Elliot and Eric who have a problem reconciling my statements of "I am not religious" yet I am "a member of a Baptist church."
I have said that I detest "organized religion" which to me means church hierarchies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the Pope and his cardinals, bishops and priests, and the like. I like churches to be independent and autonomous which ours is. We are not a part of any hierarchy.
Understanding this is also the key to understanding a favorite quote of skeptics ... the Tripoli Treaty of 1797 which stated ...
Quote
...the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen ...
Skeptics, of course, love this quote and pounce on it while disregarding hundreds of other quotes which support the fact that America is most definitely a Christian nation.
The key to understanding this is context. And of course, skeptics enjoy taking things OUT of context, which is nothing more than lying. So the context of this treaty is the "Christianity" of Europe which attacked Muslims (Musselmen) during the Crusades and other times. The treaty was worded in such a way as to give the Muslims great assurance that America is not like those European nations who called themselves "Christian" yet attacked you mercilessly. The American founders detested government control by "Christian institutions," yet most of them were strong, Protestant Christians themselves (they were far more "fundy" than me), showing their Christian committment in numerous ways--from founding colleges at Harvard, Princeton and Yale for the express purpose of training Christian preachers to go throughout all the land, to forming Bible Societies to help get Bible distributed everywhere, to having prayer meetings in Congress, to carving Bible verses in stone, etc, etc, etc.
So this treaty could really be worded ...
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...the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian "religion" [of Europe] as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
And did you forget (or ignore?) that the reason for my post was to show JonF that creationists have no quarrel with post-Flood C14 dating?
How do you tell the difference between a "pre-Flood" and "post-Flood" event?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
...the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian "religion" [of Europe] as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen ...
Well, it's a darn shame you weren't there to edit it for them before they signed it. I'm sure if you were, it would have clarified a lot of things for this generation.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Geez, Davie-doodles, the loose ends are really piling up ...
Hey, Davie-doodles, how many dates did Dalrymple "throw out" in his GC paper?
Are discordant dates published, or is the observed concordance between methods an artifact of hiding all the discordant dates? If the discordant dates are hidden, how come the program managers and accountants haven't noticed?
How's that inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab coming along?
Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staircase) are argon dates?
You said you'd be happy to discuss zircons in relation to Snelling's paper. Discuss:
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Pretty obvious and basic, Davie-moron, and the required information has been ignored by you many times in this thread. It is widely known that the isotopic composition of zircons, when they form, do not reflect "the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". In particular, the U/Pb ratio is very very high, no mater what the U/Pb ratio of the source was. (This sort of thing is comon for many relevant radioisotopes, but it's most extreme and obvious for zircons). Snelling has acknowledged this, in HELIUM DIFFUSION RATES SUPPORT ACCELERATED NUCLEAR DECAY: "The fact that these percentages are high confirms that a large amount of nuclear decay did indeed occur in the zircons. Other evidence strongly supports much nuclear decay having occurred in the past [14, pp. 335-337]. We emphasize this point because many creationists have assumed that "old" radioisotopic ages are merely an artifact of analysis, not really indicating the occurrence of large amounts of nuclear decay. But according to the measured amount of lead physically present in the zircons, approximately 1.5 billion years worth "at today's rates" of nuclear decay occurred."
Therefore the U/Pb radioisotope ratios in zircons found throughout the geologic record do not "only reflect the magmatic origin of the lavas from mantle and crustal sources, and any history of mixing or contamination in their petrogenesis". They reflect radioactive decay in-situ. And, if Snelling wants to claim that this does not indicate age, it's up to him to provide far more evidence than a few zircons with complex thermal histories and some apparently anomolous helium.
You are correct that Humphreys and Co. acknowledge significant radioactive decay has occurred. But this has nothing to do with Snelling's conclusion. Snelling was not focusing on zircons in the 2003 study. He simply points out that the overall geochemistry of recent lava flows is merely an indication of their origin--it is not reliable date indicator. He proposes that this is quite likely for ancient flows as well. Real simple. This does not negate what you are pointing out about zircons, and what you are saying does not negate Snelling's conclusion.
Of course, it's not likely at all for ancient flows, because we know that radioactive decay changes the isotopic ratios; unless you assume your conclusion that the Earth is young.
But zircons negate his conclusion. He may not have been focusing on them, but he made a universal claim that includes them; if it's false for zircons, his entire claim is false. Same logic as "if one K-Ar date is correct, the Earth is olderr than 6,000 years", and pretty basic logic at that. One counterexample disproves any universal claim.
He didn't say overall geochemistry, and he's not talking about overall geochemisty; nobody uses overall geochemistry of lava flows as an age indicator, and often we use chemistry of tiny components of lava flows as an age indicator. If indeed he's talking about overall geochemistry; then his conclusion is vacuous and there's no point to the paper.
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 14 2006,22:09)
Now I am not too clear about the criteria for "cogenetic" (maybe JonF can help me here), but I would assume it means, for example, that you might have a 1 meter thick layer of igneous rock and you take 6 samples that are fairly close to one another in the same layer.
"Cogenetic" means "were isotopically homogeneous at some time in the past". Multiple samples that are obviously from the same magma source are a common way of making cogeneticiy likely.
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Quote
And here's another. Dating of King Hezekiah's Tunnel verified by scientists or the Nature article at Radiometric dating of the Siloam Tunnel, Jerusalem. They dated a leaf in the plaster of the Siloam tunnel by 14C at 700-800 BCE and a stalactite by U-Th disequilibrium dating at 400 BCE, confirming the Biblical chronology (but that doesn't mean that all Biblical chronology is correct).
Are you not aware that creationists have no problem with C14 dating for post Flood events? I think I have said that several times before. The problem with pre-Flood C14 dating is the uniformitarian assumptions of carbon levels. Deep Timers dismiss the Global Flood and thus render their assumptions invalid for any "dates" older than the Flood.
As has already been pointed out many times, there are no uniformitarian assumptions about carbon levels. But you missed the point; what about the U-Th dating of the stalactite? Yet another chance to compare geological dating techniques to history ... and the geolocal technique is correct! (Unless, of course, the Bible is wrong). The evidence that geological dating techniques give correct answers keeps piling up, and all you've come up with so far is:
Some but nowhere near all samples contain excess argon.
Dating samples known to contain xenoliths gives meaningless results
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Tearing down all of modern science" ... You have a more active imagination than me! No I'm just tearing down Deep Time and Evolution
And chemistry and physics and geology and ...
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Whooppee! 20% huh? I thought your "calibration curves" were supposed to validate you 20,000 year old cave paintings and such, thereby refuting by 6000 year old earth. I never heard you mention this 20%.
I think it's more like 10%, but we know there is variation. 10%, 20%, 50%, whatever; it doesn't matter. 14C dating and calibration curves refute your claims about the age of the Earth and "pre-flood carbon".
---------------
In reference to Davie-morons' long-ago claim that he sees no reason why geologists can't pay for at least twice as many dates as they publish and discard the ones they don't like, I found this post by a person who really uses 14C dating interesting:
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Now, my PhD site is a place in the east of England called Hoxne. On stratigraphic grounds, it is believed that this site dates to MIS11. Radiometric dating tends to cost quite a bit of money and we'd rather spend our cash on other things, but every so often people crib together for funding for a few radiometric dates. The Hoxne site was dated using U-series dating. Guess what the age was.......MIS11.
Someone here said I quote mined, but I'm not seeing it ...
Here is what ANSA said about the Pope's recent homily ...
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Vatican: pope slams evolution 'Accounts about Man don't add up without God' says pontiff (ANSA) - Regensburg, September 12 - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable" .
Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable" . http://ansa.it/main....96.html
and here's what the Pope actually said ...
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We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But is such a thing still possible today? Is it reasonable? From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part [Darwin et. al.], has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success - inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something doesn't add up for man, the world, the whole vast universe. So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. [IOW ToE is meaningless and unreasonable] As Christians, we say:B I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth - I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=94805
Looks like ANSA was accurate to me ...
**********************************
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Well, it's a darn shame you weren't there to edit it for them before they signed it. I'm sure if you were, it would have clarified a lot of things for this generation.
These things are already QUITE clear to honest people of this generation. Your problem is that you are dishonest ... bent on being a skeptic no matter what evidence is presented to you.
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How do you tell the difference between a "pre-Flood" and "post-Flood" event?
Historical, eyewitness records -- Genesis. How does one beat a reliable, historical account for determining things about the past?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Understanding this is also the key to understanding a favorite quote of skeptics ... the Tripoli Treaty of 1797 which stated ...
...
Quote
The key to understanding this is context. And of course, skeptics enjoy taking things OUT of context, which is nothing more than lying. So the context of this treaty is the "Christianity" of Europe which attacked Muslims (Musselmen) during the Crusades and other times. The treaty was worded in such a way as to give the Muslims great assurance that America is not like those European nations who called themselves "Christian" yet attacked you mercilessly. The American founders detested government control by "Christian institutions," yet most of them were strong, Protestant Christians themselves
Of course, the President at the time, John Adams, was, by his own admission, a unitarian.
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(they were far more "fundy" than me),
More fundamentalist than you? How do you figure. The Founders were children of the Enlightment and emphasized reason over revelation. For all your attempts over the last few months, Dave, it is pretty clear that your entire worldview, by virtue of being built on one book, favors revelation over reason. You don't get much more fundamentalist than that.
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showing their Christian committment in numerous ways--from founding colleges at Harvard, Princeton and Yale for the express purpose of training Christian preachers
Umm, the founding of Harvard and Yale in 1636 and 1701 predates the Founding Father's arrival on this planet. And Princeton, while founded in 1746, was established under a royal charter.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
How do you tell the difference between a "pre-Flood" and "post-Flood" event?
Historical, eyewitness records -- Genesis. How does one beat a reliable, historical account for determining things about the past?
So you're saying that if I give you a rock, you can somehow look it up in the bible and tell me if it formed pre-Flood or post-Flood?
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Someone here said I quote mined, but I'm not seeing it ...
Here is what ANSA said about the Pope's recent homily ...
Quote
Vatican: pope slams evolution 'Accounts about Man don't add up without God' says pontiff (ANSA) - Regensburg, September 12 - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday issued his strongest criticism yet of evolutionary theory, calling it "unreasonable" .
Speaking to a 300,000-strong crowd in this German city, the former theological watchdog said that, according to such theories derived from Charles Darwin's work, the universe is "the random result of evolution and therefore, at bottom, something unreasonable" . http://ansa.it/main....96.html
and here's what the Pope actually said ...
Quote
We believe in God. This is a fundamental decision on our part. But is such a thing still possible today? Is it reasonable? From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part [Darwin et. al.], has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary. And if this were so, he would also become unnecessary in our lives. But whenever the attempt seemed to be nearing success - inevitably it would become clear: something is missing from the equation! When God is subtracted, something doesn't add up for man, the world, the whole vast universe. So we end up with two alternatives. What came first? Creative Reason, the Spirit who makes all things and gives them growth, or Unreason, which, lacking any meaning, yet somehow brings forth a mathematically ordered cosmos, as well as man and his reason. The latter, however, would then be nothing more than a chance result of evolution and thus, in the end, equally meaningless. [IOW ToE is meaningless and unreasonable] As Christians, we say:B I believe in God the Father, the Creator of heaven and earth - I believe in the Creator Spirit. We believe that at the beginning of everything is the eternal Word, with Reason and not Unreason. http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=94805
Looks like ANSA was accurate to me ...
You are ridiculously dishonest. The Pope never said anything about Darwin. He did not "slam" the theory of evolution. Anyone with half a brain can see this.
Oh wait...
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Umm, the founding of Harvard and Yale in 1636 and 1701 predates the Founding Father's arrival on this planet. And Princeton, while founded in 1746, was established under a royal charter.
Ah ... I see that you think my idea of "founding fathers" is limited to post 1776 personalities? No, my idea of founding fathers goes all the way back to the Mayflower.
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So you're saying that if I give you a rock, you can somehow look it up in the bible and tell me if it formed pre-Flood or post-Flood?
You asked me about EVENTS, not rocks.
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You are ridiculously dishonest. The Pope never said anything about Darwin. He did not "slam" the theory of evolution.
Oh so who do YOU think he was referring to here? Walt Disney? ...
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From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part [Darwin et. al.], has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary.
"Something is missing ... doesn't add up ... meaningless"
The Pope is a polite guy, but if you fail to see this as "slamming Evolution" then you are blind.
But we already knew that anyway.
Thanks, JonF, for clarifying "cogenetic suites" ... now we will move ahead with Isochron Dating.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Skeptics, of course, love this quote and pounce on it while disregarding hundreds of other quotes which support the fact that America is most definitely a Christian nation.
Hundreds? No foolin, Dave. Wanna list them?
And remember, modern people like David Limbaugh don't count.
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
So you're saying that if I give you a rock, you can somehow look it up in the bible and tell me if it formed pre-Flood or post-Flood?
You asked me about EVENTS, not rocks.
Dave, YOU are the one who keeps referring to the foramtion of rocks as "pre-Flood events" or "post-Flood events". If you don't like the terminology, feel free to stop using it.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
You are ridiculously dishonest. The Pope never said anything about Darwin. He did not "slam" the theory of evolution.
Oh so who do YOU think he was referring to here? Walt Disney? ...
Quote
From the Enlightenment on, science, at least in part [Darwin et. al.], has applied itself to seeking an explanation of the world in which God would be unnecessary.
"Something is missing ... doesn't add up ... meaningless"
The Pope is a polite guy, but if you fail to see this as "slamming Evolution" then you are blind.
No, you idiot. He's just saying that he believes in God rather than a random cause for the universe. The fact that you interpret this as a "slam on the theory of evolution" only further illustrates how grossly ignoarant you still are as to what the theory of evolution actually is. He's talking about theology, not science.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Ah ... I see that you think my idea of "founding fathers" is limited to post 1776 personalities? No, my idea of founding fathers goes all the way back to the Mayflower.
Pff. Well my idea of founding fathers goes all the way back to Rome! Seriously, Dave, this argument is your worst since "3 quotes is more detailed than 6, which contain all 3 quotes" back in the Portuguese discussion.
Quote
Oh so who do YOU think he was referring to here? Walt Disney? ...
Read the passage again, and perhaps you'll understand.
I'm curious, from where is your engineering degree? The Air Force Academy?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
And remember, modern people like David Limbaugh don't count.
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
Yes. Hundreds. Go read a book by David Barton to get you started.
Quote
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
I did not say Christian theocracy. Have you ever read the Declaration? It mentions the "laws of nature and of nature's God," affirms that "men are created equal," that they are endowed by their "Creator" with unalienable rights and rely on "Divine Providence." What did you want them to do to convince you? Quote John 3:16? As for the constitution, why is it that no mention of Jesus in there means that America is not a Christian nation? You are clearly ignorant of American history.
Argy ... American history goes back to the Mayflower, not Rome. This is very basic stuff.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Umm, the founding of Harvard and Yale in 1636 and 1701 predates the Founding Father's arrival on this planet. And Princeton, while founded in 1746, was established under a royal charter.
Ah ... I see that you think my idea of "founding fathers" is limited to post 1776 personalities? No, my idea of founding fathers goes all the way back to the Mayflower.
Oh, good googly-moogly, Dave, changing capitalization to shift the goal posts is just plain weak as an explanation. If you want to talk about the United States being a Christian nation, you have do it in the context of the US Constitution, which superceded everything that preceded it. And the Founding Fathers (note the capital letters) are necessarily those that participated in the forming and passage of the Constitution. Trolling back to the Mayflower Compact is just plain silly. You'd have marginally better luck deconstructing the Articles of Confederation and claim universal states rights.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Argy ... American history goes back to the Mayflower, not Rome. This is very basic stuff.
Geographically, American history goes back much longer than that. The history of the United States begins in the late 18th century. Where's that degree from, Dave?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
Argy ... I've already said where my degree is from ... maybe if you try a polite approach and tell me what degrees you have and where they are from (telling me what your occupation is would also be a nice touch) I will tell you again ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Argy ... I've already said where my degree is from ... maybe if you try a polite approach and tell me what degrees you have and where they are from (telling me what your occupation is would also be a nice touch) I will tell you again ...
I have a Bachelor of Science in Cell & Molecular Biology from the University of Washington, class of 2005. I am currently a second year (as of today) graduate student studying outer membrane proteins of Treponema pallidum as vaccine candidates for syphilis. And I can answer deadman's syphilis question (although the answer is ludicrous, it's biologically feasible). And with all that information, you might even be able to figure out my real name! Would you care to reciprocate?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
I did not say Christian theocracy. Have you ever read the Declaration? It mentions the "laws of nature and of nature's God," affirms that "men are created equal," that they are endowed by their "Creator" with unalienable rights and rely on "Divine Providence." What did you want them to do to convince you? Quote John 3:16?
Well, yes, I would like you to show me where they did that. Because, you see phrases like "nature's God" and "Divine Providence" are words out of the deist's lexicon. And, quite frankly, we can find myriad examples of them quoting Locke, Hume, and Montesquieu, to name a few.
Quote
As for the constitution, why is it that no mention of Jesus in there means that America is not a Christian nation? You are clearly ignorant of American history.
Not really. You see, American history is so much more than Barton's hack piece. So very much more. But, I tell you what. You have sworn, just today, on your belief in eyewitness accounts. Why not do that here? Why don't you deconstruct The Federalist Papers and James Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 for us and show us exactly how it was intended for the United States to be a Christian nation. You can't get anymore first-hand than that.
Quote
Argy ... American history goes back to the Mayflower, not Rome. This is very basic stuff.
American history, sure. But we are talking about the history of the United States of America, which is not the same thing. But, nice try.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
"Tearing down all of modern science" ... You have a more active imagination than me! No I'm just tearing down Deep Time and Evolution which has very little to do with science (it does have a little to do with science ... for example, microevolution is perfectly legitimate and chemical analyses of rocks is also legitimate, to name two). How does tearing down Deep Time and Evolution help establish my Creator God Hypothesis? It helps in a very large way.
Dave, whether you realize it or not, you are trying to tear down all of science. Your attempts to refute radiometric dating techniques require that most of quantum physics be wrong. Your attempts to date the universe to 6,000 ya requires that all of astronomy and quantum physics and geology and general relativity to be wrong. Your attempts to refute evolution require all of biology to be wrong.
For your worldview to be right, just about all of science has to be wrong, Dave. I pointed this out to you back in May. I've told you a million times that you don't believe in "90-95%" of science; you believe in essentially none of it.
And no, Dave, trying to disprove that the earth is no more than a few thousand years does nothing for your Creator God "Hypothesis." All it does is prove that you don't believe in science. A world 6,000 years old requires that essentially all of science be wrong.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I did not say Christian theocracy. Have you ever read the Declaration? It mentions the "laws of nature and of nature's God," affirms that "men are created equal,"
I won't even ASK why you think that second statement supports your argument.
Quote
that they are endowed by their "Creator" with unalienable rights and rely on "Divine Providence." What did you want them to do to convince you? Quote John 3:16? As for the constitution, why is it that no mention of Jesus in there means that America is not a Christian nation? You are clearly ignorant of American history.
Ho ho ho, AFD calls others 'ignorant'.
Dingbat, you didn't address my main question: if the founding fathers meant to establish America as a 'Christian Nation', which is a claim you've made plenty of times, why do the foundational documents never once mention Jesus or Christianity?
What I'm saying is your argument is pretty desperate if all you can do is point to the word 'Creator' (classic Deist wording) and make vague allusions to what you ASSUME they meant and what their 'feelings' really were.
Can't help but notice you couldn't produce any of these 'hundreds of quotes', either. I'm noticing a pattern in your arguing style, no matter what the subject is.
You want to point to what the founding fathers 'intended'? From what they WROTE DOWN, the only evidence that matters, I could just as well conclude that America was designed to be a Deist or Unitarian Nation.
Jefferson, Adams, Franklin et al let you down, Dave. Trust me, they were much smarter people than you. They knew what people like you wanted, and they wanted no part of it.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
American history goes back to the Mayflower, not Rome. This is very basic stuff.
Dave translated: "American history begins once White people arrive."
I wish I could say I'm surprised.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I have a Bachelor of Science in Cell & Molecular Biology from the University of Washington, class of 2005. I am currently a second year (as of today) graduate student studying outer membrane proteins of Treponema pallidum as vaccine candidates for syphilis. And I can answer deadman's syphilis question (although the answer is ludicrous, it's biologically feasible). And with all that information, you might even be able to figure out my real name! Would you care to reciprocate?
Thanks. I truly am interested in people's education and careers here. Not so that I can take cheap shots. Just pure human interest. It also is helpful in dialogue to know where a person is coming from.
I have a BS in Electrical Engineering from Univ of Texas at Arlington. Hey, I even got honors. But alas, I'm a lowly BS (and you all think there's a double meaning there). I assume you know the rest of my career details ... it's at this forum somewhere.
Yes, American history to me is about the United States of America, which in my opinion, began with white settlers. Sorry if that sounds insensitive or something, but that appears to be the facts of history. And I'm not excusing Indian mistreatment either. Just stating the facts.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Dave, do you understand the difference between these two statements?
A) I believe that there is a Creator who takes an interest in the welfare of human beings;
B) I believe that Jesus Christ is my personal lord and savior.
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
Because the first statement has nothing to do with Christianity, and the second one does. When you can find something equivalent to B) in the founding documents of the United States (e.g., the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers), then you are justified in asserting that the U.S. was intended to be a Christian nation. If all you can find is equivalents of A), then you (once again) lose.
Do you understand the difference between a "Deist" and a "Christian," Dave? Because you sure don't talk as if you do.
Now, explain to me how it's possible for the universe to be more than 6,000 years old if we can see objects that are more than 6,000 ly away, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave:Whooppee! 20% huh? I thought your "calibration curves" were supposed to validate you 20,000 year old cave paintings and such, thereby refuting by 6000 year old earth. I never heard you mention this 20%.
The C14/C12 ratio has varied considerably, NOT the measured dates, you idiot. The ratio variance is accounted for in the calibration curves, which is why we do calibration. The 28,000 year old cave dates are accurate to within <0.5%
Sometimes it's hard to tell if you are being deliberately obtuse, or really are dumb as a sack of doorknobs.
Here is another good overview of how multiple independent calibration sources are combined to produce as accurate an overall calibration curve as possible
The theoretical C14/C12 ratio correlation (assuming uniformity) would be a straight diagonal line from (0,0) to (45, 45). The empirical data shows the C14/C12 ratio has not been constant. To get the true calendar age of a sample, you measure the C14/C12 ratio in your sample, calculate the theoretical date, find that data point on the Y axis, then get the actual date from the cal curve X axis.
Notice Dave there is NO big spike around your claimed Flood date
I will be reminding you often of your promise to discuss this data Dave. Be prepared to deal with it.
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
And remember, modern people like David Limbaugh don't count.
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
Yes. Hundreds. Go read a book by David Barton to get you started.
Quote
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
I did not say Christian theocracy. Have you ever read the Declaration? It mentions the "laws of nature and of nature's God," affirms that "men are created equal," that they are endowed by their "Creator" with unalienable rights and rely on "Divine Providence."
My bolding
Curious.
Could anyone explain simply how this was held wrt slavery in the USA?
Dave, your belief that the genesis account was a written record passed down through time, is that a common belief of Southern Baptists? I've never heard of it before, and can't find any information about it online. The long held jewish tradition is that Moses himself wrote the Torah, after receiving the information directly from God, what evidence do we have that they are incorrect?
And remember, modern people like David Limbaugh don't count.
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
Yes. Hundreds. Go read a book by David Barton to get you started.
Quote
And if America was founded to be a 'Christian nation', why are Christianity or Jesus never mentioned in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? Seems an awfully careless way to establish a Christian theocracy.
I did not say Christian theocracy. Have you ever read the Declaration? It mentions the "laws of nature and of nature's God," affirms that "men are created equal," that they are endowed by their "Creator" with unalienable rights and rely on "Divine Providence."
My bolding
Curious.
Could anyone explain simply how this was held wrt slavery in the USA?
That one is easy.
Ephesians 6:5-9
Quote
5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. 9And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
5Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, 8because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good he does, whether he is slave or free. 9And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.
No dude.
I don't nean give a biblical justification. I am specifically reffering to justifying it against the declaration of independence. That (the declaration) never used the bible as an authority. It specifically claimed, "it is self evident all men are created equal". Or words to that effect.
[quote Have you ever read the Declaration? It mentions the "laws of nature and of nature's God," affirms that "men are created equal," that they are endowed by their "Creator" with unalienable rights and rely on "Divine Providence."
Could anyone explain simply how this was held wrt slavery in the USA?
Well, the answer is complicated. But, I can offer a quick response with respect to the Founders that were slaveholders, such as Washington, Jefferson and Madison. These men recognized, and to some extent agonized over, the contradiction between their personal slaveholdings and the human rights they espoused. The problem they faced was that the southern economy, and their personal finances, were built on the back of slave labor. They acknowledged the problem, but didn't have any solution beyond the abolition of slave trading and gradual emancipation to move away from slavery. Jefferson in particular, as a lifelong spendthrift and debtor, was particularly bound by the Gordian knot.
Slavery was, of course, a point of contention at the Constitutional Convention. But, it was essentially deferred into the future in order because it was a non-starter for the southern states and the establishment of a Union was considered paramount to resolving slavery. So, it was punted on down the road.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
What flood? As I've pointed out to Dave at least two dozen times, he's presented no evidence whatsoever that his "flood" ever happened.
He hasn't presented any evidence for a source of floodwaters, he's provided no evidence (his oft-repeated "millions of dead things buried all over the world in water-laid sediments" is not evidence of a global catastrophic flood, no matter how many times he repeats it) for the existence of a "flood," and he's provided no place for all those floodwaters to have drained to. And that's just the first problem with his flood. I could list other problems with his flood from now til doomsday, and as soon as he answers those three questions, or admits he has no answer, I'll post more of them.
DunderHeadDave thinks he can just assume the existence of the flood to explain the entire history of the earth prior to 4,500 years ago. But that's assuming what he wants to prove.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Barton's book. Ok, so the founding father's wanted a christian Nation? Is that your hypothesis?
We are talking Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Tom Paine, John Adams, James Madison.
Who else do you want to include?
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
[quote=Stephen Elliott,Sep. 15 2006,12:23] Well, the answer is complicated. But, I can offer a quick response with respect to the Founders that were slaveholders, such as Washington, Jefferson and Madison. These men recognized, and to some extent agonized over, the contradiction between their personal slaveholdings and the human rights they espoused. The problem they faced was that the southern economy, and their personal finances, were built on the back of slave labor. They acknowledged the problem, but didn't have any solution beyond the abolition of slave trading and gradual emancipation to move away from slavery. Jefferson in particular, as a lifelong spendthrift and debtor, was particularly bound by the Gordian knot.
Slavery was, of course, a point of contention at the Constitutional Convention. But, it was essentially deferred into the future in order because it was a non-starter for the southern states and the establishment of a Union was considered paramount to resolving slavery. So, it was punted on down the road.
And by making slaves 3/5 of a person so they could be taxed
Art. I, §2.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
Dave, your belief that the genesis account was a written record passed down through time, is that a common belief of Southern Baptists? I've never heard of it before, and can't find any information about it online. The long held jewish tradition is that Moses himself wrote the Torah, after receiving the information directly from God, what evidence do we have that they are incorrect?
I don't think it's very common among SB's but I am not one, so I don't know for sure. I am an independent "fundy" Baptist :-) The understanding of Genesis has an interesting history. You are correct that the traditional view is that Moses wrote it, however, there have been several nagging questions which have caused scholars to wonder if the direct Mosaic authorshp view is correct ... the apparent separate and seemingly contradictory accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, the recurring phrase "these are the generations of", the different names for God, etc.
Jean Astruc was the first to publish a work that claimed that Genesis was a compilation, rather than directly authored by Moses. The Graf-Wellhausen theory then built an elaborate superstructure on this foundation and their theory has been the position of liberal scholarship ever since. This is known as the Documentery Hypothesis.
But in 1936, Air Commodore P.J. Wiseman published a little book called New Discoveries in Babylonia About Genesis, which in my opinion has finally made sense of all the data. His son, Donald J. Wiseman became a professor of Assyriology at the University of London and was the Assistant Keeper in the Dept. of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum. He updated and republished his father's book under the title Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis, a fascinating little book. I was alerted to this book by one of my favorite Bible commentators, Henry Morris, who uses the Wiseman material extensively in his Defender's Study Bible. R.K. Harrison is also a well known Bible commentator and discusses this material in his Introduction to the Old Testament, 1969. Harrison also wrote the forward to the latter Wiseman book. I think Josh McDowell subscribes to this view as well, but I'm not sure ... I'll have to look him up.
In any case, it is not a well-known theory, but I think it should be promoted because it makes the most sense of any theory so far. Take a look at p. 82 of this thread if you like. I did an extensive review of Wiseman's book.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Over at TheologyWeb Natural Science, geologist Glenn Morton (the devout Christian and ex-YEC you love to hate) has a new thread about the geological evidence that refutes YEC.
I happen over and read this thread. I found one comment in particular very interesting. In it Morton says:
Quote
No, I don't mock miracles. I believe in miracles. But, what I dont' feel comfortable with is thinking up a miracle for God to perform everytime I run into a science problem that doesn't fit what I wish to believe. How do I tell such a 'miracle', from one which is real and which God himself attests to? Do I get to tell God what miracles he must do to help my YEC theories out? That seems to place me as the Boss of God. While I might like getting to boss God around, calling down miracle after miracle, doing so means that I am forgetting that I am the creature; he the creator.
Very insightful. And humble. A model Christian, if I may be so bold to offer that observation.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
No, I don't mock miracles. I believe in miracles. But, what I dont' feel comfortable with is thinking up a miracle for God to perform everytime I run into a science problem that doesn't fit what I wish to believe. How do I tell such a 'miracle', from one which is real and which God himself attests to? Do I get to tell God what miracles he must do to help my YEC theories out? That seems to place me as the Boss of God. While I might like getting to boss God around, calling down miracle after miracle, doing so means that I am forgetting that I am the creature; he the creator.
It is insightful, and correct. So Glenn does not "boss God around" ... his error is a different one. He puts words in God's mouth. He thinks when God says "and the evening and the morning were the fourth day" that He really means something quite different than a literal 24 hour day. He thinks when God says there was a flood and "all the high hills ... and the mountains were covered" that God really doesn't mean "all" and He doesn't really mean "covered."
YECs do not invoke miracles willy nilly, contrary to the active imaginations of some skeptics ... they simply acknowledge the infinite power of the Creator and realize that a Being with infinite power can do some pretty amazing things! (to make an understatement)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
YECs do not invoke miracles willy nilly, contrary to the active imaginations of some skeptics ...
Of course, YECs invoke miracles far more often than they explicitly invoke miracles. Such as explaining paleosols.
Quote
they simply acknowledge the infinite power of the Creator and realize that a Being with infinite power can do some pretty amazing things! (to make an understatement)
Absolutely. That is why such a Being is also outside the scope of science; science cannot study such a Being, have any comment on whether or not such a Being exists, or use such a Being as explanation for any observations. So when YEcs do invoke miracles, as the RATE group does for accelerated radioactive decay and the many miracles that takes, they immediately remove themselves from the scientific arena and firmly plant themselves in the religious arena.
We have been discussing Argon dating which falls into the general category of "Model Age Dating."
Now we move to the second general category of dating methods called the Whole Rock Isochron method. Both this method and the Mineral Isochron method can be represented by the generalized charts above. Let's talk about Whole Rock Isochron "dating" first. Sometimes it can be very confusing to separate data from conclusions, so let's start with the data first. The data is shown in the chart on the far right. You can see that this represents 6 samples from a "cogenetic suite" which means, for example, that you might have a 1 meter thick layer of igneous rock and you take 6 samples that are fairly close to one another in the same layer. Now if you do this and send the samples off to the lab, the lab crushes them and does a chemical analysis. What do you get from the lab? In our example above, we get particular concentrations of parent and daughter (we'll call them "units" for simplicity and ignore the ratios).
So here is our data from the lab (I just eyeballed the charts) ...
where P stands for Parent ratio, D stands for Daughter ratio ...
We have not made any assumptions yet (other than that the lab can do a good chemical analysis) ... all we have done is grab some rock samples from a "cogenetic suite" and done a chemical analysis, right?
And to answer my own earlier question, "What defensible conclusions can we make from these charts?" the only truly defensible answer is that "These samples now contain such and such concentrations of Parent and Daughter as listed above." Any other conclusions require assumptions which I believe to be entirely unwarranted.
******************************************
Now for the assumptions ...
1) SAME DAUGHTER AMOUNT / DIFFERENT PARENT AMOUNT. The Deep Time crowd ASSUMES that these samples all had the same amount of daughter isotope, but different amounts of parent isotope. This is illutrated by the middle figure in the horizontal (bottom) line.
Now right off the bat, a thoughtful person would ask "Why different amounts of parent?" ... "Why shouldn't they have the same amounts of parent? They were formed at the same time, right? And if they had different amounts of parent when formed, why shouldn't they have different amounts of daughter also when formed?"
So before we go any further, I want someone to have a shot at answering these questions, because it appears to me that there is no good reason at all to assume the same amounts of daughter initially, yet different amounts of parent.
Am I missing something here?
**********************************
Quote
Of course, YECs invoke miracles far more often than they explicitly invoke miracles. Such as explaining paleosols.
I already easily explained the very few pseudo-paleosols that I was shown. And no one ever showed me any from the Grand Staircase. Still waiting on that.
Quote
Absolutely. That is why such a Being is also outside the scope of science;
Why should Something we don't understand yet be outside the scope of science? Is not this what science is supposed to be about? Observing the universe and trying to figure out things were are hitherto unknown?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
1) SAME DAUGHTER AMOUNT / DIFFERENT PARENT AMOUNT. The Deep Time crowd ASSUMES that these samples all had the same amount of daughter isotope, but different amounts of parent isotope. This is illutrated by the middle figure in the horizontal (bottom) line.
Now right off the bat, a thoughtful person would ask "Why different amounts of parent?" ... "Why shouldn't they have the same amounts of parent? They were formed at the same time, right? And if they had different amounts of parent when formed, why shouldn't they have different amounts of daughter also when formed?"
So before we go any further, I want someone to have a shot at answering these questions, because it appears to me that there is no good reason at all to assume the same amounts of daughter initially, yet different amounts of parent.
Am I missing something here?
Yes, Davie-doodles, you are missing something. Of course. It goes without saying.
You are missing even the most tenuous understanding of isochron dating. You don't know what "isotopically homogeneous" means, you don't know what the units of the axes are on an isochron diagram, you don't know why an isochron is initially horizontal, and you don't know why an isochron remains a line as time passes. You know nothing about isochrons.
We know that the samples all had different amounts of daughter and different amounts of parent when the samples formed. Moron. The clever part of isochron dating is normalizing the axis units by the amount of a non-radiogenic isotope of the daughter in each sample. How this works the "magic" is more than I'm going to try to type out in a limited medium such as this, but there are several good treatments on the Web such as Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective and Isochron Dating. You don't have to believe them, but if you are going to discuss isochron dating you have to understand the material presented in those links.
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Of course, YECs invoke miracles far more often than they explicitly invoke miracles. Such as explaining paleosols.
I already easily explained the very few pseudo-paleosols that I was shown.
Right. Sure, Davie-pord. You called 'em pseudo-paleosols ... but never gave any reason why they were psuedo. And your "explanation" was ... tada ... miraculously upright roots!
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And no one ever showed me any from the Grand Staircase. Still waiting on that.
Posted and linked to many times. Always ignored by you. Here it is for at least the sixth time. Don't forget to be really specific about your mechanism for how roots always appear in growing position ("it just happened" doesn't cut it), how soil horizons formed, and how the characteristic microstructures of paleosols formed and look just like the microstructures of soils.
And I'm still waiting on you to discuss why zircons don't falsify Snelling's conclusions (your one attempt was pathetic, as I pointed out). And what about U-Th dating of Hezekiah's tunnel? how many dates did Dalrymple "throw out" in his GC paper? Are discordant dates published, or is the observed concordance between methods an artifact of hiding all the discordant dates? If the discordant dates are hidden, how come the program managers and accountants haven't noticed? How's that inquiry to the Menlo Park dating lab coming along? Exactly how many of the dates given to you by deadman (for far more than four of the layers of the Grand Staircase) are argon dates?
Still waiting on those, Davie ...
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Absolutely. That is why such a Being is also outside the scope of science;
Why should Something we don't understand yet be outside the scope of science? Is not this what science is supposed to be about? Observing the universe and trying to figure out things were are hitherto unknown?
Yup, that's what science is about. But such a Being cannot be repeatably observed, cannot be controlled for in any experiment, and introducing such a concept into science destroys the possibility of doing any science. So science is silent on the question of the existence of God, and science perforce does not and can not include God in its explanations and conclusions. Maybe that leads to an error; maybe God did create the universe 6,000 years ago and purposefully made it so all the evidence points to a much older universe and life (although most Christians don't like the "God the liar" scenario). But that's the facts of what science is.
YECs do not invoke miracles willy nilly, contrary to the active imaginations of some skeptics ...
Nonsense. Whenever YECs such as yourself, AirHead, find yourself totally at odds with facts -- such as supernovae that *must* have occured prior to your claimed young earth date -- a miracle is immediately appealed to, as if you speak for God.
This is why you avoid topics like ice cores and deep-sea cores and an actual evaluation of dendrochronology as it exists today --because then you'd be caught invoking miracles at each turn.
Instead, you'd rather offer up the blitherings of a pseudoscientist who claims dendro is flawed because he looked at studies on farmed trees of one species in a non-seasonal environment -- or you offer up claims that if a procedure is NOT 100% perfect, 100% of the time, it is somehow invalidated --- as though there is ANY thing in technology that can be said to fulfill those fanatic criteria.
By your standards, Airhead, we should abandon CAT scans and X-rays because they are not perfect in identifying medical problems We should never fly in planes, because they crash.
We shouldn't drive because stupid kids roll cars trying to do things that the vehicle is not built for....kind of like how the fools you admire at ICR apply known technology in knowingly INAPPLICABLE ways and then crow about it when the technology fails.
You have seen that the Bible is NOT "infallible and perfect" it contains errors of all sorts, ranging from copy errors to outright lies. Yet you would say that it is better to invoke a miracle about stars being created with the APPEARANCE of age...rather than say you MIGHT be wrong about the Bible.
This is why you and your kind will always be seen as the fanatics and liars that you are. Because you are precisely those things. Let's take for example, just one layer that you wanted to examine in the Grand Staircase. The Morrison. You were given dates on it that all correllated. All of them. Using multiple absolute methods. All of them show the Morrison is dated to 148-158 million years old. Do the math...what is the probability of such correllation? -- And it's not because scientists are "throwing out" dates.
That's the final point I wanted to make, Dave...you want to point to anomalous results or instances of outright abuse of a method to say: "this means we should ignore all dates, because scientists are mindlessly tossing out dates or equally mindlessly correcting dates due to peer pressure." which is defaming the integrity of hundreds of thousands of people around the world...all because you want to adhere to a claimed Bible date...based on a Bible that you know is flawed. And you DO know its flawed...you were given multiple examples of copyist errors and false prophecies and outright lies contained in the Bible. I don't believe that the Bible is NOT valuable, I just don't want to see people like you making up stories about scribes using metal tools writing in stone about what they saw and heard in "Adamic" times. The Bible doesn't come close to supporting this, nor does it come close to supporting your movable dates for the flood. The Bible, if taken literally supports ONLY a specific time range for the global flood that SHOULD have, if taken literally, have wiped out all those people that I mentioned long ago...Egyptian, Sumerian, Harrappan, Chinese, Amerindian and many other cultures who WERE around at 2300-2400 BCE.
I know full well none of this will make a difference to you...you're not a "skeptic" or "scientific"...you're just another fanatic in a world filled with religious fanatics and it is people like you that make this a worse world to live in, because you'd kill any idea that is contrary to your fanaticism, or in extremis, you'd kill the messenger, too. There is little difference between a man that would fly a plane into a building in the name of God and a man that would pervert knowledge in the name of God.
I don't give a #### if you keep on blithering another 190 pages on this thread, the fact is that I KNOW you're dishonest, deceitful and beyond the range of reason. You are no different than any other fanatic unwilling to honestly weigh the evidence, and you cannot say the same about me at all, despite your willingness to lie about "knowing" my religious views--the fact of the matter is that I have no personal antagonism towards concepts of god, I have problems only with fanatics like you that claim to speak for god.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I am happy to take a much closer look at dendro, ice cores, limestone, C14 and many other things in due course ... however, I am only one guy with a limited amount of bandwidth and I have to take one topic at a time.
It seemed logical to me to look closely at radiometric dating since we just finished looking at the Grand Staircase in some detail and it is claimed that the layers of the Grand Staircase can be dated (or at least bracketed) radiometrically.
Is this such an unreasonable approach?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I am happy to take a much closer look at dendro, ice cores, limestone, C14 and many other things in due course ... however, I am only one guy with a limited amount of bandwidth and I have to take one topic at a time.
It seemed logical to me to look closely at radiometric dating since we just finished looking at the Grand Staircase in some detail and it is claimed that the layers of the Grand Staircase can be dated (or at least bracketed) radiometrically.
Is this such an unreasonable approach?
not at all, but would you care to clearly re-state your position as to how old the Grand Staircase is and how you arrived at that particular figure?
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
It seemed logical to me to look closely at radiometric dating since we just finished looking at the Grand Staircase in some detail and it is claimed that the layers of the Grand Staircase can be dated (or at least bracketed) radiometrically.
Is this such an unreasonable approach?
It wouldn't be unreasonable if you'd either answered the questions previously posed to you or admitted that you have no answer. Instead, you've pretended to have answered those questions when you have not, in the same way that you've pretended to have won arguments when you have not.
And why are we discussing whether radiometric dating methods work or not, when you've already admitted you have no methodology whatsoever for dating anything in the Grand Canyon or anywhere else, cannot bracket the date of the Grand Staircase strata within even ten orders of magnitude, and claim that your admittedly flawed Bible is the best source for dating the Grand Canyon despite the fact that it never even mentions the Grand Canyon. You assume your flood carved the Grand Canyon, despite the fact that you have no evidence your flood ever even happened, and even if you did, you have no way of knowing if the Grand Canyon happened before the flood, during, or after the flood, because you have no independent method of dating it. Was every canyon everywhere carved during the "flood"?
That's what's unreasonable, Dave. If you were reasonable at all, you'd have ditched your untenable "hypothesis" a long time ago.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
It seemed logical to me to look closely at radiometric dating since we just finished looking at the Grand Staircase in some detail and it is claimed that the layers of the Grand Staircase can be dated (or at least bracketed) radiometrically.
Is this such an unreasonable approach?
Your approach to it is unreasonable. You looked at those isochron diagrams and you assumed without warrant that the "evilutionists" based that diagram on a stupid and obviously untrue assumption. It never occurred to you that you are totally ignorant of isochron dating and you should learn the basics before opening your mouth. You are the only one making foolish assumptions.
You assume your flood carved the Grand Canyon, despite the fact that you have no evidence your flood ever even happened, and even if you did, you have no way of knowing if the Grand Canyon happened before the flood, during, or after the flood, because you have no independent method of dating it. Was every canyon everywhere carved during the "flood"?
Sorry if this sounds obtuse but how could a Global flood create a canyon? Any canyon. If the whole World was under water, how would it move in a way to carve rock like that?
You assume your flood carved the Grand Canyon, despite the fact that you have no evidence your flood ever even happened, and even if you did, you have no way of knowing if the Grand Canyon happened before the flood, during, or after the flood, because you have no independent method of dating it. Was every canyon everywhere carved during the "flood"?
Sorry if this sounds obtuse but how could a Global flood create a canyon? Any canyon. If the whole World was under water, how would it move in a way to carve rock like that?
Open to anyone.
I've wondered that for years.
I think it reflects a Creationist thought process "Lots of Water Do Big Thing, Make Canyons". I don't think they think it through further than that.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Sorry if this sounds obtuse but how could a Global flood create a canyon? Any canyon. If the whole World was under water, how would it move in a way to carve rock like that?
Open to anyone.
The typical creationist response is that a temporary dam trapped some of the water, and after the rest of the flood receded the dam broke and released the water; that scenario could indeed create something that looks like the Channeled Scablands or the Toutle River "canyon". Alas, neither of those resemble the Grand Canyon, with it's plethora of near-vertical walls, incised meanders, side canyons, and characteristics like that which are not formed by fast water in soft sediments.
I visited the Grand Canyon aprox 10 years ago. Started just north of Flagstaff and drove along towards Kingsman then crossed the Hoover dam.
My first thought was that it looked as though it was initialy carved by a glacier then by a river.
Never gave it much thought again till about 15 mins ago. Just done a google search and it seems as though it was entirely cut by liquid water. This is surprising to me as I tend to asociate vertical walls with ice. Not that I am in any way an expert.
It is damned impressive to actually see though. Pictures cannot do the awe inspiring grandeur justice.
I did neglect to answer a few of your questions ...
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 16 2006,08:51)
Now right off the bat, a thoughtful person would ask "Why different amounts of parent?" ... "Why shouldn't they have the same amounts of parent? They were formed at the same time, right?
They were not formed at exactly the same time. Some solidified a few minutes/days/years/centuries/millennia after the others. Also certain minerals take up certain atoms and reject others; e.g. Rubidium substitutes well for Potassium and Strontium substitutes well for Calcium, so you'll find more Rb in minerals that include K in their chemical formulas, and more Sr in minerals that include Ca in their chemical formulas. (Few minerals explicitly contain radioactive elements in their basic chemical formulas; the radioactive elements are trace elements substituted in the crystal lattice). Finally, the melt from which they solidified often is enriched or depleted in relevant elements by extraction or rejection by previously solidified parts. Different whole-rock samples never contain exactly the same minerals in exactly the same proportions as other samples, and often solidified at significantlly different times (be the difference seconds or be it millenia). So they contain different amounts of parent and daughter. But in an isotopically homogeneous source the ratio of isotopes of the same element is constant throughout the relevant volume, and at solidification all minerals that solidify from that source contain the same ratio of isotopes of the same element as the parent melt did. That's the extra information that allows us to get the original amount of daughter at solidification, because the amount of the non-radiogenic isotope of the daughter in the samples doesn't change over time.
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And if they had different amounts of parent when formed, why shouldn't they have different amounts of daughter also when formed?
They did. It's only your penchant for making things up and ignoring your abysmal ignorance and lack of success in making things up that leads you to believe that.
We have been discussing Argon dating which falls into the general category of "Model Age Dating."
Now we move to the second general category of dating methods called the Whole Rock Isochron method. Both this method and the Mineral Isochron method can be represented by the generalized charts above. Let's talk about Whole Rock Isochron "dating" first. Sometimes it can be very confusing to separate data from conclusions, so let's start with the data first. The data is shown in the chart on the far right. You can see that this represents 6 samples from a "cogenetic suite" which means, for example, that you might have a 1 meter thick layer of igneous rock and you take 6 samples that are fairly close to one another in the same layer. Now if you do this and send the samples off to the lab, the lab crushes them and does a chemical analysis. What do you get from the lab? In our example above, we get particular concentrations of parent and daughter (we'll call them "units" for simplicity and ignore the ratios).
The plots are goofy. Isochron plots plot isotope ratios.
Doing multiple whole-rock isochrons can be used to derive the age of source material instead of solidification of the igneous rock. Particularly instructive would be isochrons from individual minerals within the same sample.
Proximity is not enough to guarantee cogenetic origin.. Are these the same lava flow, or not?
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
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"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
Wow. 193 pages of this crap! Truly impressive. Kudos to all with the perseverance to keep holding afd's feet to the fire. But beyond a certain point, incinerated feet can't get any more incinerated.
Seriously. It occurs to me that the only reason sane people take the time to even confront this pre-medieval silliness is because of the scary political prominence of the would-be theocrats. So to those of us in the U.S. - let's resolve to devote at least as much time, energy and resources to the upcoming election as to diversions like Davey-doodles.
You assume your flood carved the Grand Canyon, despite the fact that you have no evidence your flood ever even happened, and even if you did, you have no way of knowing if the Grand Canyon happened before the flood, during, or after the flood, because you have no independent method of dating it. Was every canyon everywhere carved during the "flood"?
Sorry if this sounds obtuse but how could a Global flood create a canyon? Any canyon. If the whole World was under water, how would it move in a way to carve rock like that?
Open to anyone.
I've wondered that for years.
I think it reflects a Creationist thought process "Lots of Water Do Big Thing, Make Canyons". I don't think they think it through further than that.
Our friend Dave referred to underground sources of water, therefore unable to erode lanscapes. But presumably, there was enough rain for the erosion of the Grand Canyon in 40 days, but not too much so that Noah could build his arch safely.
Our friend Dave referred to underground sources of water, therefore unable to erode lanscapes. But presumably, there was enough rain for the erosion of the Grand Canyon in 40 days, but not too much so that Noah could build his arch safely.
You get the picture?
Except for the fact that Dave's "flood" doesn't have any water to begin with. That's the principal problem with his flood "hypothesis." The rest is just details.
But without a source (or a sink) for his flood, he's up a dry creek without a bicycle. His canoe ain't gonna do him any good at all.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So to those of us in the U.S. - let's resolve to devote at least as much time, energy and resources to the upcoming election as to diversions like Davey-doodles.
I certainly plan to. After all, the truth of the matter is that creationism and "ID" represent religio-political power moves, anyway. It ain't about science, that's for sure.
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I visited the Grand Canyon aprox 10 years ago. Started just north of Flagstaff and drove along towards Kingsman then crossed the Hoover dam.
I was born in the southwest (New Mexico) and being at the Grand Canyon in winter is a highlight of my life. The National Parks of Utah in winter aren't too shabby, either -- I'd just make sure I buy my beverages of choice out-of-state -- I found it's just easier.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Wow. 193 pages of this crap! Truly impressive. Kudos to all with the perseverance to keep holding afd's feet to the fire. But beyond a certain point, incinerated feet can't get any more incinerated.
Seriously. It occurs to me that the only reason sane people take the time to even confront this pre-medieval silliness is because of the scary political prominence of the would-be theocrats. So to those of us in the U.S. - let's resolve to devote at least as much time, energy and resources to the upcoming election as to diversions like Davey-doodles.
The other fundies run away after a few pages or get into subjective qualities when everyone goes bonkers. This one stays around and offers a very detailed look into a particular mindset.
I for one truly enjoy the often bizzare banter that develops when the difficult student (Dave) pops up with some Chickian response to the science teacher and all the good students have to say "No,no, no. You're gettin it wrong."
But the difficult student sticks to his (fluid ) ideas and the class moves on. I can't wait to get to various core samples personally. I learned a bit about various Rm techniques and now I'm off to another topic.
Hopefully, we can squeeze in a discussion of the founding fathers if we get lucky. I offered Dave to discuss his book on Dave's blog (I even bought the wretched thing) but he petered out there. I would love to have a one on one debate with him on the idea that the founding fathers wanted a christian nation but, since I appear to be sidelined by Dave at the moment, I will have to be content with a quick comment now and then.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
So they contain different amounts of parent and daughter. But in an isotopically homogeneous source the ratio of isotopes of the same element is constant throughout the relevant volume, and at solidification all minerals that solidify from that source contain the same ratio of isotopes of the same element as the parent melt did. That's the extra information that allows us to get the original amount of daughter at solidification, because the amount of the non-radiogenic isotope of the daughter in the samples doesn't change over time.
OK. So let's say our hypothetical example in the chart above are from the same lava flow so Tracy will be happy. (Oh, and Tracy, the plots are not "goofy" ... they do plot isochron ratios. As I explained, the ratios are not shown for simplicity.) So we select 6 samples and do a Whole Rock Isochron analysis. Let's also assume that we are doing a Rb/Sr analysis, so in this example, the non-radiogenic daughter product that JonF refers to would be 86Sr. The radiogenic parent would be 87Rb and the radiogenic daughter would be 87Sr. This means that the "daughter units of abundance" (vertical axis) is really the ratio 87Sr/86Sr (now are you happy, Tracy?). And the "parent units of abundance (horizontal axis) is really the ratio 87Rb/86Sr.
So here is our data again from the lab (I just eyeballed the charts) ...
Where P stands for Parent ratio, D stands for Daughter ratio ... so what we are saying for this example is for Sample 1, the Parent ratio, P = 87Rb/86Sr = 275 (nm/g) / 250 (nm/g) = 1.1 and the Daughter ratio, D = 87Sr/86Sr = 450 (nm/g) / 250 (nm/g) = 1.8. These are typical values that you might find. The units nm/g mean nano-moles per gram.
Now that we have some real numbers attached to our hypothetical charts, let's return to the assumptions.
"DEEP TIMER" ASSUMPTION: The Daughter Ratio, D, was the same in all six samples when the sample was formed. In this case, the samples were formed at the same time from the same lava flow, so they are "cogenetic." This means that we are assuming a Daughter ratio, D = 1.0 for all six samples. So Sample 1 might have a ratio of 250 / 250, Sample 2 might be 150 / 150 etc. So the actual concentration (nm/g) might be different among the different samples, but the assumption is merely saying that the ratio of concentrations of Radiogenic Daughter to Stable Daughter is the same among all the samples when the sample is first formed.
Now I understand Jon's statement that "in an isotopically homogeneous source the ratio of isotopes of the same element is constant throughout the relevant volume, and at solidification all minerals that solidify from that source contain the same ratio of isotopes of the same element as the parent melt did", but I guess I'm just not seeing how you can say that [i]this was definitely an isotopically homogeneous source." I understand that it was "cogenetic" ... no problem with that. But how can we say that the 87Sr/86Sr ratio was the same for all samples when formed? Why should there be ANY 87Sr at all when formed? Or if there is some, why couldn't there be a lot so that the ratio is 1.5 or 2.0 initially? I mean ... the parent ratio, 87Rb/86Sr sure isn't the same for all the samples. Why should the daughter ratio be the same? Are you telling me that if I go buy a furnace and melt some rock and then let it cool, that my 87Sr/86Sr ratio will be the same for any sample, but my 87Rb/86Sr ratio will NOT be the same? What mechanism could possibly be operating on the initial 87Rb that would not also be operating on the initial 87Sr to distribute it variously and thus yield different ratios for BOTH parent and daughter ratios?
Sorry if this sounds obtuse but how could a Global flood create a canyon? Any canyon. If the whole World was under water, how would it move in a way to carve rock like that?
Open to anyone.
The Missoula Flood story is one worth reading and gives a very good explanation of how the Grand Canyon and many others were formed ... you should read the whole story here ...
Better yet ... spend some time at the AIG web site and buy some of their books. But don't let these guys know if you do ... they will laugh you off the planet!
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The flood overtopped a ridge north of the Snake River, rapidly cutting a narrow canyon 500 feet deep. The modern Palouse River that used to flow west into the Columbia River before the flood now takes a 90 degree left-hand turn south and flows through the canyon carved by the flood. This is called a water gap in which a river or stream flows through a barrier instead of flowing around it. If a geologist did not know about the Lake Missoula Flood, he would have suggested one of three main speculations on the formation of water gaps. But it was formed in the Lake Missoula flood. The Lake Missoula flood provides an analog for the thousand or more rivers over the earth that now flow through mountain barriers, sometimes through gaps much deeper than Grand Canyon. The river should have gone around the barrier, if the slow processes over millions of years model were true, but these water gaps through transverse barriers can be cut rapidly during the Genesis Flood.6
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Sorry if this sounds obtuse but how could a Global flood create a canyon? Any canyon. If the whole World was under water, how would it move in a way to carve rock like that?
Open to anyone.
The Missoula Flood story is one worth reading and gives a very good explanation of how the Grand Canyon and many others were formed ... you should read the whole story here ...
Better yet ... spend some time at the AIG web site and buy some of their books. But don't let these guys know if you do ... they will laugh you off the planet!
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The flood overtopped a ridge north of the Snake River, rapidly cutting a narrow canyon 500 feet deep. The modern Palouse River that used to flow west into the Columbia River before the flood now takes a 90 degree left-hand turn south and flows through the canyon carved by the flood. This is called a water gap in which a river or stream flows through a barrier instead of flowing around it. If a geologist did not know about the Lake Missoula Flood, he would have suggested one of three main speculations on the formation of water gaps. But it was formed in the Lake Missoula flood. The Lake Missoula flood provides an analog for the thousand or more rivers over the earth that now flow through mountain barriers, sometimes through gaps much deeper than Grand Canyon. The river should have gone around the barrier, if the slow processes over millions of years model were true, but these water gaps through transverse barriers can be cut rapidly during the Genesis Flood.6
During the flood there would be no rivers or dry land though. Wasn't everything covered by water? Surely water action would tend to smooth rock formations during a global flood, not cut canyons.
So what is next? The canyon was cut after the flood receded by trapped flood water?
If you are going to use that argument then where did all the other water go when it left the land? Was the remnant water just forgotten about by God? Did he leave it there on purpose to cut canyons?
Or maybe the flood story in the Bible is not 100% correct. Could it not be an analogy, a legend or a means to just scare peope to do what the priesthood tells them?
The plots are goofy. Isochron plots plot isotope ratios.
Yup. Wonder where he got 'em. There are lots of good illustrative plots on the Web, our Davie managed to dig up a lousy and misleading set.
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Doing multiple whole-rock isochrons can be used to derive the age of source material instead of solidification of the igneous rock.
Davie-doo doesn't even know the uints of the axes, he doesn't have a prayer of understanding how that works.
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Particularly instructive would be isochrons from individual minerals within the same sample.
Do you mean a mineral isochron, in which each sample is an individual mineral, or something else? Davie did mention mineral isochrons, but he seems to think that theer's a mineral isochron method and a whole-rock isochron method, while in reality there's an isochron method that is applied to different types of samples. But that's nothing compared to his other misunderstandings.
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Proximity is not enough to guarantee cogenetic origin.. Are these the same lava flow, or not?
Are you thinking Austin? I considered the possibility. Davie-diddles stated that they are hypothetical samples. He may be lying.
{Sigh} You really need to learn about this stuff, Davie, you can't just make it up as you go along. Oh, and how 'bout them Grand Staircase paleosols? Waiting for your explanation, especially what possible mechanism held the plants in place with their roots in growing position and packed sediment around them. Gee, isn't that kind of like your "what possible mechanism" question below? Of course, there's an answer for your question, but no answer for mine!
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 17 2006,07:05)
I guess I'm just not seeing how you can say that this was definitely an isotopically homogeneous source." I understand that it was "cogenetic" ... no problem with that. But how can we say that the 87Sr/86Sr ratio was the same for all samples when formed?
That's pretty much the definition of cogenetic; isotopically homogeneous. We know that there's a very very very good chance that the ratio was the same for all samples because the data plots on a straight line today. (The example you picked doesn't plot on a good-enough straight line, but that's a minor point). Straight lines can be caused by identical initial ratios, mixing in sources with different isotopic ratios (but we have very good evidence that such lines are rare) or random chance (but that's not going to happen often). It's faintly possible that a very few of the tens of thousands of isochron dates are in error because of mixing or random chance; it's not possible that they are all in error, or even that a lot of our dates are in error.
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Why should there be ANY 87Sr at all when formed?
It's everywhere, Davie-doodles. About 0.0005% of you is strontium, and the isotopic ratio in you is at least close to today's average world-wide isotopic ratio. (And about 0.001% of you is Rb).
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Or if there is some, why couldn't there be a lot so that the ratio is 1.5 or 2.0 initially?
You are confusing [i]quantities with ratios. Having a lot means nothing about the isotopic ratio.
The initial ratio is wherever the Y-intercept is; either whoever made up the samples you chose either arbitrarily decided to make the Y-intercept 1 or they normalized the initial ratio to 1. In reality, there's an average 87Sr/86Sr concentration over the entire Earth (actually, there's a mantle average and a slightly different crustal average). Of course, this overall average changes over time as 87Rb decays to 87Sr. In most cases, the Y-intercept of an isochron turns out to be very close to the overall average concentration at the time indicated by the slope of the isochron ... samples that we measure as younger tend to have a higher initial 87Sr/86Sr concentration ... how do you like them kumquats! E.g. real initial 87Sr/86Sr concentrations (as measured by the Y-intercept of the isochron) run in the vicinity of 0.70, real initial 143Nd/144Nd ratios run in the vicinity of 0.51, both for rocks measured as a few billion years old. Any theory of the meaning of isochrons has to explain this fact ... you won't forget that as the discussion continues, will you, Davie-diddles?
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I mean ... the parent ratio, 87Rb/86Sr sure isn't the same for all the samples. Why should the daughter ratio be the same? Are you telling me that if I go buy a furnace and melt some rock and then let it cool, that my 87Sr/86Sr ratio will be the same for any sample, but my 87Rb/86Sr ratio will NOT be the same? What mechanism could possibly be operating on the initial 87Rb that would not also be operating on the initial 87Sr to distribute it variously and thus yield different ratios for BOTH parent and daughter ratios?
Your ignorance is showing again, Dave. You really should read the links I gave, you need to learn a lot more before you're ready to discuss.
You bet your bippy that, if you go buy a furnace and melt some rock and then let it cool, your 87Sr/86Sr ratio will be the same for any sample and your 87Rb/86Sr ratio will NOT be the same between samples. Absolutely guaranteed.
The "possible mechanism" is basic chemistry and statistics. 87Sr and 86Sr atoms are chemically identical and near-as-dammit mechanically identical; they're the same size (insofar as the size of an atom has any meaning) and almost the same mass (it takes some serious and large and high-tech equipment to separate them based on mass). So, when a crystal is forming from an isotopically homogeneous melt and for one reason or another a strontium atom gets incorporated in the crystal, the probability that the atom is an 86Sr atom is the same as the ratio of 86Sr atoms to all Sr atoms in the melt and so on for all the four isotopes. And, since we are working with untold megazillions of atoms in even small samples, the law of large numbers takes over. This immediately leads to two facts: the ratio of any two strontium isotopes in the solidified crystal is the same as it was in the melt, and the ratio of any two strontium isotopes in the melt does not change as crystals solidify from it (although the amount of strontium in the melt can and does change).
But Rb atoms are chemically and mechanically very different from Sr atoms. Rb has one electron in its outer shell, Sr has two. Rb+ is 1.48 Angstroms "diameter", Sr++ is 1.13 Angstroms "diameter". So Rb doesn't get incorporated where Sr gets incorporated, and there's no probability that connects the Rb isotopic uptake with the Sr isotopic concentrations. Of course, the initial proportion of 87Rb to 85Rb in the crystal will be the same as it was in the melt, and for the same reasons as for strontium, but that's not relevant to dating.
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The Missoula Flood story is one worth reading and gives a very good explanation of how the Grand Canyon and many others were formed
The features formed by the Missoula flood bear no resemblance to the Grand Canyon features.
AFDave: The Missoula Flood story is one worth reading and gives a very good explanation of how the Grand Canyon and many others were formed
Tell me again Dave, how did that buried canyon in China form? You know, the one I showed you that's cut into rock hard limestone and covered with over 17,000 feet of sediment?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
The Missoula Flood story is one worth reading and gives a very good explanation of how the Grand Canyon and many others were formed ... you should read the whole story here ...
Amazing, isn't it, how even after it's pointed out to Dave that the Missoula river canyon looks nothing like the Grand Canyon and was formed via totally different mechanisms, he still points to it as an example of how the Grand Canyon was formed.
It really makes you wonder if Dave is any more educable than a dog.
One more time, Dave: How do you know how old the Grand Canyon is, without reference to your Bible? After all, the Bible certainly is not an eyewitness (or even a god-witness) account of the formation of the Grand Canyon; it doesn't even mention the Grand Canyon. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that your "flood" didn't happen, how would you know whether the Grand Canyon was formed before, during, or after the "flood'?
You wouldn't, would you?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
The plots are goofy. Isochron plots plot isotope ratios.
Yup. Wonder where he got 'em. There are lots of good illustrative plots on the Web, our Davie managed to dig up a lousy and misleading set.
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Doing multiple whole-rock isochrons can be used to derive the age of source material instead of solidification of the igneous rock.
Davie-doo doesn't even know the uints of the axes, he doesn't have a prayer of understanding how that works.
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Particularly instructive would be isochrons from individual minerals within the same sample.
Do you mean a mineral isochron, in which each sample is an individual mineral,
Yes.
Quote (JonF @ Sep. 17 2006,08:12)
Davie did mention mineral isochrons, but he seems to think that theer's a mineral isochron method and a whole-rock isochron method, while in reality there's an isochron method that is applied to different types of samples. But that's nothing compared to his other misunderstandings.
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Proximity is not enough to guarantee cogenetic origin.. Are these the same lava flow, or not?
Are you thinking Austin? I considered the possibility. Davie-diddles stated that they are hypothetical samples. He may be lying.
I suspect the plots are from the "RATE" book. Just a guess.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
So they contain different amounts of parent and daughter. But in an isotopically homogeneous source the ratio of isotopes of the same element is constant throughout the relevant volume, and at solidification all minerals that solidify from that source contain the same ratio of isotopes of the same element as the parent melt did. That's the extra information that allows us to get the original amount of daughter at solidification, because the amount of the non-radiogenic isotope of the daughter in the samples doesn't change over time.
OK. So let's say our hypothetical example in the chart above are from the same lava flow so Tracy will be happy.
Then there should be only one point, not a line!
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 17 2006,06:05)
(Oh, and Tracy, the plots are not "goofy" ... they do plot isochron ratios. As I explained, the ratios are not shown for simplicity.) So we select 6 samples and do a Whole Rock Isochron analysis. Let's also assume that we are doing a Rb/Sr analysis, so in this example, the non-radiogenic daughter product that JonF refers to would be 86Sr. The radiogenic parent would be 87Rb and the radiogenic daughter would be 87Sr. This means that the "daughter units of abundance" (vertical axis) is really the ratio 87Sr/86Sr (now are you happy, Tracy?). And the "parent units of abundance (horizontal axis) is really the ratio 87Rb/86Sr.
So here is our data again from the lab (I just eyeballed the charts) ...
Oh, Davie-doodles, while looking for the above reference I stumbled across Age determination of Precambrian rocks from Greenland: past and present. He's speaking of dating in Greenland, and he doesn't totally support my claims about the history of radiometric dating, but he sure rebuts your claim that K-Ar is the most common method of dating:
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The history of geochronology can be roughly divided into three periods:
1) a period of single-sample K-Ar and Rb-Sr mineral or whole-rock age determinations; 2) a time when most ages were determined with the help of Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb whole-rock isochrons and multi-grain zircon U-Pb isotope data; 3) the present, where 'single' zircon U-Pb data are the preferred method to obtain rock ages. ...
The first results of K-Ar and Rb-Sr single-sample dating for Greenland rocks were published around 1960. ...
By the beginning of the 1970s, dating of whole rocks with the help of Rb-Sr isochrons had come into general use. ...
Among the first to report modern U-Pb zircon data for Greenland rocks was Baadsgaard (1973), ...
It also is helpful in dialogue to know where a person is coming from.
Yes, American history to me is about the United States of America, which in my opinion, began with white settlers. Sorry if that sounds insensitive or something, but that appears to be the facts of history. And I'm not excusing Indian mistreatment either. Just stating the facts.
Yes, it is useful to know where a person is coming from. Your condescending attitude towards non whites (and Native Americans in particular) has already been noted. You've also made the claim that your "good book" can explain racial differences. I can't wait for that explanation.
You aren't stating the facts, you are expressing your massively ignorant opinions.
American History extends farther into the past than your "inerrant mythology" can account for so you have to discredit anything that predates your dogma.
We don't even need to discuss pre Clovis sites to blow your 'merican history starts with fundy white immigrants wiping out the local inhabitants view of American History (much less the History of the Universe).
Let's add racist to moron and willfully ignorant liar!
It's taken a while but AFDave has finally blown my cloaking device. I invested heavily in time and money to protect my lurker status but all previous protections are now null and void.
As a long time lurker since page 1 of this thread (and the previous related topics in April06) I've laughed (and almost cried) at the antics to prove the present Hypothesis under question. The latest Isochron set-up by AFDave went over the top for me.
I was reading the initial Isochron post (and JonF and Tracy Hamilton response) and glanced over to my bookshelf full of my undergrad chemical engineering textbooks to see where AFDave had gone wrong (again). I didn't have to get further than my freshman math texts, not even the vector calc or matrix algebra is needed for this argument. I guess AFDave's EE degree never went into variance over time (d/dt) or how this relation could be extracted from Isochron evidence to derive the ratios in question. I can almost predict AFDave's argument without knowing the details of Isochron dating since the math is fairly straight forward BUT can be misrepresented by hand-waving and jargon to those without a graphical interpretation skill in there head (something I'm blessed/cursed with).
If AFDave wants to misrepresent mathematical arguments as it relates to raw data then he should choose reaction rate chemistry or IR plots of mixed organic compounds. Those data sets are tough to interpret except by skilled or experienced technicians.
I look forward to the mathematical gymnastics that AFDave will have to display in this topic. Let the mathematically challenged special olympics begin.
And..... thanks for all the patience and time of all the regular posters on this thread. It's good reading on plane trips.
It's taken a while but AFDave has finally blown my cloaking device. I invested heavily in time and money to protect my lurker status but all previous protections are now null and void.
As a long time lurker since page 1 of this thread (and the previous related topics in April06) I've laughed (and almost cried) at the antics to prove the present Hypothesis under question. The latest Isochron set-up by AFDave went over the top for me.
Welcome!
And I am glad Dear Dave does serve a useful purpose here
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
OK. So let's say our hypothetical example in the chart above are from the same lava flow so Tracy will be happy.
Then there should be only one point, not a line!
Er, maybe, maybe not. In a message to AfDave I pointed out that samples from different parts of one lava flow commonly have different makeups of minerals, and therefore whole-rock methods can and do give rise to different points on an isochron plot.
If the magma was not completely melted. You have to put it in very simple terms for AFDave.
One wonders if he will acknowledge the clear statement of the history of which method was most popular in radiometric dating. Maybe AFDave will get Tyred of it.
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
Yes, it is useful to know where a person is coming from. Your condescending attitude towards non whites (and Native Americans in particular) has already been noted. You've also made the claim that your "good book" can explain racial differences. I can't wait for that explanation.
The latest Isochron set-up by AFDave went over the top for me.
Me too. Except that for me it just got too boring. I was able to keep up with and be interested in the likes of the zircon discussion and the xenoliths discussion but this one just catches my brain flat-footed. I could even write this one off in my mind having dave "win" this argument and he'd still be no closer to supporting his "hypothesis".
I am happy to take a much closer look at dendro, ice cores, limestone, C14 and many other things in due course ... however, I am only one guy with a limited amount of bandwidth and I have to take one topic at a time.
It seemed logical to me to look closely at radiometric dating since we just finished looking at the Grand Staircase in some detail and it is claimed that the layers of the Grand Staircase can be dated (or at least bracketed) radiometrically.
Is this such an unreasonable approach?
In order to finish looking at radiometric dating, you're going to need to look at dendrochronology and core samples and how they relate to RM dating.
Er, maybe, maybe not. In a message to AfDave I pointed out that samples from different parts of one lava flow commonly have different makeups of minerals, and therefore whole-rock methods can and do give rise to different points on an isochron plot.
If the magma was not completely melted.
Not necessarily. Since solidification is not instantaneous throughout the magma/lava (leading to enhancement or depletion in various elements) and since temperature is not uniform throughout the solidifying magma/lava (leading to inhomogeneity in the amounts of various mineral types), whole-rock tests on single-source igneous rocks do work and are done.
"Another development of the Rb-Sr method (Schreiner, 1958), was the analysis of co-genetic whole-rock sample suites, as an alternative to separate minerals. To be effective, a whole-rock suite must display variation in modal mineral content, such that samples display a range of Rb/Sr ratios, without introducing any variation in initial Sr isotope ratio. In actual fact, perfect initial ratio homogeneity may not be achieved, especially in rocks with a mixed magmatic parentage. However, if the spread in Rb/Sr ratios is sufficient, then any initial ratio variations are swamped, and an accurate age can be determined. Initial ratio heterogeneity is a greater problem in Sm-Nd isochrons, and is therefore discussed under that heading (section 4.1.2). Schreiner's proposal actually preceded the invention of the Rb-Sr isochron diagram, but some of his data are presented on an isochron diagram in Fig. 3.4 to demonstrate the method.
Fig. 3.4. Rb-Sr whole-rock isochron for the "red granite" of the Bushveld complex, using the data of Schreiner (1958). ...
(By a stroke of luck, the Royal Society Archives are open now, but that link won't work after December).
Note "especially in rocks with a mixed magmatic parentage", clearly meaning that the method applies to rocks with single magmatic parentage.
And, from section 4.1:
"This equation has the same form as that for Rb-Sr (section 3.2) and can be plotted as an isochron diagram. However, because Sm and Nd have very similar chemical properties (unlike Rb and Sr), large ranges of Sm/Nd in whole-rock systems are rare, and in particular, low Sm/Nd ratios near the y axis are very rare. Therefore, because of the difficulty of obtaining a wide range of Sm/Nd ratios from a single rock body, and because of the greater technical demands of Nd isotope analysis, the Sm-Nd isochron method was generally applied to problems where Rb-Sr isochrons had proved unsatisfactory. Many of these applications were also made before the U/Pb zircon method had reached its present level of development (section 5.2.2). Therefore some of these units have subsequently been dated to greater accuracy and precision by the U/Pb method. However, it is important to review a few case studies to show the development of the method."
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You have to put it in very simple terms for AFDave.
Oh, yes.
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One wonders if he will acknowledge the clear statement of the history of which method was most popular in radiometric dating. Maybe AFDave will get Tyred of it.
We don't even need to discuss pre Clovis sites to blow your 'merican history starts with fundy white immigrants wiping out the local inhabitants view of American History (much less the History of the Universe).
Let's add racist to moron and willfully ignorant liar!
Ahhh....you did elaborate. Too bad the explanation's silly: the history of America is not congruent to the history of North America. Your hatred of the West whines through loud and clear, however.....
Oh, Davie can't even conceive of considering the interconnections and correlations among all branches of science. His only hope, futile though it is, is to consider each teeny subset in isolation.
WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRON "DATING" WAS DISCREDITED LONG AGO AND I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT ... SILLY ME (AND SILLY YOU)
(Refuted by a couple of Creationists *gasp* and subsequently discarded by the Godfather ... Brent Dalrymple himself)
So here's where we are in our study of the Isochron Method of dating rocks ... we have looked at a hypothetical set of charts which are very good because they really help you understand the logic. And yes, they are from the RATE books. (But don't buy them ... they might destroy your comfy worldview) We are looking at whole rock isochrons first, then we will look at mineral isochrons. Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed Initial Daughter Ratio is closer to 0.7 for the Rb/Sr analyses.
We might just as well continue our discussion with this real world example. But before we continue with that example, let's consider a statement made by JonF ...
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You bet your bippy that, if you go buy a furnace and melt some rock and then let it cool, your 87Sr/86Sr ratio will be the same for any sample and your 87Rb/86Sr ratio will NOT be the same between samples. Absolutely guaranteed.
Jon made this statement and then went on to explain the size difference between Rb and Sr. Jon's statement that the atoms are different sizes is correct (I think he meant to say radius, not diameter ... my chart shows 1.48 as the radius for Rb+), however, I don't think size matters in regard to our present question (Sorry, Godzilla). Certainly Rb atoms are going to be emplaced within crystal structures differently that Sr atoms because of their difference in size.
But that is not the issue.
The issue is this: If a mass of lava is thoroughly mixed, then the atomic size difference does not matter. Everything is mixed thoroughly and Sample 1 should have the same composition as Sample 2, and Sample 3, etc. Yes, the Rb will be emplaced into the various mineral crystal structures differently than the Sr is emplaced, but the different emplacement should operate the same in all samples. And I think Tracy is right. If this is the case, you will have single point on your isochron diagram which of course is meaningless WRT an age calculation.
I did some more reading on this topic and I found some interesting things ...
Here's the Talk Origins article on the issue, complete with an animated GIF by someone named Jon Fleming (I'm guessing this is our own famous JonF?) ...
The article does a wonderful job explaining the theory of the Isochron Method ... too bad that the fundamental assumptions appear to be wrong ... and apparently even Dalrymple cannot defend them anymore.
The following article sums up the fatal flaw with Whole Rock Isochron dating ... interestingly, Talk Origins doesn't even mention this article despite the fact that Dalrymple tried unsuccessfully to refute it. I suppose it is an embarrassment to Talk Origins and they would rather try to refute some less competent writers ... such as Gill and Zheng. (I'm not saying Gill and Zheng are incompetent ... I have not read them ... but apparently TO does.)
Let's take a look at the William Overn article found here ...
ABSTRACT Radiometric rock dating, the methodology of determining the date of formation of a rock sample by the well-established rate of decay of the isotopes contained, depends on accurately determination of the starting points, the original concentrations of the isotopes. Many methods of estimating these beginning concentrations have been proposed, but all rest on tenuous assumptions which have limited their acceptance. This paper attempts to show that the Isochron-Diagram method contains a logical flaw that invalidates it. This most accepted of all methods has two variations, the mineral isochron and the whole-rock isochron. The logically-sound authenticating mechanism of the mineral isochron is applied to the whole-rock isochron, where it is invalid. The long-term stability of the whole-rock is applied to the mineral, where it is inappropriate.
When the isochron data are the result of the rock being a blend of two original species, the diagram is called a mixing line, having no time significance. This paper shows that all whole-rock isochrons are necessarily mixing lines. It is noted that by analogy the mixing-line logic casts strong suspicion on the mineral isochron as well. Since only whole-rock isochrons play a significant role in the dating game anyway, isotopic geochronology can be rather generally discredited.
Introduction: Thanks mainly to the fact that they appear to be so constant, the decay rates of radioactive materials have become the primary mechanism for attempting to discover the age of rocks.[5,16] In addition to a constant rate of variation, however, any timing mechanism must also have a calibrated beginning point. A number of methods have been tried to calibrate the "radiometric clock". But they have all required unprovable and apparently unwarranted assumptions. Faure, in his textbook [9] refers to all of them as "assumed values" except for those obtained by the "isochron", or similar linear method.
The linear methods are several, and have in common the reduction of the data to a set which can yield a straight-line plot. Many exceedingly detailed descriptions of these methods are available.[1,2,5,16] A summary description of the Rb-Sr isochron is included below.
ARNDTS AND OVERN RAISE THE "BE" FLAG (BE stands for JonF style "Bovine Excrement")
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Arndts and Overn alerted the creationist community to the fact that in spite of the mathematical rigor of the isochron, it also has unwarranted assumptions, and the data carefully gathered and processed to indicate immense ages can more appropriately be dismissed as indicating the recent mixing of two or more magmas.[1,2,3]
DALRYMPLE, THE FAMOUS CHAMPION OF RM DATING TRIES TO REFUTE ARNDTS AND OVERN
DALRYMPLE DODGES THE BULLET HAVING BEEN THOROUGHLY REFUTED.
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In Dalrymple's latest book [7] he ignores the entire issue of the whole-rock isochron, only defending the mineral isochron.
Wow ... did you catch all that so far? A couple of creationists (leading the way in the search for truth as usual), blow the whistle on "Whole Rock Isochron" dating and show it is fatally flawed. Dalrymple cannot disagree, so he ignores it and promotes "Mineral Isochron" dating. Talk Origins has to be aware of this, but does not even mention it. Why? Too much good ammo for creationists, maybe?
This would explain why the 2006 Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say ...
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Rubidium–strontium (Rb–Sr) dating was the first technique in which the whole rock isochron method was extensively employed. Certain rocks that cooled quickly at the surface were found to give precisely defined linear isochrons, but many others did not. Some studies have shown that rubidium is very mobile both in fluids that migrate through the rock as it cools and in fluids that are present as the rock undergoes chemical weathering. Similar studies have shown that the samarium–neodymium (Sm–Nd) parent–daughter pair is more resistant to secondary migration but that, in this instance, sufficient initial spread in the abundance of the parent isotope is difficult to achieve.
There is sound logic supporting the mineral isochron, but another fatal flaw. Individual mineral crystals are not closed systems. Even over the few thousands of years available in the young-earth paradigm, they are insufficiently stable to give acceptable data to the geochronologists.
Overn describes the Rb-Sr Method
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The Rb-Sr Isochron Method Rubidium and strontium occur as trace elements in many common rock types. Rubidium has two isotopes. 85Rb (stable, abundance 72%) and 87Rb (radioactive). 87Rb decays to 87Sr with a half-life of (approximately) 48.8 billion years. Strontium is stable in all natural forms, and in addition to the radiogenic 87Sr (7%), has isotopes 88Sr (82%), 86Sr (10%), and 84Sr (<1%).
The general method of dating is to take several samples of the rock, to determine the ratios of the Rb-Sr isotopes in each, and by simultaneous equations determine the probable beginning points for each, from which the age may be determined.[16]
For the sake of compatibility with the available laboratory instruments, the specific ratios chosen are 87Rb-86Sr and 87Sr-86Sr. The algebra is equivalent to a simple straight-line diagram as in Figure 1. where points a, b, and c represent the samples.
Here is graphically represented the fact that the amount of daughter isotope increases as the amount of parent increases in the sample. The magnitude of that increase (i.e. the slope of the line) depends on the time allowed for the decay process to transpire, or the age of the rock. If we extrapolate down the line to the zero intercept, we have a representation of a sample with no parent isotope to contribute to the daughter concentration. This must represent the initial daughter concentration.
The slope is the age and the intercept is the initial daughter ratio. The scheme is mathematically sound. We must examine the assumptions.
For a problem to be solvable by simultaneous equations there must be as many independent equations as there are unknowns. The unknowns are the original 87Sr-86Sr ratio for each sample and the age of each sample. [THIS IS WHAT I SAID, REMEMBER?]Each sample gives one equation, but introduces two additional unknowns. Regardless of the number of samples, there are never enough equations to cover all the unknowns.[16] These problems must be resolved by the assumptions.
Assumption: The same age It is assumed that all samples analyzed together are the same age. The word "isochron" (from the Greek "same time") symbolizes that. We do not dispute this assumption.
Assumption: The same initial strontium ratio If all initial 87Sr-86Sr ratios in the system are assumed to be the same, the scheme can be made to work,[YES, THIS IS WHAT THEY DO ALRIGHT ... THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING] as the unknowns are reduced to two, the common age, and the common strontium ratio. Any two samples may now introduce the required two equations, and any more beyond that will simply improve the accuracy and the confidence level. This assumption is outside the experience based on field data, however, where the general case is that every sample has its own unique ratio.[DID YOU HEAR THAT? SO MUCH FOR JONF SAYING ALL SAMPLES HAVE THE SAME RATIO ... I DID NOT THINK THIS COULD BE TRUE.] However, it can be rationally assumed that each sample we find has its own age and its particular rubidium concentration, which over time may have imparted a unique portion of daughter isotope. The assumed uniform strontium ratios should certainly be valid when applied to a rock system solidifying from a uniform homogenized melt. We must emphasize, however, that this enabling assumption must fail in the absence of an initial homogenized melt.[AND I THINK WE HAVE NOW ESTABLISHED THAT THIS SITUATION ONLY YIELDS ONE DATA POINT, WHICH IN TURN DOESN'T GIVE US ANY "AGE" INFO]
Assumption: A "closed" system If isotopes have migrated in or out of the sample during the aging period, the resulting data have no time significance. Isochrons are thought to be self checking in this regard, since with several samples an open system with random migration should scatter the points off of the straight line. Indeed, it often happens that there is a scatter of data, rendering the isochron worthless. But there are many occurrences of isochrons having acceptably straight-line form that are also rejected. Often "metamorphism" is cited as the probable cause, the system having opened, either partially or completely resetting the clock. [11,19] In order to assure an acceptably closed system, samples as large as 1 meter cubes have been suggested.[20] The assumption of a closed system for many of the isochrons, if they have not been questioned by the geochronologists, will not be challenged here. We note that these are generally obtained on the samples of larger dimensions, that is the whole-rock isochrons.
Assumption: Independent equations If the equations are not independent, the problem cannot be solved. This would be the case where all samples on the diagram plot on a single point. Although the single point on the diagram is valid, there is no way of finding a slope or intercept. If the melt were initially homogeneous and remained closed, it could be expected still to be homogeneous, and yield that single-point isochron. This should be the general case of the whole-rock isochron.
The need is to find samples with a variety of initial rubidium content but still having initial strontium ratios that are known to be uniform. The assumed initial homogeneous melt cannot be expected to give whole-rock samples with variable rubidium, but the assumed uniform 87Sr-86Sr ratios demand such an initial homogeneous melt.
So I hate to sink your ship again ... I know it's painful, but the road to recovery always involves first admitting you have been wrong, so there's really no other option for you.
Note that most of the dates out there are "whole rock" dates ... or at least they were at the time this was written ... then Overn goes on to talk about the "Mineral Isochron" method which according to Dalrympe supposedly solves everything ...
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The mineral isochron solves the dilemma. The mineral crystals have done the job in an elegant way. Crystals naturally form around a specific chemical composition, each atom occupying its naturally-assigned site. Foreign atoms just don't fit, either electrochemically or physically, and are strongly rejected. Depending on its concentration in the melt, a foreign element may have more or less acceptance in a crystal, based on its chemical and physical resemblance to one or another of the normal host elements. As the crystals form, each different mineral type accepts a different trace level of rubidium and of strontium. Because of their individual unique chemistry they each extract a different amount of rubidium and of strontium from the melt. The crystals of the individual minerals are used as the rock samples in the mineral isochrons.
MIXING Often an isochron yields an unacceptable slope, indicating an age much too young or much too old to be compatible with the accepted model. [19] Frequently the slope is negative.[18,14] A common explanation for these cases is "mixing". It has always been recognized that the same straight-line plot as the isochron can be achieved if the original melt were a mixture of two original homogenized pools.[12] Figure 1. may also be used to illustrate this case. If points a and c are the compositions of the two original pools that partially merged to form the melt, any sample from the melt will occupy a place on a straight line between them, such as point b. No sample will be found above a or below c. Such a "mixing line" has no time significance, and the textbook warns to be wary of accepting such mixing as a true isochron.
Faure's text also proposes a test for mixing. [13] If a plot of 87Sr-86Sr vs 1/Sr (the concentration of strontium) shows a linear relationship, then mixing is indicated. A brief study conducted in 1981 showed a high degree of correlation to this mixing test in the isochrons being published.[3] A subsequent public dialog between Dalrymple[6] and Arndts & Overn [4] concluded that although the mixing test is strongly indicative of mixing, there are circumstances under which mixing would not be detected by such a test, and others wherein the test could give a false indication of mixing. The caution for the geochronologist would be to suspect any isochron, since there is no way to rule out mixing.
It is now clear, however, that there is at least one positive test for mixing. It is the whole-rock isochron itself. If the whole rock yields samples that give a linear plot, whether the slope is positive or negative, or whether the slope signifies an age that fits a preconceived model or not, there is no other known mechanism outside of mixing to which the data may be rationally ascribed.
Discussion Mixing is an unfortunate misnomer that has become popular for describing rocks formed from two or more original melts, or from a melt becoming contaminated by isolated incorporation of local rock. Understand it to mean partial mixing, with resulting heterogeneity. Complete mixing would result in homogeneity, and would give only a single point to plot. No curve of any kind, nor even a scattering of points would occur.
This homogeneity is the assumed starting point in the history of the rock being dated. It then solidifies. But now, years later, we dig up 6 adjacent meter cubes of the rock, and discover that the normalized ratio of the parent (and incidentally of the daughter) is different in each cube, sufficient to plot as an "isochron". How can we rationally accept the assumed initial homogeneity? We can not.
What is needed but missing in the whole rock isochron is a mechanism to establish initial homogeneity, and then to extract heterogeneous samples. The mineral crystals do the job in an elegant way. Each type accepts a different level of contamination of the parent isotope, chemically determined. One cannot rationally extend this process back to the whole rock. It has been tried, but there is a fallacy . [5,20]
As we stated in 1986: [5]
The whole-rock isochron is justified on the basis that migration of the isotopes in a metamorphic event may be confined to distances of perhaps 1 cm. This is much larger than the average crystal size. Thus the original constituents of each crystal will lie nearby. By taking samples of 100-cm dimensions, one could assure that the entire content of the original crystals are well represented by the sample, with very small error. However, this matrix is the original melt that was theorized to be homogeneous. The ability to find differences in the rubidium content among the samples violates the assumption of original homogeneity. Original inhomogeneity is the only possible explanation: in other words, mixing.
This method of justifying the whole-rock isochron on the basis of the mineral is logically unsound. Within the larger matrix the tiny crystals may incorporate discrete trace elements and return them over time. But they are powerless to alter the composition of the whole-rock matrix.
It is claimed that fractional crystallization of magmas and separation of crystals from the remaining liquid result in suites of comagmatic rocks of differing composition. [10]. This may be true, but there is no experimental evidence that this can generally be applied to trace elements that are foreign to the crystals. Add the fact that trace elements are not securely held by crystals until temperatures are well below the melting points, and this postulate falls far short of explaining the variation in rubidium in whole-rock isochrons. Mixing is much preferred, particularly when it is noted that many data sets have negative slope, where mixing is always the accepted explanation. Often the negative-slope data pertain to large formations that particularly fit the hypothesis of slow cooling from a melt. [15,18]
In the case of the mineral isochrons the scheme postulates an initial homogeneous melt, represented by a single point on the diagram. As the crystals form, their differential solubility will move their individual points on the diagram horizontally , different distances. (Only horizontally, since the vertical is a ratio of two isotopes of the same element).[THIS IS WHAT JONF WAS TALKING ABOUT IN HIS DISCUSSION OF ATOMIC "DIAMETERS" ... THE "T.O." ARTICLE ALSO SHOWS A DIAGRAM OF THIS ... IT IS A VALID POINT, BUT DOESN'T SALVAGE THE LOGIC BEHIND WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS] The large volume of whole-rock isochrons, however, shows the general case to be an initial heterogeneous melt represented by the kind of diagram published as an isochron, and which we conclude is actually a mixing line.[WHAT I WAS TRYING TO TELL YOU] Any point in the melt can be represented as a point on the straight line. When mineral crystals form, each crystal will move its point off the straight line in one or the other horizontal directions. The result is a scattering of the points. The geochronologist discards it as one of the following:
A three or more part mixture,
Subsequent metamorphosis,
Not a closed system: In this case he recognizes that crystals really cannot be expected to be a closed system. They tend to continue to reject contaminants long after formation, the mobilities of foreign elements in crystals being a whole school of scientific study. The retention of trace elements in crystals is so inadequate that it has been possible to construct "Isochrons" from various parts of the same crystal.[17] It is common that when the mineral isochron fails, the geochronologist then produces a whole-rock isochron from the same formation.
The ability to obtain a whole-rock diagram, straight-line or not, can be considered proof that the data represent a "mixing line" rather than an "isochron". If mixing has not occurred, and the system has remained closed, then the whole-rock data must all lie on a single point. In fact, even if the whole-rock data show scatter, either mixing is indicated -- but of a complex nature, with more than two components -- or there have been subsequent alterations described as the system being open, or both.
Has any legitimate isochron ever been formed? It is improbable. There is ample evidence for mixing. Any "isochron" could be mixing. There is no way to rule it out. All whole-rock "isochrons" are mixing, and they are approximately 90% of all published. Many of the remaining (mineral) "isochrons" have a whole-rock point located close enough to the straight line to discredit them. Why should we expect any of the others to be "true isochrons", since mixing has the strongest probability?
Wow ... 90% of all the isochron "dates" published are whole rock AND Dalrymple had no defense when whole rock dating was shown to be fatally flawed!! This explains why JonF doesn't get very excited about whole rock isochrons. I guess it also explains the following from EB ...
Quote
Absolute dating > Major methods of isotopic dating > Uranium–lead method
As each dating method was developed, tested, and improved, mainly since 1950, a vast body of knowledge about the behaviour of different isotopic systems under different geologic conditions has evolved. It is now clear that with recent advances the uranium–lead method is superior in providing precise age information with the least number of assumptions. The method has evolved mainly around the mineral zircon (ZrSiO4).
EB goes on to describe how it is apparently not even good enough to analyze single zircon grains ... you have to remove the outer damaged "shell" of the zircon and analyze the tiny inner portion alone.
Quote
More recently, it has been found that of all the grains present in a rock a very few still retain closed isotopic systems but only in their interior parts. Thus grains with a diameter comparable to that of a human hair, selected under a microscope to be crack-free and of the highest possible quality, have been found to be more concordant than cracked grains. In addition, it has been shown that most such grains can be made much more concordant by mechanically removing their outer parts using an air-abrasion technique (upper points in Figure 2).
dating. (2006). In Encyclopćdia Britannica. Retrieved September 18, 2006, from Encyclopćdia Britannica Online: [url]http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-69768 [/url]
Overn continues...
Quote
If one possesses a strong faith in the antiquity of the rocks, one could rationally expect that an occasional mineral isochron is legitimate. But it would also require the whole-rock diagram to be concentrated in a single point. (Neither a straight line or scattered). Often a whole rock point is put on a mineral diagram. That does not meet the criterion. Several whole-rock samples must be obtained, using the same techniques required for the whole-rock method. Their individual data points must be identical, i.e. superimposed on the diagram. At that point mixing would not have been ruled out, but all available tests requiring mixing would have been eliminated.
In the dialog with Dalrymple [4] it was noted that he is unwilling to defend the whole-rock isochron. In his latest book [7] on the age of the earth he has included a section that describes the elegant process with which crystals (minerals) give the necessary heterogeneity to make the system work. He also shows why the mineral isochron cannot be relied upon for dating, but does not state that conclusion. He carefully avoids describing the whole-rock method, which leads the casual reader to conclude that it is validated by the same processes as is the mineral method. Nothing could be farther from the case. Dalrymple has seen our initial critique of the whole-rock method, [5] and is obviously reluctant to forthrightly claim any scientific merit for it. He has clearly sidestepped the issue.
Dalrymple [7] does not depend directly on isochron dating of rocks to date the earth, but rather on the lead-isotope ratios. He must be commended for his carefully pointing out the many assumptions involved. However, he finally ignores them and claims that the age has been determined within a very narrow margin.
His ultimate method is to take the radiometric ages of lead ores (Circa 2.6-3.5 Ga) and correct to the beginning. Again I point out that the "isochrons" used to date the ores, as well as those of the meteorites, that add so much to Dalrymple's confidence in the method, are most probably mixing. Note tables 7.4 and 7.5, [Ref 7] which give many meteorite ages. Almost all are whole-rock.
Additionally note that with all his enthusiasm for the isochron, Dalrymple characterizes the method as a "first approximation" [8]
As has been pointed out many times before, all radiometric methods including the linear-plot techniques have been effectively "calibrated" to the fossil dates by selecting among the discordant data those that fit the accepted stratigraphic model. [THIS IS WHAT I TOLD YOU LONG AGO][16] Since the proponents of the isochrons don't take them at face value, others should by equally wary.
See also: "Still No Proof For Ancient Age -A Response" by W. M. Overn and Russell T. Arndts A technical analysis of "Isochrons" as defended by Dalrymple against creationist criticism, showing that despite mathematical sophistication, they are unreliable and are calibrated to "known ages" using the geologic column.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[1] Arndts, R. & Overn, W. 1981 "Pseudo Concordance in U-Pb Dating" Bible-Science Newsletter 19(2):1.
[2] Arndts, R. & Overn, W. 1981 "Isochrons" Bible-Science Newsletter 19(4):5-6.
[3] Arndts, R., Kramer, M. & Overn, W. 1981 "Proof of the Validity of the Mixing Model" Bible-Science Newsletter 19(8):1.
[4] Arndts, R. & Overn, W. Proceedings of 1985 Creation Conference North Coast Bible-Science Association, Cleveland, Ohio.
[5] Arndts, R. & Overn, W. 1986 "Radiometric Dating -- An unconvincing Art" Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism Vol 2, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp 167-173.
[6] Dalrymple, G. B. 1984 "How Old is the Earth? A Reply to {at}Scientific Creationism' " Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division AAAS 1(3):84-86
[7] Dalrymple, G. B. 1992 The Age of the Earth
[8] Ibid p. 402.
[9] Faure, L. 1977 Principles of Isotope Geology John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York, New York. p.78
[10] Ibid p. 79.
[11] Ibid p. 83-87.
[12] Ibid p. 97-105.
[13] Ibid p. 101.
[14] Jager, E. & Hunziker, J. C., eds, 1979 Lectures in Isotope Geology Springer-Verlaug, Berlin, Heidelberg and New York, p. 36
[15] Ibid p. 142-144
[16] Overn, W. 1986 "The Truth About Radiometric Dating" Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism Vol 1, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pp 101-104.
[17] Scharer, V. & Allegre, C. 1982 "Uranium - Lead System in Fragments of a Single Zircon Grain" Nature 295 (Feb.): 585
[18] Tilton, G. R. & Barreio, B. A. 1979 "Origin of Lead in Andean Calc-Alkaline Lavas, Southern Peru" Science 210, 1245-1247
[19] Woodmorappe, John 1979 "Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised" Creation Research Quarterly 16, 102-129
[20] York, D. & Farquhar, R. M. 1972 The Earth's Age and Geochronology Pergamon Press, New York, pp. 80 ff.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, (are there any ladies?) we have come to the end of yet another chapter in AFDave's Creator God Hypothesis ... I have seen overwhelming evidence for exactly what I expected to see ...
MOST RADIOMETRIC DATES ARE NONSENSE
I suppose I will take a day or so and look at the "latest and greatest" methods (which I am seeing are really not the latest and greatest at all ... they are just increasingly desperate attempts to stay one or two steps ahead of the creationist whistle blowers, all the while hoping that the general public will never really understand what's really going on ...
THAT DEEP TIMER'S ARE MISTAKEN ABOUT THE AGE OF THE EARTH
How does this help my Hypothesis? Simple. It removes the "credibility" of RM "dating" methods and creates a vacuum. Into this vacuum steps the Biblical (historical) explanation. Many have asked how I would date the layers of the Grand Staircase. And the answer is: from the historical record of Genesis. There is a record of "the fountains of the deep" being broken up and a global flood occuring. When did this occur? Probably around 2300 BC based on genealogical records. If some were missing the date moves back some, but there is no evidence that any are missing.
***************************************
SE...
Quote
During the flood there would be no rivers or dry land though. Wasn't everything covered by water? Surely water action would tend to smooth rock formations during a global flood, not cut canyons.
So what is next? The canyon was cut after the flood receded by trapped flood water?
Here's a likely scenario for how the Grand Canyon was cut ...
... and here's a likely timeline of the Flood Events ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
During the flood there would be no rivers or dry land though. Wasn't everything covered by water? Surely water action would tend to smooth rock formations during a global flood, not cut canyons.
So what is next? The canyon was cut after the flood receded by trapped flood water?
Here's a likely scenario for how the Grand Canyon was cut ...
... and here's a likely timeline of the Flood Events ...
I do not think you answered my question.
If God caused the flood and then caused the waters to recede...
Was the water left that caused the canyon a mistake, an oversite or deliberate?
We don't even need to discuss pre Clovis sites to blow your 'merican history starts with fundy white immigrants wiping out the local inhabitants view of American History (much less the History of the Universe).
Let's add racist to moron and willfully ignorant liar!
Ahhh....you did elaborate. Too bad the explanation's silly: the history of America is not congruent to the history of North America. Your hatred of the West whines through loud and clear, however.....
and you aredoing what again, trying to say that the sun goes around the earth or something?
I think that before you speak of other peoples *silly* explanations you might want to have a look in the mirror.
now, run along.
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Reducing this even further we get a value of 213.88889 feet per second! That's 2/3 the length of a football field every second!
How much energy does your car require to travel 70 mph? How much energy does it take for your car to travel 145 mph?
How much energy would it take for a continent to travel 145 mph through water? Think back to your fluid dynamics classes from first year engineering Dave, come up with a number and get back to us, OK? What would that energy do to the water surrounding it Dave? Do you think the earth would even have cooled down yet, 4300 (alleged) years later?
The problem with the isochron method deconstruction you are using is isolation. Anyway, Rm dating is not normally done in a "vacuum" (That genesis could step into). Dating is not any single discipline. Besides missing the point of peer revue, you are also missing the forest for the trees. Rm dating is a laboratory issue. A well managed lab can show you results and tell you what they mean and how they got them.
i.e. I send my rock over to a lab here in town. I say something like, "I need you to do a date on it and tell me if x, y or z are present."
They say something like "Sure we have the equipment for dating method x and we will use method a to determine the presence xy or z."
"Great, thanks. What are the tolerances?"
Then we go through it all and it turns out that knowing the date becomes really important. Then, I will go back to the place I got my sample and try to see if lots of other methods agree. If one doesn't, and I ignore it when I include the "date" in my report, I will get called on it and have to go back and do it all over again until I get dates in agreement. Doesn't matter what my answer is, just that I have double checked my work. True, I would check the one that didn't agree first, but if I couldn't get it to agree, I would have to find out why. This could quite possibly lead me to check all my other dates too. (I actually would be likely to be checking sediment rather than igneous rock but that just changes a few of the techniques and methodologies.)
Core samples are also pretty good dating methods. Want to talk about core samples? I'm really tired of Rm dating.
-------------- Who said that ev'ry wish would be heard and answered
When wished on the morning star
Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it
Look what it's done so far
WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRON "DATING" WAS DISCREDITED LONG AGO AND I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT ... SILLY ME (AND SILLY YOU)res/hydroplateevents.jpg[/img]
Dave, here's the thing. We've got tens of thousands of scientists working for decades on the methodologies involved in, e.g., isochron radiometric dating. Then we've got you, a complete ignoramus in the field, coming in and telling us all these guys are idiots, and made errors in their assumptions that a complete ignoramus found in a few days of study. Now, how reasonable does that sound? Do you honestly think you have any credibility at all when you make a statement like that? Some of the people who developed radiometric dating techniques have won Nobel prizes for their work in the field, but you think you're smarter than they are.
I don't really have to know anything about radiometric dating to know you're wrong, Dave. Especially given your track record in being wrong about virtually everything you've ever claimed on this website.
And you still haven't come with any explanation for how isochrons could happen in the first place! What's your explanation for them? Surely you must have noted that pretty much every potential error gives older ages, not younger ages. How does that help your young-earth hypothesis, Dave? When accurate dates are younger than inaccurate dates, and all the derived dates are thousands of times older than the oldest date allowed by your "hypothesis"?
How are you ever going to rescue your "hypothesis" from the mountains of countervailing evidence? You seriously think you're going to disprove every single bit of it? As Jon has pointed out more than once, you have to prove that every single date ever derived from any radiometric method must be wrong.Every single one.
And Dave, if you honestly think isochron dating was "discredited long ago," then what's your explanation for why it's still in use? Because geologists need an old earth? Why do geologists need an old earth?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
We don't even need to discuss pre Clovis sites to blow your 'merican history starts with fundy white immigrants wiping out the local inhabitants view of American History (much less the History of the Universe).
Let's add racist to moron and willfully ignorant liar!
Ahhh....you did elaborate. Too bad the explanation's silly: the history of America is not congruent to the history of North America. Your hatred of the West whines through loud and clear, however.....
But Paley, you hate liberals, atheists, and Muslims, and, given your great familiarity with White supremacist websites, probably other groups too. So what's your point?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
It also is helpful in dialogue to know where a person is coming from.
Yes, American history to me is about the United States of America, which in my opinion, began with white settlers. Sorry if that sounds insensitive or something, but that appears to be the facts of history. And I'm not excusing Indian mistreatment either. Just stating the facts.
Yes, it is useful to know where a person is coming from. Your condescending attitude towards non whites (and Native Americans in particular) has already been noted. You've also made the claim that your "good book" can explain racial differences. I can't wait for that explanation.
You aren't stating the facts, you are expressing your massively ignorant opinions.
American History extends farther into the past than your "inerrant mythology" can account for so you have to discredit anything that predates your dogma.
We don't even need to discuss pre Clovis sites to blow your 'merican history starts with fundy white immigrants wiping out the local inhabitants view of American History (much less the History of the Universe).
Let's add racist to moron and willfully ignorant liar!
Also, AFDave never did volunteer any 'evidence' for his statement that American Indian tribes all had writing pre-contact.
What about it, Dave? What's your evidence for that idea?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Okay, Dave's made it pretty clear that he doesn't understand radiometric dating well enough to explain why every single date ever derived radiometrically is wrong. But even if every single one of them were, he still wouldn't be any closer to proving his "hypothesis."
Let's try this again, Dave, since your ignoring skills are so good: your "flood" never happened. You have no evidence whatsoever for it, other than the biblical account, and you have already admitted a) that the existing translations of the Bible are not inerrant, b) you've never read an inerrant original, and consequently c) have no way of knowing where the versions you have read are correct and where they're incorrect.
Even if the Bible were inerrant, Dave, it makes no mention of the Grand Canyon (or North America, for that matter), and therefore you have no justification whatsoever for assuming the "flood" carved the Grand Canyon (plus you've been given multiple reasons why any "flood" could not have carved it). For all you know, the Grand Canyon predates the "flood" by billions of years, or could have happened as recently as the 15th century. Therefore, you have no justification whatsoever for appealing to "eyewitness testimony," because there is no existing "eyewitness testimony" for the formation of the Grand Canyon. Your belief that it was carved by the "flood" is a giant assumption, far larger (and far more wrong) than any of the assumptions involved in radiometric dating techniques.
So all your tapdancing about radiometric dating techniques is completely worthless, Dave. As has been pointed out to you innumerable times, trying to discredit other theories does absolutely nothing for your own "hypothesis." Your young-earth "hypothesis" has so many problems it's difficult to know where to start. But here's a few objections to it you've never even attempted to address:
• If the universe were only 6,000 years old, there could be no stars, or galaxies, or quasars, or galactic superclusters, than are more than 6,000 light years away. But numerous methods of determining distances which all result in similar values demonstrate that the closest galaxies are several hundred thousand light years away, and the most distant visible objects are almost 14 billion light years away. How do you explain the observation of these objects?
• 6,000 years is not nearly enough time for a solar system to form, to say nothing of a galaxy, or a galactic cluster, or a galactic supercluster. How does your “hypothesis” explain the existence of these objects?
• It would take at least several million years for the giant molecular cloud that birthed the sun to undergo gravitational collapse to the point of self-sustaining thermonuclear fusion. How do you explain this happening in only 6,000 years?
• It would take at least another few millions years for the planets to have formed through a process of gravitational accretion. How did this happen in only 6,000 years?
• Photons produced in nucleosynthesis in the sun's core take a minimum of several tens of thousands of years to reach the photosphere, and an appreciable quantity would take hundreds of thousands to millions of years to reach the photosphere. Why don’t we see the sun’s power output increasing noticeably from one year to the next if it is only 6,000 years old?
• Why isn't plutonium-239 found to naturally occur? It has a good 20,000 year half-life, or thereabouts, and could easily exist from the point of creation. Certainly we have any number of radioactive elements, but other than the ones that are produced by ongoing processes, we find none that would have disappeared to undetectable levels within 4 and a half billion years.
• The half-life of Uranium 235 is 704 million years. If the earth were only 6,000 years old, essentially none of this U-235 should have decayed by now. U-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. If the earth were only 6,000 years old, it should be essentially impossible to detect any decay products of U-238. Why does observation demonstrate that an appreciable fraction of both has decayed since the earth was formed?
• Please explain the Oklo natural nuclear reactor.
• How do you cool an iron sphere massing over 10^24 Kg in less than 6,000 years? Did the earth cool down several hundred degrees in 6000 years or so? Please explain the thermodynamics of such a cooling process.
• For any of these things to have happened in 6,000 years or less would have required multiple miracles, Dave. But you say you believe in science. In fact you claim, overwhelming evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that you accept "90-95%" of science. So if you believe in science, Dave, why do you also believe in miracles? Isn't that just a little bit inconsistent? And a little bit useless, in that you can wave away any phenomenon with an unknown cause by appeal to miracles?
My point? You haven't begun to discredit any form of ratiometric dating; you haven't even looked at 90% of them. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You still haven't presented the tiniest sliver of evidence for your own "hypothesis," after almost 200 pages!
When are you going to begin?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Eric ... "This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ... This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ...This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ..."
BWE ... "Who cares about RM dating anyway ... just pay your money to some lab and move on down the road ... and gimme a beer! ... after all Ice Cores is it, man!"
Arden ... your Indians had writing and lost it because ALL people groups are descended from Adam who had writing.
Bing ... think PRE-FLOOD continents, my friend.
Stephen Elliot ...
Quote
If God caused the flood and then caused the waters to recede...Was the water left that caused the canyon a mistake, an oversite or deliberate?
As far as we can tell, God only interacts directly with His creation sporadically, not continuously. My best guess is that He interacted briefly to start the Flood mechanisms of the "fountains of the deep," volcanism and tectonic movements, then "sat back" and watched. It is also quite possible that He built the pre-Flood earth to only last in it's original state for a certain number of years (1650?), tension building during that time period under the crust which ultimately ruptured catastrophically at the time of the Flood (Walt Brown hypothesis). In this case, the only "miracle" related to Flood geology would have been the miracle of the original creation. Note that there are no miracles required that we know of to cause a debris dam to burst and form a canyon. This is now known to have happened with the Missoula Flood and the Toutle River, and thus it is quite reasonable to assume in the case of the GC as well.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Arden ... your Indians had writing and lost it because ALL people groups are descended from Adam who had writing.
('My' Indians? )
BUUZZZZZZZZZ. No, no, no, Dave. Won't cut it. You're parroting a Biblical myth, as filtered through your own uneducated American fundy sensibility. Not what we asked for. I want EVIDENCE that 'my' Indians had writing. Real world proof.
Besides, I would invite you to tell me where in the Bible it says "Indians all had writing because Adam did".
Please, Dave, we've told you about the perils of pulling nonsense out of your ass.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Eric ... "This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ... This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ...This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ..."
BWE ... "Who cares about RM dating anyway ... just pay your money to some lab and move on down the road ... and gimme a beer! ... after all Ice Cores is it, man!"
Arden ... your Indians had writing and lost it because ALL people groups are descended from Adam who had writing.
Bing ... think PRE-FLOOD continents, my friend.
... and with those 4 deft quips, Dave destroys you guys yet again. What skill.
Arden, I know you think the Bible is a "religious" book only. The sooner you get that idea out of your head, the better off you will be ... as for reliable ancient history, you cannot find a better real world proof of events that happened than the Genesis record.
It's every bit as good a real world proof as the historical records for George Washington or any other historical figure.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
But Paley, you hate liberals, atheists, and Muslims, and, given your great familiarity with White supremacist websites, probably other groups too. So what's your point?
Even if true (and it ain't), this is a Tu Quoque argument, Chatty.
Back on topic:
Dave, do you have a link to the original Dalrymple critique?
But Paley, you hate liberals, atheists, and Muslims, and, given your great familiarity with White supremacist websites, probably other groups too. So what's your point?
Even if true (and it ain't), this is a Tu Quoque argument, Chatty.
Back on topic:
Dave, do you have a link to the original Dalrymple critique?
Let me guess. 'Hate the sin, love the sinner'. Uh huh.
So why are you in any position to be faulting people for 'hating the west', when you can't keep that kind of attitude in check yourself?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Arden, I know you think the Bible is a "religious" book only. The sooner you get that idea out of your head, the better off you will be ... as for reliable ancient history, you cannot find a better real world proof of events that happened than the Genesis record.
It's every bit as good a real world proof as the historical records for George Washington or any other historical figure.
Sure, you've done a splendid job 'proving' Noah's flood here all summer.
Okay, dingbat, let's play it your way for a moment.
Where in 'your Bible' does it say "American Indians all had writing because Adam did"?
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Arden, I know you think the Bible is a "religious" book only. The sooner you get that idea out of your head, the better off you will be ... as for reliable ancient history, you cannot find a better real world proof of events that happened than the Genesis record.
It's every bit as good a real world proof as the historical records for George Washington or any other historical figure.
did you know some people are not convinced that Elvis is dead? And people argue over the recipe for his fav fried chicken? Some people think Elvis never took drugs in his life.
If all this can happen in a few years, the "real world" proof of Elvis being distorted so much, then how much stronger will the effect be after 2000 odd years worth of chinese whispers - which is kinda what your book is, translated mutiple times etc.
So it's hardly the best proof of anything at all. People dont make predictions using Elvisology, so it's ok to argue or just not know about how much paprika he liked in his chicken wings. It dont matter so much.
There are some other books that are really almost as old, that contain timeless truths. I think you'll find they are about maths
Can you see the point here Dave? Science is here because it's useful, not because it's rote!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
Let me guess. 'Hate the sin, love the sinner'. Uh huh.
That's right. Please recall that I don't believe in coercing anyone into my faith, and I am no fan of Bush's policies. Muslims, heathens, gays, and other minorities have nothing to fear from either Dave or me. Liberals, however, are actively destroying the West. Christians and Jews are trying to protect ya'll from tyranny -- too bad you're too spoiled to be grateful for what we provide.
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So why are you in any position to be faulting people for 'hating the west', when you can't keep that kind of attitude in check yourself?
What attitude? I'm just telling it like it is. It's reality that's got the 'tude, not me.
Eric ... "This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ... This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ...This is a recording ... you haven't presented one scintilla of evidence for your hypothesis ..."
Why do you suppose it's a recording, Dave? Is it because it's true? You think you can duck out of providing evidence in support of your "hypothesis" merely because you've been asked hundreds of times to provide it? Is that your argument? I've asked you so many times to provide evidence for your "hypothesis" that it's obvious you have provided evidence for it?
It's your friggin' "hypothesis", Dave, and we've been waiting for almost five months for you to provide any evidence to support it. If you think I'm wrong, and you have provided such evidence, then do the right thing and post a permalink to it.
Do you want me to repost yet again all the questions to your "hypothesis" you've never been able to answer?
The truth is, Dave, everyone here knows that your "hypothesis" is a joke. It has no explanatory power, can't even explain simple things like why the sun isn't getting significantly brighter every year, and can't even provide a date for the formation of the Grand Canyon!
You can't even prove that Adam was literate! Where does it say anywhere in the Bible that Adam ever wrote anything down? Or was it his "secretaries," following Adam around with stone tablets and metal tools?
I know you'll never admit your "hypothesis" is utterly without factual foundation, Dave, but that's okay: everyone here knows it anyway.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Dave, Let's cut to the chase -- how do you know Genesis is true? How do you preserve that 'truth' in the face of the conflicts and contradictions within the work, to say nothing of those between work and world? What steps did you take to determine that the contents were truth rather than fiction? If you can't answer that, you have no basis for any of the assertions you've been making.
Where in 'your Bible' does it say "American Indians all had writing because Adam did"?
It doesn't say that. It simply records the history of the human race including the beginning of the race. I explained in a lot of detail beginning on p. 82 that writing goes back to the dawn of human history and that Genesis is a written record of eyewitness history, passed down from generation to generation eventually to Moses who compiled the records into one book. Thus we know that the human family had writing originally ... some kept it, some did not. Most (if not all) of the American Indians apparently did not.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That's right. Please recall that I don't believe in coercing anyone into my faith, and I am no fan of Bush's policies. Muslims, heathens, gays, and other minorities have nothing to fear from either Dave or me. Liberals, however, are actively destroying the West.
Cool, glad to see we're having SOME effect that runs counter to what you want!
Quote
Christians and Jews are trying to protect ya'll from tyranny -- too bad you're too spoiled to be grateful for what we provide.
OH MY GOD, PALEY, I am so GRATEFUL to you for SINGLE-HANDEDLY protecting us wicked liberals from, uh, whoever it is you're protecting us from. OH GOD, I'VE BEEN SO BLIND! WHAT CAN I DO to thank YOU, and ALL THE OTHER FUNDIES, and ISRAEL?
We liberals never realized HOW CLOSE WE CAME! *WHEW!*
Is it the MUSLIM HORDES, Paley? Is that who you're saving me from? Oh my GOD, is my face RED!
So Paley, once again, thank YOU so much for saving me! Can you tell me, what part did YOU play in the rescue of Western Civilization? Going to Church? Posting here? Voting Republican? For the Reform Party? Lurking at Little Green Footballs? Or did you sign up in the Military yourself? Oh yes, I bet that must be it! I'm sure that your role in the defense of Western Civilization was quite direct, and not just trolling the internet! I'm sure it was CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT! Were you there in your uniform and with your gun at the Gates of Vienna? Baghdad?
Do tell me, so that we wicked Libs and Evos can KNOW what to be GRATEFUL for!
Tell me, how can I write a letter to The Christians and The Jews to thank them, too?
Oh yes, I'm going to become a rightwing Christian first thing tomorrow, and you've also convinced me of the Sun-orbiting-the-Earth thing, as well as the evils of Darwinism. Can't be too careful -- the Muslims could take over any minute!
Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Where in 'your Bible' does it say "American Indians all had writing because Adam did"?
It doesn't say that. It simply records the history of the human race including the beginning of the race. I explained in a lot of detail beginning on p. 82 that writing goes back to the dawn of human history and that Genesis is a written record of eyewitness history, passed down from generation to generation eventually to Moses who compiled the records into one book. Thus we know that the human family had writing originally ... some kept it, some did not. Most (if not all) of the American Indians apparently did not.
Gee, who would have ever thought that Ancient Hebrew nomads knew so much about American Indians.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Where in 'your Bible' does it say "American Indians all had writing because Adam did"?
It doesn't say that. It simply records the history of the human race including the beginning of the race. I explained in a lot of detail beginning on p. 82 that writing goes back to the dawn of human history and that Genesis is a written record of eyewitness history, passed down from generation to generation eventually to Moses who compiled the records into one book. Thus we know that the human family had writing originally ... some kept it, some did not. Most (if not all) of the American Indians apparently did not.
Dave, it's a tautology that writing goes back to the beginning of history. Duh! Do you even understand what the word "history" means?
"We know that the human family had writing originally"? And how do we know that, Dave? Yet another of your unsupportable assertions? You don't even know what "originally" means.
And where's your evidence that Genesis is "a written record of eyewitness history"? This is what you call evidence? You have no such evidence, Dave, and you know it. Whether the documentary hypothesis is correct or not has no bearing whatsoever on whether the events depicted in Genesis actually happened. We know for a fact that the earth was around for billions of years before Genesis claims it was, and no amount of handwaving about radiometric dating techniques can change that. There are so many problems with your young-earth creationism that it's already been completely ruled out by observation. You haven't been able to deal with a single one of those problems so far.
Just to pick one example: where is your independent evidence that light and darkness were created 6,000 years ago? Where's your evidence that the sun and the moon were created 6,000 years ago? The only reason you have for supposing any of those things are true comes from the Bible itself, and nowhere else. You have no independent confirmation for the veracity of anything in Genesis at all. You see it in the Bible, the same Bible you admit is not inerrant, and for that reason and that reason only you blieve it to be true.
You keep saying you know the Bible is accurate because the evidence points that way, but then when someone asks you to provide such evidence, you accuse them of being a broken record. Well, if you're sick of hearing the same thing over and over, why don't you fix the problem and shut me up by putting up some evidence?
Or, alternatively, you could admit you don't have any evidence, and we can move on to something else.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Gee, who would have ever thought that Ancient Hebrew nomads knew so much about American Indians.
If I am not mistaken, the Mormons believe that the American Indians were one of the lost tribes of Israel. So, there you go.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Gee, who would have ever thought that Ancient Hebrew nomads knew so much about American Indians.
I thought is was obvious:
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
...too bad that the fundamental assumptions appear to be wrong ... and apparently even Dalrymple cannot defend them anymore.
Do I understand correctly? Is afd concluding that Dalrymple has abandoned this methodology because he doesn't bother to argue with a couple of fundy wing-nuts, publishing in fundy wing-nut rags?
Earth to Dave: One thing you can bank on - these creationists are just like you in that they will never, ever concede. If you think Dalrymple is conceding every argument he chooses not to waste time on publicly destroying, it's possible that you're even more delusional than I thought.
Should I assume that you tacitly acknowledge every criticism you haven't publicly countered? Or, more to the point, can I assume that the countless times* in this thread you've ignored inconvenient data and questions reflect the failure of your "hypothesis"?
*Since life is way too short for me to go and list them all, I'll just let the most recent failure to address Stephen Elliott's questions about the Grand Canyon serve as typical.
I just had to point this out, in case anyone missed it:
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Of course, late 19th and 20th century archaeology has clearly shown that writing goes all the way back to at least 3500 BC and no doubt to the dawn of history…
Yep, you sure are right about that, Dave. Writing goes all the way back to the dawn of history. I don't think anyone's going to argue that point.
So I'll just file that assertion under "Stating the Bleedin' Obvious With an Air of Discovery," shall I?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Gee, who would have ever thought that Ancient Hebrew nomads knew so much about American Indians.
I thought is was obvious:
"Oy vey! They're darker than we are!"
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I just had to point this out, in case anyone missed it:
Quote
Of course, late 19th and 20th century archaeology has clearly shown that writing goes all the way back to at least 3500 BC and no doubt to the dawn of history…
Yep, you sure are right about that, Dave. Writing goes all the way back to the dawn of history. I don't think anyone's going to argue that point.
So I'll just file that assertion under "Stating the Bleedin' Obvious With an Air of Discovery," shall I?
Yes, I suppose "writing goes all the way back to when people first started to write" is about as good as anything Dave is likely to come up with.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
A few posts related to GoP arguing about how terrible muslims are, have been moved to the appropriate thread.
?? I was arguing that Christianity civilised the West. This would be true if Mohammed had never been born.
........Moving on.........................
Apparently, Dalrymple's original response is only available here:
Quote
4. Dalrymple, G.B. 1984. How Old is the Earth? A Reply to "Scientific Creationism". Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division AAAS 1(3) : 84-86.
Does he ever address W. M. Overn and Russell T. Arndts online?
Radiometric dating techniques have always been an important element in the modern Creation-evolution controversy. From the time that radioactive decay rates were first suggested as a means of measuring the age of rocks, creation-model scientists and other critical thinkers were quick to point out that because the original compositions of the rocks could not be established, the "age" as measured was actually conjecture, and without compelling scientific value.
Oh, really? Then why are there any daughter products at all of long-lived radioisotopes such as U-238? If the earth were really only 6,000 years old, there should be essentially no detectable radiogenic daughter isotopes at all. Even if you could support an argument that radiometric dating is inaccurate (which you can't), you still can't get around the fact that long-lived (~10E9 years or more) isotopes should not have decayed at all.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I was arguing that Christianity civilised the West.
And that we wicked liberals are destroying society and too spoiled to be sufficiently grateful to Paley, the other fundies, and the Jews for protecting us from 'tyranny' every day. Yawn.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed ...
Not assumed. Calculated. Big difference.
{ABE: Dave, that meanss that the initial ratio is an output of the procedure, not an input to it.}
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Initial Daughter Ratio is closer to 0.7 for the Rb/Sr analyses.
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If a mass of lava is thoroughly mixed, then the atomic size difference does not matter. Everything is mixed thoroughly and Sample 1 should have the same composition as Sample 2, and Sample 3, etc. Yes, the Rb will be emplaced into the various mineral crystal structures differently than the Sr is emplaced, but the different emplacement should operate the same in all samples.
Nope, you still don't have a clue. This is high-school chemistry, Davie-doofus. There is no connection between the number of Rb atoms picked up by a crystal and the number of Sr atoms picked up by a crystal. There is a solid connection between the number of 87Sr atoms picked up by a crystal and the number 0f 86Sr atoms picked up by that crystal.
Here's an analogy. A good one. There's a big hat. Really big. It contains 1,000,000,000 white balls and 500,000,000 black balls, all mixed up and randomized really well. You can't tell any of the black balls apart, and you can't tell any of the white balls apart. But 75% of the white balls have red centers and 25% have green centers. The red-center balls are 87Sr atoms, the green-center balls are 86Sr atoms. The black balls are 87Rb atoms.
You are a growing crystal with some room for strontium. Your job is to pick 10,000,000 white balls from the hat. After you have done so, without opening any balls, what is your ratio of red-center balls to white-center balls (your 87Sr/86Sr ratio)? Answer: dam close to 75%/25% or 3.0.
Unknown to you, at the same time that you were picking white balls, someone else who is part of your crystal was picking black balls. You didn't notice this in any way. What is the ratio of the number of black balls he picked to the number of green-center white balls you picked (your 87Rb/86Sr ratio)? Answer: Could be anything. No way to tell.
Rewal crystal growth is like that. There's an incredibly tight correlation between 87Sr and 86Sr, there's no such correlation between 87Rb and 86Sr. (In fact, crystals that pick up a lot of Sr tend to have very little Rb and vice-versa. But they all get some of each.)
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And I think Tracy is right. If this is the case, you will have single point on your isochron diagram which of course is meaningless WRT an age calculation.
Sorry, both of you are wrong. Reasons and references already shown.
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The following article sums up the fatal flaw with Whole Rock Isochron dating ...
I figured you'd dig that one up sooner or later. It's the kind of total arm-waving BE article you love.
I point out that your reference includes:
"The assumed uniform strontium ratios should certainly be valid when applied to a rock system solidifying from a uniform homogenized melt. We must emphasize, however, that this enabling assumption must fail in the absence of an initial homogenized melt."
Except for the "assumed" part he's totally correct in those two sentences. Guess he'd have a good laugh at your claims about 87Sr/86Sr and 87Rb/86Sr, hum? Alas, he's not right about much else. In particular, no calculations or evidence, just assertions.
Mixing isochrons would have a random set of slopes; especially negative slopes would be as common as positive. Observed isochrons almost universally have positive slopes, and rather small positive slopes at that. (Occasional negative slopes turn up, and get published, 'cause they're so rare and interesting).
Mixing isochrons would have random Y-intercepts. The vast majority of intercepts are in the range expected for a true isochron.
There's a "mixing test" that is a necessary but not sufficient condition for two-component mixing; if it forms a line the isochron may be a result of mixing, but if it does not form a line the isochron is not the result of two-component mixing. Many isochrons do not form a line in the mixing test and are not the result of two-component mixing. Three+ component mixing is possible but unlikely; we know of a source for two components but not for a widely-spread third, and the scenarios that creationists have proposed for three-component mixing are frankly silly (e.g. absolutely zero 86Sr).
{ABE: And, I almost forgot, the truth that Davie can't face: correlation! I suppose that all whole-rock isochrons are mixing lines and always have just enough excess argon for K-Ar dating to agree with the isochron dating ... but then what about the concordant U-Pb dates? What incredible but omnipresent coincidence is responsible for the U-Pb dates that are concordant with the isochron dates that are concordant with the model-age dates? (See the table that Deadman just posted). No matter what you think of the individual methods, Davie-doodles, there's a pattern there that you need to explain.}
Wow ... 90% of all the isochron "dates" published are whole rock
Gee, where's the evidence for that? How old is that claim? Was it true when written? Has anything changed?
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This would explain why the 2006 Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say ...
Hey, you brought up whole-rock isochron dating. Your creationist pals' unsupported claims notwithstanding, it's valid but faiiry expensive and not as accurate as lower-cost methods that can be applied to many of the same roicks. Remember that graph I posted?
(There's still a lot of use of Rb-Sr isochrons in isotope geochemistry, and a lot of use of the Rb-Sr system in archeological dating).
Apparently, Dalrymple's original response is only available here:
Quote
4. Dalrymple, G.B. 1984. How Old is the Earth? A Reply to "Scientific Creationism". Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division AAAS 1(3) : 84-86.
Does he ever address W. M. Overn and Russell T. Arndts online?
Not that I know of. No further response was necessary.
I'm not going to bother refuting your claims on radiometrics, Dave. I have learned that you will merely avoid it if you are given multiple responses. What I will do is point out a few other things that I find interesting.
AirHeadDave says:
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There is a record of "the fountains of the deep" being broken up and a global flood occuring. When did this occur? Probably around 2300 BC based on genealogical records. If some were missing the date moves back some, but there is no evidence that any are missing.
Yet the fact is that multiple civilizations had writing before and after that period -- and kept right on writing as though no global flood ever happened, AirHead. Why?
Don't try to avoid this, Dave, as you just did with your claim that "amerinds devolved" from written-language users to illiteracy.
Secondly, I'd like to ask you a few things on rocks from the moon that have been dated, AirHead.
Those rocks were things like olivine and basalt, etc., and were dated by multiple radiometric methods that all converged on specific dates.
The studies themselves were published and show no evidence of tossing out dates or any other of your imagined/delusional "tricks used by old-agers"...How do you explain this, AirHead? Here's a few examples: Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.49 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.52 +- 0.04 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.57 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.56 +- 0.06 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar ilmenite 3.58 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar pyroxene 3.55 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Rb-Sr isochron 3.57 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Sm-Nd isochron 3.57 +- 0.03
So...unless you're willing to claim that every worker involved on this were "lying or tricked"...How were all these dates -- from the same sample of basalt -- all convergent on the same date range, AirHead?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Jon: Yeah, it's not as if *THAT'S* unusual with widdle Daveykins.
Kind of like how he avoided even supporting his "hypothesis that is better than any other" in favor of the usual creationist sniping. He actually thinks (if it can be called that) that he'll fare better this way. Dave's just not very bright
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Dave, you said in an earlier post that you believed that there was only 1 super-continent before the flood. And that it broke up during the flood to become the continents we see today.
So again, how does 1 continent break up and then all the pieces go whizzing around underwater at 145 mph? How much energy is required to overcome the drag of the water?
Here's a little hint I found for you.
D = ˝ * p * v˛ * A * C
where D is the drag in Newtons, p is the density of the medium (floodwaters), v is velocity, A is the surface area and C is the drag coefficient.
You can figure out the velocity Dave, something like 780,000,000 m/s? What's that squared Davie-doodles? Something like 608,400,000,000,000,000?
And the surface area? Well, how long is the pacific coastline? Billions of meters? And how deep? How many billions of square meters of surface area?
Just how friggin' big does that drag number come out to Dave? How much energy would be required to overcome that number? Enough to boil the planet?
[snip] So here's where we are in our study of the Isochron Method of dating rocks ... we have looked at a hypothetical set of charts which are very good because they really help you understand the logic. And yes, they are from the RATE books. (But don't buy them ... they might destroy your comfy worldview) We are looking at whole rock isochrons first, then we will look at mineral isochrons. Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed Initial Daughter Ratio is closer to 0.7 for the Rb/Sr analyses.
We might just as well continue our discussion with this real world example. [snip]
AFDave, I have a couple questions. You brought up a graph showing the Isochron of chondritic meteorites.
If this data was from whole rock Isochron analysis, why do we get a linear relationship instead of a scatter of single points?
Why are there no data points between the Rb/Sr ratios of (approx.) 1.0 to 1.3?
This graph doesn't seem to jive with what Overn and Arndts are arguing.
Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed ...
Not assumed. Calculated. Big difference.
Oh really? How?
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Nope, you still don't have a clue.
No I do have a clue. You just cannot read. Here is what I said ...
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Yes, the Rb will be emplaced into the various mineral crystal structures differently than the Sr is emplaced, but the different emplacement should operate the same in all samples.
Now, Jon, read it again very slowly and you will see that I understand that Sr and Rb is emplaced differently.
JonF...
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Here's an analogy. A good one. There's a big hat. Really big. It contains 1,000,000,000 white balls and 500,000,000 black balls, all mixed up and randomized really well. (Blah blah blah for several paragraphs because he thinks I don't understand the difference in crystal uptake)
Very good, Jon. We all understood this already. You are arguing about individual crystals and we are still talking about whole rock isochrons. I just touched on mineral (individual crystal) isochron "dating" but the main point of the article is that whole rock isochron dating has a fundamentally flawed assumption. Maybe this explains why 90% of the dates WERE whole rock isochrons when this article was written (mid-90's I think), but now they are not. Interesting isn't it? Again, notice the Overn article ...
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In the dialog with Dalrymple [4] it was noted that he is unwilling to defend the whole-rock isochron. In his latest book [7] on the age of the earth he has included a section that describes the elegant process with which crystals (minerals) give the necessary heterogeneity to make the system work.
See? Overn understands about your little black and white balls and I do also. BUt again, you are missing his point which is that WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS are either (a) homogeneous and meaningless (single point), or (b) heterogeneous and invalid (no way to determine initial daughter ratio ... remember, Jon, we are not talking about single crystals yet, we're talking about big samples containing all kinds of crystals)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
See? Overn understands about your little black and white balls and I do also. BUt again, you are missing his point which is that WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS are either (a) homogeneous and meaningless (single point), or (b) heterogeneous and invalid (no way to determine initial daughter ratio ... remember, Jon, we are not talking about single crystals yet, we're talking about big samples containing all kinds of crystals)
Dave, think of the probabilities. You believe that isochrons are meaningless—invalid. Would you care to compute the probabilities that isochrons ever converge on any particular values? Why is it that rock formations that are expected to be of Precambrian provenance due to their location in the geologic column all date to—wait for it—the Precambrian? Why is it that rock formations that are expected to be of Triassic provenance due to their location in the geologic column all date to—wait for it again—the Triassic?
This is the part you don't get, Dave, and will never ever get, no matter how often it's pointed out to you: scientific knowledge is cumulative and mutually-reinforcing. If you think all radiometric dating techniques are bogus, then you're left to explain why they fit so well with dating from other, independent, non-radiometric techniques. Is it because geologists "need" an old earth? Why do geologists "need" an old earth, Dave? Why do biologists, for that matter, "need" an old earth? A few million years would be plenty.
What your "hypothesis" can't do is get any dates to converge on any particular value. Your only "evidence" for a 6,000 year old earth comes from adding up the dates in the Old Testament. No corroborating evidence whatsoever. None.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
you are missing his point which is that WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS are either (a) homogeneous and meaningless (single point), or (b) heterogeneous and invalid (no way to determine initial daughter ratio
So, explain the moon rock data I gave you , AirTard1. Why do the dates all converge, despite your claim? Remember, the dates are all in billions of years before the present. Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.49 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.52 +- 0.04 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.57 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.56 +- 0.06 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar ilmenite 3.58 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar pyroxene 3.55 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Rb-Sr isochron 3.57 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Sm-Nd isochron 3.57 +- 0.03
That's all on the same basalt sample, Davey-dumplin'. So...explain it, please. I know you can't say that the dates are valid, so... Did God "majick" up the decay? Was it moon fairies? Were the scientists all under some mind-ray? Quick, Airhead...invoke a miracle that you say creationists don't use.
Oh, and don't just wave your girlish hands and say "invalid assumptions" AirHead. Be honest, or pretend that you are ( I know, it's a stretch). Say PRECISELY what assumptions are invalid and why. Be CONCISE and PRECISE. Say EXACTLY why you disagree with all the dates above, other than "God doesn't like those dates"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Arden ... your Indians had writing and lost it because ALL people groups are descended from Adam who had writing.
Um, don't you mean Noah? Major slip-up there, Davey.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Arden ... your Indians had writing and lost it because ALL people groups are descended from Adam who had writing.
Um, don't you mean Noah? Major slip-up there, Davey.
I did want to ask Dave where in the Bible it says that 'Adam had writing'...
Wait til I tell 'my Indians'!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The Sumerians/Babylonians were writing on clay, the Egyptians were writing on stone walls and papyrus, contemporary Incas were writing with knots and colored strings and yet DDTTD contends (without any evidence whatsoever) the nomadic Hebrews were keeping records on stone tablets!
Come On Hezekiah! The goats are hungry and we gotta MOVE! Hang on 'Zeke, I gotta chisel out a few more notes and pack these tablets away. DANG, that tablet broke! You guys go ahead without me while I re-chisel it or Moses is gonna be powerful pissed.
I say my progenitors were smart enough to get out of the Middle East well before all that fludding and tower of Babel craziness went down.
We were begatting over here in America (North and South) before the post glacial weather settled down enough to permit agriculture to develop. That's why we domesticated a completely different set of flora and fauna. Think about that when you give thanks for "our" Turkey on "your Holidays" and let me celebrate my Green Corn Ceremony in peace.
Ghost of a paleass
You might want to look into the influence the Iroquois and other Natives had on the Founding Fathers. I don't confuse American History and U.S. History. American History began a long time before Europeans stepped off the brow and said, "Hey, what's for dinner?"
Yep, everbody who knows me calls me Mr. PC, but you can call me Mr. Appleton.
DDTTD
There are organisms that have been alive longer than your "hypothesis" allows for.
The Sumerians/Babylonians were writing on clay, the Egyptians were writing on stone walls and papyrus, contemporary Incas were writing with knots and colored strings and yet DDTTD contends (without any evidence whatsoever) the nomadic Hebrews were keeping records on stone tablets!
Crabby ... you are displaying some monumental ignorance of basic history ...
The Hebrews didn't even exist as a people until after 2000BC. They probably used the same writing systems as the Egyptians until they left Egypt, when they began using vellum (hopefully you know what vellum is). When I talk about the book of Genesis being a written account of eyewitness history, I'm talking about the tablet records which comprise what we now know as Genesis 1:1-37:2a. All these were composed prior to birth of the Hebrew nation. Moses was simply a compiler of these records, plus he wrote his own record.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I see you can't address the issues with Arndts and Overns' "all isochrons are mixing" theory. They came up with a hypothesis, it almost (but not quite) passed one easy test on a small set of samples; but until they can explain the observed pattern of isochron slopes, the observed pattern of isochron intercepts, and the observed pattern of concordance between whole-rock isochrons, mineral isochrons, and other methods that are not susceptible to mixing ... they're just blowing smoke.
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 18 2006,22:15)
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Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed ...
Not assumed. Calculated. Big difference.
Oh really? How?
Still no clue, hum? Read the references. The data points define a line. The calculated Y-intercept of the line is the initial ratio.
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Nope, you still don't have a clue.
No I do have a clue. You just cannot read. Here is what I said ...
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Yes, the Rb will be emplaced into the various mineral crystal structures differently than the Sr is emplaced, but the different emplacement should operate the same in all samples.
Now, Jon, read it again very slowly and you will see that I understand that Sr and Rb is emplaced differently.
But you did not acknowledge the point; there is a connection between isotopes of the same element which forces the initial 87Sr/86Sr to be the same for all samples, but there is no connection between different elements that forces anything about the initial 87Rb/87Sr ratio. Do you understand that now, Davie-pie? Of course, that would mean you would have to admit your error, and you never do that.
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Here's an analogy. A good one. There's a big hat. Really big. It contains 1,000,000,000 white balls and 500,000,000 black balls, all mixed up and randomized really well. (Blah blah blah for several paragraphs because he thinks I don't understand the difference in crystal uptake)
Very good, Jon. We all understood this already.
Ah, so you do acknowledge you were wrong to claim that the 87Rb/87Sr ratio should be the same for all samples.
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You are arguing about individual crystals and we are still talking about whole rock isochrons. I just touched on mineral (individual crystal) isochron "dating" but the main point of the article is that whole rock isochron dating has a fundamentally flawed assumption. Maybe this explains why 90% of the dates WERE whole rock isochrons when this article was written (mid-90's I think), but now they are not. Interesting isn't it? Again, notice the Overn article ...
The claim that 90% of isochrons (not dates, as you wrote) were whole-rock isochrons is an unsupported assertion. Isochron dating in general has declined in popularity because it is expensive and not as accurate as other methods, many of which can be used on the same rocks. Isochron dating can only get you to an accuracy of 1-3%; sub-1% accuracy is where it's at.
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In the dialog with Dalrymple [4] it was noted that he is unwilling to defend the whole-rock isochron. In his latest book [7] on the age of the earth he has included a section that describes the elegant process with which crystals (minerals) give the necessary heterogeneity to make the system work.
See? Overn understands about your little black and white balls and I do also. BUt again, you are missing his point which is that WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS are either (a) homogeneous and meaningless (single point), or (b) heterogeneous and invalid (no way to determine initial daughter ratio ... remember, Jon, we are not talking about single crystals yet, we're talking about big samples containing all kinds of crystals)
Actually, the problem is that you're not talking about big samples containing all kinds of crystals. I'll restore something you wrote:
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The issue is this: If a mass of lava is thoroughly mixed, then the atomic size difference does not matter. Everything is mixed thoroughly and Sample 1 should have the same composition as Sample 2, and Sample 3, etc. Yes, the Rb will be emplaced into the various mineral crystal structures differently than the Sr is emplaced, but the different emplacement should operate the same in all samples. And I think Tracy is right. If this is the case, you will have single point on your isochron diagram which of course is meaningless WRT an age calculation.
I've already pointed out why you don't get a single point on the isochron diagram, with several references. I notice you have no response.
But your real problem is "Everything is mixed thoroughly and Sample 1 should have the same composition as Sample 2". This is true of the lava or magma before it starts to solidify but it changes as soon as solidification starts. Different crystals form at different temperatures, and the temperature varies with postion in the melt (e.g. a surface underwater is a lot cooler than a point few feet to the interior of the flow from that surface). Also, as crystals form, they remove or reject particular chemical elements, changing the relative concentrations of different elements in the remaining melt (but not the relative concentrations of isotopes of the same element, as we have seen). The upshot is that the relative proportions of different types of crystals in a sample rock varies as a function of where in the solidified mass the rock came from and the amount of chemical species in a sample rock varies as a function of when the rock solidified relative to the rest of the cogenetic rocks. (Remember, Rb and Sr are trace elements in these cryustals, substituting for particular other atoms). And these facts lead to varying 87Rb/86Sr ratios in (rationally chosen) different rocks from the same source. And, finally, that leads to a valid whole-rock isochron in which we can calculate the initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio and the number of half-lives since solidification.
If this data was from whole rock Isochron analysis, why do we get a linear relationship instead of a scatter of single points?
Why are there no data points between the Rb/Sr ratios of (approx.) 1.0 to 1.3?
This graph doesn't seem to jive with what Overn and Arndts are arguing.
The data in that graph may be consistent with Arndts and Overn's hypothesis; it isn't prima facie inconsistent.
They hypothesize that all whole-rock isochrons are the result of mixing of two isotopically inhomogeneous sources, which is physically possible. Imagine that there's a mass of well-mixed magma, magma A, that happens to have an 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.81 and an 87Rb/86Sr ratio of 1.7. Imagine another mass of well-mixed magma, magma B, that happens to have an 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.708 and an 87Rb/86Sr ratio of 0.15. Now imagine that magmas A and B come together, mix somewhat but don't mix thoroughly, and erupt and solidify. Your friendly local geologist comes along a few thousand years later (before any significant amount of Rb has decayed in the rocks) and collects samples for an isochron analysis. One of his samples just happens to be all from magma A, and plots as the upper right data point on the graph. Another one of his samples happens to be all from magma B, and plots as the lower left data point on the graph. The other samples are made up of varying proportions of the two magmas, and plot as points between the two extremes but on a straight line connecting the extremes. This is as expected, and this sort of thing does happen occasionally.
There's a test for such a "mixing line". You plot the data points again, but this time with 1/(87Sr + 86Sr) on the X-axis and 87Sr/86Sr on the Y-axis. If the result is near a straight line, the isochron may be a mixing isochron; if the result is scattered all over the graph, as it often is, the result is not a mixing isochron of two sources. (It might possibly be a mixing isochron of three or more sources, but I touched on the problems with that already).
But the mixing test gives lots of false positives for mixing lines. The reason is a consequence of the chemical properties of Rb and Sr, and is discussed a little more in Isochrons and Mixing Lines.
Arndts and Overn ran mixing tests on 18 whole-rock isochrons. They used a least-squares straight-line fit (which is technically invalid, you need a more complex line-fitting algorithm, but that's not the major issue). They found correlation coefficients ranging from less than 0.5 (two tests) to over 0.9 (8 tests). In this kind of work, a correlation coefficient over 0.9 is significant, a correlation coefficient over 0.99 is a lock. So less than half of their tests were reasonably close to forming a straight line on a mixing plot, and many of them were far away from forming a straight line. (Remember that forming a straight line on a mixing plot is a necessary but not sufficient test for two-component mixing.) So, the correct conclusion is that some of the isochrons might be mixing lines and some of them definitely are not two-component mixing lines.
With this data, and lots of arm-waving and ignoring of the observed pattern of isochron slopes, the observed pattern of isochron intercepts, and the observed pattern of concordance between whole-rock isochrons, mineral isochrons, and other methods that are not susceptible to mixing, they concluded that all whole-rock isochrons are the result of mixing. Well you may cry "WTF?!?!?!". Yes, their conclusions are invalid and unsupported.
But that graph doesn't disprove their claims. Lots of other things do, but not that graph.
When I talk about the book of Genesis being a written account of eyewitness history, I'm talking about the tablet records which comprise what we now know as Genesis 1:1-37:2a. All these were composed prior to birth of the Hebrew nation. Moses was simply a compiler of these records, plus he wrote his own record.
You're missing the point, Dave. Where's your evidence that Genesis 1:1–37:2a ever existed as stone tablets, and what do you think those tablets were inscribed with? Bronze tools?
Whether you claim they were inscribed by Hebrews, or by God his big bad self, is irrelevant. They're just another one of a long list of unsupported assertions you've made.
You do have a habit of missing the forest for the trees, Dave.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
You might want to look into the influence the Iroquois and other Natives had on the Founding Fathers. I don't confuse American History and U.S. History. American History began a long time before Europeans stepped off the brow and said, "Hey, what's for dinner?"
<groan> Not that tired urban legend again. I assure you that Rome and Britain shaped the Constitution much more profoundly than the Iroquois Nation ever did. As to your other claim, American History starts with the European settlers. Once again, you're confusing a nation with its geography. I'm not saying that textbooks shouldn't discuss Indian societies and cultures; I'm just asserting that Indian History is not equal to American history. Logic and reality are not PC, sorry.
Once again, you're confusing a nation with its geography. I'm not saying that textbooks shouldn't discuss Indian societies and cultures; I'm just asserting that Indian History is not equal to American history. Logic and reality are not PC, sorry.
So are you asserting that America does not exist geographically?
Or are you confusing a racist eurocetric view and reality?
-------------- If I fly the coop some time And take nothing but a grip With the few good books that really count It's a necessary trip
I'll be gone with the girl in the gold silk jacket The girl with the pearl-driller's hands
Davie ignored it, of course; too close to reality for his taste.
I was shocked...SHOCKED to find that DoodlebugDave had ignored my post on lunar basalt. I suspect that in his mind the moon is an evil satanic symbol -- so any rocks there are demonically-inspired.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So are you asserting that America does not exist geographically?
No, I'm separating America as a political entity from preexisting political entities that share the same geography. I'm not saying that Euro History is more important than non-Euro history, only that it's distinct. You wouldn't conflate the Toltec and Aztec Empires would you? So why confuse tribal nations with America?
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Or are you confusing a racist eurocetric view and reality?
As opposed to a racist Afrocentric view or a racist Oriental view?
If this data was from whole rock Isochron analysis, why do we get a linear relationship instead of a scatter of single points?
Why are there no data points between the Rb/Sr ratios of (approx.) 1.0 to 1.3?
This graph doesn't seem to jive with what Overn and Arndts are arguing.
The data in that graph may be consistent with Arndts and Overn's hypothesis; it isn't prima facie inconsistent.
They hypothesize that all whole-rock isochrons are the result of mixing of two isotopically inhomogeneous sources, which is physically possible. Imagine that there's a mass of well-mixed magma, magma A, that happens to have an 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.81 and an 87Rb/86Sr ratio of 1.7. Imagine another mass of well-mixed magma, magma B, that happens to have an 87Sr/86Sr ratio of 0.708 and an 87Rb/86Sr ratio of 0.15. Now imagine that magmas A and B come together, mix somewhat but don't mix thoroughly, and erupt and solidify. Your friendly local geologist comes along a few thousand years later (before any significant amount of Rb has decayed in the rocks) and collects samples for an isochron analysis. One of his samples just happens to be all from magma A, and plots as the upper right data point on the graph. Another one of his samples happens to be all from magma B, and plots as the lower left data point on the graph. The other samples are made up of varying proportions of the two magmas, and plot as points between the two extremes but on a straight line connecting the extremes. This is as expected, and this sort of thing does happen occasionally.
I agree fully with your analysis. However, the graph represents 23 seperate meteorite samples that are extra-terrestrial in origin but still consistent (and concordant with Pb-Pb) in their dates on the Isochron graph. Plus, AFDave intends on using thisgraph to continue his discussion on invalidating Isochrons.
How can AFDave argue "mixing" problems with the extra-terrestrial origin of the samples? I think this graph and deadman's argument are similar in nature in regards to the origins of the samples.
AFDave, any answers on this data you yourself have held up as evidence of your argument?
Mike PSS
PSS = Professer Steve Sibling. My brother is on the list.
No, I'm separating America as a political entity from preexisting political entities that share the same geography. I'm not saying that Euro History is more important than non-Euro history, only that it's distinct. You wouldn't conflate the Toltec and Aztec Empires would you? So why confuse tribal nations with America?
No offense, Bill, but it's hard enough to keep this thread on topic with AF Dave wandering all over the place trying to avoid having to support his "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis." This discussion seems a bit more on-topic on your "Muslim" thread. At least the two are tangentially related.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Mike PSS-- I would like to know more about the Minster graph of the 23 meteorites. Does anyone here have free access to the paper so we can see all the data and the complete discussion? Ditto for Deadman's moon rocks.
One thing I am noting is that we are basing this 4.5 Ga age number on a really small range of data ... the daughter ratios range from about 0.71 to 0.81, which is well within the range of naturally occurring ratios in both young and "old" rocks.
I do understand that this graph has the appearance of a legitimate age but I am not convinced yet. This is 23 meteorites, true, but how many meteorites have been analyzed? Maybe several hundred? Do they fit on this line as well? If not, why not? And about these 23 meteorites ... why were they selected? Were they chosen at random? From a pool of how many?
As for mixing affecting meteorites, why could it not?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
One thing I am noting is that we are basing this 4.5 Ga age number on a really small range of data ... the daughter ratios range from about 0.71 to 0.81, which is well within the range of naturally occurring ratios in both young and "old" rocks.
Uh, the samples I gave you from Apollo 11 were not enough? That's "too small a sample?" Yet NONE of the data obtained disagrees with it. Nonetheless, he's some more: the oldest dated lunar rocks -- all in billions of years before present:
Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.55 +- 0.1 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.60 +- 0.1 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.49 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.43 +- 0.05 Apollo 17 Sm-Nd isochron 4.23 +- 0.05 Apollo 17 Sm-Nd isochron 4.34 +- 0.05 Apollo 16 40Ar/39Ar 4.47 Apollo 16 40Ar/39Ar 4.42
There's lots more than that, too. And look!-- The Earth's Oldest Rocks (in billions of years)
I didn't say "small sample" ... read it again and see if you can tell what I really said ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
AFDave, any answers on this data you yourself have held up as evidence of your argument?
Let's be clear. I am not using the Minster plot as evidence of my argument. I posted it because Jon and Tracy were complaining about my hypothetical example.
I then found the Overn article and I am currently in the process of evaluating everything I have learned so far.
I do think this is interesting ...
Google Scholar All articles Recent articles Results 1 - 10 of about 11,300 for whole rock age. 1981-1990 Recent articles Results 1 - 10 of about 478 for mineral isochron 1981-1990
So Bill Overn was probably right about 90% of all the isochron "ages" out there being whole rock ... at least at the time he wrote the paper.
Sorry, Jon ... I guess Google Scholar doesn't like you :-)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If you're not using "range" in the vernacular then you *must*mean the difference between the highest and lowest values, as in stats -- of which set of data?
Or do you see a function there giving you a set of all values?
Or are you just lost?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
So are you asserting that America does not exist geographically?
No, I'm separating America as a political entity from preexisting political entities that share the same geography. I'm not saying that Euro History is more important than non-Euro history, only that it's distinct. You wouldn't conflate the Toltec and Aztec Empires would you? So why confuse tribal nations with America?
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Or are you confusing a racist eurocetric view and reality?
As opposed to a racist Afrocentric view or a racist Oriental view?
Poor liberal.
Hey, Paley, got that geocentric proof yet?
Or that proof that the earth is 6,000 years old?
Or that proof that the stars are just a few thousand miles away?
Nah, didn't think so.
Poor wingnut.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I probably shouldn't have said that the Amitsoq samples were the "oldest." The Acasta gneisses in the Canadian Shield near Great Slave Lake are older. Then there's the odd zircon from the Jack Hills in Western Australia, published in Nature...not that I want to talk about that
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
All I want to know is how your interpretation of this data supports your assertion against whole-rock Isochron methods. And in this vernacular I mean the data showing a linear relation of the data set, not the age determination that is quoted (this age of course being the interpretation of the data by Minster).
You posted the graph and should have a reference somewhere, why ask the audience for further reference, just post a link to where you got the graph.
If we get to questions that require further reference then we can query further, but this plot creates a number of anomolies by itself..... 1) How can whole-rock analysis of 23 independent samples from extra-terrestrial objects create a linear relation that is similar/same in relation to terrestrial plots that follow the same Isochron technique? 2) Why is there no data points between a Rb/Sr ratio of 1.0 to 1.3?
If you want to know about meteorite dating, I suggest you drag your lazy creationist keister to a library and look up a few things:
**Alekeseev V.A. (1996): Uranium-thorium-helium and potassium-argon ages of ordinary chondrites. Sol. Syst. Res. 30, 243-250 **Faure, G. 1977. Principles of isotope geology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York. 464 pp. **Murthy, V. R. & C. C. Patterson. 1962. Primary isochron of zero age for meteorites and the earth. Geophys. Res. J. 67: 1161. **Smoliar M.I.,R.J. Walker,J.W. Morgan (1996): Re-Os Ages of Group IIA, IIIA, IVA, and IVB Iron Meteorites. Science 271, 1099-0 **Shukolyukov A.,Begemann F. (1996): Cosmogenic and fissiogenic noble gases and 81^Kr-Kr exposure age clusters of eucrites.Meteoritics Planet. Sci. 31, 60-72 **York, D. & R. M. Farquhar. 1972. The earth’s age and geochronology. Pergamon Press, Oxford. 178 pp. http://seismo.berkeley.edu/~manga....ites%22 (16 martian meteorites) The lunar rock sample dates are found in : Head, J. W., III. 1976. Lunar volcanism in space and time. Geophys. Space Phys. Rev. 14: 265-299.
While you're there, you might want to ask yourself why all the radioactive elements we find on earth have half-lives greater than 80 million years...we don't find any with half-lives less than that-- those nuclides decayed themselves out of the picture. Deep Time, baby.
IF the Earth were created a mere 6000 or so years ago...where are the nuclides with a smaller half-life? Accellerated decay that would melt the Earth? Or did god create the EARTH with a fake appearance of age, as you claim happened with the stars, AirHead? "God made them look old" isn't science, that is a blind and misguided religious faith. It makes a liar out of God, to boot. Do "the heavens declare the glory of God..." (Psalm 19) ? Apparently not, since the heavens (according to AirHead) mislead us about the nature and age of God's creation? They appear very old, but are quite young? The heavens declare the deception of the Creator? You're an idiot, Dave, seriously.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Crabby ... you are displaying some monumental ignorance of basic history ...
The Hebrews didn't even exist as a people until after 2000BC. They probably used the same writing systems as the Egyptians until they left Egypt, when they began using vellum (hopefully you know what vellum is). When I talk about the book of Genesis being a written account of eyewitness history, I'm talking about the tablet records which comprise what we now know as Genesis 1:1-37:2a. All these were composed prior to birth of the Hebrew nation. Moses was simply a compiler of these records, plus he wrote his own record.
I'm displaying ignorance? Heh.
5000 year old quipus (hopefully you know what a quipu is, eh?) have been unearthed that predate your 2000 BCE Hebrews. It'd be pretty hard for the sons of Abraham to make it to the New World before that Patriarch was born would it not? Keep in mind you've admitted post flood dating works!
Golly gee, American History goes wayback Mr. Peabody!
So much for the "theory" that Native Americans are one of the "Lost Tribes of Israel". Go stand in the corner with Joseph Smith, boy and leave the moldy rye bread alone.
Yet you're still spouting nonsense about nomads carrying around tablets that record all that begatting and speculating that the Hebrews were using Egyptian writing systems, hieroglyphs on stone or clay tablets, vellum or papyrus?
Where in the world is the evidence for any of this claptrap DDTTD?
Crabby ... I didn't say anything about Native Americans being a lost tribe of Israel ... go argue that with Paley somewhere else ... I also am not interested in talking about geocentrism ... I am a heliocentrist.
Mike PSS ...
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All I want to know is how your interpretation of this data supports your assertion against whole-rock Isochron methods.
It does not support my assertion, nor does it refute it by itself. I still want to discuss it, though. It is from the RATE Book 1 so I do not have the original paper by Minster. If no one here has free access to it, I may buy it.
Eric...AFD said...
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One thing I am noting is that we are basing this 4.5 Ga age number on a really small range of data ... the daughter ratios range from about 0.71 to 0.81, which is well within the range of naturally occurring ratios in both young and "old" rocks.
Now, YOU read it again until you get it. "really small range of data" is not the same as "small sample," see?
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Here is my guess of what we might have if we analyzed MANY meteorites. With this data set, you can have MANY lines with all different slopes ... if this is the real situation, then of course, there is no age significance at all.
But I would like to see the paper and find out more.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
In fairness, regression analysis is not part of most engineering programs. As an industrial engineer, I probably had a half-dozen or more upper level courses that used applied statistics and regression analysis. But I wouldn't expect an EE to know an R-square from a T-square.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Got it straight on where the intial daugher ratio comes from now, Davie-doofus? You were wrong about us assuming it, weren't you!
Learned anything about chemistry and soldification kinetics?
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 20 2006,07:23)
[img]Here is my guess of what we might have if we analyzed MANY meteorites. With this data set, you can have MANY lines with all different slopes ... if this is the real situation, then of course, there is no age significance at all.
One thing I am noting is that we are basing this 4.5 Ga age number on a really small range of data ... the daughter ratios range from about 0.71 to 0.81, which is well within the range of naturally occurring ratios in both young and "old" rocks.
"Really small" is a relative term, meaningless without a referent. It's gigantic relative to the sensitivity, precision, and accuracy of the instrumentation, which arguably is the one realistic referent. It's not "really small" relative to the total range of observed values, being approximately 1/2 the range we see and much more than 1/2 of the most commonly encountered ranges. So, Davie-piddles, "really small" relative to what?
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Sorry, Jon ... I guess Google Scholar doesn't like you
We've already pointed out the problems with Google Scholar searches for such counting, not the least of which is the choice of keywords. Boots on the ground, Davie-doodles. That's the only way.
{ABE:} Geez, Davie-moron, I just noticed your extreme dishonesty in your Google search. You almost slipped that one by!!
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Google Scholar All articles Recent articles Results 1 - 10 of about 11,300 for whole rock age. 1981-1990 Recent articles Results 1 - 10 of about 478 for mineral isochron 1981-1990
You searched for "whole rock age", picking up all sorts of dating methods, but "mineral isochron", trying to limit it to isochrons! Naughty, naughty, Davie-dork! Of course, I don't think that a Google Scholar search is particularly meaningful, but let's see why Davie did that:
Google Scholar, all articles, 1981-1990:
Code Sample
"whole rock isochron" (phrase) 145 whole rock isochron (all words) 443 "mineral isochron" (phrase) 41 mineral isochron (all words) 478
"whole rock age" (phrase) 103 whole rock age (all words) 11,600 "mineral age" (phrase) 69 mineral age (all words) 12,400
So, Davie-doodles, you didn't like that result, did you? If you believe in such Google Scholar searches, your (and Arndts and Overns' ) claim is refuted. No matter how you slice it, comparing comparable searches doesn't come close to 90% whole rock. So you had to do something fraudulent, didn't you? That explains your love for Snelling; frauds of a feather flock together. {end ABE}
I'm sure he doesn't know any of that, nor what r^2 is or means, or why Arndts and Overn's data don't support their hypothesis (not even counting the mountains of evidence that they've ignored that refute their hypothesis).
I just want to note that line-fitting to geochronological data is a very advanced subject, and few of us (including myself) are really knowledgable in that field. Ordinary least-squares regression comes fairly close to an optimum line, but not close enough for the accuracy and significance we want, and similarly r^2 is a very crude measure of significance. The major problem is that least-squares fitting assumes that the X-axis values are all known exactly and all the errors are in the Y-axis values. This is known false in the case of geochronological data; in fact, usually the errors in X and Y dat are correlated. Mean Sum of Weighted Deviates (MSWD) is the appropriate measure of goodness-of-fit and linearity of the data. The canonical reference is York, D., 1969, Least squares fitting of a straight line with correlated errors, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 5, 320-324.
Here is my guess of what we might have if we analyzed MANY meteorites. With this data set, you can have MANY lines with all different slopes ... if this is the real situation, then of course, there is no age significance at all.
But I would like to see the paper and find out more.
AFDave, Just as one person would say to another person "Your fly is undone." I say to you... "Your cognitive dissonance is showing!!"
I asked you to interpret the data that you presented, that I now find out was from RATE 1. What is your interpretation of the data presented. Wild guesses reflecting your imagination aren't part of the discussion of the data set that you brought to the table.
Looking at the above graph with my red filter glasses on I now only see measured and verified data in a linear relation of MANY meteorite samples. In my vernacular MANY has a meaning related to counting... e.g. "One..... Two..... MANY...." Since there are 23 independent meteorites than this fits my definition of MANY. I'll assume you agree with me on this definition and carry on. {AFDave, please don't quibble about this definition since you have argued in the past about parts of your hypothesis based upon One data point, namely your KJV-v3.8.25}
AFDave, I will admit to you that I am not revealing all that I know on this subject. I am certainly no expert in radiometric dating however I have some experience in radio-nucleides (on-stream density measurement of fluid flow in a pipe for example), chemistry, engineering and material science. In other words I know enough to be dangerous (to myself or others remains to be seen). If I'm wrong in my interpretations of the data that you brought to the table and someone calls me on it then I will admit my error and accept the correction.
So........... Accepting that we have MANY meteorites already sampled and putting your red filter glasses on and looking at the above graph, what is your interpretation of the data set presented and why does the data result in a linear relation? *
I'll drop my second question about the Rb/Sr ratio gap since JonF has already argued this point in the past. I'll give you extra credit if you can state how my question relates to one of JonF's previous arguments that you didn't agree with (may be tough, you disagree with JonF quite a bit so there are MANY arguments to choose from).
Mike PSS
* Why do I get the feeling that AFDave will put on his black filter glasses instead of his red ones?
Ichthyic and JonF ... You are chopping wood with scalpels designed for brain surgery. You are getting all high and mighty about the finer points of curve fitting and linear regressions, and missing a very obvious point that should be as plain as the nose on your face.
The point, again, is this ... the Minster report only gives us 23 data points ... I see on closer reading, it's not even 23 seperate meteorites. My chart above shows the probable situation that we really have if we considered many more meteorites. As you can see, there is no need to do any fancy linear regressions to know that there is no age significance whatsoever to the data. You can fit lines every which way with both positive and negative slope and with no slope at all.
Now I don't know what the data really is and you don't either, so the chart above is hypothetical, but my point is ... we cannot really conclude anything from the Minster plot unless we ...
a) see the paper and the data b) answer the question about OTHER meteorites
I can tell you this ... the more I get into real papers that do real analyses of rocks, the more I see that much data is simply discarded because it does not fit pre-conceived ideas about the age of the earth. I hope to post 2 examples later today of REAL data from real rocks, with NOTHING discarded.
*************************************
Jon-- I'm glad to see you've decided Google Scholar is not so bad after all ...
My search terms ARE appropriate and are better than yours ...
"Mineral age" has no relevance to radiometric dating.
"Whole rock age" does. Go look at the results you get and you will see this is so.
JonF...
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Got it straight on where the intial daugher ratio comes from now, Davie-doofus? You were wrong about us assuming it, weren't you!
I have always understood that the Y-intercept is the initial daughter ratio ... you are just quite desperate to portray me as stupid so you jump on anything (sort of like Icthy jumping up and down about linear regression) (sort of like your fantasy that I said lava was sedimentary when actually YOU were the one that said that) ... my question of how do you calculate it came because something you said made me think that you were saying that the OTHER values (not on the Y-intercept) were also calculated, not measured. I see now that you do not think that. Whew!
JonF...
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Learned anything about chemistry and soldification kinetics?
No, already knew it. I'm learning alot about RM dating, though, and also about how gullible you are to believe whole rock isochrons give valid dates, when Dalrymple himself doesn't even defend them. You also were given the EB quote that said how unreliable Rb-Sr dating is. Your little analogy of white balls and black balls was yet another example of just how desperate you are to try to portray me as ignorant. You tried to portray me as not understanding the uptake of different size atoms into crystals, when we weren't talking about individual mineral crystals at all. We were talking about whole rock samples. I even pointed this out to you in the Overn article and yet here you are, still trying to pretend that I don't understand that Rb and Sr are emplaced into crystal structures differently.
Shame on you!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
We have analyzed many meteorites. See Radioisotopic evidences for age of earth (and solar system) for a table of many meteorite analyses (at the end).
Er ... I tried your link and got some site called "Lord I Believe" or something ... didn't see anything about meteorites and the link to the article on "radiometric dating" was broken ...
Maybe try again and give me a more specific link for your supposed massive meteorite data?
Mike PSS-- I have explained to you already why I posted the Minster plot. I could have posted ANY plot from the literature and it would have looked similar. What I am saying, though, is that this plot is a SELECTION of data. (It's not even 23 meteorites I see)
Of course, if this was a random sampling of all the meteorites out there, and no data was discarded as "erroneous" for whatever reason, then this would be interesting and possibly indicate Deep Time.
But alas for Deep Timers, it is quite possibly not.
Now if YOU want to pick up the baton for the Deep TIme crowd and try to prove to me why the Minster data proves Deep Time, then have at it. Spend your $30 and get the paper as a starting point and I will be glad to discuss it with you.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
One thing I am noting is that we are basing this 4.5 Ga age number on a really small range of data ... the daughter ratios range from about 0.71 to 0.81, which is well within the range of naturally occurring ratios in both young and "old" rocks.
Now, YOU read it again until you get it. "really small range of data" is not the same as "small sample," see?
Dave, you can't even keep track of what you're saying, let alone what anyone else is saying.
I'm not confusing "small range of data" with "small sample"; you are. Here's what you said:
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I do understand that this graph has the appearance of a legitimate age but I am not convinced yet. This is 23 meteorites, true, but how many meteorites have been analyzed? Maybe several hundred? Do they fit on this line as well? If not, why not? And about these 23 meteorites ... why were they selected? Were they chosen at random? From a pool of how many?
That's a complaint about small sample size, genius. And as if we needed more evidence that that's what you're complaining about, you come back with this:
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Here is my guess of what we might have if we analyzed MANY meteorites. With this data set, you can have MANY lines with all different slopes ... if this is the real situation, then of course, there is no age significance at all.
Still saying you're not complaining about a small sample size, Dave?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Still saying you're not complaining about a small sample size, Dave?
And after reading further, I see that you are still complaining about small sample size. But you think I'm confusing "small range of data" with "small sample"?
And need I point out once more that it only takes one accurate date of more than 6,000 years to blow your "hypothesis" away? You think you're going to discredit every single one of the millions of dates greater than 6,000 years, all by yourself?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
We have analyzed many meteorites. See Radioisotopic evidences for age of earth (and solar system) for a table of many meteorite analyses (at the end).
Er ... I tried your link and got some site called "Lord I Believe" or something ... didn't see anything about meteorites and the link to the article on "radiometric dating" was broken ...
You didn't read carefully enough, and you were trying the wrong link. Use this one.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Mike PSS-- I have explained to you already why I posted the Minster plot. I could have posted ANY plot from the literature and it would have looked similar.
You mean with a single, distinct line? Wow, you're doing a great job of making the case against yourself.
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Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
My chart above shows the probable situation that we really have if we considered many more meteorites. As you can see, there is no need to do any fancy linear regressions to know that there is no age significance whatsoever to the data. You can fit lines every which way with both positive and negative slope and with no slope at all.
Your ability to draw imaginary lines through imaginary points is not evidence. (ANd none of those lines fit any set of points nearly as well as the real line fits the real points). "Probable situation", hum? Any evidence or calculations for that claim? Of course not.
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I can tell you this ... the more I get into real papers that do real analyses of rocks, the more I see that much data is simply discarded because it does not fit pre-conceived ideas about the age of the earth.
Then why haven't you posted any references to such papers? The KBS Tuff dates and Dalrymple's GC dates that were rejected were rejected not because they didn't fit preconceived ideas .. many of them did ... but for objective and repeatable and valid reasons. Your ability to repeat unsupported claims is not evidence.
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Jon-- I'm glad to see you've decided Google Scholar is not so bad after all ...
I stated explicitly that I still think Google scholar searches are meaningless for this kind of investigation.
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My search terms ARE appropriate and are better than yours ...
Nope, Davie-doodles, your search terms are not appropriate at all. Overn's claim is that "All whole-rock "isochrons" are mixing, and they are approximately 90% of all published.". All published what? Not dates, that's ridiculous on the face of it, and he's only discussing isochrons, and the referent must be to something that appeared just previously; the referent is clear, and it's isochrons. The only possible reading is that he's claiming they are approximately 90% of all published isochrons are whole-rock. And therefore "whole rock age", a ridiculous term no matter what Overn claimed, is totally out of the ballpark. "Whole rock isochron" and "mineral isochron" are the only ones that might be valid, but there's so many things that hit both and/or aren't dating studies that those are meaningless too.
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Got it straight on where the intial daugher ratio comes from now, Davie-doofus? You were wrong about us assuming it, weren't you!
I have always understood that the Y-intercept is the initial daughter ratio ... you are just quite desperate to portray me as stupid so you jump on anything (sort of like Icthy jumping up and down about linear regression)
Sure, Davie-doofus. I believe you, really really I do. The fact that there's lots of evidence that you're lying shouldn't led me to suspect you're lying.
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(sort of like your fantasy that I said lava was sedimentary when actually YOU were the one that said that)
Never said any such thing, Davie-moron. You keep claiming I said it, but you can't point to where. The whole thread is downloadable and easily searchable ... let's see the reference.
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my question of how do you calculate it came because something you said made me think that you were saying that the OTHER values (not on the Y-intercept) were also calculated, not measured. I see now that you do not think that. Whew!
Oh, yeah, sure, Davie-doofus. Exactly what did I write that made you think that? And why did you label the inital daughter ratio as "assumed"?
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Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed Initial Daughter Ratio is closer to 0.7 for the Rb/Sr analyses.
And, when I replied:
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Not assumed. Calculated. Big difference.
you replied:
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Oh really? How?
That's not the question of one who knows the answer and is testing my knowledge, it's the question of a doofus who hasn't figured out the basics yet but assumes all sorts of wild fantasies.
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Learned anything about chemistry and soldification kinetics?
No, already knew it.
Oh, yeah, sure, Davie-doodles. You knew it all. That's why you thought the units of isochron axes were quantities, not ratios. That's why you thought there was no reason for there to be any 87Sr in a rock. That's why you thought there was no reason for the initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio to be the same for cogenetic samples. That's why you thought the 87Rb/86Sr ratio was tied to the 87Sr/86Sr ratio. That's why you thought that the 87Rb/87Sr ratio had to be the same for cogenetic samples. You really are pathetically incompetent in your frantic efforts to avoid admitting your many errors.
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You tried to portray me as not understanding the uptake of different size atoms into crystals, when we weren't talking about individual mineral crystals at all. We were talking about whole rock samples.
Well, you were (and, I bet, still are) ignorant of the uptake of different size and chemically different atoms into crystals ... which is both germane and critical to understanding whole rock samples. Whole rock samples are made up of varying proportions of individual mineral crystals. Therefore individual mineral crystals and how they form are relevant and important to understanding the properties of whole rock samples. Moron. Your inability to comprehend the basics of crystallization leads immediately to your inability to understand whole-rock samples.
Geez AFD .....no wonder the Air Force sidelined you.
Did they figure out if you didn't like something ....you just told a bunch of lies to make it look like they were wrong.
I'll bet they were glad to rid of you.
You're just a weak, half assed, lying scam artist.
Scum.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Now if YOU want to pick up the baton for the Deep TIme crowd and try to prove to me why the Minster data proves Deep Time, then have at it. Spend your $30 and get the paper as a starting point and I will be glad to discuss it with you.
Dave, are you ever going to get clear on who has the burden of proof here? It's your freaking "hypothesis."You have to prove the earth is only 6,000 years old. It's not our job to prove deep time to you.
You're just like every other dishonest and deceitful creationist out there. You came in with this wild-ass "hypothesis" about the Bible in general and Genesis in particular being literally true and that the earth is only 6,000 years old. So far, you have presented—wait for it—ZERO evidence to back up either one of those assertions. Instead, you've spent all your time discussing everything but evidence for your "hypothesis." But you expect other people to spend money supporting a theory they subscribe to? Why would they do that? We're not supposed to be even discussing other theories, and certainly shouldn't be required to defend them.
But on the other hand, if you weren't spending all your time trying (to absolutely no effect) to refute other theories, you'd have nothing to talk about at all, would you?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
We have analyzed many meteorites. See Radioisotopic evidences for age of earth (and solar system) for a table of many meteorite analyses (at the end).
Er ... I tried your link and got some site called "Lord I Believe" or something ... didn't see anything about meteorites and the link to the article on "radiometric dating" was broken ...
Whoops, I linked to the page above the one I wanted, although it would do you good to read all that's linked from that page ... lots of good info there. As improvious pointed out, the proper link is Radioisotopic evidences for age of earth (and solar system). And the link to it from the page I linked to is not broken, although the link to Wien's paper appears to be. But, of course, since you've been investigating radiometric dating and have been pointed to Wien's paper many times, you've already read it thoroughly, right?
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Now if YOU want to pick up the baton for the Deep TIme crowd and try to prove to me why the Minster data proves Deep Time, then have at it. Spend your $30 and get the paper as a starting point and I will be glad to discuss it with you.
The Minster data prima facie proves deep time. If you can't come up with some discussion of real (not fantasized) problems with the study, then that's just one more item on the mountain of evidence that proves the Earth and life are far older than 6,000 years.
The point, again, is this ... the Minster report only gives us 23 data points ... I see on closer reading, it's not even 23 seperate meteorites. My chart above shows the probable situation that we really have if we considered many more meteorites. As you can see, there is no need to do any fancy linear regressions to know that there is no age significance whatsoever to the data. You can fit lines every which way with both positive and negative slope and with no slope at all.
You can eyeball many lines, but linear regression only provides one answer that best fits the data. But, tell you what. Why don't you take the fitted line and all your made-up lines and calculate the least squares sum and r-square. If you are right, it should be immediately obvious that the fitted line isn't much better than any other.
Now, I do note that JonF has indicated that linear regression provides a reasonable fit, but not at a great enough level of accuracy. But, (correct me if I am wrong, Jon) linear regression on each of these lines ought to provide us enough information to at least compare their relative suitability.
EDIT: Wait a minute. You put the red dots on the chart yourself? Never mind. First, go get yourself some real data then show us how you can fit multiple lines to the same data.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
That's a complaint about small sample size, genius. And as if we needed more evidence that that's what you're complaining about, you come back with this:
Different topic, Eric. The context of Deadman's misstatement that I corrected was the Y-axis of the Minster plot. You are talking about how many meteorites were sampled. Try to keep things straight if you are going to enter the discussion, OK? I have enough intentional obfuscators to keep between the ditches ... I don't need any blunderers to make matters worse.
JonF...
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The KBS Tuff dates and Dalrymple's GC dates that were rejected were rejected not because they didn't fit preconceived ideas .. many of them did ... but for objective and repeatable and valid reasons.
And you have posted how much evidence for this claim? ZERO. Yet you preach to me. Shameful.
JonF...
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Any evidence or calculations for that claim? Of course not.
Didn't claim I have evidence ... YET ... I'm cheap like you ... I don't want to spend the $30 unless I have to. JonF...
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And therefore "whole rock age", a ridiculous term no matter what Overn claimed, is totally out of the ballpark.
Fine, Jon. You go ahead and continue in your fairy tale world ... that's nice ... meanwhile, the creationists will continue to shine the light on scientists and force them to discard worthless methods (like WR isochrons). I'm quite sure I will never convince YOU of anything, so I will stop trying.
JonF...
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Jon is correct that (at least from this real world example) the assumed Initial Daughter Ratio is closer to 0.7 for the Rb/Sr analyses.
And, when I replied: Quote Not assumed. Calculated. Big difference.
I'll give you this one. I misread. For some reason I thought you were saying ALL the daughter values were calculated.
JonF...
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Oh, yeah, sure, Davie-doodles. You knew it all. That's why you thought the units of isochron axes were quantities, not ratios. That's why you thought there was no reason for there to be any 87Sr in a rock. That's why you thought there was no reason for the initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio to be the same for cogenetic samples. That's why you thought the 87Rb/86Sr ratio was tied to the 87Sr/86Sr ratio. That's why you thought that the 87Rb/87Sr ratio had to be the same for cogenetic samples. You really are pathetically incompetent in your frantic efforts to avoid admitting your many errors. Quote You tried to portray me as not understanding the uptake of different size atoms into crystals, when we weren't talking about individual mineral crystals at all. We were talking about whole rock samples.
Well, you were (and, I bet, still are) ignorant of the uptake of different size and chemically different atoms into crystals ... which is both germane and critical to understanding whole rock samples. Whole rock samples are made up of varying proportions of individual mineral crystals. Therefore individual mineral crystals and how they form are relevant and important to understanding the properties of whole rock samples. Moron. Your inability to comprehend the basics of crystallization leads immediately to your inability to understand whole-rock samples.
Calm down. Calm down. The fact is that you and I BOTH misread one another once in a while. I just admitted misreading you and you have just demonstrated that you misread me. (Not that you will ever admit it, but nonetheless, you did)
Regardless of who said what when, the bottom line here is that Overn and Arndts have pointed out correctly that ...
1) WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRON DATING IS FATALLY FLAWED http://tccsa.tc/articles/isochrons2.html 2) DALRYMPLE ENGAGED THEM PUBLICLY, BUT AVOIDED A DEFENSE OF WHOLE ROCK DATING. 3) ALL WHOLE ROCK DATING CAN BE INTERPRETED AS NOTHING MORE THAN MIXING 4) YOU YOURSELF HAVE IMPLICITLY ACKNOWLEDGED THE FAILURE OF WHOLE ROCK DATING BECAUSE YOU POINT TO OTHER TYPES OF DATING AS THE "LATEST AND GREATEST" 5) I HAVE GIVEN YOU A PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR THE LINEARITY OF THE MINSTER PLOT AND MANY OTHER PLOTS LIKE IT - PREFERENTIAL SELECTION OF DATA
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
That's a complaint about small sample size, genius. And as if we needed more evidence that that's what you're complaining about, you come back with this:
Different topic, Eric. The context of Deadman's misstatement that I corrected was the Y-axis of the Minster plot. You are talking about how many meteorites were sampled. Try to keep things straight if you are going to enter the discussion, OK? I have enough intentional obfuscators to keep between the ditches ... I don't need any blunderers to make matters worse.
Dave, no matter how many ways you try to slice it, you were indeed complaining about the sample size—and you continue to complain about it. That you were also complaining about the data range is utterly irrelevant. It's not a different topic; it's the same exact topic. And it's in the exact same post. You're implying that the ages derived from the meteor do not prove deep time because the sample is too small, having conveniently forgotten once again that one ancient date is sufficient to obliterate your "hypothesis."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Jon--- Your link http://lordibelieve.org/time/age4.PDF does not have any RAW DATA. It simply has lists of studies which supposedly dated meteorites at such and such an age.
If you want to convince me, show me some data ... you know like this ...
DATA, Jon, DATA ... not some scientist's biased conclusions.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
If you want to convince me, show me some data ... you know like this ...
DATA, Jon, DATA ... not some scientist's biased conclusions.
How about this, Dave: how about you try to convince us that the earth is only 6,000 years old. Try to find any set of data anywhere derived from any source whatsoever that converges on 6,000 years.
We've shown you mountains of data that the earth is 4.55 billion years old. You don't believe any of that data—not one speck of it—is accurate, because if you did, if you thought a single data point was accurate, you'd have to admit that your "hypothesis" has been falsified. Fine. Be that way. But this is your "hypothesis," and I'm not going to let you get away with not supporting it, and I'm not going to let you shift the burden of proof.
FIND A DATASET SOMEWHERE THAT CONVERGES ON 6,000 YEARS, DAVE, OR ADMIT YOU CANNOT.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh, Davie-doofus, what percentage of published isochron dates in the mid 90's were whole-rock isochron dates? What did a Google Scholar search indicate? Seems to me that either Google Scholar searches are not valid counts of the use of particular dating methods and/or Overn's claim is wrong. What do you think?
And exactly where did I say lava is sedimentary? You keep claiming that I did but can't point to where. Now that's shameful, Davie-poo.
Quote (afdave @ Sep. 20 2006,12:36)
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The KBS Tuff dates and Dalrymple's GC dates that were rejected were rejected not because they didn't fit preconceived ideas .. many of them did ... but for objective and repeatable and valid reasons.
And you have posted how much evidence for this claim? ZERO. Yet you preach to me. Shameful.
I've posted links to the papers themselves, and listed the objective and repeatable and valid reasons for rejecting particular dates. I.e., lots of evidence. The "zero evidence" must be referring to your unsupported claims.
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Any evidence or calculations for that claim? Of course not.
Didn't claim I have evidence ... YET ... I'm cheap like you ... I don't want to spend the $30 unless I have to.
If you don't have the evidence to back up your claims, don't make claims.
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You tried to portray me as not understanding the uptake of different size atoms into crystals, when we weren't talking about individual mineral crystals at all. We were talking about whole rock samples.
Well, you were (and, I bet, still are) ignorant of the uptake of different size and chemically different atoms into crystals ... which is both germane and critical to understanding whole rock samples. Whole rock samples are made up of varying proportions of individual mineral crystals. Therefore individual mineral crystals and how they form are relevant and important to understanding the properties of whole rock samples. Moron. Your inability to comprehend the basics of crystallization leads immediately to your inability to understand whole-rock samples.
Calm down. Calm down. The fact is that you and I BOTH misread one another once in a while. I just admitted misreading you and you have just demonstrated that you misread me. (Not that you will ever admit it, but nonetheless, you did)
I misread nothing. You didn't (and don't) know anything about solidification, you made a bunch of wild-ass claims about solidification, and you claimed that individual mineral crystallization is irrelevant to whole-rock samples when in fact it's key. You're a moron, Davie.
Neither you nor they have addressed the fatal flaws in Arndts and Overn's arguments:
Passing the mixing test is not sufficient evidence for a mixing line.
Their own data doesn't support their conclusion; many of their samples failed the mxing test! They have no evidence that it is even reasonable to interpret those isochrons as mixing lines.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron slopes.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron intercepts.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of agreement with other dating methods that are not susceptible to mixing. No matter what you think of the individual dating methods, the pattern is there and must be explained by any viable hypothesis.
Quote
2) DALRYMPLE ENGAGED THEM PUBLICLY, BUT AVOIDED A DEFENSE OF WHOLE ROCK DATING.
Dalrymple pointed out the fatal flaws in their arguments. There's no need to engage them further until they come up with something new.
Quote
3) ALL WHOLE ROCK DATING CAN BE INTERPRETED AS NOTHING MORE THAN MIXING
Only by ignoring the vast majority of the facts.
Quote
YOU YOURSELF HAVE IMPLICITLY ACKNOWLEDGED THE FAILURE OF WHOLE ROCK DATING BECAUSE YOU POINT TO OTHER TYPES OF DATING AS THE "LATEST AND GREATEST"
Isochron dating has not failed; it's good for some situations, other methods are good in other situations. It so happens that isochron dating usualy can't yield sub-1% accuracy, so methods that can are mor popular now. But isochron methods are stilly widely used in isotope geochemistry.
Quote
5) I HAVE GIVEN YOU A PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR THE LINEARITY OF THE MINSTER PLOT AND MANY OTHER PLOTS LIKE IT - PREFERENTIAL SELECTION OF DATA
How, by photoshopping a lot of imaginary dots and imaginary lines on top of the graph? Are you even fooling yourself? You sure ain't fooling anyone else.
Let's see your evidence for preferential selection of datas. If you don't have the evidence, don't make the claim.
Quote
Jon--- Your link http://lordibelieve.org/time/age4.PDF does not have any RAW DATA. It simply has lists of studies which supposedly dated meteorites at such and such an age.
It's got the references to the papers. You're the one that's trying to prove preferential selection or mixing or whatever; I've given you a good start, you go to the library and dig up the papers. If you haven't got the evidence, don't make the claim.
The KBS Tuff dates and Dalrymple's GC dates that were rejected were rejected not because they didn't fit preconceived ideas .. many of them did ... but for objective and repeatable and valid reasons.
And you have posted how much evidence for this claim? ZERO. Yet you preach to me. Shameful.
He posted plenty of evidence on that. You just dismissed it because it was too "sciencey".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
AFDave: DATA, Jon, DATA ... not some scientist's biased conclusions.
You mean like the data on the C14 calibration curves that you totally ignored?
Or the data on limestone formation and erosion rates that you totally ignored?
Or the data on river meander formation that you totally ignored?
Or the data on the two dozen mature forests in Yellowstone that are buried one on top of another that you totally ignored?
We all know you're an intellectually dishonest habitual liar Davie. What would you do with another data set to totally ignore?
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
....now you know how all your creo pseudo science heros work.
Just make it up as you go along and Barnums 1st Axiom kicks in.
"There is a sucker born every minute"
and 'red dot' Dave .....YOU are one of them.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I'm a bit puzzled. The black dots represent individual meteorites, and are placed based on their ages calculated using Rb-Sr and Sr-Sr dating, right? What are the red dots, and why do neither the red dots nor the black dots add up to 23?
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
I'm a bit puzzled. The black dots represent individual meteorites, and are placed based on their ages calculated using Rb-Sr and Sr-Sr dating, right? What are the red dots, and why do neither the red dots nor the black dots add up to 23?
The red dots represent Dave's imagination.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
be a man for once in your life and tell Argy about the 'red dots'
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
Too true.....at least Sal knows when to pack up his lies and move on to fresher pastures.
AFD is a class of his own in pure moron-ness.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
I'm a bit puzzled. The black dots represent individual meteorites ...
Yes.
Quote
and are placed based on their ages calculated using Rb-Sr and Sr-Sr dating, right?
Not quite. They are placed based on an X-coordinate of each meterorite's rubidium-87 content divided by its strontium-86 content, and a Y-coordinate of its strontium-87 content divided by its strontium-86 content. For reasons that you probably don't care about (but I can elucidate if you're interested), the slope of the line they form is the common age of all the meteorites expressed in half-lives of rubidium-87, and the intercept of the line with the Y-axis is the ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86 when all the meteorites formed.
Quote
What are the red dots, and why do neither the red dots nor the black dots add up to 23?
There's 38 black dots, but a lot of the black dots overlap a lot. Here's a scan of the version from Dalrymple's Age of the Earth (1991), which may be clearer: The different symbols are for different groups of meteorite types (see Stony Meteorites).
The red dots are meaningless, as are the lines through them. Davie dreamed 'em in an opium-induced stupor. He thinks that sort of thing is evidence for high probability of error in the slope of the line.
I hope somebody is saving copies of Dave's graphs. I think Dave's Imaginary, Random Red Points (or DIRR Points) will go down in ATBC history as one of the stupidest creationist arguments ever made. It would be a shame if Dave took the pics offline.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
OK, so let's see if I have this right. 1) Dave is presented with data 2) Dave agrees, the data suggests that two particular dating methods have a high degree of correlation if one trusts the data presented 3) Then Dave says "What if the data looked like THIS:" and adds a bunch of red dots to the chart 4) Dave goes on to prove that the imaginary data points have very little correlation, thus proving a young earth
Perhaps the term straw man should be replaced with "Red Dot."
-------------- "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" -Calvin
I normally don't read AFDave's posts, I read others' posts and if something isn't clear I might go back up and read the original. But when I saw that fake graph he made, I almost died laughing.
improv, I agree, and I've copied the photo to imageshack.
So now, instead of providing evidence in support of his own "hypothesis," or even providing evidence contradicting other theories, he now totally makes up evidence out of his own fevered imagination in an attempt not to support his own "hypothesis," but to try to discredit other theories.
Maybe the "AF" in "AF Dave" actually stands for "Absolutely Fictional."
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
ROFPMSL! I guffawed so loudly at that my co-workers came over to see what the fuss was about!
-------------- "CO2 can't re-emit any trapped heat unless all the molecules point the right way" "All the evidence supports Creation baraminology" "If it required a mind, planning and design, it isn't materialistic." "Jews and Christians are Muslims."
Ah, I see AirHead's use of "range" Pfft. Not that he made himself clear by adding "I do understand that this graph has the appearance of a legitimate age but I am not convinced yet. This is 23 meteorites, true, but how many meteorites have been analyzed?"
I have a subscription to both Nature and Science, AirHead, but I'd rather see you go to a library and look it up yourself. Or buy it. (remember, your money goes to publishing horrible, godless science) While you're there, you can look at the data on lunar rocks and find out if "dates were thrown out."
And you can look at why there are no atomic nuclides around with a half-life less than 80 million years. C'mon, AirHead, I want to hear you say " there was accellerated decay in the past" and then " but creationists don't invoke miracles." Do "the heavens declare the glory of God..." (Psalm 19)? Apparently not, since the heavens (according to AirHead) mislead us about the nature and age of God's creation. They appear very old, but are quite young. The heavens "declare the deception of the Creator?" Stars that are created to "look old?" Accellerated decay? For shame, oh ye of little faith. In the meantime, chew on these for a bit: Apollo 15 Sample : 15555 (olivine) dates in billions and billions of years ********************************** Ar-Ar whole rock 3.29 +/- 0.05 Ar-Ar whole rock 3.25 +/- 0.06 Ar-Ar whole rock 3.28 +/- 0.06 Ar-Ar whole rock 3.24 +/- 0.06 Ar-Ar whole rock 3.19 +/- 0.02 Ar-Ar plagioclase 3.27 +/- 0.02 Ar-Ar pyroxene 3.24 +/- 0.09 Rb-Sr 6 isochron 3.23 +/- 0.08 Rb-Sr 6 isochron 3.27 +/- 0.09 Rb-Sr 7 isochron 3.25 +/- 0.04 Neat concordance, eh? Darn those evil scientists. Yet you said whole rock dating was flawed,fatally...oh, noes! I gave you the reference...go see if dates were "thrown out"
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
OK, so let's see if I have this right. 1) Dave is presented with data 2) Dave agrees, the data suggests that two particular dating methods have a high degree of correlation if one trusts the data presented 3) Then Dave says "What if the data looked like THIS:" and adds a bunch of red dots to the chart 4) Dave goes on to prove that the imaginary data points have very little correlation, thus proving a young earth
Perhaps the term straw man should be replaced with "Red Dot."
Almost. The graph represents only one dating method. But it does represent a lot of data that defines a dam good straight line, and no known sources for a multi-component mix.
Quote (ericmurphy @ Sep. 20 2006,17:05)
So now, instead of providing evidence in support of his own "hypothesis," or even providing evidence contradicting other theories, he now totally makes up evidence out of his own fevered imagination in an attempt not to support his own "hypothesis," but to try to discredit other theories.
Oh, he's done that before. E.g., September 4:
Quote
Would the "ages" have come out younger if xenoliths were excluded? ... But you want to exclude the xeonliths? OK Fine. Exclude the xenoliths. What would they have gotten then? Answer: Probably not much different
September 8:
Quote
Quote
The Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb dates on Broken Hill were both 1680 Ma. The Ar-Ar date is 1573 Ma. Wow.
Wow. It's like magic! You just discard those samples over there that show 950 Ma and these samples over here that show 400 Ma and VOILA! Concordant dates! Ain't it great?
Is it necessary to point out that he made up those "discarded dates"?
But this diagram is indeed an incredibly retarded attempt by him.
We might just as well continue our discussion with this real world example.
Oh, and Davie-poo, I just noticed; it's not 23 meteorites, it's 38; you can count 'em if you look closely at the graph I posted. Gee, and it does not include multiple analyses on any single meteorite. Those RATE guys can't get anything right! Obviously you need to double-check everything they claim, even the most prosaic.
Not 30 pages yet, but I luckily decided to check this thread out of general boredom, and was rewarded beyond my wildest hopes by Steve S's final re-working of AFDumb's hypothesis!
My son wants me to explain whatever has been making me erupt into belly-aching guffaws for the last ten minutes, but, y'know, it's such a brilliant, but inside-inside, joke...
Can we give Steve Story a new award for this? I believe it is the funniest ever slapdown of everything (or the nothing?) AFDumb is!
It sure ain't the Lorax or the Grinch Category: Creationism Posted on: September 20, 2006 3:08 PM, by
Whoa…faux-Seussian poetry, fairly nice animation, all in the service of a dumb, dead idea: The Watchmaker. It's a rather elaborate setup for Paley's watchmaker argument that starts with an imaginary animated analogy of glass and metal condensing to spontaneously form a watch, and then compares the absurdity of that argument with cells, which contain "assembly lines, robots, electrical cable", and argues that it's silly to claim that cells could just happen from dirt and warm water…as if anyone has argued such a thing.
Isn't it enough to simply point out that watches need watchmakers because they don't reproduce? Rabbits don't need rabbitmakers (other than other rabbits), so the analogy fails just by contradiction with common experience.
One enlightening and informative aspect of the exercise is that it does go on about the debunked watchmaker argument, and also associates itself with Intelligent Design—the Discovery Institute is recommended on the page—but it is screamingly evangelical and religious.
Great science there, isn't it? It's more propaganda for creationism aimed directly at children. If there were a god and heaven, I would hope that lying to impressionable kids would be one of his most smite-worthy sins.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It's also pretty interesting that people like PZ Meyers have been lying to kids about our origins for years, but now he's mad because there's an alternate view out there being promoted to kids.
Just think how mad he'd be if we were TAX FUNDED like his view is AND mandated in all the public schools!
Whooo ... baby!
*************************
Oh, I see that people looked at my chart and are pretending not to know what the word "hypothetical" means ... oh well ... what am I to expect from this crowd.
More pretty pictures tomorrow!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
It's also pretty interesting that people like PZ Meyers have been lying to kids about our origins for years, but now he's mad because there's an alternate view out there being promoted to kids.
Dave, you have a pretty strange idea of what "lying" means.
You've got, on one hand, a theory that is supported by literally hundreds of millions of words, warehouses full of data that have been verified and corroborated every way imaginable, and thousands if not millions of man-years of investigation by scientists all over the world, that is supported by the entire scientific community (with truly miniscule exceptions, most of whom do not practice in relevant fields), and you've got, on the other hand, a myth based on book which is a translation of a translation of a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of an oral tradition which is contradicted by observations in so many places it's difficult to fathom how anyone could imagine it was anything other than a myth, but you somehow think this "myth" is somehow a better explanation for observation than a scientifically-verified theory.
And remember, we're talking about your "hypothesis" which, after almost two hundred pages, you haven't managed to provide the tiniest little scrap of evidence to support it with.
Dave, your lies, misrepresentations, and flights of hallucination are legendary here. If you can't see why people like PZ Meyers have problems with your lies, you're an idiot.
It doesn't appear that PZ Meyers has even seen your lies on this thread. If you think he's got a low opinion of you now…
And did you actually read PZ's post, Dave? Because if you had, you would have noted that he obliterated your stupid watch metaphor in a single sentence.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Oh, I see that people looked at my chart and are pretending not to know what the word "hypothetical" means ... oh well ... what am I to expect from this crowd.
Dave, we know what “hypothetical” means; you’re the one who doesn’t. Which is why after almost 200 pages, you still haven't managed to provide any support for what we laughingly (and you, evidently, in all seriousness) refer to as a "hypothesis."
A "hypothesis" isn't a wild-assed guess, Dave. You merely sprinkled a bunch of red dots on a graph and drew some randomly-oriented lines through them. Is that supposed to mean something? Because it doesn't. I could equally reasonably illustrate the impossibility of an ark floating in water by drawing a picture of it with a giant hole in the hull beneath the waterline, thereby "demonstrating" that a wooden ark wouldn't be able to float in water.
Your red dots have got to be the most idiotic attempt to refute evidence for an old earth in the history of creationist thought.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
It's also pretty interesting that people like PZ Meyers have been lying to kids about our origins for years
Now here's a particularly loathsome piece of sliminess.
Would you care to document a single specific instance of PZ lying to kids? Or perhaps you'll want to hide behind the construction "people like PZ" (e.g. people with two eyes, people older than 30...).
Really. If your Jesus approves of this sort of calumny, I want nothing to do with him.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
It's also pretty interesting that people like PZ Meyers have been lying to kids about our origins for years, but now he's mad because there's an alternate view out there being promoted to kids.
Just think how mad he'd be if we were TAX FUNDED like his view is AND mandated in all the public schools!
Dave?
Shut up. Okay?
See if you can't salvage a tiny shard of human dignity.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
It's also pretty interesting that people like PZ Meyers have been lying to kids about our origins for years, but now he's mad because there's an alternate view out there being promoted to kids.
Just think how mad he'd be if we were TAX FUNDED like his view is AND mandated in all the public schools!
Whooo ... baby!
*************************
Oh, I see that people looked at my chart and are pretending not to know what the word "hypothetical" means ... oh well ... what am I to expect from this crowd.
AFDave, Your Isochron arguments made me decloak because I knew you didn't know what you were getting into when you started this little bit of "street theater".
Then you presented REAL data on p.194 and stated that this was a point of discussion we should continue for your argument. I think this was a first for you since the start of your hypothesising to actually present REAL data so I challanged you to interpret the data. I even gave you an out and said you didn't have to commit to the age published in the graph, just the reasoning behind the linearity of the data. SIMPLE.
You said the graph came from RATE Book 1. So... what do they say about the graph and do you support the RATE group interpretation of the data?
Stop playing with crayons and start using your grey matter a little bit more. I predicted that you would put on your black filter glasses in my last post and you did just that.
And finally you stated:
Quote
Mike PSS-- I have explained to you already why I posted the Minster plot. I could have posted ANY plot from the literature and it would have looked similar. What I am saying, though, is that this plot is a SELECTION of data. (It's not even 23 meteorites I see)
Of course, if this was a random sampling of all the meteorites out there, and no data was discarded as "erroneous" for whatever reason, then this would be interesting and possibly indicate Deep Time.
So we have come to an interesting point in your discussion of your hypothesis. We have REAL data on the table (not your genital wart plot creation) and we have a statement of falsifiability for your 6,000 year old earth hypothesis from yourself.
Also, How many is MANY (let's put this goalpost in concrete right now)? I gave you an out once with Minster's assumed age but you didn't take it. So...Why do you think the linear plot would indicate Deep Time if it met your falsifiability statement (think about this one, you yourself stated it above)?
I think you are now seeing that this circular room has no corners to hide in. There are multi-layer, multi-discipline, multi-connected reasons for a single data point on that graph (and that graph has 38 points, and there are thousands of these graphs) and I am beginning to detect that you aren't seeing enough of these connections.
That's enough to get you thinking for now. Mike PSS
And did you actually read PZ's post, Dave? Because if you had, you would have noted that he obliterated your stupid watch metaphor in a single sentence.
Mmm hmm ... same old stuff ... about as silly as reading Dawkins talk about bat echolocation, then attempt to explain for 8 chapters why it wasn't designed.
Steverino--
Quote
Does the sun revlove around the earth?
Yes, and the moon is made of cheese and your ancestors were pond scum :-) (the sad part is you really believe that last part)
Arden...
Quote
Shut up. Okay?
You know ... maybe I would, but Steve Story says I'm helping your side ... and I'm always one to help ... so I guess I better keep it up for a while ... you guys seem like you need help :-)
Russell...
Quote
Now here's a particularly loathsome piece of sliminess.
Would you care to document a single specific instance of PZ lying to kids? Or perhaps you'll want to hide behind the construction "people like PZ" (e.g. people with two eyes, people older than 30...).
Really. If your Jesus approves of this sort of calumny, I want nothing to do with him.
I see you answered your own question ... you did finally realize that I said "people like PZ" which of course means Evolutionists in general.
I do commend you for your breadth of word knowledge ... I hadn't heard the word "calumny" for quite some time. I am sorry that you don't like "my" Jesus. You will bow before Him someday whether you like Him or not. I'm simply here to warn you before it's too late.
Hey, aren't you the guy that said it was a waste of time to argue with me? Well, I see your back. So am I irresistible?
Steve Story-- I guess I will have to watch out ... I have an able and distinguished Photoshop opponent now!
Mike PSS...
Quote
I think you are now seeing that this circular room has no corners to hide in. There are multi-layer, multi-discipline, multi-connected reasons for a single data point on that graph (and that graph has 38 points, and there are thousands of these graphs) and I am beginning to detect that you aren't seeing enough of these connections.
In case you haven't noticed, I'm not looking for any corners to hide in ... has it escaped you that this thread is nearly 200 pages long? Has it dawned on you that I plan to be here as long as I can find a good YEC purpose for being here? Or until I am banned?
As for multi-this and multi-that, I've heard that many times on this thread now, the latest being how the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase can supposedly be dated radiometrically. This turned out to be nonsense like so many other items.
I am not done with studying isochrons, but if it goes anything like the other 10 or so topics that I have covered, then it will be just one more "skeleton" in the closet of Deep Timers.
Mike PSS...
Quote
So we have come to an interesting point in your discussion of your hypothesis. We have REAL data on the table (not your genital wart plot creation) and we have a statement of falsifiability for your 6,000 year old earth hypothesis from yourself.
Mike, my friend, IF it somehow turns out that all meteorites plot on the Minster line and NOT in some pattern like my red dots, then you will have ONE shred of evidence supporting Deep Time. But even this piece of evidence can still be explained in other ways besides Deep Time.
You are not even CLOSE to falsifying a 6000 year old earth.
(And I did get the meteorite count wrong ... I guess there was 23, but 38 data points ... my error, not the RATE guys)
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
if this was a random sampling of all the meteorites out there, and no data was discarded as "erroneous" for whatever reason, then this would be interesting and possibly indicate Deep Time
Uh...it *does* indicate deep time, as do all the other data that has been presented to you in support of it.
You haven't been successful in refuting any of it, AirHead, and in fact, you run from most of it -- like the radionuclide point I just mentioned...and deep sea cores...and ice cores...and dendro (on that last one, don't try to repeat your claim that one guy looking at NZ pine trees = refuting dendro). The fact of the matter is that the data is simply overwhelming that you are wrong in your creationist hypothesis.
More importantly, you have offered no real evidence to support your claim of a young earth at all--what you have been reduced to is the same thing that all other creationists have been reduced to...you use the same cheap tactics over and over to try to falsely discredit good science -- rather than support your own claims.
What you will resort to eventually...will be to invoke a "miracle" of accellerated decay...the same thing the ICR had to do, the same thing all creationists had to do...because the data is massively against you. So you will eventually make something up, attribute it to God...as if you speak for God...and make God into a liar, a charlatan who "faked" deep age for the universe around you...all for your silly literalist religious views. Pathetic, but true.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
What you will resort to eventually...will be to invoke a "miracle" of accellerated decay...
A m-m-m-miracle??!! Horrors! How dare anyone mention a miracle!! Yes, Deadman, miracles DO happen ... we've been over this before ... and the biggest miracle of all is that trained scientists think their ancestors were pond scum!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
the latest being how the sedimentary layers of the Grand Staircase can supposedly be dated radiometrically. This turned out to be nonsense like so many other items.
You lost that bet, AirHeadDave. Lying about it now doesn't help you. Pretending that all the dates I gave you on the Morrison alone (and how they concord with paleomagnetic and fossil data) that those "don't count" is just another example of your willingness to lie. Lying FOR "God" is making a liar OUT of God, AirHead.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
It's also pretty interesting that people like PZ Meyers have been lying to kids about our origins for years, but now he's mad because there's an alternate view out there being promoted to kids.
Just think how mad he'd be if we were TAX FUNDED like his view is AND mandated in all the public schools!
Whooo ... baby!
*************************
Oh, I see that people looked at my chart and are pretending not to know what the word "hypothetical" means ... oh well ... what am I to expect from this crowd.
More pretty pictures tomorrow!
The real shame is...dishonest idiots like yourself are allowed to influence children with your misinformation. Those children will grow up without the ability to critically think...all for your own personal selfish reasons.
You and your closed minded, intellectually vapid leaders are really just about control. God forbid anyone actually think for themselves.
You are promoting the dumbing down of America.
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
A m-m-m-miracle??!! Horrors! How dare anyone mention a miracle!!
But you said creationists don't invoke those, liar. But they do, huh? Like the "miracle" of flying hydroplates that leave no trace...like the miracle of a global flood that didn't leave a global stratum ( don't point to sedimentary layers and say "there they are" show me where the pre-flood and post-flood strata begin and end. ). The miracle of a global flood at 2300 BCE that didn't kill off the Egyptians and Sumerians and multiple other literate civilizations that don't even mention a flood, though they had writing before and after that date. The Miracle of accellerated decay, the Miracle of God making stars with apparent age. The miracle of "fountains of the deep " that have no support except selective citation of 2 deep boreholes, while ignoring the thousands of others that don't hit water at all. The "miracle " of flood waters SHOOTING OFF INTO SPACE. The Miracle of continents zooming around and not boiling off all water on the planet. And on and on and on. How many more miracles do you have to invoke to try to fake your way through this?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Mike PSS-- I have explained to you already why I posted the Minster plot. I could have posted ANY plot from the literature and it would have looked similar. What I am saying, though, is that this plot is a SELECTION of data. (It's not even 23 meteorites I see)
Of course, if this was a random sampling of all the meteorites out there, and no data was discarded as "erroneous" for whatever reason, then this would be interesting and possibly indicate Deep Time.
This is the part that's wrong, Dave. These results could all be from one single, solitary meteorite, and it would be, all by itself, enough to falsify your young-earth "hypothesis." Further, all sorts of results could have been tossed as erroneous, and your "hypothesis" is still dead.
You seem to be under the delusion that some significant fraction of meteorites would have to be older than 6,000 years to falsify your "hypothesis." No. One would be enough to do it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
And did you actually read PZ's post, Dave? Because if you had, you would have noted that he obliterated your stupid watch metaphor in a single sentence.
Mmm hmm ... same old stuff ... about as silly as reading Dawkins talk about bat echolocation, then attempt to explain for 8 chapters why it wasn't designed.
What, you mean the "same old stuff" that neither you nor any other creationist has ever been able to address? The fact that watches don't reproduce, and that completely invalidates your analogy?
What's your response to that criticism, Dave? Do you have one?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
... your ancestors were pond scum :-) (the sad part is you really believe that last part)
... you did finally realize that I said "people like PZ" which of course means Evolutionists in general.
Steve Story-- I guess I will have to watch out ... I have an able and distinguished Photoshop opponent now!
Has it dawned on you that I plan to be here as long as I can find a good YEC purpose for being here? Or until I am banned?
You are not even CLOSE to falsifying a 6000 year old earth.
It's not sad that we realize that Evolution has taken place during the Deep Time you fear so greatly, what is sad is that you are so revolted by the fact that your Momma is a nekkid African ape. We have proof of that too DDTTD! Get over it. You and you children are nekkid African apes.
DDTTD doesn't "mean" the same old stuff, he means the old same stuff! SEE! You can't get there from heah. Come on guys, the red dots are DDTTD hypothesizin'!
Photoshop opponent? You admit you're doctoring evidence? No surprises there. You needed Photoshop to doctor that graph? What a dolt.
Ahh, dawned on us about your purpose? I said a long time ago you were here to be crucified (banned) about the same time DM said you were here to bilk the ignorant of their filthy lucre.
You're too cowardly both physically and mentally to ever suffer as Yeshua alledgedly did (but you can play at it over the internet, pseudo fighter stud).
No one here has to falsify a 6000 YO "theory" of the earth, YOU do. Then you have to prove your "hypothesis".
You are not even CLOSE to falsifying a 6000 year old earth.
Dave, a 6,000-year-old earth was falsified at least a hundred years ago. A 6,000 year-old earth is a flat-out physical impossibility, from a hundred different directions. Evidently you haven't gotten the memo, even after it's been stapled to your forehead.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
A m-m-m-miracle??!! Horrors! How dare anyone mention a miracle!! Yes, Deadman, miracles DO happen ... we've been over this before ... and the biggest miracle of all is that trained scientists think their ancestors were pond scum!
Is it a "miracle" that a trained professional, living in the 21st Century, could be so deluded as to believe that world is only a few weeks (a few weeks, a few thousand years, on real time-scales the difference is insignificant) old?
"Miracle" might not be the best word for it.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(And I did get the meteorite count wrong ... I guess there was 23, but 38 data points ... my error, not the RATE guys)
Nope, Davie-doodles, it's the RATE guy's multiple errors; the printed caption clearly says "23" and {"ncludes multiple analyses on a single meteorite". Both false.
Ah, good so you are going to address the fatal flaws in Arndts and Overn's hypothesis:
Passing the mixing test is not sufficient evidence for a mixing line.
Their own data doesn't support their conclusion; many of their samples failed the mxing test! They have no evidence that it is even reasonable to interpret those isochrons as mixing lines.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron slopes.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron intercepts.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of agreement with other dating methods that are not susceptible to mixing. No matter what you think of the individual dating methods, the pattern is there and must be explained by any viable hypothesis.
Quote
but if it goes anything like the other 10 or so topics that I have covered, then it will be just one more "skeleton" in the closet of Deep Timers.
If it goes anything like the other topics that have been discussed, you'll ignore the evidence, make unsupported asserions, lie, and claim victory.
No Dave, no more beating around the bush or obfuscation...answer the question...Does the sun revolve around the earth...Do the stars revolve around the earth?
Ecclesiastes 1:4 and 5: One generation goeth, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to its place where it ariseth.
Psalms 92: "He has made the world firm, not to be moved."
Psalms 103: "You fixed the earth upon its foundation, not to be moved forever."
Joshua 10:12: "Then spake Joshua to Jehovah in the day when Jehovah delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel; and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon."
It's that simple. You believe in Biblical Creation and that the Bible is a book of facts and the inerrant word of God. Now pony up.
Or do you just pick and choose the statements that support your beliefs?
See if you can answer this time without resorting to an attempt at a "veiled" shot.[I]
-------------- - Born right the first time. - Asking questions is NOT the same as providing answers. - It's all fun and games until the flying monkeys show up!
I'm learning alot about RM dating, though, and also about how gullible you are to believe whole rock isochrons give valid dates, when Dalrymple himself doesn't even defend them. 2) DALRYMPLE ENGAGED THEM PUBLICLY, BUT AVOIDED A DEFENSE OF WHOLE ROCK DATING
??
1. Dalrymple responded to some creationist idiots. That doesn't constitute some kind of "official debate." Creationists, like you, Airhead...are well-known as willing liars. This makes honest debate impossible. 2. Dalrymple further refuted creationist idiots in 2000. See: York D, Dalrymple, GB. Comments on a creationist’s irrelevant discussion of isochrons. Reports of the National Center for Science Education 2000; 20 (3): 18-20 "Radiometric dating of rocks and minerals using naturally occurring, long-lived radioactive isotopes is troublesome for young-earth creationists because the techniques have provided overwhelming evidence of the antiquity of the earth and life. Some so-called creation scientists have attempted to show that radiometric dating does not work on theoretical grounds (for example, Arndts and Overn 1981; Gill 1996) but such attempts invariably have fatal flaws (see Dalrymple 1984; York and Dalrymple 2000)."
You're an idiot, AirHead.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
AFDave, I see in your reply to my previous post you missed (avoided) the questions I asked. Let me be more precise.
If you ever accepted the data in the graph from RATE Book 1, how does this indicate Deep Time?
I never said this was MY evidence (or Eric's evidence or JonF's evidence) for Deep Time. I never said you had to accept Minster's quoted age on the graph. All I wanted to know was why you think this linear Isochron data set would indicate Deep Time? SIMPLE
AFDave, I'm keeping my messages more concise. I see that you are overworked with absorbing the multiple blows from the others on this thread. So.......
Quote
Mike PSS...
Quote
So we have come to an interesting point in your discussion of your hypothesis. We have REAL data on the table (not your genital wart plot creation) and we have a statement of falsifiability for your 6,000 year old earth hypothesis from yourself.
Mike, my friend, IF it somehow turns out that all meteorites plot on the Minster line and NOT in some pattern like my red dots, then you will have ONE shred of evidence supporting Deep Time. But even this piece of evidence can still be explained in other ways besides Deep Time.
You are not even CLOSE to falsifying a 6000 year old earth.
You ALMOST have an answer in that statement. Also, I'm not calling it evidence for anything. Just a collection of data. I want to know... What is your interpretation of the data explaining why the data set is linear? No age commitment, no zircon interpretation, no Portuguese word comparison. Just tell me what you see and why you see it that way.
Finally, you can see in my quote that I'm not trying to falsify your 6,000 year old earth hypothesis. I only said that you yourself have established a test of falsifiability to your hypothesis. From a logical standpoint this is good. Why can't you see this?
What is your interpretation of the data explaining why the data set is linear?
Dave thinks it's cherry picking.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Hey, aren't you the guy that said it was a waste of time to argue with me?
One of many. And, no, I haven't wavered on that. Pointing out that your rhetoric is beyond the pale of any normal person's definition of decency should not be confused with "arguing with you".
Quote
So am I irresistible?
My work involves "germs". I admit I'm fascinated by viruses, bacteria and the like; can't get enough of them. Does that tell you something?
What is your interpretation of the data explaining why the data set is linear?
Dave thinks it's cherry picking.
[Yoda] AFDave, don't think..... DO! Or don't do. Feel the force around you and act upon it. [/Yoda] (mis-quoted I'm sure)
Like chess, I think everyone but AFDave sees three moves ahead and understands why I ask this question first. AFDave is playing tiddly-winks on the chess board.
Sorry if I ruined the surprise, Mike. I've been over this with Dave, and frankly I haven't found a way to get past his paranoid delusions. In his mind, anyone who shows him ironclad evidence of the actual age of the earth must be lying. It is impossible for the graph in question to be accurate, therefore the data must be invalid. Dave simply has to use his imagination to come up with a reason for it to be invalid. His imagination, no matter how bizzare, must be correct because the alternative goes against everything he believes.
Honestly, I don't think Dave is ever going to find his way out of the mental prison he has constructed for himself. I'm out of ideas.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Improvious, No surprise ruined because there are no surprises in the data involved. Anyone who learns this stuff can understand how the data is put together. AFDave has indicated that he DOESN"T understand the subject (and JonF and ericmurphy both have pointed this out). I'm just trying to get an answer out of him showing me what level of education I can reasonably engage him at. I started with an BSc, EE degree basis but am now backing up to freshman level. It will be high school level very soon...... Wait a minute....
Okay, Dave: you say a 6,000 year old earth hasn't "begun to be falsified"? You're an engineer (okay, an electrical engineer), but you should be able to figure this out. Take six times ten to the twenty-fourth power kilograms of molten iron, and let it form into a sphere under its own gravitational attraction. Use pure iron, with no radionuclides, no silicon, nothing that will cause it to cool more slowly than pure iron.
Now: tell me how long it will take this molten droplet of iron to cool from the molten state to the point where the surface is solid (and roughly room-temperature). Do you think it will be less than 6,000 years? Oh, wait: it's gonna have to be in a few days, max, if Adam was able to talk around on it in his bare feet…
Still think a 6,000 year old earth hasn't been falsified, junior? Or is this yet another in the long list of miracles your "hypothesis" requires in order to be viable?
Here you are, stumbling around in the minefield of least-squares fitting algorithms and parent/daughter ratios with your head wedged in a milk-bucket, when your "hypothesis" is utterly defeated by bone-simple 19th-century physics.
But don't worry about answering the question, Dave; we already know you cannot.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I'd wish Dave and everyone here a happy steaming 200 pages, but 200 is just a number relative to the number of posts per page and numbers really are meaningless.
I'd wish Dave and everyone here a happy steaming 200 pages, but 200 is just a number relative to the number of posts per page and numbers really are meaningless.
666
You know what else is meaningless? That Match.com profile where you say you're straight. -dt
I'd wish Dave and everyone here a happy steaming 200 pages, but 200 is just a number relative to the number of posts per page and numbers really are meaningless.
666
Get with the times! We all know 616 is the Mark of The Beast™ now.
Steve, you are on fire this week!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
I'd wish Dave and everyone here a happy steaming 200 pages, but 200 is just a number relative to the number of posts per page and numbers really are meaningless.
666
Get with the times! We all know 616 is the Mark of The Beast™ now.
Steve, you are on fire this week!
Oh, come on now. 616 is like so like 3rd Century or something.
I'd wish Dave and everyone here a happy steaming 200 pages, but 200 is just a number relative to the number of posts per page and numbers really are meaningless.
666
Get with the times! We all know 616 is the Mark of The Beast™ now.
Steve, you are on fire this week!
Oh, come on now. 616 is like so like 3rd Century or something.
And "straight" is the new "square"
And "Dembski" is the new "Isaac Newton".
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Whole rock isochrons are inconclusive for demonstrating Deep Time. Why? Because they can better (more probably) be explained as the result of mixing.
Let's illustrate what we are talking about ...
The above picture shows a typical lava flow. Now the theory says that for the isochron to be valid, the initial Sr ratio of 87Sr/86Sr is HOMOGENEOUS. Now one could argue whether or not the flow above is actually homogeneous, but for the whole rock isochron method to work, this is the assumption. The typical assumed initial value is around 0.70 depending on whether you are talking about island volcanoes or continental volcanoes. I think it's a little higher for contintental. But in any case, it is ASSUMED to be homogeneous. Now IF the 87Sr/86Sr ratio is homogeneous, this means that the 87Rb/86Sr ratio is ALSO homogeneous, and this means that we would have only ONE data point on the isochron diagram if we were to analyze any sample in the lava flow.
Now let's consider what happens after it cools and solidifies. As JonF has pointed out, WHILE it is cooling, many different mineral crystals will form at different rates and will accept and/or reject Sr and Rb in different ways. Also note that both of these "foreigners" (they are foreign to the normal crystal structure) are mobile far below the melting temperature of the different mineral crystals. So just because a particular mineral accepts or rejects Sr or Rb initially as it is forming doesn't not mean it will stay there. Either atom can leave or show up in any crystal during the cooling process.
Now, what we want to note is that none of this discussion above has any bearing at all with the Whole Rock Isochron. Individual mineral crystals can go through as many gymnastics as they want to and none of this will change the overall composition of a large sample of the lava flow. So, what do we have? We have this ...
As you can see, nothing has changed on the isochron diagram ... we still only have one data point, simply because of the assumption of initial homogeneity and the fact that we are taking large sample sizes. Now Arndts and Overn recognize that the "One Data Point" problem can be solved by the Mineral Isochron method, and they are correct, because mineral crystals provide the needed inhomogeneity. But the mineral isochron method does not help us "date" the whole rock for reasons which Overn and Arndts explain and I won't repeat here. Suffice to say for the moment that IF the initial homogeneity assumption is true, then the whole rock isochron plot will yield only one data point, which, of course is useless for dating rocks.
OK? Is everybody with me?
Now that we understand homogeneity and cogenetic suites, let's consider 2 LAVA FLOWS. Let's assume that these are of different compositions as indicated by the different positions of the single points on the respective isochron diagrams. What happens when these two flows get mixed? Well, let's watch and see ...
In the picture above, you can see that some of the lava is not mixed at all and some is mixed partially. We have represented this with percentages of Flow A and Flow B -- 100/0, 75/25, etc.
They have a good discussion of this a little over halfway down the article entitled "Mixing of two sources" where they show exactly what I have shown. You can even put this in a Spreadsheet and play with the percentages and you will see that the mixing points ALWAYS lie on a line between the two end points which, of course, are merely the single point isochron diagrams of two distinct sources with different composition.
They even say this ...
Quote
Mixing would appear to be a pernicious problem. Since A and B can be completely unrelated to each other, their individual compositions could plot to a fairly wide range of locations on the graph. The line AB could have any slope at all.
Pernicious indeed! Actually, the word I would use is "FATAL." The T.O. article goes on to relate the "Mixing Test" from Faure, but I don't get the impression that the author really understands the mixing test. He does not say much, other than to give a simple reciprocal test which supposedly approximates Faure's rigorous test. And I don't think even Faure claims that the mixing test proves conclusively that mixing is not a possibility. If he does, I think he is wrong.
After working through all of this and understanding the assumptions and details of the whole rock isochron method, I have to say that I agree with Arndts and Overn is concluding that ALL whole rock isochron diagrams can be interpreted as mixing diagrams and there is really no way to prove that they are not. And with what we now know of earth processes, it makes total sense to interpret them as mixing diagrams.
Now, of course, there is the remote POSSIBILITY that all these WR isochron diagrams out there do, in fact, indicate true age. I freely admit that this is a rational possibility.
But my point today is what Overn and Arndt's point is also ...
WHOLE ROCK DIAGRAMS CAN ALL BE EXPLAINED AS MIXING DIAGRAMS ... IN FACT, THIS IS A BETTER EXPLANATION THAN DEEP TIME WHEN YOU CONSIDER MANY OTHER "EARTH AGE INDICATORS."
(Who was that bozo that said Creationists don't consider ALL the evidence? Heh heh!
**********************************
Now where does this leave us with the Minster plot of the 23 meteorites?
Simple. There are at least three possible conclusions and I have touched on two of them ...
1) Deep Time is indicated 2) The data was cherry picked as my hypothetical plot with "cherries" on it indicates 3) The plot is nothing more than a mixing plot
Now my guess is (3) ... how can this be? Well, what are meteorites anyway? Where did they come from? I don't know and you don't either, but a good guess, I suppose is that they are the remains of some great collision of two planets which may have formed the asteroid belt. Here's the Wikipedia article on meteorites ...
As of mid-2006, there are approximately 1050 witnessed falls having specimens in the world's collections. In contrast, there are over 31,000 well-documented meteorite finds[1].
Wow. 31,000 and the Minster plots analyzes 23. OK.
But anyway, back to where they came from ... I don't think anyone one really knows, so educated guesses is really all we have. Could they have come from a single mixed source relatively recently? Of course. Just as we have seen from the study above. It is entirely plausible that these meteorites are fragments of a planet or two planets or two moons or what have you, and we have just seen how the plots can be the result of mixing. Two independent sources, each with their own single point isochron diagrams on one or more planets or moons could have been heated, then flowed and experienced partial mixing. In fact, they probably did. Then when the big collision occurred, the pieces got scattered and wound up in the asteroid belt, then made their way to earth. Totally possible, completely plausible. One can think of a hundred different variations on this theme to envision how these meteorites got here.
Can the Minster plot be indicative of Deep Time? Of course, if no other data is considered. But we must consider other data, and when we do, Deep Time is not indicated.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Wow! 200 pages! You all should pool together and buy me a dinner for two at Hereford House or something!
How about it Steve ... can you arrange that? You're the Moderator Guy.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Wow! 200 pages! You all should pool together and buy me a dinner for two at Hereford House or something!
How about it Steve ... can you arrange that? You're the Moderator Guy.
Aw, c'mon Dave! How about more graphs with your made up data? That was a lot funnier!
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
(Who was that bozo that said Creationists don't consider ALL the evidence? Heh heh!
Dave, when we said "all" we didn't mean "including the stuff in your feverish imagination".
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
So no dinner for two at Hereford House to celebrate 200 pages? Bummer ...
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Glenn Morton's website is waiting for you, Dave. There's nothing more you can accomplish here. Except maybe amuse us with more imaginary evidence.
So does this mean that you have changed your mind about me being good for your side? Don't want everyone to "keep me taling" anymore, huh?
You must think I'm harmful to your cause now, right?
Hmmmmm....
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Chondrites are stony meteorites that have not been modified due to melting or differentiation of the parent body. They formed when various types of dust and small grains that were present in the early solar system accreted to form primitive asteroids . Chondrites are typically about 4.55 billion years old and are thought to represent material from the asteroid belt that never formed into large bodies. Most meteorites that are recovered on Earth are chondrites: ~86% of witnessed falls are chondrites, as is the overwhelming majority of meteorites that are found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrite
You seem to have selectively overlooked those phrases in the wikipedia article...I wonder why?
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Chondrites are stony meteorites that have not been modified due to melting or differentiation of the parent body. They formed when various types of dust and small grains that were present in the early solar system accreted to form primitive asteroids . Chondrites are typically about 4.55 billion years old and are thought to represent material from the asteroid belt that never formed into large bodies. Most meteorites that are recovered on Earth are chondrites: ~86% of witnessed falls are chondrites, as is the overwhelming majority of meteorites that are found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chondrite
You don't know any of this ... why don't you be honest and admit it is speculation? And your speculation is no better than my speculation.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
Actually, I do know better than you. The fact of the matter is that chemistry and physics still applies, even in your fantasy world, liar. And by the way, the Minster graph is on 38 meteorites, again.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Glenn Morton's website is waiting for you, Dave. There's nothing more you can accomplish here. Except maybe amuse us with more imaginary evidence.
So does this mean that you have changed your mind about me being good for your side? Don't want everyone to "keep me taling" anymore, huh?
You must think I'm harmful to your cause now, right?
Hmmmmm....
I don't know what the point is. You've demonstrated your uh intellectual capabilities for 886 posts. Knowledgeable people have pointed out the very basic mistakes for 5000 posts. So we've got what we need. And you aren't changing anyone's mind here. So why not get a new audience.
It's like if your local t-ball team played Florida State. After nine innings, and the score is 435-0, there's really not much benefit to playing nine more innings.
Glenn Morton's website is waiting for you, Dave. There's nothing more you can accomplish here. Except maybe amuse us with more imaginary evidence.
So does this mean that you have changed your mind about me being good for your side? Don't want everyone to "keep me taling" anymore, huh?
You must think I'm harmful to your cause now, right?
No, it's an admission that you're ineducable. It's not something you should be proud of.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
The same rules of mineralogy would apply if you envision a "fusing" of material from two bodies. This means that the various melting rates and recombination rules would apply. This means that specific minerals would NOT be found following a heat-generating event...and others WOULD, idiot. This is why scientists are secure in saying what they do..basic chemistry and physics. As I said, you really are an idiot. Look at the 15 or so types of chondrites. look at their mineral compositions. THEN talk to me once you've learned some basic chem and physics, you smug, stupid little twit.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
I don't know what the point is. You've demonstrated your uh intellectual capabilities for 886 posts. Knowledgeable people have pointed out the very basic mistakes for 5000 posts. So we've got what we need. And you aren't changing anyone's mind here. So why not get a new audience.
It's like if your local t-ball team played Florida State. After nine innings, and the score is 435-0, there's really not much benefit to playing nine more innings.
No. The truth is that I AM harmful to your cause because I am telling the truth about Evoism and Deep Time, but you like to pretend that I am helpful to your cause by displaying my supposed ignorance, which is why you told everyone to keep me talking. Now you've changed your mind and want me to go away. Pretty simple really.
Robert-- Glad you liked the "Watchmaker" ... feel free to join in any time on my thread here. As you can see, I'm slightly outnumbered.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
No. The truth is that I AM harmful to your cause because I am telling the truth about Evoism and Deep Time, but you like to pretend that I am helpful to your cause by displaying my supposed ignorance, which is why you told everyone to keep me talking. Now you've changed your mind and want me to go away. Pretty simple really.
Yeah, all those graphs with the made up data are a real threat...
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Glad you liked the "Watchmaker" ... feel free to join in any time on my thread here. As you can see, I'm slightly outnumbered.
You're not "outnumbered" stupid. You're outclassed. Any well-informed debater here can slice and dice your claims. And that is precisely what has happened at each turn. You're outclassed because you're an idiot relying on creationist crap that has been refuted over and over again, despite your "new" imaginary scenarios. I will repeat this, again: Lying FOR god makes God INTO a liar. Your stupid, patently obvious attempts at lying about Tyre, about whizzing land masses, about water shooting off into space, about the origins of chondrites, about "23" meteorites, about Portuguese, about dendro, about a hundred other subjects...all of those things are as clear as day and testify to your ineptitude and utter stupidity, along with your utter dishonesty.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Now let's consider what happens after it cools and solidifies. As JonF has pointed out, WHILE it is cooling, many different mineral crystals will form at different rates and will accept and/or reject Sr and Rb in different ways. Also note that both of these "foreigners" (they are foreign to the normal crystal structure) are mobile far below the melting temperature of the different mineral crystals.
Nope. No more mobile than the normal constituents of the crystal. Rb and Sr are (mostly) held in the crystal structure by chemical bonds.
Your problem is believing the BS that Arndts and Overn are making up. Their fantasies are almost as stupid as yours.
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So just because a particular mineral accepts or rejects Sr or Rb initially as it is forming doesn't not mean it will stay there. Either atom can leave or show up in any crystal during the cooling process.
Nope. They show up in crystals with which they are physically and electrochemically compatible, and do not show up (much) in crystals with which they are physically and electrochemically incompatible.
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Now, what we want to note is that none of this discussion above has any bearing at all with the Whole Rock Isochron. Individual mineral crystals can go through as many gymnastics as they want to and none of this will change the overall composition of a large sample of the lava flow.
Yup, provided "large" means "much larger than any sample we take for a whole-rock isochron". However, samples on the order of a few grams to a few hundred kilograms will differ from samples separated from them by meters or kilometers.
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So, what do we have? We have this ...
Your ability to photoshop imaginary dots on a picture is not evidence. However, the individual small samples are separated widely, and are very likely not homogeneous for Rb.
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But the mineral isochron method does not help us "date" the whole rock for reasons which Overn and Arndts explain and I won't repeat here.
Because they are so stupid. They assert without evidence that "Foreign atoms just don't fit, either electrochemically or physically, and are strongly rejected". They can't present any evidence, 'cause their assertion is false. Rb+ substitutes quite nicely physically and electrochemically for K+, and Sr++ substitutes quite nicely physically and electrochemicaly for Ca++. (There's this thing called the "Periodic Table"; I suppose you've never heard of it). Both K and Ca are common in the chemical formulas of minerals, and therefore Rb and Sr are commonly found as an integral part of the crystal structures of minerals.
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Mixing would appear to be a pernicious problem. Since A and B can be completely unrelated to each other, their individual compositions could plot to a fairly wide range of locations on the graph. The line AB could have any slope at all.
Pernicious indeed! Actually, the word I would use is "FATAL." The T.O. article goes on to relate the "Mixing Test" from Faure, but I don't get the impression that the author really understands the mixing test. He does not say much, other than to give a simple reciprocal test which supposedly approximates Faure's rigorous test. And I don't think even Faure claims that the mixing test proves conclusively that mixing is not a possibility. If he does, I think he is wrong.
You obviously don't understand. Faure and Chris Stassen (and I) do. The "simple reciprocal test" is Faure's test. If a set of samples plot scattered on a mixing diagram, they are not the result of two-component mixing; and nobody's come up with a plausible scenario for 3+ component mixing that would not be easily detected. (There are also more sophisticated tests for mixing which can pick up three-component mixing, such as those described in Dickin's Radiogenic Isotope Geology section 7.3.3, but Davie doesn't have a prayer of understasnding them).
IOW, when Arndts and Overn plotted their data on mixing plots and obtained scattered results for some of them (r^2 < 0.5), they falsified their own hypothesis.
And you didn't even notice "The line AB could have any slope at all". That kills your hypothesis again. We do not observe isochron lines with "any slope at all", we observe almost all isochron lines with a very restricted range of slopes, all positive, and a very few that have high positive slopes or negative slopes. If the mixing hypothesis were true, we wouldn't see that, we'd see a much more uniform distirbution of slopes; but we don't see that uniform distribution of slopes, therefore the mixing hypothesis is false.
Same argument for the Y-intercepts.
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After working through all of this and understanding the assumptions and details of the whole rock isochron method, I have to say that I agree with Arndts and Overn is concluding that ALL whole rock isochron diagrams can be interpreted as mixing diagrams and there is really no way to prove that they are not. And with what we now know of earth processes, it makes total sense to interpret them as mixing diagrams.
You haven't understood yet, nor have you addressed the fatal flaws, nor have you considered even a tiny fraction of the relevant data:
Passing the mixing test is not sufficient evidence for a mixing line.
Their own data doesn't support their conclusion; many of their samples failed the mxing test! They have no evidence that it is even reasonable to interpret those isochrons as mixing lines.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron slopes.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron intercepts.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of agreement with other dating methods that are not susceptible to mixing. No matter what you think of the individual dating methods, the pattern is there and must be explained by any viable hypothesis.
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WHOLE ROCK DIAGRAMS CAN ALL BE EXPLAINED AS MIXING DIAGRAMS ... IN FACT, THIS IS A BETTER EXPLANATION THAN DEEP TIME WHEN YOU CONSIDER MANY OTHER "EARTH AGE INDICATORS."
Er, Davie-moron, when you consider many other "Earth age indicators" (which you have not done), they all agree with the whole-rock isochrons to an almost frightening degree of precision .. the Earth and life are old.
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(Who was that bozo that said Creationists don't consider ALL the evidence? Heh heh!
I've said it many times. You're proof that I'm right. See the last point in the above list. You haven't considered a fraction of the relevant evidence.
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Well, what are meteorites anyway? Where did they come from? I don't know and you don't either, but a good guess, I suppose is that they are the remains of some great collision of two planets which may have formed the asteroid belt.
Let me make sure I've got this right though; correct me if I'm wrong:
Given a plot of 38, 380, or 38000 (X,Y) data points, even if they all fall on a line, no matter what the correlation coefficient is, you can never have any confidence about the relationship between X and Y, because it's possible those 38, 380, or 38000 were complete flukes, and the next 380000 points will probably, might, for all we know,could conceivably could, with a probability somewhere around 10^-47(*), demonstrate no significant X-Y correlation.
* (A number I pulled out of thin air. Surely it's as valid as any other!
"Another development of the Rb-Sr method (Schreiner, 1958), was the analysis of co-genetic whole-rock sample suites, as an alternative to separate minerals. To be effective, a whole-rock suite must display variation in modal mineral content, such that samples display a range of Rb/Sr ratios, without introducing any variation in initial Sr isotope ratio. In actual fact, perfect initial ratio homogeneity may not be achieved, especially in rocks with a mixed magmatic parentage. However, if the spread in Rb/Sr ratios is sufficient, then any initial ratio variations are swamped, and an accurate age can be determined. Initial ratio heterogeneity is a greater problem in Sm-Nd isochrons, and is therefore discussed under that heading (section 4.1.2). Schreiner's proposal actually preceded the invention of the Rb-Sr isochron diagram, but some of his data are presented on an isochron diagram in Fig. 3.4 to demonstrate the method.
Fig. 3.4. Rb-Sr whole-rock isochron for the "red granite" of the Bushveld complex, using the data of Schreiner (1958). ...
I don't know what the point is. You've demonstrated your uh intellectual capabilities for 886 posts. Knowledgeable people have pointed out the very basic mistakes for 5000 posts. So we've got what we need. And you aren't changing anyone's mind here. So why not get a new audience.
It's like if your local t-ball team played Florida State. After nine innings, and the score is 435-0, there's really not much benefit to playing nine more innings.
No. The truth is that I AM harmful to your cause because I am telling the truth about Evoism and Deep Time, but you like to pretend that I am helpful to your cause by displaying my supposed ignorance, which is why you told everyone to keep me talking. Now you've changed your mind and want me to go away. Pretty simple really.
Robert-- Glad you liked the "Watchmaker" ... feel free to join in any time on my thread here. As you can see, I'm slightly outnumbered.
If you were hurting my cause, after 5900 posts you'd have hurt it pretty badly. The last thing I would want, would be for you to continue at a different site with new people to impress. You could call it changing my mind, but it's really vaccillation. Sometimes I think you're still entertaining, sometimes I think you're boring. If you want to keep playing, T-ball Dave, I'm sure JonF and Deadman and such will keep running up the score.
Er, Davie-moron, when you consider many other "Earth age indicators" (which you have not done), they all agree with the whole-rock isochrons to an almost frightening degree of precision .. the Earth and life are old.
Just to reinforce what Jon said above: *******All Ages in Billyuns and Billllyuns of Years****** Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.49 +- 0.05 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.55 +- 0.1 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar whole rock 3.52 +- 0.04 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.60 +- 0.1 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.57 +- 0.05 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.49 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar plagioclase 3.56 +- 0.06 Apollo 17 Rb-Sr isochron 4.43 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar ilmenite 3.58 +- 0.05 Apollo 17 Sm-Nd isochron 4.23 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 40Ar/39Ar pyroxene 3.55 +- 0.05 Apollo 17 Sm-Nd isochron 4.34 +- 0.05 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Rb-Sr isochron 3.57 +- 0.05 Apollo 16 40Ar/39Ar 4.47 Apollo 11 - High-K basalt 10072 Sm-Nd isochron 3.57 +- 0.03 Apollo 16 40Ar/39Ar 4.42
All of these are taken from Dalrymple. I suggest you go buy his book and contribute to the continued publication of science, AirHead. Or visit a library, that strange place that holds books , so many, many books that you have never read...and which say you're wrong beyond mere wrong, you're simply comical. Stupid, fanatical and blindly in error is a bad way for a sheep to go through life and does a disservice to any God worthy of the name.
-------------- AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
Face it, Dave: you're getting your ass handed to you in this discussion of isochrons. JonF has repeatedly asked you questions that you cannot answer, and meanwhile has rebutted every single point you've ever made. You're hopelessly outclassed here, Dave, and it shows.
So why don't you try something you have a prayer of understanding: take a sphere of molten iron (pure iron, melting point 1811 K), with no impurities that would slow the rate of cooling. That sphere masses 6 X 10E24 Kg. How long will it take that iron sphere to cool in a vacuum to the point where the surfact temperature is, say, 275 K? You should be able to do the calculations without too much difficulty, Dave. What do you suppose the answer is going to be? Is it going to be 6,000 years or less? Is it going to be 1,500 years or less? Is it going to be 1 year or less? Because even a result of one year or more will utterly falsify your young-earth "hypothesis," with no escape other than appeal to miracles.
Don't be a coward, Dave. Answer the question. I already know you won't like the answer.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Steve is a selfish bastard and he just wants you to quit before anyone tops his TARD chart.
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
Robert-- Glad you liked the "Watchmaker" ... feel free to join in any time on my thread here. As you can see, I'm slightly outnumbered.
Hi Dave. I can't help you with YEC, since I accept that the earth is billions of years old. I can only help you to the extent that I am a theist who thinks the biological sciences rest on an inferior epistemological foundation.
or is it that I don't want any thread to surpass Official Uncommonly Dense Discussion Thread? No, I'm just moody. Sometimes I see AFDave as hilariously dim, and other times, he's terribly boring.
Oh, and one more question, Dave (not that it hasn't been asked before ad nauseum): how does the fact that watches do not reproduce not completely invalidate your "watchmaker" analogy?
Any ideas? Or are you just going to ignore this as yet another question you cannot possibly answer?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
AFDave, I begin to understand why people call you names on this board. However, I have patience to engage in your present rambling explanations. But first you have to show some knowledge of the material that you presented.
What you (and Arndts and Overn) are not recognizing is the actual formation of crystaline structures from a homogenous melt. The melt may have 5 (or 7 or 9 or more) different elements that form a crystal structure. With these elements, you may have preferrential crystallization of one type of crystal in one zone and another type of crystal in another zone of the solidification front as the melt cools. Since there are MANY crystals in any rock there can be areas between the actual crystals that are amorphous in nature. A granite countertop would be pretty bland if this were not the case.
To carry on with the technical side of this discussion you have to understand some terms. Face-Centered-Cubic, Body-Centered-Cubic, Hexagonal-Close-Packed. These are unit cells of a crystal. The unit cells can combine into different geometries like, Cubic, Hexagonal, Tetragonal, Rhombohedral, Orthorhombic, Monoclinic, Triclinic. Depending on the unit cell AND the lattice geometry, an impurity may be substituted either interstitially (between crystal atoms) or substitutuinally (replacing atoms in the crystal matrix) depending on the impurities atomic size and the crystal structure. Also, impurities may be present at the crystal boundries because of linear defects or grain boundries in the crystalline mass.
OK? Are you still with me?
To summerize into usefull bullet points.
*WHOLE ROCK ANALYSIS CAN CONTAIN IMPURITIES FROM INTERSTITIAL, SUBSTITUTIONAL, LINEAR BOUNDRY, OR GRAIN BOUNDRY DEFECTS ALONG WITH AMORPHOUS AREAS OF THE ROCK. *THE NUMBER AND TYPE OF THESE DEFECTS IS RANDOM. which means... *THE NUMBER OF Rb AND Sr ATOMS IN ANY ONE WHOLE ROCK SAMPLES IS SOMEWHAT RANDOMIZED. *A WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRON ANALYSIS WILL SHOW DIFFERENT POINTS ON A LINEAR LINE RELATIONSHIP. *ALL OF THIS VARIABILITY WAS FROM AN INITIAL, HOMOGENEOUS MELT.
Dalrymple probably didn't engage Arndts and Overn because the argument they used against Dalrymple was so basically flawed why should he respond to such simpleton accusations.
Back to you AFDave.
Mike PSS
****This information from my sophmore MatSci text. It fits since AFDave's arguments are very sophmoric in nature.****
A lot hinges on this, too. What people think about origins and the nature of mankind is VITALLY important to law and society. This is why you see me being so passionate about this issue.
Note: I am interjecting here to a much earlier thing that I still find fascinating after reading this awesome array of posts dismantling this amazingly inane argument.
I find the above quotation a stunning thing to write about the law, Dave, given that you apparently have no respect for the scientific method in your mind. The functionality of the U.S. legal system hinges considerably more on the scientific method and logic than you seem to be able to muster AND it functions so well because of its reliance on the presentation and logical (if emotionally laden) explanation of that evidence. You will find that the areligious (not anti-religious) nature of our legal system and its avoidance of a priori religious stances has ensured a much higher degree of fairness than those systems that existed before it.
Think of the Salem Witch Trials, the Inquisition or the present legal systems run by theocracies across the globe. What kind of evidence need be presented? None need be when you have the power of divine inspiration on your side. God fills in the blanks.
I have read so many posts here as a lurker and I find your lack of evidentiary respect so shoddy. You just keep moving the goal posts around trying to avoid the conflict that must arise in that fantastically evolved cortex when it is confronted by so much evidence.
Don't make us laugh by saying that you are serious about the law. You may be serious about some kind of anti-Enlightenment (your beliefs are antiquated beyond the 18th century) and anti-educational law rooted in a sectarian reading of the Bible (which translation I also wonder). You are serious about your ideology. You are not serious about U.S. law as it is rooted in the Enlightenment and the respect of evidence and reason.
Depending on the unit cell AND the lattice geometry, an impurity may be substituted either interstitially (between crystal atoms) or substitutuinally (replacing atoms in the crystal matrix) depending on the impurities atomic size and the crystal structure.
And, especially for substitutions, the electrochemical properties of the impurity atom.
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*WHOLE ROCK ANALYSIS CAN CONTAIN IMPURITIES FROM INTERSTITIAL, SUBSTITUTIONAL, LINEAR BOUNDRY, OR GRAIN BOUNDRY DEFECTS ALONG WITH AMORPHOUS AREAS OF THE ROCK. *THE NUMBER AND TYPE OF THESE DEFECTS IS RANDOM. which means... *THE NUMBER OF Rb AND Sr ATOMS IN ANY ONE WHOLE ROCK SAMPLES IS SOMEWHAT RANDOMIZED.
I don't quite agree; many of the ways impurities are incorporated are indeed random, but substitution typically is not. But the chemical effects, of course, lead to enrichment or depletion in the melt as various crystals form from it, and inhomogeneous temperature effects contribute too, and all sorts of things show up that complicate the picture far beyond Davie's "it all freezes at once" level of understanding ... eventualy leading to initial spatial inhomogeneity in the solidified rocks as well as the minerals, and therefore, as you wrote:
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*A WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRON ANALYSIS WILL SHOW DIFFERENT POINTS ON A LINEAR LINE RELATIONSHIP. *ALL OF THIS VARIABILITY WAS FROM AN INITIAL, HOMOGENEOUS MELT.
FYI, FWIW, you can make neat lists with:
{list] {*}Item 1 {*}Item 2 {/list}
Replacing the curly braces with square brackets.
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Dalrymple probably didn't engage Arndts and Overn because the argument they used against Dalrymple was so basically flawed why should he respond to such simpleton accusations.
Dalrymple did a certain amount of responding to simpleton accusations. He engaged Arndts and Overn's argument at Isochrons and Mixing Lines, and apparently in an NCSE publication that's not on the web (I had hardcopy but have lost it, and don't rmemeber the details). But Arndts and Overn didn't bring up anything new after Dalrymple fisked them, so there's no need to re-engage.
Don't make us laugh by saying that you are serious about the law. You may be serious about some kind of anti-Enlightenment (your beliefs are antiquated beyond the 18th century) and anti-educational law rooted in a sectarian reading of the Bible (which translation I also wonder). You are serious about your ideology. You are not serious about U.S. law as it is rooted in the Enlightenment and the respect of evidence and reason.
Been there, done that. Dave rejects the notion that the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers and the nascent United States was derived from Enlightenment thinking. He has found his one book, his bible if you will, in the work of David Barton. America is a Christian nation, by God, and 200 years of scholarship and the Founders own words, will never convince him otherwise. That whole discussion is getting boring too.
Now if we want to really liven things up around here, we ought to see if we can get him on about macroeconomic theory. He has already stated that Keynesian economics is a myth and I, for one, would like to see him try to pull down the foundation of modern macroeconomic theory. Should be good fun.
-------------- It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)
Now if we want to really liven things up around here, we ought to see if we can get him on about macroeconomic theory. He has already stated that Keynesian economics is a myth and I, for one, would like to see him try to pull down the foundation of modern macroeconomic theory. Should be good fun.
Or it would be, except Dave can't even answer the most elementary questions about his own "hypothesis," e.g, how does the existence of the Andromeda Galaxy not falsify his 6,000 year old cosmos, how long would it take a globe of molten iron the size of the earth to cool to a solid surface, how the fact that watches don't reproduce doesn't invalidate his "watchmaker" analogy, how even one object dated anywhere via any method to more than 6,000 years doesn't falsify his "hypothesis," etc. These are basic questions that any simpleton should be able to answer, but Dave's not up to the task.
It's hard enough to keep Dave on-topic on this thread—actually, he's never actually been on-topic, since he's never provided any support for his hypothesis. I'd suggest any debates on other topics, e.g., Keynesian economics, be moved to another thread.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
(Mike PSS @ Sep. 21 2006,15:30) Depending on the unit cell AND the lattice geometry, an impurity may be substituted either interstitially (between crystal atoms) or substitutuinally (replacing atoms in the crystal matrix) depending on the impurities atomic size and the crystal structure.
And, especially for substitutions, the electrochemical properties of the impurity atom.
Quote
*WHOLE ROCK ANALYSIS CAN CONTAIN IMPURITIES FROM INTERSTITIAL, SUBSTITUTIONAL, LINEAR BOUNDRY, OR GRAIN BOUNDRY DEFECTS ALONG WITH AMORPHOUS AREAS OF THE ROCK. *THE NUMBER AND TYPE OF THESE DEFECTS IS RANDOM. which means... *THE NUMBER OF Rb AND Sr ATOMS IN ANY ONE WHOLE ROCK SAMPLES IS SOMEWHAT RANDOMIZED.
I don't quite agree; many of the ways impurities are incorporated are indeed random, but substitution typically is not. But the chemical effects, of course, lead to enrichment or depletion in the melt as various crystals form from it, and inhomogeneous temperature effects contribute too, and all sorts of things show up that complicate the picture far beyond Davie's "it all freezes at once" level of understanding ... eventualy leading to initial spatial inhomogeneity in the solidified rocks as well as the minerals, and therefore, as you wrote:{snip}
(my bold)
Thanks for the clarification. I had thought of saying something similar to the bolded comment at first but thought a bit of explanation of how spatial inhomogenaity could be structurally formed. I left the selection issue out of the discussion because I knew you were trying to hammer it into AFDave already. I was then going to carry-on about the material balance and mass transfer issues at the solidification front of the melt but thought I would end the message with what I had. Your summary above states it pretty well.
AFDave, Do you agree with the structural mechanisms I presented? Do they exist in your hypothesis? If not, why not?
Or it would be, except Dave can't even answer the most elementary questions about his own "hypothesis," e.g, how does the existence of the Andromeda Galaxy not falsify his 6,000 year old cosmos, how long would it take a globe of molten iron the size of the earth to cool to a solid surface, how the fact that watches don't reproduce doesn't invalidate his "watchmaker" analogy, how even one object dated anywhere via any method to more than 6,000 years doesn't falsify his "hypothesis," etc. These are basic questions that any simpleton should be able to answer, but Dave's not up to the task.
It's hard enough to keep Dave on-topic on this thread—actually, he's never actually been on-topic, since he's never provided any support for his hypothesis. I'd suggest any debates on other topics, e.g., Keynesian economics, be moved to another thread.
Just an observation: AFDave completely ignores any issue that he has no cut-and-paste or canned YEC "argument" to use for an "answer". Something contrary to his beliefs has no existence (other than as an evil anti-faith claim) unless and until it has an answer that he is stupid enough to glom onto.
Of course the failures of his "answers" are spectacular, since neither he nor his sources have any reasonable grasp of science. But that's beside the point that he treats anything not having a YEC "answer" as if it doesn't exist, or with some idle boast that he's sure he could as handily defeat, say, DNA dating, as he has radiometric dating, or some such ignorant fantasy.
OK, this is not rocket science. However, it does point out how thorough his denial of any contrary evidence is, as anything not "explained", however badly, is denied point blank. AIG BS is just a further form of denial, of course, since he neither understands nor cares about the actual science. It is the denial that matters, not whether or not one could actually do science with his "hypothesis". Clearly one could not do science with his or AIG's "hypothesis", which makes these people hostile to working science.
It's worth noting that near the beginning of this thread AFDave claimed that he wasn't so much out to bring in new evidence as a new way of thinking. The trouble was that denial is not a new way of thinking. Indeed, it is something that most of us have taken some trouble to get away from. This doesn't change the fact that this "way of thinking" is all that AFDave has to offer, and it is something that prevents him from learning how to think in a way that treats data non-prejudicially.
That's a given, though, since he's only trying to shore up his prejudices.
AFDave, Is this your data interpretation filter? (found here)
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Implications of the Old Earth Position It is obvious that belief in a 4.6 billion-year-old earth and a 15 billion-year-old universe did not come from the Bible, for there is not a hint of evolution or long geological ages anywhere in the Bible. My book, Biblical Creationism, for example, examines every relevant verse in every book of the Bible, and there is no suggestion anywhere of the geological or astronomical ages that are widely assumed today. The concepts of evolution and an infinitely old cosmos are often found in the ancient pagan religions, but never in the original Judaeo-Christian literature.
Therefore, Christians who want to harmonize the standard geological/astronomical age system with Scripture must use eisegesis, not exegesis, to do so. That is, they have to try to interpret Scripture in such a way as to make it fit modern scientism. We believe on the other hand, that the only way we can really honor the Bible as God's inspired Word is to assume it as authoritative on all subjects with which it deals. That means we must use the Bible to interpret scientific data, not use naturalistic presuppositions to direct our Bible interpretations.
Those who choose the latter course, however, embark on a very slippery slope that ends in a precipice. For if the long geological ages really took place, that means there were at least a billion years of suffering and death in the animal kingdom before the arrival of men and women in the world. Each geological "age" is identified by the types of dead organisms now preserved as fossils in the rocks of that age, and there are literally billions of such fossils buried in the earth's crust. This fact leads to the following very disturbing chain of conclusions, as follows:
[1]God is not really a God of grace and mercy after all, for He seems to have created a world filled with animals suffering and dying for a billion years, and He did so for no apparent reason whatever, assuming that His ultimate goal was to create human beings for fellowship with Himself. [2]The Bible is not really an au thoritative guide, for if it is wrong in these important matters of science and history, which we supposedly can check for ourselves, using the usual criteria of scientific and historical investigation, then how can we trust it in matters of salvation, heaven, and everlasting life, which we have no means of verifying scientifically? (and on and on and on and on.........)
For someone who had never been exposed to any sort of science before, or religion for that matter, there's a pretty simple method for making an assessment as to which is more likely: an old earth or a really, really young earth.
Literally hundreds of thousands of books, papers, articles, etc. provide evidence for an earth at least a few billion years old, and a cosmos at least twice as old as the earth. Virtually every branch of science there is provides some support for an old earth and an older universe. Such evidence is provided by such diverse disciplines as astronomy, chemistry, geology, biology, and physics.
On the other hand, there is one source for the belief in an earth 6,000 years old: the Bible.
So, one can believe that literally all of science, and everything ever written about science in the last 100 years—all those hundreds of thousands of books, papers, articles, literally terabytes if not exabytes of data—is wrong.
Or, one can believe that one book is wrong.
Knowing nothing at all about theology, science, or the scientific method, which seems more likely?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Wee Davey hasn't popped his head out of his hidey=hole at all on this page.
Like one of those blowup punching dolls slowly running out of gas, it's taking roundheeled Dave longer and longer to roll back into the upright position.
Only to immediately be smacked down again.
Dave: it's been ugly for quite a while; now it's just pitiful.
I am sorry that you don't like "my" Jesus. You will bow before Him someday whether you like Him or not. I'm simply here to warn you before it's too late.
I always thought Jesus was "the Truth, the Light, and the Way." Evidently not. Jesus, in Dave's constipated little universe, is a fascist jerk who demands obeisance and worship like some sort of infantile, insecure little tyrant. Just like Dave's god: he so desperately wants approval from his slaves that he'll wipe them all out if he doesn't get it.
Dave, your religion fills me with revulsion.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
PeterEvolves & Carsonjok (not to mention those who know who they are) are on the money with AFD.
PeterEvolves:
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.....Dave, given that you apparently have no respect for the scientific method in your mind. The functionality of the U.S. legal system hinges considerably more on the scientific method and logic than you seem to be able to muster AND it functions so well because of its reliance on the presentation and logical (if emotionally laden) explanation of that evidence. You will find that the areligious (not anti-religious) nature of our legal system and its avoidance of a priori religious stances has ensured a much higher degree of fairness than those systems that existed before it.
AFD and his ilk must maintain a kind of post modernist funk where the rules of evidence are carelessly twisted if not completely disregarded to create the impression they are following them.
That is why the only way they can ever hope their insane version of reality will be accepted is to have SOTUS change the rules of evidence.
Of course if that were to happen the rule of Law would be completely bankrupt and the Crazies would be in charge of the Asylum....one can only speculate what would happen then...reasoning people becoming unreasonable?
Fortunately there are some people who realize this, however given that their dear leader Mr 30% ...Korn God GWB has failed dismally to convince even 'some of the people' ....the 30% being the proverbial backwash, I for one can't see that happening soon.
AFD stop lying to yourself.
You do understand if you had to support your case in a court you would be laughed out of it in next to no time.
Speaking of which how is your congregation going with that financial scandle ?
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
MIKE PSS AND JONF ARE DISPLAYING THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF MINERAL CRYSTAL FORMATION, BUT MISSING THE FATAL FLAW IN WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS
Very impressive display, guys ... I see you have a good command of all the intricacies of how mineral crystals form. Now, why don't you face the fact that ...
a) Whole Rock Isochrons were far more common that Mineral Isochrons for many years (at least up until the mid-90's, and b) Whole Rock Isochrons can easily be explained as Mixing Diagrams, thus rendering them unconvincing as proof of Deep Time
JonF says that the samples above are widely spaced enough that they would be inhomogeneous WRT Rb content ...
Oh really? OK, fine. Then guess what ... they are inhomogeneous WRT to intial 87Sr/86Sr content also. You cannot have it both ways. The Whole Rock Isochron method assumes a homogeneous daughter ratio. It is either homogeneous or it is not. If it is, then Rb is homogeneous also. If it is not, the the WRI diagram is rendered useless.
Think of it another way. Take 2 of those 23 meteorites we were discussing ... for example, take the ones with D and P equal to 0.708/0.18 and 0.81/1.7, the lower left data point and the upper right data point.
Now melt them and mix them completely. What do you get? A SINGLE POINT ISOCHRON
Now rewind the tape. Melt them again and mix them IN-completely, like in the picture above. What do you get now? A MULTI-POINT ISOCHRON EXACTLY LIKE THE MINSTER PLOT
Now do you see? The point is that those 23 meteorites could have easily come from a source that was partially mixed. (I've actually been reading Walt Brown's theory of meteorites here http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/Asteroids.html ... pretty interesting, but I'm not prepared to debate this yet) . I have read that the "Exploded Planet Theory" of the asteroids is evidently wrong, but I don't think the "Failed Planet Formation" theory has much support either. Another new thing I learned is that apparently, meteoroids are not "chips off of asteroids," but more likely are "chips off Planet Earth." See the link above for references.
In any case, it is quite easy to imagine that these meteorites are the result of varying degrees of mixing within a common source. Partial mixing is actually quite common ... happens all the time when a volcano erupts. As the magma rises through the fissure, it is mixed to a greater or lesser degree with crustal layers, finally escaping and being deposited in a heterogeneous mixture.
Sorry, guys ... you have failed to convince me that Whole Rock Isochron diagrams are of any use for proving Deep Time. They COULD be interpreted that way, but it is more logical and consistent with the evidence to NOT interpret them that way.
*******************************
TIDBITS
JonF made a big deal a while back about how wrong I supposedly was about how popular the K-Ar "dating" method is ... I said what the RATE Group said (p. 37 of the RATE Book, Vol 1), which is basically that K-Ar is the most popular dating method. Jon laughed at me and said I was crazy and that the RATE guys are liars, blah, blah, blah ...
The K-Ar method is probably the most widely used radiometric dating technique available to geologists.
Now who's the liar?
I like this quote from Dalrymple's article also ...
Quote
One of the principal tasks of the geochronologist is to select the type of material used for a dating analysis. A great deal of effort goes into the sample selection, and the choices are made before the analysis, not on the basis of the results.
Yeah, a great deal of effort alright ... a great deal of effort to pick samples that will "date correctly" ... i.e. align with the "Deep Time Religion" ... can anyone say "Cherry Picking" ??
and this one ...
Quote
Unlike argon, which escapes easily and entirely from most molten rocks,
Seems likes Snelling and AFD said something like this once ... now we have Dalrymple himself saying it. Hmmmm ... Jon ... fraudsters, huh? I don't think so.
If you continue reading Dalrymple's rebuttal, it becomes clear that whoever said that Dalrymple wouldn't waste his time rebutting Overn and Arndts was wrong. He spends quite a bit of his paper on them ... makes 5 points, which Overn and Arndts promptly rebutted here http://tccsa.tc/articles/isochrons.html.
I like this particular rebuttal of Dalrymple's Point 4 ...
Quote
4. If isochrons are due to mixing, roughly one-half should show a negative slope. It is probable that if all samples gathered from the field for testing by this method resulted in published curves, that a reasonably large percentage would be negative. However, since little significance is given to these "mixing lines", and because of the time and expense involved in obtaining the data, few negative-slope plots could be expected to be completed, and a much smaller number of those published. A significant sample does show up in the literature, however, which should be sufficient to satisfy a judgment that the field data satisfy this criterion.
In support of this, check out Snelling's data from Mt. Ngauruhoe ... (we're using the Talk Origins convention of P/Di and D/Di)
Hmmmm ... what would I find if I spent a lot of money and did an extensive literature search ...
Probably the same thing.
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
So ......has your congregation decided not to sue you and your shonky pastor?
What would it take AFD? have you covered up all the paper trail? What about the bank accounts ? 900 odd people AFD..... there must be someone who has an axe to grind. Anyone asking leading questions..any threats?..nasty letters?
Come on give us the good oil.
Back to your purty piktures ..just arant nonsense...how do I know? It's your MO half a D.
-------------- The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane
MIKE PSS AND JONF ARE DISPLAYING THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF MINERAL CRYSTAL FORMATION, BUT MISSING THE FATAL FLAW IN WHOLE ROCK ISOCHRONS
Dave, you still don't get it: the chances that you, a complete dilettante in the field of radiometric dating techniques, could catch a fatal flaw in the methodologies that have eluded experts in the field for decades, are zero.
ZERO.
JonF has made it abundantly clear that he's forgotten more about radiometric dating techniques than you'll ever know, and the chances that you can educate him about anything in the subject are likewise zero.
ZERO.
The chances that young-earth creationists, who have an obvious and admitted agenda, are going to be honest with you in trying to find reasons why every single last bit of evidence for an old earth is wrong are likewise zero.
ZERO.
And the chances that any evidence whatsoever, no matter how compelling, could convince you that you're wrong about anything, are likewise zero.
ZERO.
So what stock should we put in a statement from you that you don't find the evidence "convincing"?
What do you think?
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
Very impressive display, guys ... I see you have a good command of all the intricacies of how mineral crystals form.
And you still don't have the faintest idea.
Quote
Now, why don't you face the fact that ...
a) Whole Rock Isochrons were far more common that Mineral Isochrons for many years (at least up until the mid-90's,
Unsupported assertion ... in fact, if your test of it is valid, it's falsified:
Results 1 - 10 of about 385 for isochron "whole rock" 1981-1990 Results 1 - 10 of about 478 for isochron mineral 1981-1990
Quote
Whole Rock Isochrons can easily be explained as Mixing Diagrams, thus rendering them unconvincing as proof of Deep Time
Only if you ignore 99.99% of the evidence, including Arndts and Overns' own tests which showed several isochrons severely scattered on a mixing diagram. Repeating lies don't make 'em true, moron.
Quote
JonF says that the samples above are widely spaced enough that they would be inhomogeneous WRT Rb content ...
Oh really? OK, fine. Then guess what ... they are inhomogeneous WRT to intial 87Sr/86Sr content also. You cannot have it both ways.
Actually, I can and do have it both ways. I realize that this is very basic chemistry and therefore far above your capabilities, and we've only gone over it at least two times before, so it's unreasonable to expect you to have caught on yet. But I'll go over it again. I'm warning you, though, it's going to be difficult for you; you'll have to keep three ideas in your head at one time, and it's obvious you're not accustomed to have any ideas in your head at any time. But I'm here for you, and I'm confident that if you try hard and really concentrate you can handle it. Ready? Stoked? Here we go!
Different isotopes of the same element are chemically and mechanically identical.
Solidification is a chemical (and slightly mechanical) process.
Therefore, solidification cannot and does not distinguish between isotopes of the same element.
Got that? I know you love wide-spaced caps, so to help you fix it in your mind: S O L I D I F I C A T I O N C A N N O T A N D D O E S N O T D I S T I N G U I S H B E T W E E N I S O T O P E S O F T H E S A M E E L E M E N T . Hold that thought if you can, we're going to the next stage:
Different elements have different chemical and mechanical properties.
Solidification is a chemical (and slightly mechanical) process.
Therefore, solidification can and does distinguish between different elements.
Here it is again, in your favorite format to help you remember: S O L I D I F I C A T I O N C A N A N D D O E S D I S T I N G U I S H B E T W E E N D I F F E R E N T E L E M E N T S.
In particular, when we are talking about the 87Sr/86Sr ratio during solidification, we are talking about how solidification affects different isotopes of the same element, and we know it affects them identically; so, no matter how little or how much Sr is taken up in a particular crystal, we know that the 87Sr/86Sr ratio in that crystal will be the same as in the melt, and the 87Sr/86Sr ratio in the melt doesn't change. But when we are talking about how Rb is taken up into crystals (substituting for other elements or fitting mechanically in "nooks and crannies"), or what the Rb/Sr ratio is in a crystal, we are talking about how solidification affects different elements, and we know that it affects them differently. For example, if a particular type of crystal happens to take up a lot of Rb when it solidifies, that reduces the percentage of the local melt that is Rb; or, if a particular type of crystal happens to reject a lot of Rb when it solidifies, that increases the percentage of the local melt that is Rb. And different types of crystals are forming in different places in the melt, depending on temperature and cooling rate and dynamically changing concentrations of various elements and all sorts of stuff. Now add in the fact the all this is affecting the Sr concentration in crystals and we come to the final conclusion:
The 87Rb/86Sr ratio is going to vary between different minerals, and between the same minerals in different paces in the solidified melt, and different minerals are going to form in different places in the solidified melt, and therefore the rocks we take from that solidifed melt "shortly" after solidification are going to be made up of different minerals and/or the same minerals in different proportions ... the 87Rb/86Sr ratio is going to vary between rocks and the 87Sr/86Sr ratio is not going to vary between rocks.
It all follows directly from the facts that solidification cannot and does not distinguish between isotopes of the same element and solidification can and does distinguish between different elements.
Oh, and Davie-poo ... melt solidification has been extensively studied and tested. We know this happens 'cause we see it in the lab. Observations trump your pipe dreams.
Quote
Think of it another way. Take 2 of those 23 meteorites we were discussing ... for example, take the ones with D and P equal to 0.708/0.18 and 0.81/1.7, the lower left data point and the upper right data point.
Now melt them and mix them completely. What do you get?
After solidifying, a body with constant 87Sr/86Sr ratio and varying 87Rb/87Sr ratio. I.e., a multi-point horizontal isochron.
Quote
Hmmm ... Jon, guess what this article says ...
Quote
The K-Ar method is probably the most widely used radiometric dating technique available to geologists.
Now who's the liar?
You, Davie. I admitted I had no proof for popularity back then, it was just my opinion, but I posted three independent pieces of evidence, each of which proved that your claim that K-Ar is recently the most popular dating technique is wrong.
Quote
I like this quote from Dalrymple's article also ...
Quote
One of the principal tasks of the geochronologist is to select the type of material used for a dating analysis. A great deal of effort goes into the sample selection, and the choices are made before the analysis, not on the basis of the results.
Yeah, a great deal of effort alright ... a great deal of effort to pick samples that will "date correctly" ... i.e. align with the "Deep Time Religion" ... can anyone say "Cherry Picking" ??
Nope. Can you say "don't make claims unless you have evidence for them"?
Quote
I like this particular rebuttal of Dalrymple's Point 4 ...
Quote
4. If isochrons are due to mixing, roughly one-half should show a negative slope. It is probable that if all samples gathered from the field for testing by this method resulted in published curves, that a reasonably large percentage would be negative. However, since little significance is given to these "mixing lines", and because of the time and expense involved in obtaining the data, few negative-slope plots could be expected to be completed, and a much smaller number of those published. A significant sample does show up in the literature, however, which should be sufficient to satisfy a judgment that the field data satisfy this criterion.
Actually, I like that a lot. It demonstrates the vacuity of your position very well. "A few negative-slope plots are published, therefore about half of the possible plots are negative-slope". Sure, Davie-dumbo. Yeah, right. Negative-slope isochrons are interesting and publishable, Davie-pootles. Academics like to publish, it helps their careers. A few published negative-slope isochrons are evidence that that's all there are, not evidence that a lot more exist.
Quote
and this one ...
Quote
Unlike argon, which escapes easily and entirely from most molten rocks,
Seems likes Snelling and AFD said something like this once ... now we have Dalrymple himself saying it. Hmmmm ... Jon ... fraudsters, huh?
Yup, analyzing rocks with xenoliths (which were not molten when the rest of the rock was) and claiming the results mean anything is fraud. Clear and simple.
You can't even keep your claims straight, Davie-dweeb. Real geologists know that argon escapes easily from molten rocks. Argon that does not escape from molten rocks is called "excess argon", and your claim is that argon does not easily escape from molten rocks, therefore giving rise to lots of excess argon. Do try to keep up, Davie-pie, there's a good lad.
Quote
If you continue reading Dalrymple's rebuttal, it becomes clear that whoever said that Dalrymple wouldn't waste his time rebutting Overn and Arndts was wrong. He spends quite a bit of his paper on them ...
971 words out of 30,969. 3%. "Quite a bit", hum? Wotta dork you are.
Quote
In support of this, check out Snelling's data from Mt. Ngauruhoe ... (we're using the Talk Origins convention of P/Di and D/Di)
Oh, Davie, Davie, Davie, Davie, Davie. You're a classic. You post so much evidence that disproves your claims and you don't even notice.
The range of Snelling's 87Sr/86Sr values is 0.000507. The range of 87Sr/86Sr values found in real isochron analysis of old rocks is on the order of 1.0. E.g.:
Four orders of magnitude larger than Sneling's data range, Davie-dipsy. Hee hee hee hee hee ... gee, wonder what I'll get if I plot Snelling's data on a realistic scale instead of letting Excel choose the scale for me? Let's have the Y-axis range be 0.1, one-tenth the realistic range for an old rock:
Gosharootie, Davie-pud, it is a nice straight horizontal line, derived from whole-rock analysis of a young flow, showing significant variation in 87Rb/87Sr but negligible variation in 87Sr/86Sr. Snelling's data clearly shows what you and Arndts and Overn are claiming is impossible!!!!
Quote
Hmmmm ... what would I find if I spent a lot of money and did an extensive literature search ...
Probably the same thing.
Absolutely, Davie-dip. You'd find whole-rock isochrons from young flows plotting as nice horizontal lines with wide variations in 87Rb/87Sr and minuscule variations in 87Sr/86Sr.
You can thank me by pointing out exactly where I said lava is sedimentary, posting your often-promised discussion of the Grand Staircase paleosols, responding to my refutation of your claims about Snelling's paper and zircons, and, of course the list you've ignored so many times:
Passing the mixing test is not sufficient evidence for a mixing line.
Their own data doesn't support their conclusion; many of their samples failed the mxing test! They have no evidence that it is even reasonable to interpret those isochrons as mixing lines.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron slopes.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of isochron intercepts.
Mixing does not explain the observed pattern of agreement with other dating methods that are not susceptible to mixing. No matter what you think of the individual dating methods, the pattern is there and must be explained by any viable hypothesis.
Hee hee hee hee ... says JonF ... he's laughing so hard at his wiley ways of tripping me up that he fails to notice that his own champion, Dalrymple himself, tries to prove meteorites are 4.6 BYO with a very similar graph ...
Figure 3: Rb-Sr isochron for the meteorite Juvinas. The points represent analyses on glass, tridymite and quartz, pyroxene, total rock, and plagioclase. After Faure (49). Data from Allegre and others (3).
Hey, Jon ... what would I get if I plotted this on a "normal" graph?
Pretty near a horizontal line, my friend! See what the range is?
0.0057 !!!!!!!!!!!
Incidentally, what I showed with my graph is ...
a) WR Isochrons are useless (plotted on a fine scale, they are all over the map) ... hence useless. b) WR Isochrons are useless (plotted on a "normal" scale they are a horizontal line) ... again useless.
USELESS EITHER WAY YOU SLICE IT, JON.
Your guy is trying to prove meteorites are 4.6 GYO with a range of 0.0057!!!!!!!!!!
And you laugh at my chart!!!! Oh man, this is great stuff!
(But thanks for the zip file ... you're a good man anyway!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
I am sorry that you don't like "my" Jesus. You will bow before Him someday whether you like Him or not.
How do you know that?
Because he's an arrogant assclown.
It's such a shame that when afdave's body bites the dust, his mind won't be around to realize that he's squandered his one shot at existence by living a lie.
He thinks that when we die we'll learn the Truth. I think he will never learn the truth.
I am sorry that you don't like "my" Jesus. You will bow before Him someday whether you like Him or not.
How do you know that?
'Cuz everyone's been telling him that all his life.
Quote
It's worth noting that near the beginning of this thread AFDave claimed that he wasn't so much out to bring in new evidence as a new way of thinking. The trouble was that denial is not a new way of thinking.
No, it's a very old way of not thinking.
Quote
And you laugh at my chart!!!!
You mean the chart where you made up all the data and claimed it supported a Young Earth™?
Yeah, we actually had a VERY good laugh at that! I meant to thank you.
-------------- "Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus
Your arguments get absolutely blasted down to the bedrock, over and over and over again, but you keep coming back for more! And more than that, you keep think you're winning!
If there was a Nobel Prize given out for self-delusion, I think you'd be a multiple prize-winner.
By the way, Dave: you'll notice that JonF answered each one of your questions, and rebutted every single last one of your claims. He's done this again and again and again, over and over with every claim about radiometric dating you've ever made.
In the meantime, the five-month anniversary of this thread is coming up, which seems an appropriate time to post the list of questions on radiometric dating and other topics (including, you know, your "UPDATED Creator God Hypothesis"—remember that one?) that you have never been able to answer. I've compiled a nice list, organized by topic, and it will be going up in a few days.
Now that you know how to use permalinks, I can't wait for you to show us how you actually have answered all those questions. It's like waiting for Oscars night!
And JonF: I know this is verging on damning with faint praise, but congrats for your utter evisceration of all of Dave's claims wrt to isochrons and other topics. Stellar work, and I can only hope that all of Dave's YEC friends stop by to watch the slayage.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
I am sorry that you don't like "my" Jesus. You will bow before Him someday whether you like Him or not.
How do you know that?
just like he knows the earth is 6000 years old. And, just to remind everybody, Dave thinks the sun is 6000 years old. His default position is that everything is 6000 years old. Kinda rules out life on other planets then eh?
So, it dont matter what the subject is, or how conclusive the evidence is, it's wrong by default if it indicates an age greater then 6000 years old. So stars thousands of light years away (6000+) are also less then 6000 years old. Logic plays no part here. If gawd really wanted us to believe in an ancient earth then he's doing a damm good job of proving it. Big old liar in the sky?
Dave, you say you believe in 90-95% of science. Well, part of that belief should come with the idea that you can look at what the evidence says and then draw a conclusion based on that. Not the other way round!
-------------- I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies". FTK
if there are even critical flaws in Gauger’s work, the evo mat narrative cannot stand Gordon Mullings
AFDave, I was going to put a lengthy explanation of how crystal structure selection and formation was related to the limiting element in the melt front. And if the limiting element was depleted then the structure of the crystal would change in that area.
Hey, Jon ... what would I get if I plotted this on a "normal" graph?
Pretty near a horizontal line, my friend! See what the range is?
0.0057 !!!!!!!!!!!
Is an order of magnitude greater than what JonF said
Quote
The range of Snelling's 87Sr/86Sr values is 0.000507.
See what you get when you miss the decimal place.
Mike PSS
An order of magnitude? Dave's (and the various Bible-apologists) underestimate the age of the earth by six orders of magnitude.
Not quite as bad as the cosmological constant fiasco, but then it's not like Dave couldn't get the correct value pretty easily just by looking at actual evidence, rather than consulting his one book that even he knows is far from inerrant.
-------------- 2006 MVD award for most dogged defense of scientific sanity
"Atheism is a religion the same way NOT collecting stamps is a hobby." —Scott Adams
So Dave, I know you're having fun with the isochrons now but...
I understand that according to you, at any time any of us would be able to have a change of heart, accept your Jesus, and be taken in, and spend the rest of eternity in the light with your God.
I also understand that you believe that this is still possible right up to the very end, no matter what kind of evil, Jesus-rejecting life we've led. This is your beloved Death Bed Scenario.
Now, here's what I don't understand. Imagine for a minute that someone were to miss out on that last chance for salvation during life here, on purpose. I thought that that was supposed to send a person straight to [Hades]. Instead, what I think you're saying is that Jesus calls you up and makes you bow before him whether you want to or not. What does he do, have an angel poke you with a stick? Or is he just impossible to resist against? At what point do you lose free will? Do you get another chance to accept him then and there and possibly change your fate?
Hee hee hee hee ... says JonF ... he's laughing so hard at his wiley ways of tripping me up that he fails to notice that his own champion, Dalrymple himself, tries to prove meteorites are 4.6 BYO with a very similar graph ...
Figure 3: Rb-Sr isochron for the meteorite Juvinas. The points represent analyses on glass, tridymite and quartz, pyroxene, total rock, and plagioclase. After Faure (49). Data from Allegre and others (3).
Hey, Jon ... what would I get if I plotted this on a "normal" graph?
Pretty near a horizontal line, my friend! See what the range is?
0.0057 !!!!!!!!!!!
Yup. A mere order of magnitude greater than Snelling's range. Davie-dip, you're just proving my point, that yuor graph of Snelling's data is meaningless 'cause you used irrational axis scale choices.
But, Davie-doodles, you've tripped yourself up again. The appropriate scale prtly depends on the data and partly depends on the overall real-world values. Dalrymple's data is fine, accurate and well above the threshold of the instrumentation. So is Snelling's. The range just happens to vary a lot, but both the X and Y ranges vary.
Notice the range on the X-axis too.
In Moorbath's data, approximately 20.
In Snelling's data, approximately 1.5. (That's why it made sense for me to plot Snelling's data with 10% of the Y-range of Moorbath; Snelling's X and Y ranges are about 10% of Moorbath's, so the X axis was scaled OK already.)
In Dalrymple's data, approximately 0.1.
So, when you calculate slopes (which is how you get ages), dividing delta Y by delta X, you get a significantly positive slope on Moorbath's plot, a significantly positive slope on Dalrymple's plot, and a significantly horizontal line on Snelling's plot. Calculate what the rocks that Snelling sampled will be in a bilion years.
To make it even clearer, let's scale the data linearly (which won't affect the slope, but it'll mess up the intercept) so we can see all three sets on a comparable scale; for Moorbath, divide X and Y by 10 and add 0.625 to Y, leaving the slope the same; for Dalrymple, multiply X and Y by 10 and subtract 6.29 from Y leaving the slope the same; and for Snelling, leave X and Y alone. I'll just do the extreme points for Dalrymple and Moorbath, it's a pain trying to read them from the graph:
{ABE: I just swapped the picture; the original version had Dalrymple's data labeled as Moorbath's and vice versa. Wonder if Davie would have noticed that my graph had Isua older than Juivenas?}
It's clear, Davie-doodles; Snelling's data clearly shows a horizontal whole-rock isochron, insignificant variation in 87Sr/86Sr, and significant variation in 87Rb/86Sr. Who was saying that's impossible?
Quote
Incidentally, what I showed with my graph is ...
a) WR Isochrons are useless (plotted on a fine scale, they are all over the map) ... hence useless. b) WR Isochrons are useless (plotted on a "normal" scale they are a horizontal line) ... again useless.
Um, Davie-doodles, WR isochrons for young rocks ... "plotted on a "normal" scale they are a horizontal line" ... are far from useless ... 'cause when they age they aren't horizontal any more. Your graph demonstratges how useful WR isochrons are.
Quote
(But thanks for the zip file ... you're a good man anyway!
And you're not, Davie, 'cause you're cutting and running from the discussions you promised.
The board f**ked up the link; the link was correct (but when I go to edit the post it presents the link in HTML rather than in UBB), and Steve's version of it works.
Looks like the methodology described on TO wins again:
Quote
A horizontal line represents "zero age."
--------------
Quote (afdave @ Oct. 02 2006,18:37)
Many Jews were in comfortable oblivion about Hitler ... until it was too late. Many scientists will persist in comfortable oblivion about their Creator ... until it is too late.
AFDave, I was going to put a lengthy explanation of how crystal structure selection and formation was related to the limiting element in the melt front. And if the limiting element was depleted then the structure of the crystal would change in that area.
However, as I walk up and see JonF's response this is what I find:
Not much left there for me to pick-apart. Good Job JonF.
Obnviously AFDave was piloting it! He must have mistaken his IQ for his altitude.
Quote (Mike PSS @ Sep. 22 2006,13:30)
AND AFDave said
Quote
Hey, Jon ... what would I get if I plotted this on a "normal" graph?
Pretty near a horizontal line, my friend! See what the range is?
0.0057 !!!!!!!!!!!
Is an order of magnitude greater than what JonF said
Quote
The range of Snelling's 87Sr/86Sr values is 0.000507.
See what you get when you miss the decimal place.
Mike PSS
And the x axis is another two orders of magnitude!
-------------- "Following what I just wrote about fitness, you’re taking refuge in what we see in the world." PaV
"The simple equation F = MA leads to the concept of four-dimensional space." GilDodgen
"We have no brain, I don't, for thinking." Robert Byers
The bad link had http://www.antievolution.org/ stuck in front of the intended address. I think the BB does that if a url doesn't have the http:// in front of it, or something like that.
Did I read that right? I never noticed this before! I was laughing so hard that John was griping about my miniscule range of Y-values being only slightly more miniscule than Dalrymples that I didn't even notice the X-axis values!
This is great!! I wish I had noticed this before!! Thank you for pointing this out to me!!
Look at those X-values! Talk about MINISCULE!!
So you mean to tell me that you think this meteorite is 4.6 GYO because they measured these infinitesmally miniscule values and they plot on a nice line with a slope? Wow!
Hmmm ... I guess I should be more understanding. I came to this discussion with absolutely no illusions that radiometric "dating" could tell us anything about the real age of rocks. But I forget that you all DO believe in that sort of thing, and yes, you are correct about your slope comparisons. I suppose I should be more considerate and at least give you a fair chance to explain why it makes sense, even though it makes no sense to me.
And mind you, I do understand why positive slopes LOOK like old age, but I just keep hearing Dalrymple's statements ringing in my ears ...
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The K-Ar method is probably the most widely used radiometric dating technique available to geologists.
and ...
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Unlike argon, which escapes easily and entirely from most molten rocks,
... and migrates IN also, JonF, as we have seen.
And the famous Cherry Picking statement ...
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One of the principal tasks of the geochronologist is to select the type of material used for a dating analysis. A great deal of effort goes into the sample selection
But alas, you don't care about any one this ...
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Alright, so, you're convinced the earth is old ... I'm not ... what did I expect?
But ... as in all our other discussions, I have come away from this one with a really nice view of ...
THE SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET OF WHOLE ROCK iSOCHRON DATING
And tomorrow ... Mineral Isochrons!
(Oh BTW ... did anyone notice that the chart we just discussed with the miniscule range of values was primarily a MINERAL isochron chart? I think there may be something to discuss there ... we shall see!
-------------- A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
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Now there are some interesting things we can observe here. First, we could ask why my dad told them Cessna made the airplane. And the answer would be that he had previously used the Abductive Reasoning method and had made an Inference to the Best Explanation. Let's walk through this. .jpg)
As you are passionate about your cause, I am just as passionate about scientific literacy. I see a real threat to the economic future of my country if the pseudoscientific pushers like the Creationists continue to try and lower the U.S. science standards. 
Research that shouldn't exist. When faced with it, Behe said he didn't believe in it (although he never read it- after all, it wasn't supposed to exist)- and, when pressed, he completely forgot the "principle" of his theory and started to demand ridiculous amounts of evidence that, if they were to be demanded all the time, all of genetics and biology would be rendered useless- "unfruitful", if you like.
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Is a current photo of the "Grand Canyon of the Toutle River." THE RIVER HAS INCISED ABOUT 30 METERS OF SEDIMENT SINCE 1980 
) and in studying the materials that form between grains when the rock lithifies. If we can reliably date the material that formed between grains when the rock became rock, we can date the rock. One very promising such material is 
that's the Vishnu Schist. 
<< me bowing to stevestory's superior satirical and sarcastic skills. Sensei! (look! -- it's ID, 'cause it's alliterative) 
See what you get when you miss the decimal place.
